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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
Claire is standing in front of Dad’s house when I get there. She’s holding a succulent that looks a bit worse for wear.
“Don’t start,” she says when she sees me look at it. “She never keeps the flowers, and I thought this was a bit more on-trend anyway.”
“No, I think it’s a great idea.”
“Stop it. Just because you never bring anything — ”
“I brought a bottle of wine.”
“I mean for anybody else.”
I don’t know why she’s in such a bad mood. She’s been happier lately: Klare-induced sex happiness. Every time she comes back from Finland, she’s positively glowing with “I’m getting fucked” energy. So the bad mood must have to do with something else.
“Do you know why we’re here, then?” I ask. “I thought the invitation was quite mysterious.”
“No,” she says, peering suspiciously at the front door, “and I don’t like it. The last time Dad said he needed to talk to us, it was to tell us they were engaged.”
“Yes, what life milestone could it be now?” I say. “Divorce?”
“One can only hope.”
“Maybe she’s pregnant,” I say.
A horrifying thought. That’s one goldfish I would scoop out of the bowl myself.
“Don’t even say that. You’ll will it into existence.” She rings the doorbell.
Our godmother opens the door, beaming at us.
“Hello, darlings,” she says. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Her hands are cupped around her stomach. Under the swaths of fabric, there is an unmistakable bulge.
“Oh my God,” Claire says.
“Oh my God,” I say.
Godmother smiles beatifically. “As you can see, we have wonderful news.”
***
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Claire says, when we’ve all taken a mimosa (except Godmother, pointedly) and are seated in the living room, “but how did this happen?”
Godmother smiles. “Darling, you don’t expect me to explain the logistics to you, do you? I’d be happy to, of course. One can always benefit from more sexual education.”
“God, no, not that. I mean — you’re — aren’t you — ?”
Not fit to parent a child? Satan in a little hat (“it’s actually a head scarf”)?
“A bit old?” I offer helpfully.
Godmother’s smile is now fixed to her face. “Don’t be silly, I’m only 45,” she says. “And the female body is capable of miraculous things if you take care of it.” She looks at me.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “It’s capable of quite miraculous things if you pour liquor and cigarettes into it as well.”
She tilts her head. “Lovely.”
“I think what your godmother is trying to say — ” Dad interjects, “ — is that when two people love each other, and, ehm, well, when the timing is just right — you girls — what I mean to say — ”
Dad has never been good at talking about sex. When I was nine, he gave me a copy of a book called Where Babies Come From and said, “If you have any questions, er — well, there are more of these at the library.”
Godmother puts her hand on his knee. The other is still cupping the bulge as if we might forget about it if she lets go.
“When you put two people together with the sexual magnetism that your father and I have, it’s really only a matter of time,” she says.
I look at Claire. She’s very upset, but she’s hiding it with a manic sort of smile.
“Well, cheers,” I say, to derail the impending soliloquy about Dad’s sexual prowess. “I’m very happy for you both.”
“Yes, very,” Claire says tightly. She’s holding her mimosa glass as if she’s about to shatter it in her hand.
“And of course we’ll want you at the birth, when the time comes,” Godmother says.
Of course. They’ll need me there to catch the afterbirth and then get everyone a coffee.
“We’re going to have quite a non-traditional birth, actually,” Godmother says. “A few of my most interesting friends have agreed to be there.”
“Yes, it’s — ” Dad starts.
“Darling.” She gives him a cheerful warning look. “As I was saying, Kwame will be playing some music from his home country as the baby arrives, and Zerth has agreed to do an improvised poem.”
“The delivery room will be quite crowded,” I say, glancing at Claire, whose mouth has formed a horizontal line across her face. “Hopefully you’ve left enough room for the doctor.”
Godmother ignores that. “And naturally, Father will be there to bless me while I’m in labor.”
Everything stops.
“What?” I say.
“Father,” Godmother says, in a voice you’d use to talk to a small child or a dog. “You remember him. He officiated our wedding.”
His hand, wrapped around mine, the cold turning our fingers red. Him touching his chest in disbelief, saying, “I don’t know what this feeling is.” His laugh. The way he startled when the bushes rustled. His beautiful face, his beautiful arms. His beautiful neck.
Him saying, “It’ll pass.”
The way he looked at me when he asked a question, like he really, really wanted to know the answer, like he wouldn’t be satisfied without it. The way he looked at me.
The feeling of his mouth. His hands. His —
“I didn’t realize you were still in love with him,” Claire says.
“What?” I say.
“I said, I didn’t realize you were still in touch with him,” Claire says, giving me a funny look. “We haven’t seen him since the wedding.”
“Oh yes,” Godmother says. “Well, he’s one of our closest friends, isn’t he? My spiritual advisor, as it were.”
“Excuse me, I just need to — ” I gesture at my glass. It’s mostly full. Shit.
“Just need a top off,” I say. “Can’t celebrate with half a drink!”
I go to the front porch and sit on the step. I take out a cigarette and light it.
Claire comes out in a few minutes. She doesn’t sit down, just stands and looks at me.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, except the small fact that the only man I’ve ever really loved is going to be at my step-god-mother’s geriatric birth, and probably every other family event for the rest of my life.”
He’ll probably officiate Godmother’s funeral. That’s a nice thought, at least.
“It’s a bit shit,” she says. “But maybe. Well. You never know.”
This is Claire’s version of full-blown emotional support. It’s actually quite touching.
“I appreciate that, but I think the ship has sailed,” I say. “There are only so many ways you can say, ‘Are you sure God is that important to you?’ before it begins to sound a bit selfish.”
She puts her hand sort of close to my leg, but not on it. She looks rather pained.
“There’s always a chance,” she says. “Look at me and Klare.”
In the end, she did run through the airport for him. She bought an $800 plane ticket to do it. I really wish I had been there to see it. Claire hates to look out of control.
“To be fair, you and Klare were destiny,” I say. “You have the same name. And haircut.”
“Oh, shut up.”
***
When Mum was close to the end, she developed a problem where she couldn’t control her farts. She was about seven stone and tethered to a hospital bed, but this particular humiliation was too much for her to take.
“It’s not enough that I don’t have tits and can’t eat solid foods anymore,” she said. “Now He has to embarrass me by making me fart in front of Dr. Barry.”
“I knew you fancied Dr. Barry!” I said. “And what? He? I didn’t think we believed in a He.”
She sighed and leant back on her pillow. “Oh, love,” she said. “When you get to this stage, you have to hedge your bets a bit. And anyway, don’t you think it sounds nice?”
“Eh,” I said. “I’ve always thought God sounded like a bit of a twat. Like someone who, when you suggest a book for book club, says, ‘Oh, I’ve read that, and it wasn’t any good.’”
“Well, He would know,” she said, and then she needed to rest and couldn’t talk anymore.
She was dead a few weeks later. I’ve tried to think of her sitting on a cloud, recruited into a heavenly choir, chatting up Jesus. But I just can’t imagine her anywhere but here.
And that’s the worst part of all of this, really. In the end, the Priest chose something he couldn’t even be sure existed. I lost to a possibly fictional character.
***
Godmother goes into labor on a Monday in November.
“Monday’s child is fair of face,” she says. “The apple doesn’t fall far!”
I was born on a Wednesday: full of woe. Born sad after all.
Harry texts me as I’m on my way to the hospital.
At the hospital yet??? Just got here. I’m so excited.
In my next life, I hope to be born into a family that considers it strange to invite several of my former love interests to the delivery room.
Nearly there, I text back. How’s she doing?
The throat singers cancelled at the last minute apparently. So not good.
For the millionth time in the past two years, I wish Boo were here. She would have been spectacular in a moment like this.
“Can you believe she held you as you were being Christened?” she said at Mum’s funeral, as we watched Godmother drop to her knees in front of the casket in a rather outsized display of grief.
“I strongly suspect that she held me under the water for a minute or two,” I said. “It would explain my fear of swimming.”
Boo laughed. She had a great laugh.
Godmother was wailing and simultaneously looking back at Dad to make sure he noticed.
“She’s going to climb into the casket in a minute,” Boo said. “It must kill her that this is the one area where she can never live up to your mum.”
She was right. Even now, the score is weighed in Mum’s favor. Engagement: Check. Marriage: Check. Birth: Check. But death is still squarely in Mum’s column. You can’t compete with a dead woman.
I’ll be there in a few, I text Harry. Gonna have a quick cig first.
Can you smoke near a hospital??? It’s not the 60s.
He was lovely in a lot of ways, Harry, but I don’t miss him.
***
I go around the side of the hospital and pull out a cigarette.
It turns out Harry was right, because there’s a rather large NO SMOKING sign on the wall behind me. If anyone comes, I’ll pretend I didn’t see it.
“Excuse me, miss, but I think there’s no smoking allowed here.”
I turn, ready to look innocent and surprised. I do quite a good surprised face. Claire has always said I’m a natural liar.
But it’s not a member of the hospital staff. It’s him.
He’s wearing a bright white robe with tiny gold crosses embroidered on it. He loves white, he told me once. I wonder how long it took him to pick this one out. I wonder if he had help.
He smiles uncertainly, then looks down and starts fidgeting with his robe.
“I was just joking,” he says. “I don’t give a fuck if you smoke.”
“That’s good. I don’t think your holy authority extends this far anyway.”
He laughs. His beautiful laugh.
“Probably not,” he says. “I know I’m not allowed to make up extra commandments, for example.”
“You’ve tried, then?”
“Personally I think they could do with a bit of revision,” he says, looking up nervously as if God is watching us and might intervene at any moment. “Honor thy mother and father, for example.”
“Godmother believes very deeply in that one. You’ll have to fight her for it.”
He squints at me, smiling. “Fuck,” he says. “I forgot what you’re like.”
“Did you?”
“No, not really, actually. But apparently my imagination isn’t as good as I thought it was.”
“So you’ve been thinking about me.”
I don’t know why I’m doing this, pretending to be flirty and casual. I suppose it’s a reflex. In reality, looking at him is like looking at the sun. I can’t do it for more than a few seconds before I have to look somewhere else.
“I don’t — ” he says.
“No, sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I’m a glutton for punishment, I think.”
There’s a slightly painful pause.
“So how’s she doing?” I say. “Godmother, I mean.”
“Oh, yeah, grand,” he says. “She kicked me out of the delivery room a few minutes ago, and I think I heard her call your dad a cunt.”
He’s looking at me in the way he used to look at me, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. I want so badly to reach out and touch him.
“Look, d’you want to — ” he says. “D’you want to go somewhere?”
Hotel room?
“Bar?” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I could use a drink. I don’t think anyone will miss us, do you?”
“I honestly don’t think Godmother would notice if she never saw me again,” I say. “Come on, I’ll drive.”
***
We go to a dingy pub near the café and sit next to each other at the bar, elbows not quite touching.
I order a vodka. He orders a beer.
“So you’re off G&Ts, then?” I say.
“If I’m honest, I’m trying to drink less generally,” he says. “I found that it was making it difficult to control my impulses.”
He smiles slightly and looks at me. How dare he look at me that way? He’s right; my imaginary version of him was nothing in comparison to this.
“So this drink is likely to get you in trouble?”
“God, I hope so,” he says.
There’s a short, exquisite silence.
“Look,” he says. “I don’t know how to say this, and I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway.”
We are in deep shit.
“I thought that once I called things off, it would hurt for a bit, but then it would be over,” he says. “That’s what it’s been like for me in the past.”
“And you’ve done this before,” I joke. “Many times.”
His gaze is steady and serious. “Not like this,” he says. “If I’m honest, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since the day of the wedding. I don’t know how.”
“Well, you’re not alone there,” I say. I’m still trying to keep it light, but he’s looking at me desperately now.
“I need someone to tell me how I do this,” he says, his voice breaking. “I need Him to tell me how I do this, and He’s been totally fucking silent.”
I don’t say anything, just nod.
“It’s not fair,” he says. “I gave up everything for Him, and I know He’s not supposed to say thank you, and that’s not the point. But I’m drowning, and when I ask Him for help, I hear nothing.”
About a week after he left, I tried praying. I didn’t pray for him to come back. I just sat on the floor of my bedroom and tried to talk to God.
I looked at the ceiling and said: Help me understand why this happened. Give me peace. Send me another man who’s exactly the same, but not completely fucked up about sex. (That last one was mostly a joke).
I didn’t hear anything either. It was just the same old voice in my head, the one that’s always been there, the one that is me and nothing more.
The Priest is staring at his hands, which are wrapped tightly around his drink.
“I’m supposed to love one thing,” he says, “and I had to pick the one thing that can’t show me it loves me back.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I reach over and take his hand. He exhales and rubs his thumb over my skin. Electrifying.
“I think that’s sort of what love is about,” I say after a minute.
He laughs mirthlessly. "Oh yeah, is it?" he says. "Great."
"Hear me out," I say. “Even in a relationship, you can’t make the other person love you back in exactly the way you need to be loved. You just have to love them the way you know how, and accept that they’re loving you the best way they can.”
He’s silent.
“So maybe God’s love for you — ”
I can’t believe I’m saying this.
“ — is Him loving you the best way He can.” I swallow. “And maybe it actually really hurts Him that you can’t feel it.”
It sounds like a lot of shit, but it feels true.
“I want something that I can feel,” he says, and the tone of his voice breaks my heart all over again.
“I want something that I can fucking feel,” he repeats, and then he’s kissing me.
His hands are in my hair, and I probably shouldn’t kiss him back, but there’s no alternative. There’s no other place I could be than right here, in this bar, with the TV on in the background and the bartender cleaning a dirty glass, his mouth on mine, his hands on the side of my face, the feeling of him through me like thread through a needle.
I've spent so long pulling away from feeling. Boo on the pavement, ready to step into the street. Mum in the hospital bed, barely recognizable. Mum in her casket, in the pink dress she wore on Christmas. Boo in her casket, though I wasn't allowed to see her; she wasn't fit to be seen; I never saw her again. When my mind touches the edge of those thoughts, I step back as quickly as possible.
I can't step back from this. I am inside it; it is all around me. It is inescapable.
He pulls away and looks at me, his hands still cupping my face. “God,” he says.
“Or me,” I say, smiling slightly.
“Can it be both?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“I haven’t heard Him in months,” he says, exhaling and placing his forehead against mine. “I hear Him now.”
***
The last thing Mum said to me was, “Go.”
I was in her hospital room, trying to get a nurse to come and up the morphine because she was in so much pain. The call button wasn’t working.
I was supposed to open the café. Boo was on a weekend trip with her boyfriend, so I couldn’t call her. I didn’t want to leave her like this.
“Go, love,” she said. At this point she could barely talk. Getting out a single word was an effort.
I went out into the hallway and gestured for a nurse, who came towards me. I turned back to my mum, who gave the slightest head nod towards the door.
“Go,” she said.
I went. I opened the café. No one came in the entire afternoon.
She died quickly and unexpectedly that evening while Claire was visiting.
I’ve thought a million times about that moment. For years, I’ve thought that I shouldn’t have listened to her. I shouldn’t have left her when she was in pain for something as useless as an afternoon at an empty café.
Recently, though, I’ve thought that maybe she was trying to tell me something important. Go. Go, even though it will be painful. Live your life, even though it would be easier to stay in your grief.
Do the thing that could hurt you. Do it because there is no other thing to do.
I reach out and touch the Priest’s bottom lip. There is no other way of putting it: He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I look at him and somewhere I feel my mum and Boo sigh. Perhaps one of them puts an arm around the other. Perhaps one of them says, "Isn't he lovely."
Grief and joy. Regret and forgiveness. Loving someone more than anything, more than you love yourself, more than your mind can bear to ponder. And still, letting them go.
“It can be both,” I say, and I kiss him.