True Believers(27)

Father Healy moved things around on his desk again. There was a small square television in one corner of the office, and he had put it on as soon as he had come in, because he was feeling so guilty about Sister Harriet Garrity. What was on was not The X-Files, but a music video of Christina Aguilera singing “Genie in a Bottle.” This, Father Healy understood. He had understood it ever since he was twelve years old and got his first look at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. It was not true, as some people wanted to make out, that you had to be some kind of sexual oddity to commit to a life of priestly celibacy. Father Healy’s sexual impulses were in perfectly good working order. If he had been a scrupulous man, he would have been driven nearly insane by the way the young women dressed on the streets of Philadelphia in the summer—and forget the University of Pennsylvania campus in the spring, where they seemed to have abandoned the custom of women wearing something on the top halves of their bodies even while sunbathing.

What marked him out was not his lack of sexual response, but the fact that he also responded to other things, and always had, even as a small child. He might remember very little about himself when he was young, but he did remember lying on his bed in his darkened room, knowing he was supposed to go to sleep, and feeling the presence of God all around him, thicker and more pressing than any blanket. He had felt the presence of God around him all the time, in those days. He had carried it with him like a mist. When he received his First Holy Communion  , he had felt it inside himself, as heat: the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, Our Lord, not a symbol, but a fact. He was much older when he realized that everybody else did not feel what he felt. If they had, they would behave differently, and there would not be many churches but only one. That was when he knew he had to be a priest, the way some people knew they had to be painters or writers or musicians. Next to the feeling he had when God touched him at the moment of the consecration, sex was nice, but not compelling.

There was a knock on the door. Father Healy said “come in,” and then wondered if he would be doing better here if he were older—fifty-six instead of thirty-six, experienced at living instead of just at argumentation.

The office door opened, and Sister Scholastica came in. Father Healy relaxed. He hadn’t been aware that he had been tense, but now he realized that he had been expecting Sister Harriet at any moment. He didn’t think Sister Harriet was the sort of person to let a matter rest.

Sister Scholastica looked at the television and raised her eyebrows. Christina Aguilera faded, and in her place came something called Smash Mouth, singing something called “All Star.” Apparently, this was a program that showed people singing things.

“You can turn it off,” Father Healy said. “I just turned it on to have background noise.”

“From VH-1?”

“I didn’t pay attention to what was on.” This was not exactly true. Father Healy wanted always to be honest. He might end up on a faculty somewhere, he might even end up a bishop, but he would never be a Vatican politician. “I did like that last song,” he said. “She was very attractive. The young woman.”

“Right,” Scholastica said. She left the television alone. “Do you have a moment? I know it’s six o’clock, and we’re coming up on Mass, but I’m getting a little worried. Do you know that Marty Kelly’s truck is parked in the parking lot?”

“Oh, yes. Somebody told me it was. I’m so glad to have him back. Them. I only hope Bernadette was well enough to make the trip.”

“So do I. What worries me particularly is that she might have made the trip and then become ill, because the truck is in the parking lot, but Marty and Bernadette are not in the church. At least, they’re not anywhere I could find them. With diabetes as volatile as Bernadette’s, she could have fallen into a coma—”

“But wouldn’t Marty have come to someone in the church for help? Bernadette wouldn’t have brought the truck here on her own, would she? I thought she couldn’t drive, because her eyesight was too poor.”

“She was nearly blind.”

“Well, then.”

“The fact remains that I can’t find them. I even sent Sister Peter Rose across the street, to see if they’d gone over to the vigil, but they weren’t there. It would have made a certain amount of sense. Bernadette and Scott got along when Bernadette was coming here regularly. Or at least, Peter Rose says they did.”

“Maybe they went to get something to eat,” Father Healy said. “Doesn’t Bernadette have to remember not to go too long without eating? Surely there must be places that would be open even this early in the morning.”