be my salvation. “I understand that people are eager to find her. Who wouldn’t be? I pray every day for her safe return.”
“But that’s not—” I start. Then I squint through the shadows. “Why did you tell me about the party then? If you think I’m some rubbernecker?”
The handkerchief comes out again. He wipes it across his brow. “Oh, it’s a type of penance, I suppose.”
“Penance?”
“Not in the official sense, of course. That involves confession and prayer—though I have always believed righteous action to be a form of praying. And perhaps telling this story can help others who are equally troubled.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“God forgives us,” he continues. “So easily, it seems. But forgiving ourselves is sometimes a greater challenge. I thought I’d forgiven myself. I told you I’ve worked through my regrets, but that’s not completely true. Twenty years ago, when she was returned, I thought I had, because she was home. She was safe. But here she is, she’s missing again, as you well know. And I wonder. If I’d done things differently that day, would any of this have happened at all?”
“If you’d done what differently? Told her parents you didn’t think she went to the friend’s house?”
His eyes become distant. It’s not until he focuses on me that I realize he was staring over my shoulder. Straight at the red door.
He takes a few steps backward, then puts a hand on a slightly ajar door to his right. As he opens it wider, I see a desk. A bookshelf. Jesus on the cross.
“St. Cecilia’s is an open place of worship,” Father Murphy says, his voice cold. “But if you’re not here to pray, or for spiritual guidance, then I think you should go.”
Excerpt from Chapter Two of Behind the Red Door: A Memoir by Astrid Sullivan
I have tried to forget the part I played in my abduction. I have tried to remember how I wore the dress my mother laid out for me, I kissed the guests on the cheek, I laid the linen napkin on my lap. The dress was tea-length and white, ballooning out as it reached my calves. It had scalloped edges and lace embroidery and could not avoid comparisons to a bridal gown—as if my Confirmation had been a wedding to God.
I suppose, in a way, it was. Only I was terrible at keeping my promises. I broke my vows as easily as fingernails.
But I tried to be good that day. The day of the party. I kept on parting my lips for the spoonfuls of guilt my mother emptied into my throat. I let that bitter medicine numb my tongue, erase the taste of Bridget’s skin. I did not call her, did not run to her house, even though I overflowed with longing. Even though my mouth was a chalice from which I needed her to sip.
I almost kissed her at the Confirmation service, three days before my party. I almost cheated on God, my groom, to pledge myself to her lips. We looked at each other as we waited in line for the bishop to anoint us, and I was so close to latching my fingers to her wrist, pulling her to me, marrying my mouth to hers with the entire church as our witness.
What stopped me, though, was Bridget herself. She broke our gaze to look at the floor, and the shame that flamed in her cheeks was as bright as the scarlet aisle beneath our feet. In that moment, I saw it clearly: she believed that what we’d done, what we felt, was wrong. More than that, it hurt her. I saw the pain in the pinch of her eyes. I practically heard the hiss of sin, sin, sin, said by some serpent into her ear.
It was then that my mother’s medicine flooded back onto my tongue. It pooled in the insides of my cheeks. It threatened to drown me if I didn’t swallow it down.
I watched Bridget offer her forehead to the bishop’s thumb. He touched the oil to her flesh and made the sign of the cross. Her “Amen” was her “I do” to God. And I was next in line to be his bride. So I, too, tipped my head toward the bishop. I said my vow. I walked back to my pew and prayed.
By the day of the party, my legs had a perpetual bend in them, as if always about to kneel.