Too Much Happiness

Could that have been where Charlene was married?

No. Of course not. She had been sent to a United Church camp, and there were no Catholic girls at that camp, though there was quite a variety of Protestants. And then there was the business about C. not knowing.

She might have converted secretly. Since.

I found my way in time to the cathedral parking lot, and sat there wondering what I should do. I was wearing slacks and a jacket. My idea of what was required in a Catholic church-a Catholic cathedral-was so antiquated that I was not even sure if my outfit would be all right. I tried to recall visits to great churches in Europe. Something about the arms being covered? Headscarves, skirts?

What a bright high silence there was up on this hill. April, not a leaf out yet on the trees, but the sun after all was still well up in the sky. There was one low bank of snow gray as the paving in the church lot.

The jacket I had on was too light for evening wear, or maybe it was colder here, the wind stronger, than in Toronto.

The building might well be locked at this time, locked and empty.

The grand front doors appeared to be so. I did not even bother to climb the steps to try them, because I decided to follow a couple of old women-old like me-who had just come up the long flight from the street and who bypassed those steps entirely, heading around to an easier entrance at the side of the building.

There were more people inside, maybe two or three dozen people, but there wasn’t a sense that they were gathered for a service. They were scattered here and there in the pews, some kneeling and some chatting. The women ahead of me dipped their hands in a marble font without looking at what they were doing and said hello-hardly lowering their voices-to a man who was setting out baskets on a table.

“It looks a lot warmer out than it is,” said one of them, and the man said the wind would bite your nose off.

I recognized the confessionals. Like separate small cottages or large playhouses in a Gothic style, with a lot of dark wooden carving, dark brown curtains. Elsewhere all was glowing, dazzling. The high curved ceiling most celestially blue, the lower curves of the ceiling-those that joined the upright walls-decorated with holy images on gold-painted medallions. Stained-glass windows hit by the sun at this time of day were turned into columns of jewels. I made my way discreetly down one aisle, trying to get a look at the altar, but the chancel being in the western wall was too bright for me to look into. Above the windows, though, I saw that there were painted angels. Flocks of angels, all fresh and gauzy and pure as light.

It was a most insistent place but nobody seemed to be overwhelmed by all the insistence. The chatting ladies kept chatting softly but not in whispers. And other people after some businesslike nodding and crossing knelt down and went about their routines.

As I ought to be going about mine. I looked around for a priest but there was not one in sight. Priests as well as other people must have a working day. They must drive home and go into their living rooms or offices or dens and turn on the television and loosen their collars. Fetch a drink and wonder if they were going to get anything decent for supper. When they did come into the church they would come officially. In their vestments, ready to perform some ceremony. Mass?

Or to hear confessions. But then you would never know when they were there. Didn’t they enter and leave their grilled stalls by a private door?

I would have to ask somebody. The man who had distributed the baskets seemed to be here for reasons that were not purely private, though he was apparently not an usher. Nobody needed an usher. People chose where they wanted to sit-or kneel-and sometimes decided to get up and choose another spot, perhaps being bothered by the glare of the jewel-inflaming sun. When I spoke to him I whispered, out of old habit in a church-and he had to ask me to speak again. Puzzled or embarrassed, he nodded in a wobbly way towards one of the confessionals. I had to become very specific and convincing.

“No, no. I just want to talk to a priest. I’ve been sent to talk to a priest. A priest called Father Hofstrader.”

The basket man disappeared down the more distant side aisle and came back in a little while with a briskly moving stout young priest in ordinary black costume.

He motioned me into a room I had not noticed-not a room, actually, we went through an archway, not a doorway-at the back of the church.

“Give us a chance to talk, in here,” he said, and pulled out a chair for me.

“Father Hofstrader-”

“Oh no, I must tell you, I am not Father Hofstrader. Father Hofstrader is not here. He is on vacation.”

For a moment I did not know how to proceed.

“I will do my best to help you.”

“There is a woman,” I said, “a woman who is dying in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto-”

“Yes, yes. We know of Princess Margaret Hospital.”

“She asks me-I have a note from her here-she wants to see Father Hofstrader.”

“Is she a member of this parish?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she is a Catholic or not. She is from here. From Guelph. She is a friend I have not seen for a long time.”

“When did you talk with her?”

I had to explain that I hadn’t talked with her, she had been asleep, but she had left the note for me.

“But you don’t know if she is a Catholic?”

He had a cracked sore at the corner of his mouth. It must have been painful for him to talk.

“I think she is, but her husband isn’t and he doesn’t know she is. She doesn’t want him to know.”

I said this in the hope of making things clearer, even though I didn’t know for sure if it was true. I had an idea that this priest might shortly lose interest altogether. “Father Hofstrader must have known all this,” I said.

“You didn’t speak with her?”

I said that she had been under medication but that this was not the case all the time and I was sure she would have periods of lucidity. This too I stressed because I thought it necessary.

“If she wishes to make a confession, you know, there are priests available at Princess Margaret’s.”

I could not think of what else to say. I got out the note, smoothed the paper, and handed it to him. I saw that the handwriting was not as good as I had thought. It was legible only in comparison with the letters on the envelope.

He made a troubled face.

“Who is this C.?”

“Her husband.” I was worried that he might ask for the husband’s name, to get in touch with him, but instead he asked for Charlene’s. This woman’s name, he said.

“Charlene Sullivan.” It was a wonder that I even remembered the surname. And I was reassured for a moment, because it was a name that sounded Catholic. Of course that meant that it was the husband who could be Catholic. But the priest might conclude that the husband had lapsed, and that would surely make Charlene’s secrecy more understandable, her message more urgent.

“Why does she need Father Hofstrader?”

“I think perhaps it’s something special.”

“All confessions are special.”

He made a move to get up, but I stayed where I was. He sat down again.

“Father Hofstrader is on vacation but he is not out of town. I could phone and ask him about this. If you insist.”

“Yes. Please.”

“I do not like to bother him. He has not been well.”

I said that if he was not well enough to drive himself to Toronto I could drive him.

“We can take care of his transportation if necessary.”

He looked around and did not see what he wanted, unclipped a pen from his pocket, and then decided that the blank side of the note would do to write on.

“If you’ll just make sure I’ve got the name. Charlotte-”

“Charlene.”

Was I not tempted, during all this palaver? Not once? You’d think that I might break open, be wise to break open, glimpsing that vast though tricky forgiveness. But no. It’s not for me. What’s done is done. Flocks of angels, tears of blood, not withstanding.