The Saint
Eleanor fell silent again. She’d never had a more painful conversation in her life. Even her allocution before the judge when she’d pled guilty for the car thefts had been less awkward and uncomfortable than this nightmare chitchat.
“Why did you come here tonight?” Søren asked her, his eyes still on the wall in front of him.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I had a question.”
“What question?”
“I don’t remember it now. Seemed important at the time.”
Søren clasped his hands together and rested them in his lap. He wasn’t praying now. At least it didn’t seem like it. It looked more like he was trying to control himself, trying to hold his hands down to keep them from doing something. Doing what?
“This is going to be difficult for us,” Søren said. “You and I working together. You understand this?”
“I …” She paused and thought about the question. “I think I do.”
“I’m a priest. Do you also understand that?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Of course I don’t understand why you’re a priest.” The words she’d been holding back since the day she met him rushed out. “You’re twenty-nine and you’re the most beautiful man on earth. You could have any girl in the world you wanted. You’re brilliant and you could do any job you wanted. You could get married and have kids. Or you could have crazy sex with anyone you wanted whenever you wanted to. This is f**king Wakefield, Connecticut. You walk two miles south of here and you reach the end of the world. There’s nothing here for you. You’re wasted in this place. You could be running the world if you wanted and the world would probably be okay with that. I hate following the rules, but I would follow you into Hell and carry you back out again if I had to. Do I understand why you’re a priest? No, and I don’t think I ever will. Because if you weren’t a priest …”
“If I weren’t a priest,” he repeated. “Do you know what would happen if I weren’t a priest?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You and I could—”
“You and I could do nothing,” he said. “If I weren’t a priest, Eleanor, you and I would never have met. If I weren’t a priest, you would be in juvenile detention right now because Father Gregory wouldn’t have been able to help you the way I did. If I weren’t a priest, you would have a felony conviction on your permanent record. You would graduate from high school in detention and the likelihood of you getting into college would be practically nonexistent.”
Eleanor felt the floor shiver under her feet. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Søren?”
“When I was fourteen I decided to become a priest,” he said. “Once I made that decision, I felt peace in my heart for the first time in my life. And I didn’t know why or from where that peace came. It should have scared me—a life of poverty, a life of celibacy and chastity, a life of obedience to a community that could and would send me all over the world. But I knew there was a reason I needed to be a priest. I was certain of it. And that certainty carried me all the way through seminary and all the way here. And now I know why I needed to become a priest. Because God knew long before I did that I would need to be a priest to find you and help you and keep you on the right path. And I will keep you safe even if it kills me.”
A lone tear traveled down her cheek and dropped onto the floor. Now she was grateful he wouldn’t look at her so he wouldn’t see her crying.
“And if I weren’t a priest,” Søren continued, “I would likely be dead. There were moments when I was your age and younger, foolish moments when I feared I didn’t deserve to live. The things I’d done, the things I wanted to do, taunted me constantly. I worried God had made some terrible mistake when he’d made me, and perhaps the world would be better off if I wasn’t in it.”
“No …” She nearly choked on the word. The thought of Søren dead was an insult to everything she believed in, especially him because she believed in him the most.
“When I felt the first stirrings of the call to become a Jesuit, those feelings started to fade and new ones took their place. God had created me for a reason, made me like I was for a reason.”
“Like what? You’re—”
“My call to the priesthood saved me, Eleanor. Like it saved you. If I weren’t a priest you wouldn’t be in this sanctuary and neither would I. So please …” He stopped and raised his hand, holding it up almost in a posture of surrender. “Please don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”
He lowered his hand again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. I told you months ago that the new rules I created were for my sake, because of my need for boundaries. I’m asking you to honor that.”
“I can,” she promised. “I will.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She wanted to say more, to say she would never go into his office again, not without permission anyway. He hadn’t said anything about what she’d done on his desk but she was certain he knew, and it was because of that he couldn’t look at her right now. She imagined he wasn’t looking at her for her own sake—to protect her from the embarrassment. But strangely, she felt none. Only sadness that he was right. As much as she wished he wasn’t a priest so they could be together, she knew that they would never have met if he wasn’t a priest. What had brought them together was the very thing that kept them apart. She wanted to say all that to him but before she could open her mouth, the sound of a car horn discreetly honking interrupted their tense silence.