Joseph Caldwell - Lazarus Rising

“You realize, of course, that you’re being foolish.”

“And what’s wrong with being a fool? Am I a fool for being a Catholic? Am I a fool for believing in the Church, for believing that’s where I have to get married?”

“If you’re such a believer, why do you have so little trouble exempting yourself from its teaching about sex? Sex outside of marriage?”

“I don’t exempt myself. Can’t you see that? That’s what I’m talking about. I want to get married. Haven’t you heard me? I want to get married. But I’m told I can’t. So what do I do? Oh, yes, I know. I abstain. Abstinence. Continence. Why, when I’m more than willing, when I’m desperate to get married?” He squatted down again, his face inches from the priest. “Marry us. Then let me take care of her. She’s going to die, but marry us first,” he whispered.

Father Dunphy made no move. Slowly, Johnny stood up. His voice still close to a whisper, he said, “All right, then. I’m going to say something and I have to ask you not to look at me while I’m saying it. It could be proof that I’m the most trusting guy on the block or, worse, it could mean I’ve signed myself on to the biggest con job ever perpetrated in human history.” He paused only slightly. Father Dunphy stared down at the bottom of the boat. “The real reason I want to marry Dempsey—why I want you to do the marrying—is that I was brought up to believe—and this is the hard part—is that I believe that marriage is a sacrament. It means we get special grace, special help when things get so difficult that we don’t know what to do. For reasons I don’t quite understand, I believe this. And I want that help—whatever form it might take—when the going gets really rough. The way it’s going to.”

Again he squatted down, again his face close to Father Dunphy’s. “Whether my faith humbles me or humiliates me, I don’t know. But I do know I want us—Dempsey and me—to have this help. If it really exists.”

Father Dunphy, after a long look at Johnny, swung his body away, there on the seat of the rowing machine. He looked again at the footboard, then rested his feet against it.

Johnny bowed his head. “Please say something, Father.”

The priest waited, then said, “May I sit here for a few minutes before I go?”

Without raising his head, Johnny said, “Would you be more comfortable up there, on the couch?”

“I’m fine here,” he said quietly. “If it’s all right. Just for a minute if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” Johnny stood up. “I’ll get you something cold.”

“No. Nothing. Please. Go finish your windows. I can find my own way out. Please. I’ll be better here by myself.”

After he’d taken a few steps back toward the windows, Johnny stopped. He thought he should say something, but he didn’t know what it was. Maybe he should get the priest something to drink whether he said he wanted it or not. But he didn’t want to interfere if the man preferred to be alone. He continued toward the windows, past the cupboards lining the walls where each man kept his civilian clothes, his personal belongings. Their doors needed painting. The pale green paint was worn or chipped away. His own cupboard, the third from the end, was no better than the rest. Near the padlock the wood showed, a honey-colored pine. One of the doors sagged slightly from a loose hinge. Noonan’s door was worse; the screws securing the padlock were slipping out of their grooves and one hinge was pulled away from the frame completely.

The priest should not have seen this disrepair. He should not have been allowed to come up to this private space. He should not have seen the shredded wood of the floor or the collapsing couch. He should not have seen the television set with the smudged screen and the single sock on top.

When Johnny passed his cupboard, he straightened the lock so it wouldn’t hang at an angle and stick out away from the hasp.

Quietly he tore some paper towels from the roll. He didn’t want to disturb Father Dunphy. Quietly he crumpled them and began to rub away the dried glass wax he’d applied earlier. When the towel squeaked against the glass, he stopped, then put less pressure into his rubbing. He listened to hear the priest get up to leave, but heard nothing. Johnny’s hope was that he’d turn around and Father Dunphy would be gone.

The inside windows were finished. While Johnny was raising the window so he could sit on the sill and do more outside, he decided he would stop trying to be so quiet. (Dempsey had—again and again—told him how noisy it was, trying to be quiet.) Ordinary sounds might help the priest make the necessary transfer back to ordinary life, away from the world of AIDS. It might help Johnny too.

He sat on the sill, outside. The priest was still sitting silently on the rowing machine, his back to Johnny, his feet still propped against the board in front of him. The window was lowered so the bottom of the frame rested on Johnny’s thighs. He began his rubbing, clearing away the dusty dried wax. He kept his eyes focused a few inches from his nose. If the priest got up, Johnny would see it only as some movement in the distance, removed from the set range of his vision.

Now he could see through the clear glass into the room. Father Dunphy, slowly bending, slowly straightening himself, was rowing. Forward he bowed his head, then raised it, the seat moving back and forth as he pulled on the oars, released them, then pulled again. The massive shoulders, the broad back, leaned down, then brought themselves up, but so slowly, so evenly, that it seemed an act of keening, of mourning, of prayer.

Johnny went back to his work, but quiet again. When he finished, he sat there, looking through the separating glass. Father Dunphy had stopped rowing. He had let go of the oars and had put his open hands, palms down, on the seat. He didn’t move.

Johnny raised the window and stepped inside. He waited to see if the priest might move. When nothing stirred, he turned back to the window and looked again to see where a smudge might be. He shifted to the side and looked from there. It was along the frame on the far side.

As he reached out his hand, he heard the priest say, “I’ll marry you then, if that’s what you want. And we’ll let God, not the cardinal, decide whether it’s valid or not.” The man’s back was still to Johnny. There had been a slight motion of the head, a lifting, as he’d said the words, but now no movement could be seen.

Johnny took a step forward, but before he could take a second step, the bell sounded, its pitch high and clear, the tiny hammer hitting against the metal disk. The priest made no move. Johnny quickly made a turn to his right, grabbed the pole and began the slide. His last sight of Father Dunphy was of a huge man becalmed in his boat, wondering how far he’d come and how far it was to an unseen shore.

Johnny sat with Dempsey in Doctor Norstar’s office. He was wearing his T-shirt with the Maltese Cross that identified him as a fireman. Experience had taught him that wearing some official marking at the doctor’s office, at the clinic, at the hospital, got them, if not preferential treatment, at least an assurance that they wouldn’t be made to wait beyond their turn. One might be tempted to keep the sick and the dying waiting, but not a fireman. Johnny would come with Dempsey whenever he could to make sure she got there with as little trouble as possible, to help her home if she was feeling wobbly, and to sit in on her sessions with Doctor Norstar so he’d be kept current with her condition and her treatment. He was also there for moral as well as physical support, especially if the news was to be less than encouraging, like the time Dempsey’s T-cells fell to ninety-three from two hundred seventeen—meaning she was even more susceptible to infection than before. At moments like that, Johnny could casually rub his hand along her lower thigh or, once in a while, scratch her knee just to let her know he had heard and understood what Doctor Norstar had said. Dempsey herself took no notice of his ministrations and Johnny took this as a sign that they were acceptable and welcome.