St. Sebastian | The Singularity of Writing

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Fr. Cyprian couldn’t help but wonder how things would have been different if Sebastian hadn’t been named after a saint, even if indirectly. Was it all part of a divine purpose or the seed of an idea planted in Sebastian’s head at an early age by his mother in the romanticized retelling of a fourth-generation removed relative’s landing on Omaha Beach? Whichever the source of the seed, as part of a divine plan, or the incidental implantation of a partially fictionalized familial legend, it fell on fertile soil of biblical, mustard-seed potential in the young boy’s mind with the end result being, for Sebastian, a lifelong preoccupation with saints; more specifically, what they did to become saints, what they did with their saintly lives, and how they died their saintly deaths, all of which coalesced in a fervent desire to become one himself. It logically followed that he would need to become a priest, which, for as long as anyone could remember, was Sebastian’s unwavering response to the question—So, what do you want to be when you grow up?— “I’m going to be a priest,” the boy would pragmatically reply, much like one would say the sky is blue, or fire, hot, or ice, cold, at least, until he met Cindi in the fourth grade.

The day had broken overcast, the sun rising behind clouds responsible for the soft scent of petrichor that lay lightly in the air and the shallow damp spots in the streets and on the walks, punctuated by thinned-out earthworms reaching. Inside the church, the people waited patiently, quietly, the stained glass windows like curiously flat lampshades lit by gentle bulbs on the other side.

Fr. Cyprian cleared his throat. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” he said, wondering if it would have been different if the young boy hadn’t been named after a saint. His eyes passed over Sebastian, to Sebastian’s mother, to Cindi in the second row, then back to Sebastian’s mother…

“I’m named after a saint.”

“My name’s Cindi. See-Eye-En-Dee-Eye, not with a Why. My mom didn’t want me to be like everyone else named Cindy—with a Why.”

“Technically, my mom named me after her grandfather. But he was named after a saint.”

“I don’t think there’s a saint named Cindi. What’s your saint’s name?”

“Cynthia. It has a Why though, but it’s after the See; there’s even an Eye at the end. Kind of.”

“You’re named Cynthia?”

“No.” Sebastian laughed. “She’s a saint though. Her feet were tied to a horse, and she was dragged through the streets of Alexandria in Egypt for not worshiping idols.

“Oh, but what’s—”

“Sebastian. He was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows.”

“Your mom’s grandpa?”

“No!” Sebastian laughed again. “The saint.” Sebastian’s face turned serious. “My great-grandfather died in World War II. He was a medic and was tying a tourniqu— a strap, around another soldier’s leg so he wouldn’t bleed to death when a grenade landed on the ground. He covered it to protect his friends. Then he died.”

“Oh…that’s sad,” she whispered, blinking back a quick flush of tears from the novel consideration of violence and death outside of animated characters falling from cliffs or disappearing behind the KABOOM of an explosion only to re-emerge alive and well, if slightly smudged, a few frames later.

Sebastian nodded. “Yeah, but my mom said he was a saint automatically and went straight to heaven because he gave his life for another. That’s almost as good as dying for God, like the first St. Sebastian did.”

“What did the first St. Sebastian do that was so wrong?”

“He was a Roman soldier who believed Jesus was the Son of God, and he made other soldiers believe it too.

“Back then there were a lot of bad people that didn’t want other people to believe that, but they did anyway. Especially the saints. Like Saint Stephen. He was the first martyr.”

“Martyr?”

“Someone who dies for God.”

“What happened to him.”

“He was stoned to death.”

Cindi frowned, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around herself, tucking in her chin as imaginary stones filled the air.

“One of the stoners was Saul of Tarsus.”

“Saul of Tarsush?”

“Tarsus. But he changed his name to Paul and became a saint later. He was a martyr too. Nero, who was the emperor of Rome, chopped his head off, but not before St. Paul wrote a ton of letters, like to the Galatians and Thessalonians.”

“Is every saint a martyr?”

“Mostly.”

“But why would you—”

“Heaven.”

“But don’t most people go to Heaven anyway?”

“Purgatory. Mostly. Hell, if you have an un-confessed mortal sin and it’s not hard to make one either. Just by thinking a bad thought or missing church counts, so going straight to Heaven makes it worth it. If you know you’re going to die and get the last rights, then you go straight to heaven too, or if you have time to say an Act of Contrition, I think that works, but I need to clarify that with Fr. Cyprian.”

“You’re weird. Double-You-Eye-Ee-Are-Dee. Weird.”

“Ee-Eye.”

“What?”

“Weird. It’s Ee-Eye.”

“Whatever.”

“St. John was the only disciple that wasn’t martyred. He was the one who Jesus loved the most.”

“Why did He love him the most?”

“He sat next to him at the last supper in that painting and he was the only one who died of old age. They tried to kill him by throwing him into a giant pot of boiling oil, but he just climbed out like nothing happened.” Cindi nodded, wide eyed. “That was a miracle right there. If I can make two miracles, I can be a saint too.”

“How come you’re so religious?”

“I’m going to be a priest,” Sebastian said, sitting opposite Cindi on the merry-go-round, painted like a giant pie of different kinds, each slice with a cluster of the appropriate fruit painted unnaturally on top of the crust, but, for the first time in his life, Sebastian felt doubt.

Cindi hugged her knees to her chest. “What if you want to get married?”

Sebastian lifted his brown eyes from the apple wedges perfectly framed between Cindi’s pink jelly sandals to look in Cindi’s blue, “That’s not possible.”

“Maybe you can be a saint and be married too. At the same time, I mean.”

“I don’t know many saints that were married other than St. Peter. Probably…” –Sebastian closed his eyes, squinting slightly– “Wait. There was Zechariah and Elizabeth, but they were the parents of saints… I’m not sure that counts as much.”

“Yeah. They didn’t have to do anything to become a saint. They didn’t know their kids would be saints.”

Sebastian leaned back against the metal bar, dividing the slices of cherry and blueberry. He looked across the eternity of space between him and Cindi, forgetting to close his eyes, his voice soft, like he was talking more to himself than to her. “There waaaas”—he drew out the ‘was,’ making two words instead of one— “St. Aquila and St. Priscilla. They were married. St. Paul wrote about them in Romans. They were in the Acts of the Apostles too. So, technically, I suppose I could be married.” He blushed. “But it’s not very common.”

“How do you even know all that?”

“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”

“What?”

“It’s one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Henry VI, part II.”

“Henry what?”

“Shakespeare.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Yeah.” Sebastian winced. “You already told me.”

“Interesting weird,” Cindi said with a small laugh, adding, “I like interesting weird,” and Sebastian blushed again. “But what does that have to do with knowing about all your saints anyway?”

“Knowledge of the bible is one of my wings. I’ve already read the bible. Well…almost. I’m on 1 Timothy, only twelve chapters left, but I doubt there’re many more married saints in there.”

“You remember all that?”

“I remember everything. Ev-Er-Ay-Thang.”

“I’m sorry I said you’re weird.”

“S’okay.”

The polished wood door slid in a wine-dark velvet groove. Dimly, Fr. Cyprian’s priestly profile through the cloth screen revealed his preferred position, perpendicular to the confessor, in a chair, head relaxed back, resting against a wine-dark, tufted velvet wall.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Sebastian crossed himself. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was three weeks ago.”

It was quiet other than the ticking of Fr. Cyprian’s watch and the movement of breath. Sebastian liked the small, closed space, the darkness, the illusion of anonymity, the padded velvet under his knees, and the smell. He didn’t know what it was; maybe incense that had seeped into the wood and cloth over the years, holy oils, frankincense, and myrrh; whatever it was, he thought, if God were to have a smell, it would be precisely this.

“I missed church last Sunday. I know that’s a mortal sin. We were in Hamilton, Missouri, because mom wanted to go to the Quilting Museum there and do some shopping—it’s called ‘Quilt Town, USA.’ There was only a Baptist and Methodist Church with an earlier mass, and they don’t count for us. The Catholic mass wasn’t ‘till ten, and Mom said we didn’t have time to go to church anyway because we had to drive home because she had to work on Monday, and, ah…Father?”

“Yes?”

“Do Baptists and Methodists go to Heaven if they don’t have to go to church on Sundays?”

“People who live good lives and are true to the worship of God in their chosen faiths have the opportunity to join our Heavenly Father.”

“Even if they don’t go to church on Sunday?”

“Even then, Sebastian,” Fr. Cyprian said. That he had acknowledged Sebastian’s presence by the use of his name in the confessional was of no particular significance or breach of etiquette, having abandoned the illusion of anonymity years ago. Sebastian believed that the formality of the confessional afforded specific privileges and advantages not available otherwise such that the very restrictions and confines of the confessional paradoxically allowed a greater freedom of exchange, which is why Sebastian preferred it.

“So, I could turn into a Lutheran or Methodist or Baptist and not have to go to church on Sunday and still go to Heaven?”

“Probably not, if that’s the only reason you decided to become a Lutheran, Methodist, or Baptist, Sebastian. God will know.”

“But being a Catholic is harder.”

“In some ways, yes.”

“And Lutheran ministers can be married. Right?”

“That’s right, Sebastian.”

“Are there any Lutheran Saints, Father?”

“Lutherans and most non-Catholic faiths recognize the saints, Sebastian, but all the saints after Jesus and before the reformation were Catholics, and since Canonization for sainthood is done by the Pope, it would be quite unlikely to become a saint unless you were a practicing Catholic.

“What is it, Sebastian? What do you really want to know?”

“I feel less certain, Father.”

“About…”

“About being a priest,” Sebastian said, waiting.

Fr. Cyprian breathed out, relaxing against the wall, and then it was him, on the kneeler on the other side, in the dark, in another time, his soul black with sin.

Bless me father for I have sinned he said.

It has been two weeks since my last confession and I have had impure thoughts exacerbated by random and solitary bouts of concupiscent self-stimulation, and then I committed fornication with a married woman, Karl. I don’t know what to do. Please help me.

A married woman, Cyprian?

I was helping her with an annulment.

Do you love her?

Yes. Absolutely. From the first moment I saw her.

Has it ever happened before?

No. I never felt this way before.

Everybody sins, Cyprian. You know that.

That doesn’t help me. I’m afraid.

Afraid of what?

I’ve wanted to be a priest all my life, until now. How could I have been so wrong about something I used to be so sure about. That’s why I’m afraid. I don’t think I can be as good not being a priest. I took my vows, and now I’ve broken them. I’m afraid I’ll be as much of a disappointment to her as I am to God.

You’re not a disappointment to God, Cyprian. A lot of priests have left the church.

That doesn’t make it right, or easier, Karl.

You know the catechism as well as I. You know there is beauty and grace in two becoming one flesh. That communion was created by the hand of God Himself—I am his beloved—so said King Solomon. So, Cyprian, if you love this woman with all your heart and can be true to her all the days of your life, choose that. If your heart yearns for priestly works and the daily transubstantiation of bread and water into the flesh and blood of Christ, choose that. Regardless, you are forgiven, I absolve you. Pray over this carefully, Cyprian. Say five Hail Mary’s, ten Our Fathers, but first, say to me your Act of Contrition.

“…Father?”

“Sorry, Sebastian. Yes..?”

“I think I like a girl.”

“Does she like you?”

“She thinks I’m weird, Father. She said it twice. Once, after I told her about Purgatory and Hell, and again, after I told her my favorite quote from Shakespeare, but I still think I like her.”

“The one about ignorance is the curse of God?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I see. What is it about her that you like?”

“I think she’s pretty, and she makes me feel different; but mainly, she actually listened when I told her about the saints. She didn’t act all bored or run away. Then she asked me if I wanted to get married. Her name is Cindi, with an Eye, so I told her about St. Cynthia.”

“Married? I thought you said she said you were weird.”

“Yeah, but then she kind of laughed and said I was ‘interesting weird,’ which didn’t sound so bad. Then she said maybe I could be a saint and be married at the same time.”

“A saint?”

“I told her how I wanted to be a saint, which is why I needed to be a priest first. Right?”

Not necessarily…but, yes…that would increase your chances, but it can be hard to be a saint, Sebastian.”

“I know. I’ll probably die…and I need to make two miracles.”

“Why do you want to be a saint so bad?”

“So I go straight to Heaven.”

“But you don’t have to be a saint to go to Heaven, and when you get to Heaven, you will be a saint anyway. So, Sebastian,” Fr. Cyprian paused, shifted to the kneeler, facing the screen and the young boy on the other side, “you don’t have to be a priest to be a saint, Sebastian, and if you fall in love with a woman and want to get married, there is beauty and grace in that, just as much as in being…”

“Yes?”

“Just as much in being a priest. When two become one, as did Adam and Eve in Genesis, inside the sacrament of marriage, that represents the true image of God. ‘In His image’ isn’t one or the other, alone. It is the two together. The communion of two souls, that of a man and of a woman, is the earthly representation of man’s ultimate communion with God. So, Sebastian, if you are called to a woman, to be married—that is a beautiful thing and something in which to rejoice. The important thing, Sebastian, is that you must be sure about it, before you become a priest.”

“Be sure about what?”

“To be sure that you will not ever want to get married.”

“If I’m not sure now, Father, how will I know later?”

“You’ll have to pray about it when the time comes, Sebastian. God will tell you.”

“Did God tell you, Father?”

“He told me when I was young,” said Fr. Cyprian, his voice catching with his partial truth.

“So you never wanted to get married then?”

Fr. Cyprian bowed his head, happy for the privacy of the confessional and the screen between he and the boy. “It has not been always easy for me, Sebastian. People are meant to be loved, and to love, even priests feel that, but as a priest, I must love all, not one more than another, exclusively so. Is there anything else, Sebastian?” he said, suddenly tired.

“All people in Heaven are saints?”

“Yes. All you must do is be true to God and live his will.”

“I still want to be a saint on earth. Like Saint Sebastian. And I am.”

“I am what?”

“Living His will. Right? Isn’t this what He wants me to do?”

“I only count eleven…” said Mr. Pickett. His finger, having moved up and down eleven times, stopped, pointing only at an empty space that roughly included the entire first floor of the Museum of the Bible. “Where’s Sebastian?” He looked over the heads of his entourage to Sr. Carol, who was standing behind them. She shrugged, crossed herself, and prayerfully looked over her right shoulder like Sebastian might transfigure himself right before her.

“He was reading some scroll about the Book of Revelations on the fourth floor,” spoke up Sebastian’s friend, Darrel, from somewhere in the middle. “I think it was in Latin. He told me it was written by the disciple Jesus loved the most.”

Cindi stood in the back, to Sr. Carol’s left. She was the first to notice that Sebastian was gone because he was always behind her. “There he is!” she yelled at Mr. Pickett, pointing to an elevator door that’d just opened, disgorging a young man in a clerical collar, a family of four, and Sebastian. She raised her hand in an authoritative wave and yelled across the lobby, “Sebaaaastian!” in a voice urgently loud enough to startle all those between her and the elevator, as well as Sebastian, which disallowed him the opportunity of asking the man in the collar if he were a priest.

“Thank God!” Mr. Picket said.

“Praise be!” Sr. Carol said, making a vigorous sign of the cross and feeling the need of further devotional demonstration, added, “The Lord is kind and merciful.”

The the other children didn’t say anything, not especially worried because it was Sebastian. He was always either late or extremely early, usually reading about something they never cared about, and for the last month he had been speaking partially in Latin, which they didn’t understand anyway.

“Salvete, terreni”— Sebastain breathed deeply, having just raced nearly the entire distance of the lobby — “Duc me ad ducem tuum,” he finished before breathing deeply a second time as he came to a sharp halt in front of Mr. Pickett, his heels smartly together, standing tall and straight with his arms at his sides.

His classmates started to laugh. Cindi had worked her way to the front, but she was only smiling. “Greetings, Earthlings. Take me to your leader,” she translated for Mr. Pickett. “I’ve heard him say that one before.”

“Sebastian! What did I say?”

“Paenitet, Mr. Pickett.”

“I think that means ‘sorry,’” Cindi said.

“Thank you, Cindi. I gathered.” Mr. Pickett said, his eyes fixing on Sebastian like a fly he wanted to pin him to a Styrofoam board in biology class. “Well? Sebastian?”

“It wasn’t the same as the bible, Mr. Pickett.”

“What wasn’t, Sebastian?”

“Revelations. The part about the Wh—thee-ahhh…” –Sebastian squinted with the effort of finding an alternative word for the bad one, not knowing the Latin translation for it because he hadn’t gotten to the W’s yet. He decided to just take it out — “The ‘blank’ of Babylon will ride in on her beast, drunk on the blood of saints and martyrs.” It had caught his attention immediately because saints and martyrs rose up out of the parchment, like words buried in a puzzle of letters, except it wasn’t just one word; it was three words. “The scroll specifically describes her as a real entity… but the footnote in the bible said that she was allegorical to the city of…” Sebastian heard the laughter then. He turned around and saw his classmates looking at him and elbowing each other; even Sister Carol had abandoned her effort at solemnity. He stopped and looked at the floor, his face burning.

“It’s okay, Sebastian,” Mr. Pickett said, “It’s just that we all need to stay together, and right now, we need to catch the blue line back to the hotel.”

As usual, Sebastian stood by himself, apart from the others, but not enough so that Mr. Pickett would say anything. The hexagonal tiled floor was the color of dark honey, and it was not at all difficult to imagine bees crawling up through the flat surface; in fact, in one of the hexagonal shapes, it looked like…yes. Very rare to see a giant queen bee, even if in one’s imagination. Of course, the thought of honey made Sebastian think of Cindi because her hair was the same color, only paler, so he looked up from the floor and saw her standing between the pylon with Waterfront on it and the Northbound track. She was even beyond him, but Mr. Pickett either hadn’t noticed, or Sebastian thought more likely, Mr. Pickett mostly just noticed him.

Cindi’s back was to Sebastian, which was a familiar view because he had managed to sit behind her in fifth grade but had to move one row over and two desks back in sixth because her BFF, Megan, claimed the one immediately behind. Sebastian found he preferred the angular separation of one row over to better see her profile with more regularity, whereas, in fifth grade, he had to wait for her to turn her head one way or the other. He was enchanted by the ringlets of her hair, which were so perfectly unusual that he felt for sure it was some violation of physical law. He had googled it. When he told Cindi it was because she had elliptical-shaped hair follicles, she looked at him funny and started to laugh, which caused him to walk away, red-faced, deciding then and there that in the future, he would minimize verbalizations of his research.

Cindi turned towards the track, playing with the snap on the little pocket purse on a lanyard around her neck that she and most of the other girls had bought at the souvenir shop down the street from the White House.

“Click.” Up went the flap.

“Snap.” Down went the flap.

“Click,” and somehow, inexplicably, all of Cindi’s cards flipped out and scattered across the floor like a trick gone horribly wrong. All the cards but for one. Sebastian saw her look down into the low channel where the Metro tracks ran. It wasn’t deep, less than two feet. Not deep at all. He moved closer, close enough to see a white card with a small picture laying parallel to and equidistant between the rails as though placed purposefully there. Sebastian felt the first tingle of alarm. The air was alive, electric. He knew what she was thinking. It was so close. It was probably her governmental ID she’d need at the airport for the trip home tomorrow.

No, Cindi! And with his thought, she looked up and back at him, eyes wide, her mouth opened slightly. She was breathing rapidly, her face flushed, like it had been after she’d run up the steps at the Lincoln Memorial earlier in the day. Sebastian looked over his shoulder to see if Mr. Pickett had seen. He had not. By the time Sebastian turned back, Cindi was gone.

There was a hum in the air, and in the distance, the trundling rumble of the Metro approaching. “Mr. Pickett!” Sebastian screamed, but by the time Mr. Pickett looked up, Sebastian was gone, too.

Cindi lifted her blue eyes to Sebastian’s brown from where she had tripped and fallen between the tracks, the card in her hand. “I’m sorry,” was all she said.

“Deus amor este,” was all Sebastian said.

She felt his arms under her, and then she was flying.

Mr. Pickett ran towards the track, recognizing that something unimaginably tragic was imminent. He saw Sebastian standing on the rail closest to the passenger side, using it as leverage to lift Cindi and push her up and over the low wall. Then, the train roared past. Mr. Pickett rushed to the track as the train began to slow. All he saw was Cindi, sitting upright on the honeycombed tile floor the color of dark honey, hugging her knees to her chest, screaming and crying like a part of her soul had been ripped out, which, of course, it had.

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today…” said Fr. Cyprian, relieved that all of Hildagard’s attention rested upon her son so that he could linger on the shape of her face, how her arms formed a steeple with her hands clasped below her chin. He forgot that he had been talking. It seemed natural at first, the pause. Cindi watched him from the front row, Cindi with an Eye, her gaze traveling from Sebastian to him, back to Sebastian, to him, and for the second time in his life, Fr. Cyprian didn’t know if he could be a priest much longer.

His pulse quickened. He felt mildly short of breath, hyper-aware. The silence was less natural now.

“We are gathered here today,” Fr. Cyprian repeated, “for the Requiem Mass in celebration of the life of Sebastian Ehrmantraut, a remarkable young man who a few short days ago joined our Heavenly Father in paradise where there is no sorrow, nor weeping, nor pain.” Fr. Cyprian’s voice was low and resonant, sounding larger than he was. He had been doing it long enough to know the words.

“‘Deus amor este,’ were Sebastian’s last words. Deus amor este. God is Love. In his selfless and, for him, most natural act, he demonstrated that singular love, that Godly love of the love of others above self. There is no greater gift”—Fr. Cyprian’s voice wavered. His tears fell. — “than to give your life for another, as did his great-great-grandfather nearly sixty years ago, also named Sebastian as many of you know. It is the supreme act of love. And, like God, in His image, Sebastian, is Love…”

Fr. Cyprian looked out over his congregation, their collective convulsion of grief forming a moist turbulence of soft sounds and harsh, of muffled sobs and sharp cries, of deep sighs and shuddering breaths, and he remembered the day he baptized Sebastian twelve years earlier, at the right side of the Chancel in which he now stood. He remembered Sebastian for the seriousness he demonstrated in being baptized at four months of age in his mother’s arms, as if he recognized he was being made new again after, only recently, being made new once already. In Fr. Cyprian’s experience, babies usually didn’t appreciate being made new again, trapped as they were in long white robes while being held, tipped upside down, only to have cold water splashed across their heads, but Sebastian’s response to the removal of original sin was contrary to most other babies.

Sebastian’s mouth had opened in a beatific, toothless smile at the first touch of the holy water on his bald head, and as the water continued to flow, an aberrant rivulet found Sebastian’s left eye. He blinked, laughed, smiled wider, then stretched back as though to thrust himself even more into and under the water, as if he were instead in the river Jordan rather than a modestly sized baptismal font. Fr. Cyprian had never seen anything quite like it, and as he looked down into the gray of Sebastian’s eyes, wondering what color they would eventually be, he saw His image looking back at him. That he had seen His image wasn’t unusual because Fr. Cyprian saw God’s image in all newborn babies, but Sebastian, wasn’t just any baby, which was why Fr. Cyprian found himself in a relative state of spiritual disarray at the exact moment that when he needed faith the most, all he could find was doubt.

Trapped in an interface of one universe touching up against another, he heard himself finish the introductory rites, his voice growing ever distant and as he sat for the first reading, Fr. Cyprian simply left.

My name’s Hildegarde she said, holding out her hand. I want to get an annulment.

That can be difficult he said.

I don’t care how long it takes.

How could something so beautiful be wrong she asked.

Because I took a vow he said as she pressed up against him.

I shouldn’t. I can’t, he mumbled. She kissed him, touching him, then nothing else mattered other than she, in all her splendor, as though she walked from behind a tree in the garden of Eden holding a shiny red fruit. He was Adam, music from violins played. Her skin smelled of vanilla and roses. Her breath tasted of apples, and Adam ate.

Should I leave the church?

Do you want to?

I don’t know. Should I leave?

You can’t have both, but I’m only twenty-one. We could start a family—somewhere else, where you aren’t a priest anymore. There’s beauty in that, Cyprian. Surely you can find God in that.

It was a mistake. I was wrong. I confessed.

How come you’re still here then?

I didn’t confess to the bishop. I confessed to Fr. Karl at St. Joseph’s. He’s a friend.

Oh. Does he confess to you?

Yes.

I see. That’s easy. You confess to him for fucking me, and he confesses for whichever boy, girl, man, woman he fucked last week. It’s like your own personal Get Out of Jail Free cards.

It’s not like that.

Okay she said, looking down, Fr. Cyprian not seeing the tears in her eyes through the tears in his own, not hearing the Responsorial Psalm in the other time.

Is it mine?

It’s his.

But you were getting divorced.

I told everyone that we tried to make it work.

But you didn’t.

It was easier than the truth because it doesn’t count as rape if you’re married.

Why didn’t you tell me?

I was ashamed. I was sad. I felt worthless. That’s the day you told me that God loved me and everything would be okay.

I remember.

That’s when I started to love you.

I loved you the first time I saw you but it didn’t matter because it would never happen, but then it did.

I named him after my grandfather.

Why?

I never knew him but it felt like I did because my father had pictures of him when he was young, in a uniform. I grew up with his pictures on walls, in frames on shelves, in a box under the bed. He died in the war the year my father was born. My grandmother never remarried. She didn’t have to. My father said if I would have been a boy, he would have named me after him. I never had a brother and I thought Grandpa deserved to have a namesake.

Why?

Grandpa was named after St. Sebastian and I always wondered if that’s why he did what he did, like maybe he felt he had to, like it was his legacy, like maybe he wouldn’t have if he wasn’t named after a saint.

What did he do?

It was the day after he landed on Omaha Beach. Grandpa was in the second wave, survived, and by the next morning they had made it to the top of the cliffs. He was a medic and had just set up a forward aid station when a grenade landed between two stretchers. He covered it with his helmet and fell on top of it. He saved the fourteen wounded soldiers around him. One of the soldiers closest to him wrote a letter to my mother. He said how grandpa started to say an Act of Contrition, but then the grenade exploded. My dad’s been telling me that story since I was old enough to hear stories. ‘And then he flew up to Heaven,’ is how it always ended. That was how you describe a violent death to a toddler, ‘then you fly up to Heaven on the soft, white wings of angels.’

It’s a good name. Strong. Solid. Like the saint, he said, the strains of Alleluia intervening, lifting him from the chair.

Fr. Cyprian walked to the lectern from which he had delivered over five thousand sermons in fourteen years. He read the gospel reading. “The Gospel of the Lord,” Fr. Cyprian said.

“Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” the people said.

His sermon lay before him, printed double space, 14pt, like they all were. He looked at the words. He blinked and shook his head. They were his words, then they weren’t, as they moved in and out of focus, the pages catching an unusual light.

A second passed.

Are you sure he’s not mine? He asked.

No.

How do you know?

I just do.

It doesn’t matter. He’s beautiful. I love him.

Whether or not Sebastian was the son of his mother’s only husband, or his was irrelevant relative to the sin of it. The child was not the sin, the act was. Fr. Cyprian’s problem was that he didn’t know if the loss of Sebastian’s life was collateral of the punishment bestowed for the sin he and Hildegarde had committed, or simply a minor thread variation—a Butterfly Effect to be exerted an eon hence—in the tapestry of God’s plan.

If punishment, for himself, and Hildegarde, Fr. Cyprian reasoned, death to Sebastian meant only earlier admittance to the ecstasy of the Heavenly Hereafter, and no further subjugation to the trials of a mortal existence; therefore, the full weight of Sebastian’s untimely death fell fully upon the shoulders of Hildegarde and Fr. Cyprian.

For as long as he could remember, Fr. Cyprian had lived with the sense that there was something more, something higher than the beauty of a sunset, the sound of waves falling on a beach, the scent of earth after a rain, the complexity of a bacterial flagellum, the embryo-genesis and subsequent birth of a human or any other animal, the photosynthetic life and evolution of all from a singular organism from an ancient sea implied the presence, if not the necessity of God for the simple reason of the impossibility of any of it happening by some random chance. So, there had to be a God, even in a world where Sebastian dies, and by default, according to plan.

And if not punishment, but part of a larger plan, what was his role? Should he have left the church for Hildegarde twelve years ago? Would Sebastian still be alive? Could Hildegarde forgive him? These were the questions Fr. Cyprian was struggling with at the front of his congregation, the pages before him filled with a curious light. He looked out the window through which the sun shone at such and such an angle to strike, exactly, the page he was looking at.

He looked at the words, blinked, and shook his head. They were his words, then they weren’t, moving in and out of focus.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, the first line read. I come to bury Sebastian, not to praise him, the second line read. He read further, and it similarly read all the way through to the last two lines, My heart is in the coffin there with Sebastian, And I must pause till it come back to me.

It had taken just under a minute for Fr. Cyprian’s eyes to race over Marc Antony’s soliloquy from Julius Caesar in which every reference to Caesar had been replaced by Sebastian.

Sebastian’s family, Cindi and her family, Mr. Picket and his family, and Sr. Carol, and everyone else waited expectantly, not surprised that Fr. Cyprian was wiping his eyes and seemingly having difficulty in finding the right words, but a second minute passed. There was total silence.

All eyes were on Fr. Cyprian, especially Cindi’s, Cindi with an Eye. Cindi, who had been hospitalized the first three days for the acute psychological trauma of bearing witness to the sight, and barely perceptible sound of Sebastian’s impact with the train, traveling at seventy-five MPH, the onset of deceleration coinciding, exactly, with impact, not that it would have made any difference.

Six hours of hysterical screams interspersed with muscular convulsions treated with high-dose benzodiazepines and anti-psychotics, then twelve hours in a dissociative fugue where she couldn’t say her name, or where she was, or identify the day, then twelve hours more in which she began responding to her name, to faces, to her parents, with progressively longer periods of lucidity, interspersed with random bouts of uncontrollable crying of progressively shorter durations. On the third day, her parents took her home. On the fifth day was the funeral. It was five days because Cindi had to be there. She said so herself. It was the first thing she said after.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Cindi smiled. Fr. Cyprian grabbed the sides of the podium, the ground shifting under him. A young girl in a hospital bed, reclined forty-five degrees looked at him, her blue eyes swimming in tears that had been falling for three straight days.

It’s not your fault he told her.

Yes it is. It was me who jumped down on the tracks to get that stupid card.

That’s how life works, Cindi, he said. You make mistakes, you trust in Him and pray and life moves on.

But why would God do that, allow someone like Sebastian to die. That’s not a good God.

God did not create a perfect world for us here on earth. It only becomes perfect after, when we join him in the Heavenly Paradise, but down here, on earth, we are free to choose right or wrong, and then suffer the consequences. Even choosing right does not mean there will be no pain. There will be. There has to be. It is how we feel the joy. It’s how we tell the difference. I’m sorry, but life is hard for everyone.

So, whats the point?

The point is to find joy in the good parts that are there, do the good things, and at the end, everything will be perfect. The point, Cindi, is love. That’s the last thing Sebastian said to you. That was his gift to you. Find love, Cindi. Find love.

Okay she said, not looking much different or any more at peace than before, but then she reached for Fr. Cyprian’s hand.

What, he said.

Sebastian said you’re always right, she said, and smiled.

Fr. Cyprian’s sharp inhale through the sound system startled even him. His head dropped down to his notes. He recognized the faint spot of chamomile tea that he had dripped on it the evening before. It was his paper. Of that, he had no doubt. He just didn’t remember writing it.

“Friends, parishioners, countrymen,” Fr. Cyprian began, “God is Love. Sebastian said so himself…” Over the course of the ensuing thirty-three minutes, Fr. Cyprian, spoke of Sebastian, of his love for the saints and knowledge, Shakespeare and life, but mostly, he spoke of Sebastian’s uncommon faith for one so young, and how we all could learn…And as Fr. Cyprian arrived at his final mental period of his impromptu soliloquy, he heard, as clearly as if he had been standing behind him, soft laughter, and then Sebastian said, “The first miracle.”

Not discounting the reality that he was going crazy, Fr. Cyprian surrendered to the order of the mass. “I believe in one God…” he said, closing his eyes, his voice trailing off as the congregation took over in the recitation of The Profession of Faith…

Our son is dead—

But—

I lied, she said.

Why would you lie about something like that?

Because I didn’t want you to leave the church because of that, and you didn’t. Remember?

Yes, but why are you telling me now? I can’t hurt any more knowing that I was his father because I couldn’t have loved him any more than I already do.

I thought you should know.

Is that all?

I can’t believe you’re going to make me say it. Is that what you want? You want to see me crawl on my knees and beg for you to leave your precious church.

Our church, he said placing his hand over hers.

But mostly your church, she said, pulling her hand away.

I’ve never stopped loving you.

And yet you haven’t touched me like that for thirteen years.

I couldn’t.

Why? Was it that easy for you to just stop?

No. I thought about you most every hour of every day. I couldn’t touch you because I didn’t know if I could stop.

You stopped just now, she said.

No. You did, he said.

She placed her hand back in his. Well, she said.

I’m confused.

You know he worshiped you. He wanted to be like you. He wanted to be a priest ever since he could talk.

Did you ever tell—

Of course not. He thought you were perfect, one of the rocks upon which the church was built. I wasn’t going to take that from him, even if it wasn’t true.

I see, he said, his shoulders shaking, his tears falling.

It’s not wrong, being perfect in his eyes, even if you weren’t. She put her other hand on top of his and squeezed.

What are we going to do? he asked.

That’s not the right question, Cyprian. What are you going to do?

What do you want me to do?

That’s not the right question either. You know how much I loved you, ever since I first saw you, even as a priest, even when it was impossible, but I don’t know if it’s the same kind of love any longer.

You’re angry.

I can’t help but wonder. If you had chosen me, Sebastian would be alive today because we wouldn’t have lived here, and there would have been no trip to that stupid museum in that stupid town and I’m mad at myself for hanging around like there might ever have been a chance of you loving me enough to leave.

So it’s too late? Because it’s different now?

Too many questions, Cyprian. I’m tired of making it easy for you, she said, looking down at their hands, then back at him. Sebastian was so enchanted by the illusion of your perfection, and all those stories of saints and martyrs you filled his head with that I honestly think he he couldn’t wait to sacrifice himself in his own twisted perception of perfection.

Like his great-great grandfather.

Yes. Like him.

He saved Cindi’s life.

I know. Like I said, I’m angry.

I love you, Hildegarde. I’m so, so sorry. I wish I could have been better, he said. I should have been better.

“…the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen,” the parishioners said.

Fr. Cyprian chose the first Eucharistic Prayer because it was the longest. He didn’t want the mass to end because he didn’t know what was his life would be on the other side of it. He was afraid, like the first time he touched her, his soul on fire.

He recited the same words as he had done for the past fifteen years. On the second ringing of the Sanctus bells, he raised his hands.

“For this is my body, which will be given up for you,” Fr. Cyprian said, the host, a silver moon shining down on the space between his arms as he looked out over the congregation, meeting Hildegarde’s eyes.

The church choir began singing How Great Thou Art as Fr. Cyprian began the Fraction Rite. It was his favorite hymn, sung at his mother’s funeral. It always made him cry. With tremulous hands he picked up the host to carefully, reverentially do what he had done seven times seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven times before. He carefully broke it in half, and with the breaking of the bread he saw a small drop of blood, perfectly formed, like a tear, and it dropped, impossibly slowly to the white of the altar cloth below. It didn’t matter if he was the only one who saw it. He didn’t even look up to see. That he had seen was enough. He broke each half into lesser portions for distribution, and placed a smaller portion into the chalice, his shoulders shaking, his tears falling.