Woman of God Page 21

  The lawyers were prepared.

  They told Cooney that the word “Catholic” couldn’t be branded or protected, that Greeks and members of other Orthodox churches used the term “Catholic,” but that it was possible to cast doubt on Aubrey’s authenticity and credibility.

  Said Flanagan, “Make him out to be a cult leader, not a priest. There’s a reasonable basis for it. And he should be defrocked.”

  “Already done,” said Cooney. “He’s off the payroll.”

  “And excommunication?” asked Salerno.

  “It’s in the works,” said Cooney.

  Sebastian added, “I agree, Cardinal, when you say that Aubrey is dangerous, but he’s not invincible. He was accused of sexual predation. Even though his accuser recanted, we could say publicly and loudly that Brent recanted not because Aubrey was innocent but because he couldn’t take the pressure of what the trial was doing to his family.”

  “What else can we use?” Salerno asked Sebastian. Salerno was a big man who spoke sparingly unless he was in court. Cooney thought him to be a great litigator, one of the best.

  Sebastian said, “He’s in love with his wife and child. He won’t let anything touch them. An attack on them could shut him down.”

  Cooney turned to his P.R. consultant. “Fiona, what have you dug up on the wife?”

  Fiona Horsfall held up a thick file on Brigid Fitzgerald. “She’s very well regarded. Has a huge reputation for her medical work in South Sudan. She was considered heroic. Saved many lives. Assisted our military in bringing down a paramilitary terrorist—or, as some say, our military assisted her.”

  Cooney was pacing now, touching the backs of chairs as he walked around the table. “Go on,” he said.

  “She exhibited heroism again in a bombing a few years ago in Jerusalem. She has done a lot of work with the poor and disadvantaged. She’s seen as pious but accessible and down-to-earth. She’s working in a clinic now.”

  “Forget about her, then,” said Cooney. “Concentrate on Aubrey. Full-court press. It will be easier and much more effective to cut Aubrey down—”

  Horsfall interrupted.

  “Your Eminence. I think Fitzgerald is a big influence on Aubrey. She has been and is currently instrumental in the expansion of this JMJ movement.”

  “Fiona. You’ve just said she’s unassailable. Focus on Aubrey. He’s the public face of his church. He’s the pervert who is challenging Rome and canon law, defying two thousand years of Catholic doctrine.

  “Bloody him. Put him out of business. I want his ratty little JMJ movement to die.”

  Chapter 97

  JAMES WAS patching the roof when a slick, blue late-model sedan pulled up to our doorway.

  He jogged downstairs and asked, “Are we expecting someone?”

  I had Gilly in my arms when we opened the door to Father Sebastian of the Boston Archdiocese.

  Why was he here?

  The last time I’d seen him, he had crashed our wedding, given us the stink eye, and wished us a bad life.

  The priest said, “I’m sorry to drop in like this, Dr. Fitzgerald, but I have an urgent message for James from the cardinal.”

  “Have a seat,” I said, sitting down next to James.

  “Cardinal Cooney wants you to know that your excommunication is in process, James. You will be severed from the Church, and you know what that means. You won’t be able to conduct rites of any kind—not Mass, not marriages, not confession, none of it.”

  James said, “I get it. I won’t be a priest under the auspices of Rome, but I will be a priest under the auspices of God. Which is all that matters. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t have to go this way, James.”

  Sebastian wasn’t speaking to me or even looking at me. I could have been a dust bunny under the sofa. That was fine with me, because it gave me a chance to observe the cardinal’s emissary at close range. He was well dressed, crisply pressed, presenting himself as a messenger, but he was more than that. Sebastian was Cooney’s chief of staff, with a degree in law from Harvard.

  “You’ve lost me,” James said.

  James’s expression was even, but I knew that this threat from the archdiocese felt like being kneecapped with a ball bat. James loved God and he loved the Church.

  Gilly felt the tension in the room. She reached around my neck and held on to me fiercely, and I shushed her as she started to whimper.

  “Let me clarify,” said Sebastian. “Cardinal Cooney asks that you stop this destructive rebellion, James. Don’t call this a Catholic church. It’s not. Stop proselytizing. Stop undercutting the Church, and the cardinal will drop our public-relations offensive. Do you understand?”

  “I’m sorry you had to come all this way, Peter,” James said, getting up, displacing the cat. “Be careful when you back out that you don’t hit the oak tree. It’s been here for a hundred years.”

  Sebastian stayed seated.

  “James, I must know if you understand me. The full force of the Boston Archdiocese is poised to launch a campaign against you. You will be painted as a pervert, as a tool of the devil, as a cult leader, and your followers will be tarred with the same brush…”

  I had heard way too much of this crap, and I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.

  I jumped to my feet and said to the outrageous Father Sebastian, “Please understand us. James is a good man and a good priest, and there’s nothing you can say that will stop the JMJ movement. The Roman Catholic Church’s threats, rigidity, and exclusion are exactly why people are coming to JMJ. We will fight anyone who gets between people and their love of God, and we will win.”

  Now Sebastian was on his feet, too, and Gilly let loose with her signature, glass-breaking wail.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” Sebastian said to me over the din.

  James said, “Brigid and I are of the same mind. I’ve got work to do upstairs. Rain is in the forecast.”

  The priest made a gesture, as though brushing dirt off his hands. When he had cleared the threshold, James closed the door hard behind him.

  Baby and I went into my husband’s arms.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I expected to be excommunicated. But I am worried that Cooney will intimidate people and that they’ll be frightened away.”

  “Some will. Many won’t,” I said.

  I took Gilly upstairs to her room and soothed her as I looked out her window. I watched Father Sebastian get into his car, and I stayed at the window until that black cloud of a man drove away.

  Chapter 98

  AT FOUR in the afternoon, I was stitching a nasty head wound at the clinic when a patient called the front desk and I was called to the phone, stat.

  “Doctor, it’s Chloe.” Chloe’s voice trailed off, and I called her name several times until she came back, saying in a weak voice, “I’ve killed myself.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Downstairs. Tell my mom.”

  Chloe Tremaine was one of my patients. At seventeen, she was a heroin addict, twelve weeks pregnant, and trying to clean up. I ran outside and found her lying on the pavement, curled into a ball. She wasn’t dead, but a great amount of blood was soaking through her pink flannel pajamas.

  She was just conscious enough to say, “I had to get rid of it. Tell…Mom…I’m sorry.” I tried to keep her talking, but she had passed out.

  Chloe lived with her boyfriend in his parked van behind the pizzeria where he worked, around the corner from the clinic. She had come in irregularly for checkups and had told me that she wanted the baby, but she was shooting up, horrified at herself for doing that, not eating or sleeping properly. She was a total mess with a sweet personality and a desperately dangerous and chaotic life.

  Now, curled up at the intersection of Maple and the highway, she was close to death. Her pulse was thready, and she had a high fever, indicating a raging infection. But the loss of blood was going to kill her first. I wouldn’t be able to save her in our low-t
ech walk-in clinic.

  By the time the ambulance arrived, Gilly was under the care of our head nurse, and I had Chloe’s medical records in my hands, including her pre-signed permission for procedures including surgery to save her life.

  As messed up as she was, I was fond of Chloe. I talked to her nonstop as we tore down Interstate 91 at rocket speed, assuring her that everything would be fine.

  Dr. John Nelson, the attending emergency surgeon at Springfield Metro Hospital that day, had booked an O.R. for us and was ready to assist. We scrubbed in and assessed Chloe’s condition as critical. She was given a complete physical, a blood transfusion, and an MRI.

  We were able to ascertain that Chloe had thrust a sharp instrument up her vagina, likely a coat hanger, hoping to hit something that would induce a miscarriage.

  The fetus was dead, and the instrument Chloe had used had pierced the spongy walls of her uterus, clipping an artery on the way to puncturing her bowel, which had introduced a massive infection. She was septic, on the verge of shock, and I couldn’t even give her Kind Hands’ fifty-fifty odds. The very small chance we could save her was still dropping.

  Over the next four hours, Nelson and I performed a complete hysterectomy and tried to stabilize our young, stupid patient. I felt stupid, too, that I hadn’t guessed during those prenatal counseling sessions that she had considered doing this.

  Chloe survived the surgery, and her condition stabilized. I was looking in on her in the ICU, waiting for her mother to arrive, when a nurse found me.

  I asked her, “Is Chloe’s mother here?”

  The nurse had a very strange look on her face.

  “Dr. Fitzgerald. Your husband is trying to reach you. It’s an emergency. You’re wanted at home.”

  “What kind of emergency? What happened?”

  The nurse didn’t know.

  It had to be Gilly. Something had happened to Gilly. Please, God. No.

  I called James. He didn’t answer.

  I’d come to the hospital in an ambulance, and I was going to have to return home the same way.

  I went out into the hallway and shouted, “I need a bus to take me back to Millbrook. I need it now.”

  Chapter 99

  THE PARAMEDIC drove the ambulance as if it were his child’s life on the line. We reached Millbrook’s town limits after I’d gotten the message that James had called. During that drive, I was in a roaring panic. My God, it was so late. The clinic was long closed. I’d forgotten Gilly. What had happened to her? What had happened to my child?

  James was with her, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

  I prayed, asking God to please let my daughter be safe, but if He heard me, He didn’t respond. I called James until I had jammed his mailbox with my messages, and we finally approached the rectory.

  What I saw was so unbelievable, I thought I was in one of my open communications with God. But this scene was 100 percent real, in this time and place. While I was out, hell had come to our door.

  The street fronting the church was clogged with cars, and four fire trucks were parked up on the grass. Fire burned behind the church’s arched windows, and flames shot through the roof. The blaze looked like a living thing, an evil entity that was determined to destroy everything it touched.

  Where is James? Where is Gilly?

  The churchyard was pitch-black and raging orange at the same time. I searched the fire-illuminated faces of the bystanders and called for James. Water arced through the air, soaking the rectory’s roof, our home, only fifty feet from the blazing church. The flames fell back, but the heat and roiling smoke made even breathing nearly impossible.

  Where is James? Does he have Gilly?

  A group of men with their backs to me were talking among themselves. I called out, “Please help me. I’m looking for my husband and child.”

  The men turned.

  The one closest to me was the maniac Lawrence House. He’d pulled a gun in a church jam-packed with people, including dozens of children, and warned me that because of our message, there would be hell to pay. Had he done this?

  “Sorry, Doctor. I haven’t seen him,” House said. “You know what this is, don’t you?” He waved a hand toward the conflagration.

  “What are you saying?”

  I was looking past him, scanning the onlookers for my husband’s face.

  “Divine intervention,” said House, with great pleasure. “Di-vine in-ter-ven-tion. And you earned it. In full.”

  I was staring at him, speechless with fury, when someone pulled at my arm. I spun around, ready to do violence.

  It was Katherine Ross, my former bridesmaid, and she had Gilly in her arms.

  I screamed my daughter’s name and grabbed a double armful of Gilly and Katherine together. Kath was saying, “Gilly is fine. She’s fine. My mom has your cat.”

  Gilly reached out her arms. “Where were you, Mommy?”

  Kath handed my precious toddler to me, and I kissed her and held her so tightly that she yelped.

  “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry. I was at the hospital. Kath, where is he? Have you seen James?”

  She shook her head no.

  I gave Gilly back to Katherine and said, “Please. Take care of her. I need to look for him.”

  I ran.

  I rounded the church, and I saw a crew holding hoses on the western side, the side that faced the rectory. James was wearing a fire hat and aiming a hose at the roof.

  “James.”

  I ran to him and held on to him as he kept the hose trained on the flames.

  “I couldn’t find you!” he shouted over the crackle of fire, the roar of streaming water, and the grinding engines. “Katherine has Gillian. I was in the rectory when the fire trucks came. I called you.”

  “I was in a no-phone zone at the hospital. What happened?”

  James waved his hand toward the church, taking in the blackened walls all the way up to what was left of the bell tower.

  “Our wonderful old church. I can’t believe this.”

  But I could believe it. I remembered an image of myself floating on a glassy sea with flames leaping around me. God had sent rain. And he had enveloped me in a ball of light.

  James shouted, “We hosed the rectory down so that sparks can’t set fire to the roof! Can you give me a hand with this hose, Brigid? My arms are wearing out.”

  I stepped in front of my husband, and we stood together with our hands on the line, dousing the fire.

  “Thank God,” he said to me. “No one was hurt. No one died.”

  Chapter 100

  AT ONE in the morning, James, Gilly, and I opened the front door to the rectory. Our little home was smoke filled, water soaked, and uninhabitable. James left his phone number with the fire chief, and we drove to the closest motel on the highway.

  We went to bed in our clothes, didn’t sleep, and were back at the site of the fire at six a.m. Police arrived, as did the fire chief, an arson investigator, and an insurance adjuster.

  The fire was out, but the nightmare continued.

  I stared at what remained of JMJ and tried to picture what had happened since yesterday morning, when I kissed James good-bye, got into my car with Gilly, and drove to work. Sometime between taking Chloe Tremaine to the hospital and getting word in the ICU that there was a go-home emergency, this devastation had occurred.

  I tried to picture that first spark. Had the wiring in the old church frayed and started the blaze? Or had someone deliberately torched our dreams?

  The arson investigator, a man with a deeply lined face and a badge pinned to his jacket, stopped us from going into the church. He introduced himself as Walt Harrison and said, “It’s not safe in there, folks. The rest of the roof could fall through. Same for the floor.”

  We stood just outside the dripping doorway as Harrison flashed his light around the scorched and ashen interior.

  “Here’s what I see. This fire started under the loft. A Molotov cocktail, or something like it, was tossed under there.
Superheated smoke and poisonous gases traveled into the bell tower and steeple. As the gases ignited, the steeple, the tower, this section of the roof, collapsed.”

  Pale shafts of light came through the open roof and illuminated the ancient church bell, lying on its side on the floor.

  Harrison took us to his mobile office inside a van. He asked, “Who do you think would do this?”

  James told Harrison about the raging controversy surrounding JMJ, concluding, “Some people”—his voice cracked—“a lot of people think what we’re doing is wrong.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Harrison. “I’d like you to look at some photos that were taken at the fire. Arsonists—if it is arson—are fascinated by the fires they set. They really cannot stay away.”

  Harrison turned his computer screen toward us and clicked through shots of the crowd watching our burning church. I skipped over the faces of neighbors and friends and stabbed at the face of a man who hated us.

  “I ran into him last night, Walt. His name is Lawrence House, and he told me that the fire was ‘divine intervention.’ Months ago, he pulled a gun in our church. We got it away from him before he could hurt anyone.”

  James gave details to Harrison, and I thought ahead to the near future.

  Our congregants would have to be interrogated.

  The church would have to be rebuilt.

  Even the rectory would require rescue.

  I thought of my father quoting Nietzsche at my fourteen-year-old self: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”

  This fire hadn’t killed us. We would come back from this. And we would be stronger.

  Chapter 101

  I WAS painting the new cabinets in the rectory kitchen when Zach Graham showed up without warning, shouting, “Hello, Red!” Totally startled, I knocked over a paint can, which jumped off the counter and beyond the drop cloth, scared Gilly, who burst out crying, and sent Birdie racing across the spill, tracking powder-blue footprints across the ancient wide-board floors.

  Zach laughed at the chaotic scene he’d caused, which was right out of a fifties Lucille Ball comedy, with me in the starring role. I didn’t find it funny. He got that, loud and clear.