Six Catholics and an Atheist

Kirsten Hazelton, the discharge planner at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital, was sitting alone in a rear pew of the prayer chapel, when Dr. Wong entered and slid down on the polyurethane oak next to her. “Strange place for a patient conference,” the osteopath noted. With his round, boyish face the stocky, middle-aged man was old enough to be her father.

“The chapel was closer to the wards than my office.” She didn’t bother stating the obvious, which was that, except for a few diehard Catholics, hospital staff seldom ever visited the somber prayer room. "Mrs. Edwards is leaving us tomorrow." The elderly woman had tripped over a frayed rug two weeks earlier and fractured a hip. Surgery was uneventful, the patient already up and about with the aid of a walker.

"She's being released to rehab for a few weeks before going home," the doctor confirmed.

"Yes, well that was the original plan." Kirsten was staring at a picture of the Holy Mother alongside a gold crucifix that adorned the altar. "Her son, Brandon, apparently wants the woman placed in a nursing home so he can put the house in the hands of a real estate broker."

Dr. Wong listened impassively, staring at a pile of missals and hymnals arrayed on a rack near the holy water. "What does the patient want?"

"To return home, naturally. Mrs. Edwards is quite upset."

The osteopath rubbed his chin. "Have you thought about asking Father McNulty to intercede… plead her case with the family?"

Kirsten's features cycled through a series of unflattering contortions. In his later sixties, Father Evan McNulty was a hellfire and brimstone ideologue with no social graces to speak of. The skinny cleric suffered from rosacea - the cheeks, nose, chin and eyelids mottled with spider-like blood vessels and chronic eruptions. He much preferred the challenge of defeating evil in the abstract to the mundane banalities of parish life. "Father McNulty would be my last choice."

"Yes, I know what you mean." The doctor leaned back in the pew extending his legs beneath the velour kneeler. "Mrs. Edwards is only in her seventies. Once the bone mends, that woman's got another decade of active years ahead of her."

"Which is just my point: she doesn't belong cooped up in some drab, geriatric facility playing bingo and trying to make small talk with residents who can’t recall what day of the week it is."

Dr. Wong smiled and patted her hand reassuringly. "I'll drop by Mrs. Edwards' room later today and make sure she doesn't get bullied into making a bad choice." The older man seemed momentarily lost in some private reverie. "You get solace from your faith?"

"Yes, of course. Don't you?"

"I'm an atheist."

Kirsten burst into a fit of laughter, which quickly ebbed away to nothing when she realized that the physician was not responding in kind. "You're serious?" He shook his head. "But you work at a Catholic hospital."

"What difference does that make? Doctor Shapiro is orthodox Jewish and the chief of oncology; Dr. Watanabe, is a practicing Buddhist. Being godless doesn't imply a lack of morals." He rose to his feet. "Maybe I better speak with Mrs. Edwards before Brandon badgers her into giving up her independence."

The following day Kirsten ran into Dr. Wong eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. No sooner had she sat down then the physician's cell phone twittered. He spoke briefly and hung up. "My daughters are coming home for the holidays, and my wife is already frantic about the preparations. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

"Keeping my options open," Kirsten replied evasively. She had been dating an intern since the summer, but the relationship fell apart when the doctor got offered a position at hospital in Connecticut. Her parents didn't know about the breakup and the notion of going home alone was terribly unappealing.

Truth be told, Kirsten was relieved Jason had taken the new job and moved away. The man had his priorities – a lucrative medical practice and rapacious sex - mapped out from the day they met. Her boyfriend used the bedroom to unwind, as a diversion from the strain of twelve-hour shifts and academic studies. Kirsten somehow didn't see that ever changing. For the young medic, romance was a novelty. Away from the emergency room, he had few hobbies or outside interests. What Kirsten needed was a younger version of Dr. Wong - not that she was the least bit attracted to the roly-poly physician, but still, at least he golfed on weekends, took his youngest daughter to figure skating lessons at the Lynch Arena in Pawtucket and baked homemade breads. Perhaps a brief ad in the personals section of the local paper might jump-start a new romance, get Kirsten's pitiful social life back on track:

"Thirty-something female
looking to meet devout Catholic
with no major vices, social
diseases, sexual aberrations,
fetishes or incurable neurosis.
Must be family-oriented,
compassionate, love children
and not be married to the
workplace. Smokers need not apply."

"I spoke with Brandon Edwards," Dr. Wong said, interrupting Kirsten's private reveries, "and informed him that ultimately his mother should choose what's in her best interest… even waved a Patient's-Bill-of-Rights form under his nose."

A few years back, Kirsten had used a similar ploy with another dysfunctional family. It was nothing more than a bluff, a hollow show of bravura. "And what was his response?"

"Brandon promised to honor his mother's wishes." He leaned across the table and tapped Kirsten's forearm. "Problem is, I don't trust that guy. He gives me the creeps."

Kirsten briefly met the son, who had only visited his mother twice in all the time she was recuperating at the hospital. The day of his mother's surgery, Brandon never even bothered to make an appearance and didn't resurface until a week later. "And do you believe that malarkey about honoring his mother's wishes?"

"No, not really, but there's only so much we can do."

Kirsten agreed wholeheartedly with the doctor's assessment of Mr. Edwards. The fellow had a distracted, morose manner, responding to the discharge planner's light banter with monosyllables. Kirsten slit open a packet of creamy poppy seed dressing and drizzled it over her garden salad. "I've been researching atheism," she deflected the conversation.

The doctor looked up with mild surprise. "And what have you discovered?"

"A meager two per cent of the world's population identify themselves as godless."

"Yes," Dr. Wong replied, "that's absolutely true, but in the Scandinavian countries, those numbers are inverted." His tone was more instructive than argumentative. "In Japan upwards of sixty-five per cent don't believe in God at all and in the Nordic countries such as Sweden the figure climbs to eighty-five - just a few percentage points lower in Denmark, Norway and Finland."

Kirsten stumbled across similar statistics when she Googled the topic on the internet. Among the intelligentsia, belief in personal gods or a heavenly afterlife were at an all-time low, the implication being that more educated and cultured individuals felt no compelling need to fill the churches. Similar findings had been duplicated in studies dating back to the late nineteen twenties, establishing an inverse correlation between IQ and religiosity. "In the U.S., those communities with the highest percentages of atheists tend to have the lowest murder rates," Dr. Wong mused, "while in rural communities where people are the most religious, violent homicides are considerably higher than average."

Kirsten speared a cucumber wedge and raised it to her lips. She had no desire to debate the issue. Dr. Wong’s logic was rock solid, any opposing position indefensible. "Less than one per cent of the prison population is made up of non-believers while atheists are historically more tolerant toward women and homosexuals. We also beat our children less often and tend to donate more to charitable causes."

"Ouch!" Kirsten raised her hands in an attitude of capitulation. "Okay, I'm throwing in the towel!"

"No, please don’t!” “Unlike that gasbag, Father McNulty, you're one of the good Catholics. The church needs you more than we do," he parried the humor like a tennis ball across a sagging net. "I just wanted to make the point that we non-believers aren't ogres."

Later that night Kirsten babysat her nephew, Wilbur. Her sister, Alice, had a PTO meeting and her husband was away on business.

"Tell me a bedtime story," the boy insisted as she was settling him under the covers.

"What would you like to hear?" Kirsten drifted over to a bookshelf crammed with illustrated offerings - Junie B. Jones, Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Richard Scary series and a mishmash of Disney picture books.

"No, I don't want any of those. Make one up."

"Off the top of my head?" Kirsten settled into the rocking chair alongside the single bed and sat thinking for the longest time.

"I like the crazy ones," Wilbur insisted. Over the past year, as her personal life caromed further and further out of control, Kirsten's impromptu stories had become equally offbeat and bizarre.

"Penrod and Sarah Smithers lived
all by themselves. Totally, completely
and utterly alone. And that’s
the way they liked it. Penrod was
twelve years old; Sarah turned eight
on June 6th. It was a smallish but
very pleasant birthday party.
Just Penrod, Sarah and their pygmy goat.

"What was the goat's name?" Wilbur demanded.

"Lambchop."

Exactly a year, three months and twelve
days earlier, their parents decided
to vacation in Africa. The Smithers
wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro
in northeast Tanzania and shoot a
few elephants, crocodiles and
water buffalo. It never occurred to
them that certain African animals
might be endangered or that Penrod
and Sarah were ‘endangered’ in a
different sort of way.
“There are exactly thirty-five TV dinners
in the freezer,” Mrs. Smithers counseled
as she piled the luggage into the trunk
of the Volvo. The Smithers always
bought Volvos. They were very safe and
reliable autos and, when it came to
family transportation, you didn’t want
to take unnecessary risks. “The TV
dinners should last a while, and we
put some extra money in the dresser
drawer under your father’s silk
underwear. But that’s only for emergencies.”
Mr. Smithers wagged a finger under
his son’s nose. “Don’t squander the
money.”
“If you get sick and tired of TV dinners
and want a pepperoni pizza,” Mrs.
Smithers added, “that’s perfectly OK.”
The parents were only suppose to be
gone a week. How many water buffalo can
a person shoot? And how many dumb
snow-covered mountains can you climb
before the stupendous, African safari
vacation becomes boring with a capitol B?

"What's a Papist, Auntie Kirsten?" Wilbur blurted.

Kirsten stared at the child in disbelief. "Why do you ask?"

Rolling over on his stomach momentarily, he punched the pillow, propping it up against the headboard. "My daddy calls you the Papist,… the goody two-shoes Papist, so I was wondering…"

Kirsten felt her cheeks flush. She knew her brother-in-law had no use for religion - not that he held any sophisticated, teleological convictions similar to Dr. Wong's - but this was too much!. "A Papist is a Catholic, but it's not a particularly nice term." "Do you attend church on Sundays?"

"Can't"

"Why not?"

"Interferes with soccer practice." The boy wiggled his rump under the covers. "You can continue with the story now."

Well, a week passed and then a month.
The folks sent post postcards
and tons of colorful pictures. One
showed Mr. Smithers sitting on top
of an elephant. The elephant was lying
on its side with its mouth open
and a big red tongue hanging out.
Its eyes were open but the lumpy
beast didn’t seem to be focusing on
anything in particular.
“That’s one saaaad looking elephant,” Sarah
said, drawing out the vowel for dramatic
effect.
“Do you think it’s just sleeping?”
Penrod studied the picture for the longest
time. He stared at the huge gun his
father slung over his shoulder and
the crisscrossed cartridge belts full
of hollow-point bullets draped around his neck. “Sleeping,” Sarah's brother confirmed.
“Definitely taking a mid-morning snooze.”
In another picture the parents were
standing at the top of a mountain
looking down through hazy clouds - yes,
the clouds were below them - at a
huge African plain.

Well, the Smithers were having such
great fun they simply forgot to
come home. They sent pictures and flowery
postcards but that was pretty much it.
But Penrod and Sarah didn’t mind. They
grew comfortable in their parentless
solitude. They looked after each other,
which is what brothers and sisters are
supposed
to do.
When one of the super-duper, nosey neighbors
said something like, “Haven’t seen your
folks around lately,” Sarah would reply,
“Oh they're very busy people.”
The children never lied. That would be
wrong. They omitted a few minor details
but never ever told a lie.
Now you might think that a couple of
children abandoned by their selfish,
good-for-nothing parents would be scared
to death, but not Penrod and Sarah Smithers.
Heck no! From the day their parents waltz
out the door on their glorious African
safari, Penrod had a plan. “I’ll cook
and you clean," he told his sister. “We’ll
be just fine. Who needs parents anyway?
They just boss you around and act more irresponsible than a bunch of dopey kids.”
“We’ll be just fine,” Penrod repeated
with a confident wave of his hand. “This
is the beginning of an awesome, stupendous,
splendiferous adventure.”
“Splennndiferous,” Sarah repeated in a
soon-to-be-fourth-grade, singsongy voice.

A gurgling snore cut the narrative short. Wilbur was sound asleep. Kirsten shut the light off, drifted into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of coffee. An hour later she recognize the purr of her sister's Honda CRV as the car crawled up the driveway.

"How was Willy?" Alice slipped off her high heels.

"He's never any problem." Kirsten was trying to decide whether to confront her sister with her husband’s crassness. "Do you know any atheists?"

. "No, why do you ask?" She teased a pearl drop earrings from a fleshy lobe then withdrew its mate

"There's a well-respected doctor over at the hospital who doesn't believe in God."

"I'm not surprised," Alice countered. "Modern life has become too hectic for a lot of people. Organized religion’s optional,... a luxury."

"Not for us goody two-shoes Papists," Kirsten muttered.

"What was that?" Alice loosened the buttons on her cuffs. "I didn't catch that last remark.

Tuesday morning on the way to work, Kirsten swung by the Braintree Rehabilitation Center. "I'm looking for Dorothy Edwards."

"Second floor, room twenty-eight," the receptionist replied.

Kirsten rode the elevator up one flight and found the white-haired woman sitting by herself in the solarium. She greeted Kirsten warmly but looked haggard. "There's been a change of plans." She pulled the hospital-issue bathrobe up around her wrinkled throat. "I'm transferring to Briarcrest Nursing Home next Tuesday."

Kirsten felt her brain grow numb. "But I thought - "

"My son, Brandon feels it's for the best."

The fight had gone out of her. A vibrant women, who, after her husband died, attended college and raised three children had been reduced to disposable chattel. "What do you want, Dorothy?"

"I'm an old woman."

"Your son bullied you into changing your mind, didn't he?"

"My best years are behind me." Her voice cracked but, through an effort of will, the widow maintained a semblance of composure. "It's time to move on."

My best years are behind me. It's time to move on. Mrs. Edwards was talking a cryptic, Morse code. Her son, Brandon, in all likelihood, had gotten himself into a financial mess and needed to sell off his mother's estate in order to set his own pathetic house in order. No matter that Mrs. Edwards lived out her final years sharing a sardine-can-of-a-room with mental defectives who talked gibberish and crapped the bed every five minutes! Brandon required financial liquidity. He didn't have a pot to piss in and his mother's property represented a disposable asset. And the worthless bastard was probably a practicing Catholic!

Around midday, Kirsten slipped out of her office and visited the hospital chapel. The room smelled faintly of incense. Except for a handful of votive candles and a solitary row of track lighting near the front, the room was dark and utterly still. She prayed to the Holy Mother asking her to watch over Mrs. Edwards - to make sure that the elderly woman got a reasonably spacious room with a scenic view plus a roommate equally alert and pleasant. Then she prayed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that He help her make sense of the ludicrous farce that was her personal life. For good measure, Kirsten followed the petitions with a dozen Hail Marys.

Slouching down in the pew, she closed her eyes. Somewhere back in her college years Kirsten stumbled across a silly creation myth. According to the Blackfoot Indians, the Spider God fashioned the universe. Everything worked out fine except for the humans – even among native Americans, a handful of Brandon Edwards types slipped through the cracks, mucking things up – and so the Spider God flew into a rage. Throwing down fireballs, he incinerating the planet and started over from scratch. But the troublemakers and shady characters got the upper hand and, a second time, the Spider God put the match to his organic masterpiece. By the fourth or fifth try, he finally despaired. “Let the crazy earthlings works things out on their own terms.” The Spider God was far too busy with other celestial tasks to worry about Brandon Edwards finessing his mother out of her life savings. Properly understood, the Blackfoot deity was neither unsympathetic nor indifferent to human misery. It wasn’t so much a flawed theology but human pathology that gummed up the works. As she was rising to her feet, the door opened, and Father McNulty shuffled into the prayer chapel.

"Miss Hazelton," the priest greeted her with an unctuous smile, "what brings a young professional here so early in the day?"

"Do you remember Mrs. Edwards?"

"The woman with the broken hip."

"Her son is putting her into a nursing home." Her tone was leaden.

The priest removed his glasses and rubbed the side of his thin nose. The rosacea was particular bad today, the cheeks streaked with dark purple."Yes, well, at her age,…" the priest began philosophically but never bothered to finish the thought.

"At her age what?" When there was no immediate response, Kirsten rose from the pew, lunged forward and stuck her head up under the priest's mottled chin. "You're an asshole, Father McNulty." The man staggered backwards. "Has a disgruntled parishioner ever told you such a thing or do you assume that, as God's divine emissary, everything you say or do is above reproach?"

"This is the house of the Lord.” If he was taken aback by the outburst, it didn’t take the priest long to regain his composure. “Leave the chapel and don't return until you have properly atoned for this disgraceful behavior."

"Yes, I'll leave," She retreated several steps, "but that changes nothing. You're still an insufferable asshole."

"I ran into Father McNulty. " Dr. Wong tracked down a despondent Kirsten Hazelton in the solarium drying her puffy eyes. He said you became irrational, foulmouthed,… emotionally unhinged." He shared the observation with a flippant smile, implying that he didn't put much credence in the priest's account. "By his reckoning, you belong on a locked ward over at the Institute of Mental Health." The Institute of Mental Health was where the most incorrigible mental defectives were warehoused once less drastic resources had been exhausted.

"We had a difference of opinion," Kirsten sputtered, "and I told the crusty old fart things no one else ever had the nerve to say."

"Apparently that didn’t go over very well."

Kirsten grinned weakly. She was grateful Dr. Wong hadn't demand specifics. The soft-spoken physician had done his best to safeguard Mrs. Edward's dignity and would have been devastated to learn the truth about the son's treachery.

"What are your plans for the holiday?" Dr. Wong asked.

"Not much. I'm just staying home."

"An emotionally unhinged coworker with nowhere to go on Thanksgiving…" Pulling a pen from his pocket, he scribbled an address on a slip of paper. "We live over by the Brandenberg Community Center… seventy-five Aspen Drive. It's a slate blue colonial with white shutters."

"I can't impose -"

"Show up around noon. I'll tell my wife to set another plate at the table." Dr. Wong hurried off down the corridor.

The next day, Kirsten did her makeup and pulled her hair back in a tight bun which she fixed with an ivory pick. She opted for low heels and a lavender dress that showed her figure to best advantage without being in the least bit provocative. Arriving at the Wong's house, she was ushered into the vestibule by a chubby woman a year or two younger than herself. "So there you are!" Dr. Wong rushed over and, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, wrapped her in a bear hug. "Here, let me introduce you to my family, and I must warn you from the outset, I'm feeling quite outnumbered."

"In what way?" Any reservations she might have experienced were blown away by the combination of savory aromas and festive faces.

My wife's family is originally from Nanjing Province on the Yangtze River in southern China."

"Which means nothing to me."

"For centuries, foreign missionaries spread their religions through the coastal routes. A recent census suggested four million, Chinese Catholics, but the true figure is much closer to fourteen." The man gestured at the oriental women gathered together in the next room putting the final, decorative touches on the table. "Four daughters and a wife - all devout Catholics."

Mrs. Wong, a short round woman, looked up and smiled slyly. "Even my son has gone over to the enemy camp, attending Mass over at Saint Andrews!" He led the way into the main dining room as a tall, well-built man in his mid thirties came down the stairs from the upper level. "Joshua, let me introduce you to Miss Hazelton, the discharge planner at our hospital."
"We'll be eating in a moment," Mrs. Wong announced.

"Perfect timing!" The doctor led Kirsten to a seat alongside his son. "Did I mention that Joshua, like his illustrious father, is an osteopath over at Beth Israel?" He shook his head up and down energetically, as though in answer to his own question. "Well, at any rate, he can bring you up to speed on that." The man retreated to the far end of the room.

Joshua leaned forward and said, "I've been dying to meet you?"

"How's that?"

"My father's always been rather close-lipped. He hardly ever has anything much to say about the people he works with, but he's been singing your praises all morning." He raised a bottle of bottle of wine. "Would you like some?"

Kirsten brought her glass up to the neck of the bottle. "Yes, I don't mind if I do."

At the far end of the table Dr. Wong - the senior Dr. Wong, that is - had just cracked a joke and was laughing his fool head off.