The Buried Bride

Three

Three

“ANNA,” I CALL AS I come through the door, “I’m home. Any calls while I was out?”

“No, Tom,” Anna says, emerging from the kitchen. “Is everything OK?”

“Sure, it is. Why do you ask?”

“Well, six hours is an awfully long time to spend drinking coffee, even for you and Helen,” she says, a look emphasizing her displeasure.

“But I wasn’t with Helen. I drove to Dulles to pick up Gladys and we just got back. I texted you and said that’s what I was doing.”

“You did not,” she says, looking at her phone. “Oh, wait, I guess you did. The service here has been spotty ever since the last snowfall.”

She takes a breath and looks at me evenly. I know what is coming and this time I feel ready, even grateful, to have to deal with it.

“Tom,” she says, looking me square in the eye, “I haven’t wanted to bring this up while you’re still recovering. In fact, after I heard everything that happened to you, and how close you came to losing your life, I decided that I’d just let everything else go and be thankful to have you back in one piece. But that is not realistic, not if we’re going to continue to work together as closely as we have.”

“Anna, you’re right. We do need to talk about this. Have you made lunch yet?”

“Of course. Can’t you smell the soup?”

I realize now that I can.

“OK,” I say, “let’s chat over lunch.”

We go into the kitchen where Anna pours us both steaming mugs of her wonderful vegetable soup.

“I was going to make cornbread . . .” she says, trailing off.

“This is great. In fact, it's so good that I’ll treat for dinner.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

We eat in silence for a few bites as I try to think where to start, but before I can say anything, Anna jumps in.

“Before you say anything else, Tom, please tell me this. Are you leaving the priesthood?”

I look her squarely in the eye and say without hesitation, “Absolutely not.”

“So the situation we need to talk about has nothing to do with the Archbishop’s visit yesterday?”

“No, Anna, the situation has everything to do with the Archbishop’s visit yesterday.”

“Is he going to move you?”

“Not in the foreseeable future.”

“Oh, Tom,” she cries, bursting into tears, “I am so glad. You are the only living connection I have to Joan and I have been sure these last few months that you would either leave the priesthood and run off with Helen or that the Archbishop would force you to go to another place, you know, for your own good.”

I put my arms around Anna and say, “While no one can tell what the future holds, it seems that the Church has learned some valuable lessons in recent years about the folly of transferring their problems to other places. Here I am, and here I intend to stay.”

After a moment, Anna stops crying and I let go. I look at my mug, giving myself one more chance to leave it there. Anna would be satisfied to know that I wasn’t leaving either the priesthood or Saint Clare’s. But the time I just spent with my own Mom made me appreciate how important Anna is to me, not just as my secretary and housekeeper, but as a surrogate Mom.

She deserves to know the truth.

“Anna,” I whisper. “I . . . I owe you an apology.”

She says nothing. Instead, she looks at me, her chin on her hand, a slight smile on her face.

I take a deep breath. “When you talked to me that day, before I left. You . . . you said some things that I got angry about. About the way I’d been neglecting my duties. About how I’d been treating people. About . . .”

I’m too choked up to continue.

“About Helen,” Anna says softly.

I nod, not able to look at her. “You were right,” I whisper. “About all of it. After Leonard died, I just stopped caring. I didn’t want to do it anymore. As far as I was concerned, I was just biding my time until I had an excuse to leave the priesthood.”

“And Helen became your excuse.”

“She was the only thing that kept me around,” I say. “If she hadn’t been here—if she had taken that job in Nebraska, which I couldn’t stand the thought of—I would have left. Maybe not the priesthood, but Saint Clare’s certainly.

“But the more time I spent with her, the more I realized how much I love her, Anna.” I wipe my hand across my face. “So you were right when you said I was in love with Helen. Because I was. I am.”

“And Helen? How does she feel?”

“She loves me, too, Anna. We . . . we told each other in Bellamy.” I close my eyes. “We showed each other,” I whisper.

The silence is heavy in the room. “Tom,” Anna finally says, “did you and Helen . . . ?”

I shake my head. “No. We didn’t. Honestly, if I had my way . . . But it never went that far. Helen stopped us. Stopped me. Because she loves me. But she loves God more.”

Anna exhales a deep breath she’d been holding. “Oh,” she says with a smile.

“I owe her so much,” I say. “She talked me out of making a huge mistake. Her faith was so strong, Anna, it made me see how weak mine had become. It was like a light came on. I wasn’t a priest who was worthy of God anymore.

“So I began again. I began praying again. I began focusing on God instead of what I wanted. I knew one thing with certainty: I wanted Helen. But I wanted God more.”

“So why was the Archbishop here yesterday?”

“To follow up on our meeting Monday night after we got back. Helen and I told him what we wanted—that I remain a priest, but that we stay in each other’s lives somehow. We had talked a lot on the way home, and laid out a whole new way of being together, one that eliminates the possibility of crossing boundaries that we shouldn’t cross, but keeps the parts that are important to us. The Archbishop came here to tell us he had basically decided to allow us to spend Lent seeing if it could work out.

“So that’s where we are,” I say. “Helen is going to remain part of my life, a big part, a close friend and a companion. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Tom,” Anna says, “and I’m glad, and I believe Joan would be, too.”

These words bring tears to my eyes and I continue.

“You know, Anna, that Helen was once married and that her husband was killed in a traffic accident.”

“Yes, I remember hearing something like that.”

“That is one of the things that makes her so comforting to me. She knows what it is like to lose someone you love suddenly and violently, without warning. It doesn’t surprise her that I wandered around for such a long time in a fog of grief. I know that, even if she knew of some of the things that I did in those first terrible months after I lost Joan, things that I regret so very much and have had a hard time forgiving myself for, she would understand.”

In my mind, a guilty question rears its ugly head and I add silently, At least I hope she would.

Anna is sniffling, too, and I am once again reminded that while I lost a wife and could, theoretically at one time, have married again, she lost her only daughter.

Before I can say anything else, though, she wipes her nose and says briskly. “So, what should we order tonight?”

“I don’t know,” I say, recognizing that she has discussed this topic enough. “Chinese? Barbeque? Pizza?”

“No, not pizza. That’s not a suitable dinner for two adults.” Then she adds, a bit conspiratorially, “Look, Tom, if Helen is going to continue to be a part of your life, why don’t you call her and get her to pick up something and bring it over here?”

“Are you sure?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, Tom, I’m sure. I’ve worked with enough youth groups in my time to have developed some excellent chaperoning skills. I’ll expect you both to sit in separate chairs in the living room and her to be out the door and on her way home by 10 p.m. How does that sound?”

“That sounds great, I think,” I say, picking up my phone and dialing Helen’s number.