The Prayers in Rossford

“This is a problem,” Dan said, flatly, folding his hands together as, behind him, the coffee pot began to hiss.

“I know,” Keith McDonald said. Dan saw that his long hands were dry, and his hair was disheveled. He shook his head: “Maybe I should talk to Dena.”

“I had no idea that it was Dena’s father.”

“Keith,” Dan said. “It shouldn’t have been anyone at all!”

“I know.”

“None of us is guiltless,” Dan said. “I mean, I know what it’s like. I told you… And told no one else, I broke my vows too. Once.”

“But it wasn’t with a man you met off the Internet, who is the father of a student at Saint Barbara’s and one of our parishioners.”

“No,” Dan said. “No it wasn’t. I… Look, I need to know everything, Keith. You need to tell me everything.”Dan got up and went to the counter. “I’m supposed to be your friend.”

“You’re my only friend.”

“I don’t believe that,” Dan said.

“You’re the only one I can tell everything too,” Keith said.

“Then you have to tell me. If you’re a priest, and there is more to tell, then more is going to come out. Eventually.”

Dan poured the first cup of coffee and grimaced saying, “You may have to add more than the normal amount of cream and sugar to that. I got a little overzealous on the Folgers.”

“You think there’s more?” Keith said.

“I’ve seen Noah Riley’s face when he sees you. And he was here on Christmas. And… I know Paul Anderson knows you as well. If you all are old friends, then there has to be more. No one knows those boys and there isn’t more.”

“I used to do what they used to do.”

For once Dan looked truly shocked. He crossed himself.

“Why look like that?” Keith said, suddenly. “You see Paul and you would never think he’d have that in his past. Most guys who do it, who do that, they’re not… nasty or evil, or…”

“You’re a priest,” Dan said. “For Christ’s sake, a priest. Every Sunday—no, all the time, people look to you, to us, for guidance. For… light. The ones who still believe, that is. The other ones are already convinced we’re molesting little boys and up to… God knows what. Because half of us probably are up to God knows what.”

“Dan! Don’t say that.”

“Says the pornstar! Was this before seminary? Please say yes.”

Keith shook his head.

“During. That’s when I met them. Paul, but we didn’t call him Paul—”

“Johnny Mellow,” Dan nodded, waving it off with his hand.

“And I wasn’t Keith either. Half of us had this life we were trying to break away from, or that was too small, and this was a way out of it. I know that doesn’t sound like an excuse. It’s not an excuse. It’s an explanation. These fellows were like me. Married men, engaged guys. Some folks with good jobs. Boys who were very attractive, but couldn’t get through school, couldn’t keep real jobs. Failed models, rising star models. We all…. recognized something in each other. I’m not telling you to go to the website and watch it, but whatever you can say, Guy was different from the others. You felt safe there.”

Dan was just sitting at the table listening, nodding, intently.

“I like the way you listen,” Keith said. “You don’t judge. You just listen.”

“Yes,” Dan said. “Well, you listen to all of these people, all of our congregation. And you need someone to listen to you right now, the same way.

“But now I think it’s time for me to talk.”

“All right,” Keith said.

“You have a problem,” Dan said flatly. “And I’m not deluded enough to tell you what it is. I’m not calling you sick when I say it, but I’m saying that a Catholic priest who sneaks away to make porn movies and comes to discreet hotel rooms for sex has a problem.”

Keith opened his mouth, but Dan held up his hand.

“Now, maybe the problem is sex. That’s what I’m supposed to say it is. But maybe it’s the Church. Maybe celibacy is something you shouldn’t do. Or maybe it’s your inability to meet a lover.”

Keith said nothing this time.

“You probably know that Fenn Houghton and I used to…”

“Yes. I mean, I think you sort of told me.”

Dan smiled as he related it.

“We were freshmen. I went to the school across the street. Our first Christmas I went back home with him, back here for the first time, and that’s when we realized we were in love. And we were together. But I really wanted to be a priest. So eventually I went to seminary, because Fenn told me to and, I didn’t do what you did because I had already had what you did not. A long time later, for a brief time, Fenn and I came back together, and then, again, when he saw the pull of the priesthood was so strong, and I couldn’t be Father Malloy and his boyfriend, he sent me back. And… I don’t feel the need to… meet men, or anyone else. I’m happy.

“But my point is I’m free to be celibate because I was free not to be. You never had freedom, Keith. I think that’s your problem. You’ve got to get a way to get some sort of… freedom, so you don’t have to do things that make you feel…”

“Like shit.”

“That endangers you,” Dan said. “And our parishioners. And,” Dan said, touching the other priest’s hand, “You’ve got to trust me to help you find a way to do that.”

When Dena came into the Affren house, Keith McDonald was talking with Barb and they both looked up at her with two very different expressions.

“If,” Barb said, “you are looking for Milo, he is upstairs. If you are looking for your mother, she’s with Bill. I don’t know why they didn’t pay any attention to each other back in school. They get on well enough and I like her a lot better than that Elizabeth he married.”

Dena didn’t know what to say, so she only nodded. Barb was a woman she could usually tell anything, but today, the presence of Father Keith held her tongue.

“I’m going to get Milo,” Dena said.

“Say hello to Father,” Barbara told her.

Dena choked and Keith said, “Dena, could I speak to you a moment?”

Because of Barbara, she couldn’t say no. She had to nod her head.

Keith said, “We’ll be right back. Barb. I… I’m afraid I’ve wronged Dena, and I need to make it right.”

Dena was used to being lied to. She was not used to grown ups trying to make anything right, or confessing, publicly, that they’d screwed up. So she allowed him to take her into the parlor and shut the door.

He didn’t speak right away. He seemed to be gathering strength.

“That day I was just surprised that anyone came in,” Keith said, at last.

“And I was ashamed that it was a parishioner and a student. It was only a little bit later that I realized that the man was your father.”

“Are you having an affair with my father?”

“No.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“No, Dena. Dena, listen. I don’t…. You are much too young for this,” Keith lamented. “And I am your priest. I shouldn’t take you through this.”

“I’m not too young to realize that you probably met each other and decided to have anonymous sex in his hotel room,” Dena said flatly.

“That is what happened, right?”

“Yes.”

“See,” said Dena. “I’m not innocent.”

“That’s worse,” Keith said. “I just confirmed all your worst suspicions about… everything probably. And I became a priest for the opposite reason.”

“I haven’t told anyone,” Dena said. “And I’m not planning to. I don’t have an axe to grind. My father’s done other things. He’s hurt a lot of people already.”

“Well, I have too,” Keith said in a low voice. “I came here to be a man of God, and I’m… I’m ashamed is what I am.”

“I wish I could help you,” Dena found herself saying.

He looked at her.

“I know that the end of innocence is supposed to be a bad thing, but… you can’t be innocent and shocked forever, can you? I wanted to find something bad that day when I came to find my dad. I didn’t know how bad it would be. I was angry and I was bitter. But today, when you got up and came to me, that did shock me. Sex doesn’t shock me. Fathers and priests… and ex boyfriends who turn out gay don’t shock me. Not anymore. Drugs don’t shock me. But… I think sincerity does.”

“I’m not sincere. You saw what I am. I’m a hypo—”

“You’re a man,” Dena said, shaking her head. “And you’ve got to live with whoever that man is, Father.”

Dena moved to the door and opened it.

“Now I’m going to see my boyfriend. You and I have got no quarrel.”

Then Dena was gone.

It was unbelievably cold that morning,and Keith McDonald was thinking of how once his father had told him—this was years back, when he was visiting his parents in Bedford—that there was only so much snow that could fall in a winter, and that a heavy early winter meant a mild latter one. Well, this winter had been heavy all the way through. There was no sign of it becoming any milder or any warmer. It was well into February, approaching Ash Wednesday, and icy cold as he trudged from the church back to the rectory. Barb Affren said that midday Mass revived her. It didn’t revive Keith at all today. Right now he was weighted down with the greyness of the sky, the unforgiving hardness of old snow, and the constant chill of the air. And he was strangely afraid, though of what he could not say.

He stamped up the steps into the large brick porch and then opened the rectory door, and was surprised by the man in the chair across from Dan Malloy.

“Keith,” Dan rose, “You have a visitor.”

The old priest smiled. His face was a mass of wrinkles in a time browned face and his eyes twinkled as he crossed the room to take Keith’s hand.

“You may not remember me, but I remember you,” he said. “Such a handsome young man.”

Anxiety hit Keith like a bolt.

Keith shook his head, coming back to himself and remembering: “Bishop Lord.”

This could only get worse.

“Yes, Keith. I came to see you, really.”

It had gotten worse. The fear broke like a fever, and relieved, Keith McDonald sat in the chair, only a little curious to find out why the bishop was smiling mildly while he began to talk.

“Now, Keith,” he said, “There are some things that have come to my attention about you, and I think we need to talk.”

“I honestly thought that I was done with girls,” Melanie said while Ray Charles played in the background.

“Well, I sort of ceased to be a girl a long time ago,” Tara noted.

Melanie stopped drinking while Ray Charles’s backup singers declared:

I can’t stop loving you!

I’ve made up my mind.

“When you say you thought you were through,” Tara said. “Does that mean…”

“It means if you wanted me to be un-through,” Melanie chuckled. “I could give it a go.”

Naked, Melanie came out of the bed and sat at the head of it, her legs drawn to her chest, her breasts, now middle aged and unconcerned with standing at attention for anyone, rested on her knees.

“I’m not the kind of bitch that moves in with folks, at least not right away,” she said.

On her side, Tara reclined and nodded, touching Melanie’s hip.

“I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to think I’m one of those clingy folks who says, ‘now you’ve been in my bed you have to be surgically attached to me.’”

Tara rose up. Some of her thick hair was in her face, so she pushed it back.

“You might not be that kind of bitch, but I would let you be that kind of bitch with me.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I don’t know too many people I want to spend that much time with. Especially lesbians.”

“I thought it would be just like Sappho. Or a women’s studies meeting from back in college,” Melanie reflected. “Didn’t exactly turn out that way.”

She lay down and pressed herself against Tara.

“This is what I could get used to. It’s been so long, Tara, since I’ve met a woman I could actually stand that I was starting to think I might be straight.”

“Well, I hope I cleared that shit up for you tonight.”

Melanie laughed deep in her chest and lay on her back beside Tara.

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes you damn sure did.”

“Daniel contacted me,” Bishop Lord said. “He told me how you were having troubles.”

At the look on Keith’s face, the old bishop said, “Now don’t be angry, Keith. Most priests are perfectly content to stay out of their brother priests’ business. That’s the whole problem. We are supposed to be a family, but it’s the loneliness, the feeling that you are all on your own that causes so many of us to break down.” The bishop’s eyes had a far off look.

“I belong to a congregation you know? And even there, very often abrother is left to drift alone. You don’t know how blest you are that Daniel is a nosey young man.”

Dan was closer to forty than thirty, and though Keith could objectively tell that he was attractive and had been…. cute, for lack of a better word, he chuckled to think of Dan Malloy described as a young man.

“Now, I’m doing all the talking,” the bishop said. “And that’s all right. Because you might not want to elaborate on what’s going on.”

“Father,” Keith said, immediately, “I’ve been engaged in sinful activity.”

The bishop looked at him.

“Not… abuse, not anything like that,” Keith said, “So don’t even worry about that.”

Keith could not tell if the bishop was relieved or not. The old man had a beautiful poker face.

The bishop was silent and tired looking for a moment. Finally he said, “Daniel, is this where I am supposed to clear my throat and say—” the old man made an imitation of an old man, wheedling: “‘Is this sin of a sexual nature, my son?’”

Keith opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the priest said, “I don’t want to know anything you don’t want to tell me, Keith. As long as you have a friend, as long as you’ve told someone, I don’t need your dirty laundry.”

“Thank you, Father.”

When he said this, he meant it. For some reason he felt emotion welling up inside of him at this old man’s kindness. This was the Church he loved, this was the priest he wanted to be. This love, and this compassion right made all the pitiful things he’d sneaked off to do, all the strong impulses, seem so stupid, and so small.

Dan absented himself, heading to the kitchen.

“I do have friends I’ve talked to,” Keith said, feeling more emotional, more ready to cry the more he talked. “Dan, and… others. They know me. But I don’t want to hurt them, and that’s why I am so… miserable right now.”

Bishop Ford nodded and nodded.

“In my community,” he said, at last, “before final vows are taken a man can leave. He can break away from the community and think about what he’s doing. He can take a long time waiting to make those vows.”

“I… I’m a priest, Father. Your Excellency… I… I’m ordained. Two years now. I…”

“What if I release you from those vows for a time?”

Keith straightened in his seat and said, “Can you… Can you do that, Father?”

“Yes. Release you from your vows for a time so that you can… be free to find out what’s going on inside of you. All right?”

Keith sat rigid before Bishop Ford a while. And then his shoulders sagged, and suddenly he began to cry.

The old man rose up, and circling the table, came to sit down beside Keith McDonald, placing an arm over his shoulders while the young priest sobbed and sobbed.

His crying was so loud that the door opened and Dan came in, looking at them for a moment before just coming over and sitting on the other side of Keith, rocking him by the shoulder.

“Keith,” Dan said tenderly, “Keith…. What’s wrong?”

Lifting his wet, red face from his hands, Keith said, through his weeping:

“I feel more free at this moment than I’ve ever felt in my whole life. And it’s the moment when my bishop tells me that the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be in my whole life, I am free from….

“What’s wrong with me?”