Page 33 of When We Were Enemies

“Does someone write your lines? Are you wearing earpieces linked to a comedian somewhere? You guys are too hilarious.”

“Hey, don’t encourage them,” Father Patrick interjects.

“I can’t help it. They’re too darn charming.”

“No argument here,” Stan says, his hands up, grains of rice hanging off the tines of his fork.

“And bonus—Dottie knows everything about the history of this place. Which I’m finding completely fascinating.” I take another bite as Dottie brushes off my compliment.

Father Patrick dusts the rice off the table into a napkin.

“Before Operation Allies Welcome, I knew there was a base here, and we celebrate a mass at the POW chapel every fall but nothing else.”

Dottie’s whole body bounces on the bench. “Yes, Father is a history buff. We’ve become good friends.”

She winks at the priest.

“You’re gonna make Stan jealous,” Father Patrick says in a very loud mock whisper.

“Too late,” Stan says with a grin, standing up slowly from his bench seat. “On that note, I need to steal this lady for a few minutes if you two don’t mind. Father, could you keep an eye on the young one till my wife gets back?”

“Of course,” Father Patrick agrees.

Dottie taps my arm to get my attention.

“If they call you back to the set, you can leave. I’ll have Stan drive me back in his cart.”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks, dear,” she says sweetly as though I’m one of her granddaughters. As they walk off together, Stan takes his wife’s tray, returns it, and then claims her hand for himself.

“Are they really like that?” I ask, enthralled.

“Like what?” Father Patrick asks, not as interested in their timeless love story as I am.

“In love. Are they really that in love?”

He shrugs, also watching them leave, and turns back to me. “I have no reason to doubt it. Do you?”

“Nah, not really. I just ... I guess I haven’t seen any relationship close-up without noticing all the flaws.”

“Well, there are always going to be flaws. No marriage is perfect, just like no painting is without its brushstrokes if you get close enough.”

“Okay ...,” I say, not sure I understand what he means.

“I see it this way. I remember going to the Louvre and seeingThe Raft of the Medusaby Théodore Géricault, something I’d always believed was a perfect masterpiece. But up close, only a few feet away from the canvas, if I put my toes right up against the line on the floor that kept the public from touching it, I could see the final brushstrokes on the surface of the painting, which I’d never seen from far away, or in a book, or through a screen. But you know what those strokes helped me understand?”

“Maybe?” I think I know where he’s going with the analogy, but I want to hear him say it. The way he talks is so steady, and the way he thinks, so much more reflective than what I’m used to.

“That Géricault was a man, just like me. His hand wasn’t a gilded creation free of the constraints of human frailty. His brush wasn’t a magical instrument endowed with mythical powers. Everything I do as a man is covered in textures, and seeing that in Géricault’s work reminded me it’s okay to be imperfect.”

“So, a ‘we’re all flawed, so God needs to fix us’ kind of a thing?” I push back, catching on to his undercover sermon in the nick of time.

Father Patrick tilts his head and assesses me for a moment, which I’m learning is a habit of his. I stare back at him without flinching.

“Not everything I think about has to do with God.” He returns my unbroken stare.

“So that wasn’t a replay of one of your sermons?” I raise my eyebrow in a blatant challenge.