Page 101 of Saint
“He’s also a fox,” Jamie says doubtfully. “And again, it feels strange to sexualize what’s essentially a drawing.”
“You’re very pure,” I tell him.
“I think you’re the truly pure one, being a monk and all,” he says, reaching for the muffin container at his feet.
I am definitely not the truly pure one.
And I’m suddenly very sad.
“I meant what I said,” I say awkwardly. “I don’t want this to be a situation where the only outcome is unhappiness for you no matter what.”
Jamie gives me another smile, but it’s coupled with a frank look. “The man I wanted to marry didn’t want to marry me because he loved someone else more. It hurt, and I can’t lie about that. But I’m going to be okay.”
I look up at him as he stands up.
“Will you really?” I ask, needing to know. When I’d told Elijah that I’d leave a monastic life for him, I hadn’t been thinking of Jamie. But I’m thinking of him now. I can’t undo anything that’s happened, but I can be aware of him and what he’s lost and what he’s felt and make sure he’s okay.
“I will,” he affirms. “It hurts now, but it would have hurt much more three years from now when this would’ve driven us apart anyway. And honestly?” he adds, handing the container of muffins to me, which I take. “I’m a lot more emotionally healthy than the two of you. I’m going to be fine a long time before you are.”
Well. That’s fair.
“I hope you read the article, Brother Patrick. And the muffins are for all the brothers. Also the container can’t go in the dishwasher.”
Of course it can’t.
I stand to say goodbye, giving him a shallow bow as he leaves the cloister, and then I sit right back down and set my muffin and the container to the side, picking up the issue ofModeinstead.
The entire article is good enough to hurt me as I read it. The vivid imagery of the Belgian forests. The lavender fields of Provence and the tall, dark cliffs of St. Columba’s. I can practically taste the beer as he describes it, and all the personal moments in the article are beyond bittersweet to read. The moments I was there to witness too because I was by his side.
It’s the last paragraph of the article that I reread over and over again, there in the cloister with the fountain burbling and the hot August sun moving overhead.
There was a moment at St. Columba’s. Father Finbarr had graciously let me work in the library while my ex went to talk to their master brewer. It was raining, and I could still taste the communion wine on my tongue, and I was surrounded by books that have been collected over centuries and centuries with the faith that someone in the future would be there to read them, even there at the edge of the world. Through the veil of the rain outside, I could just barely make out the sea cliffs. It was impossible, in that lonely place, not to think of the faith this life requires. Monks pray, sing, sleep, work, brew beer, build libraries, and dig graves all for a love that they will never see consummated in this lifetime, for a beloved that they cannot see or touch, except by metaphor alone. It is impossible not to be affected by that, not to be humbled by the patience and the trust it requires, and so it is with the idea of patience that I leave you now. Patience is what makes good beer and good love both, and it is what I believe has now given me the greatest gift I’ll ever receive. (And no, it isn’t a case of the honey beer from Our Lady of the Fountains.)
The greatest gift he’ll ever receive.
I take the muffins into the refectory, and then I ask the abbot for permission to spend the next two days in the hermitage, which he grants.
I spend the days praying and chopping wood and thinking.
And this time, I have the patience to let the answers come to me instead of the other way around.
* * *
“This is Tyler Bell,”the voice answers on the other end of the phone.
“I don’t want to be a monk anymore,” I say. I glance around—I’m in my office and it’s a Saturday, so no one else would be in here, but still. This is a private conversation. Just me and my brother who also failed out of celibacy school.
“Well, I see we’re getting right to it,” Tyler says, and then I hear the sound of a door and the abrupt cease of a breezy, bug-filled outdoors. He’s probably at the cabin he borrows from Poppy’s family when he’s writing. (Okay, well, it’s lesscabinthanvery expensive forest retreat, but that’s how the Danforths roll.)
“Can I just start from the beginning?” I say. “Like the beginning-beginning?”
“Would that be the time you called me before you went to the monastery?”
The day I’d returned to Mount Sergius—no longer in crisis and with my life actually prepared for me to leave it—I’d called Tyler from the abbey parking lot.
Am I doing the right thing?I’d asked him. I hadn’t told him about That Night; I hadn’t really told him anything, aside from that I’d visited the abbey once and knew I wanted to be a monk.
Well,he’d answered slowly.I don’t know all of your reasons, Aiden. The reasons you go can be anything. But the reasons you stay? They need to be everything.
