“Well, it’s a little embarrassing to ask,” I admit, “but I need advice. Uh. About a woman.”
“Do I need to remind you about that time I was a priest?” Tyler asks dryly. “I’m probably not the best person for dating advice.”
I stand up, feeling fidgety. “Well, she’s Catholic.”
“That’s hardly an alien race to us, Sean. In fact, I think Mom still has your ‘Best in Old Testament Trivia’ award from Vacation Bible School somewhere.”
That sends an automatic scowl to my mouth. I don’t like thinking about that boy, the one I used to be, the one who believed in God and spent Vacation Bible School gluing Popsicle sticks together and teaming up with Elijah to tease Lizzy and her friends on the church playground. And for the first time, I realize—like really, fully realize—that spending time with Zenny means that I’m going to have to remember that boy. If I’m going to coax Zenny into the land of doubt, I’m going to have to remember why I ever occupied the land of belief.
“Is she some kind of weird Catholic?” Tyler asks. “Like one of those pre-Vatican II people?”
“I’m annoyed I still know what that means,” I sigh. “And no, she’s fine with Mass in English and all that—at least I think so. More like, she wants to be a nun.”
I blurt it before I can hesitate any longer, but the awkward silence that ensues makes me wish I hadn’t said it at all. “You know what, never mind. I—”
“Sean,” Tyler interrupts, and I hear him walking into another room. A door closing. “I need to know before we go any further if you’re exaggerating. Be serious for once.”
I run my fingertip along a line of Sarah MacLean paperbacks. “I’m not exaggerating. She becomes a novice in a month.”
A long, long sigh from the other end of the line. “What have you done?”
“Look, I haven’t done anything—”
“Sure.”
“I swear. It’s more like…I need to make sure that I keep not doing anything. Or if I do something, that it’s the right something.”
I’m only asking for a month.
I’m not asking for anything you don’t want to give.
I’m asking you because you’re the only person I trust to help me.
I scrub my fingertips through my hair, trying to gather my thoughts. My feelings. My wayward cock cravings.
“So you’ve met a girl,” Tyler prompts after I don’t speak for a bit. “Met a nun, I mean.”
“Well, the word met,” I say, turning to lean against the bookshelf and stare at a wall lined with diplomas and academic awards. “That implies we didn’t know each other before.”
“Sean.”
Just tell him.
“It’s Elijah’s sister,” I force out.
“Zenny? But she’s only—”
“She’s not a kid anymore, Tyler. She just turned twenty-one, it’s her senior year of college. And before you ask, no, Mom and Dad haven’t reconnected with the Iversons.”
Tyler grumbles something on his end that sounds like, well, they should, which I ignore. Maybe, when looked at rationally, the Iversons weren’t to blame for the schism, but no one was thinking rationally the day of Lizzy’s funeral, and after the fallout, it seemed safer not to touch the still-smoldering pieces. Safer just to side with my parents and keep my friendship with Elijah separate from all the pain and alienation. Tyler had been the lone voice of dissent in the Bell clan, being the Mr. Conscience that he was, and it hadn’t changed a thing, it only made life harder for him.
That’s what having a conscience will get you.
Which is why it’s super inconvenient that I’ve grown one now.
Before Tyler can spin off into Lecture Mode, I explain to him about the gala and then about the issues with the Keegan property and the Good Shepherd shelter. And then, in a voice that is more faltering and faint than I care to admit, I tell him about her visit today. Her situation.
Her request.
Tyler listens quietly through it all, and it gradually becomes easier and easier for me to talk, and I have a moment when I wonder if this is how his parishioners felt when they gave their confessions. If he made it this easy for all people to talk to him, to stumble through their messy thoughts and lusts and regrets. I could almost resent him for it, except right now I’m nothing but grateful. I need this, I need the unloading and confessing and just to talk about it, because I can’t with anyone else.
“So then I told her I’d think about it and that we’d talk over dinner tomorrow night,” I conclude.
Tyler takes a breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
There’s more silence on the other end, and I’m done with the silence, I’m done with the uncertainty. It’s only been an hour since Zenny left, and I think I’ll be ripped apart from the sheer insanity of it all if I don’t find a way to fix it.
“So what do I do?” I ask impatiently.
“Well,” Tyler says carefully, “it sounds like she was able to neatly shut down all of your objections.”
“Yeah. It was humiliating.”
“Never argue with a budding theologian,” my brother laughs. “We like being the smartest one in the room too much.”
I snort at my wall of degrees. I used to think I was a pretty smart guy, but this afternoon proved that I’ve got nothing on Zenny.
“What do you think you should do?” Tyler asks. “Maybe that’s the best place to start.”
“I should say no,” I say after a minute. “I should stay far away from her.”
“Why?” Tyler asks.
“What do you mean, why?” I say in my best isn’t it obvious voice. “She’s young, she’s Elijah’s sister, and she wants to be a professional non-sex-haver.”
“Twenty-one is hardly jailbait, Sean, and also I imagine that your connection to Elijah is precisely why she feels safe with you. As for her vocation and how it intersects with sex, I would suggest that you’re looking at the intersection with the wrong lens.”
“Are you going into Lecture Mode?”
Tyler ignores me. “You might think that you’re so liberated from the trap of Catholic morality, but you’re still acting like a man who thinks sex is dirty. Like a man who believes in the concept of purity.”
“I don’t think sex is dirty,” I sputter. “I fuck literally all—”
“—all the time, I know, but listen to me: you can still fuck a lot and unconsciously believe these things. You can smugly think you’re better than all the people trapped in repressive paradigms, but still believe, deep down, that you have the capacity to taint another person with your cock.”
“I don’t think that,” I say, not at all convincingly.
“Tell me, Sean. Do you fuck strippers and socialites only because they’re conveniently around? Or do you fuck them because you feel like they’re already impure and you won’t hurt them with just a little more impurity of your own?”
I don’t have a ready answer to that. And I don’t like what I’m finding in my mind as I search for answers, which are the clammy skeletons of half-forgotten beliefs and sermons from hypocrites. I thought I’d thrown away all that shit years ago.