Page 44 of Saint
I will be able to prove that I’m ready for solemn vows, and that I’m ready for an entire lifetime of them.
“I can do it,” I hear myself say before I’ve even finished forming the plan in my mind. I look up to the abbot. “He’s welcome to come. For the sake of his article and all.”
Abbot Jerome studies me. Not in an unkind way, but in a penetrating way that’s still a little uncomfortable. “You’ll probably recall that I was very excited for this article,” he says after a minute. “But no article is more important to me than you. I care for you deeply, Brother Patrick. I want this to be your choice.”
“Thank you,” I say. My mind is now completely made up. Maybe this is Impulsive Aiden rearing his head once again, but I know this is the way to prove to everyone, including myself, that I’m meant to be a monk. “I want him to come. And it will be good for me.”
And it will be. Even if it means I need to sneak my cage into my suitcase to make extra sure everything will be okay.
The reward will be all the sweeter for its difficult birth.
I will know with absolute certainty that I am doing the right thing.
Part 2
Belgium
26
From Mode Magazine
At this point, I have a choice, and like many people before me who can’t stop thinking about broad shoulders and fireflies, I choose total emotional recklessness. What if, I ask my editor, I go with my monk ex-boyfriend to Europe and write about the beers there too?
Fine, my editor says. Just don’t get me in trouble with the pope.
—“The Eternal Cool of Monks: Beer and Prayer in Some of the World’s Loneliest Abbeys” by Elijah Iverson
27
I’m not doingthe right thing.
I thought I was, but now I’m sitting in a car wending its way through the forested hills of the Ardennes in Belgium on our way from the airport and how can I be doing the right thing right now? Every time I shift in the back seat of the tiny car, my knee brushes against Elijah’s. Every time we speak—short, polite small talk—the air feels like it’s about to pop with electric discharge.
And he and I have only been together for the last hour, since we flew separately, and met outside customs to wait for the car from Semois Abbey. It’d been less than three weeks since I’d seen him last, but the sight of him leaning against a pillar and typing on his phone still threatened to crumple me.
No one kisses like you.
But he seemed unaffected by the sight of me, nodding coolly in greeting and then asking me the usual travel questions, like we were colleagues or acquaintances—how was your flight, did you manage to sleep, how was the food—mine was surprisingly good—etc, etc, until the pale, bespectacled brother from Semois arrived in a battered Renault to pick us up.
And since then, we’ve barely spoken, even though there are a millionmillionthings I’m dying to ask. If he’s told Jamie about our kiss and if Elijah is angry with me for kissing him to begin with, and why he wanted to come on this trip with me. I want to ask him if he’s thought of me these last couple of weeks, if he’s dreaded seeing me, if he’swantedto see me.
If this is really about an article, or if it’s about something else entirely.
Brother Xavier is friendly, but like many Trappists, not particularly given to chattiness, which makes the absence of conversation between Elijah and me all the more palpable. I’m about to burst with all the unsaid things between us when we finally pull onto a narrow tree-lined lane and I get my first glimpse of Semois.
Nestled on a tongue of land tucked into a loop of La Semois—a sedate and shallow river—Semois Abbey is a mix of medieval ruins and modern buildings, which are all made of the same butter-colored stone. Tree-covered hills rear up around either side of the river, and the campus itself is choked with thick oaks, tall beeches, and evergreens with dark emerald boughs. It’s like being inside the illustration of a forest from a children’s fairy-tale book.
We’re led not to the dormitory, but to the guesthouse, which Brother Xavier explains is their custom even for visiting monks. He tells us it’s mostly used by hikers and bicyclists making their way through the Ardennes, with the occasional serious retreatant thrown in. There’s only one other guest here now—a rangy German bicyclist who nods at us on his way out the door—and we’re given a photocopied handout of the monastery’s daily schedule and told that our host will be back to escort us to dinner.
And then we’re left alone to unpack and rest.
Elijah gives a shuddering stretch like a cat waking up from a nap as he looks around the cozy common room. The walls are stone, and the floors are made of old brick, and the furniture is made of well-worn wood and leather. But my eyes are on him and on the hem of his shirt as he stretches, which reveals the narrowest sliver of taut stomach as he does.
“I know I’m getting old when I’m tired after a flight I slept my way through,” he says, more to the room than to me.
“Same,” I say.
He slants a look my way. “A little different from the transatlantic flights we used to take, hmm?”
