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It was always understood that Aldo was intended for the Church. Like the days of yore: God would take the superfluous sons. Aldo was the second-youngest of ten, and he liked to read, spending hours tucked away between the shelves of the public library instead of playing in the park across the street, and he had made a fine altar-boy, and so his parents and siblings and he had always understood he would go to seminary instead of college, which was cheaper for the whole family. There never was much money to spare, with so many children. "Children coming out my ears," his mother liked to say. "God gave me too many mouths to feed." And the rent was getting higher, and his father's auto-body shop was failing, the business never as lucrative as it should have been. That was his eldest brother's inheritance. Aldo wouldn't have to worry about that. "And maybe God will take you back to Italy," she'd say, and send him back to his books.
Later people would hear his name and think he was Italian. He would have to correct them, though he liked the assumption, especially the political advantage it gave him within the church. Italy was beautiful, he loved her like a woman, her art and her architecture and her rugged mountains and bright blue seas and winding streets and sometimes even her people, the country everything he'd ever dreamed of, but he hailed from a suburb of New York City that dragged out Italian flags for the parade every Columbus day and voted Republican.
His parents had been promised there would be riches and peace out in the suburbs, when they'd fled New York City for a cookie-cutter picket-fence grass-lawn town that was half Catholic and half Jewish. Their parents before them had been promised the same, in Italy, getting on the crowded boat with a couple of suitcases, fleeing Mussolini (or so the story went). His parents longed for the city as his grandparents had longed for Italy. He didn't know what he longed for. So long as it was different than where he was. He had long since memorized the cracks in every sidewalk, and read all the books in the library that were worth reading. He was tired of green grass lawns and a too small house, siblings climbing up the walls. He wanted his own room.
"If I go to seminary, will you let me have my own room," he asked his father.
"You'll have your own room in the seminary, and not a moment before. Unless you think the money we'd need to buy a new house grows on trees," his father said.
At first Aldo was more or less resigned to his fate. Not particularly enthusiastic, but he liked being an altar boy and he liked the music they sang in mass when the choir was in tune. So it could be worse. He didn't want to learn Latin, though. He hated the sound of the Latin that filled every church, especially their own small wooden building. Too cramped, a relic from when the suburb had been largely Protestant, and ornately decorated in a way that felt fake. Besides, it was dusty, and the dust made him sneeze.
The first time he was truly excited to be a priest was when the old church burned down. His parents said it was a sign that God disapproved of Vatican II, the church getting rid of the Latin Mass. But Aldo was excited to hear sermons in English, even if they'd had to hold them in a parking lot while they waited for the new church to be built. The new church was built on a whole new lot, with much more space. It wouldn't be so cramped.
"And our priest bribed the mayor for the new lot only to get this put up," Aldo's father said with disgust the first time they went to Mass at the new church. It was made of cement and glass, and the town buzzed with thinking it ugly. But the moment they went in Aldo's jaw had dropped. The new church was beautiful, its interiors sleek and modern. The slant of the ceiling made him think he was lifting his mind up to God. There was no dust here, no falsely gilded decoration. Only light and elegance, only what was necessary. Fresh and new and like no other church he saw for a long, long time.
It didn't hurt that the way the light fell on the altar made the priest's hair glow with holy light, like a true vision from God, nor that the sculpture of Jesus installed behind him had incredibly defined pectoral muscles. All made because of the bribe.
By the time Aldo went to seminary, he had managed to get excited about it. The church was joining the modern world: fitfully, with backwards steps, but progress was clear for all to see, or so he thought from looking through the Catholic periodicals he read while ignoring his parents shouting at each other and his siblings. There had even been a Catholic president. And there were other reasons, more shameful ones. But the world was changing. There was no need to think of that, of the secret shame that had long since hid itself inside him. Maybe someday the church would even accept it. Pipe dream, maybe, but he had to have hope.
The church was changing. And Aldo had always been clever. He knew it needed new men, to lead its change, and he intended to be one of them. Sitting at the crest of the wave. He believed in the changes. But he also knew any movement needed a leader, and that being at the forefront of progressive change would help him rise if he managed to increase the strength of his party. He went to seminary with this aim, full of youthful arrogance.
Seminary was something of a disappointment to his high hopes, until he met Thomas Lawrence. Most of their classmates were idiots, hidebound and backwards-looking, praying in Latin and cursing the state of the world. But Thomas was...something else. Aldo had approached him, the best student in their class, for his smarts and his social intelligence. Aldo had stayed for his deep faith and sensitivity, his morals and ideals.
(Aldo had stayed because Thomas reminded him sometimes of a Romantic painting, all dark shadows and bright light. Because of the softness of his smile, his mouth, his hair. The suppleness of God's words on his tongue.
Aldo had reached for him, once. "We cannot," Thomas had said, voice low and rough, and that had been that. But didn't you want to, Aldo had thought, later, in the deepest privacy he was capable of. But didn't you want to. Why couldn't we. He knew the answer, of course. But sometimes he liked to pretend. That they weren't who they were, they were other people, in a different world...)
Seminary had not been nothing, then. And it set him up for success. He'd been able to get a good position straight out. Aldo had grown used to wanting things. It was like flexing a muscle that had once nearly withered away. He hadn't chosen the priesthood, not as much as he would have liked, but he had grown to want it. To want men. To want change. To want power. To want something to come of his life.
He forged that want like a sword within him, forged it out of every doubt and fear he'd ever been able to admit to himself. And he rose like a meteor. He remembered to thank God. Sometimes he thanked Thomas, who stayed beside him unwaveringly, a constant friend and ally.
When the Pope he'd befriended died, Aldo shed tears. And he remembered the little boy his parents had thought nothing would ever come of, had cast off like a loose thread. Ambition and idealism swirled within him, indistinguishable. He knew his mistake: he expected too much. He had never been meant to be Pope, becausee he thought it would come easy.
And then, the one expectation he'd never had. Thomas, doubting him. Turning away.
At least: he would always be a cardinal. And Italy was beautiful in the summer, the way his hometown had never been.