Uncross My Heart (13 page)

“Look, I’ve thought about it.
You
can baptize the baby,” he said, not unkindly.

“In case your rosary is missing a bead, I’m not Catholic.”

“I’ll book the campus chapel for you—”

“The baby is apparently very ill and may not wait for the campus chapel roster to open up, but might instead merely need a priest who gives a shit to baptize her.”

“You get the girl and her family or friends or whatever and we do the baptism right away.”

“We?”

“You. But I’ll stand nearby in my robes looking priestly.”

I let out a long sharp sigh of exasperation. “This doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to officiate at any mass beyond this one.”

“Does it always have to be about you?” He goaded me into smiling.

“Only because I know how you are. So for the record, my officiating is a one-time, emergency-conditions deal.” My flippancy was cover for the embarrassment of admission that I would no longer allow myself that privilege. “No regalia. I’m only wearing a stole.”

“You can wear bouffant hair and pumps for all I care, darling.”

“Humf.” I hung up and began hunting Angela’s number in the student directory.

Moments later Dennis phoned back to tell me that tomorrow morning, both he and the chapel were available if Angela was—which meant I couldn’t meet Vivienne. I paused before telling Dennis the time would work for me.
God is intent on keeping me out of trouble
when I’m too weak to do it for myself.
I picked up the phone and dialed Vivienne’s office number and left the message that Thursday would no longer work for me.

I then located Angela’s number and called, intending to tell her that I would be the celebrant for her baby’s baptism tomorrow, along with Father O’Shane, which was stretching it a bit since he was only planning to be present. She answered the phone crying and, when I delivered the good news, said only that it no longer mattered. She’d arrived home to find her baby worse and believed she was dying. Her sobs prevented any longer discussion.

“Where do you live?” I demanded, and she rattled off an address that I scribbled on a pad. “I’ll be right there.” I unlocked the closet next to my desk, snatched a stole from a hanger, and slammed the door shut again. Scooping up the Book of Common Prayer and my keys, I locked my office door and ran to my car. I backed out of the parking lot so fast I nearly creamed a red Toyota pulling out across from me and waved my apologies.

Moments later, as I sped down the freeway toward a blue-collar area of town populated by migrant workers, I wondered what had convinced a girl like Angela to choose a school like Claridge.

I pulled up in front of a small clapboard house in need of major repair in a neighborhood full of tan-skinned men in white T-shirts leaning over the hoods of parked cars that spilled off the curb and into their front yards. All eyes turned as I got out, and a stocky man whistled in my direction. I ignored him and placed the ecclesiastic stole around my shoulders and knocked on the door. A tall, middle-aged Hispanic matron with sorrowful eyes and a troubled brow opened the door and stared at me for a long moment.

“I’m Alexandra Westbrooke from Claridge Seminary. Angela asked me to come and see her baby.”

She stepped back and I entered. The house was dark and moldy, and I found my way to the baby’s bedroom on my own. Angela hung over the crib, her hand on the baby’s damp brow.

I placed my hand on Angela’s head in the same way she touched the baby’s, and I told her I was sorry. Foolish words, but I couldn’t come up with something more meaningful.

“I will miss her too much,” she said to the baby, her English only slightly broken in comparison to her heart.

“Do you want me to baptize her?”

She stared at me for a long time, perhaps deciding what sway a tall woman priest, not of her faith, would have with her God, but then finally nodded.

“What’s the child’s name?” I opened the Book of Common Prayer to the baptismal prayers.

“Maria Estrella.”

The baby was gasping and gurgling now. I decided this was an emergency baptism—one without frills. “Maria Estrella, I do hereby baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” I said as I sprinkled her small, hot forehead with holy water I had carried in a vial in my pocket.

Afterward, I led Angela and the woman who had greeted me in saying the Lord’s Prayer. And then I ended the brief ceremony with,

“Maria Estrella, you are now sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Amen.”

“Amen,” the two women said in unison.

“Thank you,” the older woman said solemnly. “Even though you are a woman, it still counts with God?”

“Mama.” Angela’s voice was slightly reprimanding.

“The baptism? Yes, of course.
Especially
since I am a woman. Christ protected and cared for women.”

She nodded, seeming to contemplate that remark. A young, muscular Hispanic man entered the room and glanced at the baby. He put his arm around Angela and I thought perhaps he was the father.

“My brother, Ortiz,” Angela said.

I extended my hand. “What does the doctor say about the baby?”

“There is no doctor.” His voice was harsh.

“He stopped when we could no longer pay,” Angela said, without malice.

“Did you ask for assistance?” I inquired, stunned at the matter-of-fact way they accepted the child would die for lack of funds.

“We do not need help.” Her brother’s voice was final.

“I know you don’t, but the baby—”

“The baby is one of us.”

“Angela, let me call a doctor friend and at least see if she can help.”

Angela’s eyes darted to her brother. His look clearly said no.

“It’s too late.” Her voice was devoid of emotion, as if the fatigue of caring for and about this sick child, and dealing with the apparent machismo of her brother, had distanced her from reality.

I bowed my head and said a silent prayer different than the one that came from my lips. The prayer in my head was
Let this man get
out of the way
. I said out loud, “Heavenly Father, we thank you for the life of this child, Maria Estrella, entrusted to the care of her uncle Ortiz and her dear mother, Angela. Help Ortiz and Angela love and nurture Maria Estrella that she may grow up and do all that is intended for her before reaching your eternal kingdom. Help Ortiz find in his generous heart the ability to save her, for the sake of your dear son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Ortiz had tears of frustration in his eyes as he whirled and left the room.

I reached for my cell phone in the pocket bearing the holy water, thinking both had their place, and called Madeleine Montgomery, a pediatrician I had known for years—our friendship born at the bedside of Madeleine’s dying mother.

Angela bundled the baby girl up, and she and her mother got into my car. As I drove them to the hospital, the baby made distressing sounds that forced me to wonder if we would get her there alive or if I would merely be delivering her small dead body.

“Do you drive children to the hospital as part of your work?”

Angela’s mother asked, seeming to want to drown out the choking sounds we were incapable of treating.

“I do whatever is needed,” I said, picking up speed and swerving in and out of traffic.

“Then you are a saint,” she said in a matter-of-fact way.

“That I’m definitely not.”

“My grandmother always said the saint is the one who looks most like God. Tonight, for me, that is you.”

Tears gathered in my eyes and I prayed,
God, please save this
little girl.

We pulled under the massive hospital ER portico and rushed inside with the baby, who was whisked out of our arms and into those of a waiting nurse, the kind of treatment no one gets unless they have a friend at the factory.

Mother and child now having been handed off to someone who might help, I headed back to the parking lot alone and confused.

After all these years, I was still troubled by moral issues of faith, and today had been full of them—Dennis’s remaining on the sidelines choosing the tenets of his faith over the needs of a poor family to feel their baby was safely baptized, the baby’s family letting male pride stop them from getting help for their dying child, and me choosing to baptize the baby first rather than get her immediately to the hospital—soul-saving taking precedence over life-saving. I questioned my own belief system that put covenants over common sense, and that questioning made my heart heavy.

I was walking across the commons early Thursday morning when Harold Hightower intercepted me. From the way he glanced left and right and tried lamely at small talk, I could tell this wasn’t a casual conversation, but one he’d been waiting to have and had now found an opportune time. He inquired about my health since I’d fainted in his office and tried to blend in remarks about the stress of working for a seminary.

“Are you trying to get to something, Harold?” I invoked a familiar tone I rarely took with him unless I no longer cared about the consequences.

“Two things, actually. One, we are putting together succession plans for me—”

“Why?”

“It’s time.” His tone sounded as if someone other than he held the stopwatch. “I’ve contributed a great deal but I have other things I want to do. You were mentioned, on a very
long
list, I might add, as leadership material. If you care about that sort of thing, now would be the time to be particularly careful in your associations. The conference, for example—which I hear went well—”

“It did, if ancient sex turns you on.”

“Speaking of which, spending the evening with a known…lesbian, even when traveling, doesn’t go unnoticed.” He’d lowered his voice and glanced furtively as he spoke.

“What?”

“There’s been a flurry of activity around you of late and we’ve finally gotten it to die down, and I simply don’t want—”

“Who told you this?”

“It doesn’t matter who—”

“It matters to me.”

“I will not tell you—”

“I demand to know who is say—”

“Gladys Irons mentioned it…out of concern.”

Several thoughts collided in my head. First, how quickly Hightower gave up his stooge, and I made a mental note never to confide in him.

Secondly, Gladys had spied on me, ascertaining I was dining with Lyra Monahan at the San Francisco conference.
Why would she do that?

“Gladys, to her credit, did not want me to tell you or cause you any trouble. She is only interested in your well-being. She has really taken a shine to you.”

And there it is,
I thought.
Gladys has taken a shine to me. My fault.

I kissed her. But I kissed her in a mocking fashion. However, for someone
who apparently never gets kissed, how would she know mocking?

“Look, Gladys Irons is unhinged right now.”

“What’s unhinged her?”

“Possibilities, Harold. I opened a door she didn’t know existed.

Now a draft is blowing through her stuffy old framework and giving her goose bumps.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“She has feelings for me, Harold.”

“Gladys Irons?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good Lord.” Harold Hightower buckled over in a belly laugh that was so completely out of character I laughed along with him. “Oh, dear God. Only you could turn this around—”

“Why else would she be spying on me? Why would she care? She had to follow us to the restaurant, and why would she?”

“You have been forewarned. And that goes for any…with Gladys.”

He laughed again, perhaps envisioning her black orthopedic oxfords under my bed.

I stormed back toward my office wondering how I’d blundered into this mess. Formerly my life was quiet. Then my neighbor, Sylvia, came out of nowhere and kissed me, a kiss that seemed to change the atmosphere, attracting other women. Sylvia begot Jude who begot Lyra who begot Gladys. And then there was Vivienne, whom I had really kissed. Kissing seemed to be at the root of my current conundrum.

Women were drawn to kissing more than men. A kiss meant more to a woman. And now one particular kiss had changed me forever, its memory enslaved my mind and body.

I needed to work off the frustrating, unsettling feelings that buzzed around me like irritating flies. Bury myself in all the papers I’d put off writing. Stay locked inside.

I hurried down the long corridor to my office where my heart stopped as abruptly as my footsteps. Red roses sitting on the floor in front of my door. I scooped them up, unlocked and opened the door, and put the flowers on my desk, extracting the card from the plastic prong, wanting to know immediately if they were from Vivienne. On the card in large scribbled handwriting was the word “Surprise.”

The door clicked behind me and the dead bolt turned, just as I did.

Roger Thurgood III, his back to my door, his smile one that clearly said he’d planned this.

“From you?” I asked calmly.

“You wished they were from her, didn’t you?”

“Who are you speaking of?”

“You know who.” And I wondered if he’d opened the card on the orange roses Viv had sent, as they sat in my doorway, and that’s how he knew.

“Roger, I want you to leave my office.” I moved toward the door.

He clenched the doorknob.

“Get back.” He glanced frantically toward my desk, spotted a pair of scissors lying there, and reached for them without taking his eyes off me. He pointed them at me. “Just cut”—he smiled at the word—“the crap.”

“Would you like coffee?” I asked, as if he were merely demonstrating a role he was about to play onstage, but my heart beat faster and my mind was on fire assessing how to get him out.

“I want answers.”

I moved casually to the coffee machine and punched the button, taking two cups from the cabinet above the credenza, intentionally turning my back to him.
Frightened, confused people can sense fear
and it empowers them. I will not show Roger any fear
. “I’ll try to answer any questions you have, but I don’t like being threatened.”