Woman of God Read online

  As the gang of reporters thundered toward us, I said to Gilly, “Stay close.” We had no bodyguards, and I didn’t see a hired driver with a sign bearing our name. Gilly and I were about to be mobbed.

  I pushed Gilly awkwardly through the revolving doors and got into the next compartment as the reporters powered through the swinging doors beside us. When we were all on the sidewalk fronting the departure lane, Tonia Shoumatoff, a firebrand reporter and writer from the Millbrook Independent, came in close.

  “Brigid. See this?”

  She held up the front page of her paper. A quick glance showed a still shot from the video of Pope Gregory enclosing Gilly and me in his farewell embrace. The photo had to have been released by the Vatican. The headline read, POPE GREGORY MEETS WITH LOCAL WOMAN PRIEST.

  Tonia made eye contact and spoke urgently. “Brigid, please say a few words about your meeting with the pope. What did you talk about? How did he seem to you?”

  I said, “Tonia, and everyone, I just learned the news about fifteen minutes ago. I still can’t believe it. Pope Gregory looked fine when I saw him two days ago, just fine.”

  My voice caught in my throat, and as the reporters, mics and cameras in hand, waited, I saw satellite trucks parked in the bus lane. This curbside interview was going live.

  Randy Norman from the Times asked what we had spoken about, and I answered, “We talked about the meaning of God in our lives.”

  More shouts: “Did he criticize JMJ?” “Where is he on woman priests?” “Did the pope give you any indication that there would be any progress in the Church’s positions on divorce and remarriage?”

  I reached for Gilly, but she was no longer at my side. Where had she gone? Where was she?

  “Gilly? Has anyone seen Gilly?”

  I frantically searched the crowd—and then she poked through the ring of reporters, saying, “Our ride, Mommy. He’s right there.”

  A man in livery was holding a card with my name on it over his head. I grabbed Gilly into a hug and kept her beside me as I apologized and worked my way through the thicket of reporters, out to the curb.

  Our driver opened the door, and still the press mobbed us. Their faces were shining with emotion and passion and ambition. They shot endless photos and lobbed more questions.

  I boosted Gilly into the backseat and followed her in, saying, “That’s all, everyone. We need to get home.”

  We buckled up, and I locked the door.

  “Ready,” I said to the driver. And he stepped on the gas.

  After a long and jerky ride through morning rush-hour traffic, at last we were climbing the stoop to our home.

  After James died, I handed the JMJ Millbrook keys to Bishop Reedy. A week later, Gilly, Birdie, and I moved back to my small brick house in Cambridge. By the congregation’s unanimous vote, I became pastor of St. Paul’s, the very church I’d attended with my mother as a child and where I had met James. St. Paul’s was now JMJ St. Paul’s, and to serve God in this, my lifelong church, was a many-layered happiness.

  Now, I jiggled a key in the stubborn lock and opened the door fast, before we were spotted.

  Birdie was at the church being minded by the deacon, and Gilly begged to go get her.

  “She can wait, Gilly. Please.”

  The milk in the fridge was still good after our three-day absence. I made cocoa for Gilly and myself, and we got into my bed, covering ourselves with a handmade quilt. I palmed the remote and turned on the TV news. It was all about the death of Pope Gregory. Millions were grieving around the world.

  I was overcome with sadness and couldn’t help sobbing into my hands.

  Gilly tried to comfort me, but she was crying, too.

  We had only just met him, but we had loved him. And I was missing him as if I had known him my whole life.

  I kept seeing myself through the pope’s eyes, seeing him in a many-dimensional view through mine, feeling God’s presence surrounding us. And then, he died.

  What would happen now?

  Chapter 116

  I SLEPT in ragged snatches and woke up for real before sunrise on Easter Sunday.

  Everything that had been in my mind overnight rushed back to me. I thought about the way Pope Gregory touched my arm and asked that I pray for him. My train of thought was derailed by the buzz of my phone. It was on my dresser, across the room.

  It had to be a reporter, and that was an outrage. I kicked off the bedding, crossed the floor, and grabbed the phone.

  It was Zach.

  He had actually used the phone.

  I croaked, “Zach. Where are you?”

  “I’m in St. Peter’s with a couple million other people. Can you hear me okay?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “There are always educated guesses and wild rumors, but never have there been rumors like this, Brigid. The cardinals are locked up until the vote is in, but there’s been a leak. Your name is being circulated in the College of Cardinals.”

  “My name? What are you talking about?”

  “Brigid, your name has come up as a candidate for pope.”

  My legs went out from under me as if I’d been slammed behind the knees by a two-by-four, and I dropped to the floor in a state of stunned shock and denial. There was no way the church would want a woman pope. And I entirely lacked the background to qualify. This story was crazy, frightening, and I didn’t get it. I sat down hard at the foot of the bed, pressed Redial, and heard the ring tone.

  Zach answered.

  “Brigid,” he said.

  “Wait. What you just said? It’s absurd. It’s some kind of bad joke.”

  “You don’t understand, Brigid. Something is happening here in Rome. My sources are reliable.”

  A tremendous roar came over the phone. The only thing that sounded even close was a game-winning homer at Fenway. This sounded ten times louder.

  Zach shouted, “Brigid! I think news is breaking. Keep your phone with you and charged. I’ll call you.”

  And the line went dead again.

  I tried to blank out what Zach had said. I had to say Easter sunrise Mass in an hour. I had to get ready.

  I went to wake Gilly, but she was already sitting up in bed with her iPad. She flashed the screen toward me. “Zach sent this clip.”

  “Let me see.”

  I sat next to Gilly and watched the images of a roiling mass of people within the confines of St. Peter’s Square.

  “What’s happening?” Gilly asked. “It looks crazy.”

  “St. Peter’s is always filled like that on Easter Sunday because the pope goes onto his balcony—somewhere in here—and gives a blessing.”

  “But the Pope died.”

  “That’s right. And now, there’s a vote going on in the Vatican to elect a new pope.”

  “A new pope? Today?”

  “Could happen. But sometimes it takes a few days for the cardinals to reach an agreement. Hey. Are you as hungry as I am? Five minutes until breakfast. And then we’ve got to hustle.

  “Let’s go, Gilly. We have to beat the sun.”

  Chapter 117

  THE STREET outside our front steps had been closed to traffic and was jammed with people out to the very walls of the houses. The crowd was chanting my name, holding up babies to be kissed; their expressions were ecstatic, pleading, expectant.

  “Brigid, is it true? Don’t forget us when you go to Rome.”

  This was how I learned that the rumor in Rome had flashed across the “pond” and that I had become the flesh-and-blood manifestation of hope.

  But I had no answers. I opened my mind to God, and I felt a slight breeze that moved around me so faintly, I couldn’t be sure that it was anything but the natural movement of air.

  I looked out from my short stoop at the field of people who’d gathered to see me. For a moment, I was paralyzed, but Gilly loved this. Dressed in her second-best dress, blue and embroidered with daisies, and with a bandage over the cut on her hand, she thrilled to the attention. S
he waved from the top step and was rewarded by people calling out to her.

  “Yo, Gilly, did you meet the pope?”

  Gilly was still small enough to get trampled. I picked up my little girl, and she gripped her legs around my hips, tightened her arms around my neck. She was getting heavy, but once I had a good hold on her, I stepped down into the street.

  Reporters assailed me with questions from all sides. One of them, Jason “Papa” Beans of the Boston Globe, was wearing a button on his jacket, the universal question Y in bold red on a yellow ground.

  “Have you gotten the call from the Vatican?” Beans asked.

  “Aww, Papa. It’s a rumor, nothing more. And that’s the really big scoop. Now, pleeease pardon me. I have to go to church. I have a Mass to say.”

  “Bri-gid! Bri-gid!”

  Beans did the gallant thing. He walked ahead of me, parting the crowd so that I could go through. Still, people threw flowers and grabbed at my sleeves and even my hem, and they blew kisses as we moved slowly up the block.

  By the time we reached the entrance to St. Paul’s, thousands were funneling from the broader avenues down the narrow streets, toward the entrance to the church.

  Only a small number of these people would fit inside, and as this became apparent, panic began. They all wanted to see me.

  My vision started to blur. I was walking behind Beans through the crowd, and I could also see myself with Gilly and the restive mob from a great height. It reminded me of the view of St. Peter’s that Zach had sent Gilly this morning.

  It was Jason Beans who brought me back to earth. Having cleared a path for me and Gilly right to the sacristy door, he shot his last, desperate questions at me.

  “Brigid, has the Vatican contacted you? Have you been told that you’re in contention for pope?”

  “No and no. Thanks for the escort. I’ll see you after Mass, Papa, I promise.”

  I closed the sacristy’s street door behind me. As I caught my breath, Gilly embraced Birdie and fed her, and when I told her to go into the church, she said okay.

  I opened the door to the nave, and Gilly scooted through. I watched her squeeze into the aisle seat in the front right pew, my seat for thirty years. I had been sitting exactly there when I met her father. It was Gilly’s seat now.

  I looped my stole around my neck and looked out over the congregation. The air was supercharged with expectation, and I was pretty sure that the congregants were more interested in what had transpired in Rome than they were in St. Paul’s thoughts about the resurrection of Christ.

  I would read the First Epistle to the Corinthians anyway.

  I felt a draft at my feet and at my cheeks.

  God, are You here?

  I smiled at the congregation, and I began to speak.

  Chapter 118

  THAT WAS a pretty rough scene out on DeWolfe Street,” I said to the congregants. “But I’m glad we’re all together now on this momentous Easter Sunday. We have a lot to reflect upon and much to pray for.”

  As I spoke, I felt that strange sensation of water drying on my skin, the same one I had first felt when climbing the imposing marble staircase in the Apostolic Palace.

  Now, as then, I felt a soft breeze in my hair.

  Could anyone see it?

  I reined in these thoughts and focused on the faces before me. I knew, Be with them.

  But something was going on inside me. I felt woozy and warm, maybe feverish. I rationalized that it was jet lag and stress, lack of food and sleep. Or maybe the channel between me and God was so flexible now from use, it had become like a window that could open at any time.

  I anchored myself to the altar with both hands. I very much wanted to celebrate this sunrise Mass, and I didn’t think I could do that if I was both with the congregation and watching them from under St. Paul’s barrel-vaulted ceiling.

  I was reaching for my next words when a commotion broke out, back in the shadows at the rear of the church. A bearded man jumped to his feet and called my name, demanding my attention.

  “Look here, Brigid. Look at me.”

  I looked, but I couldn’t make out his face. Did I know him? He walked up the aisle toward me, and when he reached the rail, he dropped to one knee and made the sign of the cross, smoothly slipping his hand inside his jacket. I was focused on his square, bearded face—it was the beard that threw me off. And then I got it: he was Lawrence House, the man who had threatened our family and who had likely burned down our church.

  Gilly shouted “Mom!” from her seat in the front pew.

  Her face was contorted with fear, but before I could react to her, I felt a punch to my shoulder. I dropped, reached out toward Gilly, and heard, as if from a distance, the second of two sharp cracking sounds.

  I toppled backward, grabbing at the altar cloth, pulling it and everything on the altar down around me.

  I fought hard to stay in the present. I tried to get to my feet, but I was powerless. The light dimmed around me. The screams faded. I was dropping down into a bottomless blackness, and I couldn’t break my fall.

  Chapter 119

  ZACHARY GRAHAM signed off from his call to the international desk at the Times and exited the media van. His cameraman, Bart Buell, was leaning against the hood.

  “You ready?” Bart asked. “It’s starting to break.”

  “Follow me,” Zach said.

  They went back the way Zach had come, up Via della Conciliazione, cutting around St. Peter’s Square, waiting in line for the small elevator to discharge its half dozen passengers and for the next group in line to get in.

  After five or six minutes, Zach and his cameraman were riding the creaking lift up fifty feet to the top of Bernini’s colonnade, with its full view of St. Peter’s Square and the backdrop of Vatican City.

  The two men blocked out their shot, and while Buell erected the setup and tested the equipment, Zach went over his notes. When he felt good to go, he put on his shades and peered out into the blazing sunshine bouncing off the ancient cut stones of the venerable buildings and the extraordinarily beautiful dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

  The people in the square were in a spiritual frenzy. The millions moved as one, looking almost like a single-celled organism under a microscope. The sounds coming from the crowd, the shouting, praying, and keening, were like nothing Zach had ever heard before.

  These people had wanted to see and be blessed by the beloved Pope Gregory. Now they were waiting to be blessed by his replacement.

  Who would it be?

  Would Brigid be elected the head of the Roman Catholic Church? If so, she would have powerful enemies inside the Vatican and without. Would she ever be safe?

  Zach tried to make out the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, at the far end of the square. When a conclusive vote was confirmed, the ballots would be burned, and the rising white smoke would signify that the Church had elected a new pope.

  Zach asked his cameraman, “Do you see that?”

  The cameraman was zooming in with his long telephoto lens when Zach’s phone buzzed. He slapped his shirt pocket and retrieved it. The caller ID read Brigid.

  He pressed Receive.

  “Brigid, I think I see smoke. I have to go on air right now. We may have a new pope. I’ll call you back…Who is this? Gilly? You’re breaking up, Gilly. Take a breath. Say it again. What’s wrong?”

  The undulating rumble coming from St. Peter’s Square took on volume and pitch as the wisp of smoke thickened and rose in an unmistakable column. Cheers and weeping became a thundering roar.

  Zach crouched down and pressed his phone hard against his ear.

  “Gilly?”

  “Zach!” the little girl cried. “It’s Mommy! My mommy was shot!”

  Chapter 120

  THE JUBA Line bus from Juba Airport to Magwi was the same bus I’d taken so many years ago. The chassis had been repatched and painted over, and the sign in the front window reading God Is Good had been replaced with a new sign, same message.
r />   The people of South Sudan had little except their faith in God, but they still had that.

  In contrast to the torrential rains that had been drowning Magwi when I’d last been here, this was drought season, and so the air was dry and the heat oppressive. Brown dust blew away from the wheels of the bus and swirled in golden vortices around the trunks of parched trees.

  Gilly pulled at my arm as the bus slowed.

  “Is that him? Is it, Mommy?”

  Kwame’s old, brown junker was parked by the bus shelter. My grin was so wide, my cheeks hurt. I couldn’t wait to see him.

  The hydraulic brakes squealed. I held Gilly back so that the men and women and children and chickens and the one goat could leave the bus. We stepped down to the ground, and finally I had to let my daughter go. She ran toward the old Dodge, and the driver’s door opened.

  I couldn’t make sense of what I saw. The driver wasn’t Kwame. I gasped as I realized that the man wearing the panama hat, black pants, and black shirt with white collar was Father Delahanty, the priest I had met at Kind Hands. I had given him his last rites and heard his confession, even though I was a doctor at the time. I had been with him when he died.

  I knew then that I was dead.

  And Gilly?

  Please, God, no.

  I thought hard, desperately trying to remember the moment of my death. I kept walking, gripping my old leather bag, feeling the weight of Gilly’s backpack, strapped across my shoulders. When I got near the car, Father Delahanty reached out his arms to me.

  “Ah, Brigid. I’ve been waiting to see you.”

  I couldn’t say the same, but I hugged him. He was as substantial as ever. He smelled good. His eyes sparkled. He was so—alive.

  I asked him, “Is this God’s plan for me, Father? The plan you were always rattling on about?”

  “What do you think?” he asked me. He was grinning like a fool. “Brigid, get into the car. Do you know where we’re going?”

  “I guess you’ll tell me.”

  “You have a very dry sense of humor,” he said.