I'm Glad About You(46)

The monastery grounds were apparently large, as it had previously functioned as a working farm. Black-and-white photographs of monks in those timeless robes riding tractors and holding up garden hoes lined the walls of the small hallway adjacent to the cafeteria. The carpeting was industrial gray, and the few chairs stacked in the corner were monotonous, standard-issue office furniture, the kind anybody could pick up in the back of an OfficeMax or Staples. Institutional Catholicism always looked the same, he thought. Bad furniture, fluorescent lighting, industrial carpet, men in dresses.

“This is Brother Albert, you’ll see him often as he is usually here at the front desk,” Brother Luke told Kyle. “This is Doctor Wallace, he is going to take over the infirmary this week, while Dr. Murrough has his operation.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Brother Albert nodded, as he offered his hand.

“It’s an honor to be asked,” Kyle replied, and he meant it. He felt like his best self, the self he always hoped he would someday be, was somehow waking up and taking charge of the show all of a sudden. Without even doing anything these monks were improving his manners.

“I hope we don’t give you too much trouble.”

“I’m sure you won’t.”

“I’m sure we will,” Brother Albert replied. His tone carried an acerbic edge.

“Brother Albert is one of the oldest members of our community,” Brother Luke observed, as if that were a real distinction here.

“Oh my yes, I’m certifiably ancient.”

“If you have any question about the history of the monastery, he’s your man. Or if you’re a Merton fan—”

“Which I am not,” Brother Albert interrupted.

“He was his secretary, for a number of years.”

“You knew him?” Kyle asked.

“He was a good writer, but a bad monk,” Brother Albert informed Kyle, as if he had asked his opinion of the great man. “He was a child. He was allowed to be a child. He was just terribly neurotic. Oh, don’t get me started. The things I know. I opened the man’s mail!” He beamed at them with a schoolboy’s wicked glee.

What was the story? Merton was a womanizer of some sort, but the specifics eluded him. Not a womanizer, per se—that was Augustine. Augustine, that terrible prude; once he’d sown his wild oats, he turned on sexuality, it was the road to hell, and women were culprits who would lure you there. That’s right, you could talk to women but only if you were guaranteed not to have any sort of sexual relation to them. A meeting of the minds alone. The guy had a blissfully fulfilling relationship with his mother, whom the church had obligingly canonized after her death. Still, Augustine was better than Aquinas; that guy had announced that women were nothing better than deformed male fetuses. Kyle remembered the sniggering delight with which he and his friends had received this information from the Jesuits who taught them religion in high school. The memories were so close to the surface here. Lousy cafeterias. The terrifying and fascinating otherness of women. Alison.

She had never had much use for the Catholicism which completely drenched every aspect of their lives. That was apparent from the first time he laid eyes on her, at a Friday night football game, of all things. Saint X versus Moeller High. A crisp October night, white lights pouring over that mythic and insane ritual which taught boys to leap and attack one another for the sake of catching a ball. Desperate to make any kind of connection with the guys he knew from school, he agreed to go to these things even though he didn’t like them. He barely understood the rules. And then there she was, straggling behind a gaggle of Catholic school girls. Hanging out in the parking lot, clearly hoping to meet boys.

Dennis, of course, knew one of the girls in her cluster and when he sauntered over his group followed. This was the real ritual of Friday nights in Cincinnati, high school boys prowling, girls gathering to be prowled.

Those eyes of hers really were something. A green so startling, the edge of the iris melted into a darker rim, utterly unique, that you felt like you were looking into the eyes of a wood goddess, or maybe just a trickster. Because she grinned at him, as soon as she saw him, as if they had known each other for years. He was young, and pathologically lonely, even then. How did this girl with the astonishing eyes know him, already?

At sixteen he had no defenses. He had no game either. Some utterly forgettable and forgotten girl said, “This is somebody, and this is some other girl, and this is Alison.” The whole evening was a blur from then on. She was funny and shrewd and sure of herself, and he followed her around like a dork, barely coming to life when she agreed she hated football.

“Oh, God, it’s awful,” Kyle admitted. “I don’t know why the church condones it.”

“Oh, the Catholic church, they condone pedophilia, what do you expect?”

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Is it?” Alison turned to give him a full blast of those eyes. He knew he’d never recover. By the end of the evening they were making out under a corner of the bleachers, the crowd roaring around and above them. Apparently it was a pretty good game.

“I’m going to show him the chapel, and then the rest of the grounds,” Brother Luke told Brother Albert.

“Thank God I don’t have to go to choir anymore,” Brother Albert replied. “When I turned eighty-four, they decided to let me off the hook.”