“Heaven is the place where the donkey at last catches up with the carrot.” -Anonymous

Part 2: The Confession (Peter’s story)

I’d spend years blaming myself and trying not to think about it. But even though it was my worst sin, I would do it all again. Exactly the same. If only I had the chance.

The first time Assumpta and I almost kissed, we were interrupted. Then the next time, when we did kiss, there was no doubt where it all would lead eventually. And it’s strange thinking about it now, but that play and those lines we said, we ended up living it. “We maybe only have tonight, maybe less, maybe only an hour.” It happened that way exactly.

I came to her that night after play practice. I waited until the pub closed I kissed her. I never explained, I just needed to finish it and I knew I’d never sleep until I did. Only one thing would have stopped me and it wasn’t being reminded that I was a priest, it was her.

If Assumpta said anything, gave away in any look or gesture or word that she was uncomfortable I would have walked away from her. And well, it was not your average kiss. We were completely consumed by one another. Then suddenly I remembered the thing my murky mind was easily forgetting. But I didn’t feel in the least bit guilty about what had just happened. That’s when I should have known.

I remember, clearly, her eyes. She looked at me with such fear but I knew Assumpta wasn’t afraid of me, not exactly. It was all the consequences and repercussions wrapped up in what just happened. And probably fear of what I was going to do next.

I didn’t say anything and I left. In that moment, I realized I couldn’t be the lead in the play. I just knew I couldn’t kiss her in front of an audience and not give myself away. Look at what had just happened- our kiss went on and on, my hands were all over her, I was ready to make love to her right there. What a show that would have made. That would have sold a lot of tickets the following year.

I tried to act normal and pretend it never happened. She seemed to do the same. For a long while, I thought that’s where it would be left.

Until one night I happened to walk by, I saw Assumpta was alone, cleaning up the pub late at night. She was obviously down, and I felt bad for her. So, I decided to help her out.

Didn’t take long for the conversation to come around to my vows. At the time, I didn’t understand where she was going with it. Did she want me to apologize for kissing her? Did she want a repeat performance? And with Assumpta, you never know when she’s going to launch into one of her lectures on the flaws of the church. I’d given her fantastic evidence to use against me. Plus, I was a little afraid of my willingness to agree with her complaints.

I was consumed with my own internal conflicts. I didn’t need one with her as well. So, I ran from her and the failure she exposed in me.

In fact, I avoided her quite a lot, until the day Assumpta was diagnosed. I was so afraid, I had never heard of it before, and I knew nothing about it. Of course, the rumors circulating in Ballyk were terrible and had Assumpta at death’s door.

I pumped Dr. Ryan for information and I searched the depths of the Internet. It seemed for many it was a minor annoyance, but for others it caused infection, infertility, cancer. I was filled with worry and fear. Especially knowing how Assumpta would never ask for help if she needed it. She’d never even allow others to know she even had a problem to start with.

I suppose I could blame everything on helping her recover. I could say it was tempting fate to be that close to her day in and day out. Accuse my sympathy and need to comfort her as the reason. But if I were truly honest with myself, I always knew one day I would no longer be able to fight my feelings.

Assumpta never hesitated even for a moment. She took my hand and led me upstairs. I remember I could feel my cheeks redden. I never was very good at hiding the sensitive side of myself. It accounted for my failure as a priest, among many things.

Amazingly, I was worried only about two things. Her health, since it had only been a short time since her surgery, and gossip about her. Should have been other things, like breaking my vow to God, but it wasn’t.

Assumpta probably assumed it was a one-time thing, a mistake that I’d ask forgiveness for and forget about. The next few times it was unspoken. It was understood that we both wanted this to happen. I felt so amazing I didn’t think, I just acted.

I almost skipped down the street with happiness in the morning light. I’d leave at dawn, having been up half the night but feeling rejuvenated and alive and rested. It was the nights I didn’t spend with her that I couldn’t sleep and I was lost the next day.

In the beginning, I ignored everything else- my vows, my vocation, what would happen in the future- there was nothing but her. I told her once that being a priest was a very lonely life, cut off from everyone, and that the best part of being with her was having someone to talk to.

Assumpta asked, “Not the sex?” Sarcastic and ready to be insulted just a little.

I told her that part was great and I wasn’t lying. But over time it became less about that, or maybe not only about that. It was mostly about having that connection. I told her that at the end of the day, no matter how much of a disaster it may have been, I knew I would find sanctuary in her arms.

We started to talk each night. Being there for her, and the way she would open up to me, made me feel privileged. She never let many people in to see what was really going on in her head. She’d tell me things I was sure she’d never told anyone, about her past, her fears, her dreams for the future. And I knew I made her happy, that was priceless. I could even get her to laugh.

Her laugh was beautiful, like music. My favorite moments were little things, sitting together holding hands in front of the fire and she put her head on my shoulder. It was those simple moments that I wanted to live over and over.

We talked about everything, or so I thought. Often, it was just news of what friends were doing or a joke heard that day. One night, I even admitted to her how conflicted I was. How much I wanted to leave the church for her but that I felt dreadfully selfish. I was supposed to be serving God and others. And then if I stayed in the Church, I knew I should stop coming to her. She became stiff and cold. I knew she wanted me there, at any price, even if it was wrong.

I didn’t realize how Assumpta still didn’t understand what she meant to me. What she would always mean, no matter what happened. All along, I told her the things I felt in my heart for her, how beautiful she was, how perfect it was between us, but never that I loved her. I couldn’t, and to this day I’m not sure why. Maybe part of me was ashamed of the affair, but only because it wasn’t worthy of my love for her. She never said either. Even later, after I finally did tell her, she never said.

I knew she wanted something else, though she never asked. Assumpta never once requested I leave the church or that we change the way things were. But I could tell just the same.

Once, she talked of her dreams as a young girl of having a family of her own some day because growing up her family had been so fractured. I knew the way things were it wouldn’t happen. I’d keep her from that by keeping her in this limbo with me. That’s around the time when the strain of me being a priest was becoming too much for either of us.

It was becoming difficult for us to be with our friends and still act normal around one another as if nothing was happening behind the scenes. One day in the pub, a simple discussion on a sweating statue went too far and I realized how bad things had become. When she came to apologize, she must have realized then it was falling apart because I agreed with her views on the church.

Even if in the short term it would hurt us both, I honestly believed in the long term it would be better, she would be happier, free to live her dreams and it was the right thing. I stood in her kitchen… My heart aches even now at the mere memory… and as I told Assumpta, she cried. I hated myself for making her cry, I only ever wanted to make her laugh.

Assumpta did the last thing I expected her to do, go and marry someone else. She told me later it was only to drive me from her head but all I understood at that time was betrayal. I wasn’t sure if I meant so little to her that it was that easy to move on from me. Or was this some form of revenge, knowing it would tear me to pieces?

At that point I never slept at all. I spent nights considering, weighing, vacillating. Asking myself questions like, if I’d left the Church and married her, would it have saved us? Or would I have regrets one day? Would my guilt over leaving the Church destroy us just the same? I know there are no guarantees but a sign, even a small one, would have been nice.

Memories of being with her haunted me night and day. And I started to dwell on details like him sleeping in the same bed I did. I wondered if Assumpta made those same sounds when she was with him, if she pleaded his name just the same. Was he there for her, did he listen to her and comfort her when she was upset or angry? Did Assumpta care for him more than she ever did me?

She came one night wearing his sweater. I was half afraid she wanted us to be together. But half afraid she didn’t ever want that again. It was one thing for me to break my vows but I never would have allowed her to break her marriage vows. I missed her and I wanted her still but I couldn’t. She was better than that.

It didn’t matter, Assumpta only wanted to talk. That was the worst part of the whole mess. As much as I missed loving her, more, I missed having that one person to share everything with.

I sensed that was what she was lookin’ for but I couldn’t… how could I? How could I say I’d made a mistake and I’d do anything to make it right again? She wasn’t free now. I was so frustrated by circumstance that I lost my temper- much more like Assumpta to get angry like that. If I knew she only had weeks to live I never would have let her walk out that night. I would have told her the things in my heart.

I got word Mum was dying and I left for Manchester. But just as bad, I wasn’t even able to be there for Assumpta when her marriage fell apart. Though part of me was happy, I also knew how embarrassed and distressed she must have felt.

And I, well, I was even more lost, aching, lonely, needing Assumpta. More than ever, and I didn’t think that was even possible. When I returned to Ballyk, I literally shook in her presence.

Finally one night, we ended up alone by chance at the Egan’s. I tried to tell some polar bear joke but by the end I couldn’t deliver the punch line because I was near tears. It was really about me missing her so. I couldn’t function properly without her, I was cold and lonely and I pleaded with her, “Why am I always thinkin’ of you?”

She took me in her arms then. It had been so long it was like coming home after years of wandering. I missed us talking and sharing things and being alone together just as much, maybe more than her body. But I was crying on her shoulder and I could smell her hair and I couldn’t help myself. I knew every inch of her, where she was ticklish, what parts were soft and which were firm with muscle. Most of all, I knew those places that made her sigh with pleasure including her neck and I kissed her there.

I wanted to hear that she wanted me still. I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone in this torture. But Assumpta pushed me away and ran off. She said it was wrong, which was true but she’d never pushed me away before.

Assumpta came to me later that night, she’d never come to my home late at night, we’d only ever been together at the pub. But she was angry, demanding. I told her I needed to think and she stormed out.

We did finally talk, we met outside of Ballyk and once again I tried to explain my wanting to be with her, but to do so was selfish. It meant I should leave the church, she deserved that but I’d be letting people down, letting myself down. It was in that conversation that I finally realized what the problem had been all along, she didn’t know what was in my heart, not completely. Those three words are so little and yet if you never hear them, that means everything. I know now how she felt then. The next day I told her I loved her.

After she died I spent months on that one moment alone. I was glad that I did tell her, that Assumpta knew when she died. But I wished just once I could have heard her say it.

I’ve punished myself for the fact that she died just as I was about to leave the church and finally make it right. I should have come to that decision sooner. Maybe God wouldn’t have been angry with me and taken her from me.

Charlie suddenly interrupts my prayers, “God isn’t that vindictive.”

I look up, startled, I forgotten he was sitting next to me this whole time.

“You’d know better then I would,” I counter. “I have to admit, Charlie, I really expected to be headed in the other direction. I did break my vow.”

“You and Assumpta…” Charlie shakes his head. “It was fate. It was a near impossible situation because you were meant to be together and yet you vowed otherwise long before you met her. Peter, you did the best you could with it. You were always trying to do what was right and you asked forgiveness when you made mistakes. God expects nothing more.”

“Besides,” Charlie says, grinning, “Boss once told me that if He were too strict, it would be boring up here because all the interesting people would be in Hell. I’m pretty sure He was kidding.

“But He did expect you two to move away where Assumpta wouldn’t be anywhere near that electrical box. He underestimated the influence of Ballyk and all your friends on you both. One of the many downfalls of free will you never know what sort of unexpected choices humans make. Even God was sorry that Assumpta arrived here so soon, told her so in fact.”

Charlie laughs again. “Yeah, it was an interesting one, she was mad and went several rounds with Him. But He put her on his Board of Directors… could see she’d be honest with him and not intimidated. Most are, you see. That Board of Directors idea seemed to shut her up quick.”

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around all of this, “Board of Directors?” I ask Charlie.

“Oh, we’re very new millennium.” Charlie quips.

“What’s it really like in there?”

“Heaven’s different for everyone,” Charlie shrugs. “It’s what someone wants most, a lot of times what they couldn’t have in life, but sometimes the same as their life. It’s always whatever makes that person the happiest.

“Usually I get people choosing to be with their family and friends, their favorite team to win the championship, a big plasma screen TV… that sort of thing. I have had a lot of heartbroken Cubs fans for almost a century now so the Cubbies win most of the World Series up here. But I get surprises once in a while, one guy last week wanted to do nothing but to eat ice cream. He was a lifelong diabetic. You just never know, keeps me on my toes. You ready now?”

“I’m not sure.” I’m anxious but nervous too.

“Just through those gates,” Charlie points. “Go on, she’s waiting for you.”

“Assumpta?” Is it possible?

“Sure. Runs a good pub in there too, but she could use a hand. I think you’d be perfect for the job. What do you say?”

“I get to-” It was almost too unbelievable, I couldn’t form words for a moment.

Charlie finishes for me, “To spend eternity together. It’s your reward, and hers. Assumpta wanted that also, but she’s been waiting. I won’t say all that patiently.”

I smile now. I’ve missed her so intensely that I have even come to miss her temper. I can clearly picture an image of Assumpta’s eyes flashing, hands on her hips, saying, “What took you so long, for God’s sake, Peter?”

With tear-filled eyes, I step through the gates and the clouds break. I hadn’t seen Ballyk for many years, but now it stood before me suddenly.

I am on the bridge over the river Angel and I look down to see I’m now wearing a white shirt and jeans and have a rucksack over my shoulder. A gold band on my left hand reflects the sun.

There are men who would feel that spending eternity married was Hell, not Heaven. Many more would agree if it were Assumpta they would be married to. But this is not their Heaven, it’s mine.

I head toward Fitzgerald’s, my steps quicken the closer I get. As I open the door, I meet her eye. Her beautiful smiling eyes draw me in. I rush closer to her and kiss her without saying a word first. A sweet slow kiss, it had been so long.

Then Assumpta speaks against my lips. “Peter, I love you too.”

Yes, this is Heaven, finally.