I was immediately consumed by the need to confess. To fall to my knees and spill every terrible, selfish urge and thought, to purge it all in front of her and for her, because I could see this wound in her eyes, a wound that I’d just worsened, and I had to fix it. I had to atone.
“Poppy—”
She shook her head. “Give me a moment, Tyler.”
I fell silent.
She took a deep breath. She was still completely naked, but it no longer mattered, because a distance was slowly settling in her eyes, along with a cold, elegant posture and a composed press of her lips—she wore an invisible armor that did far more to separate us than clothes ever could.
I tried again, desperate to keep this chasm from opening wider. “I’m so sorry, lamb. I thought you wanted it—”
“Give me a fucking minute!” Her voice started out quiet and collected, but then quickly escalated into a quavering yell, which reverberated against the studio floors and walls and also inside of my chest. She glanced away, breathing out and breathing in again. Then she turned back to me. “I did want it,” she said, calmer now. “And I wanted it like that. Rough and hard. Please trust me when I tell you what I want, and please trust me to tell you to stop if I need it. I’m frankly tired of having to give you explicit permission every single time we do something kinkier than kiss. I like being fucked that way, and tonight was no exception.”
“But you don’t know what I was thinking when I was fucking you—”
She let out a long breath, her jaw setting. “I knew exactly what you were thinking. I saw Anton too.”
Oh shit.
“Poppy…” She didn’t interrupt me, but I still stopped, because what could I say?
“The thing is, I didn’t mind it. I thought it was kind of sexy, actually. You fucking me while he watched. And you want to know why?”
Please don’t say it’s because you find him attractive. Please don’t say it’s because you want him.
“He’s gay, Tyler. He was watching because he finds you impossibly sexy, and watching you fuck me is the closest he’ll ever come to fucking you himself, so I imagine it made his night. It’s hot to me because I love it when anybody—man or woman—notices how sexy my Father Bell is.”
My mouth was dry and my mind whirled with this new information. “I don’t understand,” I said, blinking a little. “Anton’s gay?”
“Gay,” Poppy confirmed. “And has had a massive crush on you since he met you a couple years ago. He asked me not to tell you, because it’s obviously embarrassing for him, and I am violating that request now because I am so sick of you being jealous over nothing.”
“I just…I didn’t know…” I felt like such an idiot, wasting so much time being jealous and angry. Over nothing.
Poppy bent down to get her bra and dress off the floor, and her movements were jerky and stilted, and I realized that Anton was not the issue here, at least not for her.
“What is it?” I asked, hoping against hope that she would tell me and not storm out.
She straightened up, fastening her bra and not looking at me. “This usually works,” she said, and her voice sounded choked. “We fight and we screw and then everything is fine. I thought it would work tonight—I thought this is what I needed to feel better. To have you use me, to have you make me come. But it’s not better right now.”
“Because of the gala?”
“Because of everything. When we met, you were a priest and so you were putting everyone first, never thinking about yourself or what you needed. And I was so proud to be the woman who could coax selfishness out of you, who could coax you to take what you wanted.”
I knew immediately what she was saying. “I never meant to put myself first tonight, Poppy. It was Professor Morales and her baby, and please, lamb—”
She was shaking her head, her hands trembling as she put her dress back on, barely able to manage the zipper but stepping away when I tried to help. “It’s not just tonight, Tyler. It’s been this entire year, and I can’t any more. I asked you for one thing—for one time. I asked you for tonight, because even though you’ve been a ghost all this year, I thought maybe if you came tonight and saw everything I’ve worked so hard for, that it would make up for it all. But now I think it wouldn’t have, no matter what you did or didn’t do.”
I reached for her and I didn’t let her wriggle away this time, keeping her shoulders tight in my hands and searching her face. “Tell me how to fix this,” I pleaded. “I know I’ve fucked up and I keep fucking up, but things can get better. They will get better—my dissertation defense is this week and then all this craziness will be over.”
“You really think it will make a difference?” she snapped. “You think you’ll be able to magically throw yourself back into being a husband?”
I was almost speechless. “Of course, Poppy. This is just a season!”
“Don’t give me that ‘season’ bullshit. You know what I think? I think that you will always be chasing after the next thing, the next vocation, the next escape. First a priest…then a scholar…don’t you see that you’re doing everything you can to hide from being just Tyler Bell, a person and not a title?”
“That’s not fair,” I protested, sputtering. “I don’t use jobs to hide from anything!”
“I need you to be a part of my life, and I’m not sure that you’re capable of that anymore,” she continued, not listening to me. “I’m beginning to think that you just want to be alone.”
“Jesus Christ, Poppy. No. A thousand times no, that is not what I want! I want you!”
“Then why won’t you stand by my side when I need you?” Tears streamed down her face. “Why do I have to eat alone, go to sleep alone, put up Christmas trees alone? This was supposed to be the beginning of our new chapter, this was supposed to be our next big moment—”
I was confused. “What? This gala?”
“Fuck the gala!” she cried. “Of course you have no idea what I’m talking about because you haven’t been anywhere around me when I’ve needed you. It’s like you don’t love me—”
“Goddammit, Poppy, I left my church for you!”
The words, angry and bitter, resounded in the enclosed room, echoing and drowning out every other noise. I hadn’t meant to say it, but it had burst out of me all the same, and once I said it, I knew that the damage had been done. To her and to me, because the party line—the thing we told curious acquaintances and friends—had always been that I’d left the church for me and for no other reason.
And it was more than the party line, it was the truth. Except now I wondered if maybe it wasn’t the whole truth, and if this was just the first time I’d admitted it to myself.
And in Poppy’s eyes, I could tell that I had just confirmed every unspoken fear she’d ever had about us.
She took a step backward into the dark. “I need some time to think,” she said emotionlessly. “Please don’t be home when I go back there tonight.”
No, I wanted to say. I want to fix this. I couldn’t imagine spending the night—all night—apart from her right now. I couldn’t imagine letting this wound fester and become infected with resentment and unexplained truths.
God helped me in that moment, the slightest note of clarity in the midst of my pain and confusion. A tiny drop of peace, of you can do this, if only for her sake.
“How long do you want me to stay away?” I asked and then I realized I was crying too.
Poppy’s tears mirrored my own, but her voice was still flat and without affect when she said, “I don’t know. Maybe a week. Maybe more.”
My chest cracked open and my heart fell out.
“A week?” I whispered disbelievingly.
“I’ll call or text when I’m ready to talk.” And without anything more, without an I love you or even a goodbye, she walked out.
I went home and packed a bag. Realistically I knew that she would stay longer at the gala, and that even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t come inside while my truck was in the driveway, but I still hoped that she’d walk in while I was here. That she’d run in, having changed her mind, and then she’d let me apologize. She’d let me fall to my knees and confess, and then after I confessed, she would let me atone. I’d whip myself for her. I’d walk across broken glass and hot coals for her, climb up on a cross for her…although my intentions were still less than Christlike.
Anger shadowed my guilt, anger and blame, and I knew that my desire to atone came not just from guilt, but from a desire to hurt her by hurting myself.
Not Christlike at all.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Poppy never came home. I packed my bag, looked around the townhouse, and then left for the closest hotel, which was a cheap, anonymous place with a squeaky bed and a framed picture of a spoon.
I knew she said she’d call me when she was ready, so out of respect for her boundaries, I didn’t call.
But I wrote.
I wrote by hand, which was something I’d never done in my adult life, writing her my first letter on some Post-It notes I’d found in my laptop bag. I delivered it the next day on my way to Mass, sliding the paper-clipped Post-Its through the mail slot in the door. Her little Fiat was nowhere in sight and I hoped that meant she’d be at Mass, that I could at least fill some of this void with a glimpse of her face.
She wasn’t there. Poppy never missed Mass unless she was traveling or sick, but that day, she was absent, and I knew it was because of me. Because she was avoiding me.
I wrote her another letter during the service, this time on the back of the church newsletter. I delivered that and I went to the library to work the day away and lose my mind in ancient theology. (It didn’t work. I couldn’t stop thinking about Poppy and our fight.)
I fell into the kind of miserable routine that stretches hours into years. At night, I lay between thin, foreign sheets and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come. During the day, I sunk myself into the final pages of my dissertation, trying to push down the oppressive torment of missing my wife.
We’d never fought like this, never, not in three years of marriage, and I had no idea how to fix things. I had no idea how to prove to her that I would be better, that I would be worthy, because I was still reeling from it all. Poppy had seemed so understanding, so patiently calm, all this year, but had it been a front all along? Had she been gathering this pain and anger under the surface for the last twelve months? Or had something changed just in the last week to ignite her pain?
And how could I possibly ever find out if she wouldn’t speak to me?
On Tuesday, I went to the soup kitchen and worked silently, a zombie. And I was a zombie on the phone with Millie on the way back home, which was fine, because she was quiet too. She didn’t even complain about the food at Pinewoods Village.
“How is Poppy?” she finally asked after an exceptionally long pause.
There was no point in lying. “We’re…we’re having some difficulties.”
“Are those difficulties your fault or hers?”
Snow flurried around me as I parked the truck in the faculty lot and trudged to my office. “Mostly mine.”
Millie didn’t say anything for a moment, but she did let out a few of those strange coughs that made me cringe to listen to.
“Millie, have you told a nurse that you haven’t been feeling well?”
“They know,” she said dismissively. “It’s just a cold. Everyone gets them this time of year. Besides, I’m so sick of having them fuss over me. I miss being in my own home.”
“I know you do.”
More silence. A cough. “Sometimes I think it’s not worth it to be here.”
Her words sank through the murk of my depression and began pinging soft alarms in my mind. I stopped at the door to the building, my hand on the handle, snow drifting around me. “Millie, what do you mean by that?”
“Oh nothing. Just an old lady’s rambles, that’s all. I’ll keep you and Poppy in my prayers this week.”
“Okay, Millie. And I’ll be praying for your cough.”
After we exchanged goodbyes, I stepped inside the building and typed out a couple quick texts to Mom and Jordan, asking if they could check on Millie this week. Mom always did, but I wanted Jordan there too. He could tell right away if someone was soul-sick, and that’s what I worried about with Millie. More than a cough, soul-sickness could kill someone like her, someone who needed a sense of purpose and independence to live.
Both Jordan and Mom responded with assurances that they would check on my old friend, and so I headed to my office to meet with a couple students and then I spent the rest of my day in the library, writing Poppy letters that she would probably never read and plodding through the last several thousand words of my conclusion.
And so the week went on, each day worse than the last, each day that Poppy didn’t call or text like a fresh version of hell, and I became a shadow of myself. Not eating, barely sleeping, my focus so intent on Poppy and what she was doing at each moment that I couldn’t attend to anything else.
It was a miracle that I made it to my dissertation.
It was an even bigger miracle that I could force myself to speak words, sentences, coherent thoughts. I was glad Professor Morales was on maternity leave, because I didn’t want her to see me like this. Fucked up and clumsy, and lackluster in my defense, even as the board members raved about my conclusion and how practical and visionary it was. Morales would have been proud of that part, at least.
And then the biggest miracle of all: I made it through. As Jesus said, it is finished, and so I walked out of that building with my doctorate in theology, four years of my life finally sealed shut and packed away. I was supposed to be happy now, I knew. I was supposed to be giddy with my accomplishment and the chance for a new phase in my life.
But I was also supposed to be celebrating with my wife right now. I was supposed to be kissing her, holding her, whispering wild promises in her ear.
Instead, I ate a greasy dinner alone in a mostly-empty restaurant, watching Christmas shoppers pass by the window, listening to holiday songs so familiar and overplayed that they’d become meaningless background noise peculiar to this one time of year—no more notable than cicadas chirruping in the summer heat or raindrops pattering against the window in the springtime. Just the noise that goes along with cold wet weather and the smell of gingerbread.
I went back to my hotel, turned on the shower and stripped down slowly, climbing in and sitting on the floor of the tub. I didn’t cry, though. I just sat, empty and worthless, feeling the water sluicing across my skin like so much rain, and trying not to remember all the showers that Poppy and I had shared. All the wet kisses. All the skin and steam and breathy moans echoing off the tile.
Did I make a mistake leaving the clergy?
The thought surfaced out of nowhere, fractured and shifting like a reflection on the sea. But once it appeared, it couldn’t be unthought, no matter how fleeting or ephemeral it had been.
When I’d left, I’d felt so certain, so confident that I was following God’s plan for my life. That I was setting my feet to the path that would lead to self-actualizaton and modern-day sainthood and a full, rich life. I was so certain that it didn’t matter what happened between me and Poppy, it didn’t matter where the road took me, it only mattered that I step outside the safe bubble I’d made for myself and start taking real risks again.
There was no whisper of that confidence now, no lingering scent of that certainty. Because if all of my pain and effort meant that I was a PhD sitting alone in a shower, then what had all of it been for? What had the world gained by me leaving the clergy?
Poppy was right—I liked to hide behind vocations, behind callings—and scholar was so much worse than priest because at least priests helped people. At least they brought people closer to the Lord. Everything I’d gained as a student, I’d gained for myself. It hadn’t even netted anything positive for my marriage.
And if Poppy left me, actually left me and filed for divorce, I would break. Not just my heart, and not just my mind, but my soul and my body—it would splinter into brittle dead shards and I would be finished.
Lord, where are you? I asked the ceiling numbly. Why do I feel so alone?
And that was when the phone rang.