Saint John the Divine was run by monks; Benedictines to be exact. Their kind had been living the Rule of Saint Benedict since anno domini 529. Their wardrobe consisted of identical black-hooded habits. They eschewed vanities like deodorant and toothpaste—baking soda was good enough. Shampoo was for women.
Until I actually came across one I had a storybook idea of monks. Friar Tuck and the Grim Reaper instantly sprang to mind. The first one I ever encountered was Brother Thomas. A tall, skeletal man slightly older than my father, he had a permanent squint as if he’d been sucking a lemon or was thinking so hard he was about to burst a blood vessel.
“Man of God!” he declared that very first day as he surveyed my Rocky III T-shirt and tight blue jeans. I hadn’t even made it into the building. The earphones attached to a poorly concealed Walkman were of particular interest. Carefully he removed them from my head and listened to Billy Idol for a moment before issuing his signature grimace. He told me to change out of my “getup,” then store it and the offending machine in my trunk. “Be on time and in uniform for the Reading of the Rules,” he added. “There the Veil of Misunderstanding will surely be lifted.”
This morning, this Dedication Day, Brother Thomas stood unnaturally erect in front of his stall “conducting” the schola, his hand undulating like a belly dancer’s over his Latin graduale. No one paid him any attention.
Father Albert was my second monk. He was a plump, rose-cheeked man of considerable style and charm. After my name and where I was from, the next thing he wanted to know about me was the last movie I’d seen. Addicted to films, Father Albert confessed he hadn’t been out to a theatre since Doctor Zhivago. He survived on videos and detailed accounts of recent movies from his students. I was to tell him all about Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.
Today, for this momentous occasion, Father Albert was seated at the helm of his new pipe organ, eyes closed, arms outstretched, head thrown back in ecstasy.
“Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea, et a peccato meo munda me” we sang. Wash me clean of my guilt, purify me from my sin.
On the way back from Communion I stopped to take it all in. I nearly tripped looking up at the distant honeycombed ceiling, then followed Jon into our pew where we knelt and made the sign of the cross in perfect unison. As I watched Father Albert sweat and sway toward a musical crescendo, the Eucharist attached itself firmly to the roof of my mouth. I held it there with my tongue until it dissolved like an M&M and became part of me, body and soul.
As I prayed, I thought about my grandfather. He had died that summer, and every day since I had been variously haunted or comforted by the knowledge that he was now omniscient, gazing down from heaven, watching my every move. He saw me here, kneeling at the dedication of the new abbey church, and he was proud. But he also saw me when I was naked, playing with myself in the shower before I left on the bus for the seminary. I was nearly paralyzed with guilt after that, knowing in my heart that he saw what these hands, these same hands that were pressed together in prayer, had been doing only two days before.
So, I prayed to my grandfather, now you know the truth.
During that endless Mass, I had time for a revelation. If my grandfather was in heaven, how could he be upset or disappointed? Wasn’t he shielded from all things unpleasant in the radiant face of God? It seemed a terrible fate to have to watch people for eternity picking their noses, stealing, and doing and thinking all the other things they did and thought in private. This led me to wonder about the saints, the angels, and even God Himself: all of them watching us fall and beg forgiveness, fall and beg again. Down here we only had full knowledge of our private lives. We only truly knew our sinful selves. I thought what an unbearable burden it must be to know the sins and secrets of all the world, especially the ones you loved.
The afternoon sunlight pushed down on Saint John the Divine like a hand on the back of a neck. But with the blue-sky backdrop and green junipers out front the place looked like a postcard from somewhere a whole lot better than this.
Although it was Monday, we had the day off. The monks had another big Mass with the remaining bishops, abbots, and assorted Catholic wheels. The party atmosphere died down right after lunch as the guests finally left the monks and student body to settle into their new/old routines.
Saint John’s was a simple three-story structure of bare grey cinder blocks and big picture windows. A terra-cotta roof flattered it with the look of an old California mission. The seminary wing was connected to the monastery by way of the scullery, dining halls, and guesthouse. The gentle side of the hill rolled down from the buildings and the new abbey church in a quilt of sun-bleached grass, lush clover, and dandelions past their prime. It came to an indeterminate end at a small body of water at the edge of the woods and the foot of Mount Saint John.
The monks preferred us to call it Mary Lake, but that would be overly kind. About fifty yards across and only eight feet deep in the middle, it was semi-square, betraying its man-made origins. The pond attracted boys, frogs, and flies and exuded a fetid stink during the warmest months. Its ill-defined banks were slick with mud, and it was difficult to tell where land ended and water began. To the student body it had always been and would forever remain the Bog.
Dandelion seeds cartwheeled down the hill and brushed against my ankles. Cool clay oozed between my toes. Jon floated on his back, arms splayed, fingers moving enough to keep him afloat on the smooth, almost stagnant surface.
Although we had exchanged letters and the odd phone call, we’d gone nearly three months without seeing each other and, to me, that seemed like forever. I wondered if he felt the same.
Jon had changed since I’d last seen him. His face was slightly more angular than before, jaw more pronounced. His shoulders appeared wider. Over the summer he had even grown a few curly black hairs on his sternum. I glanced down at my bare chest, then dived in, disturbing the calm. Staying under until my lungs burned, I resurfaced behind him. “Miss me?” I asked.
He lied and said he didn’t, then silently slipped away, tea-coloured skin flowing easily under the surface, the dark waves of his hair smoothed flat against his skull. He couldn’t stay under as long as I could. After coming up and gasping for breath, he rubbed his eyes and stared at the new abbey church. “What do you think about all that money going for a building like that? It’s not like any poor people will ever get the chance to use it.”
I swiped the hair from my eyes and blew my nose. “When you say stuff like that, it makes me think you’re reacting against your own cushy life. You wanna hang with the poor people? Come on over to my place for a while.”
Jon’s family owned Benning Home Furnishings: Quality & Tradition Since 1953. He always had a selection of new shoes and, other than his school uniform, he never wore the previous year’s clothes. On top of being rich, Jon had “class”—a kind of charm and refinement I was beginning to notice in others but found sorely lacking in myself.
Blessed with dark, deep eyes, Jon also had skin that was always a shade or two healthier than mine. When he smiled, people stopped what they were doing. From visiting sisters to the girls at the corner store, the few women who entered our lives were united in their opinion: hearts would be broken. Even my own mother said as much. Jon and I really didn’t look much alike—me being pale, my hair straight and blond—but sometimes when we were in town people would mistake us for