'Give us this day our daily bread and lead us not into temptation.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others ivho trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.'
It felt like putting on flannel pajamas on a snowy night; like turning on your blinker for the exit that you know will take you home.
I looked at Father Michael, and together we said 'Amen.'
M I C H A EL
Ian Fletcher, former tele-atheist and current academic, lived in New
Canaan, New Hampshire, in a farmhouse on a dirt road where the mailboxes were not numbered. I drove up and down the street four times before turning down one driveway and knocking on the door. When I did, no one answered, although I could hear strains of Mozart through the open windows.
I had left June in the hospital, still shaken by my encounter with
Shay. Talk about irony: just when I allowed myself to think that I might be in God's company, after all-He flatly rejected me. The whole world felt off-kilter; it is an odd thing to start questioning the framework that's ordered your life, your career, your expectations-and so I had placed a phone call to someone who'd been through it before.
I knocked again, and this time the door swung open beneath my fist. 'Hello? Anyone home?'
'In here,' a woman called out.
I stepped into the foyer, taking note of the colonial furniture, the photo on the wall that showed a young girl shaking hands with Bill
Clinton and another of the girl smiling beside the Dalai Lama. I followed the music to a room off the kitchen, where the most intricate dollhouse I'd ever seen was sitting on a table, surrounded by bits of wood and chisels and glue gun sticks. The house was made of bricks no bigger than my thumbnail, the windows had miniature shutters that could be louvered to let in light; there was a porch with Corinthian columns.
'Amazing,' I murmured, and a woman stood up from behind the dollhouse, where she'd been hidden.
'Oh,' she said. 'Thanks.' Seeing me, she did a double take, and I realized her eyes were focused on my clerical collar.
'Bad parochial school flashback?'
'No... it's just been a while since I've had a priest in here.' She stood up, wiping her hands on a white butcher's apron. I'm Mariah
Fletcher,' she said.
'Michael Wright.'
'Father Michael Wright.'
I grinned. 'Busted.' Then I gestured to her handiwork. 'Did you make this?'
'Well. Yeah.'
'I've never seen anything like it.'
'Good,' Mariah said. 'That's what the client's counting on.'
I bent down, scrutinizing a tiny door knocker with the head of a lion. 'You're quite an artist.'
'Not really. I'm just better at detail than I am at the big picture.' She turned off the CD player that was trilling The Magic Flute. 'Ian said I was supposed to keep an eye out for you. And- Oh, shoot.' Her eyes flew to the corner of the room, where a stack of blocks had been abandoned.
'You didn't come across two hellions on your way in?'
'No...'
'That's not a good sign.' Pushing past me, she ran into the kitchen and threw open a pantry door. Twins-I figured them to be about four years old-were smearing the white linoleum with peanut butter and jelly-
'Oh, God,' Mariah sighed as their faces turned up to hers like sunflowers.
'You told us we could finger-paint,' one of the boys said.
'Not on the floor; and not with food!' She glanced at me. 'I'd escort you, but-'
'You have to take care of a sticky situation?'
She smiled. 'lan's in the barn; you can just head down there.' She lifted each boy and pointed him toward the sink. 'And you two,' she said, 'are going to clean up, and then go torture Daddy.'
I left her washing the twins' hands and walked down the path toward the barn. Having children was not in the cards for me-I knew that. A priest's love for God was so all-encompassing that it should erase the human craving for a family-my parents, brothers, sisters, and children were all Jesus. If the Gospel of Thomas was right, however, and we were more like God than unlike Him, then having children should have been mandatory for everyone. After all, God had a son and had given Him up. Any parent whose child had gone to college or gotten married or moved away would understand this part of God more than me.
As I approached the barn, I heard the most unholy sounds-like cats being dismembered, calves being slaughtered. Panicked-was Fletcher hurt?-I threw open the door to find him watching a teenage girl play the violin.
Really badly.
She took the violin from her chin and settled it into the slight curve of her hip. 'I don't understand why I have to practice in the barn.'
Fletcher removed a pair of foam earplugs. 'What was that?'
She rolled her eyes. 'Did you even hear my piece at air?'
Fletcher paused. 'You know I love you, right?' The girl nodded.
'Well, let's just say if God was hanging around here today, that last bit probably sent Her running for the hills.'
Tryouts for band are tomorrow,' she said. 'What am I going to do!'
'Switch to the flute?' Fletcher suggested, but he put his arm around the girl and hugged her as he spoke. As he turned, he noticed me. 'Ah.
You must be Michael Wright.' He shook my hand and introduced the girl. 'This is my daughter. Faith.'
Faith shook my hand, too. 'Did you hear me play? Am I as bad as he says I am?'
I hesitated, and Fletcher came to my rescue. 'Honey, don't put the priest in a position where he's going to have to lie-he'll waste his whole afternoon at confession.' He grinned at Faith. 'I think it's your turn to watch the demon twins from hell.'
'No, I remember very clearly that it's your turn. I was doing it all morning while Mom worked.'
'Ten bucks,' Ian said.
'Twenty,' Faith countered.
'Done.' She put her violin back in its case. 'Nice to meet you,' she said to me, and she slipped out of the barn, heading toward the house.
'You have a beautiful family,' I said to Fletcher.
He laughed. 'Appearances can be deceiving. Spending an afternoon with Cain and Abel is a whole new form of birth control.'
'Their names are-'
'Not really,' Fletcher said, smiling. 'But that's what I call them when Mariah's not listening. Come on back to my office.'
He walked me past a generator and a snowblower, two abandoned horse stalls, and through a pine door. Inside, to my surprise, was a finished room with paneled walls and two stories of bookshelves. 'I have to admit,' Fletcher said, 'I don't get very many calls from the Catholic clergy. They aren't quite the prevalent audience for my book.'
I sat down on a leather wing chair. 'I can imagine.'
'So what's a nice priest like you doing in the office of a rabblerouser like me? Can I expect a blistering commentary in the Catholic
Advocate with your byline on it?'
'No... this is more of a fact-finding mission.' I thought about how much I should admit to Ian Fletcher. The
