let him pick me up at my apartment on a Thursday night, though I waited outside for him. I ordered cappuccino, and he ordered tea before he brought the waitress back, “You know what, can you make that an Irish coffee?” Facing me from behind him was Audrey Hepburn from the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in which her character, a call girl named Holly Golightly who’s still dressed in the black gown from the night before, is looking into the window of Tiffany’s to soothe her fears. She’s beautiful and polished and goes to a lot of great parties, but as the movie unfolds we learn she’s running from the truth. Father asked me how I went about helping students get jobs, so I told him about the company visits, the on-campus recruitment, the job consortia, as I tried my best not to get foam on my lips. He remarked admiringly, “You’re so together.”
After that night, I called him to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving, and in December we saw each other four nights in a row at the parish mission and spoke twice for an hour. I still didn’t say a word about my calling. A week before Christmas when we went for coffee a second time, I asked him in to bless my apartment. He shook holy water and made the sign of the cross in each of the rooms including my bedroom where the floor lamp cast a dim glow on the ceiling as I stood in the doorway, so he couldn’t see me and my bed at the same time. Turning around, he looked in my eyes and said, “What a cozy place you keep.”
A few days later I was at a rectory near work telling a priest I didn’t know that I had a vocation. The sight of Father liking my bedroom had unnerved me that much. But sitting across from the trim, forty-something Father Relici who was donning an Augustinian black capuchin, I couldn’t bring myself to say “nun.” It wasn’t just celibacy that troubled me. I didn’t want to take a vow of poverty either. I didn’t want to wear a habit or live in a convent. If I had to have a vocation, I wanted to be like a diocesan priest, like Father Infanzi who got to keep his paycheck and had his own car and bank account. The only way a Catholic woman could give her life to God and be independent was to remain single, but what was the use of that? Even if I were certain the single life could be a real vocation, people would never understand. They’d ask me, “Haven’t you met anyone?” or think, What a shame she never married. I wanted a title, something that would explain me, a life that would make me feel worthy and visible. I blurted, “Father, I feel called to the clergy.”
“Are you saying you want to convert, so you can become a female minister? Because in the Catholic Church, clergy means priests and deacons, men only.”
“Oh no, I’m Catholic. I think I just got my words mixed up,” I said feeling humiliated but determined. I told him how my relationships lasted three months tops and how I thought that was a sign from God that I wasn’t meant to get married. I said nothing about Father Infanzi. What would I have said, I’m falling for a priest, and I think this confirms I have a calling? Then I added half-jokingly, “Not all the guys I dated were losers,” but Father Relici didn’t grin, not even a slight upturn of his lips. I tried to recover with, “Some were very nice guys.”
“Nuns serve in so many capacities. They work in hospitals, schools, they’re presidents of colleges.”
“Father, I’m really struggling with the idea of celibacy.”
“There are so many good women religious out there who you could talk to,” he said, dabbing his pointer finger into a piece of dust on his mahogany desk and then flicking it off.
“Is it hard, Father? Do you find it difficult?” desperate for him to say something consoling like, The struggle will go away.
“I could allow myself to think about what my wife would have looked like, my children, my house, where I’d be now, but I don’t. I try not to think about what I’m missing. What would be the use?” He dabbed and flicked another piece of dust off his finger. “You know, it’s a good life. You get the privilege of touching so many people’s lives.”
“I’m just really afraid I’ll have to commit to something before I’m ready,” I said, feeling the sting of tears in my nose.
“It’s not like that. Discernment takes a long time. The nuns—the Sisters—they wouldn’t rush you.” Then, maybe because he sensed my independence, he told me that some nuns rent apartments if it’s convenient to their ministry and there isn’t a convent nearby, which made me feel a little relieved. He got up from his desk, walked over to his shelf where the books were in perfect size order and pulled out a royal blue, soft covered book, A Guide to Religious Ministries for Catholic Men and Women.
“A good person to start with is Sister Lorraine in the vocations office. Here she is,” he said, marking her phone number with a highlighter and handing the book to me. “Thank you,” I said, opening to a random page where the picture of a cross rose up from the New York skyline and across the top, Sisters of Charity.
Two nights later on Christmas Eve, I was sitting in front of the crèche after Midnight Mass when Father Infanzi, revved up from saying Mass for the largest crowd of the year, asked me to go for coffee. I had wanted to stay in front of the manger, hoping the Baby Jesus would give me the courage to finally tell him about my calling, especially given the beautiful homily he’d delivered. After his joke about how Italians know the meaning of the word “manger” from the order, “Mangia, mangia,” which got him the big laugh he was hoping for, he explained that Christ not only humbled himself by coming as an infant, but also by being lain in a manger where animals ate from. He is food for the world, for us. It was the most precious explanation of the Incarnation I’d ever heard, and I felt the same profound warmth as when I drank Christ’s blood. But then Father switched to his brother’s excitement when his wife gave birth. He used the phrase, “born of love for his wife.” I had been sitting in the lector’s seat so close to the pulpit that if I reached out my arm, I could touch Father’s garment, feel his thigh beneath it. Julie and Nick were expecting their first child in a week, the first baby in our family, which made me feel more insecure. When Father ended by explaining that Deism is the opposite of Christianity, that God couldn’t get more involved in our lives than by taking on our human nature, something inside me broke, and a tear fell from my eye. How could God give me the gift of womanhood and then ask me to give up marriage and motherhood? Why was He taking care of every other woman but me?
“I promise not to keep you out too long,” he said, looking at me like an eager boy.
“You know what, Father? Coffee sounds nice.”
There was no one in the diner whom I recognized, which I was glad about, though I still told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Father was wearing a long, black coat that made him look so handsome, it hurt. He took it off, revealing his cleric shirt with only the tip of the white tab collar showing, and then he stuffed it in the booth and sat down. I stood at the rack near our booth with my coat in my hands so he’d get the hint. “Oh, gosh,” he said, “I should be getting that for you.” I said, “That’s okay,” as if I hadn’t given it any thought.
Within minutes we were drinking coffee and exchanging the gifts we hadn’t told each other we were buying. I bought him How Houses Learn, a book about how the character of houses develops over time. I didn’t realize it, but I was implying that his character needed developing. When I’d hung around after morning Mass the day before, he admitted that he hadn’t been an ideal seminarian. First, he brought up the fact that when he was walking down the stairs in the rectory to meet Janine for the first time, all he could think was: “Whoever this girl is, she smells really nice. The seminary never smelled like that.” It was something he’d already told me, but I pretended it was the first time. Then he told me that sometimes when he was in the seminary, he’d throw enough clothes for the weekend in a laundry bag, so the rector would think he was going home, but he was headed to Atlantic City with Matt.
“Really?” I said, disappointed but also a little turned on. It was something like me telling my mother I had sorority meetings on Thursday nights in college when I was really headed for the bars. Then he said, “I almost didn’t make it to ordination.”
“What?”
“Three priests voted me in, three didn’t, and one was indecisive.”
“Wow.