First Sacraments - (January 2017)

Annie stands quietly in the bright afternoon sun, lights a joint outside the majestic wooden doors of the St. Catherine of Genoa Parish, and feels the coolness of the butter-yellow bricks against her neck when she leans back. She’s shaken by feeling so close to him again. “Shit,” she says with a long exhale of smoke, “I can do this.”

Annie breathes in deep and holds the smoke in her lungs until she can hold it no longer. As she exhales Annie begins to feel the anxiety move out of her body. She’s grateful her mom welcomed her back so easily, but it didn’t come without strings. Annie thinks that maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel to come home to a place she hardly knows.

The cannabis lifts her mood and the day suddenly glows with clarity and possibilities. “God I love a good joint,” she says to herself before taking one last inhale and crushing the ashy tip lightly against the metal railing running along the wide concrete staircase. Annie turns her head slightly to look up at the church steeple and notices the small white clouds floating above the church.  It’s okay to come home, she thinks as she pushes the majestic wooden doors open and walks casually into the dark sanctuary.

 The day Annie McGrath came back into his life he could feel her before she’d said a word. His heartbeat quickened and his soft, round body tingled with a familiar longing. Father Lorenzo knew the white-collar around his neck protected him against many things, but not against her.

 “First, how are you?” Is what he’d asked from his place behind the delicate barrier, his face shadowed from her view while he sat afraid to ask what he really wanted to know after he’d made sure no one else was waiting in the Church.

 “I’m learning to sleep again, at night. Being on tour for so many years screwed up my ability to sleep in the dark. We lived like vampires, out on the road with the hedonists and atheists.” She laughs but he doesn’t join in. 

“That’s positive,” he says quietly.

He knows she is smiling because he feels that familiar lift in his chest as the warm rush-of-feelings begin to fill the void of his frozen center. Maybe love is eternal, he thinks hopefully. “Annie, I’m so glad you are home. Dottie said you would be here, but I didn’t really believe her. It’s been a long time.”

 “I know, I never planned on moving back in with Mom,”  is what Annie says as she sits back against the confessional wall and pulls the cream-colored silk scarf from around her burning neck. “This might be a new low point in my life.” She says slumping slowly into her seat, caressing the silk scarf on her lap.

 “No, I think that’s when you met Jean-Pierre.” Are the words Father Lorenzo blurts out and regrets instantly.

“Maybe you’re right. Yes, I know you’re right. You’re always right and I love you for knowing the truth and hate that I can hide it so easily from myself. You were always the great manager of my emotions, Lorenzo. You never disappointed people or were idle or failed others expectations.” Annie says breathlessly, leaning close the delicate barrier separating them.

Father Lorenzo knows she is wrong but he doesn’t remind her of that. “I am Father Lorenzo, a spiritual guide and responsible community member,” he says instead.

“And I’m the shamed spouse of a scandalous rock star.”

“I definitely didn’t see that coming the first day we met.”

“Night,” she corrects him.

“Yes, night. How could I have forgotten that?” he says, and feels the mood change in their tight space. Father Lorenzo thinks about how it was, with them, when they first saw each other on that cold starry night in Cambridge when they were both eight years old. “Do you remember when you stopped hanging around the after-school in sixth-grade and how I learned to play guitar because I missed you so much and wanted to sing a song outside your window!” He confesses and can hear her sit back in her side of the booth and let out an amused sound. “And I still do, play the guitar that is. It’s what makes me so popular.”

“Nothing sexier than a guitar-playing-priest,” she says, and he allows a smile to raise his cheeks. He hopes Annie can’t feel him blush from her side of the confessional, but he can’t deny he’s flattered that they can still intoxicate each other, despite the years apart.

She is silent and he waits. He knows how it was, for a time, when she used to call him from the road to talk about her life. “JP and me, we’re just living different lives, right now. He’s touring and I’m here, with family.” Are the words she speaks carefully and  slowly, but what he wants her to confess is that in the end she knew JP wasn’t good enough for her.

He’s quiet and allows her pain to fill him, that’s his power and he’s putting it to good use. Lorenzo hopes Annie can feel a lightness float into her as he absorbs her burdens. He wants to cleanse the air of their sins. “You need to be kind to yourself,” he says in his priestly voice. “You need to find the compassion for yourself that you find for others.” He pauses and sits still with his hands folded on his lap and watches Annie through the lattice as she fidgets with the scarf on her lap.  He speaks again, with a slight shake in his voice. “Sometimes, Annie, you’re allowed to take care of yourself.”

They sit alone together, but when the bells of the St. Catherine Parish ring in the hour of twelve with a dozen lyrical bell tones, he remembers that Mrs. Fitzpatrick is expecting him for their Thursday afternoon lunch at her house on Porter Street. He’s reluctant to break the moment.

“I have to go,” Annie says with a sigh. “Mom will be expecting me back with Dad’s medicine and her pack of Marlboro Lights. But I like this feeling of being together with a human who loves me unconditionally. Lorenzo, Father Lorenzo, you have always stood by me, even when I didn’t deserve that kind of love. And now with your priestly powers I’m beginning to feel that maybe you can save me.”

 “I can still picture you,” he says, hoping she will stay a few more minutes.

“Picture me where?”

“That first night, when I was watching you. Nona had sent me out with the garbage, it was Sunday and she was watching that show with the ticking clock.”

“Sixty Minutes!” Annie laughs. “I remember how I would sit by Dad every Sunday night watching that show with him.”

“I hated the sound of that clock, it meant all the happiness of the weekend was about to end. It was like listening to a bomb about to explode. But that night, the explosion was you.” He stops and allows himself to indulge in tinted nostalgia. “It was cold, so cold the world outside felt dark and frozen. I’d put on my heaviest winter coat and work boots to take out the garbage, and all you were wearing was a faded jean jacket with a leopard print fur collar and gloves without fingers. And you were smiling.” He’s glad to think back to that girl because she was someone he loved, even if Annie has done her best to destroy her.

“I remember.”

“You stood there, still as a rabbit under the bright street light, the snow landing lightly on your long braids. You looked like an angel, and I had to blink twice to make sure you were real, then I smiled because,” he pauses but she knows exactly what he will say next. “Because you were so beautiful.”

Annie leans in close to the lattice and sighs. “On that first night in Cambridge it was like the world had opened up and something I never knew I wanted was suddenly handed to me; a home and a friend. I can see your smile, Lorenzo, because it was your smile I saw first, and then how small you were.” She laughs. “You weren’t much taller than the fence around your front yard. You were wearing a green parka that was a few sizes too big with fur on the hood that covered your hair. I remember thinking you looked like a small lion. And your hands could not possibly have fit in the leather gloves attached to your skinny wrists. You stood staring at me from your driveway across the street.”

“I’d lived across the street from Charlie since I was five, and I’d never once had I seen more than one light on in that house, ever. Then you and Dottie showed up and everything changed. I was happy to have someone my age so close.”

“I remember I didn’t know what to do, I froze in my spot looking up into the city sky thinking about the nights I was going to miss in Maine. My head was still lifted up to capture the snowflakes falling from the darkness when I saw you. I was blissful, I remember. But when I saw you my joy froze and I suddenly felt exposed and embarrassed.” Annie sits back on the bench, her hands gently caressing the silk scarf like a cat in her lap. “In Maine, there was never anyone around to watch my weirdness in full display. Mom was usually working or talking with her friends, and our neighbors were far away. Cambridge was a new experience and I learned that being around people could make me uncomfortable. But I always liked you.”

They sit quietly together with that moment from so long ago.

“The truth is, I’m sad, that’s why I’m here,” Annie says in a whisper. “JP said some things he can’t take back and then I threw his favorite guitar off the living-room balcony. It was bad. It’s like we woke-up every morning with good intentions and then we ended every night with a divisive, symbolic crusade to tear each other down. What was the point?”

Lorenzo inhales, wondering if this time they’ve gone too far.

“I’m okay, no worries,” she says. He looks through the lattice and watches her cover herself with a black wool coat and pick up the cream-colored scarf she’d been holding on her lap. “I hope you don’t mind that I came here today, I really needed a compassionate listener.”

“I understand,” he says, but feels the need to remind her again. It’s obvious she’s forgotten how this is supposed to work. “Annie, my dear friend, I am so glad you are back and chose to visit me here, in this sacred space. But next time, could you begin with a statement of confession, ask for my forgiveness, my superiors might be listening.” He feels something shift in his heart, remembering who she is and who he has become.

“Of course. And you know this is just temporary,” she says. “Until I sort out what I’m going to do or get health insurance to pay for someone else to listen to me.”

“Of course, my child,” Father Lorenzo says before shutting the small door that separates his world from her.

***

Annie walks leisurely down the busy street, pausing to look in the store windows while contemplating her existence back in Cambridge. Her mind wanders back to the last year she lived at home when meeting JP felt like a reward for all that she’d been through that long, terrible year.

Being back on her old neighborhood in the shadows of her childhood church with Lorenzo in charge makes Annie smile, wondering if maybe this time things will be different. Her heart beats a little faster each time she thinks about how Lorenzo still loves her, and worries that it still feels so good. Breathe in deep, Annie thinks as memories flood her brain and unsettle her belief that change is possible. I’ll never belong and I’m not sure I want to, she emotes at  her reflection in the chocolate shop window. Do I want to? Are the thoughts that flash next as she turns away from the shop, still lost in her own gauzy memories and doesn’t see the pile of brown poop on the sidewalk that her right foot slowly slides into. “Gross!” Annie yells out to no one in particular, but a passerby agrees with a nod of his head. The stench fills her nose and she feels a purge of all her angry, sad emotions.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” She mutters continuously as she tries to wipe the feces off her black boots, the ones she’d salvaged the night she left LA. Annie sits on the cold metal bench at the bus stop and examines the orange tinged patty clinging to her boot. In that moment her foggy mind can’t focus beyond the edges of her boot, and all she can see is the shit in her life. Annie has the urge to stay in the cold bench forever and cry. She reaches into her coat pocket in search of a napkin or old wrapper to wipe her shoe, and her hand finds a small gummy bear which she pops into her mouth without thinking how long it could have been there or what is in it. Whatever, is her only thought as she pops it into her mouth.

She looks up again and the clouds are moving in fast, closing the world under a fluffy grayness, the blue disappearing from the sky. The world feels sad and she knows it’s time to get home to Dottie and Charlie because they will be worried.

Before standing up from the bench she thinks about her last night in LA, on their balcony, remembering that by the time JP finally touched her to begin healing, they’d become too partisan. They’d split allegiance, lost their community and couldn’t see each other. Maybe it was all the money that corrupted who they were, at first. And Father Lorenzo might say they believed in the wrong gods. But until that last night when JP touched Annie and her body felt offended and clutched itself tight against him in disgust, Annie knew she didn’t believe in the false gods anymore. She didn’t believe in anything.

His words were bad, but she had acted. Annie left LA thinking it was a whim and it would come to an end. But now I’m not so sure, I like it here, she thinks to herself.  It’s old and cold and dirty on these crooked Cambridge streets, but that’s how I feel. Not all shiny and perfect like LA.  She sits quietly and moves slowly as she wipes the poop off her black boot. She can hear the small voice inside her say that  maybe she won’t forgive him. Can’t forgive him. But that seems doubtful. She knows that if she can still love Lorenzo after everything he did to her, she’s capable of forgiving JP. Annie pushes herself up slowly from the cold bench and heads back to Pemberton Street.