The two men in the examination room had touched off an endless feedback loop of yawns. The bald one standing up had been awake only half an hour, having beaten the snooze button within an inch of its life. The lanky one on the table had been up since 4:27 a.m., and his reflexes were no sharper for the icy shower and hot Earl Grey he'd taken in between.
"Something I've always wondered..." Peter trailed off into another yawn. "What is it called when you dream you're falling and you jump awake?" He couldn't roll his sleeve high enough, so he gave up and removed his shirt altogether.
"The medical term is a hypnic jerk," said Doc Ryan as he strapped on the blood-pressure cuff. "Fairly common, especially if you're under stress."
"Good to know." Peter tried to relax as the cuff gripped his arm in the same place Assumpta had done in his dream. The pneumatic action of the pump sounded too like her panting in his ear. He tried not to imagine her naked before him now.
The doctor read the gauge. "Bit high."
No kidding. "Hm."
Michael put the stethoscope in his ears. "Deep breaths?"
Peter felt the cold bell on his chest in the same place he'd dreamt Assumpta's warm, soft mouth the night before. He then imagined her kissing him everywhere it touched: his rib cage; his back...
"Couple spots near your hairline," commented the doc, shattering the reverie. "Change shampoos recently?"
"Huh? No, nothing new there."
"So you're having sleep troubles?" Michael put the stethoscope back around his neck.
"Dreams, mostly."
"Nightmares?"
Peter swallowed. "Not exactly."
"Always with the hypnic jerk?"
"Not until last night."
"New medications or supplements?"
"None."
"Anything you can recall that seems to precede the dreams?" Michael stifled another yawn.
"Yeah."
Michael waited. Peter pretended not to notice.
"Father, you understand professional confidence as well as anyone in this town. What you tell me in this surgery is as privileged as any confession I share with you."
Peter nodded, still silent.
"Wild guess: it isn't unrelated to your choice to abstain from the pub of late?"
Way to softball it. "No."
"And are the dreams equally as vivid if, say, you take a nightcap at home?"
"No," Peter said again, more hushed now.
"Any other changes in your usual routine?"
"Been taking shorter showers. Cooler water." He prayed that the doctor wouldn't infer the motivation.
Michael frowned. "Hormones, so."
"I beg your pardon!"
The doctor rubbed his temples. "There's a growing body of anecdotal evidence that regular cold showers might boost your testosterone levels. If that's what's happening, it could be part of the problem. Hormonal changes can play hell with your mind. And your blood pressure. And your complexion."
And your libido, both men thought, neither daring say it aloud.
Michael's next yawn wasn't one he could suppress. "Lay off the cold showers. See if it helps." He blinked a few times. "My orders," he added, before the priest could protest.
In the blue living room of the Garda house, an exasperated Niamh threw up her hands. "I'm only saying it isn't wrong to return one, and let the other represent both gifts!"
Ambrose frowned at the two identical baby monitor sets, then glanced at his wife. The first wave of silly baby gifts at the shower had only amused or delighted her. The second wave after the birth met with quiet gratitude, and some expected exhaustion. The third wave began a week after the birth announcements went out, and it had already fuelled six different spats.
Had she grown more impossible in her great no-sweets experiment, or had the loss of his usual recourse for clearing his own mind merely left him more irritable?
Either way, he felt in the mood to let her pick this fight. "Shall we return the one from your godparents, or the one from my favourite aunt?" he said coolly.
Niamh's eyes widened as her lips did the opposite. She grabbed both gift tags off the unopened boxes, throwing them aside. She took the boxes from the sideboard and set them on the coffee table.
"Eyes on the prize, young man. Follow the money." She began moving the boxes on the table like a shell game.
"Niamh, enough."
"Oh, no, big boy, you think these things have souls of their own, you should be able to tell them apart."
It was already too late; he had already looked up at her, and couldn't tell which was which anymore.
"Now," she growled, "you open this one and put it up in the nursery. I'm taking this one to St. Joseph's and see if there's any use for it there."
"You're being ridiculous."
"Call it almsgiving!" she yelled before slamming the door.
Ambrose sighed, retrieved their personal stationery from the writing desk, and composed two near-identical thank-you notes.
Peter examined the gift, then looked across his desk at the bearer. "It's very kind of you, Niamh, but I'm not sure what I'd do with a baby monitor."
"It's a one-way radio! Might prove helpful for security, say, the next time someone breaks in and writes graffiti. Or smears chip fat on the statues."
"You mean I might recognise the perpetrator's footsteps?" he smiled wearily.
"You've had to care for abandoned babies before!"
"I never meant to make a habit of it!"
"Oh, for God's sake, Father, will you just take the bloody thing?!"
She was weeping.
Peter rose from his chair and moved round to hers, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Niamh, this isn't really about duplicate baby gifts, is it?"
"I don't know what's the matter with me! Every time I look at Ambrose I have this...this overwhelming impulse to ring his neck!"
"I don't think you really mean that," he said. "You've both been through quite a lot of upheaval in recent weeks. These things are stressful. You have to cut yourselves some slack."
"All I want is some peace and quiet and a bowl of raw biscuit dough," she snivelled.
He handed her a tissue. "Tell you what. When you're ready for a night off, I'll be happy to step in and look after Kieran. In the meantime...come to the market with me. Maybe a little yoghurt and fruit will hit the spot." She nodded and rose. He helped her on with her coat.
"Father?" She looked up at him cautiously. "We miss you round the pub. All of us."
He searched his mind for a response that would be anywhere close to satisfying. Finding none, he only shrugged and held the door, leaving the useless baby monitor where she'd left it.
Assumpta was running out of ways to punish the regulars with their proscribed vices, and the regulars were running into ways to make her squirm. For all Peter's glaring absence, his name came up in passing more than ever, and no one would stop glancing at her when it did.
Least of all Brendan.
"Drinking on the job, so," he commented as she finished a pint of treacle-thick porter. "Sure you'll balance your tills all right?"
"Sure. Thanks, mother," she shot back.
"Penny for 'em?" he tried.
"No bargain. Another Guinness?"
"Nah, nearly time for confession."
"Didn't know you were bothering," she said, refilling her own glass.
"Lent, Assumpta. Excellent time to make up for the lapses of the rest of the year."
She shrugged and raised her glass.
As the afternoon lull set in, she had planned to slow her drinking - no need to belabour the point. But for whatever reason, the regulars were dragging their feet - save, of course, the unusually-devout Mr. Kearney. So she kept her glass close at hand, another nail in the coffin of self-denial.
By the time the last lunch customer did clear out, she was well beyond buzzed. She checked the clock: half past four. She felt a strong impulse to make two telephone calls - the Chinese, for delivery, was the first.
The second inspired more trepidation, more calculation - why am I doing this now? Is he even through hearing confessions?
Is that what I'm about to do? Confess everything?
As her hand made contact with the telephone, it rang against her palm. The alcohol in her system dulled the surprise; she merely lifted the handset to her ear.
"Fisszherald's," she slurred.
"Everything all right?" said Siobhan's voice on the line.
"Fine, fine," Assumpta covered, feeling strangely like a teenager concealing drunkenness from her parents.
"Forgot to ask over lunch today - has anyone won the pool yet?"
"No, all holding steady as of this afternoon. Why?"
"No reason, only curious." Siobhan sounded hurried. "Ta."
Assumpta returned the receiver to its cradle, too numb to wonder at the purpose of the call. She dialled the number for the curate's house before she could think better of it, but six rings in, she gave up. Feeling restless as she waited for the delivery, she scribbled an impulsive, sloppy, four-paragraph letter.
Scheduling prevented Peter from making it to confession at St. Cecilia's, another church in Wicklow, but he figured he would still benefit from some quiet contemplation in her pews.
He was right about contemplation, though wrong about quiet: he happened to arrive just in time for choir practise. He noticed a few others scattered about the church, unabashedly listening in on the proceedings. Seeing it was not forbidden, he sat down to observe as well.
The director had all the diplomacy and patience of a young Father Mac, but a decidedly more...flamboyant air. The choristers were a motley crew of both sexes and various ages, bound by an apparent common thread of thick skin and rowdy irreverence. When the director yelled, "Altos! You sound like a lot of drag queens!" the altos only laughed and fired a few cheap shots in response.
The seeming chaos disappeared when they returned to the number they were rehearsing - "Be Thou My Vision," as it happened. Now they were sober, unified, reverent. As soon as the director stopped them again to correct a misprint in the sheet music, they lost their composure once more, giggling and making jokes at one another's expense. The white-haired veterans were no better-behaved than the young adults, and there seemed to be a deep intergenerational bond among them all.
If Fitzgerald's were a church, he thought, allowing himself a bittersweet smile as the music resumed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the hymn, its translated English verses and ancient Irish melody by turns comforting him...and breaking his heart.
This chapter is dedicated to my choir director. But don't tell him. It'll go straight to his head. :)
It occurs to me that Peter never officially put his shirt back on. Oh, well! I also feel weird posting this on such a momentous day... (It's still 28 Feb in my time zone, as this goes live. I know they'll smash the pope-emeritus's ring with a silver hammer, but...does anyone know what they do with it after that?)
But seriously: this is still supposed to be at least SORT of funny, and I hope it's not dragging too long or getting too mopey (two charges our heroine might level at Lent itself). Please keep chiming in with whatever feedback you have!