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Gus, Imbolc
The month of Januaryground by. Both of us were on edge waiting for her meeting with Jeanette—Decca’s former mentor and the current director—who was stepping down. Decca had been groomed to fill her shoes in this eventuality.
During the past few weeks, Decca had grown more and more excited about the prospect, although she tempered her hopes around me. It was hard not to be excited for her. Her enthusiasm was always so infectious, and I loved watching her so filled with excitement. She talked about some of her favorite memories at the Body Farm. When she’d first met Bethany and my sister. When she’d started working in the lab there with Chris.
Neither of us talked aboutourfuture. Just as well. We’d burn that bridge when we got to it.
The Metropolitan could transfer me to a church close to Knoxville, but the odds of that happening were practically zero. There simply weren’t very many Greek Orthodox churches in East Tennessee.
No. I could stay where I was stationed. At the church where I was needed.
Or I could leave the priesthood.
There had to be something else I could do with degrees in theology and divinity. I could get my Ph.D. I loved school. It wouldn’t be that farfetched. I could become a counselor. That’s what so much of my profession entailed anyway.
But ordination was more than a profession. It was more than a calling. Like marriage, it was a sacrament. A Holy mystery of the Church. It would carve my soul in two. I’d do it. For her. Somehow, I’d find the strength. But it was the less worse option of two abominations.
This morning was the interview.
I stood at the top of the stairs listening to the ambient noises in the kitchen: her phone pinging with messages, coffee brewing in the drip machine, the jug gurgling as she filled her water bottle. Her footsteps paced, paused, and paced again, while I remained upstairs, hidden.
My body was unable to share these sweet moments of domesticity with her, only for her to leave. I was frozen here, in stasis, while her morning routine was heightened into surrealism. Like Dali’s dripping clocks, Picasso’s distorted nudes, everything was too loud, fractured, wrong.
With every little noise, I could feel myself ripping in half. In half again.
I should be down there, to wish her luck. This was an important step for her. She deserved a fare-thee-well.Godspeed, Decca, on your journey away from me.
Her key slipped into the lock with a crunch, and she twisted it. After a minute, I heard her car start through the window of my office, the rumble of her tires on the gravel.
For the first time, her leaving made it easier to breathe. A weight off my chest.
She’d be home tomorrow. I wasn’t losing her. Not yet. She’d come home and tell me it was official. She was taking the job. The interview had gone so well, it reawakened the dream she’d once had, to lead the world in forensic anthropology scholarship. Now, she’d need to pack up the house.
Granny’s house. Our house.
Sell it quickly, so she could settle into her new life in her new town before fall semester.
So much of that felt wrong. That wasn’t her.
Oh, fuck… I didn’t know.
I knew he didn’t mean to, but Chris had gotten into my head and made me question everything I thought I’d finally gotten a handle on. I’d pushed Decca away again. Pushed her into a job she swore meant nothing to her. Pushed her until she finally gave in, and now it was like watching my own death happen in slow motion.
Chris might have been looking out for the woman he knew. But that wasn’t the same woman I knew. Everything Decca held dear was nestled around this house. Her garden, her memories, even me. How could she possibly leave this?
None of this fit. Nothing made sense.
I should be trusting in God. That’s what I would tell my parishioners. And I did, to an extent. I trusted that He’d give me what I needed to survive. My heart wouldn’t shred into nothingness inside my chest, but what kind of life would it be without her?
Now that her car was probably miles away, merging onto the highway, I understood this swirl of emotion. Why I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Why saliva pooled between my cheeks and my jaw, and I was seconds away from rushing to the toilet.
I hadn’t really expected her to go. I expected her to keep arguing with me, to push back and reassure me like a needy child, waving his little red flag.
But she didn’t fall for it. She called my bluff and believed me when I showed her how unimportant she was—not that I’d really thought that. In trying to make her pursue this “dream,” I’d convinced her that our careers were more important than each other.
My phone rang, and I tugged it out of my pocket.
It was a number I didn’t recognize, but that wasn’t unusual.
