The Asylum: Father Hooley

[FrankieOliver]

I knocked on the door and waited. The creaking sound of him rising from his old wingchair and the sounds of his feet shuffling across the gaudy, orange carpet were audible. I chuckled. He shuffled when he walked the corridors, too. I’d walked with him enough to know. It was difficult to shift down to and maintain that pace of his, so after a while when we were done eating, I’d get up and scream, “I’ll see you later, Father Hooley.”

He nodded; he was deaf, too. I knew he didn’t hear a word, but I didn’t like to get close. He always had bad breath and I liked to get back to my room before classes to brush my teeth and not be reminded of his breath and end up dry heaving the toothpaste out of my mouth and down my chin onto my freshly pressed shirts.

Then I was reminded of how he’d spray bits of food all over me as he chewed when we had a meal together. I’d had had bits of food hit me in the eyes and even once on my upper lip. The trick was to eat as fast as possible, push my plate away and then my chair back as if I were full and needed the space to breath. Before I’d conditioned myself thusly, there were many times when I’d just gotten my plate of food at the buffet, turned toward a table of fellow seminarians and then thought fvck it. The deaf, food-spraying, old Irish priest is far more interesting than the table of ponces over there. Besides, I’m headed for sainthood, not like them with their talk of fancy schmancy, priestly garments and the bejeweled, golden chalice they’ll have at the altar.

The door opened and the white-haired priest simply nodded, which was my invitation to follow him back to his wingchair and take the chair directly across from him. He shuffled. I followed and sat. I pointed to the tome on the small table beside him. He turned, picked it up and showed me the cover. “Rahner. Have you read him?”
“No, I haven’t, Father,” I said.
“You should, when you have time, of course. You have enough on your plate now.”
“More than enough,” I smiled. “What should I start with?”
“When you’re ready, I’ll lend you my copy.” He was happy that I wanted to read Rahner.
“Thank you, Father.”
“You’re a good man,” he announced. I wasn’t prepared to hear that. Christ, if he only knew.
“I enjoy our discussions, Father,” I wanted him to know it. I meant it. The man was gold. He’d been a Latin Professor and taught in Rome for many years. He told me he sometimes dreamed in Latin. Immediately it occurred to me that my nocturnal love affairs spoken completely in the vernacular were getting old fast and that if I only knew Latin, I’d be able to change it up. Then I caught myself and looked to see if Father Hooley had heard my thoughts. Father Hooley’s attention wasn’t on me though. Thank fvck. He was looking out the window. “Philosophy and Theology are essential. I’m glad you enjoy them, but take some time out there,” he advised and pointed out the window.

I nodded. It was a good strong nod, too, but he didn’t see it.
“You can’t discern this vocation properly if you lock yourself up tight behind these walls. Trust me,” he turned back to me and he looked serious. I nodded again. I was in a groove now. He turned back to the window again. I waited. I turned around to look at the window. It framed a flowering cherry tree.

There was nothing else to see. I glanced the old priest’s face. Tears began to flow from his old, blue Irish eyes. He wiped at them and then he began to sob. He struggled to compose himself. What’s this? Oh fvck me. “What’s wrong, Father?”
“Make sure you know what you're getting into. I wasted my whole life being a priest, he cried.”
I nearly shat my drawers. I was horrified. The man was eighty-three years old and he’d just admitted to me that he’d wasted his entire life.
“I never said that to anyone before,” he said, trembling and wiping tears as they dropped on his rosy cheeks.
I wanted to hear more. “Father, why in hell didn’t you ever leave?

He turned to me for a second, but he couldn’t face me and returned to that window and that flowering cherry tree of his. I was good with. The only other thing he needed was my ear and he had it. “The writing was on the wall. I saw it clear as day, but I ignored it, over and over again.”
I waited. I counted to ten. Then ten more, but he needed a prompt. “What did it say?”
He turned to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You’re a man like any other normal man and this is not what you truly want.”
“Jesus Christ, Father,” I belted out.

He managed a chuckle. A bit of a mad one, but it cut the tension, briefly. “He never helped me. I take pills to get through the day. Imagine, at my age!” Then his face scrunched up and twisted and it turned beet red. I could see the network of fine, purple arteries. This man was a work of art, to be sure, but the varnish had peeled and now bits of color were falling off onto the floor. There was nothing I could do to preserve him. I cringed. He turned to the window again.

Good. I needed a rest to think. I needed something else to say.
Oh shit. I got it. I was about to open my mouth, but I checked myself. Ah, fvck it. I let him spit food all over me. “Father, if I may, why did you enter the seminary in the first place?”

“In those days, it was one child for the business, one for the country and one for the church, if you had some brains, of course.” He was shaking. I mean his body was trembling and he was shaking his head emphatically. He was angry. I knew there was a good reason, but I was already concerned that my old friend might stroke out or have a heart attack right there in front of me. Father, simmer down. I’d like to hear this first before you die.“You didn’t think you had a choice, did you? I knew the answer, but what else could I say.

“My education was paid for. There was a lot of pressure. Parents became parish celebrities when a son entered religious life. Before I knew it, I was in Rome,” he said and then I noticed he had stopped crying. This is what he needed – to tell his story to someone who would listen. I was the chosen one. I didn’t feel particularly good about that. I didn’t like feeling special, but I needed to get over it and let him continue.

Then I really didn’t know what to say. He went to Rome to become a priest. He shouldn’t have. Then I thought about some of the shit I’d done knowing full well it wasn’t the right thing for me to do and realized how perfectly capable we foolish humans can be when we continue to put one foot in front of the other after the sign said, “KEEP OUT. TURN BACK NOW.”

Then I said, “Tell me about Rome, Father Hooley.” He had me in deep enough already.

He pulled back away from the window, finally, and eased back into his wingchair. He sighed. “It was long ago. Pius XI sat in St. Peter's chair. I was young and right off I fell in love with Rome. You’d have to have no soul not to,” he started and closed his eyes to recall a life and a world long ago and far away.

I followed suit and relaxed into the wing chair Father Hooley had designated to me. I went to put my feet up on the ottoman, but checked myself. “No, it’s alright, son. Make yourself comfortable,” the deaf, old priest said. I decided to wait on the ottoman, however. I’d missed my siesta, but I certainly didn’t want to dose off now.

Then Father Hooley went on to tell me about a woman he’d met one day while taking a stroll through the Piazza Navona. He had been admiring the great fountains of Bernini when he spied a beautiful, young, Italian goddess sitting on a stone bench sketching a Triton at La Fontana del Moro and made a point to sit down beside her and get to know her. They fell in love. “We were like a newlywed couple, so we were,” he said to me. “I knew the love of a woman and still, I thought I knew better. ‘The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.’ Never forget it.”

Despite the intensity of the love between them, he still believed he had a calling to the priesthood and went through with his ordination. Ada loved him so much that she even told him that she’d follow him to New York and live nearby as his mistress. He of course turned her down, broke her heart and unbeknownst to him, he’d torn his own heart asunder and went on for decades with that terrible wound unchecked and when, finally, it had festered and infected his whole soul, a half-century had passed and he’d already embarked on the trolley to the madhouse. “I was lost a long time ago,” he admitted.

I didn’t know what to say to any of it. I couldn’t say I was sorry. There was nothing for me to be sorry for, of course. He went back to that window and that flowering cherry tree. I turned and looked out at it, too.

Then I thought about the young women who were at the seminary that summer teaching foreign languages to priests and seminarians from all over the country. Some seminarians were going to the Gregorian in Rome and needed to learn Italian. Some priests found themselves in parishes with a large immigrant population and wanted to learn the appropriate language. Some simply had nothing better to do. I could think of a few things I’d rather be doing than being locked up in there all summer, if not for the fact that there were several attractive, young ladies staying in an old wing on the third floor.

Father Hooley was well aware of it, too, and had fallen for one of the Spanish teachers, a young and rather attractive Puerto Rican woman with a gentle soul. I found them chatting a few times in different places around the building. It didn’t surprise me – Father Hooley was quite an interesting man and despite the foul breath and food showers during meals, was an absolute pleasure to be around.

Then after he’d finished telling me about Ada and Rome, he began telling me how the presence of this young woman had triggered his intense feelings of regret. I knew then that despite his age, his disabilities, despite everything, he was desperately clinging to a shred of hope, that there might yet be another shot at love in this life.

It was easy to see how this all materialized of course. I myself had my eye on a teacher from Italy, but initially I kept my distance from her. I didn’t dare mentioned that to him. He was out of his mind over the Puerto Rican woman and by the way he’d suddenly rained all of this down on my delicate, seminarian shoulders, it was clear to me that he was teetering on the edge.

One day not long after this encounter with Father Hooley the Puerto Rican woman confided in me that Father Hooley had told her that he was in love with her. She as a matter of course had to let him down gently, but it was to no avail and he retreated to his room to keep his distance and his agonia to himself.

One day after the summer had ended and all the roses dying, I was sent for and during that sit-down with Pumpkin Head, it was strongly suggested that during meals I sit with my fellow seminarians and not with Father Hooley. I did not question it, but simply nodded in agreement. I learned how to be an affective nodder at the Asylum. Then I left to return to my studies. I really didn’t give a shit. I knew where he lived and visited him from time to time to see how he was getting along.

The women were long gone and he certainly hadn’t forgotten, but his disposition seemed improved, as if he had found something to hold onto for the time being. Whatever that branch was, maybe it was old Karl Rahner in that tome on the table again or maybe it was whatever he could see pass in front of that window now that all the leaves were gone from the cherry tree. I never knew. Our conversation was far less substantial and brief. He was tired. So was I. I simply wanted to him to know that he had a friend left in the world and because he kept on opening the door whenever I stopped by for a visit, I knew that he was glad of it and that’s all that mattered then.

The following May, I completed the pre-Theology program. There was a small graduation ceremony. The bishops, the monsignors, the priests, all my fellow seminarians and some family members attended. I invited none of own my family because I knew in my heart that my discernment was complete and didn’t see the point. Father Hooley sat alone in a pew in the back. When I went up to receive my diploma from my bishop and turned back toward my place in the front row, I nodded to him, my only real friend there.

The next day I packed my shit into my pickup and left to begin anew. Early the following morning I drove upstate with a friend to Walton for my grandfather’s wedding. On the way up a windy, mountain road in the Catskill Mountains, nearly asleep in the cab, my friend and I thought we saw a Pterodactyl flying alongside my truck for a stretch. Perhaps he’d been hiding out up in the woods for a few million years. If that were true, I really couldn’t blame him.

At my apartment in Brooklyn a few weeks later I received a message on my answering machine. It was the voice of Mrs. McGillicutty, one of the secretaries at the Asylum. In her strong brogue, she informed me that my friend, Father Hooley, had passed away. Naturally I was deeply saddened.

The next day I drove in to the seminary to find out whatever I could about his passing. Mrs. McGillicutty didn’t have much to say, but I asked around. It turns out that he had been dead in his room for four days before someone found him. No one missed him at breakfast. No one missed him at lunch. No one missed him at dinner. No one missed him at mass. He was found because his body was rotting in his room during the month of June and the odor had been picked up by a passing house cleaner.

Right then I wanted to dial up Lucifer and have him unleash the hounds of hell on the place. Then I wanted them all nailed up good and tight, the dirty bastards. I thought better of it though. They’d all end up martyrs and in a hundred years they’d be venerated and after another hundred, beatified. I wasn’t going to pave the way for any of that nonsense. They were already paving the way to Hell. When they entered, I’d jump out from behind a burning, broken column and yell, “Welcome to Heaven,” for shits and giggles.

Then the wailing would commence and I’d laugh and say, “Grab a seat and make yourself comfortable, you cvnts.”

Later when I returned to my apartment, I typed out my letter of resignation. I’d planned on doing it before too long anyway, but I was running hot and wanted the letter posted the next day. It was brief and to the point. I sealed up the envelope, put a stamp on it and poured myself some bourbon. I swallowed it down, sat down on my sofa and thought of my dear friend, Father Hooley. Then it occurred to me that I’d been listening to my heart along and I had no reason to think otherwise.

 

[Tim Fezziwig]

Nice Frankie ,I feel like reading some Merton now.

 

[cmh6122]

Well told good sir.

 

[FrankieOliver]

Thanks for reading, gentlemen.

Nice Frankie ,I feel like reading some Merton now.

Tim, everyone once in a blue moon, I'll take Seven Story Mountain off the shelf, give it a dusting off and sit down and read it straight through. Quite a writer in his time.

 

[NeptuneBlue]

Quite an interesting read... There's plenty more I could say, but it would be for the best if I didn't... I'm not quite ready for another long stay in ban camp

Thanks for writing it! I found it fascinating

 

[Eric Duane]

A very well told story. I enjoyed it very much. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[cherryles]

“In those days, it was one child for the business, one for the country and one for the church, if you had some brains, of course.”


The number of priests in Ireland are at an all time low.


Ireland Running Out of Priests