Forbidden Fruit by Annie Murphy, Peter de Rosa Page A

went along. Eamonn was now jazzing around with me, inventing a music for me.
    But he was right about one thing: I
was
wounded and far worse than he imagined. All the same, there was a massive denial on his part. He offered me love in the guise
     of medicine—“Take one twice a night.” I accepted it because I needed it. The truth would out in the end. Either he loved
     me or he was just out for the kicks.
    “Your confessor,” I asked, “gave you the green light?”
    “I think he saw my point of view.”
    One snicker from me would have torn apart his closely woven web of self-deceit. He and I had been brought up with the same
     moral code. We both knew there was no justification for what he was doing.
    I had one advantage over him: guilt was not my enemy but my friend and accomplice. Being a bad Catholic is the best religion
     there is. Catholicism was my guide to happiness because by now I felt that it was unnatural. Turn its beliefs about behavior
     upside down and, behold, fulfillment.
    However twisted men had made me, I was far more normal than Eamonn in one other respect: my fears, like my God, were real
     and not invented.
    He never mentioned the confessor’s name but I presumed it was Father O’Keeffe. In my brief meeting with him, I saw how he
     idolized Eamonn. Maybe, like me, Father O’Keeffe looked on him as a magician, as someone who was not bound by the usual rules.
    “You mentioned your point of view. What is that?”
    “Oh,” he said, taking another sip of brandy, “that this is a passage in your life and someone must go with you and help you
     face its dangers.”
    The phrase
passage of life
brought me back to the mother of Johnny, Eamonn’s spitting image. How had he helped her? Had he first messed up her life
     and torn her child from her before magnanimously helping her through a dark passage of life?
    Moreover, did he intend to come into my bed so he could make me sound and chaste at the end? If he had sex often enough with
     me, might I end up like the Virgin Mary?
    “Eamonn,” I said, “I’m so grateful.”
    Another contented sip of brandy. “If God were here, He would approve of what I am doing.”
    I really didn’t need this unorthodox foreplay. Only he needed convincing that sex was wholesome. That is why he had been forced
     to tamper with his God, making Him surprisingly tolerant toward a celibate bishop having “physical relations.”
    “Read the Gospels, Annie. The essence of Our Lord’s message is love. I told my confessor, ‘If love is what she needs, that
     is what I am obliged to give her.’ “
    I nodded understandingly.
    “When Jesus let a street woman wash His feet, everyone was scandalized. Good men, they said, never let any woman touch them,
     let alone a whore.”
    Thanks
, I thought.
    “The same with Mary Magdalene, a prostitute. For all the snide comments of scribes and Pharisees, Jesus let her stay around
     so He could heal her.”
    Tears of laughter at the thought of Jesus taking Mary Magdalene into His bed sprang into my eyes, which, I think, he interpreted
     as gratitude.
    “If Christ were in this room now, Annie, He would understand.”
    I could just see it: Jesus walking over to Eamonn while he burrowed away on top of me, tapping him on the shoulder and saying,
     “Well done, Bishop, keep it up.”
    In a quick mental somersault, it occurred to me that he really
was
doing a brave thing in loving me. What if from his point of view, it was a Christ-like sacrifice? What if we were driving
     along a road so perilous that not even his driving skills might be able to stop us going over the cliff? Into what? Not the
     sea, but the fires of hell. For me, heaven and hell were within but for Eamonn they were real places, and he was terrified
     of ending up forever in hell.
    If these were his thoughts, thanks for your trouble, Eamonn, but I really don’t want to be on the receiving end of episcopal
     sympathy. I didn’t like Catholicism in a church; I certainly