“It’s Brigid, Dad. I’ll send you pictures after the baby comes,” I said.
A week later, Kyle Richardson called to say he’d been notified that G.S.F. had died.
I sat for a long time at my desk in the rectory, remembering my father. The bean-sized place where I had quarantined thoughts of him burst open and flooded my mind. I was both in the rectory and in my house on Jackson Street as a teen. My mother was in a drugged sleep in their bedroom, and George and I were in the kitchen, where he was reading my essay on epic poetry.
His criticism was scathing. I was just fourteen, two grades ahead of other kids my age, still fearful of his enormous, condescending presence. But I stood up for myself that day.
“You’re being too hard on me, Dad. Don’t forget. I’ve been getting As.”
He had taken a pen and written across the entire face of the paper, C-. Sloppy thinking. G. S. Fitzgerald.
I wouldn’t be able to turn the paper in the next morning. I would have to retype and probably rewrite it again. I shouted, “I hate you!”
And he said, “Hate me all you want. Someone has to give you standards. You need something to push against, Snotface.” And then he quoted Nietzsche, saying, “‘What does not kill me makes me stronger.’”
I was furious. After telling him that I hated him, I shouted, “I wish you were dead!”
I didn’t want to remember that, but now that he was dead, I had no defense against it.
I remembered that I rewrote the paper. I got an A+. I didn’t tell him. George gave me plenty to push against until the day my mother died and I finally freed myself.
But had I?
After Harvard, I had gone to one of the most rigorous medical schools anywhere. I had achieved high grades, and I had gone to one of the arguably most savage places on earth to practice medicine. Not once but twice.
There was no denying it in this moment, when I was all alone with the memory of the man who had stood in for my unknown father. What hadn’t killed me had indeed made me stronger. And now I missed the son of a bitch who had been the dominant influence in my life to this day.
Of course I forgave him. Why couldn’t I do it when he was alive?
I folded my arms on my desk then, put my head down and cried. I cried for the caring moments we never shared, for the fact that he had never told me he loved me and that I understood now that he had loved me. I cried because he hadn’t known Karl and he would have liked and respected him. He hadn’t known Tre and would never know the child I was carrying.
I cried because my father was gone.
When I was all sobbed out, I washed my face.
Then I went down to the church and prayed for G.S.F.’s immortal soul.
Chapter 93
WINTER MONTHS flew by, and while unique and devastating weather patterns disrupted growing seasons around the globe, spring unfurled in western Massachusetts with leaves and buds and red-breasted robins.
The first Sunday in May, James presented a woman priest to our congregation. Yes, a woman priest. Her name was Madeline Faulkner, and we welcomed her at JMJ with applause and coffee and sugar cookies in the basement room.
Madeline was in her mid-thirties, had degrees in theology and law, and had missionary experience in the Amazon. She made a presentation to the congregation and was welcomed and well received. If the archdiocese knew or cared about this new priest, they didn’t say anything to us.
That evening, Madeline, Bishop Reedy, James, and I had dinner in our oaken kitchen: chicken stew and honeyed tea and fresh apple pie.
Madeline asked me, “Have you seen the film Pink Smoke over the Vatican?’
I hadn’t.
“It’s about a movement that began back in 2002,” she said. “Seven women were ordained in international waters, outside the reach and regulations of the Roman Catholic Church. Incredible, really.
“Women protesting the exclusion of women by the conclave that chose Pope Benedict released a cloud of pink smoke in front of U.S. cathedrals in Rome. Other women, in support of female ordination, did the same in the streets and from balconies throughout the world. Pink smoke, Brigid.”
I said, “White smoke rises from the Vatican when a Pope is chosen…”
“That’s it,” said Madeline. “Pink smoke suggests that one day we could have a female pope.”
“May we live so long,” Bishop Reedy said.
Reedy, James, and Madeline proceeded to quote historic church elders who laid down Church law blocking women from the priesthood.
It was quite hilarious, really, to listen to the three of them snapping out quotes from ancient history that still lived today.
“Paul,” said Reedy. "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I don’t permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She must be silent.”
“Tertullian,” James said, grabbing my hand. “Woman is ‘the devil’s gate.’”
“Timothy,” said Faulkner. “‘I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.’” She banged the table with her fist for emphasis, and we all laughed.
As for me, I counted my blessings: I had love. I had friends. I had a baby on the way, and I was helping clergy who came to JMJ seeking guidance on opening breakaway churches like ours. A dozen new JMJ churches modeled on ours had started up throughout the Northeast in this past year. Congregations had opened their minds and their doors. Under the name of the church, the acronym JMJ was posted on the churches’ signs and doorways to let worshippers know that all were welcome.
I was excited to be at ground zero of this sea change in Catholicism. A woman priest. A married priest. Inclusiveness was catching fire. What next?
Chapter 94
WE NAMED our 110 percent healthy baby girl Gillian, and she became Gilly before we had even left the hospital. She was bright pink, had James’s blue eyes and my red hair, a glass-shattering scream, and she was absolutely beautiful, made with love.
James beheld his daughter with such awe, handled her with such tenderness, that it felt to me that he couldn’t believe that he had actually fathered a child.
He kept saying, “Brigid, look at her.”
“I see her. I see her.” I brushed her wispy hair with my fingertips. “Gilly, open your eyes.”
I’d gotten to know and love this baby deeply while I carried her, but when she was inside me, she reminded me of the months I had carried Tre and how much I had loved that little girl.
But when Gilly was first put into my arms, my heart swelled so much, I could hardly breathe, and, while I would never stop missing my firstborn, I was overcome with love for Gilly, more than I could possibly say.
I didn’t let Gilly out of my sight. And that was exactly how she wanted it. She slept in our room, and when I took a new job at the Maple Street Clinic, only a few blocks from the church, I took Gilly with me. I commandeered an office next to mine, had a door installed between us so that I could watch her all day. Worse yet, I documented her waking and sleeping hours, her appetite and her bodily functions, in my journal. I was keeping a medical chart. I was that terrified that she might for some reason die.
It was nuts, but I forgave myself for being overprotective. And James forgave me, too. Gilly must have approved of the care she was getting, because she kept growing and thriving. I finally exhaled when she was six months old and I let James take her out of the house without my hovering over them.
Meanwhile, media storms continued to rage around our home.
The press knew of Gilly’s birth, and James’s being a married priest with a child added to his colorful history and mine, creating too much human interest to be ignored. It was as if the tiny farm town of Millbrook, Massachusetts, were outlined on the map in red marker pen and reporters had stuck innumerable pins in it.