“The key to a good marriage is not letting the little things bother you.” Vincent put two fingers in the collar of his shirt and pulled it away from his visibly sweaty, skinny neck.  “The day to day habits of your spouse that may irritate you beyond measure should count for nothing.”    Here he paused for dramatic effect.   “For instance, my wife leaves teabags in the sink.” He motioned behind him to Mary, who immediately cringed.  “The garbage is right there, I mean RIGHT there, next to the sink.  And yet, despite this convenience, I am forced to deal with used teabags in the sink on a daily basis.”  Mary stepped almost directly behind her husband, hoping no one could see her anymore.  Which was useless as she was close to one-hundred pounds heavier than Vincent and wearing a bright red sweatshirt.

But Father Chuck had to give her credit for trying.   He motioned to Eugene, his maintenance man, and mimed turning the heat down.  Eugene nodded and limped off slowly, not eager to miss this public exposure of marital discourse.

Vincent was still talking about teabags.  Father Chuck made his way up to the small stage and when he got there patted Vincent dismissively on the back. 

“Now perhaps from the woman’s perspective?” he motioned to Mary, who stood rooted to the spot now that her husband was no longer in front of her.  After an excruciating moment, she finally took one small step to the front of the stage.  She was in her late fifty’s, and had the ‘Snake bit’ look that women get when they have been married to an idiot for too long.  Father Chuck, sensing her fear,  immediately felt pangs of regret and pity for making her come forward. Clutching the front of her sweatshirt she whispered over the podium, “Yes, I leave the teabags in the sink…” and stepped back again hastily. Father Chuck quickly stepped in front of her and made a mental note to examine the congregants more thoroughly before inviting them to speak at marriage workshops.

He beamed at the five couples in folding chairs before him.  They looked less than thrilled by the demonstration they had been forced to sit through.

“Well, there you have it!  Try not to leave teabags in the sink, and try not to let teabags in the sink bother you!  Now why don’t you all go into the kitchen for some coffee?”  The couples shuffled off in a confused manner to the kitchen with Vincent leading the way and Mary making a meaty caboose.  Father Chuck stood at the podium for a moment, defeated.  He has come to St. Andre’s to try and mend the community after the scandal the other priest left behind.  With nights like these, he was only going to push them further away.

Eugene was back, and spread his hands out in a “what happened?” gesture.   Father Chuck shook his head at him and followed the others into the kitchen.  Amy, a veteran parishioner, rushed up to him with a beaming face. 

“I brought you some homemade lamb stew!”  She thrust a plate before him, “To welcome you here!”  I’ll just pop it in the fridge.” Before he could stop her she had opened the refrigerator and now stood there, uncertain, as he’d known she would.   The fridge was stocked heavily with beer, with not one inch of space left.   She turned to him, her chicken plucked eyebrows practically touching her hairline of red dye.  

“Oh Amy, how kind of you, I’ll just take one of these out…” he hurriedly pulled six-pack out and set it on the counter, “and put your generous gift in to enjoy later.”  He slid the glass casserole dish in and chided himself for stocking up so much.  He had heard it was going to snow, and well…didn’t want to be caught “without”.

So far the first impression he was leaving on the St. Andre’s was less than stellar.

Father Chuck had been running a parish in New York State when he got the call.  The ‘Boston Call’  named for the huge sexual abuse scandal that had broken there in 2002.   It’s when you are called in to take over a parish whose priest has done something unforgivable. In St. Andre’s case, the priest before Father Chuck had carried on an affair with a seventeen year old girl.  He had been whisked away to ‘repent and pray’ on his sin.  And in the meantime, Father Chuck was called in to regain the trust of the local parish.

He’d been here for the month of September so far and had already been hit in the head with a rock on his way to mass, found dog shit on the steps of the rectory every Sunday morning and been hissed at in the grocery store.  Despite the bad reputation of someone in a black frock and white collar, he had been able to hire a local woman named Jeanette to do the shopping and had found Eugene to do general maintenance in the church and take care of the grounds in exchange for room and board and a little spending money.  Father Chuck gave Eugene a bedroom on the first floor of the rectory, his own key and a new found responsibility Eugene thrived on.  Eugene had brain damage from an overdose of anesthesia as a boy.  He had gone in the hospital a healthy five year old with a severe case of tonsillitis and come out ‘just not the same’.  Father Chuck had found him asking for money outside of the gas station on the edge of town.  He had chatted with him for a bit and found he stayed with relatives when he could and hitchhiked to a shelter in the city when they threw him out.

“And why did they throw you out Eugene?” Father Chuck had asked.

“Because I’m disgusting.” Eugene had answered.

Father Chuck could see they had a point.  He had to remind Eugene every day to wash, to chew with his mouth closed, to change into fresh clothing and bring the soiled to the laundry room, and after the first time he did that, Father Chuck then had to remind him to wipe.  He guessed if Eugene were his own blood, reminding him of simple human sanitation may get tedious, especially if he had a family, or a normal job or a normal life, but Father Chuck didn’t, so it wasn’t tedious for him.  He found it comforting to look after Eugene.  Reminding Eugene was reminding himself he had a purpose beyond Sunday mass and renting the basement out to girl scout troops. 

After hiring Eugene he had to fire the other local man who had a small business taking care of local ground maintenance.   The man said he understood and gathered the tools he had left in the church and gave Father Chuck, a receipt for the debt he was owed.  Later on Father Chuck got an angry phone call from the man’s wife.  “How dare you fire a decent hard working man and hire that half-wit!  We’ve got a family to support, children to feed and one off to college in the fall!  Don’t you want to see the children in Richford get somewhere?  Haven’t you any heart?”  Before Father Chuck could answer she had hung up.  Father Chuck wondered if she had ever seen Eugene begging for money in front of the gas station.  He guessed she never gave him any.

Jeanette didn’t talk much and when she came in with the groceries on Monday morning. She would pull a can of beer out of the fridge as she loaded the groceries into it and sip on it as she worked.  He had simply asked the woman behind the counter at the gas station he found Eugene at -if she knew anyone who needed a little gopher work.  The next day Jeannette showed up on the rectory steps.  It turned out she was not recommended by the woman at the gas station, but she had been in the store shoplifting and overheard the conversation.  That was fine with him; he was glad that local people were willing to work for him at all with the way the last priest left. 

So Father Chuck had settled in to the small community of Richford, Vermont, which sat a few miles off the Canadian border and tried not to dream of going back to his old parish in New York.  St Mary’s had been a small stone church built at the turn of the century on the same street that Horace Greeley had lived.  He had ministered there alone for forty years until the Bishop had sent him help. Help came in the form of a thirty-six year old with a  masters in theology and a bachelors in film from NYU. 

Suddenly youth groups meant camping and listening to the young people talk about every intimate detail of their lives.  He did want the young people to come to him with problems but thought maybe Susie Watson’s bulimia was better dealt with by a professional.  Should she come to a crossroads with her God, she should certainly call on him. Soon this young priest, Father Johnson (he even had a name the parishioners could relate to) was booking the common room for workshops and meetings and God knows what else.  In came the Christian Rock and guitars at Sunday mass, the self-help through Jesus seminars, the prayer seminars (is there a wrong way?) and a plethora of other activities for his parishioners to partake.  The parish grew and soon every chair was filled in the big church to hear Father Johnson’s riveting speeches on how we could love ourselves more, and why we are good Christians.  Then Father Chuck had found himself in the little stone church around the corner that could seat only forty and had an unusable organ.  He and the four ladies that showed up for Wednesday mass had to sing acapella .  It was painful. The blessing, he guessed, was that of the four, three had hearing aids, which he saw them fiddle with before psalms were sung.  So he was not entirely shocked when the bishop called him personally to help with a small matter in Vermont.  To mend a small community of Christians who possibly may have been wronged by their priest. Father Chuck was smart; he packed as if he would not return – and promised his congregation he would.

Now this….ridiculous idea he had of for marriage seminar.  So stupid really.  It wasn’t even his idea.  He had seen Father Johnson start one, and it had turned out to be the most popular one at St. Mary’s. Apparently everyone in his old parish was willing to make their marriage better.  Or at least eager to complain publicly about it. He had thought he could break the ice with some of the parishioners by starting one here in.  But it was a farce, an unmarried celibate 75 year old giving marriage seminars?  What was he thinking?  He knew what he what he was thinking.  He wasn’t jealous of Father Johnson; he had just thought he wanted the same thing that’s all.  For people’s faces to light up when he entered the room.  For them to settle comfortably in their seats when he walked up to the pulpit, instead of forcing themselves into a forced concentration by pinching their thighs.

He rubbed the rosary in his pocket.  He had ‘learned’ to love the Lord, so maybe his spark was dim because he did not have a proper “calling”.  Father Johnson had been “called” by God to serve him; he wouldn’t shut up about it on the pulpit.  When Father Chuck was in elementary school his parents had suspected that he was “light on his feet” and when as a freshman in high school he was the only boy to sign up for home economics  he had unknowingly sealed his own fate.  Upon graduation, instead of enrolling him at Columbia University as promised, his folks had packed him off to seminary.  Very common in his day. In seminary he learned to put all matters of natural human wants and urges down and serve God.  He was taught that he would “Learn to love the Lord” by old and tired priests. Maybe he hadn’t gotten to that place of love like Father Johnson had, but he was beginning to tolerate his employer.  He wondered if he had so successfully, sexually repressed himself — had he been a homosexual at all?  Maybe he had just liked cooking?  It was so far away.  And now here he was, 60 years later trying to give a marriage seminar.  People today seemed to want God to appear before them as their own personal burning bush,  to solve all of their problems.  Praying for money, health, a partner. He knew what they didn’t, that we were one great big petrie dish of organisms left by accident on a workbench somewhere.  The whole basis of it being irony.  They didn’t see it the same as he, that the comfort was just in knowing it, and the knowing was enough. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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