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Chapter 122

Claire had been surprised and pleased at how well Nick had reacted to the support group. Trying to get him to go into the room had been tough, but once he was there, he had warmed up to the others and the idea of it in general, as she’d hoped he would. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she’d asked teasingly as they’d left the hospital, and he’d admitted, grudgingly so, “Nah, I guess not.”

Claire hadn’t thought so either. It had been easier than she’d expected to talk about herself and her experiences. On the other hand, it had been harder than she’d expected to listen to the others talk about what they were going through. Most of them were still in treatment, still scared and unsure about what was happening to them, and the fact that she’d been in remission for four years made her feel almost… guilty. Survivor’s guilt – that was probably what Franzi the psychiatrist would call it. Claire had had enough psychology to know the term and that it probably applied to her, rational or not. Still, she planned to attend the next meeting with Nick, if he wanted her to. This wasn’t about her.

At Mass the next morning, sitting in a pew next to Jamie, she prayed. She prayed for Nick and the people from the support group, that they would make it through their treatments and recover, and that Nick would get back to his old self, physically and emotionally.

After the Mass, as the congregation was filing out of the sanctuary, she and Jamie stopped to talk to the priest, Father Miles. He was still new to St. Luke’s, having only been preaching there for several years, but Claire had been going to mass there ever since she was a small child. When his family had lived in Tampa, Jamie had gone there too. Once they’d gotten engaged, they had decided to start going regularly again, hoping to be married in this church. Claire had been disappointed to find out that Father Andrews, who had baptized her, given her her first Communion, and confirmed her, was no longer at the church, having retired due to poor health. He was no longer performing the marriage sacrament for the same reason. But Father Miles, the current priest, had happily obliged to a meeting with Jamie and Claire to discuss their marriage plans, the usual first step to arranging a Catholic wedding.

“Tuesday at 5:30,” Father Miles said as soon as he spotted the two of them. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Claire smiled. “Great. Thank you, Father. We’ll see you on Tuesday then.”

“Indeed. God bless you both,” replied Father Miles, nodding amiably to Jamie before they turned to leave.

***

That Tuesday, Jamie left work promptly at five o’clock to pick up Claire, who was dressed and ready in her apartment. She felt a wad of nervous excitement twisting around in her stomach like a ball of live wires as they drove to St. Luke’s Church to meet with Father Miles, the priest they hoped would be presiding over their wedding in just over seven months. The end of January – that’s when Claire wanted the date to be. Far enough from Christmas, but not too close to Valentine’s Day, a late January anniversary would be perfect in her mind. Jamie didn’t seem to care either way; he had made it clear that the wedding was hers to plan. As long as it was in a church, his mother would be happy, and as long as his mother and wife-to-be were happy, he would be too.

Mrs. Turner will be happy we’re getting married here, thought Claire with a smile, as Jamie turned his car into the parking lot of the church. It was a beautiful, old, traditional Catholic church, complete with wooden pews, stained glass windows, intricate statuary, and a magnificent, towering steeple. Coming there with her family on Sundays as a child, she had always thought the building beautiful and magical, almost like a castle. She’d attended several weddings there, including her own brother’s (one of the last marriage ceremonies their old priest, Father Andrews, had presided over), and wondered what it would be like to walk down the long, carpeted aisle between the pews, dressed in a lacy, flowing gown of white, past the line of tall stained glass windows that let patterns of colorful light dance across the walls, past the flower-adorned, carved pews, to the altar, all gleaming gold, marble, and stained wood, carpeted in deep crimson, like the blood of Christ, who looked down upon them from the large crucifix beyond.

This evening, she and Jamie bypassed the beautiful sanctuary and went instead through a different set of doors to a small hallway that led to the various offices and rooms of the church. They walked past the nursery room where the young children played during Mass and the classrooms in which she’d had her Sunday school CCD classes and few meeting rooms and finally came to the staff offices. Father Miles’ door was open, and Claire knocked lightly before peeking in. The priest was sitting at his desk inside the tidy office, which was trimmed in dark, rich wood. He looked up and smiled warmly, stating, “Come in, come in.” He motioned to the two chairs sitting before his desk, and Claire and Jamie sat. Jamie immediately reached for Claire’s hand, entwining her fingers with his own as they both smiled across the desk at the Father.

Once they’d exchanged the usual pleasantries, Father Miles said, “Thank you both for agreeing to meet with me this evening. As you may or may not know, I like to meet with engaged couples well in advance to discuss plans for their marriage. These meetings will help me to get to know you better as individuals, get a feel for your relationship, and help you identify what it is you’re looking for in a marriage. Of course, once we set a wedding date, you’ll also need to attend Pre-Cana classes.”

Claire nodded, aware of the marriage preparation workshop Catholic couples were mandated to take. “When do we need to sign up for that?” she asked.

“Well, it depends on when you’re going to be married. Do you have a date in mind?” He looked between Jamie and her, as they exchanged glances.

“We were hoping for sometime at the end of January,” Claire spoke up. “Maybe on a Friday or Saturday.”

Father Miles nodded and flipped through the pages of a large datebook that was spread across his desk. “How about Friday, January 25?” he suggested, looking up from his calendar to seek their approval. “There are no ceremonies already scheduled for that day, so you could have the ceremony in the afternoon or evening, whichever you wish.”

Claire looked to Jamie again, and he simply nodded. “Sure!” she said, her heart beating faster with excitement.

Father Miles nodded and penciled her in. Wow, thought Claire, as she watched him scrawl, upside down, her and Jamie’s names in a box on the planner. This is really happening. Though she and her mother had already spent hours flipping through bridal magazines and drafting guest lists, it had never seemed as real as it did now. A date! They had a wedding date!

Yet as the meeting went on, they began to talk less about the wedding itself and more about her and Jamie as a couple. Father Miles asked lots of questions. How had they met? How long had they been together? What were their families like? Had they both been raised Catholic? Did they intend to rear their children to be good Catholics too? Were they, in fact, planning to have children?

As the questions about children arose, Claire felt herself involuntarily stiffen. She knew that in the Catholic faith, having children was an important part of marriage. In fact, children were supposed to be the main purpose of getting married. She had heard of some priests refusing to marry a couple who said they did not want children. Not wanting children wasn’t a problem for Jamie and her. They definitely wanted some. The question was, would they be able to have them?

Jamie was not lying when he told Father Miles, “Yes, Claire and I can’t wait to have kids of our own and start a family.” Yet it wasn’t the whole truth either, and, in front of a priest, Claire thought they should be totally honest. And so she found herself telling Father Miles the whole truth – about how her cancer treatments had left her infertile, and how she and Jamie had come together for in-vitro fertilization to produce the embryos she’d had frozen for safekeeping. Once they were married, she explained, they would try to have children from those embryos.

Even as she was telling him this, Claire wasn’t sure she should be. In-vitro fertilization, she knew, was frowned upon by the Catholic Church. In the back of her mind, she’d been aware of this even as she’d made the decision to have her eggs harvested and frozen, but at the time, that had been the least of her worries. Though she’d been raised Catholic, she wasn’t against the procedure. To her, it provided a miraculous option, the chance to become pregnant with her own babies even once chemo had left her barren. Jamie apparently wasn’t against it either, for he had volunteered to be her donor. And even though they hadn’t been together then, they were now, and if she was one day lucky enough to get pregnant with one of those embryos, the child would be born into a loving relationship. She didn’t regret her decision one bit, even if the Church didn’t like it.

But that was the problem. Even before she had finished explaining how she and Jamie might start their family, she could see the growing frown, the deepening lines on the Father’s face. With his hands steepled on the desktop in front of him and his dark eyebrows furrowed, the priest looked grave and severe in his black clergy shirt and stiff, white clerical collar. “Are you aware that in-vitro fertilization, as a procedure which unnaturally manufactures children outside the sexual unity of marriage and leaves their souls trapped in a frozen purgatory, is condemned by the Church?”

Claire blinked and swallowed hard. All of a sudden, Father Miles’ kind, lined face looked twisted and accusing. She felt her heart start to race, her palms start to sweat. Jamie’s grip on her hand tightened, but he didn’t speak. She knew this one was on her. Clearing her throat, she found her voice. “I… I knew the Church didn’t exactly approve of it,” she confessed. “In all honesty, that didn’t really factor into my decision.”

“Obviously,” said the priest, and Claire frowned. Father Andrews never would have spoken so sarcastically, so spitefully. He had been like a grandfather, cheerful and warm, and forgiving. Even as a teenager, when she’d confessed her sins – and there had been many back then, however small – in the confession booth opposite him, he had made her feel better, reassuring her that by confessing and truly repenting for whatever she had done, the Lord would forgive her. He never would have snorted, “Obviously,” when she admitted she’d known what she was doing was wrong in the eyes of the Church.

“And have you repented for this decision in the act of confession?” asked the priest, his brown eyes probing. Claire avoided them.

“No,” she answered, her voice soft. “I am sorry that I went against the Church, but I don’t regret the decision I made. If I confessed and said that I did, I would be lying.” In the back of her mind, she knew she was digging herself a shallow grave, but she couldn’t look into the face of a priest and lie. She wanted to be honest and explain her actions. If she did, maybe he would understand…

“I’ve always wanted children,” she spoke up now, trying to defend herself. “I know I can adopt, and maybe I will, but I just… I wanted to give myself options, you know? My doctor told me the chemo would probably make me sterile, and I was scared that… that if I didn’t plan ahead and do something, I’d never be able to get pregnant… to give birth to my own child. I’m all for adoption, but there’s just something so special about having your own.” Her eyes drifted to Jamie, looking for some kind of confirmation from him. But he didn’t say anything.

There was a few seconds’ pause, as Father Miles seemed to collect his words. Finally, he spoke again. “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ taught us to be selfless. What you’ve done is selfish. And by knowingly defying the Church on a matter such as this, you have committed a grave sin. The both of you have ‘played God,’ so to say, and created new life outside of wedlock. In a laboratory, no less. And rather than repenting for this wicked act, you are defending it. You are in a state of sin, and I’m afraid that I cannot, in good faith, perform the marriage sacrament on two sinners.”

“What?!” Claire gasped, nearly jumping out of her seat as Jamie’s grip crushed her hand.

The priest’s expression was as grave and flat as his words. “I will not marry you.”

***

Out in the car, Claire was inconsolable.

She wasn’t crying – she was too angry to cry – but she certainly felt like it. “How can he do that?” she kept asking, shaking her head, her cheeks on fire. “It was our choice to make… It has nothing to do with us getting married!”

“Shhh,” Jamie soothed, rubbing her shoulder. “This isn’t over. We can appeal this. Maybe this guy won’t marry us, but we’ll find someone in the Catholic Church who will. What we did isn’t enough to ban us from being married in the Catholic Church.”

Claire shook her head furiously. “No… fuck it!” she snapped, too upset to realize or care that she was cursing in front of a House of God. “I don’t think I even want to get married in the Church anymore, if that’s how it’s going to be! They’re so close-minded, Jamie!! What we’re being punished for… I look at it as a miracle, and they look at it as a sin! How can that be?? I don’t want to be married under a religion that condemns me for a choice I made! I don’t want our children to be raised in a church that looks at them as products who were manufactured in a lab! That’s not how it is!!”

She was near tears now, and Jamie pulled her closer, his arm tightening around her. “I know,” he whispered, his voice low and comforting in her ear. “I know that, and you know that, but not everyone else understands. That priest in there… what does he know about having children?”

“Exactly!” Claire cried. “He’s not allowed to marry or have children, so what gives him the right to judge us? He doesn’t know what it’s like to want children, to be free to have them, but to be physically unable to without the help of science. How could he possibly empathize?”

Jamie didn’t answer. He just held her close and kept rubbing her shoulder, trying hard, she could tell, to calm her down. When she finally stopped ranting, and her heart rate slowed, he asked quietly, “So are you saying you don’t want to marry in the Church now?”

She looked up at him, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed nervously. This rejection had to be difficult for him, perhaps more so than for her. He had always been more devout, better about going to mass and such than her. She knew it meant a lot to his family that he be married in the Church. But after sitting in that office and hearing the priest’s harsh words, the idea of a Catholic marriage, with all of its strict rules and consequences, was starting to turn her stomach. She had only truly questioned her faith once before, while fearfully struggling to get through her first cancer treatments. But the years of remission, the successful bone marrow transplant, and meeting Nick through it all had strengthened her belief in God, miracles, and fate.

But now she found herself questioning her religion again… not her belief in God, or miracles, or fate, but her belief in her church, the Catholic Church. She had always disagreed with some of their views and had certainly sinned before, but never had this divergence between her beliefs and the Church’s given her so much grief. It upset her that she was supposed to feel remorse for a choice for which she felt none. And if, one day, she found herself with a baby in her arms, the blossom sown from a seed she and Jamie had created together, she knew she would regret it even less. All she wanted was to be a mother, and the church she’d grown up in wanted to punish her for it.

“Claire?” Jamie probed softly, pulling her back to look into her eyes.

She bit down on her lip and slowly shook her head. “I don’t think I do, Jamie,” she whispered. “What do you think?”

He gazed out the windshield, his eyes traveling up the tall steeple of St. Luke’s to the blue sky above. A few moments passed, and he didn’t answer. She knew this was a big decision for him and didn’t push. It hurt her too, to look out at this church, a place from her childhood, a sanctuary in which she’d always been told she had a home, and realize she’d been shut out. No one could stop her from attending mass here… but in the back of her mind, she knew she wouldn’t be back. Not after what had gone down behind its sturdy wooden doors today. Not as long as Father Miles was preaching there.

It felt horribly wrong to feel such anger towards a priest, but as she’d stormed out of the church, every inch of her had trembled with fury, all directed towards him and the outdated and at-times ridiculous beliefs of the doctrine for which he stood.

And as the anger faded, the grief took its place, and she wanted to cry even more. She felt almost betrayed, abandoned. In this very church, Father Andrews had always made her believe that, as her pastor, she could come to him about anything. But the message spoken by his predecessor was a much different one. Repent, he enticed, and all will be forgiven. But the mere thought of sitting in a confession booth with him now and fibbing out how sorry she was that she had sinned made her want to vomit.

She could practically feel the bile creeping up her throat as she looked at her fiancée, waiting for his answer.

Finally, he looked back over at her, his blue eyes filled with surprising serenity. “Let’s find another church,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be Catholic. Just a nice Christian church with a pastor that will be glad to marry us.”

Claire smiled, a warmth spreading through her, and all of a sudden, her mind sprang to life with new hope and fresh ideas. “Dianna goes to a Christian church… Bayview Christian, I think it’s called. It’s not any particular Protestant sect, I don’t think. Maybe we could ask her to get us in touch with her minister.”

Jamie nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “We can call her when we get home if you want. Are you coming back to my place?”

“Can I?” she asked, as if she really had to. She’d been spending many nights in his apartment lately. Co-habituating – another sin to add to their list. Nick and I wouldn’t have had any hope of being married in the Church, she thought with a wry, sad smile, remembering the whirlwind six months she’d lived in his house and the sex… lots and lots of premarital sex. Her smile grew mischievous, and in the aftermath of what had just happened, she found it amusing that she was sitting in a church parking lot, thinking inappropriate thoughts about her ex. She was glad Jamie couldn’t read her mind, though when he tightened his arm back around her, she stiffened involuntarily.

“Do you really have to ask?” he replied, and she could tell without looking at him that he was smiling.

It’s gonna be okay, she thought, feeling better once they were on the road, heading back to his apartment complex. We’re in this together.

It felt reassuring to know that, this time, Jamie was there to support her.

***