Church Searching

Peter looked in his closet and frowned. Suits rarely worn hung to the left of the work polo shirts and an assortment of matching docker pants. He pulled out the blue one but decided it needed to be dry cleaned and put it back. The black suit wasn’t much better, but it was better. “Little more snug than I remember,” he said while dressing. He struggled with the top button but was able to thread it through the eye hole. He ran a finger between his neck and collar then grabbed a pair of black leather dress shoes and sat on the bed. He hadn’t worn them since the twin’s baptism seven years ago and they were old even then. He stuck his hand in his black sock and buffed the dust from the leather. He blew on it and sent specks of dust billowing away. He closely inspected the rubber tread and noticed a few hairline cracks. “Jesus. Hey Maureen! I don’t have any shoes!”

The bathroom door opened, and his wife appeared in a cloud of steam. A white towel wrapped around her head and a blue one covering her from her chest to knees. She sat on the bed with a bottle of lotion and squeezed a small amount into the palm of her hand then massaged it into her legs. She frowned at his shoes. “Wear them today and get some new ones during the week.”

“I need a new everything,” Peter said while tying the laces. The one in his left hand snapped. “Damn it!”

Maureen put an arm on his back.  “Please. Won’t you at least try. The twins are older now, it shouldn’t be so difficult. It would be good for us.”

Peter sat up. “Are we not good?”

She smiled. “It’s one hour, not the end of the world.”

Peter smiled. “Your right. It’s just that I got used to having our Sundays and to be completely honest I don’t really buy the whole thing.” He waved his arms emphatically.

Maureen kissed him on the cheek. “We can talk about it later. We need to get the kids ready. She stood up and went to her walk-in closet and returned with a flattering green dress. “It’s called faith, Peter.”

*

Peter backed the Mercedes out of the driveway. Maureen used the mirror in the vizor to check her hair and make-up. “You look beautiful,” Peter said. The twins were occupied with their iPad in the back seat. “Are those things allowed in church? I suppose if I grow my hair over my ears, I could wear an earpiece to listen to a podcast while sitting there. My grandpa used to listen to ballgames in church.” He laughed. Maureen did not. “O c’mon lighten up. You’re the one dragging us to church.”

“Dragging? Oh, please Peter. It’s one hour.”  She closed the visor and turned to look out the window. “The twins can’t sit together.”

Peter sighed.

*

“Well?” Maureen asked. They sat in the hot tub. Peter rested his neck on the wet pavement looking up at the late afternoon blue sky smeared with long orange clouds.  He was full from the day of church, yardwork, BBQing and drinking. Tiki torches flickered around the pool in which the twins screamed, ran and swam with a couple of the friends from the neighborhood.

“It was all right, but it was a bit dark. I’d never heard of Saint Ovidius before. Patron saint of hearing disease, did you say?” Peter finished his White Claw. He shook the empty can at Maureen. “Another?” She shook her head. The boys splashed him as he walked by trailing a tail of water in his wake. He jumped in and wrestled with them. Maureen took photos and laughed. He exited the pool and grabbed two drinks from the outdoor cooler on the patio. He climbed back into the warm water with his wife. “Ah!”

“Well?” His wife asked. Her blonde wet hair clung to her head and her breasts floated just below the surface of the water. “What did you mean it was a bit dark?”

Peter removed his eyes from his wife’s body which shimmered below the surface of the steaming and bubbling water. “The paneling and the windows were all dark. It was, what’s the word, oppressive, that’s it.” He shook his head.

His wife moved in closer, their feet touched. “OK, but next weekend we try St. Scholastica’s in Oak Park. And don’t forget to get new shoes.”

Peter choked. “Scholastica? Is that really a name? C’mon.”

“Please, Peter.”

Peter smiled and kissed his wife. The boys in the pool cried out in disgust.

*

Peter went to his office each day arriving at 7:30 in the morning and left by five o’clock in the afternoon. Most days he packed his lunch, either something to be microwaved or a sandwich prepared for him by Maureen as she prepared the twins for school. Fridays he went out to a restaurant with Todd, his co-worker in the cubicle next to his own. “Mexican or Mongolian?” he asked.

Todd spun around in his office chair wearing an outfit nearly identical to Peter’s. A picture of his family sat beside his monitor and work phone. Todd steepled his fingers atop his belly. “No can, do, Pete. Got to go get something for my niece, her Christening is this weekend.”

Peter blinked. “I didn’t know you were religious, Todd?”

Todd removed and cleaned his glasses. “Me? Nah. My wife was. Every Sunday. I think she thought she would convert me eventually. She hung in there but eventually went to live near her sister in Arkansas. Why anyone would move there I’ve no idea.”

Peter sat by himself in the mall food court chewing his noodles. He flipped through screens of Yahoo news notifications, stories of sports, celebrity scandals and people being killed far away. A text from Maureen came through. “Perhaps you should get some new shoes or shirts for this weekend’s service.” Peter stopped chewing and rolled his eyes. He returned a heart emoji and went back to work.

*

The drive to St. Scholastica’s was twenty-five minutes. “Jesus Christ, Maureen. Why did you have to pick a church so far away from home?”

She wore her best Sunday dress for the second week in a row. She rubbed her forehead. “Because it looked nice. The last one you said was too dark. This one has beautiful stained-glass windows, white and light blue interior. I looked at it on their website.”

It was as Maureen said. Tall lofty ceilings painted with images of angels in pastoral settings. Gentle solemn organ music poured forth from copper pipes to the right of the white altar. People, mostly in suits, made their way down the aisles to sit in the long wooden pews.  Not bad, Peter thought. Maureen looked beautiful and the boys were behaving. So far so good. He opened the tri-folded hymnal he’d picked up in the front of the church and squinted.  “Celebrant: Monsignor Włodzimierz Ikonowicz.”

*

“I’m sorry,” Peter said as they drove home from mass. “It’s not racist to say I couldn’t understand a word the man said. How do you even pronounce his name?  Also, another hour of my time on the road. I do plenty of that during the week.”

Maureen glanced in the back seat while chewing her lip.

“And they don’t have a Saturday night mass? What kind of Catholic church doesn’t have a Saturday night mass? That was the only thing I remember as being fun about church when I was a child. Sports jerseys worn to church on Saturday after games.”

“Peter? Is any of it resonating with you?”

“Resonating?” Peter noticed his wife’s vocabulary had evolved recently to include such terms as resonating, transcendence and even Dharma which Peter still do not fully understand. “Look hon, all they are trying to do at church is make you a better person, right? I mean when you really boil it down.”

Maureen nodded slightly. “Not entirely, there’s death.”

Peter pulled into the driveway. "I don’t need a church to think about death, honey. That’s all there is.” He carried his sons who had fallen asleep during the drive into the house.

             ]

*

OK, I found St. Bartholomew.” Maureen said. “And check this out, he’s the patron saint of shoemakers.” She laughed.

They sat together on the couch. The tv aired sports, the children were in bed Peter was on his fifth White Claw. He pressed pause.

She took a sip of his drink. “It’s ten minutes away, it’s bright and the presiding pastor’s name is Adam Johnson. I would be surprised if spoke with a thick accent.”

Peter sighed. “How long is this going to go on, Maureen? I told you this isn’t for me. We don’t have to do everything together.” He put his arm around her.

She pulled away. “I want us to be on this journey together.”

Peter frowned. An unpleasant thought bubbled up to the forefront of his mind. “I thought we were on this journey together.”

Maureen sighed. “Peter, sometimes it’s like you’re not wanting to leave the harbor and I’m about to ship out.”

Peter furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about? Are you talking about, about, leaving me?”

Peter fell back into the couch. “This is important to me, Peter.” She kissed him then went to bed. Peter turned off the TV and sat in the dark finishing his drink.

*

Peter and Todd had lunch the following Friday at the noodle restaurant at the local mall’s food court. “Maureen is under the weather.”

“O no. Not the Vid I hope.” Todd said slurping down noodles.

Peter chewed. “Nah, she tested negative. Just seems stressed lately.”

“Mm.”

Peter smiled and chuckled. “She’s been trying to get me to go to church lately.” He wiped his hands with a white paper napkin. “Say’s it’s important to her and frankly it’s causing some issues.”

“Mm, I get it.” A drop of soy sauce landed on Todd’s green dress shirt. “God damn it.” He dabbed it with a napkin. “Well, what do you think?

Peter wiped his face with a napkin, sat back in his red plastic seat and swallowed. “Well, I was raised Catholic. I wasn’t confirmed but was close. Parents gave up after a while, then Dad split. Mom stopped trying after that. Just added stress really.”

“Yeah,” Todd said working at the stain on his shirt. “If you like it, want it, need it and want to go, go. But if your spouse wants to. And you don’t. I recall a client who said his wife took off to join a cult. Probably a church but whatever.” Todd chuckled.

“I just don’t want to go,” Peter said firmly. I don’t see the point. If my soul was in peril, I think I would get a sign or something.

“O no!” Todd intoned, his eyes grew wide. “Your soul is in peril!” They laughed, finished lunch, and went back to work.

*

Peter tied his laces and stood up in front of the mirror. “Third week in a row.”

Maureen sniffled in bed. “Thank you, Pete. This means a lot to me.”

“Well, eventually, we’ll run out of churches to sample, right?”

“Please buy new dress shoes by next weekend, those are practically falling apart.”

Peter huffed, warned the boys to behave and went to mass.

*

St Bartholomew was perfect as Maureen had said. It was warm and smelled of incense. The pews had the right amount of padding, and he didn’t feel penned in. He sat in the middle of the pew. A young couple dressed in bland clothing sat to his right and a nice-looking family to his left. He heard snippets of conversation above the whispering. What they were going to shop for after mass. Whose house they were going to have dinner at tonight. Plans for the week.

A man made his way down Peter’s pew quickly not looking where he was going and stepped on his shoe. “I am terribly sorry,” the man said but didn’t really slow down. Peter frowned. The man’s shoe had scuffed his. What is with these shoes? What’s next?

Father Johnson delivered a sermon Peter could follow involving how to bring conscious awareness to one’s life. Maureen is going to love this guy. At least they aren’t holding hands for the Lord’s prayer. And they cut out the handshakes. Just a peace be with you.

Peter decided to receive communion, Maureen wasn’t there to remind him he should go to confession before accepting the eucharist. He felt perhaps this could be an option for them. It was close to home in beautiful building and the sermons spoke to him.

It came time for his row to stand and proceed down the center aisle to receive the eucharist. He stood and followed the man and his family. He pivoted into the aisle and lost his balance slightly but was able to gain it back quickly. Odd. With each step Peter felt as if the earth beneath his feet were moving. What the hell?

The choir sang “It Is Well With My Soul” as Peter passed rows of kneeling parishioners in their pews praying. The closer to the priest the more he noticed something was wrong with his shoe. The line stopped and he looked down and noticed small black pebble sized pieces of the sole of his shoes had crumbled away behind him. O Lord! He stepped and a piece of black rubber fell off. He could feel his face turning red. With each step another piece of his shoe crumbled away. He didn’t even recall uttering the proper refrain to the priest upon receiving the sacrament. His only thought was to exit the building as quickly as possible and avoid eye contact. “Thank you, God. Thanks an awful lot.”