Too Close to the Falls (44 page)

The next day I climbed the stairs toward the lavatory. Listening to my echoing footsteps, I knew that I was walking down death row to the execution of my innocence.

Miranda was standing at the sink teasing and spraying her hair while her cigarette burned away, leaving a brown nicotine stain in its wake. When she saw me she took a long drag and her ashes sizzled in the sink. “Well, now that the prodigal postulate has arrived, we may proceed.”

I really felt sick to my stomach — the same nausea as when all the car windows were closed and my father smoked cigars. Maybe it was the closeness, the smoke, the loose powder hanging in the air webbed in hairspray, and the cloying perfume scent. Feeling faint, I grabbed a handle of a stall door. She didn't say anything for a long time so I finally said, “Get to the point. I don't have a whole lot of time for slander.”

“Fine,” she said calmly, anointing her plunging neckline with Shalamar. “I've done it, the big
it
, night after night with The Rod in the Sunset Motel. Done it till I could hardly walk,” she said, directly into the mirror, while applying white lipstick.

“What about last Friday night?”

“Yup.”

I pounced. “You're such a
liar
.
I
was with him Friday night dining and dancing in another city.” I'd caught her. The relief I felt flooded into every one of my cells, letting me know exactly how important this had been to me as I sank down on the edge of one of the basins.

“I know. His pants were filthy. What were you doing — fighting over Martin Luther?”

“You're a liar. Why would a priest risk ten years of education, a future in the church, and all of eternity on
you
, someone he doesn't even like.” I struck my cleats against the painted cement floor, stomping toward the door. I swung around. “I want
proof
. Don't bother giving me receipts from the Sunset Motel. I'm sure your mother has plenty of them.”

“Now, let's see, how could I prove that a priest had his clothes off? Let's start with exhibit A.” Miranda reached into her bag and, while rifling through it, said in that singsong mocking voice that was bone-chilling and made the hair on my neck stand on end, “Now, what is the first layer of clothing a Jesuit puts on so that he feels the roughness of the hair shirt of good ol' yesteryear? After all, before he's entirely dressed, why not offer up your sufferings for the sins of mankind?”

I thought of the priest's scapular, but I refused to believe that she had Father Rodwick's. If she had it then he had, indeed, taken his clothes off in her presence, which was too preposterous to even imagine, let alone contemplate as a reality.

Recognizing my shock, Miranda pushed ahead with her advantage. “Oh dear, does our philosophical genius need
another
hint? Okay. What has a rough cloth on one side and a holy picture on the other?”

There was no other way she could have got the scapular. It's worn under the priests' clothing. “Miranda, you're embarrassing yourself with this pathetic fantasy. If you have it, show it right now or forever hold your peace.”

She said, “Oh, I thought you'd never ask.” She held up his worn scapular to the barred light of the lavatory. It said, “The Society of Jesus, 1957.” It even smelled like Father Rodwick's English Leather. “Poor dear looked for it for over an hour before he decided he must have left it at the rectory.” The suspended scapular swung back and forth like a pendulum casting a shadow on the cement floor and hair-woven drain.

I looked down. I'd seen enough for one day. “Let's go,” I said, feeling as if my brain, heart, or soul, or whatever it was that felt things, had been sprayed with Novocaine — an anaesthesia that took years to wear off. We filed out of the lavatory silently and slunk to our religious instruction class. As I nosed down the hallway, I wondered what was ahead. Things had gone too far and everyone had known it long before me.

The room was filled — except for two empty chairs — with twenty-eight expectant teenage faces. The others all knew it was the last throes of battle and it was time to see who was left standing. The foreboding silence was deafening. As they heard the jangle of the rosary beads announcing the arrival of the jejune Jesuit, they listened for his jaunty step along the hall and the hum of his Gregorian chant. How could he come back? No one flinched a muscle, but focused on the crucifix in the front of the room under the clock.

The lively step was the confident stride of the victor, bouncing to the front of the class. There before us stood Father Flanagan. Not one of the girls asked where Father Rodwick was. He silently passed out the
We Willing Workers
newsletter and said, as blank as a drink of water, assured of his position, “Catherine McClure, please grace us with your oratory, beginning on page one.”

“How to Start a Guardians of Mary branch club in your community. . . .” I droned on to the end.

Catherine McClure Gildiner
has her Ph.D. in psychology and is in private practice in Toronto. She also writes an advice column for
Chatelaine Magazine
and publishes humorous articles in various newspapers and magazines. She has been married for forty years and has three sons.
Too Close to the Falls
is her first book.