THE NINETY-NINE STEPS
She always
wanted
to be someone’s wife but no one would have her. A
fine-looking woman, she came
from the family who owned the internationally acclaimed Tyler’s
Oyster House in Ottawa,
right across the border
from Detroit.
It was not unusual for families to pile into their station
wagons and drive a
couple of hours to dine in the wood-paneled dining room with
stuffed marlins
and open-mouthed sharks on the wall.
As a woman
in her
mid-thirties, Marian chose a fine spring day when the pink
dogwoods spread
their petals before the sun, got into her blue Buick and
drove three hours to
the capital city of Montreal.
She
could see the church in the distance. The church of
miracles. Its blue-domed
top and tiny cupola seemed to shoot up to heaven in one huge
burst. She could
see the sojourners from her car, tiny as pencil points,
moving as slowly as a
procession of ants toward honey. But where would she park?
Circling the area in
her long Buick, a police officer, clad in a yellow vest,
blew his whistle and
directed her toward a newly vacated spot.
How
handsome he was in his uniform. She wondered if all men
looked handsome to her because
she couldn’t get a single one. She, too, had worn a uniform
to Catholic school,
where she was the school’s valedictorian. How embarrassing
it was to walk down
the aisle on graduation day. Or, rather, limp down the
aisle. That’s why she
was here on this electric-blue day.
Alighting
from her car, she avoided the policeman’s eyes, as she
reached into the back
seat to grab her cane. When he saw it, he offered to help
her walk. How she
hated that! Always to be pitied. Never loved for who she
was.
St. Joseph’s Oratory Church would save
her.
She was young enough and desperate enough to believe it. She
walked toward the
ninety-nine stairs in her best clothes: Pantyhose on both
legs, including the
short, skinny one on the left, shiny black patent leather
pumps – no, you
couldn’t see her panties in the sheen – a white ruffled
blouse, red blazer and
matching red skirt.
She
limped over to a special section off to the right of the
huge cathedral and looped
her cane around a railing. A field of canes sat indolently
as if they were all
for sale. She decided to climb the steps in the middle. She
wanted a good view
of the stairway, as if she were climbing the hill of
Golgotha to see her
beloved Lord Jesus in his Agony. She knelt on the cold stone
step and looked
upward toward the dome. She was confused a moment. How did
one crawl up the
stairs. To her left a mother and two young children were
mounting the stairs on
their knees. She watched a moment, feeling as if she were
cheating on a math
test, and then, hiking up her red skirt, began to crawl.
On
the third step, she realized she had skinned her right knee.
And then the left
one. Peeking down, she saw them bleeding, but her Lord had
bled, hadn’t He? She
pushed aside the pain and climbed higher and higher, until
she was on the first
landing.
“I suppose
I
should crawl across the concrete,” she thought, “until the
stairs appear again.”
Long
red streaks of blood appeared through her torn Pantyhose.
She crawled across
the hard punishing concrete, then began the next level of
crawling up the
stairs. She was uncommonly hot. Sweat poured from her face
and through her
white blouse and red blazer. She wiped her brow and asked
Jesus to help her
with the climb. That was all right, wasn’t it, to ask His
help?
Up
and up and up she went. All the way to the top. When she got
there, soaked with
sweat and blood, and now tears, she stood up and looked
triumphantly down.
Supplicants of all types – seemingly hundreds of men, women,
and children,
along with men and women of the cloth – trudged on bended
knees toward the top,
a Mount Everest on your
knees.
Staring
down the stairs, then up toward the blue sky, she had never
felt such peace,
even though her legs were awash with throbbing pain. She
knew that Christ on
the cross did not feel exultant. “Lord, why have you
abandoned me?” He cried,
to show mankind that he, too, suffered with them and had his
doubts.
She
hobbled over to the side to issue her prayer. Best to stand
as straight as she
could and not lean against the impervious unfeeling stone. Having given no
forethought to her
prayer, she began to whisper gratitude for her wonderful
life, her wonderful
parents and education, the taste of the slippery fresh
oysters with lemon at
the restaurant, and then got straight to the point. “I’ll
talk to You as the
friend you are,” she said. “Lord, it’s not that I want the
limp to go away, or
my skinny leg to disappear, it’s really kind of cute, after
all” - she enjoyed
rubbing both legs with Ponds’ Cold Cream at night – and she
did not hate
herself or her legs – “my fervent prayer to you, Lord, is to
let me find a man,
get married and have a family.” She
smiled.
Proud
of herself for her audacious act, she returned to her car,
drove home to her
condo and took a hot bubble bath, which stung her bleeding
knees and hands, but
she cared not a whit. When she returned to work at Tyler’s
Oyster Bar, she told no one of the
greatest adventure of her life.
On Sunday she drove
fifteen minutes to her
Roman Catholic church, Saint Anthony’s, whose three spires
spiking heavenward
beamed in the morning sun. She always felt they were calling
her and would
receive her in their welcoming arms.
Father
Morgan Whittaker delivered the sermon in his long black
cassock.
“How
many of you know what our patron saint – Saint Anthony of Padua
- represents?”
He
looked over the several hundred and parishioners.
“Speak
up,” he said. “Don’t be shy.”
He
laughed. “All right, you want to hear the sound of my voice
then, I’ll tell you
who our blessed Saint Anthony is.”
After
a lengthy explanation, and many in the congregation thought
Father Morgan loved
nothing more than the sound of his own voice, he finally
came to the point.
“He’s
the saint of finding things or of lost people.”
Marian
sat, hymnal in her lap, and uttered an involuntary gasp.
Afterward,
as always, she slipped into the tiny confessional.
“Father,
forgive
me for my sins, but I have fantasies of marrying…. you.”
The
Father was silent.
“Oh,
Father, I have sinned. Please forgive me for saying that.”
“You
are forgiven my child,” said Father Whittaker, in his deep
distinguished voice
that reminded her of a news anchorman.
Marian
picked up her cane and tottered out of the confessional. Her
face and ears were
red with embarrassment. Yes, her old friend “humiliation”
had snuggled up to
her once again.
When
she emerged the noonday sun had slipped into the
high-ceilinged sanctuary. The
stained glass cast its blue and purple hews upon the
congregants as they
hurried from the room, as if they had to make the next
train. Looking down, she
wanted to hurry outside the church and never see Father
Whittaker again. She promised
herself she’d find herself another church.
She
heard the confessional door squeak open, but wasn’t fast
enough to make it
outside.
“Marion
Tyler,” he called. “Marion Tyler with God’s gift of
wonderful mismatched legs.”
Her
huge black eyes looked up at him. Was he making fun of her?
“If
you allow me,” he said. “I’d like to invite you over to my
brother’s house for
dinner. He looks a lot like me,” he said, touching his bald
pate, “but he’s got
a full head of hair. And it’s red.”
She
was quiet.
“Jimmy
has never married. You might say he’s saving himself for the
right woman. I’ve
even talked to him about you.”
“Oh,
Father Morgan!” she cried, wiping away her tears.
The
wedding, of course, was held right here at Saint Anthony’s
of Padua.
In a stunning floor-length white gown,
Marian’s father walked her down the long aisle, her cane
emblazoned in white
lace.
