Chapter Text
Acts 16:31
at illi dixerunt crede in Domino Iesu et salvus eris
“but, they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved”
🐑
The day begins with tea, never coffee.
Kendall wakes and scratches the dog’s ear over the side of the bed. Once she snorts in recognition, he gets up with a groan and doesn’t turn on the light. Instead, he lingers in the dark.
Bathroom, small breakfast, and out of the door in winter coat and hat.
He hasn’t been here long enough to know what summer feels like. It can’t be so different from Boston, surely? Is it humid and heavy like New York? It’s been six months now, and the sky has been ceaselessly grey, the chill hard and bitter.
It reminds him of the Hamptons in November, wrapped up in the long grass, Rome pretending not to be cold.
Molly tugs on the leash and - once they reach the shingle beach - he lets her run, throwing a ball over and over in repetition for her. When they get home, his cheeks are flushed pink from the wind.
His hair is longer now, and without fastidious dyeing is almost completely grey. He’d been dyeing it out of a box for so many years that it turned silver without him even realising.
His beard has come through too, similarly salt-and-pepper, and he hides his eyes behind thick glasses (no more contacts).
Sometimes, when he looks in the mirror, it takes a hazy second for him to even recognise himself.
The lineup of translucent yellow bottles awaits him inside the bathroom mirror when he returns, and he takes his pills dutifully. Muddy walking shoes are replaced by leather ones, formal.
When he puts on the black shirt and dog collar, the transformation is complete.
It’s almost a derealisation.
He always loved performing. So many Christmases were spent putting on original festive musicals, most of which ended with tantrums when the little ones didn’t want to play along. He would cry, recover himself, and then continue singing alone to tepid applause.
Now he’s Reverend Michael Patrick Linden. It’s a role he can really get his teeth into.
-
The first task of this working day is to visit the hospital.
There’s a young mother there, addicted to oxys, barely twenty. She lost custody of her kid and overdosed. He recognises the fear in her eyes, a fear that comes part and parcel with being a drug addict. It’s a fear not only of ‘what did I do?’, but ‘what will I do?’. It permeates.
She’s still drowsy from sleep when he arrives, it is early after all.
The call came in the middle of the night, the local hospital (local being thirty miles out) informing him of a patient who wished to see a pastor. He knows Maine has a drug problem, and - strangely - such a thing makes him feel more at home, to be amongst peers.
The girl is Casey. She’s pale and rake-thin, raccoon eyes from three-day old mascara, a bloom of rosacea spreading across her nose and cheeks like a permanent blush.
He pulls out the old and squeaky plastic visitors’ chair and sits beside her, although she barely acknowledges him.
“Hi.” He broaches. “I’m Mike.”
It comes so easily.
“Hey.” She replies, voice hoarse. Her big, scared eyes somehow make her look even younger than she is.
Most of his congregation (all six of them) are elderly. None of them are under fifty. For a second, he wonders if she’s young enough to recognise him from the TV or the magazines, even under the disguise.
“I heard you wanted to speak to someone who…wasn’t Catholic. I’m sorry we haven’t met before.”
“Yeah.” She chuckles and averts her eyes. “My mom would kill me if she knew I’d met with a priest. She’d think you’d tried to convert me or somethin’.”
“Well, that’s not my job either.” He smiles in return. “No religious stuff here, unless you want to talk about it. Sometimes it can be easier to talk to someone, uh, unrelated. Not a doctor or nurse. If you need anything: clothes, snacks, need me to call anyone or…?”
“Yeah, um…” She tucks mousy, unwashed hair behind her ears. “Can you get me, like, a couple tank tops? And - god, this is embarrassing - some underwear? The ones they give you here are super uncomfortable and horrible. Sorry. I don’t have anybody else to ask.”
“Not embarrassing at all. Of course. I’ll bring some later if that’s okay.” He replies.
“Yeah. And could you call my lawyer? I gave them her number here but they’re too busy. And I don’t have my phone. I gotta talk to her about Mason.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll call her.”
“Thanks, Father.”
He still isn’t used to being addressed that way.
He taps his foot gently on the greasy linoleum floor, his anxiety just about under control but threatening to ignite at any moment.
“Was there anything else you wanted to talk with me about? Something more spiritual maybe?” He asks.
Her veneer of positivity fails and she begins to pick, shy, at her already stubby nails.
“Just…I wondered…will all this fuck up my chances, with…?” Casey points skyward.
Kendall can’t help but smile.
“Absolutely not.”
“And could you…maybe…pray for me and Mason?” She asks. “Like, I know I’m a shitty mom and I’ve really messed it up with him, but I’m gonna try so hard to get him back and get clean. It’s serious this time.”
“Of course I will. There is always a way to come back from this, no matter what. I promise.”
He wishes he could tell her that he understands her situation in a way she would probably never expect from a meek, narrow-shouldered priest.
Even if she knew who he was, she would probably be even more skeptical. What kind of spoilt billionaire overdoses, attempts suicide multiple times? What does he know about the life a teenage mother, getting hooked on opioids, living in poverty?
She’d think that, in reality, he doesn’t understand anything, and she’d be right. Who does he think he is?
For the rest of the day, there are no engagements. He takes Molly for another walk before settling in for his afternoon self-flagellation. This involves bible reading, intense and painful, for hours without a break, scrawling notes in tiny print in the margins. The book is dog-eared, covered in highlighter and pencil marks. He hasn’t quite reached the end yet, but he focuses on the passages related to forgiveness.
‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’
says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool’.
Isaiah. He circles the passage with ink, and closes the book before his hands are shaking too badly.
Sometimes these sessions end peacefully. He can put the book back on his desk and get on with his day.
Other times, they bring up things he wishes he could forget, and he ends up crying or vomiting shamefully in the bathroom.
Sometimes he cuts himself, but that’s nothing new.
Today is one of the latter days.
As he read, he couldn’t stop the images of his kids rushing to the front of his mind. His little lambs, as he used to call them. Then came Shiv, Con, Rome, Rava. Stewy, too.
His father, last but not least.
He sees the scowl in his mind’s eye and lets the razor tread its well-worn path.
Afterwards, he runs his forearm under cold water, bandages it up neat, and puts his sweater back on, pulling down the sleeves.
Everything is normal. He’s normal. He’s okay now.
The parsonage is washed white and is more comfortable than he ever would’ve wished for. He wanted the opposite of luxury, he wanted frugality - just a bed, a desk, a toilet, a sink. Instead, the house has three bedrooms and an ample kitchen, relics of when the ministers here were rich with large families. Now, he can’t help but imagine Sophie and Iver in the house, filling up the empty bedrooms with their decorations and laughter and all their beloved random shit.
This evening there is a church meeting, in the office at the back of a bigger church in town. It’s a twenty minute drive, and he takes the bus after spending a grim half hour on the phone to Casey’s lawyer. He, some of the congregation, and the head of a much larger neighbouring church are in attendance. They’re discussing upcoming field trips for local schools.
At events like this, Kendall tries to keep his head down as much as possible. Mostly, he nods along and agrees to everything they suggest.
Reverend Eddie Johnson is an experienced businessman-priest, his church attracts hundreds of worshippers, and he always takes the lead. He doesn’t need to be asked. He is busy and egocentric enough to have accepted Kendall completely when he first moved north. Some forged documents and a vague backstory about a career in Massachusetts were all that it took. He gave him a church and a house and left him to it.
“Mike.” He says after the meeting, slapping Kendall on the back as they head out into the freezing night. “How are you doing? Pretty quiet in there tonight.”
“Yeah.” Kendall replies, tying up his scarf. He’s surprised he even remembered his name. “Just tired. I was busy today. Sermon writing, I’m behind.”
“Oh?” Reverend Johnson says. “You should do them all at the start of the month, get ‘em out of the way.”
“I’m not that forward-thinking. I never quite know what I want the theme to be. Sometimes even on Saturdays I haven’t decided.”
“A maverick! I like that. Let the spirit move you however it may, Father. Goodnight.”
Reverend Johnson slaps him on the back - again, hard - and heads to his car. It, and the man himself, are overtly and flamboyantly expensive in a way that makes Kendall grimace.
He walks into town and stops at a Target. The aisles are mostly empty apart from an elderly man, and a young woman and her two children, both begging for a toy. The woman looks exhausted in her thin black leggings and stained tracksuit top.
He doesn’t think he’s seen a single two-parent family in this town in all the time he’s been here. But he’s just another absent father, he supposes. And what does he know about growing up with both parents?
What a hypocrite. His arm itches beneath the bandage.
In the cold, flickering fluorescent light of the store, he awkwardly picks up multipacks of ladies’ vests and underwear. At the counter, he briefly experiences the old urge to pilfer a lighter and a bar of chocolate. He puts his hands in his pockets instead.
Before he leaves, he searches back through the aisles for the mother and the two children. She turns to look at him; initially tensing up with suspicion but relaxing at the sight of his dog collar.
Wordlessly, he presses a hundred dollar bill into her hand.
She tries to speak, but he is already walking away.
He’s alone on the bus home. The driver smiled at him when he got on board, which was enough to send him into a spiral. Was he seen? Did he know? His knuckles were white the entire journey.
Molly is bouncing at the door when he arrives back from the hospital, having dropped off Casey’s things. She gave him a thin smile and a ‘thanks, Father’ when she took the bag. Inside, he had placed the exact energy drink that got him through his last overdose.
The drink. It’s like a code he doesn’t think she’ll understand, but he’s trying to cry out to her regardless. I’m one of you.
In the darkness, the old white house almost glows. He takes Molly into the garden to pee, feeds her, and she gladly curls up on the living room rug once they head back inside.
Kendall showers. He considers cutting again, but changes his mind. He’s too tired. It’s been a hard day already, with too many memories.
In his pyjamas, he sits at the desk that holds only his laptop, his bible, and a picture of his children in a frame. Opening the laptop, he begins to type. He’ll write late into the night, and then pore over the bible until the sun is creeping in.
This week’s sermon is on fatherhood.
-
Sunday brings a congregation of five, which is the average. Three elderly worshippers, each alone, and one elderly couple in matching red winter coats.
Kendall wonders if they even hear him. In his surplice and stole, he feels ready for his close up.
He clears his throat, adjusts his glasses, and takes centre stage. As he speaks the sermon, they all stare distantly, and when he calls for prayer, they bow their grey heads. His flock.
He knows it’s self-indulgent, how he uses these sermons as a twisted sort of journal, a way by which to purge his own worries and obsessions. He left his old therapist back in New York without even a goodbye, and the congregation has taken her place.
Once he gets into the performance, he hates how little he thinks about his audience, how blatantly he’s using their pain for his own catharsis. He is meant to be serving them, after all, not the other way around.
When they leave, they take the time to shake his hand, sometimes to hold both of his hands in their own. They thank him for the service, and tell him they’ll see him at the soup kitchen on Tuesday, or at next Sunday’s service, regular as clockwork.
If they’re having any issues, he’ll chat with them in the office as they drink tea and eat doughnuts. Mostly they’re personal, logistical issues: Tracey’s daughter can’t pay her electricity bill this month (he covers it), the Chapmans don’t know how to go about video-calling their niece in Wisconsin (he teaches them).
When it’s a spiritual issue, Kendall attempts to cover his back and disguise his lack of training by talking to them as human beings, focusing on their emotions and experiences instead of scripture.
They most often want to talk about death, and their fear of it. In such a small and elderly community, he supposes that makes sense.
Death plays on his mind, too. In the mornings, while Molly is eating her breakfast, he’ll go out into the graveyard and read the headstones. If any have fallen overnight in the strong winds, he’ll righten them.
He has performed two funerals so far, no weddings. The first one was horrible, it was the funeral of a man not much older than him, who had long since moved away from the coastal village and made a success of himself, died of cancer leaving a wife and kids behind, and wanted to be buried in his hometown, alongside his parents. Kendall didn’t have a clue what to say, and he still worries that he botched it. The man deserved better.
He thinks about Andrew all the time. About his floppy hair and his cheap little car and his agency job and his lovely parents in their suburban English house. It’s Andrew he thinks of most. He’s why he’s here, after all.
This afternoon, mercifully, no one hangs back, and Kendall breathes a sigh of relief. Only Kevin remains, the organist who comes in from town once a week. He’s a squat, moustachioed man with tortoiseshell glasses. When they first met, Kendall was absolutely positive that he saw a flicker of recognition in the other man’s eyes, but nothing ever came of it.
“Hey, Mike…” Kevin says, as he climbs down from his seat. He stuffs some sheet music into his battered old messenger bag. “You wanna come for dinner tonight? Donna’s cooking.”
“No thanks, Kevin, I’m good. I’ve already got some, uh…chicken, defrosting, so…but thanks, though. Really.”
“Hey, no problem.” Kevin says. “Another time though, huh? You just keep gettin’ thinner and thinner.”
“I’m fine.” Kendall gives him a small smile. “Just busy. You know how it is.”
Kevin waves goodbye as he leaves, shutting the church door behind him and leaving Kendall alone to collect up the hymn books.
He’s lying about the chicken, of course. He hardly ever has anything to eat in the house, and he feeds Molly with far more consistency than he feeds himself. Tonight he’ll probably eat something out of a packet before talking to Rava on the phone and telling her he’s had something filling. That’s how most Sundays end.
The door creaks open and closed and Kendall doesn’t look up from his task. Kevin’s probably forgotten his phone or something, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Quiet footsteps travel along the aisle, but stop a few yards from where Kendall is bending over in the pews.
It’s a gait that Kendall recognises, but not the one he expected. Not at all.
He straightens his back, looks up, and almost drops the hymn books.
Stewy stands in front of him, arms folded, the most familiar and irritating smirk on his face.
He looks exactly the same, in a cashmere scarf and luxurious winter coat. At the sight of the coat, Kendall’s urge to throw up is only matched by his instant desire to crawl inside it.
He puts down the books without looking, and heads into the aisle, where they can face one another.
“Hey.” Stewy broaches, strangely calm. “I found you.”