CATHEDRAL - Patrick Sean Lee (best books for 8th graders txt) 📗

knows, but you’re not twenty anymore. Don’t let this guy get away. He worships you. Who will you ever, ever meet again who can give you his very soul? Some old bald-headed fuck at a fancy-ass Newport Beach party? All he’d love you for is your fancy ass. C’mon, Is. Think what you’re doing to yourself—and Brad!”

“I have, Annie. Why do you think I went to Colorado? I didn’t so much need a rest as I needed pure silence to figure it all out for certain. I came up with the only answer that made any sense. He and I are finished. Sorry.” I’m wondering, again, what part Matthew Ash played in that decision. None. None, I’m positive, although—why am I continuing to think of him? Annie stares at me, then tightens her lips and smiles.

“Ok, you know what you want, I guess.” The phone rings again and I hear a muffled curse from the workroom. “Better give Glo a hand before she blows,” she says. “Just think about it, huh, hon?”

“Hey, you guys! C’mon, give me a break here.”

“Think about it, okay?” She doesn’t wait for a reply and leaves the office.

I made my decision. There’s nothing more to think about. If Brad calls again I vow not to let myself see his face in my mind. Just hang up without saying anything to him. Or just not answer.

The phone rings again, another line, an incoming order. I pick it up and answer sweetly, “Petals and Bows, can I help you?”

 

From Angeline

December 12

                                              

Matthew

 

 

In Paradisum.

I float on the wings of music; on a ballet of staccato strings, pings of a harp, and a chorale of exquisite soprano voices—tenors and baritones, and rich basses.

I dream that God has taken hold of my hand and flown with me across a land of green meadows, of streams and woodlands, and to mountains so high that ascending them hand in hand with Him, my breath leaves me. Rushing upward we leave my earth, my home, bound for heaven.

The voices, I discover, so far away from where we started, are Him. The violins and the harp are part of His soul that is so lovely I cannot do without hearing it. Again and again it emanates like suns and clouds and planets—omniscient peace. It is absolute rest. A moving rest that is not an agent of reinvigoration but invigoration itself.

In my dream God is a melody, with mists of robes and a face that never frowns. In my dream He has an ancient white beard that is buffeted by the starry winds of notes we sail through, and His eyes are diamonds and still pools of blackness, like space itself. They draw me, and hold me as surely as His strong, infinite hand.

“She is waiting,” He says, and we soar through endless space and dimensions of time.

I am wonderfully warm, and I wonder if I’ve died. I laugh at myself and realize that I have not because I feel my feet and my toes, and I know ghosts do not have feet.

In my dream God extends His arms outward like mighty wings, and at the end of His right hand I am suddenly shot through the dust of planets, the gas of stars a trillion light years beyond Him. Oh, and the music heightens as though every atom in the universe becomes a part of His glorious symphony as we pass by! I am smiling and unafraid, now…and looking across the cosmic ocean of His body I see Angeline in His other hand. Her sparkling jet hair, so far away, courses behind her and throws pricks of dazzling light upward and outward, like stellar fireworks, like stars being born. She turns her head and smiles at me, and I am gloriously happy.

In my dream I use the power of celestial strings and the choir voices as my pen, writing with them on comets that stream in endless arcs to hesitate momentarily in the void at my fingertips. I move my free hand in its own arc and watch as melody transformed into script imprints on them, and then one after another they whisk away, across their Creator’s beautiful face to Angeline.

In my dream Angeline longs for me, wants to fly across the space dividing us and join my soul. I believe in her love, as surely as I believe in this God whose hand holds me.

And finally…in my dream there is no hell, nor are there demons or condemnation, only a contentment and the sure knowledge that as I sail through this dimension given to me, I am safe and cared for. I join the chorus, and I am filled with joy. My words are stars. My stars are Angeline, and she is singing, too. We have found each other again, and we are going home.

    

                                           ***

I awaken and feel the hand and fingers of Angeline in my hand, and excitement grips me; my heart races for the split second it takes for me to realize she is not beside me. The sensation of her warm hand lingers, though, an afterimage, the clinging of the subconscious to things that are buried deep inside. I turn my head on the pillow in a useless gesture to make certain I am not mistaken, knowing, of course, that I am back in solid, distressing reality. God has gone home and left me here, and Angeline has also disappeared. I was safe in the dream, but now I am only in a home of brick and mortar, floating away from her, dying inside . Such are the endings of dreams. Vain hopes, and the refusal of the mind to follow the death of the heart and soul.

Since returning to the parish, she has haunted my thoughts. I rise and dress and leave the rectory every morning to say Mass but I feel the overwhelming shroud of loneliness that covers me. My lips perform the duty solemnly, without error, and also without reverence.

It is Saturday morning and a winter blizzard that rushed over the front range like a horde of invaders yesterday afternoon continues. Wild winds hurling shards of ice rise violently, subside, then begin the attack again. The pavement of the street in front of the church is black, still, because the ice has no cleft or ridge to cling to, and so the bitter snow piles up against the edge of the gutter instead, growing at the whim of the wind, beaten down again and again as chunks of it are ripped free and taken along to other barriers. I raise the collar of my winter overcoat up to cover the exposed side of my face, bend forward and to the left against the gale, and hop-run to the rear sanctuary door. I will say mid-morning Mass, visit Mr. Hernandez who is dying of liver cancer afterward, then return to the warmth of the rectory. This afternoon Father Gregory and I will hear confessions, if any parishioner penitent enough to brave the fury of the storm comes to the cathedral.

Though we priests cannot forgive a sin we are party to, Angeline confessed to me anyway. Asked my forgiveness for our sin. I didn’t know how to absolve her. Absolve her of what? That day I sat across the desk in my office watching her cry, certain in her heart that we’d committed some sin beyond adultery—and I suppose we had; we parted. I dutifully made the sign of the cross with my hand and whispered as I held back my own tears, “Ego te absolvo de peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris…”.

I watched her leave quietly, not looking back, her sad, radiant head bent forward. I struggled to speak.“Goodbye, Angeline. I will always…” She raised her hand as she descended the steps, as though casting a backward blessing, but I knew it was really her plea for me not to finish. I could see that she was still crying. I haven’t seen her since, and I want badly to leave this earth.

 

There. Enough for now.

Would that Isabella was here to…I raise my eyes and look around.

I’m going to buy this place. I’ve no idea how much Bernie and Gertie will want for it, or even if they’ll consider selling it. But I’m buying it nonetheless. Angeline is one chapter away from being finished, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I triple checked the doc with each chapter I wrote—no errors that I could see. Not long now. Not long. I’ll upload it into an email and send to Miriam, maybe next week. I’m on my way back to the top with this one. Whatever Bernie and Gertie will want for Roosevelt Lodge, I’ll pay from the royalties, or else sell the house in Italy. I never go there anymore anyway.

Charlie drove Bernie and Gertie down to Denver yesterday morning. Bernie’s hip has been killing him lately. He’d wanted to wait until after the holidays before going to the doctor, but the pain has gotten so bad he can barely walk. We all know the hip will have to be replaced, but I assured him that advances have been made in hip replacement that make the post-operative recovery speedy, and terribly less painful than what it was even ten years ago. He still wasn’t excited about the prospect. Something else, though. I’ve noticed he’s begun to lose a lot of weight from what it was when I first arrived. Why do I think that’s not connected to a bad hip?

I’m worried. Bernie and Gertie have become the parents I never had, and I think I’ve become the child they never had. I’ve grown to love them dearly with their simple outlook on life and devotion to this paradise tucked into a mountainside. I’ve gotten more than comfortable here in my little suite—across the aisle from Suite #5 where Isabella stayed. Where she showered…and slept. Empty and cold, now.

The quiet of Roosevelt Lodge is deafening except for the sound of my feet when I walk the hall outside my room, or go downstairs to the kitchen to whip up some dinner or a snack. It’s funny how you hear your own feet when no one else is within shouting distance, the rattle of pans, the movement of Jack’s eyes when I walk past him. How you can be distracted by the noise of your fingers tapping the keys on the keyboard, even. I need a short break from Angeline, and it hit me a moment ago that I want to fill the lodge with something other than quiet. With music. I don’t mean a soft, living room serenade, I mean fill it to the rafters so that even the mice in the attic will wonder if the London Philharmonic hasn’t set up right outside their tiny doors. I wonder how strong the amplifier in Bernie’s P.A. system is? Time to find out.

 

            Bernie’s—or is it Gertie’s?—taste in music isn’t mine I have to laugh. The Best of Waylan Jennings? Loretta Lynn? I don’t think so. I brought some oldies but goodies along with me way back when I came up here defeated; Billy Joel, Springsteen…The Manhattan Transfer. Okay, I’m an 80s kinda’ guy. Hmm…I’m feeling like some MT Tuxedo Junction