Relic of Time (2 page)

In the Whitehall Hotel, Lloyd was distracted by the efforts of the concierge to sell some tickets to a pair of reluctant tourists. He had just turned again to the window when someone spoke beside him.

“Lloyd?”

He was startled and that helped, all his rehearsing gone for naught; here they were facing one another. She lifted her cheek for his kiss.

“I hope it's a smoking room,” she said when he took her to the receptionist.

It wasn't. There were no more smoking rooms available. “I must have got the last one,” Lloyd said.

“Then that's all right. One's enough.”

He waited in the lobby when she went upstairs to unpack. Catherine was still lithe and agile, a slightly older girl, a woman. A woman who had flown to Chicago to spend a few days with him, a reunion after all these years. How natural it had been to kiss her cheek.

When she came down, they went into the bar and had a glass of wine, and then another. Afterward they went out and strolled along the Miracle Mile. He told her they would go to Navy Pier tomorrow. They ate in the hotel restaurant and then settled down again in the bar, where smoking was still permitted. More wine and pointless, pleasant chatter. Of course they did not talk of Monica. Not directly.

“You're still wearing your wedding ring.”

He looked at his hand as if surprised to see the golden band that Monica had slipped on his finger so many years ago.

Catherine said, “I got rid of mine before I got rid of him.”

“What happened?”

“He was a son of a bitch. Of course, I compared him and every other man with you.”

“Come on.”

She looked at him steadily. “It's true.”

What she had said couldn't possibly be true, but it was pleasant to think she meant it. It was after eleven when they went up. Their rooms were on the same floor.

“That's convenient,” she said. “I can come over for a smoke.”

She opened the door of her room and he looked it over, as if to make sure it was worthy of her. This time when she lifted her face he kissed her on the lips. Then she pushed him away.

“I'll come by later. For a cigarette.”

When she came she was in pajamas but with the robe the hotel supplied over it. Lighting a cigarette, his hands were unsteady. She looked up at him, took his hand, and brought the flame to her cigarette.

“Two on a match,” she murmured.

Within ten minutes they were two on a bed. They had talked about their walks along the creek; he remembered kissing her; he remembered the evening when they sat on the couch in her parents' living room.

“Want to mess around?” he asked.

The words emerged as if with a will of their own. They had always been his overture to Monica.

“I thought you'd never ask.” She went to the bed, got out of the robe, and then, incredibly, took off her pajamas as well. His eyes were on her as he stripped off his clothes. She had sat at the end of the bed and now fell backward onto it.

They spent most of their three days together in bed, going out seldom; the swift visit to Navy Pier seemed a little penance to justify fleeing back to the hotel. They alternated rooms; they lay together spent and content.

“I've always loved you, Lloyd.”

He did not know what to say. “Me, too.”

“Narcissus.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Say it.”

He said it. But even as he said it, he knew he did not mean it, that he could never mean it. Her very availability, the things she did when they were in bed together, overwhelmed him, and, when he was alone, his conscience started up.

“What medal is that?” Catherine asked. She was straddling him at the time and she lifted the medal from his chest.

“My mother gave it to me.”

“Awww.”

“It's a miraculous medal.”

“It sure is,” she said, tweaking him.

She had let whatever faith she had slip away long ago.

“You still believe it all?” she asked.

“Yes.” He didn't want to talk religion with her. Not like this. Not ever. He wished she hadn't noticed the medal. His mother
had
given it to him, when he made his First Communion, at the age of ten. He had worn it ever since, taking it off only on the rarest of occasions; for example, when he had a chest X-ray. He should have taken it off before he got into bed with Catherine, but there had never been time.

“All of it?”

She meant Catholicism. He nodded.

“Including that it's a sin for us to be in bed together?”

“Maybe that's why it feels so good.”

Ho ho, big joke, but it wasn't any joke for Lloyd. For several days he had managed to avoid reflective thought, but Catherine's teasing about his medal and what they were doing made the voice of conscience roar within him. He enjoyed every minute of their time together and yet longed to put her in a cab for the airport. As soon as she was gone, he would go over to Saint Peter's on Madison Avenue, where confessions were heard from morning to night, so the priests must be used to hearing every variety of sin.

Her plane left at 11:30 so they had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel. Catherine leaned toward him. “Every couple here looks illicit.”

“How can you tell?”

“They look as innocent as we do.”

“I'll take you to the airport, Catherine.”

“You will not. But you can help me pack.”

But when they got to her room it was obvious she had already packed. She came into his arms and then her hand was on him.

“There isn't time,” he said gruffly.

“There is for this.”

On the way down in the elevator, he decided he hated her. He couldn't wait to put her in a cab and hurry to Saint Peter's and confess her out of his system. For a woman who had been divorced nearly twenty years she seemed a very practiced lover. And he didn't like it. Oh, he had enjoyed it, but he didn't like it.

After her cab had pulled away, her hand fluttering good-bye from a back window, Lloyd started immediately up the street. Saint Peter's was blocks away, miles, on Madison, but he would walk. He crossed the river and strode on; not taking a cab seemed already a kind of penance for what he had done. He was ashamed of himself. He drove out thoughts of Monica. It was remorse rather than shame that he should feel. He had offended God, he had gone to bed with a woman not his wife, and they had done things he had never done with Monica. Catherine had acted like a courtesan. No, he mustn't blame her.
He
had sinned; that was the point.

There was a huge Carrara marble crucifix over the main altar of Saint Peter's. A Mass was being said, and scattered through the pews were secretaries, bank clerks, bag ladies, the homeless. Along the sides were confessionals, and over one a small light glowed. Red. Someone inside. He went immediately there and waited. No need to examine his conscience. His sins were on the tip of his tongue.

The door of the confessional opened and an old woman emerged. Lloyd waited for her to let the door close and then, pulling it open, stepped in and was alone in the dark. He knelt before the grille and was aware of voices, a penitent on the opposite side. He waited. On the long walk over, he had rehearsed, seeking ways to express the sins he had committed. The grille slid open.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

He stopped. He felt a sudden panic. The priest was waiting. Lloyd leaned forward, his head against the grille. “I don't know how to begin.”

“We'll start with the capital sins then.”

“It was a woman, Father.”

He began to babble, trying to say it all at once; the priest—he could make out his profile through the grille—was old. He nodded through the recital. A moment of silence.

“Will you see her again?”

“No!”

A pause. “Make an act of contrition.”

The familiar words came trippingly to his tongue. The priest began the formula of absolution. Lloyd felt that he was standing under a shower of grace and forgiveness.

“Take this, son.” A little slip of paper appeared beneath the grille. “For your penance, pray that psalm. And ask Our Blessed Lady to help you.”

Outside the confessional, he went to a pew and looked at the sheet the priest had given him. Psalm 51. “Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion, blot out my of-fense. O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.”

He hurried through the psalm, feeling lighter than air. When he was done, elation left him. It had all been too easy. Three days with Catherine and after a few humbling minutes, it was all wiped away. Now that he had confessed, he longed to make up for what he had done in some dramatic way, a more demanding way. Once, penitents had been sent on long pilgrimages, to shrines. . . . He thought of Lourdes, he thought of Fatima. And then an image over a side altar decided him. Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Mexico City lay in a blanket of smog, looking unreal. Lloyd went to his hotel, to his room, and then immediately back to the lobby, where he asked the clerk for directions to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She handed him a brochure; obviously his request was a familiar one. In minutes he was in a cab and on his way, hurtling through the city, taking no notice of it.

In the square outside the church, he stood staring at the facade. It was a great round church, somewhat reminiscent of the stadium of the New Orleans Saints. Just an observation. He had not come here as a critic. There was a large bronze statue of Pope John Paul II off to the right, commemorating his visits here. Lloyd crossed the square and entered the church. His eye was drawn immediately to the image of Our Lady, behind and above the altar. That was the point of the circular design; from no matter what part of the church, the eye was drawn to the miraculous picture of Mary. Lloyd hurried toward it.

Centuries ago, Juan Diego had encountered a beautiful lady who instructed him to speak to the bishop. The bishop's reaction to the illiterate peasant was doubtless understandable. He wanted proof. Again the lady appeared to Juan Diego and asked him to fill his cape with beautiful roses, which, despite the season, were there in abundance. The roses were to be the proof the bishop asked for, but when Juan opened his cape and the roses spilled out, there on the cape was the image of the lady he had seen. That image was what Lloyd and other pilgrims had come to venerate. The Lady of Guadalupe.

There was a moving belt beneath the image, so pilgrims would not cluster beneath it. Many were sighing, a man was weeping. Lloyd got in line, his eyes lifted to the image that had been miraculously imprinted on the cape of Juan Diego. The moving belt took him all too swiftly past the image. He went back and got into line again. Three times he moved beneath the image, prayers forming on his lips—no need to conceal his gratitude here—and then went to the back of the basilica. There were confessionals there and lines of penitents waiting. Lloyd joined them. He wanted to confess again here. Tell God once again that he was sorry, that he would never again offend Him. He could not have formed a clear image of Catherine if he tried.