Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

dual fatherhood, the Breviary gives form to a free flow of gratitude.
    Seven times a day: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. He seeks holiness in the poorest moment, a fulfillment of his calling. Seven times a day, he consecrates time.
    As Vivienne Blanchard knocks at the door for their weekly session, he recognizes that in some ways he is no different from the men in his parish who do shift work at the shoe shop or the mills. He never expected his life to resemble a layman’s, but like them, he has a child to raise, a job with routines. In all other respects his days resemble no one’s but another priest’s. Custodian of secrets, shepherd and steward, God’s stand-in, he opens the door to his neighbor and friend with the heady certainty of the chosen.
    I have a problem of faith, Father , says Vivienne, her small face pinkening. I require advice.
    He has always found the odd formalities in her English enchanting. The way she speaks makes him feel necessary.
    She requires him.
    He takes her hands, which are thin and hard, bony, but in a pleasing way. He squeezes her fingers, meaning to reassure, to appear older than his years. Faith is not the problem , he says, and she smiles, answering, Faith is the solution.
    Most Wednesday afternoons, just before supper when the girls like to play together after Mariette’s nap (Lizzy flat-out refuses to nap, ever), Vivienne presents to him a problem of faith, and they talk. Her questions interest him because, unlike the questions of his other parishioners, they strike him as a plea for a more meaningful life but not necessarily an easier one.
    If God is always with us, as He claims, then why do we so often feel alone?
    Do you often feel alone?
    Doesn’t everyone, Father? Clearly God wants us to feel alone at times. There must be a reason.
    What do you mean by alone?
    Surely you know, Father. You of all people. Tell me where God goes when He leaves me.
    He goes to me , he tells her, smiling. He says, Remind Vivienne Blanchard that I can exist in two places at once.
    At these times, her problems of faith appear to be nothing more than an excuse to talk to somebody who is neither a child of four, nor her sisters who don’t know everything about her, nor her husband who doesn’t listen. This, to his private satisfaction, is something he gleans between the lines.
    Not that she tells him much.
    He is thirty-three years old, flatters himself that he looks forty: permanently windburned from all those seasons on the Island, his skin exudes an illusion of experience. Despite his toughened complexion and the auburn stubble he has to shave twice a day, during his first years here the parishioners treated him like a little boy. He came to St. Bart’s as a freshly minted curate, straight-shouldered and long of limb, consigned to the tutelage of Father George Devlin, the mulish, much-loved pastor whose sole concession to Vatican II was to say Mass in an English so grudgingly unintelligible that a good third of the congregation didn’t notice the switch from Latin. Night after night, Father Devlin installed himself at the dinner table, masticating one of Mrs. Hanson’s overcooked pepper steaks, wondering loudly what in heaven’s name the Church was coming to. After one of the teenagers in the parish youth group asked to do an interpretive dance for the Offertory, Father Devlin abruptly retired, leaving his understudy in the thankless position of reviving the headliner’s beloved and long-running role.
    Because he was young—the youngest pastor in the diocese, a point of pride for the congregation—they treated him as a mascot, a class pet, the freckle-faced boy who had followed his beneficent older sister into the bosom of the Hinton Valley. Among the first seminarians to be ordained in a hometown parish, he had made his vows in this very church, prostrating himself before the Almighty and the bishop and this same congregation, light-headed from