The Confessions(19)

“Did you just use the words ‘normal’ and ‘boyfriend’ when referring to Marcus?”

“I forgot myself. Sorry.”

“Let me ask you this—do you think he was deliberately concealing this photograph from you? Or had he simply not shown it to you yet?”

“If he were deliberating hiding it from me, he wouldn’t have put it in his Bible. If he wanted to hide it from me he would have kept it in his room at the Jesuit house. No women allowed in there.”

“So he wasn’t hiding it from you but he never showed it to you?”

“Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than he wanted to protect Grace’s privacy. Except it does mean something because it’s in his Bible. And it’s the mother of his child with his child and she’s nursing him. I just wish I knew why it hurt. I don’t want kids. I was overjoyed when I learned about Fionn. I wasn’t shocked at all they’d slept together, considering what we’d all just been through. I even sent her to him. And, to be perfectly frank—”

“Please, be frank.”

“While they were together, I was in the next room f*cking Kingsley, and Wes was f*cking S?ren’s niece Laila down the hall. Your typical post-traumatic event life-affirming f*ck fest, right?”

“But of course.”

“I’m not jealous they slept together—God knows they both needed each other that night. I’m not jealous she had Fionn. I’m not jealous they had a child together, and that I didn’t have his child. So what is it? It’s not like me to not know myself. Why do I feel this way? Why does this hurt? I’m losing it, Father Ballard. No, I’ve lost it.”

He might have laughed at her words if he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes. This was a woman in pain. “You know, a wise man once said, ‘Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap.’ ”

“Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a gap,” she repeated. “Sounds like St. Ignatius.”

“Jerry Seinfeld actually.”

Her eyes widened and she looked at him with new appreciative eyes. “You’re his opposite, you know. You and S?ren? You are ontological opposites.”

“I know him well enough to take that as a compliment.”

She put her hand on her forehead and exhaled heavily. “It’s a compliment,” she said. “Definitely a compliment.”

Stuart stood and she looked up at him in a question.

“Sit, sit,” he said. “Stay there.”

He picked up his chair and moved it closer to her. When he sat again she had composed her face back into that beautiful mask but the pain was still in her eyes. He reached out and held open his hands to her. She slipped her hands into his and he held her trembling fingers.

“Pain is knowledge,” Stuart said again. “Adam and Eve fell when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. That fall hurt. You saw that picture and it was a bite of knowledge that you wish you’d never tasted. Isn’t it?”

“It could be.”

“You were walking along and ran into something you didn’t know was there. And it hurt the way it always hurts when you walk into something you didn’t see in your path—a doorknob, a chair leg, a secret your lover of nearly twenty years was keeping from you. You didn’t stub your toe here, however. You stubbed your soul.”

“He never told me he wanted that—that in the picture. He never said a word about it,” she said.

“If he had, what would have happened? If five years ago, let’s say, he sat you down in his living room and said, ‘Eleanor, I want you to have my children.’ What would you have said to that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know I wouldn’t have had his children. Not even for him would I have had a child I didn’t want to have.”

“If he had asked you, would you have said no right away? Or would you have had to think about it?”

“I wouldn’t have said no right away. As much as I love him, I would have at least thought about it, if I could go through with it, if I could change who I was enough to be something I didn’t want to be.”

“And when you told him no, would that have been an easy conversation?”

She whispered her one-word answer. “No.”

“Why not? Yes or no is such an easy answer.”

“Not when the question is ‘Will you have my children?’ The no would have been as hard to say as the yes.”

“Do you think he wanted to spare you that? Do you think he was trying to protect you from having to answer that question?”

“I’m sure he was.”

“And that photograph you found…that photograph he keeps among his most private and cherished possessions…when you saw it, perhaps you saw a side of him you didn’t know was there. The side of him that does want, you know…” Stuart’s voice trailed off. It was better to let her say it.

“He wants to see the mother of his child nursing his son.”

“That,” he said.

“It’s something I could never give him. Maybe that’s why it hurts. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes again.

“It hurts when we realize we can’t give everything to the person we love, that we can’t be everything to the person we love.”