LOOKING BACK “Doris,” the monsignor said, leaning toward her from behind his rich mahogany desk, “you have been a loyal wife to Arthur for thirteen years,” and he switched on those twinkling eyes of his, that look he must have rehearsed in the bathroom before his conferences with all the parish women who came for pastoral counseling in the rectory with its wainscoting their tithes had paid for. “Indeed,” he said, baring stunted ecru teeth in a constipated smile meant to convey empathy, “you’ve been patient as a saint,” and here he allowed himself an avuncular chuckle, as if he had uttered a bona fide bon mot. “Fact is,” he advised her through his big jawboning ham of a face, “a young man needs his freedom, a middle-aged man needs his youth, and boys will be boys. That goes for thirty-eight-year-old boys like Arthur, with their young girlfriends. Now, everybody knows about Arthur’s women, but that’s between Arthur and his confessor. And you know, of course, Holy Mother Church prohibits divorce.” He sat back, thick fingers steepled on his cassocked gut. His eyes, hard now, were fixed on her: So there! So there? She released the clasp of her brocade purse, withdrew a Lucky Strike and lit up. She made a point of taking a deep drag and exhaled right in his face. Smoked ham, she said to herself. To him she said, “I’m greatly in your debt for that pronunciamento.” Pulling hard on her Lucky, she let hot ash dangle over the Oriental rug. “Monsignor, let’s imagine two boys, shall we? Arthur and you. Two boys who could not be less alike. One of them, the crack gynecologist, grows up to spend his days jamming his face between women’s thighs. The other is called to serve in the Good Lord’s army of officially celibate predatory pedophiles. Monsignor, what a tribute to your ecumenical spirit and broad-mindedness that you—once a boy so unlike that other boy, worldly Arthur—grew up to be a man who can excuse actions that must outrage you between your trysts in the sacristy.” She took a final puff on her cigarette, let it drop on the rug and ground it out with one alligator shoe. “Boys,” she said. “That’s your topic. You’re a world authority.” Did she really say those things? Even think them? Of course not. It was 1965. She was thirty-four years old and had five children between the ages of three and twelve— all girls, as she now has reason to thank her lucky stars. It was too late for second chances, even if she had kept her looks. No one knew anything then about all those altar boys, and she had never smoked a day in her life. No, Doris just sat up straight in her straight-backed chair, gripping her beige clutch in her lap and nodding like a parakeet for twenty-five minutes while he forked his porky wisdom over that green leather desk blotter and she, good birdie, took it, took it in, twice her weight in churchly sophistry. Seventeen years later, death parted her and Arthur when his heart failed during a noonday blow job on a gurney. Ten years after that, when she read about the monsignor and how he’d been covering for himself and the others, she’d long since left the church. But back then, driving home that day, she waited through two red lights to teach the man behind her a good lesson about tailgaiting. Just because she could.
Originally published by Venus Envy, 2010.
So real. So relatable. I love yout Catholic-ish poems!
fantastic. complete.