Songs in Ordinary Time Page 66

  “If I turn here, we could be there in five minutes,” she said, slowing down. She wore a trench coat over her pajamas. He had come to her door at midnight.

  “No! I just need to get in my own bed, and then I’ll be all right.” Damn, couldn’t she ever take no for an answer? This was all her fault, anyway. She knew he had no willpower when it came to food, and yet her cupboards were stocked with all manner of things he couldn’t eat. At least Mrs. Arkaday had some sense. At least she took care of him. His own cousin didn’t seem to care.

  “Maybe after a few days’ rest you’ll feel like coming back.” She looked over with a hopeful smile. “This is the first time all summer Bernard’s come down to eat with us. It was just so wonderful being able to have a normal conversation with him. In spite of all his suffering.”

  He groaned, and with this for assent, she continued to babble about her son. Bernard, Bernard, the hell with Bernard. His head reeled with this pain knifing through his gut. Bernard had never had to endure anything like this. No one had. My God, what was this test, this latest trial? Release me from this misery, I implore you. Shrink the gallstone. Make it disappear. Take it away. You can do this, Jesus, my sweet, sweet Jesus. Damn it, I know you can! I know you can! So do it! Do it!

  “Tom?” she hit the brake, and he almost fainted with the car’s sudden lurch. “What is it, Tom?”

  “Praying,” he grunted. “I’m praying.”

  “Almost there,” she kept assuring him, jamming on the brake at every stop, then accelerating ahead as if to demonstrate her full awareness of his misery. “Almost there. Just a few more blocks.” The car swerved around another corner.

  Damn, why hadn’t Cleve been there to drive him home? Nora said he was at the bank preparing for the annual audit, but the Monsignor knew what it was: the town’s most powerful Catholic found him boring.

  “Here we go,” Nora said, pulling into the rectory driveway and braking so sharply he almost fainted. She hurried around the front of the car. She had to unfold him to get him out. Doubled over and listing to one side, he walked with his arms girding his belly. He grew dizzier with every step he climbed.

  He was shocked when Nora switched on the kitchen light. A teetering pile of dirty dishes filled the sink. On the cutting board an empty wine bottle stood in a puddle of condensation that had puckered the familiar label: the precious Brechy-Cordell he’d been saving for the day he was named Bishop. Limp tomato slices shriveled on a plate: the season’s first beefsteaks he’d been nurturing on the sunniest windowsill to full red ripeness. On the stove were a sludgy gravy pan and a pot of cold gray potato water clotted with white scum. A new pain rose in his chest.

  “Something’s happened to Mrs. Arkaday,” he groaned, groping along the countertop to the door. They passed in wordless terror through the dining room. A long, brown slick of spilled coffee stained the crocheted cloth, the last his mother had made, the intricate pattern Donegal, home of his and Nora’s good and decent ancestors. On the table were a dirty ashtray and a pack of Camels. A thin white plastic purse hanging on the back of a chair by its cracked and brittle strap swayed as he and his cousin passed by. Something was terribly wrong.

  “Just go to bed, Tom,” Nora whispered at the top of the stairs as he struggled toward Father Gannon’s bedroom.

  “Not until I find out what happened to Mrs. Arkaday,” he said, turning the young priest’s doorknob. “Father Gannon!” he barked into the musky heat that now, as the hall light bled into the darkness, was a sudden muddied swirl of naked limbs, an angry curse, and then a sobbing hunched whiteness over which a thrown sheet was settling.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the woman bleated beneath the quivering sheet.

  “Get out of here! Just get the hell out!” his bollocky curate roared, shoving him toward the hallway, where Nora stood staring, her hand over her mouth.

  Staggering, the Monsignor clutched the doorframe. “No! In the name of Jesus, no, not now or ever!” he panted. “You! Out of here this minute, you terrible woman, you vile and disgusting…”

  The two men struggled as Father Gannon pried his fingers from the wood, then pushed him away and shut the door.

  “Tom!” Nora gasped as he tried to open it, and finding it locked, pounded on it with his fist, demanding to be let in.

  “Stop it! Stop it,” she insisted. “You’re just going to hurt yourself.” She held on to his hand. “Let them get dressed,” she said at his ear in a low hard voice.

  “This is more than a heinous sin,” he cried. “This is a violation, the worst betrayal I could imagine.” He looked at her, choking on his tears. His beefsteaks. His Brechy-Cordell. His mother’s cloth, his legacy, tainted and consumed by lust. “My curate and…and my housekeeper!”

  “No, Tom, that’s a young girl. It’s Alice Fermoyle.”

  He was relieved, then shocked and disgusted and angry all over again. “I want her out of here this minute!” he thundered.

  Father Gannon said they’d come out as soon as the hallway was empty.

  The Monsignor made his way downstairs, with Nora holding his arm. He went directly to the kitchen, where he removed the two sets of car keys from the brass hooks by the door. So now it all made sense, all the late nights, the odd stains on the upholstery, the greasy whorl on the door glass…

  As Nora Hinds’s Lincoln floated through the night, Alice kept her face to the window, but her eyes were closed. It had come full circle, the bastard conception that had driven Nora Hinds away was now being delivered by Nora Hinds to her mother without any underpants on.

  It had been a terrible scene. When the Monsignor refused to let Joe drive her home, Joe had smashed a wineglass on the wall, bellowing that he couldn’t take any more of it, that he was through, through, through, goddamn it, he was through. The Monsignor kept ordering him to his room while she sobbed in the foyer. The Monsignor staggered to the phone and said he’d call her mother to come and get her out of there. Joe grabbed his arm and warned him not to. That’s when Nora Hinds, ashen-faced and trembling, said she’d drive Alice home.

  Alice tried not to smile. Home. All the ugliness and discord, her breath stale with alcohol, her thighs sticky with lovemaking, and now they all knew. Well, good, it was about time. About time. About time.

  “It’s a little after one,” Nora Hinds said.

  Had she asked the time? Alice wondered. Nora Hinds sat so erectly behind the wheel that she towered over Alice. Maybe I’ve shrunk. Maybe I can. Maybe I can. If I stop breathing and try real hard, but now they turned down the street, and here came her pathetic little house, light glaring through the cracked globe over the front door, which opened the minute they pulled into the driveway. “No, no, no,” she groaned, shaking her head as her grim-eyed mother waded around the front of the car through the shimmering headlights, with Norm at her heels, bending low a moment to see his fucked-up, dirty, crazy sister. She covered her face with her hands.

  “It’ll be all right,” Nora Hinds said to Alice. “She’s very upset,” Nora Hinds told her mother, who was trying to pull her gently from the car, but with her arms and legs gone to stone, that was going to be impossible, because now she couldn’t move, didn’t know how anymore.

  “I’ll lift her out,” Norm said, leaning in to get his arms under her, but for a grunting moment could not dislodge her.

  “Alice!” her mother commanded.

  “Poor thing’s terribly upset,” Nora Hinds said with her fingertips at her mouth as if she might cry.

  “Come on, Alice,” Norm grunted as he managed to get her legs out and his arms around her shoulders. “Let’s just get in the house,” he kept whispering as he guided her up the walk. “Just get inside and everything’ll be okay.”

  “No, it won’t,” she said as they climbed the front steps. “It’ll never be okay. Never, ever again.”

  Norm brought her to her room, where she lay in her dress with her eyes closed. Her mother came in and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time wit
hout saying anything.

  I have come full circle. Full circle into the darkness.

  “This is all my fault,” her mother said. “I should have known. Oh baby, I haven’t really seen you all summer. You were always such a good girl, I didn’t think I had to worry much about you. But it’s going to be all right. You’ll see. I haven’t told the boys yet, honey. At first I wanted to wait until the soap came, and then your father’s been trying so hard with his new job, and I didn’t want him all upset, but Omar and I are engaged, Alice! He gave me this beautiful diamond…would you like to see it? I’ll turn on the light. Well, you can see it in the morning, then. You sleep now, and in the morning everything will start to look better, I promise.”

  The bed shook, and Alice covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Don’t cry,” her mother whispered, leaning close now. “Please, Alice, listen to me. We all make mistakes. Everyone does.” She pulled her hands away. “Alice? Alice, stop that! I said stop it right now!” She grabbed her and dug her fingers into Alice’s arms. “This will be over. Do you hear me? It’s not going to change anything. Tomorrow morning you’ll get up, just the way I’ve gotten up every morning, every day of my life, and you’ll start all over again, do you hear me? Because this isn’t going to stop you. Nothing’s going to stop you. Nothing! Do you hear me? Do you? Do you? Goddamn it, answer me!”

  The door burst open. It was Norm demanding that she leave her alone. She was too upset. Couldn’t she see that?

  “Upset? She’s laughing! Look at her! Look at her, laying there laughing!”

  “You know she’s not laughing.” His voice broke. “Jesus Christ, Mom, she’s falling apart.”

  “No!” Marie cried. “No! No, that’s too easy. You don’t just fall apart and leave everyone else to pick up the pieces.” She paced back and forth between Norm and Alice, who had pulled the pillow over her head.

  “What you do is, you keep on going,” she panted, chopping the side of her hand into her palm. “You keep on going and going and going and going and going and going, goddamn it, until you just can’t do it anymore. Until you’re dead, goddamn it! That’s when you stop!” She leaned over the bed. “When you’re dead! And not until then!”

  The Monsignor hobbled from his bedroom to the bathroom, heaving sighs of pain and disgust that caused Mrs. Arkaday’s rag to scrub faster and faster. The rectory smelled of pine oil. For days Mrs. Arkaday had been scrubbing floors, woodwork, and walls with an exculpatory zeal. The Monsignor was barely speaking to her. If she had been here that night, the incident never would have happened.

  Father Gannon crept into the office. He needed to talk to Alice. Every time he called, one of her brothers answered and said she didn’t want to talk to anyone. This time when he dialed, her mother answered. He closed his eyes, asking for her in a whisper.

  “No,” Mrs. Fermoyle said. “You can’t.”

  “I have to speak to her, Mrs. Fermoyle, you don’t understand,” he said.

  “Oh I understand all right,” she said.

  “No. No, you don’t. You see, I love Alice.”

  “For God’s sake, you’re a priest!” she growled.

  “But that doesn’t matter. I—”

  “It matters to me.”

  “What matters is Alice’s happiness!” he said.

  “Then leave her alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, if you can’t, then I’m calling the Monsignor. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll call the police!”

  “Mrs. Fermoyle! Mrs. Fermoyle, please!” he begged, but she’d hung up.

  The office door swung open and the Monsignor limped in, holding his side, his face pinched with pain and shock. “You’re forcing my hand, Father Gannon. I swear to you, if you have anything more to do with that, that girl, then I’m going to call the Bishop!”

  “Call the Bishop! Call the police! Call my mother! Call everyone! Who gives a shit!” He couldn’t help laughing. They were trying to back him into a corner, that’s what they were doing here, hoping he’d flip out again, so this time they could wash their hands of him, but it wasn’t going to be so easy for them this time, because this time someone loved him and needed him. This time he’d have to fight back.

  The Monsignor closed the door behind him and leaned on the desk facing the unshaven priest, whose hair was greasy and uncombed. His soiled clerical collar was limp and creased, and there was a disagreeable odor about him. Father Gannon was clearly out of control. For the past two nights the Monsignor had been sickened by the feeble sobbing from the curate’s room. Mrs. Arkaday had confirmed his lack of bathing, and this morning she said he wasn’t eating anything to speak of but coffee and sweets. When the phone rang he’d snatch it up on the first ring, then forget to pass on the messages to the Monsignor. And now he had violated the Monsignor’s direct order. It enraged him to see Father Gannon’s foolish grin as he twirled a pen between his fingers.

  “How can you sit there? Don’t you have anything to say? You’ve disgraced your vocation and humiliated me. You have caused a scandal, and worse, you chose as your partner in sin the niece of one of my dearest parishioners.”

  At this, Father Gannon’s head bobbed with some brief amusement. The Monsignor gripped the back of the chair. What disturbed him most was this pharisaical air, as if he thought his priestliness of a higher, purer order than the Monsignor’s, some divine aegis for which he was being so unjustly punished, so constantly tormented.

  The Monsignor’s stomach rumbled and his cheeks ballooned with a swallowed belch. In addition to gallstones he had an ulcer. The doctor had put him on such a restrictive diet that he couldn’t sleep through the night, so violent were his hunger pangs. These last few evenings he found himself hurrying up to bed earlier and earlier, his cassock pockets sagging with the dinner biscuits and cold chicken Mrs. Arkaday left so providentially transportable in waxed-paper bags.

  It occurred to him that these stomach problems had begun last spring about the time of Father Gannon’s arrival. So it wasn’t intemperate eating habits, after all, but the tension and anxiety this disturbed curate had brought into his life. From the start all Father Gannon had to do was walk into the room and the Monsignor would feel his temperature rising, his throat swelling in his collar. The man was always touching, grasping, picking up things that were not his, reading the Monsignor’s mail, just because it was there, nervously sliding open drawers and cupboard doors while he spoke in that rush of words boiling over with some new cause or indignation. His most recent concern had been Howard, who would surely die of a broken heart if his sister married Grondine Carson. Father Gannon had proposed moving the dim-witted caretaker into the rectory guest room. It was for guests, visiting clergy, the Monsignor had countered. A room over the garage, then; they could build it themselves, he and Howard, Father Gannon had declared, slashing his pen back and forth across the bottom of the sermon he had been working on. See, a bedroom, parlor, small bath. He had drawn a floor plan. No need for a kitchen. Howard could take his meals with them. No, no, no. He almost had to shout before Father Gannon understood.

  The Monsignor had done his best. And this time no one could accuse of him of not trying. He had been through this years ago with one of his first curates, but that had been more delicate. Not only had the curate fondled the nephew of the Holy Name Society president, but the curate himself had been the nephew of Father Mulcahy, treasurer of the diocese. At least this should be fairly easy. Father Gannon was a nobody with a history of spiritual and mental instability. And Alice Fermoyle, well, knowing her kind, she was probably the cause of this whole mess.

  “I’m going to ask the Bishop to transfer you, Father, and in the meantime, you’re not to have anything to do with anyone.”

  Father Gannon looked up and smiled.

  “Especially with that Fermoyle girl,” he added. All he needed now was Marie Fermoyle, that disagreeable woman, charging in here again.

  The Bishop ret
urned his call an hour later.

  “Are you sure?” came the Bishop’s equable response to every allegation.

  “Am I sure? Am I sure?” the Monsignor finally exploded. “Don’t you understand? There was a girl in his bed! And I was there! The three of us! Naked! So of course I’m sure!”

  “Slow down now, Tom, you’re confusing me. I’m just trying to get the picture here, that’s all,” said the Bishop.

  “Well, it’s not a very pretty picture, let me tell you!” the Monsignor said, his mouth against the sweaty receiver.

  There was a pause. “The thing I don’t understand, Tom, is why you were…undressed.”

  “No!” he groaned. “Not me!”

  When he had finally explained everything, the Bishop said, “This is a shame, a terrible shame. I had some real hope for that young man. There was something about him, you know what I mean, Tom, that old-fashioned zeal you just don’t get anymore. Aw, that’s too bad to hear it’s been so…so misdirected. I’m disappointed. I really, really am.”

  Misdirected. The Monsignor’s jowls smarted as if he’d just been slapped. The Bishop not only didn’t understand, but he thought it was the Monsignor’s fault. Suddenly he found himself telling the Bishop how sick he’d been, how bloated and constipated he was, how he couldn’t concentrate. It was all the pressure. The convent was leaking again, and Sister William Theresa was demanding a new roof. Demanding! And when he told her there were no funds for a new roof, she had the gall to ask him where the funds for next spring’s trip to Rome were coming from. That was his silver-anniversary trip, which, by the way—he wanted the Bishop to be sure and know, just in case Sister should try and raise a stink over this—his cousin Nora was paying for. He still couldn’t believe the way that nun had dared speak to him. The same with Father Gannon, who’d gone from calling him Tom to sleeping with women in his rectory. The old order was crumbling. He hoped the Bishop knew how short a path it was from impudence to anarchy.