Joseph Caldwell: Lazarus Rising

Johnny looked at the crumpled toweling in his hand. “Yeah.” He shifted the towel from his right hand to his left, then bunched it even more.

“You love her.”

“Yes. I mean yes, Father.” He loosened his grip on the towel and pitched it toward the wastebasket near the lockers. It bounced off the rim and landed, after a tipsy roll, at the foot of Cameron’s cot. He made a move to retrieve it, but stopped himself.

“You may try again if you like,” the priest said.

“It doesn’t matter.” When the priest said nothing, Johnny went over and picked up the wadded paper, went back to where he’d been and took aim. Instead of making the toss, however, he lowered his hand, went to the wastebasket and dropped it in. It lay in between some of the other toweling he’d already discarded and a stray single brown sock thrown there by Cameron. He considered staying there, near the lockers, but when Father Dunphy didn’t turn toward him, he returned to where he’d been. Perhaps he had to be there, in that one spot, for the priest to speak to him.

After Johnny had placed his feet in their previous position and resumed as much of his pose as was possible without the crumpled towel to occupy his hands, the priest said, “I am here in obedience to my bishop, the cardinal. It would seem that the usher to my left reported your statement to one of the assistant priests in the Chancery. The assistant priest found an occasion on which to mention it to His Eminence. I myself am not assigned to the Chancery. Or to the cathedral. I was chosen to assist His Eminence that day because one of my parishioners, a firefighter, Joseph Bolles, was killed in the line of duty last fall. You may remember.”

“I remember. I was outside the church, in the ranks. Greenwich Village, right?”

Father Dunphy nodded. “In any event, I was sent for by His Eminence. He asked for verification of what you’d said. About the condoms. I verified it. He asked for verification—a second time—that I offered you the sacred host. I verified that too. There is a concern that you may have received the sacrament unworthily, that I am culpable, and that, if this is true, I must repent and you must do the same.”

“I hadn’t intended to go to Communion. To receive, to accept the host. I only wanted to say what I said and let it go at that. But I didn’t intend to say it to you. I wanted to say it to the cardinal. And then walk away, without having gone to Communion.”

“Then I should not have encouraged you to receive the sacrament.”

“Then why did you?”

“You looked so—so needful. I felt that you—you of all the men there were most in need of God’s presence, of the Body of Christ.”

He was looking directly at Johnny, his voice low, his gaze calm, with a sad perplexity. Johnny looked down at the floor, then turned his head toward the windows he’d been cleaning. “I was mad. I mean, I was angry is all. At the cardinal.”

“Ah yes. Condoms.”

“I want to get married, Father. But I can’t. My pastor on Staten Island, Father Tyson, he said we couldn’t. He said he checked with the cardinal’s office—the Chancery is it—and the cardinal or someone there, he said it wasn’t possible.”

Father Dunphy fingered the second button on his jacket, rubbing it as if it were a talisman that would give him some hint as to what he should do next. Apparently the button told him to sit down on the side of the rowing machine and stare at his shoes. When the button had completed its message and he had complied, he put his hand on his knee and simply sat there.

“Can I get you something, Father? Something cold—you know—to drink?”

The priest thought a moment, then nodded. He also managed to smile, but without dismissing the sad perplexity from his face. “Yes, you can get me something.”

“What? A Pepsi? What?”

“The gift of Solomon, the one he asked for when God told him he could have whatever he wanted. An understanding heart.” The smile widened, the perplexity, the sadness still there. “That’s what Solomon asked for. Of all the things, in all the world, an understanding heart. Not a bad answer, huh?”

“There’s a Coke machine down in the kitchen.” When Father Dunphy made no reply, he added, “But there are other drinks. Ginger ale. Root beer. Orange, I think. And grape. It’d be cold.”

“This woman you want to marry, she has AIDS.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why the condom.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you can’t marry.”

“Right. Because if I always use a condom, the marriage isn’t consummated. It wouldn’t be valid; it wouldn’t be a real marriage until I—well—until I didn’t use a condom. And Dempsey—she won’t let me without one.”

“Dempsey is the woman?”

“Dempsey is the woman.”

“And she’s worried you might get AIDS.”

“She says because she’s afraid of getting pregnant but I know it’s to protect me.”

“Father Tyson, you know, is right—about the marriage.”

“I guess so.”

“He explained that the marriage isn’t fulfilled, isn’t completed until—until the sex act is performed without impediment.”

“Yeah. He explained it. In almost those exact same words.”

“Sorry. We do resort to formulae from time to time.”

Johnny squatted down on his haunches in front of the priest. “But he’s wrong. I know he’s wrong.”

“Oh? I’m sure two millennia of theologians will be interested to hear your reasoning.”

“I don’t use a condom to thwart the marriage. I do it so I won’t get sick and die. And I told him—Father Tyson—there’s got to be such a thing as first intent. And my first intent, my only intent is not to get AIDS. What am I supposed to do? Consummate the marriage and then die?”

“In a word, yes.”

“But that’s stupid. It’s wrong. It has to be wrong.”

“Please. Don’t make me go into what constitutes a valid marriage. You’d either get bored or you’d get angry all over again. So what’s the point?”

“The point is that I want to get married. I love her. And I want to marry her. And there’s a practical side to it. If she’s my wife, when she gets really sick later on—when it gets close to—you know—to the end—to when she’s—she’s dying, I can get official leave and be with her all the time. This way, I’m going to have to quit my job, except I’m going to have to lie to her and tell her it’s a leave of absence. I have to marry her. Why can’t anyone understand that?”

“It’s not a matter of understanding.”

“All right, then. I won’t use a condom. I’ll ‘consummate’ the marriage. And if I get sick, I get sick. It’s a chance I’ll take. Except she won’t let me. I know she won’t let me.

And I can’t lie to her, for obvious reasons. And what if she does get pregnant? What do we do then?”

“How can I possibly know?”

“I’ll tell you what we do. She dies, the child dies, I die. Hooray, hooray. Good Catholic deaths. A happy death, I think it’s called. We can even get the last rites. Hooray all over again. Hooray for me, hooray for Dempsey, hooray for the kid. Especially the kid. At least it didn’t die a bastard, poor bastard.”

“And what would you like me to do?”

“Marry us. That’s all. Marry us.”

“But it wouldn’t—“

“It would! Before God I swear to you, it would be a true and real and honest and valid and consummated and all those other words marriage.”

“If you need the legality of a marriage, if she becomes Mrs. Donegan and she gets the insurance and you get the leave of absence, then why not just go down to City Hall? For all these legalities, that would be enough.”

Johnny got up. “But it wouldn’t be a true marriage. I’m a Catholic. City Hall doesn’t do it for me. If I’m not married by a priest, I’m not married. And I’m not going to fake it.”