An Unholy Mission (22 page)

In Winchester, Laura Wiltstrom and her mother were standing side by side in the cluttered kitchen of Laura’s childhood home. They were finishing up the last of the dishes from Thanksgiving dinner. Laura loved the look and feel of the Wedgwood plates and the heavy silver flatware that had been wedding gifts to her mother and father. This was as much a holiday ritual as cooking the meal. Hand drying the warm plates and putting them back in the glass fronted china cabinet was something they had done together since Laura could be trusted to hold one of the plates by herself.

In the next room baby Erica was nestled in the arms of a besotted grandfather. She had been fussy for a good part of the day, but now the two of them were dozing in front of the TV while Laura and her mother moved between the kitchen and the dining room, putting everything back into place.

“When are you planning on going back to work?” Laura held out the oversized turkey platter to her mother, who smoothed it dry with a linen towel before setting it back in its place on the mahogany sideboard.

“I’m entitled to three months with full pay. If I want to stay out longer, I can go on half pay for a total of six months. The trouble is, I don’t think I can afford to do that and keep up with the rent.”

Her mother’s face was a furrowed combination of thoughtfulness and hopefulness. “Well, we haven’t rented out your room, you know, and you wouldn’t be the first adult child to come back to the nest for a little while. Just remember it’s there if you need it, not to mention the fact that we’d absolutely love having you and the baby here.”

Laura tilted her head to one side and looked at her mother.

“Oh, mum, thank you, but for now, anyway, no thank you. It’s really good to know I can, and that helps, but I have to do this on my own. I’m trying to work out flex-time and day care right now. I’ve got a good job, and they want me back, so they’re willing to talk. I might even be able to work from home one day a week. A lot of people do that now, you know.”

“I’m proud of you, Laura, but I know you. You’ve got an independent streak as wide as the Charles River. Don’t get in over your head, honey. Um, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you going to ask for child support?”

“No.”

That conversation was over. She knew her daughter was negotiating some pretty rough waters right now, but she also knew she wanted to do it by herself if she possibly could, and the uncertain look on her face made it clear that she had something else on her mind.

“Mum?”

“Yes?”  She put down her dish towel and turned to her daughter.

“I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but I’d like to spend some part of Christmas with Olympia. I wasn’t ready to go out there until now, but I might not have time when I go back to work. With her being a minister and everything, she probably works weekends. I know she did this past summer.” Laura paused and looked at her mother. “Is that okay with you?”

“It’s not about me, Laura, it’s about what you feel you need to do, like coming back here or not. You’re a grown woman. These are your choices and decisions. I can’t imagine a holiday without you, but when I think about it, Olympia has had thirty-five years of holidays without you. I suppose it’s only fair.”

Laura placed her two hands on mother’s shoulders, holding the woman’s evident doubt and worry at arm’s length, but holding it nonetheless.

“I know it’s my decision, and know that I need to see and be where she lives at least once. I have to go to bed and get up in the same house with her, eat at her table, water her plants and play with her cats, whatever. I need to know her as a person. You’re my real mum, and you always will be, and she’s my birth mother, and I really don’t know her at all. I think for all of our sakes, I need to. I know you’ll always be there for me. I don’t doubt that for a minute. You’ll always be mum, and she’s Olympia.”

The conversation was ended by a series of mewling squeaks coming from the next room. In seconds it would become an outraged howl. Erica was hungry, and Laura was the only one in the house who could do anything about it.

Once Timothea had been properly introduced to Miss Winslow, she finished her coffee and was now on her way back to West Newton. A sated and exhausted Olympia said her goodnights and went off to bed, leaving the men to do what men do when women aren’t around. With the  sitting room more or less to themselves, Jim and Frederick were sitting companionably by the remains of a fire that was now little more than glowing coals and a clutter of ash. A single cat lay in front of it with all four feet stretched toward the warmth.

Frederick made a great show of clearing his throat and fussing with a button on his shirt before finally speaking.

“Lovely day, all in all. I’ve never had pecan pie before. Rather over the top, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m relatively new to it myself. Remember, I’m Polish from Krakow via the West End of Boston. Apple pie might not be Polish, but it’s a lot closer to what I grew up with. Pecan pie is more of a southern specialty, rather than a New England dish, but it’s unforgettable. I could feel my teeth disintegrating with every mouthful.”

Frederick fussed with a different button. “I hope I’m not being too forward, and I’m not going to ask why, but you’ve said that you’ve come down here because you need a bit of a respite. I’ve not known you for very long, but I know how much Olympia cares for you. Let me just say that if there’s anything I can do to help make this time here more beneficial to you, I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”

Jim leaned back and tented his fingers over his flat stomach. “I don’t know if Olympia has said anything to you about my health.”

Frederick shook his head, and Jim responded with a sad smile.

“I wish she had. If we’re going to be sharing living quarters, it’s time you knew. It might make you think differently—and if it does, I’ll understand.”

Twenty-One

Mondays were Women and Infants days for Olympia. She was still feeling overinflated from the Thanksgiving meal itself and from the surfeit of leftovers, which she felt personally responsible to dispatch, especially the pecan pie. Now she was paying the price with buttons that didn’t quite meet and waistbands that felt like tourniquets. She promised herself a more abstemious week on the way into work and congratulated herself when she asked for just a cup of black coffee in the hospital cafeteria before heading over to her mothers and babies.

Traffic had been surprisingly light, and she found herself with a full half-hour to sit and sip her coffee and prepare to begin the day. Her mind was racing. Too many thoughts were chasing each other round and around inside her head with no conclusions. On Friday she and Jim and Frederick had worked out the logistics of Jim’s time with them. Olympia had suspected for some time that Jim was struggling with more than health issues, and now she had a better sense of what it was.

Over the summer Jim had told her that he was HIV positive and had been for several years, but until that time he’d been asymptomatic and able to live a fairly normal life. But is there any such a thing as a normal life for a gay priest? If anyone in the diocese or the parish of St. Bartholomew’s did suspect this might be the case, it was never mentioned, and Jim was careful not to do or say anything that might lead to that discussion.

Once a year since the time that Paul, his pre-ordination partner and lover, had died, Jim took off his collar and traveled to Provincetown on the tip end of Cape Cod. There he served out free Thanksgiving dinners in the basement of the Unitarian meeting house and remembered a man he had lost to AIDS. His was a private pilgrimage, and this was the first year since Paul’s death that he had not made the trip. What he shared with Olympia and Frederick over the weekend was that while he’d come to a place where he needed to go on medication, the good news was that the disease could now be managed. But it was not his physical health that was his greatest concern. Yes, he did need to guard against overworking himself, and yes, he needed to maintain a healthy balance of food, exercise and adequate rest. Jim’s crisis was not so much medical as spiritual. He needed time away from St. Bartholomew’s and Catholic Allston College.  He needed to work out in his own mind and heart how he could be a gay man, infected with HIV, and stay within an institution which considers him and his kind to be abhorrent to God.

Frederick, prince of kind hearts that he was, sat with him and listened with none of his characteristic English banter. When Jim finished describing the true depth of his anguish, Frederick put his hand over Jim’s and said simply, “You’ve come to the right place. We’re here whenever and however you need us for as long as you want to be with us. I’m not going anywhere, my friend, and I hope that neither are you.” There was nothing more to say after that.

Olympia drained the last of her hospital coffee and looked at her watch. She needed to get moving, but instead of going directly to the maternity floor, she turned in the opposite direction and went up one floor to the hospital chapel situated in the old wing of the building. No one was keeping count of her hours, and it was not as though she had to be there at a specific time. Her need for spiritual reflection and personal introspection was greater than her need to clock in at a specific time.

Later, in the conference room, Joel Silverstein presented his most recent case study. In it he described his pastoral interaction with an elderly woman whose comatose, brain-dead daughter was being mechanically kept alive on hospital life support. The mother wanted to discontinue medical intervention and let her go, but the daughter had not filled out the necessary legal forms before she had the accident that left her in this condition, so the mother was powerless to intervene. When Joel finished, all were in agreement that he had handled the situation as well as any one of them could have done themselves. Even Sister Patrick had nothing to add other than to say she was sure that he had been a great source of comfort to the poor woman at such a difficult time, but when she finished, it was clear that something was still bothering him.

 “Is there something you’d like to add or ask us, Joel?”

The troubled man nodded and looked slowly around the table at his colleagues. “Is it that obvious, Sister? The truth is, I’m deeply conflicted by this whole experience. I know that saving lives and improving the quality of human life is what we swore to do when we took the Hippocratic Oath, and as a rabbi I’m called to honor and serve the Holy One and to understand His word and holy law as written in the Torah. The commandments tell us that we shall not kill, but are we not playing God when we extend human life beyond its ability to sustain itself?  What are we doing when we choose to consign a human being to prolonged and expensive agony simply because we have the scientific ability to keep the heart beating?”

Sister Patrick nodded as she listened but did not interrupt.

 “Oh, I know I’m not the first person ever to say this, but the painful, messy truth of it all completely overwhelmed me today. People in so-called less advanced societies seem to understand that human life has a natural beginning and a fairly predictable ending. They are no less bereaved when a loved one dies, but somehow they seem to be so much more able to accept death as a natural part of the human experience. I suppose this will be one of the core struggles of my religious calling. I guess I thought that by becoming a rabbi I would be better prepared to help both the dying and those who are about to become the bereaved, but right now it seems that the questions keep multiplying, and I’m not finding any answers.”

The whole time Joel was speaking, he was rhythmically swaying back and forth in his chair--davening, he would later explain—a graceful, gentle movement some Jewish men use to accompany their prayers.

Sister Patrick put her two hands to her lips and blew a long sigh through her fingertips.

“This is one of the reasons we’re here, Joel, and why we come back again every day—to look at this question and the myriad other questions that continue to spiral out of it. What is life? When does life begin, and when does it end, and what means should we undertake to preserve it? And when there is no hope of recovery, when do we stand aside and pray for a safe and gentle passage? We stand in awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and we work tirelessly to understand the science of what makes us human. As professed religious, we ask ourselves over and over again, what is the meaning and value of this life, and who are we to interfere with the natural process of the human journey? We in the medical profession agonize over whether to continue a pregnancy that we know will produce a hideously damaged baby that will suffer every minute that it lives, simply because we are medically able to do it.”

She paused and rubbed the bridge of her nose before continuing. “It’s no help to tell you that I struggle with this almost every day that I come in to work. My religion says I must do everything to preserve life, but my human, compassionate self is sometimes at odds with the teachings and doctrine of my church. It’s neither in my power nor within my authority to give you answers. The only thing I believe I can do is to help you clarify the questions for yourself. In our various ministries we will confront this again and again, and each time the outcome will be different. This is why you are here, and this is why I am here, to keep asking the questions and re-examining the answers.”

She stopped speaking and looked around the table at her diminished flock. Two were gone, and four were still present, taking in every word. She, too, carried a heavy burden, one she couldn’t talk about with them. She drew a deep breath before continuing.

“This, dear colleagues in faith, is pastoral care at its most challenging, being present when the only thing in heaven and on earth that anyone can do is to be present. Just because we do it over and over again doesn’t mean that we ever get used to it. We can only pray and believe and trust our way through … and start all over again the next day.”