Embracing Darkness (5 page)

Phineas withdrew a bit, and tears welled up in his eyes. His father knelt down until the two were eye to eye.

“As I’ve told you before,” Dr. Poole continued. “Mommy can’t know about
that
either.”

“GRUBER’S TOILET SOAP! THE SOAP OF CHOICE FOR HOUSEWIVES ALL ACROSS NEW ENGLAND! AVAILABLE NOW AT YOUR LOCAL GENERAL STORE!”

Phineas remembered the picture at the bottom of the advertisement. It was a picture of Pope Leo XIII in the same exact pose as the portrait in the hallway of St. Andrew’s rectory. A hand painted on the picture, meant to be that of the Pontiff, extended menacingly out of his robes. In a rather exaggerated bubble connected to his mouth were the words, “CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS!”

Father Poole managed a more genuine laugh this time, finding this coincidence to be more amusing than the joke he had made earlier about Rome coming to redecorate the drab interior of St. Andrew’s rectory. As his laugh faded, the priest looked around the room once more, desperately trying to find something else with which to entertain himself.

A
priest
presiding
over
Sunday
Mass
who
stutters
when
he
speaks
, he thought.
No
wonder
the
church
attendance
here
is
small.

The priest’s glance then shifted from the pistachio-green walls to the floor by his bed and then to the nightstand with one leg supported by a book. When he looked more closely, he noticed that the book was in fact a Bible. As he lifted the weight of the table off it, Phineas picked up the volume and opened it to the title page, where he found this inscription: “To Father Albert Carroll. Good luck in your new parish. May this Holy Book offer you support when you need it. Love always, Mother. February 3, 1895.”

Father Poole read the inscription a second time and then wondered whether he ought to run after Father Carroll and return his Bible. But Poole rejected the idea and justified his unwillingness by the obvious lack of importance this Bible had for Father Carroll.

The
man
used
it
to
keep
the
table
level,
thought Father Poole.
I’m
sure
he
won’t
miss
it.
He
probably
forgot
the
darn
thing
was
even
there
.

Father Poole then looked from the book down to the busted leg on the nightstand, back again to the Bible, and managed a second genuine laugh. “I don’t think
that
was the support your mother had in mind, Father Carroll!” he chuckled. After determining that there wasn’t much else to explore in his bedroom, he scanned it one last time, thinking how dull it all seemed.

But Father Poole couldn’t have imagined how interesting the rest of his day was going to be.

FOUR
A Less Than Auspicious Beginning
 

5:30 p.m. It was customary at this time of day for Father Poole to have his supper, yet in this new place he was unfamiliar with even the simplest protocol. His body was tense, as though he were afraid of precipitating a series of unfortunate events throughout the rectory. A sudden clumsy turn could knock something over, such as the small framed photo of a much younger Father Carroll sitting, carelessly forgotten or intentionally abandoned, on the dresser that now belonged to Father Poole. The crash of the frame onto the floor would surely shatter the glass, alert whomever was downstairs to Father Poole’s presence, and prompt that unknown person to scold him for making excessive noise just before dinner.

Is
there
a
kitchen
in
this
building?
he wondered, assuming from Father Carroll’s girth that there not only had to be a kitchen within the rectory but a fairly sizeable one at that.

He then remembered what Manchester had promised him—a staff of his own. He also could hear Carroll’s voice bellowing, “Y-y-you’ll have a staff, alr-right!” Father Poole recalled the only name Father Carroll had mentioned, Sister Mary Ignatius.

Is
there
no
one
else?
Father Poole continued to himself, as he walked to the solitary window in his room.

He glanced out and saw Father Carroll waddling down the hill toward town. Again he wondered whether he should rush out to return the priest’s Bible to him, but no sooner had the idea crossed his mind than Father Poole said, “What’s the use? He wasn’t even the sort of fellow you’d
want
to do a favor for. And really, if the shoe were on the other foot, and it had been
my
Bible, would he have returned it? He appears as happy as a clam to be done with this place once and for all.”

Father Poole noticed a slight feeling of envy toward Carroll, and he now wished that he had visited St. Andrew’s prior to accepting the position. But he was a devout man who believed that God always did things for a reason. For priests everything has a purpose. Mosquitoes, tree sap, weeds, a human appendix, the unbearable summer humidity—all things were put here on earth for some reason or other.

Walking away from the window, as he had no desire to set eyes on Father Carroll again, Poole recited part of a lecture he had memorized by one of his teachers at seminary:

And if at first we cannot find a reason why something is what it is, then we must search deep within ourselves to find the answer. And if even then, after much searching, we are still unable to find a reason, then it is God’s will to keep us ignorant of such matters; and there is a reason why God would choose to do so, if such an enigma existed.

The young priest remembered writing this quotation in his notes because he found it to be laughable, and he had appended a passage from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

This summed up Father Poole’s outlook on the mysteries of life, and he was quite content with it.

“What was that?” Father Poole gasped as he heard a loud crash downstairs. It sounded like a set of cymbals.

DONG!
There
it
goes
again!
he thought.

He went over to the door of his room very slowly, shuffling his feet as he walked. Halfway across the room he realized he’d been shuffling and picked up his feet. Even with the door closed all the way, the noise had been loud enough to make Phineas jump. He was afraid to open the door at first, worried that once he’d opened it the noise would sound even louder and possibly make him jump even higher, lose his balance, and fall on his backside. He’d be embarrassed if that were to happen. But embarrassed in front of whom? He was alone, or was he? Someone
had
to be in the rectory. The priest was determined to find out.

Father Poole opened the door to his room. Once again staring at him on the other side of the hall was Pope Leo XIII with a sober look on his face. Immediately the priest was reminded of the soap advertisement: “GRUBER’S TOILET SOAP! THE SOAP OF CHOICE FOR HOUSEWIVES ALL ACROSS NEW ENGLAND! CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS!”

Stop
that!
he thought. Father Poole now wished that he had never packed the soap. It brought back too much all at the same time. The advertisement. The Pope’s picture with the bubble coming out of his mouth. The park. His father. The kite he always had to fly by himself. Mrs. Fisher. His mother. The shed. INSIDE the shed.

The priest made his way to the top of the stairs. As he walked, he couldn’t help but notice something odd, something he hadn’t seen when first walking up the stairs a short time before. “Maybe it was because Father Carroll’s fat ass was in my face the whole way up here,” said Father Poole. He grimaced almost immediately and made a mental note to add the rude remark to his list of sins to confess for the week.

But
confess
to
whom?
he thought.
Am
I
not
the
only
show
in
town?
He paused and then said aloud, “I can wait until I have some spare time on my hands, walk to Exeter, and confess to one of the priests there!” This last observation didn’t ease Father Poole’s anxiety, as his survey of the premises quickly brought his mind back to the strange sound he’d heard downstairs.

St. Andrew’s rectory had three floors, the topmost being where Father Poole’s room was. On the second and third floors were five rooms, one toilet and shower, and one walk-in closet at the end of the hall. Father Poole couldn’t help but think of his former church, which had twelve full-time priests in a rectory half this size.

What
a
waste
of
space
, he thought.
I
mean,
if
this
were
an
affluent
community,
perhaps
the
expense
of
such
a
structure
could
be
justified.
Or
if
the
congregation
were
large
enough
to
warrant
a
larger
staff
of
priests,
but
good
Lord!
This
is
a
hotel!

DONG!

Phineas had almost jumped out of his skin upon the previous alarm, and this latest one just about robbed him of whatever composure he had left. The new resident slowly walked down the narrow staircase to the second floor and then halfway down the second set of stairs. As he descended, the crashing sound resounded once again through the halls, this time louder than before.

By now Father Poole had prepared himself for the sound. Since he was getting closer to the source, he tightened his jawbone in order to block out some of the noise. He had learned this trick from his mother. Once the family went up to Stratham to watch a fireworks show on the Fourth of July. Neither Phineas nor his mother liked the ones that made the sound Mary Margaret Brennan-Poole called a “sonic boom.” “It’s not ladylike for your mother to stick her fingers in her ears, Phinny,” she had told him in her thick Irish brogue. “You can do it if you like, but I’m gonna yawn a lot and, of course, cover my mouth when I do so. No noise is loud when you’re yawnin’.”

Father Poole continued to walk down the stairs, tightening his grip on the banister. He now found himself standing in the middle of a hallway on the first floor, which was more spacious than the upstairs corridors. To his left was a large sitting or common room with an upright piano and a divan. To his right was a dining room with a table that could accommodate fourteen people.

As he began to walk toward the dining room, Father Poole began to feel a bit more at ease. The downstairs for all intents and purposes was quite charming. The furniture seemed outdated but was in near-mint condition. Phineas felt like a young boy of ten who had just been given permission by his mother to explore an empty, abandoned house.

He began looking all around the room. The rug beneath the solid oak dining table was an intricate pattern of blues and grays. Father Poole wondered whether this could be an authentic Persian rug. Feeling a sudden urge to examine the rug more closely, he bent down, put his hands on the rug, and kneaded it with his fingertips. Although he hadn’t the slightest bit of knowledge about carpets, this one was just too extravagant-looking not to take an interest in it. He thought that a luxurious rug like this belonged in the mansion of a wealthy steel tycoon whose wife did nothing but think of new and inventive ways of spending her husband’s money.

Father Poole pressed both of his hands into the woven fabric to see how thick it was.
Fascinating
, he thought.
So
supple
and
deep.
I
wager
that
this
rug
weighs
in
the
area
of
 . . . .

Suddenly the priest was startled by another loud sound that made him raise his upper body, but not before smashing the back of his head against the bottom of the dining room table under which he’d been crawling. “Goddamn it!” Father Poole shouted, and then realized that someone might have heard him. Someone
had
to be nearby.

He knew that he was not alone downstairs and now ascertained the source of the noise. The sound of a cymbal crashing was coming directly from the other side of the door, in front of which Father Poole was now standing.

FIVE
Anything Can Stir Memories
 

The whitewashed door was all that stood between Father Poole and the curious noise. He realized as he walked cautiously toward the door that the wood had been split almost entirely down the middle from top to bottom. Although the crack seemed superficial, the priest became preoccupied with it, almost forgetting why he was there. His imagination got the better of him, as it does with anyone when we see something intriguing enough to redirect our thoughts.

Something strange about the door other than the crack concerned him. He fixed his eyes on its peeling paint. The door, whose need for renovation equaled that of the rest of the building, was in a state of dreadful neglect.