It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 12: Chapter I (Cont'd)

Scenes of domestic and substance abuse. Coarse and offensive language. Reader Discretion Advised.

In the course of human events, there has never been a more acute example of Heaven and Hell as O'Toole's and St. Gregory's Church. Leaving O'Toole's Bar, you would rise from your pedestrian existence, staggering and struggling and heaving one foot in front of the other to the crest of the hill, where, like Dante, you could gaze and revel in the majesty of paradise. That road, aptly christened Ascension Hill, was always crowded. There was always someone struggling up, and there was always someone tumbling down. Take the Donavan family for example.

At the head of the house were Mr. and Mrs. Donavan, and prostrating before them were their six children. The four girls were Katherine, Kathleen, Karen, and Colleen. The two boys you've already met. Mickey, the obnoxious nose picker, and his older brother Jimmy. The family was, by any standard, your average sort of people, and were pleasant enough to associate with during the week.

If you'd met Mr. Donavan anywhere from Monday through Thursday, you would find yourself in the company of a regular old 'Joe'. A longshoreman by trade, somehow both underfed and overweight, who voiced no opinions and caused no gossip. Mrs. Donavan ran a stern and tight ship where the home was concerned, but never was heard to raise her voice. She'd just flash those blue eyes of hers, and immediately her children would obey. Not one of the brood were miscreants, neither in the house, nor on the street. They said: 'Yes, Ma'am' and 'No, Sir' without the slightest hint of irony. Suburbia has yet to make a more righteously wholesome, Christian family as the Donavans.

But then, like a sudden tempest, Friday would come. Pay day for the longshoremen. As soon as the cash was in his hand, Mr. Donavan would lose control. He'd forget about his family, his good Christian existence as he trekked down the hill to O'Toole's. There, he would sit down to treat himself to a well deserved drink, and before he realized what had happened, Friday had turned into Saturday night. Then, with his clothes thoroughly soiled and that money all spent, Mr. Donavan would set off for home. He wouldn't want to go home, but using your trousers for a lavatory was where the dour, ashen faced publican, naturally named O'Toole, would draw the line.

As night turned to the wee hours of Sunday morning, Mr. Donavan would climb the hill, but when he came to the church, he'd turn his face away. The sight of that holy place brought only shame, and jovial drunk that he was, Mr. Donavan would not abide shame. Nonetheless, with each step he took, his happiness and his spirited hopes would fall away, and the indignity that was his life would clutch and dog him all the way back to his menial residence, until he could bare it no longer. 

And then he would explode. 

His heavy hands would ball into fists, his voice would grow loud, his language—Monday through Thursday respectable for a longshoreman—flecked with the most vulgar, paranoid curses known to mankind. He saw treachery and sin everywhere. The shadows were his wife's faceless suitors, the squawks of gulls above his children's taunts, voicing their disdain with him as a sire, and by the time Mr. Donavan came through his front door, he was set on scourging his tormentors.

And scourge he did.

With his fists and his belt and the heel of his boot, he scourged and scourged until sobriety would creep back, dull and throbbing, pierced by the terrified pleas of mercy from wife and children alike.

Then came the sun, and with it the bells of St. Gregory's would toll. Deep and forlorn, calling all adherents to Mass. And every Sunday, 10:27 on the dot, the Donavan family would slide into the church, taking their place in the third pew from the back. Every family member, save for Mr. Donavan, would be covered in a multitude of injuries. Shiners and welts, with limps and lots of wincing to go along. Sometimes there were broken things. Fingers, toes, and if it had been an exceptionally bad night, a clearly mangled, poorly bandaged limb. Then the choir, always out of pitch, would sing their first chorus, and Mr. Donavan would wrap his arms around his chest and stare up a the crucifix above the altar.

And how he would cry and beg: 'Forgive me,' he would gasp. 'Oh, forgive me!'

Who is to say whether God did forgive him? If the religion says He did, then He must have, but not even God could have such a tolerance for forgiveness as that of Mrs. Donavan. It didn't matter how many times her husband beat her, how he harmed her children, how much money he wasted, how much shame he wrought, Mrs. Donavan always pardoned.

Then again, what else could she do?

As Mass would come to an end, and the family, now holding hands and attempting to regain their rigid respectability, would walk home. Mr. Donavan, redeemed by Christ's sacrifice, would sneak a glance down the hill towards O'Toole's, but would swear to himself that this week would be different. Never, ever would he descend again.

And Monday through Thursday, the Donavans pretended their best that that was the week he'd be proven right.

But then Friday would come, and the cycle would start afresh. Rising and falling, week in and week out. The Donavans, with their persistent belief and denial and predictable failure were the embodiment of St. Gregory's. The fact and the fantasy. Always thinking they'd have it better, never working for it. 

But this was St. Gregory's. 'As long as there is a better horizon, you need never admit your present.'

St. Gregory's Parish, like a tender drug, was the perfect place to hopefully deny. To pretend. To sleep. To dream. To die. As long as you held tight to your reality, then everything would be just fine.

If there had been a welcome sign to the parish, this is what it would have said:

You Are Entering St. Gregory's Parish.

 Everything Is Fine.