Fiction by Erin McGraw

Appearance of Scandal

After the screaming and the poisonous

accusations, after the broken vase and
rib, after the gonorrhea, waking up to
½nd Anthony gone was not the hardest
thing. It was not the hardest thing to
sleep on the fluffy clown rug between
the girls’ beds, or to come to school
to pick up Stephanie the day a rash
bloomed across her chest. It was not
even so hard to forward Anthony’s mail
and to review the bar association’s list
of divorce lawyers, so many of whom
Anthony had gone to law school with,
and mocked.

The hardest thing was sitting in
church, where the scalding sense of
failure shot from Beth’s hairline to the
soles of her feet. Surrounded by intact
families with husbands who looked
proud of their wives–Anthony had not
looked proud, ever–Beth read the ads
for funeral homes and cpas on the back
of the bulletin, leafed through the hym-
nal, distracted herself in every way she

Erin McGraw is associate professor of English at
the Ohio State University. She is the author of
“Bodies at Sea” (1989), “Lies of the Saints”
(1996), and “The Baby Tree” (2002). In June of
2004, “Appearance of Scandal” will be published
in the short story collection “The Good Life” by
Houghton Mifflin as a Mariner Original.

could think of until the hour was over
and she could race to the parking lot,
always one of the ½rst to gun it out.

“You don’t know how hard it is,” she
said to Father Marino. “If it weren’t for
the kids, I wouldn’t come back here.”
“Then thank goodness for the kids,”

he said.

The easiest thing after Anthony left
was Beth’s talks with Father Marino.
Every week he made room for her in a
schedule ½lled with Social Justice Com-
mittee meetings and intramural soccer
and the daily hospital visits–needs more
legitimate than her small loneliness and
sorrow. Every week he opened his of½ce
door and produced his cracked-tooth
grin, and she saw the sort of boy he must
have been, round headed and cocky, sure
of the world’s affection.

He had long ago captured the affec-
tions of everybody at Holy Name. After
cranky Father Mestin had retired and
nervous Father Torbeiner had been
whisked away with so little explanation
–people still murmured about him–pa-
rishioners recognized their good fortune
in Father Marino. He had a friendly hab-
it of snapping off his Roman collar in
mid-conversation. “Enough of this.
Let’s talk.” People con½ded in him–
guilty teenagers and angry mothers
and the whole Men’s Club, which took

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Father Marino on a trout-½shing trip
every June from which they returned
sunburned, hung over, and sheepishly
low on trout. Beth wondered whom
Father Marino con½ded in, but she rec-
ognized her curiosity as the question of
a freshly divorced woman half in love
with her priest, and kept it to herself.
Instead, she told him about her job
at the Women’s Services of½ce on the
weedy outskirts of town. Now she was
working as a receptionist and sometime
counselor, but she was planning to be-
come a paralegal and, after that, an
attorney. “That would kill Anthony,”
Father Marino said, and she said, “My
point exactly.”

Anthony had asked her how she, a
Catholic, could work in such a place, a
question she thought rich, considering
that he had been the one with the girl-
friend. “The women who go there need
help,” she said shortly. She wasn’t about
to give him details on the sullen, ex-
hausted mothers who edged through the
of½ce door needing health care, legal
advice, babysitters. Sometimes they
needed abortions, and Beth counseled
them about facilities, a fact she’d con-
fessed to Father Marino and that he told
her didn’t need to be confessed. More
than anything, they worried about their
children, and Beth told them with real
compassion, “Children are the fear that
steals your heart. I know just what you
mean.”

When she said this her eyes slid to the
desk photo of her two daughters, laugh-
ing and proud on their new Rollerblades.
They were older now, and laughed less.
The divorce had hurt them. Ten-year-old
Alison threw tantrums like a ½rst grader,
and seven-year-old Stephanie refused
to read her colorful schoolbooks. Beth
told Father Marino about this, too. “Ali
screams until she’s blue. Anthony would
never have stood for it.”

“No kidding. He left.” He leaned for-

ward, resting his bony elbows on his
thighs. Despite his apple-round face, he
had a lean frame, freckled skin stretched
over long bones. “Don’t you feel like
screaming?”

“No more than ten times a day. But for
the last six months Anthony was home,
I wanted to scream all day long, so I
should be grateful.”

Father Marino shook his head. “You

don’t ask for enough.”

“I ask for plenty,” she said. “I just

don’t get.”

“We’ll have to see about that,” he said.

Beth understood that she should not

take Father Marino’s vague promises too
seriously. Everybody knew that he liked
to make promises. He especially liked to
make them on the telephone, at night,
when people heard the sound of ice
cubes rattling in a glass not far from the
phone.

There weren’t rumors, exactly, and
there had been no incident–unlike with
Father Toole at St. Agnes who had been
pulled over for dui and was abusive to
the of½cer, when the whole parish coun-
cil had had to swing its weight to keep
the story out of the paper. Still, so many
people had run into Father Marino at the
Liquor Barn. At so many parties he had
gotten tipsy. Holy Name parishioners
were accustomed to a priest who took a
drink–if anything, they liked the little
touch of worldliness–but sometimes
when they called the rectory late, they
heard a wildness in Father Marino’s
voice–too much laughter, too-quick
sympathy. He spoke very knowledgeably
about wine.

Beth’s own mother had drunk too
much, and had died of it. Beth knew
the signs. Still, she didn’t blame Father
Marino. Lately, when the girls were at
Anthony’s condo, Beth had been learn-

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Dædalus Spring 2004

Fiction by
Erin
McGraw

ing about the stillness of an empty
house, how a person could wade through
loneliness as if through mud. One night
she’d sat in front of the blank tv until
one in the morning, unwilling to turn it
on because eventually she’d have to turn
it off again and hear the silence sweep
back down. Who could be surprised if
Father Marino took a snort too much
now and then?

Nevertheless, when the Parish Life
Committee started planning Father’s
birthday party, Beth voted with those
who said the only liquor should be jug
wine, and not too much of that. Already
teens from the youth group were writing
a skit, and the Men’s Club had planned
a roast. It would be the sort of evening
that a pastor should enjoy, and Beth
meant to make sure Father Marino en-
joyed it. “Sorry,” she said to Frank Burd-
ing, who wanted to bring his special
punch. “This is family entertainment.”
“What are you, the den mother?”
“That would make you a Boy Scout?”

She meant it as a joke. Father Marino
would have laughed.

Maybe Frank had a party for Father
before the party, or maybe Father had a
little party for himself. But as soon as
he entered the parish hall, to applause,
Beth could see how his eyes wandered
and slid. “Happy birthday to me,” he
said at the door.

“How old are you, Father?” said Amy

Burding.

“A gentleman never tells.”
“You’re not a gentleman. You’re a

priest.”

The party was moving now. All over
the hall people were laughing, and a pile
of gifts sat near the door. Beth knew
what some of them were–two pounds
of smoked trout from the Men’s Club, a
soft wool cardigan from the Altar Soci-
ety. From Beth, a card that said only
“Happy birthday.” She was con½dent
that he would be able to read into it
her larger feelings–if not tonight, then
tomorrow. For now, she busied herself
with refreshments, cutting cake and
making sure everyone had a napkin.
She spotted Father approaching her but
didn’t meet his gleaming eyes until he
said, “Can a fella get a Sprite around
here?”

“I think we can manage that.”
He hoisted the can she handed him.
“Alcohol zero percent. Do you approve
of me?”

Beth glanced up, but no one was stand-

ing quite close enough to hear. “For
now.”

“What a whip cracker you are.”
“My ex-husband said the same thing.”
“He was a jerk. Forgive me, but I al-

ways thought so.”

“I forgive you.” She ambled toward
the end of the table, away from the knot
of people beside the wine. If she had
been more concerned for his reputation,
or her own, she would have led him into
the group. Already she could see the
flickering glances, parishioners noting
how Father Marino spoke so closely to
the divorcée.

“You forgive. That’s a great virtue.”
“I forgive you. Anybody else is on a

“And that is where my troubles

wait-and-see basis.”

began.”

Amy didn’t so much laugh as cough,
and Father Marino, companionable, did
too. Beth strolled over to the refresh-
ments table. It pained her to watch her
pastor pretend to be sober.

“I’ll bet it’s a long line. The only thing
people should want is to be forgiven by
you. Well, not the only thing.” His face
was blazing, light pouring out of the
skin, and Beth knew exactly how she
and the priest looked at that moment.

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“Your appearance of scandal is going

At least those were the words Beth

off the chart,” she said.

“‘Appearance.’ I get the name without

the game.” In answer to her look, he
added, “From Clever Phrases For All Oc-
casions. It’s a cheat book for priests, to
make us look like we’ve got the common
touch.”

“As if you needed it. Everybody loves

you.”

“Beth doesn’t love me.”
She felt the blush spreading across her

face and throat, ignited by dismay and
drumming, triumphant joy. “Of course
I love you,” she murmured. “You know
that.”

thought she heard. Noise banged
through the high-ceilinged, uncarpeted
room, matching the din inside her skull.
She wanted to ask Father Marino to re-
peat himself, but it seemed crass to ask a
man to declare himself twice. Anthony
had hardly done it once.

“Yes,” she said.
“Excuse me, you two,” said Amy
Burding, materializing beside Beth.
“Can I steal Father away? The kids are
ready to start their skit.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ve been look-
ing forward to it. I’ve been looking for-
ward to everything tonight.”

“And what does your love lead you to

“We hope so, Father,” Amy said, steer-

do? Pour me a Sprite?”

“Hush.”
He lowered his voice, which was al-
most worse; Beth had to lean close to
hear him. “I wasn’t going to come to-
night. I could have called somebody and
said that I had the flu or there was a cri-
sis at the hospital. My feet fell off. But
I knew you would be here. Knowing I
would see you here I got up and put on
my clothes. Do you understand what
I’m saying?”

“Would you shut up?”
“People have to make choices in their

lives. Anthony made one when he left
you. He found a door in his life and
opened it.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”
“But he opened a door in my life, too.
All I have to do is walk through. Should I
do that, Beth?”

“You should open your presents, go
home and sleep.” She was proud of the
evenness of her voice over a heart that
was clanging like a ½re alarm. “You need
to get a grip.”

“I’m trying.” He brushed his hand
across his glistening eyes. “I’m trying to
hold on. But it’s up to you now, not me.
Will you hold on to me, too?”

ing him away. “We wanted to give you
exactly what you wanted.” Not a glance
back at Beth. Not one.

Following that night, when she did not

sleep, she woke the girls with the prom-
ise of chocolate French toast, usually
only a special-event breakfast. She saw
them onto the bus from the front porch,
then called the Women’s Services of½ce
and told them she had the flu. Waiting
for the phone to ring, she took apart and
scrubbed the stove hood. She removed
the china from the hutch and washed it,
piece by piece.

By noon she was polishing the chande-

lier. The house’s silence turned her joy-
ful anticipation into unease and then,
as the afternoon lengthened, into panic.
Beth could well imagine the guilt Father
Marino might be experiencing, the jolt-
ing fear–or, worse, the uneasy memory.
He mustn’t shut her away from him. Not
now of all times. At 2:10, before the girls
came home, she reached for the phone.
She was prepared for a diminished
voice, but he was full of sass. “Thanks
for the card. I put it on the mantel, to
remind me that I’m getting decrepit.”

“Did you enjoy your party?”

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Dædalus Spring 2004

Fiction by
Erin
McGraw

“I love parties. But I don’t think the
kids showed me enough respect. At the
next Youth Fellowship we’re going to
have a sensitivity session on the word
‘geezer.’”

“That wasn’t the part of the evening I

paid most attention to.”

“Did I miss something?”
“You. Asked me to go away with you.”
Though he laughed, the stiffness in his

voice was instant. “Every single guy in
this parish should want to go away with
you.”

“You said opportunities make new
doors in our lives. All we have to do is
walk through.”

“Maybe Frank Burding? He was feel-

ing his oats.”

“You said you were trying to hold on.”
She couldn’t get her mouth to stop. “You
asked me to hold onto you.”

“Listen, Beth. Everyone understands
how dif½cult things have been for you.”

The hand holding the telephone
against Beth’s ear began to shake, and
her brain was flooded with bright heat.
“Do you have any idea what you have
done?” she said.

“I haven’t done anything,” he said.
“You’re not listening to me.”
After she hung up, Beth sat at the
kitchen table for a very long time. She
smiled when Ali and Stephanie clattered
in. Sensing an advantage, they asked if
they could play now and do homework
later, and she nodded.

Every inch of her–skin, organs–
ached, and her lungs seemed to have
narrowed to the circumference of a
thread. What she could hardly tolerate
was the unfairness.

As a boy, Father Marino–Joseph, the
man’s name was Joseph–had once won
a competition for flying a toy airplane
further than any of the other boys. His
prize was a movie pass, which he used to
see Carnal Knowledge. The movie was for-

bidden to every child he knew, but the
theater, when he entered, was ½lled with
furtive ten-year-olds. As a teenager, he
had driven a violent green Buick and
wore his hair down to his shoulders. He
liked peanut butter and honey sand-
wiches, and linguini con vongole. All this
Father Marino had told her, and every
detail she had cherished.

In the end, he had given Beth nothing.
She’d been an imbecile to believe other-
wise.

For the next two weeks she answered

the telephone at Women’s Services with
tight courtesy, hearing but not able to
amend the sharpness in her manner.
The clients who came in asked to talk
to other counselors.

Her daughters shied away from her,
though she spent extra time with them,
listening to Stephanie’s endless stories
and sitting up with Alison to watch the
girl’s favorite tv show. The handsome
doctor saved one life after another, in
the operating room and beside a hospi-
tal bed and at the scene of a car wreck,
where thrilling, photogenic mouth-to-
mouth resuscitation was called for.
When Alison asked if Beth would volun-
teer for resuscitation from the doctor,
the ½rst question the girl had volun-
teered in weeks, Beth nodded curtly,
and Alison didn’t ask anymore.

Had she been able to talk to Father
Marino as she used to, Beth could have
told him that she was trying to listen to
her daughters, to walk a narrow bridge
of love and communication through this
dark time. She and her priest could have
talked about darkness, which always
implied, somewhere, the presence of
light.

When the girls got home from school
they slung their backpacks into the liv-
ing room and raced back outside to join
the other children, sometimes not both-

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ering to call out a greeting to her. Stand-
ing in the doorway, Beth grew angry,
then felt her heart soften painfully at the
sound of their squealing laughter, blocks
away. Soon, she thought, picking up Ali-
son’s backpack, she would have to re-
mind them to take sweaters, as the Oc-
tober afternoons faded. Soon. Not yet.
She shivered. From a distance, she

heard a high, long shriek–a child,
screaming to be screaming, making
noise because she could. Beth listened to
the keening for a few moments in furi-
ous sympathy. Then she was through the
living room, out of her house, running as
fast as she could, but not fast enough.

On a neighbor’s lawn Alison sprawled

under a drooping ½r, her neck propped
painfully on a root. There was no blood.
Her knees jerked, out of rhythm with
her screams, and above her the tree
stretched like a column, thirty feet at
least. No telling how far she had fallen.
“Hush, sweetheart. Hush, baby girl.
I’m right here. You’re all right.” Beth
touched her daughter’s shoulder while
her brain, frosty with terror, ran down
the table of contents from the ½rst-aid
manual she’d memorized for work:
shock, head trauma, neck injury. She
looked around for Stephanie, but the lit-
tler girl was not in sight–either hiding
from her mother or lying at the bottom
of her own tree.

“Listen, Ali. Stop crying, baby. I’m
going back to the house. I’m going to
make a phone call. I’ll be right back.
Don’t cry, angel. You’ll see.”

A brave girl, Anthony’s favorite, Ali-
son tried to stop screaming, though her
body shuddered with every racking
breath. Smudged across the back of one
dirty hand were the remains of a face she
had drawn at school, its smile showing a
single tooth. Beth bent to kiss that hand.
Then she stumbled to the neighbor’s
house and planned the next hours: ½rst

the ambulance, then the emergency
room. Then Anthony. Already, under-
neath her fear, she felt the stirring of
guilt. She understood that it would only
grow, a fact that in her terri½ed eyes
seemed natural and right.

Appearance
of Scandal

Alison had fallen head ½rst, her arms

outstretched before her. Both her wrists
were snapped, but her back was un-
touched; she was able to walk out of
the emergency room, tapping her casts
together. Later, when she could, Beth
planned to make jokes about Superman.
First she had to stop shaking.

In the emergency room and in X-ray,
doctors and technicians and three nurses
told Beth how lucky Alison had been.
“You should have a party,” said the radi-
ology attendant, her Hispanic accent
softening her vowels. “You should cele-
brate.” Beth thanked her and turned
away. The woman meant well.

Only Anthony understood. “I keep
imagining her dropping out of that tree.
When I think of what could have hap-
pened–” he said.

“Stop,” she said. “Save yourself the

anguish.”

In the pause she could imagine his
crooked smile. “I thought you wanted
me to have anguish.”

“I do. But not about this.” She made
her own flickering, rueful smile. She had
read the articles by women who claimed
their ex-husbands had become their best
friends. Beth believed those women
were deluded, but nevertheless, she saw
how intimacy between two people was
never quite erased.

“I miss,” he said, and cleared his

throat. “I miss the girls. I think it’s time
for us to talk about custody.”
“We did that already.”
“Circumstances have changed.”
“Don’t be a jackass, Anthony. It was

an accident.”

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Fiction by
Erin
McGraw

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Through the sudden roaring in her
ears, Beth tried to scrutinize Anthony’s
voice, but, lawyer trained, it revealed
nothing. He routinely worked fourteen
hours a day. He couldn’t think of chang-
ing the girls’ custody unless he was get-
ting married again.

He said, “It’s time to move on.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The words

were out before she could reel them
back, and his laugh was honestly mirth-
ful. “It’s a great big world, Beth,” he
said. “Get out a little.”

Predictably, Alison was a handful that

night. Holding up her casts, she refused
to attempt even the tasks she could man-
age, bullying Beth into feeding her and
brushing her teeth. Stephanie took her
sister’s cue and tugged at her mother,
whining about television and school
and a diorama for her reading class
until Beth’s remaining speck of patience
exploded. By nine o’clock both of the
girls were in bed, tucked in so hard they
couldn’t move. The house was ½lled
with their raging resentment, the emo-
tion that would make their lives easier
when their father announced his news.
What was the name of the girls’ step-
mother-to-be? Beth had read that men
were drawn to sibilant names–Susan,
Cheryl. She ½xed herself a glass of water
with a splash of Dewar’s from a bottle
Anthony had left. When the doorbell
rang at nine-thirty, she was remember-
ing with irritation that two of Anthony’s
secretaries had been named Sandra.

Father Marino said, “I came as soon as
I heard. You should have called me when
you got to the hospital.”

“She was in good hands,” Beth said,
barely able to hear herself over the slam-
ming of her heart. “Come in.” She went
to the kitchen and brought him a Sprite,
which he smiled at and set aside. Almost

certainly he had been drinking. He
wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“People are saying it was a miracle that

she fell just right,” he said.

“She was lucky,” Beth said.
“Same thing.” Father Marino leaned

toward her. “How are you?”

To her horror, she felt her face crum-
ple and tears race to her eyes. “Terrible,”
she whispered.

“It’s too hard,” he said. “No one

should have to go through what you’ve
been through. You of all people.”

“Please stop.”
“I should, I know,” Father Marino
said. “I just want to talk to you. Every
day I want to pick up the phone. ‘Did
you see that sunset? Did you see that
double play? Did you see that god-awful
hat Louise Skipper wore to Mass?’ The
second I saw it I thought about how you
would laugh. Everything I look at brings
me back to you.”

“And here I am,” Beth said. “The
priest’s friend. Poor thing, she doesn’t
get out much.”

“What can we do?” he said. “We have

no choices left.”

His voice lapped happily at its self-
pity, like a pet cat given its cup of cream.
Angrily, she got up and poured him a
scotch. He looked at her hand, not her
face, when she gave it to him. “I need
you,” he said.

“This is hardly the time.”
“I need you to talk to someone. A

woman I know,” he said, and for a
moment she was convinced that her
heart stopped beating. She had not real-
ized that another disappointment could
be so stunning.

He said, “You’re the only person I
trust. I told her to talk to you at Wom-
en’s Services, but you won’t be there
now that Alison’s home.”

“Is this woman you know pregnant?”
“Yes.” The hand that raised his glass

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to his mouth was unsteady, and scotch
sloshed onto his chin.

“Oh, Joseph,” she said, and watched

him flinch. “What have you done?”
Something, maybe the half-½nger of De-
war’s, was affecting her ability to focus.
Father Marino’s face was a watery blur,
but the room around him–the green
chair, the knife-pleat curtains, the Sun-
day newspaper that Stephanie had cut
into pieces the size of ½ngernail clip-
pings–was sharp and hard as glass.
“The thing that always drew me to
you was your kindness,” he was saying.
“Even when things were at their worst,
you had the impulse for giving and help-
ing. I could turn to you.”

She cleared her rippling voice.

“Anthony had two names for me: Cup-
cake and Frau Gestapo. You’d be sur-
prised how early he moved from one to
the other.”

He looked around at the mostly tidy
room. “You’ve turned my life inside out.
You never meant to, I know.”

“For Pete’s sake, Joseph,” she said.

“What do you think I am?”

Because he was looking at the photos
of the girls on the wall, she couldn’t see
his face. “People call me Father.”

When he turned back nothing had
changed–not his watery eyes, or his
trembling, swollen mouth. She could
see that he was ½lled with regret and
she wished, as she had wished so many
times, that she could keep her heart
from opening to him like a mollusk. She
said, “Your friend might have been preg-
nant before. I know you don’t want to
think about it, but that’s the pattern
with certain women.” Seeing Father
Marino’s wrecked expression, Beth
couldn’t keep her voice from softening.
She hoped he did not take encourage-
ment from that. “What’s her name?”
“Cecily. Cessy.” He smiled. “I liked
playing with her name. Cessation. C-
Span.”

Cesspool, Beth thought, but said in-
stead, “Adoption services need babies.”
“Not this one,” he whispered, and
then, “Do you want me to pay you for
counseling her?”

In the moment before the insult took
hold, her uncooperative brain pondered
all she was owed. Father Marino could
not pay those debts. “Anthony’s got a
girlfriend,” she said. “Talk to him. Tell
him that she’s endangering his position
in the church. Tell him she’s got the clap.
Tell him you’ll withhold communion.”
“I don’t think anybody’s been able to

do that since the 1500s.”

“It’s less than you’re asking of me.”
The speech hung formally in the air
between them. Beth slipped from the ½re
of her anger into wooly embarrassment,
which would probably mean that she
would talk to Cessy and draw her a map
to the nearest clinic, ½fty miles away.
Father Marino said slowly, “When did
this happen to you? Was it me?” His
face looked strangely excited, which
Beth thought was the wrong reaction.
She was about to tell him so, but Alison
cried out, the hoarse squawk that sig-
naled a nightmare. “Please go home
now,” she said.

“I can go in and talk to her.”
Too easily, Beth could imagine her
daughter’s terror if she woke to the sight
of her priest bending over the bed. “It’s
time to go home.”

“You’ll help me?”
“I have to talk about adoption. It’s the

law.”

“That’s not what she needs to know.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I’m sorry,
Father. My daughter needs me.” She
steered him toward the door, then hur-
ried to her child, who was crying but
not feverish. Beth smoothed back Ali-
son’s clumped hair and said, “Father
Marino was here. He wants you to get
better right away.”

“Is he still here?” Alison said.

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Dædalus Spring 2004

101

Fiction by
Erin
McGraw

“I told him to go home.”
“I guess I should feel special that Fa-
ther came to see me. Even if I didn’t see
him.”

“You don’t need to see him,” Beth

said. “I can tell you everything you
missed.”

After twelve years, Father Marino

mostly remembered Beth in nights of
brilliant, corrosive dreams, from which
he woke up sizzling. On those nights he
rolled out of bed and counted off push-
ups until his arms gave out, then drank
glass after glass of water. He’d been
taught the techniques in rehab, and
they helped.

Beth had left the parish not long after

Alison’s wrists healed, and the bishop
had offered Father Marino a sort of va-
cation–six months at a facility in Mexi-
co, drinking iced tea under swags of pur-
ple bougainvillea where green hum-
mingbirds darted as if stitching the air.
The other priests talked ceaselessly
about margaritas and piña coladas.
“Even a beer,” muttered Father Spurl-
ing, Thad. “Wouldn’t you sell your own
mother?”

“Don’t think about it,” said Father

Marino.

“If you start talking to me about de-
tachment, I’ll take that slice of lemon
and shove it up your nose.”

Father Marino felt sorry for the oth-

er man, who one night at dinner had
clenched his water glass so hard he
snapped its stem. “I’m lucky, that’s all.
You wouldn’t believe the things I can
not think about.”

During the sharing sessions, he ac-
knowledged his misdeeds: Cessy; the
blurry nights; the inappropriate jokes;
and Beth, a misdeed he didn’t know how
to name. He wished he had more. Other
priests described their police records
and suspended driver’s licenses. Thad
Spurling had walked out of a depart-

ment store carrying three silk shirts still
on their hangers–one, he recalled wist-
fully, had been yellow. Of all the men
there, only Father Marino had never
been transferred to another parish.

He had broken no marriage, created
no crisis, not even dented a fender. His
whole life nothing had happened, just as
nothing was happening now. Like a boy
having a tantrum in an empty room, he
had struck furiously at the air around
him, and hadn’t been able to scrape a
knuckle. He should have been grateful,
but a peevish sense of loss spread
through him. At the end of a sharing
session, the priests were encouraged to
shake hands or embrace, but Father
Marino walked stiffly out, stiffening
further when he saw Father Spurling’s
approving face.

He came home after his six months,

and a noisy crowd waited for him at
the rectory with balloons and cake and
sweet punch. Frank Burding offered him
a soft drink. This was how it would be
from now on, Father Marino realized
with a spark of fury, but then the spark
winked out, and that was all.

Gradually he understood that Anthony

had bankrolled the holiday. Anthony
never stopped attending Mass at Holy
Name, and he donated handsomely to
the Bishop’s Annual Appeal. His law
½rm bought advertising space on the
church’s weekly bulletin. He passed two
years in admirable parish service before
making a private appointment with
Father Marino, and then he started talk-
ing as soon as he sat down. He was ready
to marry again. He was ready to make a
lifetime commitment, in his own eyes
and the eyes of the Church. But ½rst he
needed to have his marriage to Beth–
never a real marriage, Anthony said–
annulled. “I can’t do anything about
that,” Father Marino said. “Do you
think I have pull? I don’t.”

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“I know,” Anthony said. “I went to the

chancery of½ce and read up on proce-
dure. But you can speak for me.”

“They want statements from people
who knew both parties. Who knew the
marriage well.”

“Beth talked to you enough,” Anthony

said. He did not bother to smile, so
Father Marino didn’t either.

After Anthony left, Father Marino
read through the questionnaire An-
thony had left–six pages–with mount-
ing dismay. Why had Anthony and Beth
decided to marry? it asked. What oc-
curred on their wedding night? Did
Father Marino have reason to believe
that the marriage had been entered into
without proper understanding? He
couldn’t begin to answer the questions,
although he would answer them anyway.
To the paragraph asking about his qual-
i½cation to make such judgments, he
wrote, I was their priest.

The annulment was granted fourteen
months later, and Anthony leased Father
Marino a new car. “This will help you
get around, Father. It’s for the good of
the parish.”

“Like everything you do,” Father Ma-
rino said. Anthony looked surprised, but
he didn’t ½re back. Nobody ever did.
Sometimes Father Marino lay in bed, ap-
palled at himself for having told Marnie
Francis that her son wasn’t smart
enough to go to medical school, Elaine
Williamson that she was drinking too
much. But Marnie’s son did go to med-
ical school–in the Dominican Republic,
yes, but he still came back and passed his
boards–and Elaine kept right on drink-
ing. Was there a word for a man whose
acts were uniquely useless?

Catching himself, Father Marino
poured a glass of water, downed it, and
poured another. The parish relied on
him to baptize infants and bury the
dead. Who could mark life’s way sta-
tions, if not Father Marino? Now, for in-

stance, this steamy morning in July, he
was needed to of½ciate at the wedding
of Anthony’s oldest daughter.

Alison, Father Marino reminded him-
self, taking deep breaths of the sacristy’s
waxy air. He slipped the heavy green
vestment over his head and waited for
the storm of memories. But he had to
strain to recall the girl, her scowl and
dual casts, and her mother. Then he re-
membered Cecily, who had gone away
after her abortion–her second, as Beth
had guessed. Father Marino had been
relieved to learn that, and then ashamed,
and then relief had turned to forgetful-
ness. In the end, nothing had changed.
The rented organist started in on the
familiar measures of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s
Desiring,” and Father Marino strode
onto the altar. Anthony’s new wife bil-
lowed out of the pew beside her three
teenage sons. Behind her sat Beth, a slim
blur dressed in blue. The night before, at
the rehearsal dinner, she had shaken Fa-
ther Marino’s hand. Then she and her
new husband had joined her daughter’s
table, while Father Marino spent the
evening in conversation with the
groom’s great-aunt.

Impatient now, he watched Beth read

every word of the wedding program.
Nothing would have changed if, the
night before, he had pulled up a chair
beside her, ½ngered her bright hair, and
whispered to her through the meal.
Nothing if he had sipped from her glass
of champagne–his ½rst drink in eleven
years. Nothing if he had followed her
home. Still he would be standing in
these hot robes, and still she would
drive away with her dull husband after
the reception. They were all trapped,
every one of them, but he, the priest,
was trapped in the smallest room of all.
“Hi,” he said when the couple stood
before him. “Here’s the big day. Did you
get any sleep last night?”

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Dædalus Spring 2004

103

Fiction by
Erin
McGraw

“No,” said the groom ruefully, getting

a chuckle from the congregation.

“That’s all right. You’ll sleep from here

on in. You might sleep more than you
ever meant to.”

Hearing his words slip into dangerous
waters, Father Marino hurried into the
wedding liturgy. He generally riffed a lot
at weddings, making warm jokes about
pets or the new wedding china. It was
one of the reasons couples wanted him.
But now he stuck to the succession of
formal blessings and invocations. To do
so was steadying, and he felt his heart
settle down. Before him stood Alison
and her groom, their shining eyes impa-
tient. From the pews the congregation
looked on with mild affection, perhaps
half hearing the weighty words about
trust and steadfastness. Beth sat beside
her husband and looked at Father Mari-
no, her face like stone. Anthony had
been the one to insist that the wedding
be held here. Father Marino would not,
he knew, have been Beth’s choice.
Holding Alison and the groom’s
hands, Father Marino looked up from
his prayer book. “People think weddings
are about permanence, but that’s not
right. Vows change us. In ½ve years you
won’t be who you are now, or even who
you’d meant to be. In twenty years you
won’t recognize yourselves. Here you
are, looking beautiful, standing on the
altar. Can you know what comes next?”
“The blessing of the rings,” Alison
said, her clear voice so like her mother’s
that Father Marino closed his eyes for a
moment. The memories that had eluded
him earlier were now showering down.
He had loved his of½ce because Beth
came there. He had loved his of½ce tele-
phone because he talked to Beth on it.
“You’re in a hurry,” he said, and the
congregation laughed. “That’s good. You
should be holding your arms wide open.
Today is the day to embrace your fu-
ture.” The groom, who had a roguish

side, pulled Alison into a showy clasp,
and Father Marino stepped back and led
the quick applause for the couple, fore-
stalling the biddies who would later
complain that the ceremony had lacked
dignity.

“They’re examples to us all, these
two,” he said. “Why don’t we follow
their lead? There’s no better day than a
wedding for a hug.” In the pews, people
relaxed and smiled at one another. This
was not so different from the weekly Ex-
change of Peace at Mass, so no one was
surprised to see Father Marino fondly
embrace ½rst bride, then groom, then
move down from the altar to the ½rst
few pews. Working the crowd. He was
famous for it.

Even Beth must have been softened.
When he rustled to her, she raised her
smiling face to his, and he had the sud-
den, hectic thought that he could kiss
her mouth. What could possibly hap-
pen? Father Marino hesitated, then
lunged, but at the last second Beth
turned, and his lips dragged merely
across her cheek. Even then he clung
to her for a moment past propriety, until
he heard Anthony stand. Only then did
Father Marino, his heart plunging, let
Beth go.

Anthony’s big arms were already
open. He clasped the priest in a real
abbraccio that was as much a blow as an
embrace, and that whacked the air from
Father Marino’s lungs. Then Anthony
turned to kiss his wife, Beth to her hus-
band, and other members of the congre-
gation murmured and touched cheeks.
On the altar, Alison and her groom
kissed again, as prettily as dolls. Shaken,
Father Marino watched what he had set
in motion. All around him people em-
braced. Happiness sang through the hot
church air. He felt it himself. Mean-
while, the feel of Beth’s lips dissolved
from his face.

104

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