LITMIR.BIZ

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was how I might be able to keep him. For the three hours that we talked and ate and paused while the sun danced its shadows on the hardwood floors, I was running as hard as I could from God. As we waited for Father to get his change, he said abruptly, “I’d be happy to be the priest at your wedding.”

      At first I felt an odd sense of relief. He didn’t say if you get married. He said it as if it were certain, and hearing it from a priest, I allowed myself to think that maybe I had this whole calling thing wrong. Maybe I had misunderstood God all these years, but then I felt a sharp twist of irony. If I were to get married, I was pretty sure I’d want to marry him. He was everything I wanted in a man. Why did he have to say that? I couldn’t not feel what I was feeling. We had so much in common. The more I got to know him the more I felt I’d known him before, that it was our fate to meet. Maybe he was a gift from God, so I wouldn’t have to be completely alone; I’d be happy and fortunate just to have him as a friend. This couldn’t be the end. All I managed to say was, “That would be nice, Father.”

      Later that night, when Janine, Julie, and I were gathered at my mother’s for cake, someone asked me if I had done anything special. I said as casually as I could, “I went to lunch with Father Infanzi.” The only one who seemed a little upset was Janine whose mouth tightened. “You did?” My mother asked intrigued, “What did you talk about?” imagining herself sitting with him. Then she added, “I always thought it’d be good for you girls to have a priest-friend.” And from Julie, a completely innocent, “Where did you go? That sounds really nice.” If Nellie were there, she probably would’ve been onto me, but she was twenty and never wanted to be with us. Right before my mother placed the cake in front of me with nine flickering candles, one for good luck, I boasted, “It was a three-hour lunch.”

      Less than a week later, Father asked me out for a second lunch. While we waited for our food, he told me that one day when a woman had come to the rectory to talk to him about her marital problems, all he could think was, Go away, lady! Why can’t you be Maria? I bristled. I wanted him to prefer me, but I didn’t want him to own up to it that way. Besides, why was he bringing up another woman? When he asked if something was wrong, I said, “No,” but I was distant for the rest of lunch. Did all the unhappily married women call on him? Was he responding to them the way he was to me? When I walked out after Sunday Mass with a frown, he asked if he’d done anything wrong. I said, “Your comment made me nervous.” Two days later I received an apology in the mail: As privileged as he felt to be a priest, he needed to remind himself that he could cause great harm when he betrayed one’s trust in him. I had no reason to feel nervous in my own church, which I’d be attending long after he left. He was sorry. It’s what I thought I wanted to hear until I got to the part where he said he wasn’t trying to start anything, that he planned to be a faithful priest until he died. Now I felt jealous of the Church. When I called to accept his apology, he told me that he had just gotten home from helping a single mom whose house was in need of repair.

      No priest had ever helped my mother or spent time with Nellie and me once our father was gone. It seemed like an odd form of charity. The next time I greeted him after Mass, I shook his hand as if he were any other priest and said, “Have a good week, Father.” He said warmly, “You too, Maria” and then reached in to give me a peck on the cheek, but he didn’t ask me to stay and chat. I walked away feeling slighted, more resolved to keep my distance. In the meantime, Rick and I broke up by Labor Day, and I met Sam, a physician’s assistant who rescued me from a table of misfit singles at a wedding in October. Fifteen minutes into our first date, with the pain still palpable on his face, he told me that his ex-wife decided on their honeymoon that she didn’t want to be married. I was hoping he’d like me enough to forget her, but I knew from the obligatory kiss he gave me on our third date that I was wrong. I still went home four nights in a row hoping for a blinking red light on my answering machine. By Thursday, I had to accept that I wasn’t going to hear from him. It was the same week that Grandpa Anthony died, my mother’s father with his bald head and mischievous blue eyes who wanted all of us to run businesses from home so we didn’t have to pay taxes, who always said, “Go the straight way,” and “Se Dio vuole,” if God wants, and who prayed the Rosary for us every day. Grandpa whom I loved, with whom I couldn’t walk or talk with because of his Sicilian dialect and missing leg, which he lost the year I was born when he was walking home one day and a drunk driver crashed into him.

      I pulled out a pot from the set my mother had bought me for when I got married and put water up for pasta. While I waited, I obsessed. Maybe if I had said or done something just a little bit differently, Sam would have called. Here was more proof that I wasn’t meant to get married. Something would have worked out by now. As for Father, if God had wanted us to be together, he would have allowed us to meet before he entered the seminary or at the very least before he was ordained. How could God send me such a wonderful man I couldn’t have to corner me into a vocation I didn’t want? I was leading on a priest I wasn’t sure I trusted and blaming it on God. All these months I hadn’t said a word to him about my calling: letting him believe that I was available, sending him mixed messages as I dated other men, trying to get back at him for something I couldn’t put my finger on. Just because I was jealous, didn’t mean Father was doing anything wrong. He was reverent and dutiful on the altar, spoke so admiringly and proudly of Christ. If God wasn’t giving me a husband—if He expected me to lead a celibate life—then at the very least He owed me a special male friend. He owed me Father.

      Once the pasta was done, I reached into the cabinet to get the colander, and that’s when I saw the bulletin from St. Stephen’s sticking out beneath it. I tried not to read the list of priests’ names but saw Father James Infanzi, Parochial Vicar. I shut the cabinet quickly and ate my dinner staring at the wall. It’s not a big deal if I call him. He’s celibate and looks happy. Maybe he can help me. But it’s going to look like I’m interested in him that way. No it won’t. I haven’t done anything wrong. But what would I start by calling him? He’ll probably ask me to lunch again and then what? I looked at the phone, then away, and then back again. It’s not unusual to call a priest when your grandfather has died. Before I knew it, I was dialing the number and asking for Father Infanzi. He expressed his condolences, but I could hear a breathless excitement in his voice. We spoke for a half hour about my grandfather and how difficult Janine was taking it, and about how hard I found dating, though I implied that I had turned Sam down. Sounding relieved, Father said, “He must be crushed.” I said, “I don’t know about that” and he said, “That’s hard to believe,” which made me smile. When I asked him how his week was going, he said he got stuck late a couple of nights doing more repairs for the single mom.

      “The same woman whose husband left and has three sons?” I asked, disappointed that she was still in the picture.

      “I told you about her?”

      “Yes, of course. Why? Is anything—” I stopped and waited until he was done clearing his throat, expecting his perfect attention. “Is anything wrong?”

      “No, no, I just didn’t remember telling you about her.”

      “Did you do contracting work before the seminary?”

      “Yes, in fact my two good friends, Matt and Roger? I told you about them.”

      “Sure.”

      “The three of us were talking about going into contracting, but then I decided to become a priest. Matt was pretty upset.”

      “He probably felt abandoned.”

      “I think you’re exactly right.”

      “Father, does this woman plan on paying you at all?” I asked, growing angry at her.

      “No, nothing like that. I told her I wouldn’t charge her.”

      Before I could think or say anything else, he was telling me how happy he was that I’d called, that it was Sam’s loss, that he’d pray for my grandfather, and then, “Maria, is there any way we could go to lunch again? I promise not to make any more inappropriate comments.”

      I clutched the receiver, my doubts erased by the sound of my name in his voice. “Do you think that’s the best idea?”

      “I

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