Chapter 30: Purity
He was breathing too heavily.
He must have been, because for the life of him, that’s the only sound William could hear. In and out, in and out, thick, tense, anxious. Buffy sat to his left, her hand tightly clasping his. His mother, Sister Anne Marie, sat across from them in a hard wooden chair, her head tilted and appraising them kindly. She never wrapped him in her arms. She never claimed him as her son. Not a word, not a tear, not a thing but a nun, humbled by her service and affable because she knew nothing else. Thirty years since she’d seen him. Had she ever thought of him all this time? Did she ever wonder?
“William, say something,” Buffy whispered after a long moment of silence.
He licked his suddenly dry lips, trying to think of what a man says to the mother that abandoned him as a baby.
“I was a priest,” he said, looking her in the eye. His mother glanced at Buffy curiously, and then to William. “I was a priest for ten years, eight of those also spent as a teacher in a Catholic school.”
She said nothing. A clock ticked in the background. To Thee, O God, Silence is Praise.
He sighed. “I know you are not to speak, that we shouldn’t even be here. I…pulled some strings.”
“I insisted,” Buffy said quietly, trying to fill in the awkward gaps with something encouraging.
The nun raised her hand to grab their attention, as if their focus had been on anything else. “You are upset,” she said. Her voice was raspy, unused and almost sleepy. It was soothing until he remembered what she had said.
His eyebrows pinched in the middle and his mouth opened in silent question. Then he laughed softly and said, “I suppose I am.”
He was getting angry. Upset? He was upset? Of course he was bloody upset! She left him! Didn’t even want him! That was quite obvious now.
She flinched, that calm demeanor melting just a bit into an uncomfortable mask. He was glad. He was tired of being looked at as if he were anyone else. He was her son. He wanted her to see him.
“I don’t know why you want to confess your sins to me,” she said. “Why you went through so much trouble. I am only a nun. I’m nobody important.”
That’s when it hit him. She had no idea who he was.
He exhaled as if punched in the stomach, sat back hard in his chair as he shook his head slowly, his mind struggling to wrap around it. Buffy was looking at him for a clue, for some hint as to what she could possibly do to help, but he could give her no answer. He couldn’t remove his eyes from the woman across from him.
“My father didn’t know how to raise me, how to be around me, because I represented what he had with y—with the woman he loved.” He didn’t want to let her in on it yet, petty though it may be. A mother knew her son. No matter how long, no matter how many years had gone by. A mother knew.
“I was alone, I was lost, and I was angry. But I had a photograph of my mother, a link to a part of me that I was desperate to find. Maybe there, someone would give me the love I needed, the answers, maybe there someone could see what was so wrong with me that no one wanted me.”
Had he stopped talking for a moment, he would have seen the tremble in the nun’s chin.
“All I knew about mother was that she was religious, that she was sixteen when she was pregnant, and that I had been a burden to her. My father hated God. He told me every day that when we died, we rotted. That the only hell I’d ever experience was right here, right now. Maybe he’s right, but I wasn’t sure. I knew my mother felt differently, had made an oath. So I did, too. I forgot about everything in my life that wasn’t about the Bible, about God, about my vows and priesthood. I forgot about myself in that place, because I was trying to find you.”
William swallowed a lump in his throat when his voice started shaking, when his eyes started burning. Anne was looking at her lap, hiding her face in humility, and Buffy was crying, having never heard any of this before. He was grateful that she never pulled her hand away from his.
“Now I am here and you didn’t even recognize me. Do you have any idea what I’ve—” He inhaled, rubbed his knee with a flattened hand, urging himself to calm down.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. But she wouldn’t lift her head.
“Look at me, Mother,” he said sadly. “Please.”
When she finally did, he could see the pain written all over her face, what she’d no doubt tried to keep hidden for so many years. “William,” she began, pulling a Kleenex out from her sleeve to sop up the tears on her face, “I wish things had been different. I prayed that you’d be happy. But I had to leave everything behind to come here and I couldn’t allow myself to think of you. I had to trust that God would make it well.”
“Well he didn’t,” he said furiously.
“William,” Buffy said, scolding him in a hushed tone. He ignored her.
“He didn’t make it better, because God doesn’t control man like chess pieces. God is not responsible for fixing your errors!”
Anne started to sob. Perhaps it was in poor form to blaspheme in a church in front of a nun, who also happened to be your mother, but William was not concerned with the shape of things. He was far too angry, had over thirty years of loss to make up for, and though he was crying too, his temper never waned.
“Maybe I’m wrong for fantasizing that this little visit might have been more pleasant. Maybe I’m wrong for thinking that one day you’ll be my mother again. Maybe I’m simply wrong. If I am, you can damn well bet I’ll be the one to make it right again. Not God.”
A door creaked open and another nun popped her head in, checking on the commotion. William sat down, just then realizing he’d stood during his rant. Anne waved the nun away, reassuring her that everything was fine.
Deflated, William sighed and dragged his hands down his face, struggling not to listen to his mother’s whimpering.
“Who is she?” Anne finally asked, looking at Buffy.
He grasped her hand once more, giving her a sad smile when he saw her puffy red cheeks and her teary eyes. When he turned to look at his mother then, something started to click, and he smiled in disbelief.
“Well,” he answered with a heavy, therapeutic sigh though the tension in his lips didn’t show that it had done any good, “I suppose that Buffy was the way to find my father.” Buffy’s curious expression had him entranced for just a moment before he continued. “She was a student of mine.”
Anne’s eyes grew wide. “Wh-when you were a teacher?”
“Yes.”
She placed her hand on her chest and swallowed hard. “William…”
“Don’t worry, she never got pregnant. I can’t repeat history that well with only my subconscious to aid me.” He wanted to laugh, shake his head and say to hell with all of this. While he’d seen similarities between him and his father before, it never sank in why that might have been. That becoming a teacher, as it had been about his mother when he became a priest, had been his way to understand his father. William had never simply been himself, had never allowed his own mind to wander towards other possibilities. Not until he met Buffy.
“She was one of Rupert’s students,” he said to Buffy, keeping her updated with where his mind had wandered off to put the pieces of his life back together.
Anne was silent for a minute, and then her head nodded. “That’s where we…where we met. Rupert was an anthropologist in the summer and my art teacher at the private school I attended. He would tell these wild stories of his travels all over the world and I think everyone loved him, but especially me.” She smiled wistfully, smiled at something that she didn’t share with them, her hands idly plucking the arms of the chair for a moment. William didn’t know what memory urged her to continue after her reverent silence, but he was grateful.
“I was young and your father was a very good man. But I was foolish, full of pride and eager to snatch him up first,” she said, grinning a bit impishly as she thought of her past for the first time in ages.
Buffy’s eyes were wide and William sat in rapt silence, finally hearing the truth.
“I wasn’t always so…humble,” she said nervously, her hand fidgeting with her cross. “Some called me a wild child, and a deviant, but…what we had was real. I know that, at least for a while, it was real. But I didn’t realize that I’d, I cost him his job. He wasn’t allowed to teach again and I was six months pregnant and my parents disowned me. Rupert had gone off to Spain for something in the summer and I didn’t know what to do, if I should even tell him about you, and I was completely alone.
“I made arrangements for adoption and came to a monastery for help. When your father returned, he was…upset with my choices. So he decided to keep you himself instead of giving you to strangers. We parted ways and… The rest is history.” Anne looked at her lap once more, the light in her eyes vanishing with the end of her tale.
“But the ring,” Buffy said as she pulled the ring William gave her off of her finger. She held it in her hand, unable to quite let go of it. “Didn’t he propose?”
Anne’s head jerked up, eyes wide, mouth open. “What?”
Buffy and William shared a look, and he took the ring from Buffy when she nodded in acceptance. William, too, had taken a moment to look at it having held it so many times before, something that had once given him comfort. There was no question of its rightful owner now. It had always been hers. He raised his eyes to his mother’s and he extended his hand towards her as he said, “This was for you.”
Anne’s hands were shaking as they neared it, unsure if she should touch it as her fingers accepted the gift from her old flame. She looked at it closely, her eyes brimming with tears once more, and there was a glint of shame as she slid it onto her ring finger. It fit perfectly. She covered her mouth with her free hand as she sobbed, her eyes staring at the yellow and white diamonds on her finger as any woman would have the day she’d been proposed to, except she was crying tears of sadness, of regret. She never knew.
Anne pulled the ring off and clutched it tightly in a fisted hand. “He had been trying to…the day he left he’d been trying to say something but I was so emotional at the time. Oh, what have I done? The things I said to him. He must hate me. You must hate me,” she said, her words almost incoherent as she started wailing lugubriously.
Buffy wiped her wet eyes with one hand and pushed William with the other. “Go comfort her,” she said, frowning at him. “Look at her.”
William was struggling internally, because he didn’t know if she was more upset that she’d lost the man she loved or the baby that had caused the rift between them. Maybe she was just upset that she’d made so many mistakes. He could certainly relate to that.
He finally looked at Buffy, twitching aimlessly for a minute, and then he knelt in front of his mother and tried to console her, rubbing her arms slowly and soothingly.
“I don’t hate you,” he said.
He was startled when he felt her arms wrap around his waist and she pulled him forward to cry into his chest. It was uncertain how long they stayed there, how long he held her, how long Buffy sniffled behind them.
What he did know was that he’d needed this all his life, and he could finally start to let it go.
“I forgive you, Mother.”
When he pulled back a long while after, he noticed that Buffy had snuck away without them knowing, giving them some privacy. He wiped his eyes, smiling a bit as he sat back down across from his mother.
“She’s very pretty.”
William laughed a little, his smile growing when he looked up at her. “That she is. Eighteen, I’d like to add,” he said, holding up a submissive hand in the air.
Anne laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. Then she inhaled to keep it in check, but her smile remained. “You love her.”
“Yeah, I do. More than anything.”
“That’s good. You hold onto that feeling, William. Sometimes love is the only thing that keeps your head above water. Take it from me.”
“I wish things were different,” he uttered, looking at nothing in particular. “I wish you could… I know, that’s impossible.” He shook his head, offering a smile.
“I wish for that as well.” She reached over and handed the ring back to him. He gasped, hesitant to take something that she clearly had always wanted. “I cannot keep that here. It isn’t allowed.”
“But—”
She held her hand up again, briefly closing her eyes. “I don’t need to keep a trinket to remind me of the things I’ll never have. I keep it safe in here,” she said, touching her chest, then her crucifix, “and here. You hold onto it for me, William. You keep it. I’m married to God now and I’m happy here.”
Before he could protest, she talked right over him. He supposed she might have a few things to say, considering the vow that kept her silent. “Give her a better one. A new one. It will mean more to her, and to your father. It can’t be easy for him to see it, either.”
He felt his eyes prickling once more but he’d shed enough for today. “All right.” He slipped the ring into his pocket and stood up. He didn’t want to say goodbye, not when he knew this would really be goodbye.
“Are you happy?” She stood before him, wringing her hands, the one last question she needed answered before she tried to forget him again.
“I will be, Sister.” His hand made its way to the back of her head and he pulled her forward to kiss her brow, which turned into another embrace that she accepted eagerly. He stepped away, straightening his shirt and taking a deep breath.
“Goodbye, William.”
He smiled by reflex, lowered his head, and walked out of Carmelite Monastery, down the stairs, to the cabbie that had been waiting in the driveway, his girlfriend already opening the backdoor and crawling out to meet him.
“Are you all right?”
“Come here,” he said sweetly, holding out his hand for her. Buffy tilted her head, a suspicious smile on her face as she put her hand in his. He tugged her forward until he had her wrapped in his arms, his lips against hers, her breath in his mouth, reminding him how to stay alive. He would hold onto her forever, for the feeling in his heart right now.
“I love you, Buffy.”
“I love you, too.” Still captured in his arms, she looked up at him dazedly. “What was that for?”
He helped her into the car and shut the door behind them once they were seated and the driver pulled the car around the large driveway, out of the Monastery. “No reason. I just happen to want to say that to you every once in a while.”
“You just want me to kiss you,” she said, grinning and biting her lip.
“Could use one of those again, yes.”
She leaned forward, grabbed his face and drew him into a kiss, then another, and another, peppering his lips with sweet, tiny pecks. He started laughing through his nose, laying his head on the backseat to look up at her, touch her face, her hair. She loved him still, after all of this. This amazing girl who had come into his life looking for punishment, for a connection, had fallen in love with him as much as he had her. He knew it by the way she was looking at him then, the way her fingernails idly traced the collar of his shirt.
“Marry me,” he said out of the blue.
Her hand stilled, her eyes darted to his, wide and searching his for the hidden joke. Very softly she said, “What?”
He licked his lips and swallowed, lifting his head a bit and his expression turned serious. Yes, this was the answer. This made perfect sense. They made perfect sense.
“Buffy, will you marry me?” He took her hands in his, facing her fully now, pleading.
Buffy’s chest was heaving, her brows furrowed, her eyes darting to the ground, body jerking from side to side as the car went over a bumpy spot in the road.
He took her hesitation for doubt, so he encouraged her with rambling protestations of his love for her. “We don’t have to do it right away. I-if you’d like to go to college and experience all of those things on your own, I completely understand. If anyone knows what it means to regret a time long past, it’s me, but I just mean someday. Or now. You know, whenever. No pressure,” he said, smiling hopefully.
A wicked grin danced on her lips when she looked up at him. “I just wanted to make you sweat a little.”
He narrowed his eyes and smirked at her, laughing incredulously. “You evil little tart.”
Smiling fully, she lunged forward, crawling into his lap and kissed him all over his face, saying, “Yes, yes, yes, of course I will!”
They laughed as they kissed, sighed and squeezed one another close, and William had never felt anything akin to this before. He felt for the very first time that he’d done something right, that he’d done something that was honest and true to himself. Not one part of his love for her was manufactured, or a cry for help, or a reenactment of his parent’s failures. He and Buffy were separate from everything, from everyone. That feeling of being tainted, corrupted, and wrong had vanished. This was right. He’d never been surer of anything in his life.
“I thought you’d ask me in Paris,” she said, straddling his thighs and playing with his hair. The cabdriver cleared his throat often, but neither of them paid him any mind.
“Paris? Why would I do that?”
She shrugged. “Because that’s where we’re going next and it’s the city of love, and you’re not very clever.”
“Hey,” he said, slapping her on the behind, “I’m clever. I fooled you, didn’t I? Asked you in a cab on—hey, driver, what’s the name of this road?”
“Belgrave, sir,” the driver answered with a sigh when he spotted Buffy nibbling on William’s neck through the rearview window. William winked at him in the reflection.
“On Belgrave Road,” William continued. “Not Paris by the Eiffel, where every git with no imagination asks his woman.”
“Yes, you asked me after visiting your mother at a monastery. So much more romantic.”
“Making fun already, are you?” His hands were beneath her skirt on her thighs, his eyes smoky and ready for some alone time. She laughed girlishly as she leaned forward to press her forehead to his.
“Think the driver will know if you’re really quiet?” he whispered, sliding his hand over her panties, humming softly at how warm she was.
She glared at him in warning, whispering, “We are not doing that in a cab.” But she didn’t stop him from trying.
“All right, I won’t do anything to my fiancée.”
She swooned at that, just as he knew she would, and he took the opportunity to slip his hand behind her panties. She gasped softly, he checked the driver who had luckily not known, and then his eyes were on hers again. “Can we get married now?”
She laughed, her eyes turning glassy when his fingers slipped over her folds, easily working her up. She tried to stay calm for the driver’s sake, but he could see that she was struggling. He plucked her clit.
“Oh! My God—I just remembered something,” she said, quickly covering up her reaction to his touches.
He grinned and licked his lower lip, watching her intently. “What did you remember?” He slid his middle finger inside of her, inhaling when she started to shudder.
“That…we have to…” Her head started drooping, her breath became more and more labored, her hips slowly rising and falling in time with his hand.
“What?” William stroked the spongy wall inside her, rubbed his thumb gently over her clit, kissed her throat. Her nails were digging into his shoulders and her breath was shallow and cold and he knew she was about to—then she was slapping his shoulders and crawling off of him and he started laughing at her red, angry face. “What’s wrong?”
“You know I can’t be quiet when you do that, you jerk,” she whispered loudly, crossing her legs tightly and swatting his hands when he tried to touch her thigh.
He licked his finger clean, his eyelids low and heavy. “Too bad. You were close, too, weren’t you?”
“Shut up.” She liked watching him do that too, so she had to look away. Right before he finished, that was.
“Probably one more good, long stroke would’ve set you off right awa—”
“Shh! Is this how our marriage is going to be? With you teasing me in public places?”
He sighed happily and took her hand in his. “Yes. Is that going to be a problem?”
She shook her head in mirth, looking out the window at the passing trees and suddenly grew very still. He wondered if she was having doubts, if she were only placating him because of what had just transpired with his mother. But then she spoke, her words making him crumble for her. “Do you think my parents will be happy to see me?”
“Oh, Buffy…” He wrapped his arm around her. “Sure you’re ready to see them?”
She snuggled into his side. “I want them to know that I graduated, that I did it on my own. That I’m with you.” She looked up at him encouragingly. “If seeing your mother made you propose, who knows what’ll happen when I see mine.”
He laughed at that and kissed her temple, looking at her left hand and wondering what sort of diamond would look best there, something different than the one she’d worn for months. “I’m proud of you, Buffy. I think it’s good that you’re going to face them.”
“Thank you. I need another kiss.”
He obliged her happily, and when she gave him one of her sleepy smiles, he tried to imagine what it would look like with wrinkles, grey hair, dentures. If any of those things would matter. He decided she’d still be beautiful, that he would love her just as much as he did now.
“Without you, I don’t think I’d have ever done this. I never would have gone to Marrakech with my father, never would have accepted his offer to stay with him. I never would have come here to make amends. I never would have fallen in love with a person who unknowingly made me try to find out who I am.”
Beaming at him with shining eyes, she said, “And who are you?”
His first answer was a slow, crawling smile that he gave her before he kissed her hand. “Buffy, I have no earthly idea. But as long as I have you, I think I’m going to like finding out.”
The End
A/N: Thank you so much for reading this story of mine. Over a year to complete, this thing started as just a quick 2 part story of pron and then developed into a mammoth of research and emotional ups and downs. I appreciate those of you who stuck with it, though I’ve lost a few along the way. Your support means the world to me, and I’m very thankful for it. I’m also thankful to my beta, Kristi, who helped me make it better. Thank you, guys.