Louie looked at him hard. “Love?”
“I believe that sex should be an expression of love. And that it is wrong to have sex without love. So my concern would be whether or not you loved this person.”
Suddenly it was Louie and Willa, not an “issue.” Louie swallowed and tried not to go red. “Yes,” she croaked, and stared at the patterned carpet, “I love her.” Panic washed over Louie as the word “her” came out and she looked quickly at the priest.
He regarded her with consummate stillness. “And she? Does she love you?”
“Yes, I think she does.”
Father Campion smiled. “How wonderful.”
Louie stared at him.
“How lucky you are, to love and to be loved in return.”
This wasn’t what Louie had expected.
“Tell me about her.”
Louie took a deep breath. “She’s … my age, smaller than me, red hair, blue eyes…” This wasn’t Willa, it was a police identification. “
Light
blue eyes, they can look like—opals,” Louie ducked her head in embarrassment.
“Ah, yes,” murmured Father Campion. “Go on.”
She started again. “Her name’s Willa. I met her for the first time at Burger Giant. She threatened to…” Louie thought of the scene with Kevin and stopped with a smile. “She’s strong.” That was true. “When it comes down to it, Willa knows where she stands, on important things. I like that. She doesn’t muddle like I do, she doesn’t make a big song and dance about it, she just does it. She’s sensible.” Louie took a sip of coffee and noticed her hands were trembling. “She’s got these small, white hands and…” Louie looked at the priest. “If I was going to act Willa, I’d think of her hands. Neat, and certain. Not full of gestures or fist-banging, but, well, surgeon’s hands, cook’s hands, pilot’s hands, you know? You could rely on those hands.” Louie remembered standing under the planes at the airport. “And she’s a daredevil. A dear devil,” she said to herself, hearing the words. “Sometimes she just looks at me as if she’s—I don’t know—waiting. Waiting for me to get to where she is.”
“And where’s that?”
“Where you’re not beating yourself up about it all the time.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“My parents think it’s wrong, my friends can’t mention it, the doctor says it’s a stage, the Church thinks it’s a sin. Of course I’m beating myself up.” She glared at him for a moment.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know!” Why did he think she’d come here? Louie wished she could just leave. He was starting to sound like a counsellor. “I just wondered what you thought,” she mumbled.
Father Campion put down his coffee cup on the dark table. “What I think,” he repeated, and paused.
“I think that love is a gift. I’m talking about real love, not infatuation or desire, although those are difficult enough. I’m talking about the joy of love.”
By now Louie knew she was bright red. She could feel it prickling all over her face and neck. She sat still, out of words.
“I’ll tell you how I feel.” He leaned back in his chair and put his head on one side. “Filled, filled with joy, an unspeakable joy that at times I can hardly bear. I find it hard to remember what my life was like before I fell in love. I find it hard to believe that people can just go about their ordinary business, shopping at the supermarket, cooking their dinner, walking their dogs, without screaming for joy. Fulfilled. Uplifted. Special. Like little things don’t matter, and I love everyone, and we’re all so indescribably lucky.” He looked back at her with a quirky smile. “Yes?”
Louie nodded again, dumbfounded. “You’re in love?”
“I’m in love with Christ, Louie. Huh,” he snorted, “I know that sounds a little odd, but it’s exactly what it is. I am in love. It just happened, I never sought it, but I couldn’t turn away from it. And, after all, Jesus, so we’re led to believe, was a man, and if we believe in the everlasting spirit, still is a man. You could say I’m in love with a man.”
“But not a real man.” Louie grinned.
“Oh, he’s real to me, Louie. He’s just not three-dimensional. But I suppose what I’m saying Louie, is that love comes in many forms.”
“Yes. Except…” she paused to think. Father Campions love was for someone, something perfect. “Except I feel scared. Terrified at times. Out of control.”
“What are you frightened of?”
Louie had no doubt. “Losing her.”
“Mm. Tell me, where do you think love comes from, Louie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
She shrugged again. “There’s a piece, by Marcus Aurelius,” she looked at him carefully but his face was impassive. “Anyway, he says, it loved to happen.’ It’s like that, it just … happened. And I was pleased,” she added.
“Marcus Aurelius, eh? The old stoic himself. Well, he wasn’t usually one for overwhelming joy, but that’s a nice quote, isn’t it. it loved to happen.’ Yes.” He seemed to mull it over in his head and for a moment Louie felt he’d forgotten she was even there. Then he poured more coffee into his cup with a sigh.
“You see, I think love comes from God. And so, to turn away from love, real love, it could be argued, is to turn away from God.”
“What about the Bible—you know, Leviticus and all that.”
“Oh, you’ve been delving into Leviticus, have you?” He whistled. “Well, Louie, you’ll know then that Leviticus also tells us not to cut our beards, not to wear linen and wool together nor to eat crayfish or frogs or snails. I’m afraid that if we adhered to Leviticus the entire French nation would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”
Father Campion chuckled and offered her more coffee, which she turned down. Then he leaned forward. “I wouldn’t concern yourself too much with literal interpretations of the Old Testament rules for the Hebrews,” he advised. “You have to decide about this relationship you’re in now, in the twentieth century. Whether you truly believe it’s a good and right thing, or whether you do not. And there is the question of hurting others. What do your parents say?”
Louie frowned. “They want me to change.”
He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
“I’ve tried. I think the problem is, I don’t really want to. Nothing seems as important as Willa.”
“Indeed. Well, I can’t make that decision for you. Prayer and thought—honest thought, Louie. And time. But keep love to the forefront of your thinking. Love for Willa, but also love for your parents, and love for yourself.”
Father Campion gave her a couple of books from his library, one called
Meditations on Love
and the other essays on the Old Testament that she didn’t think she’d bother reading. The final one was a collection of
Peanuts
cartoons.
“You can get carried away with the heavy stuff,” he explained. “And I always thought Snoopy had some particularly interesting metaphysical views.”
Mo wanted them to do another Comedy Club performance to help raise money for the senior formal. At the mention of the formal Louie’s blood ran cold.
“I don’t think I’ll be going to the formal,” she said as they walked back to the common room with milkshakes and a filled roll.
Mo’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Who am I going to take to the formal?” Louie asked, slapping her lunch down on a bench. Her appetite had got slowly better but there were still moments—like now—when the familiar gripe in her belly put her right off food.
Mo’s face was like a tragedy mask. “Oh, take your pick, girl. I know lots of guys you could go with.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go with a guy.”
Mo looked blank for a moment, then the shock set in. “You’re going to go with Willa?” she said in a whisper. Then with an incredulous grin, “You’re going to take Willa! Far out!”
Louie slumped in a chair. “Unlikely Even if I had the guts she probably wouldn’t accept.”
“Why don’t you sort it out, Lou?”
“Can’t. She won’t speak to me.”
Mo slurped the bottom of her milkshake. “So go with someone else. You can’t miss the formal.”
“We’ll see.”
It was good to throw herself into another Comedy Club performance though. Working with Mo was like remembering who she used to be, finding she still had the same skills, the same sense of humour, the same rapport on stage with her old friend. Each joke Louie devised and acted felt like a little piece of herself reclaimed. Each ta-daa! on stage felt like a stamping of the jigsaw back in place. It was the only time Louie felt happy, and real.
Occasionally she saw Willa at school, but they rarely said more than hello. At Burger Giant she wasn’t sure whether to be delighted or horrified when they were on shift together. Some nights it was better than others. Louie sometimes asked Willa about Cathy, and then felt consumed with jealousy to hear Willa’s answers. Willa told her Cathy was in therapy, but looked at Louie strangely, as if there was more to tell. Was Willa seeing Cathy again? She couldn’t even think about it.
One thing was interesting: Keith had disappeared from Burger Giant. Kevin had a new four wheel drive, but Joan said he’d got it from a car sales across town—and Keith’s name was seldom even mentioned.
Often Willa went out with the others after work, and Kevin liked to tell Louie that Willa was a “real party girl.” She hated Kevin’s smirk when he said that. Occasionally Louie smelt cigarette smoke on Willa after tea break, and once Louie went outside to say hello to Judas and found Willa having a smoke with Deirdre. Willa looked hard and tarty somehow, as she blew a line of white smoke and stared at her. Louie knew she was looking shocked and priggish. She stammered something and went back inside.
The formal got closer, and the pressure on Louie to go increased. Vika and Mo and Julie were all going in one party and assured her they had a terrific guy called Jeremy lined up for her. Lunchtime conversations in the common room revolved around it almost exclusively. When her mother saw a mention of it on a school newsletter she moved into overdrive.
“We’ll have to go shopping, get organised, Lou. Do you want to buy a dress or get one made?”
“I don’t know if I’m going.”
“Of course you’re going, don’t be silly. It’s the highlight of your year. I met your father at our school formal.”
“Not that I was her partner,” added Tony from the couch.
Louie sidestepped the issue and had a long, relaxing spa, trying not to think of Willa and the controversy they’d cause at a school formal. As she went back to her bedroom she overheard her parents talking in the living room.
“It’s her decision,” said Tony, quietly.
“Yes but she’ll always regret it if she doesn’t go.”
“You can’t make her.”
“She needs a partner that’s all.”
“Suse, you know why she doesn’t want to go.”
There was a pause. Then her mother said, “I thought she was getting over that.”
There was a rustle of paper and her father didn’t answer. Louie’s heart thumped.
“The doctor was very good with her you know,” Susi continued. “She was sure she’d get over it.”
“I don’t think she is.”
Her mother’s voice rose. “What do you mean by that? That we should just accept it? Give up?”
“Look what happened to Cathy Colling.”
Her mother made a snorting noise. “Louie’s not like her. She’s a poor little thing. Anyway, you gave them that free holiday she might come right too.”
Free
holiday? What?
“The trip won’t change anything, Suse.”
“Oh don’t say that, it’s not true. Anyway, it was very generous of you.”
Her father sounded exasperated. “Look, I’m just saying Louie might be the same. You can’t just bury your head in the sand.”
“Well, I’m not giving up yet. She needs our support and help. That’s why this formal is so important. It just might be the turning point.” She heard Susi sigh. “I wonder whether Carol and Don’s boy is going. Stephen. He’s a lovely boy I might give Carol a ring tomorrow…”
Louie sped down the hall to her bedroom. This was disaster. Stephen Dingwall was lovely all right—a lovely druggie who supplied half the school and kept axolotyls in his bedroom. And what was that about Cathy Colling? Tony had been in touch with her family? Giving them free trips? That must be why Willa had looked at her so strangely when she asked about Cathy. Oh god, thought Louie, poor Willa. Both me and Cathy bundled off on a holiday to get away from her evil influence.
She must hate my parents.
The next morning Louie told Mo she’d like to go to the formal after all, with Jeremy, if he was still free. Everyone was delighted. Susi told her to go downtown and pick out a dress of her choice, Vika and Julie went with her and they spent all evening trying on a multitude of garments. She chose a simple black dress with long elegant sleeves, and tried not to remember Willa telling her how great she looked in her mother’s “little black dress.”
They had to walk past Burger Giant twice. The first time Louie never turned her head, but the second time she couldn’t resist it. Kelly was serving, and behind her Louie just caught a flash of red hair.
Jeremy rang her the next night. He was nervous and nice; he even managed to stutter out how pleased he was that she was going with him. Louie thought he would do fine; and after the formal she was definitely giving him the flick.
Three nights that week Louie worked at Burger Giant. After much angling, she still couldn’t get out of Kelly whether or not Willa was going to the formal. Eventually Simone told her that Willa was going to Kevin’s party on Saturday night, along with everyone else not on shift.
“Are you coming?” asked Simone.
Lome shrugged. “Haven’t been invited. Anyway, I’ve got the formal.”
“But this’ll be really late, like after eleven,” said Kelly. “It’s an open party. Go on, it’ll be a blast.”
Louie smiled. “Maybe.”
“Louie,” came a voice from behind. “You’ve got to come, it’s the party of the century.” Kevin leaned against the chip warmer and smiled. “Bring your mates. The more the merrier.”
Louie flicked close the flaps of a double cheese burger and handed it on to Kelly. “I don’t think so, Kevin.”
The days leading up to the formal were a complete waste of time. Nobody learned a thing at school, and every available second was devoted to discussion of Saturday night. Vika was having a party afterwards, Louie—incredibly—was offered the car to take them all, Mo had an argument with Dion who refused to wear a suit. Briefly Louie thought how awful the hype must be for Willa and others who weren’t going.