Home Again

“Did you ever regret it?” Joseph asked. “You know, all the things you gave up?”

Regret. Such a powerful word, steeped in sadness and pain. “No,” Francis said quietly, realizing as he spoke that it was true. He’d never regretted becoming a priest. It had filled him up, his faith, given him a strength and a compassion and a mission. It wasn’t until years later, years upon years, that he’d begun, not to regret, exactly …

Want. Yes, that was the word. He’d missed a lot, and sometimes, like Joseph, he’d gone i

nto his darkened bedroom, alone, and cried for what he’d missed. The yearnings that couldn’t be assuaged, all the moments that had never truly been his. Like when he’d first held the tiny, screaming Lina, and known that she wasn’t his daughter, could never be his daughter. Or the times he’d looked into Madelaine’s eyes and ached at the way she saw him, the chasteness of her love.

“Sometimes,” he said at last, recognizing the truth of his words. “I guess I wanted it all—children, a wife, a family—but I wanted my faith too. We can’t have everything we want. There are always sacrifices…”

“I think we can get what we want in life,” Levi said. “It’s just that we have the devil of a time figuring out what that is.”

“Yeah,” Joseph added. “Sometimes you have to turn the world upside down to see it right side up.”

“But Father is right,” Thomas said. “Love is a gift from God—what we do with it is up to us.”

Francis didn’t want to think about that, about what he could have if he found the courage to change his life. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was 7:00 P.M. “Okay, we have thirty minutes left, guys.” He reached into his canvas pack and pulled out a stack of yellow legal pads and a handful of pens. “I want each of you to write a letter to your wife, telling her as much of your feelings, your fears, your hopes and dreams, as you can.”

Thomas’s black eyebrows quirked up. “And you pick yellow legal pads for our romantic letters?” He laughed. “Obviously you’ve never written a love letter, Father.”

The men laughed as they reached for the pads and pens. Within moments, each of the men had retreated to a quiet corner and begun to write. Pens scratched quietly on paper.

Did you ever want children, Father?

Wantwantwant. The word repeated itself, ran together and stabbed deep…. Ah, he wanted so much, so many things he couldn’t have….

Visions of Madelaine and Lina came to him, whispering, insinuating their way into his heart, gathering in the air around him. He leaned forward, wanting to reach out, grab them, and draw them close.

She loved him; he knew that, had always known it.

Love is a gift from God….

Francis’s breath released in a quiet sigh of wonder. It was as if the words had somehow formed themselves just for him. The same words he’d said a million times in his life, but this time he understood them.

Love is a gift from God.

He knew the doctrine of his faith would call his love for Madelaine a sin, but Francis had never been able to believe that. Breaking vows, yes, that was a sin; but the simple, singular act of loving? He’d never believed that his precious God would deem it such. It was His gift to us, His ultimate blessing.

Madelaine wasn’t his lover; he’d never truly thought of her that way. She was his love. As was Lina—his precious, precious Lina—and Angel.

Angel. He thought of his brother, and as he did, a thousand remembered images sprang to his mind. At first they were the usual memories—the ones that had hurt at the time and kept on hurting, the ones that Francis could never quite get rid of. Their mother, getting nine-year-old Angel drunk and beating him up, locking him up in that dark closet until he promised to be as good as his brother. And the words, always the words, spoken to Angel in that gravelly, slurred voice, I shoulda had an abortion.

Francis had always tried to change what couldn’t be changed. So many nights he’d held his bruised baby brother in his arms and cried to his God, his own trembling voice begging for help. Then, one day, Angel stopped reaching for his big brother, and that had been the most painful time of all. Francis had seen the dawning suspicion in Angel’s eyes, the question that lurked there—why? those green eyes had asked. Why am I so different?

But Angel had never asked the question aloud, and Francis had never found an answer. So they went on, living side by side in that crappy little trailer, pretending to be brothers, when, with every passing day, they were becoming only strangers. And Angel—Angel had become what his mother had predicted he would become—a hell-raising, shit-kicking kid who didn’t care about anything, especially himself.

There had only ever been two people who believed in Angel—Francis and Madelaine—and Francis had let him down. All those years he’d let their mother terrorize Angel, and he’d stood by, unable to do anything. He’d watched as the goodness was slowly, systematically ripped from his brother’s soul.

And he’d done it again, just last week. He’d gone to the hospital, seen his baby brother lying in that narrow bed, and done nothing; he’d let the past swirl around them, just opened that damned door and let their mother’s ugly spirit in. Francis wasn’t a kid anymore and he wasn’t impotent. This time he could be the protector he should have been before. Maybe he could even give his little brother a reason to stay.

Believe in the road.

Angel coming back, now after all these years … Lina asking the question that had been unasked for so long … It had to mean something.

Francis could make it mean something. He could redeem himself in the eyes of God, and in his own eyes. He could rectify the mistakes he and Madelaine had made, and those that were his alone.

He rose to his feet and went to the window. He imagined himself standing in the midst of that rainy darkness, wanting to believe in the road beneath him. His heart was beating so quickly, he could hear it thudding in his ears. Please God, show me the way.

Suddenly he found it, the courage he’d been searching for his whole life. It was there in his heart, heating him like that last burning coal in the midst of a black, dead fire.