Uncross My Heart by Austin, Andrews & Austin Page B

delightfully odd.”
    She laughed at herself. “I suppose I am. Forget I asked the last question. I can see from the look on your face that you don’t know what you are.” We both laughed at her silliness. “I’m a lesbian.”
    Good grief, I’m in a gay vortex, I thought. I hadn’t pegged her for gay and now she was outing herself over hors d’oeuvres.
    “I’ve had affairs all my life. I try never to have them with students but I can’t say I’ve always succeeded. I live alone now with my cat the Virgin Mary—”
    “You named your cat the Virgin—”
    “She had a litter and I, to this day, can’t figure out how, since she’s never out of the house, so of course I fell back on Immaculate Conception.” She laughed again, and this time I couldn’t stop giggling and drank more wine when she offered it.
    She invited me to join her for breakfast on campus but I declined, saying my plane would be leaving midmorning.
    A pause ensued that seemed longer than the entire meal. “We have a mutual friend. Jude Baker.” Her tone was one of admittance.
    My mind flashed on the odd coincidence that I’d just seen Jude Baker in the café in Chicago after saying good-bye to my father, having not seen, or thought of, her in years. I was struck by the oddity of someone talking about her.
    “I stayed with her on my way to New York and she told me about you. In fact, she tried to get you to go out with us.”
    I sank back in my chair, now understanding why this woman was so comfortable in my presence. She undoubtedly knew a great deal about me through Jude.
    “So yes, I do have an advantage over you, Reverend Westbrooke.”
    “So it appears.” I wasn’t too happy about this turn of events. I didn’t want people talking about me or my past or using the two to draw conclusions.
    “She said you were a brilliant strategist when it came to winning religious battles and suggested that I see if I could get you to join C3—Change the Catholic Church.” She explained how she planned to effect change as it related to women’s rights and found it abhorrent that the church taught poverty-stricken families that it was a sin to use birth control. Without blinking she blamed the church for the spread of HIV because they told families they couldn’t use condoms. “It’s just so ridiculous that guys in dresses, living in a marble palace, on the backs of the very people they purport to care for, make those people’s lives more difficult and dangerous in the name of God.”
    “Your name is being scratched off the pope’s Christmas card list with a chisel as we speak,” I said. A great deal is wrong with organized religion, but if the church does nothing more than give people hope and a place to turn, that’ s more than they had to start with . Immediately after that fleeting thought, a conflicting one crossed my mind. Did I really believe the church helped or was I conditioned to believe it? Had even my private thoughts been brainwashed—my inner voice silenced?
    “A connection to a Higher Power, I think the world needs it,” I blurted, putting an end to my internal dialogue.
    “Does the world need it or is the world taught that it must need it or go down in flames?” She echoed my doubts.
    “We all need a connection to love.”
    “On that I would agree.” She gave me a provocative smile and I felt the conversation becoming personal. “Jude said after the incident with Jeannette you gave up everything .”
    “I’m surprised my rather mundane private life has kept Jude interested all these years but—”
    “Truce. I’m like that. I’m behaving as if I’ve known you for twenty years and that today we need to get to the bottom of what’s bothering you. When in fact, I’m what’s bothering you.” She gave a raucous laugh.
    “So you teach women’s religious studies.” I tried to break up the energy and shift her focus.
    She explained that her academic interest focused on women in the early Christian era but