“You’re no good coming home every night,” Tom told him. “This is exhausting you.”
“Thank you,” was all Fenn said.
“You know,” Tom told him, “We could move to Chicago.”
Fenn looked at Tom, and burst out laughing.
“What?” he touched Fenn’s head, which was on his lap.
“You don’t mean that,” Fenn said, turning and placing his head in Tom’s stomach.
“Of course I do.”
“You mean it,” Fenn said. “But I would be a wicked asshole to say yes, and we both know it. I have no wish to make you look for another job, and that’s what you’d have to do. Either I can travel to do plays, or you can travel to work. No, I think we’ll keep things the way they are.”
“I just wish the way things are could mean you were here more often.”
“Do you really mean that?” Fenn said, suddenly, looking up at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tom said. “Of course I mean it.”
Fenn sat up now, running a hand over his head.
“I know you do,” said Fenn. “It’s good to hear it, though. Sometimes I cannot believe you love me. And that we love each other.”
Tom was massaging his hand now.
Three times a week,” he said. “And how about I come to see you?”
“You do come,” Fenn said emphatically. “You’re so good to me. You come to see me do these plays where I’m nobody, and you act like I’m the star.”
While Tom was in the shower the phone rang and Fenn picked it up.
“It’s me,” Adele said.
“Hey, Sis.”
“I got a phone call from Dan Malloy.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But why did he call me? Why didn’t he call you?”
“I just thought it would be easier that way.”
“Easier?” Adele said. “Whaddo you mean?
“Fenn, are you hiding Dan from Tom?”
“That’s kind of a drastic way to put it.”
“But you are!” Adele said.
“Well, what if I am?” Fenn whispered into the phone.
“I don’t think Tom would handle the idea of Dan too well. I’ll tell him eventually. They’ll probably meet. But what did he say?”
“He left his phone number. He’s got a phone in his room. He said he didn’t know if he should leave it because he wasn’t sure… Oh, hell, I think you’re both crazy.”
“Thank you for your observations. Now give me the number.”
As the shower shut off, and Tom began singing in the bathroom, Adele told him.
“Dan?”
“Fenn, is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.”
“I thought I’d never hear from you.”
“Why would you say that? I left my number.”
“I know,” Dan acknowledged. “Hold on a second.”
“Alright.”
There was some scuffling, and then Dan said, “Alright, that’s better. So, how was the play?”
“It was good.”
Then Fenn said, “It’s so strange talking to you after I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“We can have visitors, you know?” Dan told him. “You can come and see me.
“Or was that too much?”
“No,” Fenn said. “It absolutely wasn’t too much. I’ve missed you a lot too. We haven’t seen each other in forever.”
“I know,” Dan said.
“So?”
“Yes?”
“What about this Tom?”
“Tom?”
“Yes. What’s he like?”
Suddenly it seemed very hard to describe Tom, and odd that Dan wanted to know about him.
“He’s… well… He plays the organ. He’s in music ministry at the college. I think you’d like him.”
Fenn realized he didn’t believe that for a minute. There was no way that Dan and Tom would like each other. The two of them were such different people. He could just see it now.
“So are you living with Tom, or are you living with Adele?”
“Well, I’m—” Fenn stopped. He realized why Dan had asked.
“I’m living in a lot of places lately,” Fenn said. “But it’s easier to reach me at Adele’s.”
Dan did not press this, and Fenn thought Oh, now I’m lying.
“When do you want me to come?” he asked Dan.
“We have fall break in a few weeks but, really, you could come whenever you want to.”
Mentally Fenn went through Tom’s calendar. They were so seldom together that Fenn wanted to do it at a time when Tom was busy.
“The week before fall break,” Fenn decided, “is something I think I can do.”
“Well, I sure hope you have fun,” Tom told him on the morning Fenn was head out. They lay in bed together, and Tom’s arms were wrapped around Fenn’s chest. Fenn stroked Tom’s hair.
“What?” Tom said.
Fenn looked down at him and said, “I can’t believe how much I love you. Sometimes I feel like we’re in this dream, and it’s a dream where everything I ever wanted comes true.”
“So?” Tom traced a circle on Fenn’s chest, “I’m everything you ever wanted?”
Fenn went down into the covers deeper so that he and Tom could wrap their arms tight around each other.
“Tommy, did you ever doubt it?”
Tom took him to the Amtrak station south of town and from there the ride across state was three hours to Sainte Terre College and its seminary.
Dan was waiting for him at the train station, wearing his usual uniform of khakis and neatly tucked Oxford blue shirt.
“Fenn!” he cried. He took Fenn’s bag, and while Fenn was preparing to hug him, Dan offered his hand. Eyebrow raised, Fenn shook it, and then Dan said, “The car’s this way.”
Izmir was a stately town not far from the Ohio border, and in the autumn the red brick campus looked especially vivid against the green grass. Saint Benedict’s seminary rested on the lake, and it was a large castle like structure.
“There’s the monastery. This place is Benedictine. That Church? I’ll show it to you. Isn’t it huge? It’s nothing like the one at Citeaux.” Dan’s voice went gentle. “This is a much quieter place.”
Dan was someone who’d had a difficult time with crowds and, in many ways, wished to be left alone.
“And there’s the monastery, and then right there? It used to be part of the monastery—is the seminary—and that building across from it, with the little garden, where you will stay, is the guesthouse. It’s just like a hotel.”
Dan drove him all around the place, and then said, “Are you tired? Would you like to put your stuff away?”
“I would like to put the bag up,” Fenn said. “I shouldn’t be tired. I’ve been on a train, sitting down for three hours.”
“Well, you probably want to take a nap,” Dan told him.
He did, in fact, want to take a nap. They found a parking lot, and before Fenn could take his suitcase from the trunk, Dan had it. Fenn felt things were happening very fast and at a distance, and he could not catch up with Dan, who wasn’t looking at him, anyway.
Now Fenn saw that the whole complex was circled by a brick wall with vines climbing over it, a type of paradise, and he stepped into a place with a lane leading up to the alcove of the church. To his left was a plain but sweet brick building, and to the right the wall that encircled the monastery and the seminary. Dan yanked open a door, and while holding Fenn’s suitcase in one hand, pushed the door open for Fenn with the other.
“This place,” Dan said, looking around, “is nice.”
The guesthouse was carpeted, and there was a view of hills going down to the lake. There was a parlor and a monk sitting at a desk chatting with what Fenn’s mother would call a “silly old woman.” Fenn followed Dan to the elevator. They went up a couple of floors and then Dan grunted, lifted his bag, and said, “Over this way.”
He entered something more like a hotel room than a monk’s cell, and the wide, mullioned window looked across the lane to the courtyard of the monastery.
Dan set the bag down, grinned and said, “So we can see each other at night, and then added, “Not really. My room’s far on the other side of the seminary.”
Dan stood before Fenn, looking awkward, and then he took a deep breath and said, “Well, I’m going to let you rest and walk around. Vespers is at five if you want to come. Then we can go to dinner after that? How’s that sound?”
Fenn, still not entirely here, or entirely aware of what was happening, said, “Sounds good.”
Dan nodded and, smiling, he left.
For some reason, possibly the reason that he needed to sleep, Fenn was glad when Dan was gone.
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And now back to the story.
When he heard the bells ringing, Fenn knew it was time for Vespers. After all, he had once lived in a monastery. Dutifully, he slipped his shoes on and prepared to go downstairs. As he found his way through the plush guest house to the elevator, and then down the hall to the church, he imagined wearing a long white robe, his arms folded into the sleeves, pointed hood turned up while he was on his way to prayer.
The church was still old, and when he entered, there was a gallery of several pews for laypeople that ended in a low, closed gate separating them from the rest of the church, and the pews where the monks would sit. Black robed monks entered from the other side of the church, filling their seats which looked across the church to each other. Above him now, Fenn heard feet tramping into what must have been the choir loft. He kept looking up at the low polished wood ceiling though none of the other people, most of them fairly old, did. Suddenly Fenn felt a tap on his back and turned to see Dan.
“Come with me,” Dan said eagerly, and Fenn followed him.
They went out of the chapel and then back to the guesthouse, to the back of the guesthouse, and then up the stairs to an old door Dan jiggled and yanked. Then Fenn saw that they were in the church again, only now they were in a balcony overlooking the monks, and it was filled with mostly young and somewhat awkward men.
“This is where we sit during Evening Prayer,” Dan told him, and they sat together, while Dan handed him a book.
There was a rap on wood from one of the monks far down below, and then all the seminarians stood up, and Fenn could hear people rising beneath him.
One of the monks came to the podium and chanted: “Oh, God come to my assistance.”
“Oh, Lord make haste to help me,” everyone responded.
“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!”
“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.”
As the room full of people traced the sign of the Cross over their brows, lips and shoulders, Vespers began.
“We could eat in the guesthouse, or we could eat with the monks and the seminarians,” Dan offered.
“The monks,” Fenn told him. Guest were guests. Monks? Seminarians? That was a whole other thing.
“Great,” Dan said, plainly pleased.
“This is Lou. This is Pete, and that’s Jason. He just graduated from DePaul this year.”
Jason nodded to Fenn and Fenn realized he had already forgotten the first two guys and would probably forget Jason in a few minutes if he didn’t keep repeating his name.
“Fenn just graduated in May too,” Dan told him.
“I had applied to seminary before that,” Jason said. “It’s a long process.”
“You have to do the psych evals,” one of them made a face, putting a gun sign to his head. “Make sure you’re not nuts.”
“Why do so many nuts slip through, then?” Fenn wondered.
While Jason chuckled, Dan said, “Fenn, that’s kind of harsh.”
“I didn’t say you were nuts,” Fenn told him. “Just, there are a fair amount of the maladjusted and the warped in the priesthood.”
“I think we ought to steer away from that subject,” Dan suggested.
Another one at the table said, “I used to ask my grandfather about all the crazies in the Church, and he would say the light always attracts a few bugs.”
They all laughed, but Dan was looking at the table, tapping his finger, and his laughter was strained.
“What’s wrong with you?” Fenn said, “Did you have a hard time on your psych eval?”
Dan looked at him, somewhat pained, and said, “I just forgot how you can be. That’s all.”
Fenn was glad he’d said this in a small voice, and surprised to be a little hurt by it.
“Priests aren’t crazy, Fenn,” Dan added weakly.
Fenn realized he had forgotten how Dan could be, too.
“I consecrated myself to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary,” Dan told him, once.
“Oh?” said Fenn.
“Yes. It’s the most wonderful thing you can do. And you should do it too. I mean, especially if you’re serious about being a priest.”
Fenn was serious about a life with God. Who wouldn’t be? Well, most people wouldn’t be. But this was a deep passion. The only life he knew with God was that of a priest and so, by default, he was serious about it at the time.
They were in the Arts and Letters building of Citeaux University, where Dan went, and a great crucifix spanned the arch over the main entrance.
Dan stopped and caught his breath.
“What?” said Fenn.
His eyes nearly full of tears, Dan turned to Fenn and said:
“He must love us so much! Just look at that!”
Five years later, sitting next to a very sober Dan Malloy, Fenn heard him say, “Priests aren’t crazy, Fenn.”
“I miss you!” Tom exclaimed when Fenn called that night.
“Baby, I’ll be back in a few days.”
“Did you hear what you just said?”
“Yeah,” Fenn said. “I just told you I’d be back in a few days. And I promise, I will.”
“No,” Tom said. “You called me Baby.”
“I do that all the time.”
“You’ve never done that before.”
“It really matters to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“I love you, Tom.”
Tom didn’t say anything. He knew Tom had heard this, but that he was absorbing it. Fenn looked at the very white, very sad picture of the Blessed Virgin on the wall and thought: He’s treasuring these things in his heart.
“You know I love you, Fenn,” Tom replied. “Sometimes I don’t think it’s possible to say how much. Where are you, anyway?”
“You won’t believe this. But I’m in a monastery.”
“Didn’t you live in one for a while back in college?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, now, I don’t put anything past you, Fenn Houghton.”
They chuckled in the small room with the crucifix, and after how Dan had hurt him, the laughter felt good.
“Hurry home,” Tom said.
“I promise I will.”
