Empire Falls

entered St. Cat’s sacristy door. Father Mark consulted his watch. It was ten after ten, only twenty minutes until Mass was scheduled to begin, and the early birds were already filtering in. What he would’ve preferred, Father Mark realized, was to postpone further revelations until after Mass. Not possible. Not with the good Mrs. Walsh at his side, her very presence demanding action.
    “You stay here,” he instructed her, then crossed the drive, paused and finally peered in through one of the garage’s square little windows.
    On the back porch, Mrs. Walsh watched him lean forward and rest his forehead against the garage door. She counted to ten before he straightened up again. Better to be a competent housekeeper, she thought, than an incompetent priest.
    “W HEN G OD R ETREATS,” so alive and accessible for the early Mass, proved elusive for the late. In fact, as Father Mark ascended into the pulpit, he offered up a quick, fervent prayer asking God to help him recall the main thrust of the sermon he’d delivered so eloquently just two hours before, only to discover that He had indeed retreated, forcing Father Mark to pore desperately over his handwritten notes while the congregation grew curious, then restless, then alarmed. What Father Mark was having trouble locating in his notes was the conviction required to say these things. Two hours before, he had believed them to be true. Now he wasn’t so sure.
    He had spent the evening before in the company of a young artist who taught at Fairhaven College, the same professor who, though Father Mark was unaware of this, had selected Christina Roby’s and John Voss’s paintings to represent the sophomore class in the citywide art show. The two men had met a few weeks earlier at the Bath Iron Works at a rally against the commissioning of a new nuclear submarine. Both had been arrested for criminal trespass, then quickly released. During their incarceration, Father Mark had suspected immediately that the young artist was gay.
    He was less certain what conclusions the artist himself had drawn, but a few days later Father Mark received a note asking him to visit his campus studio. The letter arrived in Tuesday’s mail, and Father Mark, his heart pounding as he held it in his hand, found himself pondering both time, which had just slowed, and how it might be speeded up. Normally he tacked invitations onto the kitchen bulletin board as a reminder, but in this instance he took the note to the desk in his room and put it in the middle drawer among some worthless papers, as if proximity to mundane matters might magically render it mundane as well.
    No such luck. He checked the drawer half a dozen times that first day, rereading the letter until he had it memorized. In addition to showing him some work in progress, the artist said there was a spiritual matter he wanted to consult Father Mark about. By Wednesday he was unable to delude himself any further. He was hiding the note, and that gesture told him everything he needed to know. Neither did it leave him much choice but to tear the sheet up, which he did, depositing its pieces into the wastepaper basket beside his desk, after which he crossed the lawn to the church, where he lit a candle and knelt at the side altar to offer a prayer of gratitude.
    He was about to begin this prayer when he heard a sound behind him and turned just in time to see Father Tom sneak into the confessional. The old man had clearly followed him, and before Father Mark could chalk up his batty colleague’s behavior to his dementia, he felt a terrible, righteous rage rising in his chest. He stormed over to the confessional, dragged the old man out, and walked him back across the lawn, dressing him down as they went. When they arrived at Mrs. Walsh’s kitchen, the old man was hanging his head in shame and looked so pitiful that Father Mark relented, telling him that of course he was forgiven. He did not, however, return to the church to complete his prayer. A prayer was a prayer, he reassured himself, no matter where it was offered, and Father Mark decided to offer this one in the privacy of his room. Once there, however, it struck him that he was making far too much of the whole thing. There was no reason to believe that the invitation wasn’t entirely innocent, and no reason that it shouldn’t be innocently accepted. It was not the artist but Father Mark himself who, by his thoughts, had turned this into an occasion of sin. Blessedly,