“You know, all I ever wanted was a daughter who loves God, goes to church, respects her priest and maybe even respects her mother a little. You think that’s too much to ask?”
Elle thought about the question one whole entire second before answering.
“Yup.”
Once her mother pulled into the Sacred Heart parking lot, Elle jumped out of the car. Her mom could make her go to church, but she wasn’t about to sit with her at church.
Elle entered the sanctuary and took a seat on the Gospel side—the left side of the church facing the altar. A visiting priest had explained the difference between the Gospel side and the Epistle side, or right side, a long time ago. He was also the same priest who taught everyone that Amen was best translated as “so be it.” That had surprised her. Until him she’d always thought Amen meant “over and out.”
Her usual pew had already filled up by the time she got there so instead of sitting beneath her favorite stained-glass window, she had to sit on the aisle. That was okay. She’d be able to get a better look at the new priest from here. And if she didn’t like the looks of him, she could “accidentally” step on the train of his vestments. Oops.
She wormed her way out of her jacket, picked up her missal and turned to the day’s readings. From her backpack she pulled out her copy of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and slid it in between the pages. She’d heard some girls in her German class giggling over a copy of it. One of them had stolen it from her older sister. Gross, they said. Nasty, they said. So dirty. They couldn’t believe people actually did this, they said. So of course Elle stole a copy of it from the public library. Now on her third reading, she still hadn’t figured out why those girls in her class had called the book gross and nasty. Elle had fallen in love with the story of sexual slavery in a fairy-tale world of kings and queens. Even better, the main character—Beauty—was only fifteen, like her. Fifteen plus that one hundred years she’d been sleeping under the spell. Maybe Elle was also under a spell and didn’t know it. Maybe she’d fallen asleep and everything happening was a dream, a bad dream where her father was a thief and her mother wished she’d never had her daughter. Maybe someday a prince would come along and kiss her and make love to her, and she’d wake up to discover she’d been a queen all along.
As Elle turned a page the bells rang. She closed her books and rose to her feet.
A hymn began.
Elle looked back to the door of the sanctuary, and saw the new priest.
The dream ended. The spell was broken.
Elle woke up.
5
Eleanor
STRIDING DOWN THE AISLE BEHIND THE CRUCIFER and the deacon was a man—a man with blond hair and a god’s face. He looked forward with eyes so serious and solemn she followed his gaze to the altar to see if Jesus waited for him there.
As he stepped past her pew he turned his head and met her eyes for the briefest of eternities. The book within her missal fell from her hand and fluttered to the floor. She didn’t bend to pick it up. It lay there, forgotten, as forgotten as everyone and everything else in this world. Everyone and everything else but this man who now mounted the steps to the altar and stood before the church.
Underneath the collar of his vestments she saw the hint of black with the white square.
This man, this most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life, this man who was the incarnation of her every hunger, every desire and every secret midnight dream … This man was her new priest?
“Oh, my God …” she breathed, but whether she addressed the God in Heaven or the God before her, she didn’t know.
She crossed herself when the church crossed themselves. She remained standing as they remained standing.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the new priest intoned, and together with the congregation Elle answered.
“Amen.”
His voice, rich and resonant, echoed out to the very edges of the church and back again. His words wrapped around her like a golden cord binding her to him. The sanctuary brightened with each word he spoke as if the sun itself drew closer to hear his voice. Once in winter she’d seen a man on a street corner playing an old cello for coins. A cello on a winter night in the midst of a frozen city—that was what his voice sounded like.
She sat when the congregation sat and even as she sat down, her heart rose.
A woman read from the Old Testament.
A man read from the New Testament.
The priest read from the Gospels.
She heard none of the words. She heard only music. Even when the hymns had been sung and ended, she still heard music.
She knelt when the church knelt and prayed when the church prayed. And when it came time to rise for the Eucharist, she rose again.
On feet she could no longer feel she made her way inexorably toward the altar. Although she walked of her own volition, she felt drawn. That golden cord had wrapped itself around her heart and she would go wherever it led her. It led her to him.
With every step closer to him, the cord tightened, and yet the tighter it bound her, the greater her joy.
Visions flashed through her mind. A fluttering of white wings. A burning arrow. Stained glass under her feet. His hands on her face. His mouth on her mouth. His mouth on her br**sts. His skin against her skin. His body inside her body. His heart in her heart in his hands …
From the deacon she took the wafer, said her Amen and swallowed it whole.
From the priest, she took the cup of wine. As she raised the cup to her lips, the sleeve of her shirt fell back, baring her arm and the two red burns on her wrist. She met his eyes and saw something flash in them, something she couldn’t translate into words. It was as if he recognized her, as if he’d seen her before somewhere and now tried to remember where. She knew she’d never seen him before in her life. If she had, she would never have forgotten him.