“Confirmation“
by Adam Petrosino
Epigraph:
The Holy Sacrament of Confirmation completes the divine promise initiated at Baptism, as the adult self now chooses to commit to faith without the bias of parents. The laying of hands, the anointing with holy oil, and the whispered utterance of faith confirm that he is now to live maturely as a vessel of Catholic piety. This is a choice to be made with a deep understanding of self, and a trust that this faith, known since birth, will guide him for the rest of his life.
…
Blaine Brooks is a sinner.
This is not due to any discernible moral offense; no, Blaine himself, superficially, is a very good Christian. But by sin’s definition: that white lies, childish behavior, and the touching of pigskin on a football are damning, it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to get by without error.
To combat these teachings, Blaine goes to confession nearly every week and tells the priest through a screen of his every trivial wrongdoing. He spills out his sins to a man he will see face to face only seconds later, feigning a smile as if he hadn’t just confessed to twenty small errors worthy of hellfire. Afterward, he counts the beads on his rosary, knelt to the spalted wooden pew, knees bruised from the hours of prayer.
Blaine prays at home too, with his family at dinner and just before bed. With all this ritual, he should feel pious, and clean. Blaine should, by all small means, feel clean, but he doesn’t.
…
That early Saturday morning, Blaine attended Faith Formation with his classmates. A chill at last had swept over summer, a late October frost taking an icy claim. His Confirmation was tomorrow- this class a final step before receiving the holy sacrament.
The classroom beneath the rectory smelled faintly of old hymnals and lemon polish. The crucifix above the chalkboard hung slightly crooked, its brass Christ illuminated by the pallid fluorescence overhead. Rows of wooden desks groaned under the weight of restless boys, all dressed in the uniform gray of pressed slacks and wool sweaters, the kind that pricked at the wrists.
Blaine sat near the center, workbook open, pencil hovering untouched. Father Calhoun stood at the front, his voice slow and steady.
“Human nature has a proclivity to evil that we have to constrain,” he said, pale colored eyes roving the rows as though measuring each boy’s portion of sin.
“Sometimes it cannot be explained or understood why we do what we do.”
Blaine traced the faint blue veins beneath his skin.
Across the aisle, Chipper shifted in his seat. He was a wild child growing up, Blaine remembered. Now his defiance was subtler, masked by a glib kind of charm. He feigned attention to Father Calhoun while he kicked other boys under the seats. Blaine thought it was kind of brilliant how inconspicuously he operated his misbehavior. Chipper’s laughter, when it came, was far too loud for Mass, but just sincere enough to draw a smile across Blaine’s face, secondhand.
Chipper’s sweater was worn too large today, sleeves swallowing his wrists, and a few curls of pale hair clung to his forehead. Chipper turned his head, and the light struck his cheek in a way that made the skin seem translucent, almost holy. Almost. The room was very hot, though the cold wind whipped outside. Blaine wiped sweat from his brow and blinked, fixing his eyes on the cross.
Father Calhoun droned on about moral vigilance, about the temptations of the body and the necessity of restraint. Blaine swallowed hard, his leg bouncing subconsciously. His mother had told him not to bounce his leg. Blaine wrote the word Evil at the top of his notes, underlining it twice.
After dismissal, the boys filed out in murmured pairs, shoes clicking against tile. Blaine gathered his books slowly, waiting for the hall to empty. As he threw his bag over his shoulder, a voice spoke from the doorway.
“Blaine.”
Chipper leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, his smile uncertain but wide enough to show a faint chip in his front tooth. His eyes in the sunlight were a light blue.
“A few of us are doing the… you know, the extra Confirmation thing tonight,” he said.
“There’s an extra Confirmation?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Not official or anything, just our way of making it mean something.”
Blaine nodded before he even knew why.
“At the chapel?”
Chipper’s smile grew wide, teeth bared. “Yeah. Midnight. You’ll see. It’ll be good.”
He gave a small, friendly clap on Blaine’s shoulder, and for a brief second, the touch lingered, warm, electric, ordinary. Then he was gone, leaving Blaine in the empty classroom beneath the watchful brass figure on the wall.
The air smelled again of polish and incense. Blaine stood for a moment longer, heart steady, curious, unsure why he already knew he would go.
…
It was late that same night. Frost crept across the windows, obscuring what was inside or out, and those final flowers which had refused to shrivel up at last began to die. The dark sky confounded as it was strangely kissed by plumes of incense, which had never before escaped their sealed sanctum below.
When Blaine pulled his car into the church’s gravel lot, he saw a palpitating red glow in the fog, light spilling through the stained glass of the chapel. It pulsed in uneven rhythm, casting vermilion fractals across the pavement, glinting off shattered bottles and flattened beer cans strewn about the lot like relics. The asphalt looked volcanic, fissured and alive, descending toward the molten core of the earth.
He parked along the trees and lingered in the driver’s seat. Shifting the rearview mirror, he depressed the overhead light. Sweat beaded his forehead, his collar damp. He brushed his hair back, trying not to notice the anxiety in his eyes, or the smile that crept, unbidden, across his lips.
What is there to fear, Blaine? What is there to so eagerly anticipate?
As soon as he opened the car door, the sound hit him- bass pounding from within the chapel, so deep it trembled through the ground. What words were sung blurred into something unrecognizable: half hymn, half howl. The air reeked of incense, thick and pungent, stinging his nose as the cold stung his skin. The sight, the sound, the smell- this whole picture felt wholly forbidding, yet Blaine approached still.
He climbed the stone steps, each footfall echoing. His breath came short, inaudible beneath the music. The heavy doors began to drift open on their own, slow and weightless, like the gates of Heaven or Hell, to revelation.
…
The chapel was not as Blaine had known it.
The incense hung heavier than the air itself, rolling like smoke from a fire with no visible source. Shadows trembled along the walls. The boys from Faith Formation stood in a loose circle at the altar, their laughter echoing in that once-holy place. Bottles glittered where chalices had stood. The air tasted faintly metallic, fruit punch, wine, something sourer beneath.
Chipper stood atop the altar, finishing the last of Father’s chalice, red liquid spilling down his front.
His eyes shone in the candlelight, a glow that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than flame. There was something reckless in his movement, like a wily acrobat, too used to standing on edges. The others mimicked him with drunken reverence, crossing themselves clumsily, mocking the rite.
Blaine stood apart. He watched silently until he at last caught Chipper’s eye. A hand beckoned Blaine, and he came forward to kneel before the altar in reverence.
Chipper ladled more of the crimson drink into a golden chalice. The liquid gleamed darkly as he raised it to his lips.
“To confirmation,” Chipper said, smiling, the word stretched between devotion and defiance.
The others repeated it: Confirmation.
Blaine felt a heat again, a stirring, a forbidden pull he could neither name nor purge. He attempted again to bury it, failing. Father Calhoun’s words echoed from the lesson.
Sometimes it cannot be explained or understood why we do what we do.
When Chipper dismounted the altar and approached, the candlelight caught his face in a strange half-glow, and Blaine saw then what the others had whispered, that the boy bore his father’s eyes. Those pale blue eyes that studied each student, that Blaine could see peering like a vulture through the screen at confession. Father Calhoun’s eyes shone bright in Chipper’s sockets tonight, his illegitimate, sinful son.
The candles had burned low, wax pooling down the brass like tears. The laughter had thinned to murmurs. Some boys drifted outside to smoke beneath the trees. The air grew colder, though the incense still clung thickly to the air.
Blaine lingered near the altar rail, gazing at the stained glass above, saints caught in fractured color, hands raised in benediction. The halos glowed faintly from the streetlight beyond, now redder, almost bruised. Blaine moved to go.
“Stay,” Chipper said, and Blaine obeyed.
Chipper stood behind the altar, the hem of his sweater brushing the chalice, fruit punch dark and half-finished within. The same metallic tang hung in the air. He smiled, not wild or mocking now, but calm, certain, as though he had been waiting for this moment.
“You know my father?” he asked.
Blaine nodded.
“Then you know what he preaches. About purity, about what’s inside of us.”
He glanced toward the crucifix, then back.
“He never mentions what’s in me.”
The words hung between them, strange and heavy. The chapel seemed to swallow sound whole.
Chipper lifted the chalice. He dipped his fingers into the liquid, the candlelight making it gleam like blood.
“He says evil runs through the line of Adam,” Chipper murmured. “Since that first sin at Eden.”
Blaine’s heart pounded, loud as the organ when the first note swells.
“I guess that means we never had a choice, huh?”
Chipper stepped closer. He raised his hand, still wet, and the scent of sweetness and metal filled the air. His gesture was deliberate, almost priestly, as he brushed his thumb across Blaine’s brow.
“Are you prepared to receive the holy sacrament?” he asked.
The touch burned. Blaine’s pulse surged with the heat of it. For the briefest instant, every prayer he had ever spoken seemed rewritten, word by word, in a language he could finally understand.
“Yes.”
The laying of hands. Blaine and Chipper pulled together.
The anointing with holy oil. Blaine tasted the ruddy taste of wine from Chipper’s lips.
And the whispered utterance of faith. “Go in peace,” Chipper breathed.
