Grace Ungiven (and the innocents left to yearn)

By Jeff Kelland

Award-winning Canadian author of What Disturbs Our Blood, James Fitzgerald, says of Grace Ungiven: "…a well-crafted labour of love and conscience."

A tragic story uncovers the depths of dysfunction in the Catholic Church.

How can a story about a man trying to bring an abusive priest to justice reveal truth about the Catholic clerical child sexual abuse crisis? Grace Ungiven, based on extensive research and over 100 in-depth interviews with Catholics from all walks of life, achieves this. It is, essentially, a fictional account of fact. Seventeen years ago, as an altar boy, Mickey Kavanaugh was sexually abused by his priest and went into self-imposed exile. He is broken, psychologically scarred and suffering ever since. Starting a victim support website for some measure of healing, he found another victim on the site abused by the same priest, around the same time and place, with DNA evidence he still holds. Mickey returns home on a desperate quest for justice and redemption, rounding up some old friends to make the case stick.

In this time of social conscience, activism and advocacy, what of justice for these children? With a fascinating blend of original storytelling and raw truth, Grace Ungiven delivers an unvarnished yet sensitive treatment of this ongoing crisis in a fast-paced tale of intrigue, romance, sex and crime. Read it with compassion for what is happening to these children, and finish it knowing why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Kelland
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223927266

Book preview

Table of Contents

Dedication

COPYRIGHT

PART ONE

1. CROSSES TO BEAR

2. HOUSES DIVIDED

3. AMASSED

4. THE CRUEL LIGHT OF DAY

5. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

6. LIVES IN THE BALANCE

PART TWO

7. MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

8. COMING TOGETHER

9. GAME AFOOT

10. HOLIER THAN THOU

11. THE WAGES OF SIN

12. FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

13. LABORS OF LOVE

14. LET THERE BE LIGHT

EPILOGUE

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Links

For the children

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2020 by Jeff R. Kelland

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the publisher.

Ebook by www.ebookconversion.ca

PART ONE

1. CROSSES TO BEAR

. . . a life so much more than wasted; misspent in a futile struggle against my own mortal instincts. A life-long battle cruelly conceived and joined for me by the obscene lie of divine salvation. And salvation from what? Sin? Satan? Nature? Myself?

. . . like millions upon millions more down through the centuries, I waited in vain for the grace of god. Grace promised but never given; and better unbidden, as it is never to be delivered, and it never was. We are all innocents, left alone to hold each other’s broken hearts, for a lifetime, to yearn blindly for an undefined and unproven reward . . .

. . . a useless, perilous journey from which there is no return or restitution. All is spoiled, and there is no joy to be found along the way; only a longing for emancipation, and sweet release . . .

______

Psychologist provides analysis of Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal

… Frawley-O’Dea, a trauma psychologist…spelled out how clerical narcissism resulted in a diminished capacity for empathy for sex abuse victims, particularly in church hierarchs…cover-up to protect priests, very much to the harm of victims – estimated as more than 50,000 children from 1950 to 2004, according to a John Jay College study…

~ The Buffalo News

September 28, 2012

______

Without looking up from his desk, the Morning Sentinel’s chief editor snarled in his office and barked out: Casey! Get in here!

Frank Casey looked over at the editor’s open office door, pursed his lips and shook his head. Turning back to the reporter he was chatting with, he smiled and winked. Gentle soul, isn’t he?

You know it, came the reply.

Frank dumped what was left of his coffee in the sink by the water cooler, methodically wiped out his Maine Black Bears mug and laid it on his desk beside the picture of his wife. He strode through the cacophony of the newsroom as casually as he could, so as not to appear to be at his boss’s beck and call. Slipping a sideways grin to the frumpy fifty-something receptionist peering at him disapprovingly over her horn-rimmed glasses, as she so often did for no good reason, he straightened himself and checked his posture as he entered the editor’s smoky lair. An old transistor radio on the windowsill crackled out the latest sports scores.

Yessir?

I still don’t have a damn thing on that mail fraud scandal you’ve been talking about since last month, Frank.

I told you I’d have the lead story put together for you by late October, Jeb. We’re not done with September yet.

The editor stuffed what he was reading into a file folder, threw it aside and snatched up another from one of the disorderly stacks piled up on his desk. To his right the crushed butt of a stogie smoldered in the overflowing ashtray. Next to it a terribly stained Bears coffee mug teetered on the edge of the desk. To his left an old catcher’s mitt half-hidden under a rumpled brown fedora. And on the front edge a green banker’s lamp caked in what seemed like centuries of dust, its base and his nameplate all but buried under still more paper. The only visible portion of his desk was a little space around a tarnished, possibly bronze Cooper basketball paperweight – the only item on the desk not being used as a paperweight.

He snorted, rubbing his jaw. Well, Frank, Monday is the first of the month. Work on it over the weekend. I don’t know what the hell you’re chasing down on this, but I want something on my desk early next week. Got it? He had yet to make eye contact.

Frank leaned over and nudged the precarious mug farther in on the desk, then looked down at his shoes, sheepish. I won’t get to properly interview my informant on the story until Wednesday. When I meet him. It’s taking longer to get all my ducks in a row for this one than I expected. I’d settle for one duck right now!

And you call yourself an investigative reporter.

Frank looked up, glaring. Fuck off, Jeb!

Fuck off yourself, Frank, the editor croaked, looking into the empty coffee mug like he had lost something in it. He laid it back down nearer the edge and picked up another piece of paper. You haven’t brought me one of your big shit-kicking news stories in a long while.

Frank straightened with a sigh, running fingers of both hands back through his jet-black hair. Look, Jeb. In the first place, in all my seventeen years with this paper I never once referred to myself as an investigative reporter – even though I’m the best damn investigative reporter you’ve got and you bloody well know it! And when have I ever missed a deadline?

Without altering his costive bearing, maintaining the stone-face he was wearing before Frank came in, the editor wheezed, and a barely audible chuckle found its way up from the rattling in his chest.

What the fuck is wrong with you this morning anyway, Jeb? Frank was getting sick of talking to the top of his boss’s bald head. You’re crankier than usual and that’s saying something! What’s the trouble? Haven’t been laid yet this week? I know I haven’t.

The editor dropped the latest piece of paper to become crumpled in his hand. He looked up from his desk with one bushy eyebrow cocked and barely a suggestion of good humor. Heck of a buzzer-beater last night, hey Frank?

Fuckin’ right, man. And a three-pointer too.

The editor leaned back in his chair with a long loud creak, scratching his neck as he rested his arm on the desk drawer he always kept open for this purpose, looking pleased with himself. I told you Jackson would end up a ringer for this team, didn’t I?

I know, I know. Frank softened. You took off awfully fast last night, though. I thought we were going for a few beers after the game like always.

Sorry. The editor abruptly sat forward again looking back down at his desk, grabbing another piece of paper. I had to go home and get laid.

Frank snickered and shook his head as he walked out of the office. Jeb was a frustrating cantankerous old bastard, but his no-nonsense approach to absolutely everything was a trait in him Frank had come to appreciate, even count on.

Call on line three, Frank, the frump said with a facile smile as he passed in front of her desk.

That perfume! Okay, thanks.

Pinning the receiver under his chin, Frank snapped open his briefcase and sat to his desk, a positively tidy station compared to his editor’s disaster area. Casey.

The voice was hesitant, almost a whisper. Frank Casey?

Yes. Hang on for a moment. Frank clutched the receiver out from under his head and called out over the office din. Can we please keep it down to a dull roar for a minute, people? There was no perceptible change in the noise level whatsoever. Fuck. I need a headset! He leaned back silently in his well-oiled chair. Now. Yes, I’m sorry. This is Frank Casey. What can I do you for?

There was an inordinately long pause. Then the caller cleared his throat and diffidently said: Yes, Mr. Casey. I am calling you this morning on behalf of our Father O’Connor of the Church of the Holy Redeemer here in Waterford?

Yes? Frank bolted upright. What the hell?

Yes, I am Father O’Connor’s personal assistant and he has asked me to call you and ask if you would be so kind as to be his guest for dinner on Monday. The voice sounded a bit muffled, but becoming more confident, a little more audible and gaining speed.

Frank found it hard not to sound surprised or puzzled by the invitation, particularly coming from this low and somewhat unctuous voice. Really? I mean, yes, of course. But…

The voice interrupted, undeterred: He wishes to discuss an important matter he feels will be of great interest to an experienced Waterford resident and prominent newspaper reporter such as yourself.

I see. So…

Fine. Shall we say eight o’clock sharp on Monday evening? At Repasté in Whitefield, Lincoln County. Are you familiar with Whitefield?

Lincoln County? Whitefield. Yes, of course. Why all the way to Whitefield?

It’s one of Father O’Connor’s favorite local restaurants. Just thirty minutes if you take the I-95.

Okay. No worries. And eight is fine.

And the establishment, Mr. Casey. Do you know it?

Oh, yes, he lied. I’ll find it.

Very good then. Father O’Connor looks forward to the pleasure of breaking bread with you on Monday evening. Good day, Mr. Casey, and may God bless.

For the first time Frank noticed Blocked ID on the telephone screen and leaned in farther on his desk. Yes, please thank the Father for his kind invitation, and I didn’t get… But he was already talking to a dial tone. Damn!

Frank slowly hung up and sat back, staring at the phone. The call was a surprise mystery. What did it mean? His curiosity was more than piqued, and he cursed himself for not asking for the assistant’s name earlier in the conversation.

Suddenly he became aware that the noise level in the newsroom had dropped significantly. He looked up to find most of the staff either whispering to each other, looking his way, or both – except for the receptionist. She had her head down feigning interest in something on her desk. She was not peering at him disapprovingly over her glasses, but he knew that meant she was listening.

The editor was leaning against the office doorway, burly arms crossed, sardonic. Father, Frank? Invitation, Frank? he teased.

Frank rolled his eyes and wagged a finger at his boss. Not now, Jeb, not now. He swept the sports jacket from the back of his chair and made for the door. You can all go back to what you were doing now, he called over his shoulder. I need a fucking cigarette.

As the door was closing behind him, he could hear the noise level in the room returning to normal again, only now it was laced with mocking remarks and derisive laughter at his expense.

Outside it was sunny, but it seemed a bit colder than when he came to work that morning. In the parking lot Frank leaned his six-one frame back stiffly against the trunk of his car, lighting up a Marlboro. He clapped the cover of the Zippo shut and threw his head back, almost spitting the smoke up into the crisp autumn air.

It was an all too portentous phone call for his liking, unsettling, intimidating. He hadn’t been to a Mass since he was fifteen back in Newfoundland, and he shuddered at the thought. A couple of years earlier he spoke to this priest in passing in the lobby of the Portland Theater during a charity ball, the only time they ever crossed paths. And now he couldn’t come up with one conceivable reason for the priest’s completely unanticipated dinner invitation. What does O’Connor want? What does the pious bastard want to discuss? And why me?

Frank didn’t have any answers. But as a recovering Catholic and crack reporter in need of a good story for his editor, there were two things he did know. As daunting as a dinner date with a Catholic priest was for a middle-aged man who spent his entire adult life trying to forget a Catholic childhood, it smelled like a big story; and this meant he was in for a long weekend of wondering and waiting to find out what the hell it was all about.

He stepped on his half-smoked cigarette and went back to work in an ugly mood.

______

Anne really liked her Mondays. It was probably her favorite day of the week. It seemed a bit strange for her to feel this way, and she never said so to anyone else. But she knew it had nothing to do with Mondays per se. It had more to do with the fact that her weekend was finally over and done with. She was not fond of weekends.

Anne was an attractive forty-three-year-old blond homemaker whose husband worked nine to five, Monday to Friday. She had no children and no time clock to punch. Her weekdays were totally conceived and structured by her, for her. They were predictable and so relatively stress-free; and she was rarely required to do anything she did not want to do.

Her weekends, on the other hand, were too unstructured and variable for her delicate sense of order. Every weekend was difficult for Anne. She had to come up with so many different things to do; and the activities usually had to accommodate other people besides herself, for the most part, her husband. Weekends were taxing so Mondays always came as a relief.

But this wasn’t Monday. It was Friday. It was her laundry day, and her day to begin the process of bracing for Saturday and Sunday. Her husband called from work at lunchtime to let her know that he would be late for dinner this evening. He sounded irritable, which meant she was probably in for an even more stressful weekend than usual.

She dearly loved her husband, but she didn’t like having him around a lot. It seemed the more time they spent apart, the more relaxed and enjoyable their time together. She could get so much done on her own. The few hours with him after dinner on weekday evenings were pleasant enough, but Saturdays and Sundays were much more challenging.

There were some ongoing difficulties in the bedroom which certainly wasn’t helping matters. But it was always more of a problem for him than it was for her. Unlike most American couples who met in college in the latter part of the twentieth century, their sexual relations were not near as freewheeling or adventurous as the brand of sex their contemporaries were practicing. Mostly because their individual paths from birth to college made it hard for either of them to feel contemporary when it came to sex.

Their lives before they met had been different, so they each brought their own considerable baggage to the relationship. But they both had starts in life more unusual and challenging than most, and the circumstances surrounding each of their first years of adulthood were also far from the norm. Further complicating matters was what they had in common: the fact that both were reared by strictly Roman Catholic parents in strictly Roman Catholic communities. This conspired with other childhood and young adulthood misfortunes to keep their sexual risk-taking to a bare minimum. They were locked into a severely limited sexual repertoire with a predictable script for intercourse.

They were both in love and otherwise perfectly healthy. But their sex life began and continued to be terribly careful and civilized. After many years of comfortable childless marriage, it got to the point where polite contentment became the goal. True sexual satisfaction had been compromised away, now just another forgotten past fantasy. Masturbation had always been frowned upon, and she denied herself this pleasure. He, of course, did not.

She couldn’t get nearly as concerned or worked up about it as he did, blithely chalking it up to the difference in the male and female sex drives, a stubbornly insouciant mindset he insisted was a big part of the problem. She was under-motivated to treat it like a problem they needed to work on and sort out. Even she found it strange that she was in no hurry to address any of it, somehow nervously content to go with the status quo. When they argued about it, he would insist these things were all facets of the same problem, which she would vehemently deny. Subconsciously, sometimes consciously of late, she knew he was right.

She reluctantly agreed that it did seem to be getting worse lately. But on this morning, as she emptied the hamper and gathered her things in preparation for a trip to the laundromat, their problematic sex life was an unwelcome distraction she resented. An additional strain on her Friday state of mind. But there was something else. Something disquieting was creeping up on her, becoming conscious and oddly troubling for her to brook – their difficulties in the bedroom were starting to bother her!

Anne and her husband lived an upper-middle-class lifestyle. So, among many other nice things she had a big Tappan washer and matching dryer at her disposal. She didn’t really need to go to a laundromat, much less an ordinary one in a rundown strip mall on the other side of town. But she always did every Friday morning, at the same laundromat, using the washer and dryer at home only when necessary.

She discovered ‘Suds in the Hood’ quite by accident two years before. Driving through town one day en route to a dental appointment, she noticed a nasty stain on her new cashmere cape and quickly ducked into a seedy little laundromat to rectify it. The place was full of honest down-to-earth characters from hard-working lower-class families, mostly black ladies. And they all took a refreshingly loose, almost careless perspective on most of the usual trials and tribulations of life – a heathen attitude nowhere to be found in Anne’s Catholic world.

She ended up being late for that dental appointment and found herself going back to Suds again the following week to do all her laundry. It was a chance to have a more substantial conversation with the women she met the week before, and especially with the black lady running the place. By the end of the second visit she was hooked, and after that she never missed a Friday morning there.

Her husband had no idea she was doing this, or that the expensive washer and dryer he bought for her was being underutilized. She never told him. It was one of those parts of her life she kept from him. She maintained as many of these private issues with herself as possible. Nothing too serious like having an extramarital fling or affair, nothing like that. She would never dream of it. But when it came to the details of her everyday life experience her husband was on a strict need-to-know basis. That was just the way she did things.

She did love her husband, insofar as she was able. But she needed to have her little secrets; certain parts of her life, certain thoughts she occasionally entertained, feelings grappled with from time to time – all to herself. It kept pressure from the outside world at bay, leaving her to address these matters on her own, or not, if and when she so desired. Harmless enough she figured.

Hidden deeper inside this undisclosed treasury of private experiences, however, was a lifetime of repression and guilt, innumerable unconfronted challenges and a plethora of unresolved indecisions. This was also where she kept her trump card against having to confront the more difficult aspects of her reality, those requiring her to take serious responsibilities or make personal sacrifices – denial.

Anne never really allowed herself to consciously admit it, but spending regular albeit limited time with the less fortunate, less educated people at this laundromat helped her feel more fortunate, better educated, better than them. She would be genuinely ashamed if she ever admitted this to herself, but she never did. To do so would bring with it the obligation to feel bad about it, giving herself another unnecessary Friday stressor.

In many ways it was slumming. A captivating entertaining sidebar in her otherwise buttoned-down Catholic week. An hour filled with plenty of common sense and simple homespun wisdom from ladies unencumbered by restrictive religious ideology or demanding social etiquette, having too much trouble negotiating the economy and a poor standard of living to be bothered with such things.

She pitied them, loved them, and envied them all at once. It was an escape. For Anne, that loud humid bleach-smelling hour every Friday morning was almost like spending time in a living sit-com. She had a cameo role in every episode; and Estelle, the Southern Baptist owner-operator from Georgia, was her favorite member of the cast.

This Friday they exchanged the usual greetings and pleasantries. But after the ladies finished gushing about Anne’s fancy fall outfit, as they always politely did for her sake, the conversation turned to one of their favorite topics – the men in their lives. Following a full round of wagging fingers, nodding heads, colorful stories and opinions, Estelle noticed Anne was not contributing as much to the banter as she usually did.

Face puckered, her big brow wrinkled down over her eyelids: Don’t you got nothin’ ta say ‘bout it, Annie?

Everyone else stopped to listen and watch Estelle wait for an answer.

Not today. Anne kept her eyes on the sheet she was folding.

Aw, come now, child. Dat man o’ yoes givin’ you hahd tahm?

Anne looked up eyes wide. Oh, no, no! Nothing like that, Estelle.

What den?

Anne looked back down at the laundry. I’m the problem, really. She was startled by how easily she confessed this, but immediately realized why. No one here knew anyone else in her life. She was safe; and it was probably the only place she knew where she could speak freely and honestly.

Well now, you jus’ tell ‘Stelle all ‘bout it. The ladies leaned in a little closer.

He’s not the problem. I think I am.

An obese Latino woman behind Anne drew a breath and chimed in asking: Huh? How so?

"He needs... You know… He wants more, you know…sex, she said, whispering the word to the floor. And I just don’t know what to do!"

Estelle was already looking down in front of her, adamantly shaking her head, hands placed squarely on her big hips. You jus’ got ta let ‘em have it, honey! she admonished.

No, you don’t understand…

Ah ‘stands plenty. Nobody ‘stands men moe ‘n me! Me’n Hinry ahways trahs ta…

I want to, Estelle, really I do!

Estelle rolled her eyes, flashing whites, the ladies buzzing with each other.

Just then, a short frail black lady came over, let out the longest sigh and put her hand on Anne’s lower back, looking exceedingly serious. You gots ta see sumbody ‘bout dat, honey.

______

If the life of a good devout Catholic woman is severely marginalized, the life of the average Catholic nun would have to be a complete sacrifice of life and limb to the exacting principles and practices of the church. The average Catholic nun is, by definition, a different breed from the average woman, even the average Catholic woman. But Sister Catherine was especially different. So very different from the average woman or the average nun.

She came into the world in a backward penurious northern corner of rural Maine, less than a mile from the Quebec border, on a bitterly cold winter’s night in 1956. The exact day was never recorded. She was born to a poor Catholic schoolgirl who had feverishly succumbed to the honest passion of a callow Protestant boy, somewhere in the dark on a sticky summer night.

The result of unmarried sex, she was rejected at some point between conception and delivery, then abandoned at birth, summarily orphaned before she was even given a name. Scooped up by the local convent, she was dubbed Catherine by the nuns who took her in; and so began an immured life of service in utter obscurity. Cloistered her entire childhood, she was kept hidden from the prying eyes and scurrilous judgment of the Catholic community outside. She lived seventeen miserable years knowing nothing but the strictest of rules, unquestioning obedience and menial work inside the convent walls. Steeped in the staid piety and proclivities of its twenty-one other residents, sometimes compelled to play handmaiden and more to some of the older, more demanding nuns – she had no way out.

Just after turning seventeen Catherine was made a novice, finally granted sisterhood before her twentieth birthday. The time and circumstances of her sordid provenance long forgotten by the outside world, it was now safe for her to emerge; and little Sister Catherine was permitted to join in the ministrations the nuns performed outside the convent. But she was not permitted to provide nursing services in the infirmary or teach at the school as the other nuns did. She was assigned strictly to cooking, cleaning and laundry duties, most often alone. She soon learned her sisterhood had limits, more limits than most. People on the outside may have forgotten who she was and where she came from, but the nuns on the inside never forgot, and they never let her forget.

Her ultimate reward for forfeiting her identity and childhood, then devoting still another eleven hard years to slavish work as a nun in and around the backwoods convent, was a welcome surprise – permission to relocate. In the summer of 1984, the Diocese of Portland sent out a statewide call to all rural convents for strong, young, exceptionally dedicated sisters to meet the exigencies arising from the church’s burgeoning demands in the more urban areas. Sister Catherine’s sad life in obscurity was becoming swept up in the winds of change, and it was about to take a very nice turn for the better.

For the Roman Catholic Church in North America and beyond, the mid-1980s were the best of times and the worst of times. One of the more popular pontiffs in modernity, Pope John Paul II, occupied the Vatican, and the full-blown sex scandal had yet to explode and threaten the hallowed halls. But it was also a time of troubling transition for many church leaders. The reforms brought in with the more relaxed doctrine of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 were starting to show in church and among the faithful, yet their numbers were consistently going down. There were some rumblings and grumblings, but Catholic ceremony was starting to lose its long-standing formality.

With pomp strangely at odds with circumstance, the situation called for a familiar Catholic Church remedy – a series of redeployments – and a twenty-eight-year-old Sister Catherine found herself arbitrarily assigned to take up residence and good works in the Servants of the Holy Sacrament. It was a Kennebec County convent under the authority of the nearby Church of the Holy Redeemer. The upright newly ordained priest, Father O’Connor, had inherited the Beatus Corpus Christi Parish, his first, the year before.

Waterford would not have been her choice, but she stoically accepted it as she did everything else in her life that was decided for her. Moving south from that old convent to this one would be a pivotal event for Catherine. It was a trip symbolizing the contemporary movement of the Roman Catholic Church away from doing things in the traditional way, to take a more contemporary approach. But for young Sister Catherine, it might as well have been a sudden shift from the dark ages to the twentieth century.

She took the trip by train, the only event in her young life so far that remotely qualified as an adventure, and that’s just how it felt to her. She had never been any farther from the old convent than the next town, three miles up the road. Now, as she gazed out the train car window in wonder at the verdant Maine countryside swiftly passing in front of her, the train wended its way farther and farther south. The autumn foliage was becoming thicker and more plentiful, the trees more varied and colorful. She had never seen anything like it.

At the same time, a similar transformation was taking place inside her. Around the midpoint of the journey Catherine discovered that her heart was beating more determinedly under her habit than it was when she first boarded the train, quickly leading to the realization that it was beating seemingly closer to her throat. She also found her stomach was nervous and upset.

At first she thought it was fear, swallowing hard, as this was how it always felt whenever someone ran afoul of convent rules and the retribution of Mother Superior was imminent. But this was somehow different. Searching her thoughts for sources of fear she found none, and soon came to understand what was happening to her – she was, in fact, excited! Excitement was an emotion young Catherine rarely felt, if at all. But as she neared her destination it grew, and she was becoming heady with it.

As another small town whizzed by, the sun setting through the trees, her excitement was enhanced by another strange and wonderful feeling – freedom. This one she regarded with much more suspicion, tempered by the reality of where she came from, who she was and where she was going. Even so, she treasured it, kept it inside, knowing she would nurture it with the time and space she had in front of her. Her tragic oppressive life as a child was now behind her, literally, becoming more distant with each passing second. That day changed her life much more than just geographically; and as the train pulled into Waterford station, she knew in her heart that it had.

A large white sign with bold red lettering that caught her attention somewhere along the way was stuck in her mind, and it gave her an idea. Looking out with giddy anticipation, like a captive bird cautiously considering an opened cage door, she stepped out onto the platform. Warmly greeted by her prosaic new Mother Superior and two torpid elderly nuns, she confidently extended her hand and introduced herself: Hello ladies. Bless you for coming to meet me today. I am Sister Catherine Brennan.

For the first time she had a surname. One she gave herself, mind you, but it was all her own. In so doing she made the first freely determined choice of her life and acted on it. And before they reached her new home that evening, she vowed it would not be her last.

She didn’t know it yet, but she was in for quite a pleasant additional surprise. Unlike the obscure rural convent she left behind, the nuns at the Servants of the Holy Sacrament were not cloistered. She would have her own private home, and one of her choosing. This rare bird would be caged no more.

______

Marion Kavanaugh made a modest living cleaning the upscale homes of Waterford’s well-to-do. She had five clients, one for each day of the week; and on Fridays she took care of a stately Elizabethan-style manor on Woolcott Lane. It sat on a manicured four-acre lot with ten mature oak trees strategically placed around the perimeter. It was the parochial house behind the Church of the Holy Redeemer, the residence of her beloved parish priest, Father Seamus O’Connor.

On this sunny September morning Marion was even more distracted than usual. She carefully pulled her faded blue Civic into the expansive driveway, just inside the sidewalk, tight to the low meticulously trimmed hedge bordering the lawn. A gleaming pearl white Escalade was parked up close to one of the doors of the three-car garage. Then a low-flying crow fluttered across in front of her windshield. Hopelessly superstitious, she made the sign of the cross three times with eyes closed, and blessed herself before opening the car door.

She was a devout, heavy set fifty-nine-year-old woman, much heavier set than she used to be. As she emerged laboriously from her car, a mature Latino groundskeeper appeared from around the side of the garage, a rake in one hand and a garbage bag stuffed with leaves in the other. His gray camouflage coveralls and black work boots looked like they were just out of their packages, and he sported a lascivious smile of perfect white teeth framed by a thick black mustache. Goo’ mahrneen, Saynyoreeta! Miguel Juarez intoned slowly and musically.

Marion let out a heavy sigh. Widowed fifteen years, she maintained an acute aversion to pursuing or being pursued by any man, much less some middle-aged Mexican gardener who fancied himself a bit of a Don Juan. Sex had always been optional, even distasteful for her; but after her husband died it became just a disgusting thing other people did, a non-issue. She never thought about it. Only encounters like this with Miguel brought it sickeningly back to mind, briefly, then promptly dismissed again.

Good morning, Miguel. Please don’t proposition me, Miguel. Not again today.

As slow and deliberate as a typical southern drawl, he replied: Joo luke berry bewtifall dees mahrneen, Saynyoreeta.

Same thing every time! She had yet to arrive on a Friday morning without being greeted by him in this way, and rarely able to leave in the afternoon without him saying or waving goodbye to her in the same salacious manner. Thank you, Miguel. I’ll just let myself in, she told him flatly with a pointed frown.

But Miguel, as always, was true to form. Without a trace of artifice or self-consciousness he assessed her appearance, unabashed. He studied her like she was a specimen of some kind, as she puffed and perspired her way up the inlayed stone steps to the door. While she feverishly dug through the contents of her handbag for the key, he purposefully and obviously appraised her without shame or a scintilla of self-respect. She had his complete undivided attention.

He always looked at her this way, like he was watching TV with nobody looking back at him. This, of course, made her extremely self-conscious and nervous every single Friday morning. And by the time she finally did gain entry to the house, she felt like she was stepping out from under a giant microscope.

In the serene quiet of the porch she placed her key in the cerulean glass bowl on an elegant mahogany stand against the wall. She checked her appearance in the gilded mirror hanging over it, slipped off her plain coat and shoes and put them in the closet. Quietly closing the closet door, she walked into the spacious foyer.

From her perspective as a garden variety, lower middle-class Catholic parishioner, Marion regarded the parochial house’s grand design and ornate interior as simply rich. It was, in fact, almost palatial. Sumptuous hallways and spacious rooms were classically decorated featuring an abundance of Renaissance art. Polished shining marble floors underscored and complimented the marble countertops, tabletops and mantelpieces; and sweeping brocaded drapes adorned every window. Heavily lacquered wood moldings throughout the house set off the hand carved wood newels and balustrades leading up the carpeted stairway to the second level. Every item of furniture was a period piece of one kind or other, the decor showing nothing contemporary whatsoever.

She had been the priest’s housekeeper since her husband died, becoming as much a fixture in his many-fixtured home as anything else it contained. But a growing concern that she could be dismissed soon due to an increasingly lighter workload was beginning to trouble her deeply. She decided that today she would broach the subject with him and get it out into the open. That is if he did come home, and he usually did on Fridays.

Father O’Connor liked to travel. He did so regularly for various speaking engagements, conferences, retreats, vacations; and once or twice to visit the Vatican itself. But in recent months he was progressively taking more time away, his absences becoming longer, more frequent. He was spending most of his time now at the seat of the diocese in Portland. Marion disapproved of this blatant neglect of the Waterford parish but never said a word to anyone about it. Occasionally, without intending to, she would let