James Patterson - Woman of God

Typical night in a one-saloon town.

House said to the bartender, “Bill. Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Our lady priest was on TV again.”

“Oh, her. Can I get you another one?” Bill asked House.

“No, I’m done.”

A fanfare came over the TV, announcing a breaking news story. House grabbed the remote and turned up the volume as the on-screen reporter intercepted Cardinal Cooney leaving the Boston Archdiocese and heading to his car.

The reporter asked, “Your Eminence. Do you have a comment for us on the Sixty Minutes interview with Brigid Aubrey?”

The cardinal scowled at the camera, then said, “Brigid Fitzgerald Aubrey has said more about her loosely wrapped mind than anything I can say. She’s delusional or blasphemous or both, but in any case, she took the Lord God’s name in vain. She can answer to Him.”

“YES,” thundered House as he thumped the bar with his empty glass. “That’s right, Cardinal. You got that right. Woman’s a fraud and a heretic.”

The bartender was mopping the bar. House shouted to him, “The backlash is coming, Bill! The tide is turning. God-loving people are getting fed up.”

On screen, the cardinal disappeared into the backseat of his car, and the TV reporter turned to face the camera.

“Chet, I’ll be outside the Millbrook JMJ church tomorrow, see if I can get Brigid Aubrey’s comments.”

House slapped some cash on the bar, said “Good night, Billy,” to the bartender, then walked outside onto the street, empty except for the fallen leaves scudding across the pavement.

He unlocked his car and got in.

He sat for a few minutes, thinking about what Brigid had said, how disturbing it was to hear her sickening so-called experiences going out all over the country. It was good, what Cooney had said. But was it enough? Mrs. Aubrey had fouled the name of God with her sick mind. She and her predator husband were infecting true believers with their dangerous nonsense, and nothing seemed to stop them.

House started up the car and drove to the intersection of Main and the highway and parked under a tree where he had a good view of the lights coming from the upstairs windows of the rectory.

He switched off the engine and settled in to watch and to wait. While waiting, he prayed to God.

JAMES WAS celebrating the second Mass of the day with a full church on a sunny morning in August.

He was in love with everything about this place, from the restored bell tower to the two-hundred-year-old floors and the new, hand-carved crucifix over the altar.

And he loved the people of this town.

He adjusted his stole and was beginning to receive Holy Communion when he felt a sharp stabbing sensation behind his right eye, more stunningly painful than anything he had ever felt before. The chalice jumped from his hand. He stepped back, lost his footing, and dropped hard to the floor.

What is happening? What is wrong with me?

He felt hands pulling at him, heard questions being shouted, but he couldn’t comprehend any of it. The fierce pain obliterated words, his vision, and, struggling to get up, he realized that he had no control at all over his body. He vomited onto the floor.

James tried opening his mind to God as Brigid had described to him, but all he felt was the astonishing, unrelenting pain and the certainty that he was drowning. James heard himself say, “Not…going…to make it.”

He didn’t want to die. Not yet.

He lost consciousness and came back to the pain, still roaring through his head like a runaway train.

James heard his name shouted right next to his ear.

“Daddy!”

He opened his eyes and tried to smile at Gilly; then he rolled his eyes up and glimpsed Brigid’s stricken face.

She said, “James, the ambulance is coming. Hang on to me. Hang on. Please. We’ll get through this.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Last. Rites.”

She screamed “No!” but he knew she understood. He dropped away again, and when he opened his eyes, Brigid was there, making a cross on his brow, forgiving him for his sins, slipping a drop of wine between his lips.

The immense pain dragged James back again into nothingness. His last thoughts were, Brigid has prepared my soul. And, The pain.

GILLY AND I were at Sloan’s Funeral Home, sitting in the front row of the reposing room, empty except for my beloved James, lying dead in his open coffin before us. It was good that Gilly and I had this private time to say good-bye to him, to pray for him before his funeral.

But even prayer was knocked down and sucked under by my grief. Gilly, too, was devastated, switching back and forth between choked sobbing and long, sad silences. It felt as though my heart kept beating only so that I could be there for our daughter, who had watched her father die in agony.

I knew James’s cause of death before we got the M.E.’s report. The suddenness and severity of his pain, the seizures and tremors, the dilated pupils and strangled speech, had told me that a brain aneurysm had ruptured, that his blood had rushed through and flooded the space between his skull and brain. If there had been time to get him into surgery-if only there had been time-maybe, maybe, he would have lived.

I looked at my husband in his coffin, with so many tall vases of flowers banked around him. Knowing that he was beyond pain gave me no solace or consolation. We had loved James so much. Gilly would grow up without him, and he had been deprived of so many things he had wanted to do. How could I sleep again in our house without him?

Gilly was lying across two chairs with her head in my lap. I dropped my hand to her head, buried my fingers in her hair. As she stirred, air rushed past my ears, and I saw a soft light arcing over James’s coffin- but he wasn’t there. The body lying on white satin was mine.

I was dead.

It wasn’t James who had died, it was me.

What had happened to me?

Had I died in South Sudan?

Or was I immobilized in a hospital, my body paralyzed while my brain lived in a dream world? Had everything that had happened after I’d been shot been an illusion? I was more confused than during the times when I’d connected with God. I was no longer sure where I was, what was real.

It was happening now, the warmth inside my chest, the breeze from nowhere, the split locations and overlapping scenes.

There I was, sitting with Gilly on a folding chair, and there I was, enclosed in a wooden box with diffused light all around me, cool satin behind my neck. I smelled lilies close by. And I heard the indistinct sound of voices.

God. What is happening?

You know.

I know what?

I saw both dimensions in the round. Gilly and I were in chairs a few yards away from the casket. James was with us, too. James. He was alive. His cheeks were pink, his eyes were bright, and he seemed-happy. He took me into his arms, and I held him tight while sobbing into the crook between his neck and shoulder. I smelled his skin and hair. This was reality. This was real.

At the same time, I could see from where I lay in the coffin. I didn’t have to sit up or even open my eyes as others came into focus. Colin knelt before my coffin and winked at me. I felt an indescribable pressure in my chest when I recognized the child sitting over there behind Gilly, kicking her seat-that was Tre.

Karl was beside Tre. He apologized to Gilly. I couldn’t quite hear the words, but I saw the kindness and love in his face. My father approached the coffin. I heard him say, “You were a good girl, Brigid.”