MAGICAL REALISM | ROMANCE | CATHOLIC | PART 1 OF 6
Heart of the Rose: Hope
Advent Week 1: The angel Raphael arrives to answer an unspoken prayer.
Drifting through the house, Raphael passed the kitchen table where a wreath encircled four candles propped in brass holders.
One of the candles had been burned, its tapered contour lined with a hardened flow of wax. By custom he knew the candle to be violet and the wreath pine, but in his spiritual form he couldn’t distinguish such features.
Raphael had come to St. Mary of the Angels Parish to puzzle over the mystery of Lillian.
He had marveled at her melancholy afternoon as she stared out her kitchen window. He wondered at her feverish evening when she put written form to chaotic thoughts. Now, he settled beside her and roamed the landscape of her dreams, listening as only an angel can, while attending to the longing of her heart.
Everyone had a prayer, but Raphael couldn’t find Lillian’s.
Although he had scrutinized the sad woman from the time she made her morning coffee to when she slept, he couldn’t find any hope left in her. Nevertheless, she simmered with intensity, as if ready to brim over with torments yet untouched. She seemed the type of woman meant for tragic love, not one to bring fulfillment to a sincere priest struggling with his vows.
But Charles loved her. It was his unspoken wish that had captured the attention of God’s Archangel of Healing.
The only son of an overburdened widow, Charles wanted to help people because he had never been able to help those he loved most. He needed to be needed, which is why he had devoted two decades of his life to the Church, and why Raphael happily received the task of answering the hidden prayer he tried so hard to deny.
In the late hours of a Sunday afternoon, Raphael walked a gravel road, his boots leaving muddy tracks in mushy snow as flakes iced his eyelashes and blurred his vision.
His gloved hand was stiff from clasping a wine bottle close, afraid it would slip, but he pressed on, knowing he was almost to his destination.
As an angel, he had few sensory impressions unless he took on a body, and despite many incarnations, each one surprised him with its dazzling sensations, even a harsh prairie winter. Touching and hearing the world with his spirit was more informative, but it was hardly more interesting.
He skidded a few feet as he descended a hill, leaving two trails behind him. He glanced back, seized with a sudden desire to throw himself down and create a snow angel. When a gust of wind whipped a tree branch, flinging a pile of snow onto his head, he brushed it off and returned to his task, accepting the divine prodding with his usual good nature.
He ascended the steps and pressed the doorbell. A flurry of curtains in a nearby window was followed with a request for his name.
“Raphael.”
With a swoosh, the door opened. Lillian flipped a mess of auburn bangs from her heart-shaped face and apologized for the delay.
“Come in, Father.”
Raphael stomped the snow from his boots and stepped into the warm cottage.
The house had been part of an estate willed to the Catholic Church before the First World War. A generation later, the diocese sold most of the land and buildings. All that remained to the parish was thirty acres supporting the chapel and rectory. Lillian’s grandfather had purchased the cottage, which had been servants’ quarters for the original estate and overlooked the parish graveyard.
“I didn’t expect you so soon.” Lillian held the bottle Raphael handed her.
“I understand you have an appreciation for Russian wines.”
She examined the bottle with surprise. “Yes, Father. Thank you.”
“Father Bristol had a meeting with a parishioner, so I thought I’d walk over and introduce myself.”
Lillian glanced out the window. “My thermometer says it’s twelve degrees.”
Raphael wore his hair short, and his body carried a middle-aged stoutness. The appearance of a lingering tan and wind-burned cheeks allowed him to blend in with other men in the rural community. His face tingled, and he pressed his hands to his stiff cheeks.
“I’m sure that’s right.”
She ushered him to her kitchen table and returned a warm kettle to the stove’s burner. “I’m sorry if I’m distracted.” She tapped her head as she turned back. “Been working all day.”
Raphael adjusted his collar and snapped the hem of his black clerical shirt to remove the wrinkles. After he sat down, he touched the table’s centerpiece, a wreath surrounding four candles. The pine branch was real, its fragrance the source of the fresh aroma he had noticed since entering the house. One candle, its wick darkened, stood with three yet to be lit. The first candle of Advent, Hope.
“Father told me you’re a good poet.”
She turned to look out the kitchen window. “I’ve had two volumes published, not like my dad, you know. He was brilliant.”
“Logan McKenney was, indeed, a brilliant poet. I know of one very worn copy of ‘Ransom Soul’.”
When the kettle whistled, Lillian dropped teabags into two cups and sat down. She sipped her steaming tea. “Were you raised near here?”
Raphael tasted his tea. “Apple-cinnamon?”
“Ginger-spice.” She looked him over. “After tea, I’ll show you the house. There’s plenty of room here, so I hope you won’t feel crowded. I keep to myself mostly.”
“Father told me you never leave.”
A blush spread across her cheeks. “My writing keeps me busy.”
He realized she had taken his comment as an accusation. She was sensitive to what people thought of the reclusive poet’s reclusive daughter. Although he recognized her discomfort, he couldn’t look away. Despite visiting her many times, this was his first experience of her precise voice, her soft red hair, and the mutable green of her sad eyes.
“You didn’t bring your things?” she asked.
“I have a few suitcases. I’ll get them later.”
He spoke with her a while longer, doing his best to avoid her questions about his life. He had no capacity to lie.
Later, he examined the objects in the house.
The wooden Advent calendar hanging by the fireplace was an heirloom from Lillian’s mother. Its thirty blue doors once held the traditional mystery of peppermints and prayer cards behind them. Nearby, a purple cloth covered the shelf used as an altar, where she set a sterling crucifix her father had given her the year he died. Behind the crucifix lay a brittle leaf from Palm Sunday, a box of white votives, and a handful of holy cards, including one painted with an image of the angel Raphael.
He picked up the fanciful portrait of himself, rubbing his finger across the glossy print of a young man with long golden locks. He hadn’t taken on such a body since all those centuries ago when he accompanied young Tobias on his journey. The prayer on the back of the card was a request for Raphael to intercede on the petitioner’s behalf, but he didn’t recall Lillian ever reading the card.
This was not her prayer.
Much could be understood from a woman’s attachments, and Lillian maintained the cottage as if it were a museum. She displayed artifacts from her childhood, some unmoved since her parents had lived there. The house was an anchor, stranding her against a familiar shore.
He would have to find a way to free her.
“I put some towels on your bed,” she said, “but please get whatever you need from the hall closet.”
As Raphael returned the card to the altar, Lillian stepped closer to peer at the calendar. “My mother used to put candy in it for us. She passed away when I was ten.”
He brushed a finger across the glossy wood. “Us?”
“My brother and me.”
As she crossed her arms and forced a smile, he realized how difficult it was going to be for her to live with someone in the house, to remain attentive when every day felt like another weight added to the heavy burden of life.
“I need to do some laundry,” she said. “Feel free to use the machine whenever you like, or I can do your clothes if you leave them in the hamper.”
“I don’t expect maid service, Lillian. Just having a room until the repairs are done is a blessing. I’ll take care of the rest, like I would at the rectory.”
She smiled at a thought.
“There was a time when St. Mary had a housemaid. My father use to talk about stopping by the rectory to see if Gisele had made a pie. She often favored the altar boys with a slice of rhubarb before Mass.”
As she left the room, she commented, “I guess it’s lean times for the Church now.”
Raphael thought of Lillian’s older brother, Lew, who had committed suicide two weeks before graduating high school. He already knew from his spiritual visits that Lillian thought of Lew every day, usually as she had last seen him before the closed-casket funeral.
She had been the one to find him, dead in his bed, rock music playing so loudly no one recognized the sound of the gunshot. Despite having nearly twenty years to heal, she lived like a shadow impatient for the light to go out.
“Heart of the Rose” is a romance that continues each week through Advent and Christmastide. You can read the complete story at Tantalizing Tales. When the wounds of love challenge a devoted Catholic priest, the angel Raphael arrives to answer an unspoken prayer.
