The Original Sinners: The Red Years

28

Wesley had already gone by the time Nora rolled out of bed the next morning. Morning? she thought and then looked at the clock. It was already after noon. She dragged herself from the tangle of her sheets.

She went to her closet and dug through it. Today she would do something she did only once a year—dress conservatively. She found her only skirt that went past her knees, her only black shoes with a low heel, her only blouse that wasn’t designed to show every inch of cleavage. She even found a strand of pearls she’d received as a gift from her grandmother years ago and put them on. She pulled her hair back and up, taming the wavy mane as best she could and applied half her usual amount of makeup.

Today she was going to church.

As Nora drove she fought off the twin demons of eagerness and fear that this day always visited upon her. Shortly after three she pulled into the parking lot at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. She’d been christened here as an infant, made her First Communion here, and this was where she first saw Søren over eighteen years ago.

Sacred Heart had thrived under Søren’s watch. From barely over a hundred members, the church had trebled in size during his time here. A handsome polyglot only twenty-nine years old when first he arrived, he was everything priests were not usually known for being—erudite, witty and charming. Two other priests in nearby diocese had been removed from their posts for allegations of sexual offenses in the past two decades. Catholic parents brought their children to Sacred Heart in droves. They knew Father S. could be trusted. And although Nora knew who he was with her behind closed bedroom doors, those parents were right to trust him.

It was funny, she thought as she entered through the front doors of Sacred Heart, how little she remembered of her childhood here. Even Father Greg, Søren’s predecessor, wavered in her mind as little more than a memory of elderly kindness. Then one Sunday when she was fifteen years old, Søren had come like an Annunciation; it was as if God Himself had hailed her by name.

She paused in the foyer and glanced around. Foyer…Søren always corrected her when she called it that. “It’s the narthex, Eleanor,” he’d said, hiding his smile. “Not the foyer.” Next time she referred to it in his presence she’d called it the “lobby.”

Glancing around, Nora tried to sift through the thousands of memories that descended on her. She saw the little shrine to the Virgin Mary in the corner of the entryway and the burning candles beneath her. Nora stood before the shrine, closed her eyes and remembered…

She’d been sixteen years old, almost seventeen, and her best and only friend was a girl named Jordan. Introverted and shy, Jordan had no idea she was also quietly beautiful. They’d gone to the same Catholic high school, had most of the same classes—all the same but for English her junior year. Nora had been in the highest-level class and Jordan, never the writer Nora was, had an easier teacher. Nora would never forget the ashen look on Jordan’s face one day after school. It took three days for Nora to drag it out of her—Jordan’s English teacher, a married man in his forties, had kept her after class and put his hand up her shirt. He’d offered her an easy A in the class in exchange for the obvious. Nora had been livid and threatened to beat the teacher to death with her bare hands. Jordan had sobbed, terrified that no one would believe her, that no one would help her. After all, this English teacher was also the basketball coach, and the team was having the best season in years. Jordan made Nora promise not to tell the school, and in return Nora made Jordan promise to tell Father S. To this day Nora still didn’t know what Søren had done or said to the teacher. She only knew Søren had gone to her school on a Friday and by Monday the teacher was gone.

Nora had raced to church after school that day and found Søren praying here by the shrine to the Virgin Mary. She’d told him how grateful Jordan was, how shocked the whole school was, how nobody knew why the coach had left so abruptly.

Søren hadn’t smiled. He’d only lit a candle.

“Was that hard to do?” She remembered standing in this very spot and asking him that question. “Telling that guy off?”

“It was frighteningly easy to put the fear of God into him,” Søren had said. “And almost enjoyable. Why do you ask, Eleanor?”

She’d zipped up her hooded sweatshirt and plucked nervously at the ragged cuffs. “I thought it might be hard for you. You know, since you’re in love with me.”

Søren had met her eyes and she saw she’d actually managed to catch him off guard, one of the few times in their eighteen years she had.

“Eleanor, there are suicide bombers on the Gaza Strip who are less dangerous than you are.” He started toward his office. She followed him, nearly running to keep up with his long strides.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” she’d said when they arrived at his office door.

“I’ve always been an admirer of the Cistercian monks.” Søren stepped into his office. “Especially their vow of silence.” And he’d closed the door in her face.

She’d smiled nonstop for the next two weeks.

Nora opened her eyes and stepped away from the shrine and out of the memory. Her heels clicked on the hardwood floors grown slick and shiny with age. She thought she’d find Søren in his office working. But she paused outside the sanctuary when she heard the sound of a piano wafting through the heavy wooden doors. Inhaling the muted notes, she slipped inside the nave and stepped quietly toward the chancel where Søren sat at a grand piano.

He didn’t look up at her as she came to the piano. She placed her hands flat on its polished black top. Closing her eyes again, she let the subtle waves vibrate through her and into her. The last note shivered up her arms and down to her feet. As the note echoed throughout the nave and back to the altar Nora opened her eyes.

“The Moonlight Sonata,” Nora said. “My favorite.”

Søren smiled and played a few stray notes.

“I know it is.”

Nora returned the smile and leaned forward, running her hand over the smooth black surface.

“Happy anniversary, Søren.”

Søren smiled again, one of his rare, genuine smiles that reached his eyes. Something caught in her chest and she let her own smile fade.

“Happy anniversary, little one,” he said, his voice as gentle as the last note of the sonata.

With those four words came a thousand more memories. She and Søren had never, would never marry, had never dated in the traditional sense of the word, but never had they questioned what day would become the signifier of the beginning of their life together. The first time Søren had beaten her and then taken her virginity was thirteen years ago on Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday, the day when Christ celebrated His Last Supper. Jesus, God Incarnate, had knelt before His disciples and washed their feet on this night. Thirteen years ago tonight Søren had done the same to her. Even as the liturgical calendar changed, they never once considered celebrating their anniversary on any other day but this too-neglected holy day, this last night of Christ’s freedom before He was taken, this last night to share a quiet moment alone with those He loved.

Søren began playing the haunting melody again, and she let it draw her inexorably into its insistent rhythms. She watched his hands, his perfect pianist’s hands, and recalled all too well how intimately she knew those hands, how intimately they knew her. One courageous strand of Søren’s perfect blond hair threatened to fall over his forehead. She longed to reach out and brush it back.

“You played this for me that night,” she said as the music faded. Nora closed her eyes and let the past come to her. “You were playing it when I came to the rectory.” She remembered that night like yesterday, slipping in through the tree-shrouded back door, following the music to Søren’s elegant living room. She stood in silence and watched the priest who would become her lover that night play by the light of a single candle the world’s most beautiful piece of music as if it had been written by him and for her. “The next morning I woke up in your bed for the first time.”

“The best morning of my life,” Søren said.

“And mine.” Nora felt the old tug of love and straightened, trying to brush it off her. “When did the church get a grand piano?”

Søren smiled.

“A mysterious stranger had an Imperial Bösendorfer delivered to my home on my most recent birthday. I donated my Steinway to the church.”

“That was very generous of that mysterious stranger,” Nora said with a sheepish grin.

“Very generous indeed. Although the Steinway still plays beautifully.”

“It’s had a tricky sustain pedal for ages.”

“Yes, and whose fault is that?”

“That is not my fault,” Nora protested. “Do you recall what you were doing to me at the time? I had to hold on to something, didn’t I?”

Søren looked down at his hands. His fingers hovered over the keyboard playing soundless phantom notes.

“You could have held on to me.”

Nora only swallowed, finding herself in a rare moment of speechlessness. Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Søren dropped his hands to the keyboard and began playing again.

“The Moonlight Sonata is a strange piece of music,” Søren said. “It’s been called a Lamentation. You can feel that when you play it, can feel the sorrow and the need in the endless repetitions. It’s simple to play but maddeningly difficult to play well. The arpeggios allow great freedom of expression. Too much freedom in untutored, unskilled hands. They say Beethoven wrote it for a seventeen-year-old countess, the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. He may have loved her. More likely he was simply trying to seduce her.”

“It would have worked for me.”

“It did work for you.”

This time Nora smiled at the memories Søren’s words conjured. Again she slid her hands lovingly over the piano. “My God, the crimes against nature that have been committed on this piano.”

“I hope you aren’t referring to my playing.”

“Never. I know how gifted those hands of yours are.”

“Some decorum please. We are in a church, Eleanor,” Søren reminded her with only a playful hint of sternness about his lips.

“Forgive me, Father.” She composed her features into a pantomime mask of contrition.

“Of course, little one. I can forgive you anything. But don’t think you won’t be called upon to do your penance someday.”

Before she could respond, the unmistakable squeak of sneakers on hardwood sounded outside the door. Another louder squeak followed that one and then the shrieking giggles of children.

“Duty calls.” Søren rose from the bench.

Nora walked with him down the aisles and into the hall outside the sanctuary. They followed the sound of the children from the church to the annex that housed the fellowship hall and the church kitchen. Søren led her into the fellowship hall that was part gymnasium, part reception area, and before her was a scene of animal chaos. Her mental description proved even more apt as a boy dressed as a sheep careened by them.

“What on earth?” Nora asked as they found a quiet place near the kitchen.

“The children are practicing for Sunday’s Passion play,” Søren explained.

Everywhere children ran to parents, from parents, sometimes through parents. As Søren’s presence became known, however, the din quieted and order began to reassert itself. She had always admired that about Søren. He let his presence speak far more often than his words.

Nora’s eyes stopped on a woman who looked vaguely familiar. As her features came into better focus, Nora placed a name to the face—Nancy James, one of her favorite mothers here. Sometimes it was hard for Nora to imagine that it was only five years ago that she still attended this church, babysat these kids, chatted with these parents. Nora was finally able to catch her eye and smile. It took Nancy a moment but then she returned the smile with full recognition. Five years…it felt like just yesterday, it felt like a million years ago.

“Did they know about us?” Nora inclined her head toward a group of parents. She kept her voice unnecessarily low. With all the children she could have screamed the question at Søren without fear.

“I am still a priest. I believe it is safe to assume they either never suspected or they never cared.”

Nora laughed coldly. “Ex-con Elle Schreiber and the sainted Father Stearns? Of course they never suspected.”

“Eleanor, they never thought as ill of you as you believed. When you come back, you will be welcomed with open arms.”

“I’m not coming back.”

A faint smile played at the corner of Søren’s exquisite lips.

“And yet you are here.”

Nora started to argue, but she caught a glimpse of mirror-pale eyes across the room and froze.

“Michael…” she breathed.

“Yes, he’s helping with the Passion play this year. He’s quite good with the children. Around them he can relax, which is difficult for him in other situations.”

At the moment Michael looked anything but relaxed. His long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail but she could see frustrated strands loose about his face. Children bustled around him frantically. He straightened haloes, retied wings, wrestled the little angels… A shepherd nearly plowed into him and he laughed and slid out of the way.

“Is he okay?” Nora asked, a knife of guilt threatening to cut into her.

“He and his mother started attending here over two years ago. This is truly the most contented I’ve ever seen him. He’s at peace now. Almost happy. There is a new look in his eyes. Relief.”

“Relief…that he isn’t alone?”

“Yes. I told him about us, who we are, the other world we live in. I realize I was taking a great chance by doing so, but he had listened all too well to his father’s words and convinced himself that he was sick and depraved for his desires. But telling only goes so far…”

“Show, don’t tell,” Nora said with a grim smile and made herself not think of Zach. “It’s not fair, you know. It’s such a double standard. You let me have Michael and he’s only fifteen. But you made me wait until I was twenty.”

Søren inhaled slowly. “That was my mistake.”

“Miracles do happen. You just admitted to a mistake. What was your mistake? Not fucking me sooner?”

“It was my mistake—” he turned and met her eyes “—thinking we had all the time in the world.”

Nora’s heart contracted in her chest. She studied Michael from across the room. He was far from jubilant, but she could see his posture had eased and he had a light in his eyes. She would never have guessed from just looking at him that he wore such fearsome scars under his wristbands.

“You owe Michael a small debt of gratitude, Eleanor.” Søren interrupted her melancholy meditation. “I had counted the day you left as the worst day of my life. The day I knelt in the back of an ambulance and administered last rites to a fourteen-year-old boy…”

“Knocked me out of first place, did he?”

“Perhaps a tie for first.”

“His scars are horrific. I can’t believe he survived that.”

“It was not a premeditated attempt. He broke glass and slashed fast. He bled profusely but not fast enough that we didn’t have time to save him. Still, the attending physician called his survival a miracle.”

“I’m glad he made it. He’s a sweet kid.”

As Nora said the words, Michael looked in their direction for the first time. His silver eyes widened with shock at the sight of her. His skin flushed and a look of pure panic eclipsed his face.

“Søren…” Nora was afraid Michael was about to lose it.

“Just watch, Eleanor.”

Michael kept looking at her. But she did as Søren ordered. Michael closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The red faded from his face, his body went calm and slack. He opened his eyes again and met her gaze once more. And then, of all things, he smiled at her.

“He’s fine,” Søren said. “He is one of us after all.”

“You care about him very much. I can tell,” she said.

“He’s become like a son to me.”

“How sweet. Like Abraham and Isaac.”

“I know you are still angry that I didn’t tell you his age. Had I told you, would anything have been different? Apart from this impressive claim to righteous indignation?”

Nora opened her mouth to protest but a boy of about five or six squealed past them.

“Owen!” Søren called out, freezing the little boy in his tracks. “Come here, young man.”

Søren snapped his fingers and pointed at a spot on the floor in front of him. Little Owen slumped over and slunk to the spot. Nora had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Owen was the cutest little thing with his curly black hair sticking out in all directions.

“Yes, Father S.?” the boy asked and kicked at the hardwood, making his soles squeak on purpose.

“Owen, please examine your shoes.”

Obediently Owen looked down. His whole body heaved the most forlorn sigh she’d ever heard come from a child.

“I forgot.” Owen looked up at Søren with pleading eyes.

“You forgot to tie them or you forgot how to tie them?” Søren asked.

“I forgot how.”

“Eleanor? I believe this is your area of expertise.”

“I’ll try, but I’m a little out of practice.”

Nora knelt in front of him and attempted to demonstrate the bunny rabbit method, the two loops as ears and the loop around the loop… Owen just watched her with his grave eyes.

“Does that make any sense, Owen?” she asked as she stood up again.

“I don’t know. It’s just so hard. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, Owen.”

Nora watched as Søren reached out and placed the tip of his finger between Owen’s eyes. Owen’s eyes crossed and both he and Søren laughed. “You’re dismissed. But do try to stay in the slow lane, please.”

Owen took off again, but this time at a more restrained pace.

Nora glanced across the hall, past the tables to where the parents sat talking among themselves but never taking their eyes off their kids.

“I wanted to have your children once,” she said, not looking in his eyes.

“I told you, Michael is like a son to me. And you had him, did you not?”

Nora inhaled sharply. “There’s a difference between sadism and cruelty. I hope you learn that someday.”

“Remind me which of those you prefer?”

“I’m going, Søren. Thank you for another lovely anniversary.”

Nora turned on her heel and strode from the hall. She heard footsteps behind her but kept walking. She only made it as far as the entryway when she heard her name.

She stopped and turned around to face Søren.

“It’s hard enough for me to come to this place again and see you,” she said. “You don’t have to make it harder.”

Søren raised a hand to the side of her face. He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. She glanced around to make sure no one was there watching them. It was a habit she’d never break.

“Forgive me. This is difficult for me, as well.”

“I didn’t think anything was difficult for you.”

Søren lowered his hand and stepped out of the sunlight and into the shadows by the shrine of the Virgin Mary.

“Surely you of all people cannot think so highly of me.”

Nora smiled and followed him into the shadows.

“The day I first saw you, I thought you were omnipotent.”

“You were fifteen, Eleanor.”

“I still think that.”

Søren’s laugh was empty and somber.

“If I were omnipotent you would still be with me, little one. I didn’t have the strength to stop you from leaving.”

“You did,” she said. “But you loved me too much to use it.”

“Perhaps I’ve always loved you too much.” Søren turned his eyes up to the Virgin Mary statue. “Our mutual acquaintance tells me you’ve given up work on your book.”

Nora tugged at her shirt cuffs.

“Zach found out about what I do. He killed the deal.”

“Surely you can write without him.”

“I’m not sure I can. He made me see my book with new eyes. I was just a smutty storyteller before him. For a little while I felt like a real writer.”

“Answer a question for me, Eleanor. Why did you begin your work with our monsieur?”

“I had nothing. He offered me a job.”

“You could have worked any number of jobs. Why that one?”

“He said I’d make a lot of money working very few hours. I thought it would give me—” She stopped and swallowed. “I thought it would give me time to write.”

“Your work with Kingsley was merely a means to an end. It was never meant to be the end.”

Nora didn’t know how to answer that.

Søren reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small black velvet bag and placed it in her hand.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Your real anniversary gift.”

Nora opened the bag and a silver pendant on a chain poured out into her hand. She held it close to her eyes.

“A saint’s medal.” She laughed. “I haven’t worn one of these in years. Who is it? St. Michael? St. Mary Magdalene?”

“St. John the Apostle actually.”

“St. John…patron saint of fools and ex-lovers?” she hazarded a guess.

“No,” Søren said, his voice and eyes gentle. “The patron saint of writers.”

Nora’s hand shook slightly and she couldn’t quite get the necklace on.

Søren took the medal from her and clasped it around her neck. She closed her eyes and relished the brief moment when his arms encircled her.