Page 68 of Whale Harbor

Lillie looked at him as if to ask what he was doing, and Sister Helena looked to Monsignor Edmund for help.

“Well,” Monsignor said, looking extremely annoyed. “Women participate in many ministries, as you know. Women read Scripture at Mass, distribute communion, they teach in Catholic schools, rise to school leadership positions. They can enter religious life if they have a calling. Motherhood is a calling. A girl can give back to her spiritual community in so many ways.”

“But they can’t have the main jobs,” Mac said, keeping his voice friendly. “They can’t be the big bosses. Priest, bishop, cardinal, pope.”

Monsignor assessed him in silence.

Mac continued. “I think the problem here might be that Mary asked why that is, and no one answered. You told her all the things she can be, and that’s fine, but you didn’t explain why she can’t have the main job.”

“She doesn’t want the main job,” Sister Helena said.

“No,” Mac said. “That’s true. And she shouldn’t have cursed in your office, Sister, we’ll certainly speak to her about that. But I’m almost fifty years old and I’m not sure I ever asked myself or anyone else why it is that women can’t be priests. You have to admit it’s not a bad question.”

Sister Helena, startled, blinked a few times and then looked at Monsignor, who was furious. When it was clear no one would take Mac up on discussing the matter any further, Lillie apologized their way out of the room and out of the school. She wouldn’t speak to him the entire ride home.

When they got home, they asked Mary to come into the kitchen and sit with them. Lillie put on the kettle and took out a day-old scone they split three ways. They went over everything Monsignor and Sister said. They told her they were proud of her grades and her scholarship, but was getting in trouble the way she wanted to live out the next year and a half of her life? Mary said that she already knew the answer to why women can’t be priests, and they knew she knew it, and that’s why they hated her. She wouldn’t write an apology essay, that was for sure. She wouldn’t retract a single thing. She would not meet weekly with Mrs. Brennan, no fucking way, how was it even relevant to anything that her husband was dead? And she would not stay after school to watch a Right to Life video. They can try their propaganda machine on some other girl. Did Lillie and Mac know that the Gospel of Mark contradicted the Gospel of Matthew? she asked. Did they know there were women who wrote Gospels, too, but they were hidden away by the other disciples, male disciples, who didn’t want women to have a say in the founding of this new thing, Christianity? None of it made sense. They picked and chose the rules they wanted, and it was all bullshit. The reason women couldn’t be priests was so simple, so straightforward, they were embarrassed to admit it.

“So what is it then?” Lillie asked.

“They don’t believe women are as good as men. Period. Not as smart, not as trustworthy, not as capable.”

“But, Mary,” Lillie said. “We know that’s not true, every woman knows it, but that’s just the way things are. Who are you to question it? You’re there to learn your subjects! Just focus on that. You’re getting a free education!”

“The public school up the street would give me a free education too. And what kind of education doesn’t allow questions?”

“If God wanted women to be priests,” Lillie said, “he would have said so in the Bible.”

“Mom,” Mary said. “You cannot be serious. The Bible was written by men, for a start, and from day one it’s been a tool used to—”

“Stop it,” Mac said. “Stop.”

“You are a child,” Lillie said. “You think you’re an adult but you are sixteen years old. There are things you don’t understand.”

“I know my own mind and I know I’m not wrong. And you know what else? I know some of the nuns agree with me. Not Sister Helena, but some of the others do. But they can’t say because they’ll get in trouble.”

“Well?” Lillie demanded of Mac. “I suppose you agree. Then I ask you what’ll she do when she has a job? Argue whenever she disagrees? Get herself fired?”

“Yes!” Mary said. “Maybe! I’ll get a new job! What should I do if my boss slaps my ass, Mom? Just take it? Because that’s the way things have always been?”

“Oh, don’t get me started,” Lillie said. “Women are offended by the smallest things now. Jesus. A boss slapped my behind once, and was I upset? Yes. But I made a joke and kept it light and then I made sure to never be alone with him again. Another one tried to kiss me when I was working late transcribing his dictation. I had the headphones on so I didn’t hear him coming in. But I dodged it and agreed how hard it must be to work long hours, the pressure he’s under, as if the pressure he was under was any more than the pressure I was under to do a good job and avoid his hands and make far less money than he did and get three young children sorted for homework, dinner, and bed when I got home. That job has paid for a good portion of this house, our lives. So you deflect, Mary. That’s what you’ll do when your turn comes. You make sure he’s not offended because, let me tell you, a man who is offended in that way is the most dangerous sort of man. And then you pretend it didn’t happen, just as all women have done since the beginning of time. Who in the world do you think you are?”

“But, Mom,” Mary said, but more patiently now. She’d never heard those stories. She didn’t know her mother was a woman to whom things had happened. Mac knew, and at the time he’d wanted Lillie to quit, to stay home with the girls or get a different job. They’d argued over it. He wanted to go up there with some of his brothers and talk to the one who kissed her, to let him know he might think she was vulnerable, a cheerful young woman alone in an office tower, but she had a lot of people behind her. But Lillie had rolled her eyes at these ideas. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she’d said to him. “Where would that get us?” She liked being a supervisor. She’d worked for it. She made better money than most women she knew. She’d give all that up because some creep had tried to kiss her? She was tougher than that.

“Mom. Isn’t this why you came to a new place and worked so hard? To make sure your own daughters don’t have to put up with the same?”

“I came to America because I couldn’t get work in Ireland, Mary,” Lillie said. “That was my only reason. I was twenty-one when I got here and I certainly had no thought of daughters. You put up with some things to get a leg up, and I’m telling you right now, Divine Child is a far better school than that public school.”

“Define better!” Mary said. “Better in what way? I’m sorry you’re mad but I’m not going back there.”

“Me neither,” Bridget added, from the next room. “And the uniform itches so bad.”

“It does,” Mary said. “She’s right.”

LILLIE WAS AS MAD AT Mac as she was at Mary. He wouldn’t betray her by agreeing with Mary in front of the girls, but as soon as they were alone, he told Lillie she had to admit Mary made a few good points.

“They get this from your side,” Lillie said when they went to bed that night. “Why argue against things? It never gets anyone anywhere but out in the cold. Just go with the flow! My god, Mac. Imagine asking a priest at home to contribute to a condom fund. It really worries me. Doesn’t she have any sense? What if she takes this battle so far one day that she’s not allowed at Mass?”

“Then she’ll pray at home if she wants,” Mac said. “Or—”