Too Close to the Falls (40 page)

She continued her onslaught. By this time there was complete silence in the class, even I had bowed out. “Isn't it true that Lutheran ministers can marry?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess that's one of the things Martin Luther wanted to do.” He didn't answer or look at any of us. She forged ahead. “Well, let's face it, those corrupt popes were doing the big ‘it,' right? Well, Martin Luther only wanted to get in on the action.”

All twenty-eight heads focused on The Rod to see his reaction. He had a vein pulsating in his forehead. “Miranda.” He sounded tired. His hands hung defeated at his side. He said softly, “There is no point discussing religion on only one level — the guttural.” You could tell he thought he'd overstated things and tried to restore some equilibrium by saying, “We must learn to separate the flawed
institution
of the Church from God's holy
teachings
.” However, it was too late. She'd snared him with his inflammatory use of the word
guttural
.

Miranda's voice was even and clear and she never hesitated. “Father Flanagan told us sex is beautiful and we have to prepare our souls for the conjugal meeting of one another. Our bodies are always holy tabernacles. After all, how else are new Catholics going to come into the world?” She paused for effect. “You don't think sex is guttural, do you?” There was a playfulness in her tone, a sort of mock shock.

Sex?
For God's sake, what was she talking about?

“No, I don't.” He was rasping now. He cleared his throat when he heard the unnatural sound of his voice.

“I didn't think so.” She took the final bite of her icicle, which was now dripping into pools of red sticky liquid on her desk.

The girls who never listened, the ones who looked like Annette Funicello and carried around little suitcases because they went to hairdressing school for half a day, fell silent. They sat up and didn't fidget with their hair or do anything except closely survey The Rod's face. There was a long silence. He seemed unable to go on.

Miranda saw her advantage and grabbed it. When it comes to humiliation, Miranda was like a watchful retriever. No matter how many times you threw the bone away, she always brought it back, panting, and laid it at your feet. “M-a-y-b-e . . .” She dragged out the word while licking her icicle wrapper. “Martin Luther wanted to control his earthly passions, couldn't, then wham — flipped out. Maybe we only know it as a religious crisis.. . . You know the story has been cleaned up for the catechism. It
does
happen, doesn't it?”

“Yes,” he said with his back turned to the class. He was looking out at the bubbling tar parking lot with the church on the far side.

“Maybe there was a young novice once, who, when she was running, let a little of her ankle show.” She stuck out her Bass Weejun–shod foot to recreate the moment, “and he just lay awake at night dreaming of that ankle.”

Father Rodwick had red blotches on his neck that started out the size of small islands, but grew into continents. He sank into his chair behind his desk. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes as though he were tired.

Miranda's voice continued in that kind of husky whispering tone that I had never heard before. “I can't imagine what it would be like never to touch a woman. I mean, it would be fine if you were old like Father Flanagan.” No one laughed. We were all sort
of scared or at least incredulous. “But not so fine if you were young, say as young as Martin Luther.”

He cut her off. “Catherine, please read aloud,” he finally managed to whisper.

I had no idea why he was so upset. What crystallized for me at that moment was I actually
liked
him. I looked forward to his class and life seemed somehow larger. Whatever was going on, Miranda had carried it too far and all I wanted to do was help him out of whatever tight spot he felt himself to be in. However, I was at a loss for what to read. I picked up the
We Willing Workers
newsletter, the rag that we all laughed at. It was the only thing I had to read, so I read it. Not really knowing what was going on, or why The Rod was acting so strange, I had lost my nerve for reading it in my usual mocking tone, so I simply muttered in a monotone: “‘May is the month for the blessed Virgin. How can we best serve her? A nice idea would be to have a May altar in her honour with a daily offering of flowers right in your own home.'”

As I was reading, Miranda leaned over and slipped a book on top of the newsletter. It was a paperback carefully covered in brown-lunch-bag paper entitled
Lady Chatterley's Lover
. She had a certain part circled and a note in the margin which said, “Read Now.” As I read, I noticed that she had crossed out the gamekeeper's name and inserted “The Rod.

The Rod took her in his arms again and drew her to him, and suddenly she became small in his arms, small and nestling. It was gone, the resistance was gone, and she began to melt in a marvellous peace. And as she melted small and wonderful in The Rod's arms, she became infinitely
desirable to him, all his blood vessels seemed to scald with intense yet tender desire, for her, for her softness, for the penetrating beauty of her in The Rod's arms, passing into his blood. And softly, with that marvellous swoon-like caress of his hand in pure soft desire, softly he stroked the silky slope of her loins, down, down, between her soft warm buttocks, coming nearer and nearer to the very quick of her. And she felt him like a flame of desire, yet tender, and she felt herself melting in the flame. She let herself go. She felt The Rod's penis risen against her with silent amazing force and assertion and she let herself go to him. She yielded with a quiver that was like death, she went all open to The Rod. And oh, if The Rod were not tender to her now, how cruel, for she was all open to him and helpless!

She quivered again at the potent inexorable entry inside her, so strange and terrible. It might come with the thrust of a sword in her softly-opened body and that would be death. She clung in a sudden anguish of terror. But it came with a strange slow thrust of peace, she held nothing. She dared to let go everything, all herself, and be gone in the flood . . .

And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark dumb mass. Oh, and far down inside her the deeps parted asunder, in long, far-travelling billows, and ever, at the quick of her, the depths parted and rolled asunder from the centre of soft plunging, as the
plunger went deeper and deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, the heavier the billows of her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further and further rolled the waves of herself away from herself, leaving her, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman
.

At the end of the passage, I was relieved, never looked up, and switched back to the newsletter and read, “‘How to cut out a cardboard altar.'” As I was reading the strange passage Miranda had picked, what had shocked me most was how determined Miranda was in this plan. It was unlike her to go to so much trouble. I couldn't believe that The Rod hadn't stopped me. All he had to do was take the book away and punish us.

Father Flanagan's voice ripped through the hallway as he tore into the room. He stormed up the aisle with his cassock flying, and his Franciscan cord, tied in seven knots for seven mysteries, was flailing people as he proceeded. “The janitor came to my office to say you were reading filth. Exactly
what
is going on here?” God, he was really riled up. Fortunately I had given the book back to Miranda. His voice was thundering as I imagined the Archangel Michael's had been as he expelled Lucifer from heaven. “Father Rodwick, I repeat, what is going on?”

The Rod didn't answer, he simply looked at his desk blotter and wiped away imaginary eraser shreds. Jesus, I felt sorry for him. He
tried. I don't know what the hell Miranda was doing or in what way I was part of it. He had attempted to discuss religious doubt and to teach us the things that the Jesuits cherished and he
did
treat us as more than “holy tabernacles.” Still, we seemed determined to destroy him. When I gave it a second's thought I had no idea why. We were far worse to him than to Father Flanagan. Yet I owed The Rod something for making me feel normal instead of possessed.

I was slow in rising, but I did finally stand up. “Father Rodwick, thank you for letting me explain myself.” Then I turned rather formally to Father Flanagan. “Father, what happened was we were reading the
W.W.W.
and suddenly Linda Low handed me a book, the likes of which I've never seen, and suggested I read it to the class. The cover was hidden so I assumed it was appropriate. Father Rodwick attempted to take the book, but I kept handing it around. Several people read from it. They'll probably want to identify themselves.”

There was a long silence where everyone's eyes met mine with a stunned numbness, as though they were trying to get up after the ninth round. Feigning self-righteous indignation, I tried direct eye contact. “Come on, ladies, at least
I
had the decency to come forward.”

Finally Miranda reluctantly raised her hand and said in her most chastened tone, “Father, I read last. Here's the book.”

I gave a puzzled look to Miranda, the look that said “you had better have this under control.” She shot back her haughty “don't sweat it” look. Father Flanagan examined the back cover to see Linda Low's name written in a perfect forgery of Linda's meticulous penmanship accompanied by her signature with matching curlicue flourishes on each of the L's. It was even written in the
same tasteless peacock-blue fountain-pen ink that Linda thought so decorative. While I was stalling around grandstanding, Miranda, the ultimate mimic, had written it in. Linda Low looked as though her mind had permanently left her body. There was only a hair-clipped empty shell before us.

“Linda,” Father said gently. “Linda, is this true?”

She shook her head, then said, “Father, Father, you have
no
idea what goes on here.”

I interrupted, pretending that I couldn't stand it another second. “Oh, give me a break, Guardian of Mary, come down off the cross.” Turning to Father Flanagan, I said, “This is nothing, you should see her gym locker. It looks like a library for Mary Magdalene
before
she asked for Christ's forgiveness.”

He wasn't buying it. His eyes narrowed and he looked straight at me. “You and Miranda are at the bottom of this.”

I realized I had to give it my all and distract him from thinking of looking in her locker. “Father,
Father
,” I said, upping the ante in as shocked a tone as I could muster. “Do you want to see my palms? Are
you
a doubting Thomas? Why should I lie?
Why Linda Low?
Do you think I go off, buy books, put
Linda Low's
name on them and read them aloud? I mean
really
, why would I
bother
? Miranda and I have confessed, isn't that enough? The Lord knows who the others are. Should we be punished for acknowledging that we have succumbed to earthly temptation? I mean, face it, you'll know the others in the confessional.”

Father Flanagan looked dubious, but still in control; both The Rod and Linda Low looked like they had been disembowelled and undergone lobotomies. Father Flanagan looked around at the path of psychological destruction and decided to call it a day.

“I want Catherine's, Miranda's, and Linda's mothers called, and I want them informed that their daughters deprived each student in this class of religious education, and if there is any more of this blasphemy you will each pay dearly. Out of respect for their mothers, don't mention the nature of this pornography or they'll think we're running the devil's workshop.” At that, he turned on his heels, cassock spinning, and charged down the hall.

Outside, as we walked home, tugging on red licorice strings, Miranda spat the words which ricochet in my memory. “You really are a suck — I'm never coming to see you in the convent.”

“I covered your ass, you stupid jerk, handing me that book. Christ, now our mothers are being called.”

“So what? I have so much on my mother, she could never tell anyone about the call.”

“What can you have on a
mother
? . . . Anyway, I don't have anything on mine.”

“So just make sure that he calls on a day when Dolores is there cleaning. You must have something on Dolores.”

“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about, nor did I care at this point. “Anyway, just forget it, I'll handle it.” As if I could arrange to have a cleaning lady there when The Rod called. Why talk to someone who has resorted to mental telepathy?

“You're the biggest worrywart I've ever laid eyes on.”

I just shook my head.

“Listen. First of all, he isn't going to call. What's he going to say? ‘I let the girls read
Lady Chatterley's Lover
, and then we got caught and I thought I had better call you just to let you know.' I doubt it. Secondly, what if he does call? Linda Low is so boring, even her mother doesn't listen to her. My mother is in the twilight
zone. My sister gave her a picture frame from Woolworth's for her birthday last year and she
still
has the picture of Tab Hunter in it that they put in it for display. I
think
I can handle her. Your parents aren't going to do anything about it because it's a book and any book is good in their minds. Besides, I think the guy who wrote it is famous ‘cause it's a Penguin.”