Baptism

I thought this had posted a few days before, but I must have not hit submit... or something. Here is the conclusion of our tale.

Standing at the gate before the walk between the guesthouse and the convent, Kevin says, “I’m just going to get this out of the way and not make it awkward.”

“Ooh,” Jinny says. “That’s already sounding awkward.”

“Yes,” Kevin admits, breathing though his nostrils and chuckling. “It is.”

Then he says, “You’re really beautiful.”

“I am not… I am… God, are you hitting on me?’

“Yes. And I don’t want this night to end. Not here.”

Jinny takes a breath and decides not to be silly.

“Kevin…”

“Feehan.”

“Oh, God, I should have known you were Irish too. Kevin Feehan, it sounds a lot like you’re asking me up to your room. I don’t want to be making things up, but—”

“You are not,” Kevin jams his hands in his jeans pockets, and he is looking up at the sky, not daring to look at Jinny as he sighs, “making things up.”

“You’re a priest.”

“I’m on my way out.”

“On your way out is not out. And besides, I’ve already slept with a seminarian.”

“Then this is a step up.”

She looks at him horrified.

“Oh, my God—gosh. God. I’m just joking, I shouldn’t have said that!”

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Maybe not,” Kevin agrees. Then he says, “Definitely not.”

“My life is a real mess,” Jinny declares. “I mean, I’m totally on the pill and if anything happened I would pawn the baby off on my fiancé, but—”

Now it is is Kevin who looks shocked, but Jinny says, “Just thinking out loud, and you don’t get to be shocked. I wonder, did Catherine whore me out to you.”

“Ani,” Kevin replies, using Sister Catherine’s actual name, “assumed we would hit it off. And she was right.”

“Because you think you shouldn’t be a priest, but are still going to keep on being one for a while.”

“I am leav—”

“Don’t tell me that,” Jinny says quietly. “I know what it’s like. I’m getting married to a man I’ve loved for a long time who I think… Well never mind what I think.”

“Jinny,” Kevin speaks her name tenderly, placing his fingers on her elbow, and turning to walk away.

Suddenly Jinny asks: “Where is your room?”

Kevin turns back without smiling and says, “Come and see.”

Oh, and he is not like Isaac. Isaac was something different. And he isn’t like Joe who was an unfinished thing. He is broad back and a hardness that is the hardness of life and a face that is joyous and serious and wants to sooth and be soothed. He is a strong neck to hold onto and hot hungry kisses, tenderness in green eyes and gentleness in calloused hands. Kevin is the waist she clings to and the ass that like the body is pelted in black hair is… dimpled, as are the cheeks of his face, is dimpled so she laughs. She laughs and rejoices at strong calves, at how they both stop themselves from crying out. They are in a holy place. They are in a holy place, but… this is holy too. It feels holy. The smell of his old cologne and the incense of all day church is holy. The bit of stale sweat is holy. Holy is the strength in his thighs, the thrill of him filling her, the ache of him, thick inside of her where she had not been entered for so long, stretching her as she hadn’t been stretched, bruising like a rose is easily bruised. Like a rose… She is a rose. Kevin is the joy with which he pushes deeper into her, moving steady like a locomotive while he puts his mouth to her neck. She feels his nuzzle, his bite, can’t strop stroking his ass as it flexes, can’t stop rejoicing in his thighs as they pump her, worries for the bed squeaking rapidly for the bedstead slamming the wall before Kevin whispers, “It’s empty. The room next door is empty.”

But her room is supposed to be empty, where Jayson is sleeping while Anne is praying alone in the chapel. Are there monastic stowaways in the room next door who are privy to their love? It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. She is, oh God, she is coming. She’s coming and he’s done this before, because as he is nuzzling her breasts, as he is burying his face in her body, she is coming on waves, flying out of her flesh, and they are both moist like the rainforests, and then Kevin shouts and stops himself from shouting. He lifts his head and closes his eyes like he’s praying--.maybe this is a type of prayer—as his body jerks and shakes, and his teeth clench, and he holds back his shout, while he fills her.

“Don’t leave me,” he says drowsily.

“I’ll come back to you,” Jinny says. “But I am going to leave you for a moment.”

“What time do you have to go in the morning? We can wake up together. There’s no Mass Holy Saturday—”

“We’re leaving at about nine, and I’m not explaining tonight to my sister or my cousin, so… I’ve gotta do the walk of shame early.”

Kevin turns over and touches her thigh. She looks back at him. He is so beautiful in his nudity. His sex hangs heavy from black hair. He has long black sideburns. His eyes are deep green without his glasses.

“There is no shame. I am not ashamed.”

He scratches his head, reaches into the drawer in the night table, pulls out a notebook and puts his glasses on before writing, and then tears out the note and gives it to Jinny.

“What is this?” she asks stupidly because it says Kevin Feehan and it is obviously his address. He is from Lassador, Ohio, a little over an hour from Rhodes.

“What you do with that is up to you,” the priest tells her drowsily.

Jinny stoops down to kiss him, and the kiss lasts longer than she thought it would. She knows she will come back to his bed. She knows that long after this night she will arrive at the address on that paper and, yes, call that number listed below.

“Do you want to come walking with me?” she asks.

“No,” Kevin tells her, turning around so she sees the long, strong back of him, his shoulders rising, “sometimes you just need to walk alone.”

The whole world is naked tonight, the way Isaac has been so often beside me, the way Kevin, whose body I still feel was just now and will be again. a trusting lover deep in sleep after the love you’ve shared. There is nothing that separates me from anything else. I know this as surely as most of my life I haven’t really bothered to know anything.

I know I need my baptism.

I am going to do something foolish, but then, I already have. I am walking through the woods. I am going through these trees to the brook I saw. I am before the brook. There is no light. The moon doesn't shine on it. I can hardly see it's there, I can just barely hear it. It's almost like what they call faith.

And then I am taking my clothes off. I am taking off the sweatshirt and the tee shirt. The bra was left in Kevin’s room. My breasts are out, half hanging, half standing. They are big, but they're still young, and the air is on my nipples and I feel… decadent, and now I am completely naked.

I don't know if it's my certainty that no one will come, or if I just really don't care. But I am here, naked and walking in the water, and it’s colder than ever, and my whole body is alive, and my nipples are hard and pointed up, and I want to go down and down and down and it's so good and so terribly chilly and I can hardly bear it.

It is just what I need.

HERE IS THE END OF THIS TALE, AND THE NEXT TALE, SIMCHA, WILL BE THE CONCLUSION OF OUR CYCLE.