Casey walked in as Nancy was just getting ready to leave. “How are you feeling?” she asked smiling.
“Better now, thanks. Is the Father in the rectory?”
“I think so.” She picked up her coat, something that had seen much better days. It always pained Casey to see how scruffy she was, but rumor had it that she had plenty of money, and did this work here as a volunteer to keep herself busy. “He looked very concerned when he came back.”
Casey looked down. “Yeah, I…yeah. I’ll go see him.”
He walked down the hallway and instead of taking a right to go to the church, he took a left to the rectory. The rectory was a cozy six-room apartment, four rooms downstairs and six upstairs. Casey knew that this door led directly into the kitchen. He knocked gently.
“Who is it?”
“Casey, Father.”
He heard shuffling, and then the door opened. Miller stood at the door in just a t-shirt, jeans and slipper-moccasins. Casey said, “I have some explaining to do.”
He said nothing and let Casey into his apartment. A dinner’s remains were on the table and it looked like he had been reading the newspaper. “Want coffee?”
“If you have it. I don’t want to put you out.”
“In that case, bottled water?”
“That’s fine, Father.”
He went to the refrigerator and got two bottled waters, handing one to Casey. “Look,” Miller said, sitting down, “I suspected you weren’t Catholic, but this…”
“Father, I’m bisexual.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I have children. Lots of children. Isn’t that the purpose of being heterosexual?”
“Children out of wedlock,” Miller said.
Casey bit his lip.
“Mutant children.”
He shook his head. “None of them have what I have.”
“The Church hasn’t decided what to think about mutants,” he said. “I sent an email to the Bishop and he said it was a case-by-case basis. But he’s checking with the Archbishop.” He drank the water. “But the Church does know what to think about homosexuals.”
“Father, you’re right, I’m not Catholic.”
He set the water down. “Casey, this isn’t helping you at all.”
“I want to be honest with you, Father.”
“This is being too honest.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Normally, I would have drummed you out by now. But something…” He looked back at him and gave him a half-smile. “Tells me that you’re not disrespecting God, or the Church if I still keep you here. I like you. The people like you. We had the passion play this Easter, which was beautiful, and I like the idea of a choir for Christmas.”
“I think God doesn’t mind my being here.”
“Which goes in the face of everything I’ve ever known.”
“I can still keep it quiet, Father. Cedric didn’t mean to do that. He was falling all over himself apologizing.”
He drank the water. “Do you two…love each other?”
Casey smiled. “If I could, I would have married him by now.”
“You can in the Isles.”
“He’s a little skittish.”
“He didn’t look it to me.”
Casey laughed.
Miller gave him that half-smile again. “Okay, I won’t bring it up any more.”
“So you don’t mind me not being a Catholic?”
“I still remember the horror show I had when I interviewed for the position before. I doubt Mr. Metal-Head was a Catholic.”
“You’d be surprised, Father.” Casey got up, finishing his water. “Do you want to hear what I would have done for the funeral today?”
Miller got up also. “Yes, I think I would.”
Casey led Miller into the church, and switched on the lights over the organ area, leaving the rest of the church in grey and dark tones. He began with the Introit: “Requiem æternam dona eis, domine,et lux perpetua luceat eis…” singing in a gentle voice, and continued throughout the entire mass, singing the Dies Irae without accompaniment in a clear, mournful voice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae
Miller listened, tears coming to his eyes. It would have been a beautiful funeral, and Dorothy, a matron of the church, a past secretary, who remembered the past priests and pre-Vatican II revisions, would have loved it.
He wiped his eyes when Casey finished. “It’s too bad nobody will hear that.”
“If they come to Mass on Saturday or Sunday, I’ll ask them to stay and I’ll play it for them.”
Miller smiled. So what if Casey wasn’t Catholic, that he was gay, and a mutant. He was still a good person, and that was what God was looking for.