Uncross My Heart Read Free Page B

and realized I was slightly high.
    Sylvia was not without conversation on any topic and rattled on about her life and her husband, and frankly I had tuned out, until the moment I heard her say, “Tell me what you think about late at night when you’re in bed? We all think about things we don’t say. What does a priest dream about?”
    “I’m generally too tired to dream and too dull to remember my dreams even if I had them.”
    “I don’t believe that,” she said.
    “Ah, it’s always an issue of nonbelief.”
    Sylvia had inched her bar stool nearer and nearer in her chatting, shifting fashion. She put her hand with the giant amethyst-ridden finger on my arm, trapping it there, and leaned close to my face.
    “You must tell me one secret before you go.” Her eyes gleamed like a teenage girl’s at a slumber party. When I didn’t answer immediately she quickly added, “No secrets? Not even something from your childhood?” I felt the mood going awry—the way children of dysfunctional families sense danger in a look or a laugh. “Then I need to give you one.”
    Sylvia darted into my face and her lips landed on mine as she kissed me, stunning me and leaving a soft, pleasant sensation. She placed her index finger on my lips as if to seal the secret, letting her finger trail across my mouth as she whispered, “You have now kissed the woman next door. That can be your secret…until you find a better one.”
    I was off the bar stool and standing at attention, my walking stick, flashlight, and towel carried like military issue as I retreated from her house. I thought I heard her chuckling from the porch as I marched back to my barnyard barracks, determined never to step foot in Sylvia’s home again and praying to God she told no one about this evening, and certainly not that I had kissed her , which was often how these stories got turned around. I wished I had someone to share this with—my surprise, my fears, my feelings—but there was no one to confide in, and so I guessed that alone made it a secret. No one to tell.

Chapter Three
    Saturday morning I lay in bed, Ketch sleeping at the foot, and stared at the farmhouse just in my line of sight across the acres leading to the Browns’ farm, where Sylvia slept and where she had brushed my lips with hers. Nothing, until now, had unearthed the feelings I had long hidden, challenged my decision to end who I was and let the robes forever cover the rest. Sylvia had stirred something in me that threatened to awaken the dead. A longing I suppressed. An intimacy I avoided.
    I contemplated all the religious men who’d flagellated their bodies for thinking of sex, covered their women in tentlike garb to stave off temptation, advocated sex only for procreation. Throughout history, the evils of sex, the preempting of sex, and the anguish over sex had been a male-dominated topic. And now, here I was making it mine—thinking I shouldn’t have thought about Sylvia sexually, should never see her again so I wouldn’t be tempted to think about her. And since we were certainly not going to procreate, sex with her was out of the question.
    Not to mention the fact that she was married, which was on the do-not-do Biblical Top Ten.
    My father’s face came into focus, his dark green suit with the shiny gold buttons bearing an eagle and gold braid on each shoulder and medals on his chest. And I heard him say, “Tradition, duty, honor.”
    Ironically, war and religion relied on the same tenets.
    My cell phone beeped, signaling I had voice mail. I stretched across the white comforter, pressing down its puffy, cloudlike surface, to grab the phone from the bedside table. The message was from Vivienne Wilde, saying we hadn’t selected a meeting place.
    “Let’s plan on finding each other across from that fountain—the one with the gigantic Mother of God. I have no idea what I’ll be wearing but I should be able to spot a woman priest. See you at ten.”
    I smiled in spite of myself.