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Chapter 22
The priest smiled. He was a kindly older man with snow-white hair and a slight belly, patrician and grandfatherly in the way I'd expect from a man heading up the largest church in Massachusetts.
"You know," he said as he leaned back in his creaky office chair. He had spent the last thirty minutes listening to me talk about why I wanted to convert. It wasn't as hard as I thought. It seemed like the church was hungry for new converts, especially high-profile ones. "It's possible the Cardinal might want to be involved." He cocked his head knowingly. "The church has had its own share of PR problems in the last ten years, as I'm sure you know. Someone like you openly joining might be...helpful. If you're willing to scratch his back, he might be willing to scratch yours, so to speak. Expedite the process, if that's what you're looking for."
I frowned.
"The conversion process takes most converts eight-to-twelve months," he continued calmly as he picked a paperweight in the shape of a bowling ball off his desk and started to rub it meditatively. "But potentially, we could speed things up. You could do an independent study of sorts with me instead of attending the standard catechism classes."
My frown deepened. "Are you talking about money?" Was this guy for real? Was a priest actually shaking me down for Brandon's money?
"No, no, no," he chortled. "I just mean a few photo-ops, maybe your picture in the paper. Human interest stuff."
"Oh."
As much as I found the conversation distasteful––after all, shouldn't the man be more interested in saving my immortal soul than building the public profile?––it was sort of the whole point of this exercise. Maybe it was better that we were all on the same page about it anyway.
"I think that will work," I said. "You have Hope McGaughey's information, right? She can set up whatever photo ops, etc., we need to do."
Father Garrett nodded. "Yes, that's all in order. I have a few hours free now. We'll do the Rite of Acceptance during Sunday Mass if you like, but there's no reason we can't begin instruction tonight. Would you like to get started?"
I sighed. So much for getting home at a decent hour.
"Sure," I said. "I'm a quick study."
"Good," said Father Garrett approvingly with a smile that for some reason made me want to cringe. "Good girl."
~
I came home to an empty apartment after two hours of listening to Father Garrett lecture me on the various elements of Christian prayer. He had seemed content to talk on his own with his hands folded over his belly, occasionally asking me questions, and generally responded with "good girl" to whatever I said. I had never felt more like a diminutive schoolgirl––not even when I was a schoolgirl.
Brandon had gone to LA again and didn't expect to be back until late. The apartment, suspended as it was above the city, was deathly quiet.
After a late dinner of leftover chicken and salad (with a hefty glass of wine), I collapsed grumpily into the big bed alone and stared at the ceiling while I waited for sleep to come. I couldn't shake the notion that I was lying all over again. While I knew that many people converted for their spouses, it seemed like such an intensive process to go through if you didn't actually have any religious convictions to start with. It would be one thing if I had grown up in some other kind of Christian denomination, but I was singularly without faith, and until now, hadn't really been looking for it either.
Father Garrett had spent a good part of our time talking about bearing witness––the expectation that as a new convert, I would go forth and proselytize my faith to others and spread the word of the Church.
Was that what I was going to be expected to do from now on? Be a good pious wife who attended Mass every Sunday? Baptize my future kids into a religion I didn't truly believe in? Was this really only going to be for the optics of the election, or would it never stop?
I twisted onto my side and found myself eye-to-eye with the framed picture of Brandon and me, taken recently in France. It was a selfie snapped on one of our long day-trips to one of many small towns around Provence. We were standing in front of a beautiful Gothic cathedral, me visibly laughing, while Brandon kissed my cheek.
I gazed at the picture for a long time. We had been so happy there, and we were starting to be happy with each other again, the stresses of this campaign notwithstanding. There was no reason we couldn't continue down that path.
People converted every day for their loves. I'd just have to do it for mine.
I padded back out to the foyer and retrieved the six-hundred-page catechism book I had brought home with me from my "independent study." Heaving it into bed, I flipped on the light and started to read.
~
"No!" Brandon shouted, jarring me out of sleep again.
Maybe it was the fact that I was living in an ice palace I hated and had to be followed wherever I went by a character from Men in Black. Maybe it was the ongoing lack of sleep and the fact that various types of immortal sins were still dancing around my brain from the reading I'd done before bed. Or maybe it was because it was only two a.m., and this was the second nightmare since Brandon had crept into bed sometime past midnight.
I didn't know what it was, exactly. But something in me broke.
"Get up!" I shouted, yanking the covers off both of us as I jumped out of the bed and flipped on the overhead lights.
"Who-wha!" Brandon yelped as he was suddenly exposed to the air-conditioned room. His eyes blinked open, and as he fully came to consciousness and registered the fact that I was awake and had turned on the lights, he turned to me with an angry blue glare. "Skylar, what the fuck? I was sleeping!"
