of the Blessed Virgin stepping on a serpent kept watch over us from behind. A solitary kneeler was parked directly in front of Our Lady’s feet. Eric often said his rosary there. On three of the four walls were the Stations of the Cross below a row of small square windows. The windows were up high and made of coloured, textured glass like the kind found in washrooms and other places where people shouldn’t look in.
There, on its knees under the fluorescent lights, the student body mumbled through never-ending prayers. Each one served to remind me I was straying farther from a state of grace. The Finger of God, it seemed, was pointed directly at me, and I cursed all parents who had christened their daughters Mary.
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus... “
Mary O’Brien was a local girl whose family came to Mass every Sunday morning. She had spent her entire life below the cliff in Ennis, the bell tower and Mount Saint John her inescapable points of reference. Toward the end of the previous year we started going on walks together. I made her laugh; she gave me impure thoughts. This sort of “fraternization” had to be kept away from school grounds. The monks couldn’t have us “strolling up and down the drive with every girl in town.” I guess they had more faith in our ability to be desired by local representatives of the opposite sex than we did.
The Sunday before the end of the spring term Mary and I had stolen away to the path behind the Bog. We ended up on the bench in front of the secluded statue of Our Lady of the Lake, a place created for quiet, holy meditation. She sat smiling on the bench in the dappled maple light. My hand wasn’t exactly up her blouse, but I could see how it might have looked that way from a distance. We were making out, I admit, but Brother Thomas wasn’t interested in hearing my defence.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
The rosary was made up of three groups of five Mysteries each. The second group, the Sorrowful Mysteries, included events in the Lord’s journey through the streets of Jerusalem on His way to crucifixion. We took turns reading the brief descriptions out of the prayer book about how Saint Veronica wiped the face of Jesus or how Simon of Cyrene shouldered the cross for a few steps. You were supposed to dedicate each Mystery to some pressing international concern: the conversion of the Soviet Union, the relief of the famine in Ethiopia, or world peace were all acceptable selections. Then it was Michael Ashbury’s turn to take the lead. We juniors were kneeling five pews back, so all I could see was his skinny little neck.
“I wish to dedicate the next Mystery to the upperclassmen at Saint John’s,” he said. “For more maturity in certain juniors and seniors so they won’t pick on kids smaller than them this year. Hail, Mary, full of grace...”
At the end of rosary Jon nudged my shoulder and gestured to the stairwell where Father Gregory was beckoning me. I squeezed out of the pew and genuflected toward the Blessed Sacrament. Then Father Gregory led me down the empty hallway past the open classrooms, the hem of his habit fluttering nervously behind him.
Father Gregory was the rector or headmaster of the seminary. That meant our day-to-day welfare was in his hands. He was our surrogate parent/prison guard. He was also a serious man who had about twelve doctorates and who read the Latin version of the Bible—with the Greek and Hebrew cross references in the margins—just for fun.
He had bad dandruff, and it collected on the inside of his glasses in a filthy haze. Trying to establish eye contact with him was frustrating. I wanted to take his glasses off, wipe them on his habit, then put them back on his face so I could see him better. Let’s just say he wasn’t one of those monks you could imagine boozing it up with Robin Hood and the Merry Men after hijacking the king’s coach. Besides, he was too old—at least 108, it seemed. He often mentioned living through eight popes in much the same way other old people talked about having survived both world wars. But despite his age he was strong and imposing. He was still over six feet tall.
Father Gregory’s office was known as the Cave. Although it was right off the foyer in the heart of the seminary, we rarely had cause to enter. It was both intimidating and exotic. This was the place your dad came on Parents’ Day and sat with you across the desk from Father Gregory. It was here that you suddenly realized your old man was almost as afraid as you were.
The door to the Cave opened on a long, narrow hallway that led to a dimly lit office with about two thousand books covering grey stone walls. Only half of the titles were in English. Everything was neat, dusted, and in its place. The only thing betraying human habitation was a newspaper tossed a little haphazardly onto the Naugahyde couch. Presiding sorrowfully over everything was a big Russian icon of the Madonna and Child.
Behind Father Gregory’s teak desk was a large window that looked out onto the middle of a colossal rhododendron that had grown into a small forest. The Cave was on the main floor of the seminary, and the dormitory wing above—particularly the window over the sinks in the washroom—could be clearly seen from my seat. I knew Jon, Connor, and Eric were probably up there with the lights turned out, watching us and making up dialogue as they saw my lips move. I tried to keep from looking.
“How are you settling in this year?” Father Gregory had my file out. It, and an antique fountain pen, were the only things on the desk. Every seminarian had one of these neat dossiers with lists and dates and records of everything you’d ever done or were likely to do. He hovered over a page, scratched something in there with his old pen, then finally looked up, waiting for my answer.
“Uh, fine. I guess.”
“Doesn’t sound very definitive to me.”
“Great. Everything’s great.”
“Have you had time to put any more thought toward your vocation?”
At the end of the previous year I was invited not to return to Saint John the Divine. The inventory of reasons included attitudinal problems, a questionable dedication toward a religious vocation, a general lack of respect, a tendency to incite rebellion, and the “liaison” with Mary. I was given the summer to pray, think things through, search my heart, and try to come to some conclusion about whether I should return for my third year a “new man” or stay at home and make the best of public school.
“I’m back, aren’t I? I want to be back.”
Father Gregory scribbled something else. “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” It was the priesthood question in another guise.
“Well, maybe teaching religion someplace like Rwanda. Maybe I’ll become a Jesuit.” The monks hated the Jesuits, only they couldn’t admit it. We said things like this just to make them mad. “But I’m not even a senior yet. Who knows what they’re going to be when they’re sixteen?”
He squinted a little, then leaned back in his cushy chair. Shadows moved in the washroom window above his head. “Don’t you miss your family and friends back in Calgary?”
Well, actually, my only friends were interred here on Saint John’s thousand acres. Father Gregory knew that. The group I had grown up with back home had gone off in such entirely different directions that I hardly had anything to say to them. My brother and sisters were all off in their own lives, busy putting our family behind them. For some reason much was expected from parents who’d done almost nothing themselves. My mother worked at the Calgary “International” School of Beauty. My father, a postal worker and regional union representative, believed in progress and often said he’d be damned if he was going to let his kids grow up to sort mail or tint hair.
“No
