Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 209(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
My calling. My journey was not what most would expect, but here I am. Was I called to serve my faith? Yes, but in my heart, my reasons were not what most would assume.
Thanks to my grandmother’s influence, my formation process was a little different to most. I was posted here to Saint Margaret’s as a Chemistry teacher for the handful of young women sent by their parents as a form of punishment. Within a year of ordination, I was the headmaster, and two years later, my prejudice about females has rooted down into my marrow.
But the location is remote, and I have no parishioners to speak of besides a few octogenarians that still shuffle into the chapel for confession or communion once a week. The girls that come here go away just as fast, either by violating the rules or begging their parents to free them from the oppression of prayer and studies and the litany of rules I impose.
Pleasantly enough, the diocese has stalled any further intakes until a decision is made about the crumbling stone structures and list of code violations that anchor this five-hundred-acre compound.
If I had my way, there would be no more Headmaster Martin and instead, I’d be left alone here to continue my own studies and research. I would set up my own lab, do things my way.
That time is coming. I’ve made deals, talked to the right people and greased the right palms. The church isn’t keen on selling up old buildings, but to the right person with the right recommendation?
Through God, all things are possible.
Giovanni slugs back the last of his whiskey coffee and I do the same as the office phone on my desk rings through. The clear button flashing on the front of the base indicates it’s on my personal line, which is only used by my father when he needs something.
My three brothers, one by blood and two by marriage, all use my cell. I see them rarely these days, but whenever they need something, be that advice or bailing out of some mess they’ve stepped in, I’m their first call. Not our father. He’s on wife number six and she came with something new.
An eighteen-year-old daughter. With a cat. He hates cats.
I haven’t met them, don’t see any point. I’ve come to realize my father has a ‘type’. Outside of my mother, of course, who was a fucking saint, he likes them a little bitchy, definitely greedy, Peg Bundy variations without the humor. There’s lots of leopard print and big hair, fake tits and PhD’s in narcissism.
My father gets the frequent flier discount at Johnson, Mettam and Roth, Divorce Attorneys, and my brothers are already doing the over under on how long this new wife is going to last.
What a fucking shit storm marriage is.
I tap my fingers on the desktop as I debate the pros and cons of answering.
“Take it,” Giovanni says, nodding at the office door. “I gotta take a leak, then need to head out. You sure you won’t come along? Let those PharmCo people see what real genius looks like.”
He pushes up from the armchair on the other side of my desk, flinging his fingers through his salty-brown hair, then turns and walks across the colorful Turkish rug that covers the stone floor between my desk and the doorway.
I take a deep breath and answer on the fifth ring, knowing when I hang up, I’ll need another shot of Johnnie.
Airports have a distinct smell that’s equal parts jet fuel, frustration, sweat and stale booze.
The ten-minute phone call with my father was mostly me saying no, and him not listening. It’s a dance for the ages with us, but this time, for whatever reason, I let him win.
Maybe it was the new sound of desperation in his voice.
Maybe it was that all the other wayward girls have vacated Saint Margaret’s so the renovations can begin and I needed a little side project.
Or, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. So, three hours later, I’m waiting to pick up my newest stepsister, not as her stepbrother but as Father Martin, and maybe I can offer some solace or advice on how to navigate the prickly as a cactus man that raised me.
I don’t fucking know, but when he promised that this would be the last favor he would ever ask of me, and that he appreciated me, I caved.
An older couple nods, making the sign of the cross as they pass. I’m inside baggage claim holding a piece of white poster board I grabbed from the art supply closet before scrawling ‘TENNANT’ across the front in thick black marker.
The ones that have that intoxicating smell.
I think it’s a childhood thing, remembering the swirling lightheaded feeling they gave me in my youth at St. Agatha’s Preparatory School where every kid needed a good magic marker high to get through the day.