liked to get up early and head to the gym before work. He used to kiss her goodbye before he left, but now he just slipped out of bed and disappeared.
She thought about what Cait had said, about Patrick being one of life’s winners. It was true: that was one of the things she’d loved most about him. It wasn’t that he was arrogant, though he could be at times. It was more that he believed so completely that life would turn out the way he wanted it to, if he just tried hard enough. When she first met him, she found that kind of confidence intoxicating. He took up space in this world without apology, and encouraged her to do the same. That is, until his vision for what their life should be like started to diverge from hers.
She didn’t remember him being particularly religious when they were younger. He talked about having faith sometimes, and he would go to the Baptist church in Hamilton Square on Ash Wednesday and spend the rest of the day with soot smudged between his eyes. Their first Christmas together, they’d gone to midnight Mass in Alameda, leaving her father dozing on the couch while they held hands in the darkened church and breathed in the incense and the fresh pine of the tree beside the altar. She’d thought that it was tradition for him more than belief, but then he’d started working at the DA’s office, and talk over dinner turned decidedly more biblical.
After they moved to Texas, his faith deepened further. He started to go to church every Sunday and encouraged her to come along. She agreed to go once, just to see what it was like. Patrick had joined one of the huge megachurches that seemed to populate every second street in Lubbock, though he said proudly that this was one of the most popular in the city. “It’s like a big party,” he told her, eyes shining. “You’ll love it.”
When she’d first walked through the double doors into the vast atrium filled with thousands of people singing and praying and holding their hands up to God, and heard the swell of music coming from the loudspeakers, she’d felt something stir inside. It was nothing like the Catholic Masses she’d attended as a kid, with their endless, droning hymns and the stifling incense and the priest peacocking in his gold-embroidered vestments.
Here, the pastor was a young guy in jeans and a button-down, and he threw around words like “buddy” and “chill.” He talked about how we all failed, and how that made us human, and beautiful, and still loved by God. “God doesn’t want perfection,” he said at one point, as behind him a man holding an electric guitar twanged out a few opening chords. “He wants love, just like the rest of us.”
Rebecca had thought about that idea as the lite-rock version of “How Great Thou Art” swelled and the crowd began to sway. She had let her body sway along with the music and had held on to Patrick’s hand as he lifted it up in devotion, and for a second, she’d sensed what it would feel like to be loved the way Patrick knew he was loved: infinitely and without judgment.
But the feeling didn’t last. The next time she went, all she could see was the cheap nylon carpet and the plastic folding chairs and the look of desperation on the faces of the people as they raised their hands up to this man with his jeans and his “hey, buddy,” and the whole thing filled her with such deep sadness that she had to close her eyes to stop the tears from coming. Of course, Patrick had seen this and assumed she was having a moment of conversion. She’d never forget the look of sheer joy on his face when she opened her eyes and saw him watching her. Like she was a long-lost dog who’d finally found its way back to the warmth of its home.
At night, after he’d gone to sleep, she’d lain awake staring at the ceiling and conjured up the paintings that hung on the walls of her Sunday school classroom. Jesus, head haloed in gold, heart laid bare for all to see, a mass of red wreathed in thorns. She willed her own chest to crack open, ribs split down the middle and splayed, the muscle of her heart waiting to be filled with God’s love.