Acedia
Excerpt from The Comb, a Novel
Father Meade awoke me. I was directly beneath the Angel’s Trumpet, the one in the northwest corner of the garden. I had been sitting under the orange gold flowers, spilling from above like a cascade of bells awaiting their chance to ring in unison. I had wondered why the flowers were called trumpets and not bells, and had called them “the bell flowers” before I remembered their real name. The breeze had blown them about slowly, and combined their quiet sound and scent with the scent of the jasmine just nearby.
I had been reading a poem. I had fallen asleep.
Che Fece, Il Gran Refiuto, whispered the open page. It was a book in an old box from college, a book I’d probably brought with me to the Priory because it was a paperback and added little weight to the small weekend bag I’d confined myself to for this visit.
Which had been longer than a weekend. I had been here for eight days.
Father Meade was sitting on the grass next to me. A bearded man in a monk’s robe.
“Did I sleep through my confession?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You needed to sleep,” he said.
I sat up. Honeybees were around and about the angel’s trumpet, busily at work. They had also chosen to let me sleep, I thought. And now the bees were fine with my being awake.
I looked up at the sky. It was afternoon. Fortunately there was some natural shade in this corner and I hadn’t gotten sunburned.
My skin is fair. It takes little time for things to turn. Sunblock makes little to no difference. When I was a child, my Gramma bought me a parasol. Which worked but attracted attention from those walking down the streets of east Sacramento. “Look at the little ginger haired doll!” They’d say. Pointing.
“Would you like to talk?” Father asked.
“Do you have time?”
“I do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you trying to get out of this?”
“No.”
“Well let’s talk then. We can go into the chapel, or we can sit here. The brothers are on their walk, and won’t be back for at least an hour.”
“OK.”
I looked up into the bells. The flowers.
“Let’s stay here.”
I took a deep breath and looked at him.
“Are we going to talk about the bank stuff, or about Leah?”
“We can talk about both if you want. Are they the same to you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I had to stretch. I did. I yawned too before I answered.
“Well, at the bank I broke the rules to help people.”
“True. Does it still make you anxious, to think about the bank?”
“I think so. Because I made a whole new set of enemies. I’m good at that, aren’t I?”
“I would say you are quite an efficient enemy maker Lucie. Let’s talk about that.”
He folded his hands in his lap.
“Is Leah your enemy?”
“Oh no. Leah is not like that.”
I sounded like I was defending her. I listened to my voice as if it had been uttered by someone else. Not me.
“Leah isn’t like what?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think she is my enemy. I don’t know why I think that. I mean , I barely know her. I worked with her husband. I slept with her husband. It’s not like Leah and I hung out together.”
My lips were dry and I folded them inward. So my mouth was like a line.
“She was in my dream last night.”
“Really. What did she say?”
“Nothing. She never talks. She just stares. She has blue eyes. Very soft, young, sad light greenish-blue eyes. She’s quiet in real life too. Zane told me that.”
“Was Zane in your dream?”
“Last night? No.”
“Had you hurt Leah? Is that what she wanted to tell you? That you’d hurt her?”
“I don’t know.”
I wanted to modify what I’d said. But I wasn’t quite sure of the words to use.
“Lucie, you’ve already told me about what you did. So let’s get to the question. Does it bother you that you slept with Leah’s husband?”
“I guess so. I mean it’s wrong to sleep with someone’s husband. What I did was wrong, and except for the first time, when I really didn’t know he was married and he wasn’t wearing his ring, it was all wrong. So yes.”
I looked up.
“Is that what I’m supposed to say?”
“There’s not a script here Lucie. You’re not supposed to say anything. Back to my question. Does it bother you?”
“I just said that it did.”
“No, you just said that you knew it was wrong. That’s an answer to a different question. You just confessed that you knowingly did something wrong. With a voice of total composure.”
He smiled.
“What do you feel right now?”
Between us, there was a silence.
“I’m being honest with you,” I said. “Very, very honest with you. And there is no doubt in my mind that it is not right to sleep with another woman’s husband. So I guess I’m upset.”
“I don’t see it, Lucie.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I asked you what you feel right now.”
“Then you are changing the subject,” I said.
“I am.”
“OK, Father what am I supposed to be talking about?”
“Lucie, you’re in control here.”
“Good. That’s nice to hear.”
“But I’m going to change that up, just for a moment.”
He looked around. He’d heard a splash in the pool in the center of the garden, and he wanted to see if the egret was back. The one that had been visiting lately. It would arrive with great wingspan and fanfare, to take a spectacular and showy bath.
And eat the pool’s residents. For lunch.
But it was a smaller splash. It was a sparrow, and so he went on.
“What if you aren’t upset at all?”
I said nothing.
“Can I take your hand for a moment Lucie?”
I put out my left hand. He reached out and placed his hand under it.
“Your hand is cold.”
Then he said, “Leah.”
He put his thumb atop my wrist.
“Your pulse,” he said. “It’s slow. Steady. Good for you.”
“Is it good?”
“Yes, in some ways it’s good. But not in all ways.”
He went back to his question.
“What does it mean if you’re not upset?”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t upset.”
“Answer my question.”
“OK, I don’t know what it means. What I know is that it all happened. A lot of things happened. And I knew it would blow up one day, for me. I was with a married man, one who had been chosen for a future of powerful things.
I always knew that. That one day I’d be molted. Shed like old skin.
So I made sure I was ready for the time when that happened. I was always ready.”
I went on.
“There are functional reasons for this, you know. How was I going to do my job, especially in a place like the District, if I couldn’t keep it all together?”
I looked right at him.
“I’m good at keeping it all together. That’s why I get though times that would have caused others to leap off buildings. Not to fly, but to kill themselves decisively. The men in the District? They shove and they shove and I just kept getting up again. That was life. There was nothing else. So point one, every time I got up in the morning, if I’d slept at all, was keep it all fucking together.”
I added, smiling, “That’s how I pulled off the trade on cyberday.”
“How did you pull off the trade?” Father Meade asked.
“I pretended I wasn’t there. I pretended I was invisible. It makes everything cleaner and easier. It works for hard stuff. If you have to do hard, difficult stuff, you can’t get all messed up. Ever.
Think about men and women who go to war. They have a mission. They must succeed. There’s no “A for effort,” there’s no second try. They can’t have it be all about them. They serve our country with honor and put their own feelings away.”
“You admire them?”
“Yes.”
Then he flipped the conversation around. This must be a confession trick.
“Was sleeping with Zane difficult?”
“Sleeping with Zane? Difficult? I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it that way. I mean, I don’t think about that part very much at all.”
“What do you think about?”
“Our conversations. The stuff we were planning. How Zane opened up, calmed down, seemed happy when I got him into my house. Away from the Ministry.”
I felt his thumb on my wrist again.
“Your pulse just sped up.”
I looked at him and I concentrated.
“Are you sure?”
He looked me right in the eye, tipping his head towards me.
“And you’re slowing it down now. And the little bit of warmth I felt just left your hand. You’re good at this Lucie.”
Maybe I was good at it. Dropping my pulse rate. But I wasn’t enjoying this.
“Was Zane your friend Lucie?”
My pulse shot up again.
I felt this weird twitch inside my nose. Was I going to cry? No. that was not going to happen.
I looked up, eyes wide open so the breeze could dry anything that might happen against my will. I pulled it off.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Really. No. Zane was my colleague.”
“A colleague you had sex with regularly.”
After he said that, I felt my pulse drop. Success.
“Well officially, that’s why he came to my house. But if you add up the minutes and hours it was more about conversation.”
“And sleeping,” I added.
I pictured Zane asleep, and had to open my eyes really wide again.
I focused. Then I suddenly felt cold again.
The moment had passed. I was relieved.
Father Meade was silent for about three minutes, though it seemed far longer than that.
“Lucie, the ability to be removed, to throw oneself into one’s mission, to intellectualize what is overwhelming and beyond explanation, that is a gift. And it’s a fault at the same time.
You need to know which is which.”
I tried to interrupt. He didn’t let me. He had let go of my hand, and he raised his fingers to his lips for a moment. He wanted me to listen. Not talk.
“This is not about shame Lucie, this is about knowledge. Wisdom.
Every gift holds a burden and every burden holds a gift.
Now if your ability to go invisible is a gift, a superpower, whatever you want to call it, then your dreams are gifts. The things you see, even when you know they are not there. The things you feel are happening even when you’re not there to witness them. Those are gifts too.
What you need to know is why you have received them.”
He peered at me again. “You have always had them, haven’t you?”
“I think so, yes. I can’t remember not having them.”
“I figured that. You need to know why. And how. How to embrace, with wisdom and gratitude, the tasks they carry.”
“The tasks are the burdens?’
“Not exactly. The tasks are the ways that the burdens are overcome. The way the burdens turn from heaviness to joyfulness.
The part of the gift that holds fault is only overcome through the tasks.
The tasks themselves are not the burden.
Sin is the burden, and that is what must be conquered.”
“So I have to embrace my gift and fight it at the same time?”
“Something like that.”
“How do I do that?”
Father Meade smiled. “This will sound funny but hear me out. What happens when someone becomes a priest?
He becomes someone else, I said. I mean he’s still himself, but he’s someone else.
And the forces of evil or whatever go after him with renewed strength. Because one desiring to serve, one taking the mission as his own, is the very first one the other side attacks.
So one becoming a priest is like a soldier going into battle, on the front lines, for the first time.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You said that perfectly.”
“OK, good.” I shrugged.
“Now you’re sarcastic. You hate compliments, don’t you.”
“Compliments mean you’re above me Father Meade. You’re judging me.”
“Well OK, it wasn’t from me then. Because I’m not above you.”
He smirked a little
“Good,” I smirked back.
“What did you just feel?”
“Did I just make a face?”
“You did. What did you just feel?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You thought I was judging you. Then I said I wasn’t. Correct?”
“Maybe.”
“Lucie, when I became a priest, I had to become someone else. To be the warrior you talked about. The soldier.
I’d already been someone. I’d been a schoolteacher. I was just a few years shy of forty and I kept feeling that something else was calling.
And I kept putting it away. I had so many ways to distract myself. I watched baseball and memorized every statistic of the best players. I became the baseball source and expert amongst my friends, and sometimes I was on the local radio station. As a local analyst. It was fun. Next it was economics. I filled myself with economic data, and social justice, and the cause of helping the poor. To the point where I could answer questions better than the Mayor himself about our own City, and what ailed it.
I took the schoolkids on field trips, and I gave them treasure hunts and games which let them learn for themselves.
I read voraciously.
And suddenly I stopped everything. Because I fainted. Right in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.
I woke up to a group of strangers, standing around me and speaking Spanish. It was before I’d really learned Spanish.”
“Did they help you?”
“Yes. They’d been strangers, both to me and to each other. I fainted and that all changed. We were all together. Committed to one another in various ways none of us had anticipated, even hours before.
And the next day I rested. The decision came back.
And I decided, well I’ll give it a try. I signed up for a Masters in scripture, and the rest is history.”
“But all that stuff you did before was good,” I said.
“It was. And I still do some of it! I still work with kids especially. And with social justice causes.
“But before this,” he gestured around the garden, and in doing so referred to his priesthood, “I was doing it for the wrong reasons.
I was untethered then. I am not untethered now.
The day I fainted I had challenged myself to go without food. It was the third day in a row I’d done that.
There are reasons for fasting. And there’s just plain old distraction, removal, pride, meaningless tests for oneself. Is it all about me and proving something I dreamed up, or is it about service to others?
One must know which is which. That knowing begins with how you approach service.”
“The two men in the temple,” I said.
“Yes. That’s the idea.” He was pleased I’d said that.
“The point is Lucie, it’s good to know how to fight. I know how, so do you.
But make your fight the right fight. For your gifts you have been given, for what gifts you bring and the reasons you bring them. In that is your quest and question.”
“What is my question?”
“To know which of your defects are actually strengths, and which of your strengths are defects.
And to know that all of that overlaps and mixes. Good and evil exist Lucie, absolutely. One is not ever the other.
But they do not exist in human boxes painted black and white. That is oversimplified.
Evil is very good at pretending. Pretending it’s …good.
Your task is to know one from the other.”
He smiled, “If they were already divided it would be way too easy. We wouldn’t have any work to do. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” I sounded less than convincing. But I wanted to understand. I think he knew that.
I asked for a glass of water, and Father Meade brought one to me. In the few minutes he was gone, I laid on my back under the jasmine, and inhaled deeply. When I sipped my water, it tasted like the scent of flowers, even as the water was perfectly clear.
“Lucie, do you ever try to pretend you’re someone you’re not?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because when I’ve been myself, people hate me.”
“Do all people hate you?”
“Well no, but a lot of them do. They just decide to hate me. There’s usually no reason at all. It just happens and I have to deal with it.”
“Did you ever tell anyone about how you can sometimes see things that aren’t there?”
“Yes, but only a few times.”
“What happened?”
“No one believed me.”
“What did that tell you?”
“That I can speak the truth and others will call it a lie.”
“Is it a lie?”
“No. It never is.”
“Are you the only one that’s ever happened to?”
“I imagine I’m not. I don’t know though.”
We were silent again. I was back to the jasmine. And the angel’s trumpet. And the honeysuckle as well. I wondered if I’d fall asleep again.
I didn’t fall asleep, because I had a question.
“Father Meade?” He was still there. I was nervous now, and he could tell.
“Can some people see demons?
He laughed. “Honestly Lucie I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“I know that sounds weird.”
“Stop qualifying. What do you want to say? Just say it. Forget about saying it the right way.
First words. Weird or not. Go. I won’t correct you. I promise.”
All right. Here goes.
“When I’m near certain people I feel something else is in them. In their face.
It’s like it lives there, or that it comes and goes, but it’s like a coldness that I can feel. I am repelled by it.
But sometimes I am intrigued by it, and I want to stare back.
It’s weird, I know. I mean I can’t actually see it, but it is there.”
“It’s cold, you said?”
“Yes. It makes me feel cold. In my hands and feet. Sometimes all over.”
Then I jumped to a more scientific explanation.
“But I have a heart condition. A congenital defect. One of my valves is misshapen, and my heart doesn’t work perfectly all the time, So when I’m under stress the heart compensates. Blood flows to my vital organs and my arms and legs have to wait. They are physically cold.
So that’s probably what’s happening. And that’s why I had to learn to slow my pulse. So I wouldn’t go around fainting and feeling chilled all of the time.”
I felt reassured by my own explanation. Father Meade was still curious.
“When you feel like this, is it with someone you don’t like, or someone who has insulted you?”
“Not always. I mean there are people I don’t like that I don’t ever feel cold with. And there are others I’ve just met that I instantly feel cold with. That have the presence in them.
And it’s only certain people. I mean 95% of people, maybe more, I don’t feel this with. It’s just certain people.
But it doesn’t have to do with liking the person or not. Because the presence is always distinct from the person.
It’s not ‘this person is bad’, I said with the help of air quotes— it’s ‘this person has that awful presence in them.’
Sometimes I want to yell ‘be gone, bad spirit!’ I want to see if it stays or goes. But I think someone would haul me away in a net if I did that.”
I laughed and so did he.
“Probably a wise decision. to keep that part to yourself.”
But he added. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t see it.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Felt it, then.”
I tried to sense what Father Meade was thinking. I was wondering if I should have told him all of that.
“Do you believe me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I was quiet. I think my eyebrows went up. He seemed to be watching them as they did.
“How did that feel?”
“I don’t know. Good, maybe.”
“Do you want me to believe you Lucie?”
“Yes.” I looked at him directly.
“I want you to believe me.”
After another silence, Father Meade focused in on the presence.
“How often do you feel it? The presence in people?”
I looked at him. I was still suspicious. I was still reacting to the strange and possibly wonderful idea that Father Meade believed me.
“I told you Lucie, I’m going to believe everything you say. Speak to me in that knowledge and confidence. Can we agree to that?”
“Yes.”
“If I told you I wouldn't believe you, would you tell me the truth?”
“Probably not. What would be the point? Why would I bother? You would have already decided that I was a liar, so truth and lie would be equal to you, and truth would then for all intents not exist. It is a framework in which no one wins. Especially not truth itself.
When no one believes, truth is not found.”
I added, “But of course it still exists. It’s just unknown.”
He nodded.
“Very good. So I believe you.”
“OK. You believe me.” I nodded back. “Keep going.”
“Back to the presences. How often are they there? In whom? When? Tell me about them.”
Leah’s face came into my mind. I wondered why. Leah had not ever had the cold presence. Maybe she’d had another kind.
But we were talking about the cold one.
“How often?” I wrung my hands, though I hadn’t planned to. “I don’t know. But it’s just with certain people, so I guess it depends upon how much time I spend with those particular people.”
“Does Zane have it?”
“I’ve seen it go into him. I mean I’ve sensed it. But it leaves. It doesn’t stay.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess it can’t decide about him.”
“Or he can’t decide about it?”
“Maybe some of both.” I considered that idea. “It’s in Fern sometimes too.”
“You mean President Tracy?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know it’s there?”
“Yes. And she knows when it leaves.” My tone was now a touch snide.
“And then she wants it back.”
“She does?” Father Meade seemed surprised.
“Yes, it’s like she runs after it! I mean she doesn’t actually run. It’s just that she thinks it makes her better. More powerful I mean. More omniscient, more balanced, quicker. Victorious at whatever cost, to her and to everyone.”
I was still looking for a word. Was the word “real?” Was Fern wanting to be more real? Or was it “visible”?
“I don’t know Father Meade. I was about to say ‘visible.’ Fern wants so much to be visible. Among men, among everyone. She does not ever want to be ignored. She has been ignored before, and she is still unresolved about that. Or so I think.
But it’s funny — I always say to myself that it’s more powerful to be invisible.
Being invisible is how you learn what’s really going on, you know?
If you are invisible you can eavesdrop. You can always know more about them than they know about you.
Plus, when you are invisible, you can always exit. Leave.
You don’t have to decide about loyalty.” I added, with a bit of surliness, “Especially when you know loyalty doesn’t work.
I always dreamed about being invisible.
Unbreakable, untouchable. Unknowable. I figured back then that if no one knew me they couldn’t hate me. I guess that part was wishful. Because people who don’t know me hate me all of the time.”
I’ve never, never understood that.
“But the part about knowing things, and being able to exit whenever you want. Those are advantages. Ones that the visible don’t quite ever have.”
“Go on,” he said.
Father Meade did not agree with me, nor did he disagree. Yet I sensed we were in some sort of fable with a moral. A fable which took place in a priory garden, under angel’s trumpet, jasmine and honeysuckle, across the way from the reddish purple of bougainvillea, spilling across and down a brick archway.
“Does Zane want the presence it back, when it leaves him?”
I had to think about that one for a moment.
“He hasn’t decided.”
“Is he trying to decide? “ Father Meade asked.
“I guess so. Sometimes he does decide. Sometimes, he thinks it helps him.”
“When does it help him?”
“When he has to decide something. It gives him balls, I guess. But that’s not quite it. Actually, Zane is quite brave sometimes. He does have balls.”
I laughed. “Sorry.”
“No problem Lucie. Keep going.”
“He’s very sensitive, and he worries, and he doesn’t want anyone to know that. He gets really upset about things sometimes, in sort of a childlike way, and he hates that about himself.”
I felt my brain composing a sentence. To say what I was trying to say.
“Zane thinks that if he lets his feelings interfere, he will make the wrong decision, and everything will go wrong, and blow up, and people will hate him.”
Father Meade nodded.
“But when the presence is there, he just decides. Cold, hard stuff. He gets it done.”
I thought back to the Ring.
“And the superiors praise him. He gets a lot of credit. And he gets promoted.”
I scoffed. “Unlike some of us.” I pointed at myself.
“But Zane doesn’t want the presence all of the time. I don’t think he does. But you know, I’m not sure.”
“Yet Fern does want it all of the time?
“I think so. She and Zane are different that way.”
I went on.
“I know the look on her face. When she wants the coldness back. It’s an obsession with her, when it comes down to it. I mean she is obsessed with being perfect. And the presence, the coldness, is part of being perfect.”
The thought was forming as I spoke.
“It’s as if she doesn’t think she’s perfect on her own, but everyone expects her to be perfect in this different way, so she has to be. And she needs the demon. Or whatever it is.”
I thought of a related example. One I knew well from my childhood.
“It’s like that for drinkers, you know. Addicts. That’s how they interact with the demon.
But Fern’s not a drinker, and Zane’s not either. I can’t see either of them doing that, ever. They’re too in control of themselves. Fern especially. They are so aware of what people think of them, so obsessed with that, and so they set their minds on hiding what they don’t want people to see.
It’s not as if what people don’t see is bad though. It’s just that it’s softer.
Especially with Zane. He can be much softer than almost anyone knows.”
I didn’t want that last thought to continue. Leah’s face came into my mind. I pushed back, and thought of Fern. And I thought of the time at St. Michael’s when The President called me “honey” by accident.
When I’d asked her why all the men hated us so much. She knew exactly what I was talking about. She heard me. She believed me.
I looked up at Father Meade. “I think Fern can be softer too. Though I’ve only seen it once or twice.”
“Who else?” he asked.
“Well, Dr. T maybe. But he’s different.” I smiled as one does having a visit from memory. “He’s his own odd character in his own odd play. But I can’t recall the presence in him.”
I made a story of it. And I talked with my hands.
“I imagine that he wishes he had it. That he seeks it. Chases it even. But it rejects him, and he’s angry about that. Envious of those who have it.”
“Why?”
“It’s knowledge. Dr. T wants to know everything,” I said. “Evvvvrything.”
He’d said that word in the same stretched out way, the day we’d met. The meeting in the Ring.
“Though more importantly, he wants everyone to think he knows everything. I think that’s what it’s really about.”
I smiled and looked down. My voice took on a bit of fondness.
“Arthur’s a little like that too. He’s reaching for the tree of knowledge, and he’s just too short to reach it.”
I caught myself. That hadn’t come out quite right.
“Oh wait, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I’m short too.” I smiled and modified my previous statement.
“Arthur’s very smart. I just think he’s good inside and that makes it harder for him in the District. It’s hard to be a good person there, you have to decide every day if you are or aren’t.
That’s why I told you a few days ago that I worry about Jackson, because I don’t know if Jackson is as aware as Arthur. I mean Arthur’s father is a priest, so Arthur has advantages that way. He’s more prepared to be a soldier than Jackson is, I think.
Jackson’s father died when he was too young, so he’s had to make it up as he went along.
So I get worried about Jackson. He doesn’t have the presence but he might want it too.”
I took a deep breath, feeling myself get anxious again.
“I sometimes think the presence wants to have Jackson.”
I shook my head.
“Jackson is so earnest. He wants to take care of people so badly, to be the man his mother needed at that awful moment when his father clutched his heart and wouldn’t wake up.
Jackson watched his father die. And he couldn’t save him. And that failure is with him every day.
He is so vulnerable Father Meade.”
I composed myself. “Anyway we were talking about Dr. T. Sorry I changed the subject.”
“It’s fine Lucie. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you changed the subject at all. So it seems you just thought of Arthur and Jackson and Dr. T at the same time.”
“I guess so.”
“You think well of Arthur and Jackson.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t hate Dr. T, do you?”
I thought for a moment.
“I guess I don’t. That’s weird, because he’s treated me deplorably. No exaggeration. He has been awful to me sometimes.”
“Really.”
“Absolutely yes. And publicly. I think he might have had a lot to do with driving me out of the Ministry.”
“Why?” Father Meade was peering at me again.
“I made him uncomfortable.” I put my hands together as I thought of what to say. “What an odd man he is. Wanting to have some presence or whatever it is control him. So he could be more the big bad guy. As if being the bad guy gave him more credibility.”
“Why does he hate you Lucie?”
“I don’t know if he hates me. I think I just make him uneasy. It’s easy to call that hate. More convenient I mean. He doesn’t have to admit any power I might have that way. Power I have because I make him uneasy. The power I had over Zane. It was a type of power Dr. T would never have. They could talk with each other by phone eleven times a day, play tennis, swear, and impress each other with endless dueling monologues.
But Dr. T has never been next to Zane and held him when he is asleep. I have.
He knows that and that has always been too much for him.”
I moved back to more general observations.
“Dr. T is a big on having the right “context “for everything. The right frame for every painting, photo, scene from life.
Lucie Daniel didn’t fit into the world as he wants it to be. Therefore Lucie Daniel had to leave.”
“Is he a bad person?”
My answer surprised me at first. But then it didn’t.
“I don’t think so. I think he’s confused.
But he’s very powerful too. He’s the Minister. He wants to give this superhuman impression of what he is and what he can think up, and do. But really he’s just human, and unique, and odd.”
“Good.” Father Meade’s face told me that I was about to get a harder question.
“Is there anyone you hate Lucie?”
I felt a chill come over me. Father Meade saw my goosebumps rise on my arms.
“I’ll call that a yes,” he said.
I looked down. I went with my first thought.
“Maybe Minister Ash,” I said. “Adam Ash. The former Minister.
But I don’t hate him. That’s the wrong word.”
“Wrong word because you don’t like the word, or wrong word because you don’t like the feeling?”
“What feeling?” I wanted specifics.
“Hate.”
“Is hate a feeling? Because if it is, then I don’t hate, because I don’t feel anything.”
I sat up straighter.
“And hate is wrong, so I don’t do it.”
Father Meade’s reply to that was quick and pointed.
“Your mind doesn’t, I know. But your body is chilled. In case you noticed. So when you think of Mr. Ash, do you get cold?”
“Yes.”
“OK, good. We’re moving in the right direction. Does Mr. Ash have the presence?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“All of the time. Always there. It never leaves. It lives there.”
I was trembling a bit, so my left hand grasped on to my right. Then Father Meade grasped my wrist lightly. I looked up.
“Forty-eight,” he said, “actually a bit less.”
“What’s 48?”
“Your pulse.”
He brought up something I’d told him of before.
“Did you feel cold like this when you saw it in Milly Bell?”
“Did I tell you that?”
“Yes Lucie. You told me about what happened when you went up for Communion. At the special Mass with the Cardinal. On the day we lost the Blackhawk in East Africa.”
“Yes, it was pretty bad that time. And I had hundreds of people looking at me. It was intense.”
“I’m sure it was.”
Father Meade waited. I said nothing.
“What about you Lucie?”
I took a quick and unplanned breath. That question threw me more than I expected it would. My mind was gliding through an old and familiar space. St. Matthew’s. In the District.
The Emmaus chapel, St. Francis and his animals, the four evangelists painted above, supporting the grand byzantine style dome. The pieta, and the Virgin Mary reaching out from the stars. All watching me the day the President’s husband and I had shared a moment with the presence.
It had been inside me, and I had refused it. With the Cardinal and a lot of others nearby.
I should have expected Father Meade’s question.
“I don’t know Father Meade. Maybe.”
“Are you saying maybe to get my approval, or maybe because you think you have experienced the presence?”
“It’s not here now,” I said.
“ All right Lucie. Let’s just talk hypotheticals. No accusations. That’s not what I’m doing.
When might you have it? When might it be there?”
I thought for a moment. “When I’m angry?”
“OK. When was the last time you were angry?”
I shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“I figured as much,” Father Meade said. “Do you ever let yourself be angry?”
“I guess not. No.”
I am never angry.
“All right Lucie. So let’s say that’s not it. It’s not anger. When is the presence there for you?”
I thought of my seven deadly sins wheel.
“Are we going through the seven Father Meade? We just hit anger.”
“If that helps, sure. Let’s go through the seven. Whatever you think will guide you.”
“OK. Pride?”
“Are you ever proud?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you do when you realize that?” He seemed to know what I was going to say.
“I catch myself,” I said. “Because being proud takes my eye off what I’m doing and makes it look all at myself.
I make mistakes when I’m proud. I miss stuff I need to see and know. So when I’m proud, I stop myself. I call it out and I move on.”
He nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen you do it. You are very conscientious, very diligent about it. I heard you in discussion with the brothers. You were open about being tempted by pride, and you acknowledged it. I recall that I saw some of the brothers looking to you as a model, toward having their own awareness of pride.
We all have that pride sin Lucie, but in my observation, your share of it is not unusual. It’s going to be with you always, and with me always, and with everyone here always.
But I don’t think that’s the presence. Maybe for others, but not for you. Let’s keep going.
What sort of sin holds you in its grasp for more than the one or two minutes it takes you to push it away?”
I had to think.
“I don’t know.”
“Try.” He was almost pushy that time.
“I don’t know Father Meade. But I’ll try another. Greed?”
I composed my thought.
“Not greed. In the past couple of years I have made more money than I will ever need. I mean there are a lot of other people with more money than me, but so what. I don’t need to work again. I haven’t even begun to decide what that all means. Or what I will ever spend the money on. I guess I will give a lot of it away. I mean I’m not like all my coworkers and their multiple Ferraris.”
Then I jumped.
“That was pride, wasn’t it.”
“Yes it was.”
“OK, roll that back. The Ferrari part.”
“Done.” He smiled. “How about Envy? Do you envy Fern? Or Zane? Or anyone we’ve talked about?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean they all have their burdens, and I know that. Fern is fighting hers every day. It is hard for her. Now I did compete with Zane in a way. We were both competing to impress our superiors. But I also helped him, a lot. I helped him get ahead. I was not forced to do that. I did that because I wanted to.”
“Does it bother you that he has risen in the ranks and you had to leave? And that those two events were somewhat related?”
“The leaving bothers me. But it’s not envy. I would have helped him rise if I was there.” I nodded. “I know that.”
“All right. How about Gluttony? Lust? Do you have an issue with any of those?”
Father Meade’s tone said we were getting warm, but weren’t there yet.
This was preparatory.
“Well I could answer that, but I’ll sound proud again.”
“You get a pass Lucie. Go for it. Answer it.”
“I don’t even think about stuff like that.
I mean I’m aware of it, but I don’t have a sense of needing to fight it off, ever. It’s not alluring. It’s just there. It’s a problem other people have.
Like cigarettes and wine. It’s there. I don’t want it.”
“Do you ever crave food or sex?”
“Actually no.” I seemed almost embarrassed. “That sounds weird, I know, but it’s true. I never, ever tell people that.”
“Well I can’t tell anyone either Lucie. We’re in confession. There are rules around all of this.”
I smiled. “That’s right. Good. Because if people knew that, they’d think I was an alien.”
“Oh you’re not the only alien, don’t worry.” He raised his hand and gestured around the garden. The Priory.
That was six.
Ira. Superbia. Avaritia. Invidia. Gula. Luxuria.
There was only one more. That didn’t seem correct.
I looked him right in the eye.
“So we’re at sloth. What are you going to tell me about sloth?”
He was intrigued. “Are you being defensive?
“No. I’m fastidious.”
“I know. You’ve lived here for several days. You are. Except for your desk.”
“Yes, I know. I have a messy desk.”
“I mean you’ve raised the bar for kitchen cleanup since you arrived Lucie, and for that I thank you. The brothers are stepping up to your example. But about your desk…”
“I’ll clean it up.”
“No, that’s not the issue. You don’t need to clean it up. I just want to discuss your desk.”
“This is going somewhere?”
“Yes. So don’t get defensive about your desk.”
“I’m not.”
“You were going in that direction. Here’s what I was going to ask. What’s on your desk right now?”
“My computer, my notebooks, my reading. Papers and things. My pens.”
“Any photos, trinkets, senseless things?”
“None.”
“Books?”
“Yes. Several.”
“Can you see your desk, or are there a lot of things on it?”
“You know that already. A lot of things.”
“Correct. And I don’t care if you have a messy desk, if that’s how you work.”
“So this is something else.
He took out his notepad and wrote a word in all caps.
I first thought it was an anagram, a puzzle I’d have to solve.
But it was a word. Not Sloth, but quite related.
ACEDIA.
“Acedia.” I said. “It sounds like a plant. Or an insect.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Torpor,” I said. “Melancholia.”
Then I realized where he was going.
“It means disconnection, doesn’t it. A choice of non-presence in one’s own life.”
“Yes.”
“Are you saying that when I am disconnected, I have this thing in me?”
I laughed.
“I just sounded like I was describing getting fucked or something.” I gasped. “Sorry, Father I didn’t mean to use that word.”
“Lucie, Are getting fucked and being disconnected pretty much the same thing for you?”
He used the word right back.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is it ever different?”
“No.”
“Is that bad?”
“I don’t think it is. But it’s not like I have anything else to compare it to.”
I considered my next question. “So I have this gift of seeing the presence, but I also have the presence. And when I have it, I’m disconnected?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Well if that’s true, then I have the presence a lot.”
That led me to a different angle. “Do other people see it in me?”
“I don’t know Lucie. It’s possible. Do people ever just reject you with no explanation?”
“All the time. I told you that already.”
“Well, maybe what’s in them is frightened of what’s in you. That’s a way to think about it. Or maybe they admire it. Whatever it is, you have a strong presence.
I felt it when you arrived.
I don’t think you realize how strong it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lucie, you are a small person. You are quiet. You are undemonstrative. I’ve never seen you cry, or hug anyone. Your laugh and facial expressions are well contained. But at the same time there's this aura around you that either draws people toward you or repels them off.
It is strong either way.
You want to be invisible. And sometimes you are. But sometimes you think you are, and the very opposite is true.
Everyone is looking toward you.
Have you felt that?”
“Yes.”
“It makes you uncomfortable.”
“Yes.”
“Lucie, I think what surprises me, and this is just from the days you’ve been here, is you go from moments of almost total self-awareness to almost total self-removal. The transit is sometimes instant. It’s not a personality change — your personality is constant. It’s a vantage change. You can see from two different vantages in almost the same moment.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not always. It means you can see things from other points of view than your own.
Some people will admire that. For others, you will seem to be an equivocator. A bringer of ambiguity. To the dogmatic and arrogantly unlearned, you might even seem like a liar. Or a politician. Or a magician.”
“What kind of a magician?”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe that’s not the best word.
But consider this. I asked you earlier in this conversation if you felt bad about Leah Leonard. You replied as if you were giving a dissertation on the definition of homo sapien reactions to right and wrong. You said, no recited, that sleeping with Leah’s husband was wrong, and therefore you should feel bad.
Now, you spoke with conviction, as a person who took responsibility for her mistake and would never do it again.
I tend to think you won’t. And that’s good. Your morals are there. Powerfully so.
But I looked into your eyes for a mere glint of remorse.
I saw nothing.
You believe the act was wrong.
But you don’t believe,” he gestured toward his own heart as he spoke, “that you were wrong, do you?”
I was quiet. I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know what the answer was.
“Lucie, you were present with Zane when you talked about reinventing the world. When he slept next to you and you stroked his face and hair. When you washed him with baby soap as if he were your own child, so he could go home to his wife and not get into trouble.
You were present with him all of those times.
But not when you were having sex.
That was not you. You were disconnected. Elsewhere.
You have told me that you believe that sleeping with a married man is wrong. You have never convinced me that you were, or are sorry about doing that.
And don’t get me wrong Lucie. I think you want to be sorry.
But you aren’t sorry.
Lucie, Acedia is innate to some but I sense that for you it was learned. Very early. You had no anchoring as a child. You needed an anchor.
That need, that quest for exit, for unbreakability, invisibility made you particularly vulnerable to this one capital sin.
Ironically, it made you very tough about all of the others. But one sin is enough. Once one happens, a lot of others tend to join it. That is why they are called capital sins. They are investment in creating other sins to be with them.
I think you know that, which is why you are fighting so ferociously. Every moment of your life. You do not rest. Even when you are asleep your nightmares are doing your work for you. Your fighting is ceaseless.”
I was taking this all in. “What do I do?”
“Remember what I said earlier Lucie? Every gift holds a burden and every burden holds a gift.
You have this burden, and this gift, for a reason. You need to find out what that reason is. That’s your homework, if you will let me give it to you.
Let’s call that your penance for today. That, and one Rosary. I want you to pray the Rosary today, not later.”
He continued.
“I know you want to find out what your gift means. And that’s important. You have to want to start, and I think you do want to start. But it’s scary, at times, as whomever you are now, you will be different when you find out.
Do you understand?”
“Sort of.” I was still soaking this all in.
“Good answer Lucie. It’s impossible to understand it all at the beginning. Or ever, for that matter. But you will grow to understand more than you do now.
His face showed that he’d recalled something. It brightened.
“Remember when President Tracy talked about the parable of the talents, during her campaign?”
“Yes. I liked that speech.”
“Did you write it?”
“Actually no, she did, and Arthur helped her.”
“Well, I feel like you could have written it. Here’s the point. There’s plenty that Fern Tracy and I don’t see eye to eye on. But I was touched by her mention of the parable. Not because I’m a priest — what it told me was that whether she is religious or not, and I tend to think she’s not, she understands the nature of gifts. How special they are. What responsibilities, lessons and obligations they bring. She is a very gifted woman. That is so very evident, in everything she does. She knows this, and she knows that her life has been both fortunate and challenging because of the gifts she was given.
You know this too Lucie, in your own way.
You don’t want to deny or mess with or grow angry with Grace. With gifts. With what is unique and special about you. What is in you that has never been before and never will be again.”
He folded his hands. “Anyway that parables speech Ms. Tracy gave almost made me want to vote for her.” He chuckled as if he’d just admitted to cooking up a plot to steal cookies from the cookie jar. It was charming in a way.
“I know what you mean, Father. That speech, and the cookies and tea thing. That did it for me.”
“Why the cookies and tea comment?” he asked. “Some thought that when she said that she was insulting women who stayed home.”
“I didn’t hear it that way at all,” I said.
“She was saying that girls like me and girls like her were going to be heard. We were going to have a chance. We wouldn’t be the odd weird special cases anymore. We wouldn’t be the stuff of quotas, the big-brained deformed sorts of dolls put up on pedestals to poke at and pity.”
I imitated the voice of a superficial dowager of polite society, adding the hand gestures to match.
“She will never be loved, and no boy will ever date her, but she’ll have a very, very good job. Because she’s as smart as the boys, you know. Something went haywire up there in God’s big factory. They put that brain where it wasn’t supposed to be!”
I went back to speaking as myself.
“That’s what she was saying Father Meade. To all of us like her. To all of us that had dreamed long ago that a boy would love us. And had found out by age twenty that it would never be that way. Because we weren’t what most boys wanted. We could be a princess, but there would be no prince.”
I continued. I actually wanted to say more, which surprised me.
“But think about it, Father Meade. I know there are things she believes that you and I will never agree with. But think about it. Someone like Fern Tracy as President. If she were President, then suddenly what was cast off as different and inconvenient, what had been despised and kicked away with no good explanation? Would be central.
And so it was! The majority of the American people went to the polls and said, Fern Tracy is OK. She doesn’t look like any of the presidents from the past. And that’s OK. We’re voting for her. We are ready for this. The game has changed. For good.”
I added, “For very good.”
I thought back to the year of the campaign. When I was still watching from the outside. Still a hotel girl, but one with a way of finding adventures.
“You know Father Meade, every moment Fern Tracy was ridiculed, and dismissed and spit at and insulted during the campaign, it was like it was me.
There were times when reporters would be so horrible to her. One time I threw up while watching TV.
It was so hard to take.
But then it was election night, and there she was, and we were all wearing our headbands, and she was walking through all that light and confetti. And right at that moment, I thought, maybe I’m not an alien anymore.
Maybe I actually belong here.
Maybe I can actually belong to this place. Maybe there are other girls like me. And while boys aren’t attracted to us, boys would vote for us. They could love us, just in another way.
And that could be better.”
I stopped. Father Meade was listening intently. He hadn’t expected me to say so much.
“You know Father, that election was a different sort of day. It wasn’t a day about the pretty girls, the ones that look lovely when they laugh.
It was about the plainer girls, the ones not thought of as pretty until second or third glance, the ones who didn’t ever learn to laugh.
We never did. We had other things on our minds, you know. We had to take care of others. We had something or someone else to think about than ourselves. When that’s your deal, survival is different. You don’t have a choice to just die. You have to keep it together.
So we learned when we were supposed to laugh, and how. So we could pass for one of the others when that was necessary. But we never did on our own. Our laughter was for survival. It was not for joy. Joy was not for us.
We were the watchers. The ones waiting. The maidens ready with the oil for our lamps, the ones ridiculed by those less ready, who told us we didn’t live in a world that was real.
‘What are you waiting for, they’d ask. For what are you preparing? Why so serious? You know boys will never like you if you have that cross little look on your face.’
They would cackle. Show contempt.
And we would be silent.
We never fit in. We were never at home anywhere. If there was such a place called home, it was a place we’d never been. Or even dreamt of.
But maybe if she or someone like her was President, then we could start believing that home would be somewhere.
That maybe home actually existed.
And maybe the laughing ones would stop all the chatter, and open their eyes for once.
The world looked different than they all had thought.
But Father Meade, it had been different all along.
There had been reason to be serious, and to look ahead. Not just backward.”
I summarized. I felt like I’d given a speech.
“If the world could elect a president like me, then maybe I would see myself as belonging to it.”
I looked to him. I wanted to know his answer to all of that.
“Are you part of the world now Lucie?”
“No.”
“Is that you or the presence talking? Is that the presence saying that you don’t belong here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you think about that?”
“Yes. That’s an interesting question.”
“Will you tell me what you feel?”
“Yes. If I know, I’ll tell you.” I added, “but I might not know. It might just be tension. I get it up here sometimes.” I put my hands on the top of my head. “Tightness up here.”
We were silent. Until I had another question.
“Father, if I’m not part of the world, then in a way doesn’t that make me a lot better at making decisions for the world?”
“In what way?” He asked.
“I mean for hard decisions. Like Fern decisions, Zane decisions, decisions affecting a whole lot of people. When tradeoffs are involved and crises are approaching, there needs to be someone who can step back and see across many options.”
I tried to offer a visual. “Be in the shoes of several people at once, but not be beholden to what each individual one craves or desires.
Such a person would have no interference as others would. That person would be the one who wound up the clock, who kept the system going and time moving forward, who made sure that the system and the world wouldn’t go to pieces.”
And I remembered being a child, and crossing the bridge with my mother, going back to the City, and its foghorns and fog, on that night that Uncle Rollie had blown up and Gramma had taught me the shield. The night when Nixon was on TV.
I had dreamed of the lighthouse lady. And how she was all alone but very, very important.
I told Father Meade about her. He listened with interest.
“Did you ever meet the lighthouse lady?” He asked.
“No. I just imagined she was there. Protecting the ships, guiding their way. They trusted her.”
The lighthouse lady of my childhood imagination. What would she have thought of Dr. T, and his brilliant solutions to everything, some of which might end up dashing the world to pieces? Of Adam Ash, who would find a way to be rich from all the chaos Dr. T made, and would watch quietly with contempt as others of lesser ilk met their demise. Lost everything.
And Zane, the little fireman. Rushing in to fix the burning building as it fell. Running it all in slow motion in his mind, so he could do it in the most perfect way.
And so he wouldn’t get all flustered while doing that.
I laughed at the image.
“Zane is so funny.” I said. “He can be so precise in a crisis, but then these little tiny things make him flustered. And he has to be comforted.”
“Do you?” Father Meade asked.
“Do I what?”
“Get flustered. Need to be comforted.”
“No.”
“Why not Lucie?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think like that.”
Father Meade folded his arms. “Did it ever occur to you that Zane wishes he was you?”
“That’s absurd.”
He tipped his head to the side. He looked inquisitive. “Is it?”
It was the strangest thought.
Zane, systemic Zane. The integration of man and machine. Wonder boy, the designer of things perfect. The one that headed into a fire and extinguished it without being touched by its heat.
Then became famous. Though all he’d ever wanted was to be liked. I knew that part.
He envied me?
“Think about it. What if Zane admires you?”
“I can’t even imagine that,” I said.
“I think its possible Lucie. I’m just giving you some angles to think about. He gets upset when he can’t keep his cool. You’re there next to him, keeping yours.
That had to have been noticed. I mean by your shared higher-ups.”
“But Father Meade, I didn’t notice it.”
“Well maybe now you do.”
I closed my eyes again. The angel’s trumpet sounded like two things. The breeze moving within it. And the bees.
“You’ve done well today,” Father Meade said, adding quickly, almost in his own defense, “That’s not a compliment by the way.” He winked. “It’s something to think about. Feel even, if you want to try.”
I nodded and opened my eyes. “You have one more question, don’t you.”
“I do. Leah.”
“What about Leah?”
Please let me lie under the flowers again. I don’t want to talk about Leah.
“Is the presence in her?”
I felt my face crumple a bit, showing thought. “I really don’t know her.”
“But she stared at you. In real life, and in the dream you had last night. What was in the stare? With what or whom were you interacting? With her or something else?”
I thought of Leah’s face.
Quiet. She is so quiet.
“Father Meade, I cannot know what it’s like to be her.”
“Maybe you can. Maybe you can be present with that, see though her eyes, hear as she hears.
Think of what you both share. Not how you are different.
Maybe your gift will tell you how to do that. Let it surprise you.”
“I’m not sure I like surprises.”
“Well I know Zane doesn’t like surprises. I can tell that when I see him on television. But you? I think you’re still open to that surprises thing.
At least I hope you are.”
He stood up. He looked up to see the position of the the sun, which had moved across the sky into a later afternoon position.
“Are you joining me?” He said.
“For what? It’s a while until Vespers.”
“For Rosary,” he said. “Today.”
“It’s Thursday. Mysteries of Light.”
22 for Wisdom is true to her name, she is not accessible to many.
23 Listen, my child, and take my advice, do not reject my counsel:
24 put your feet into her fetters, and your neck into her collar;
25 offer your shoulder to her burden, do not be impatient of her bonds;
26 court her with all your soul, and with all your might keep in her ways;
27 search for her, track her down: she will reveal herself; once you hold her, do not let her go.
28 For in the end you will find rest in her and she will take the form of joy for you:
29 her fetters you will find a mighty defence, her collars, a precious necklace.
30 Her yoke will be a golden ornament, and her bonds be purple ribbons;
31 you will wear her like a robe of honour, you will put her on like a crown of joy.
Sirach 6:22-31
