Good-bye and Amen (9 page)

I was very smooth. I don't think he had the least idea that he'd made me angry. But really, where were
his
people four generations ago?

I said, “The rectory has served six leaders of this parish, and their families, for over one hundred and twenty years. We believe that it's one of the treasures of Holy Innocents.”

“So do I,” said Norm. “I thank God you have been such wise stewards as to possess a piece of real estate that makes it possible for a priest to live in your parish without robbing a bank.”

I waited, since obviously there was a But coming.

“But my daughter has had an asthma attack that nearly killed her. We were advised by her doctors to move her and, as she's only ten, she really cannot live alone.”

He thought he was being amusing. I said, “I've heard your reasons; you forget my husband sits on the vestry.”

“I never ever forget that,” he said.

I said a really thorough professional cleaning would take care of the problem. He said he thought so too. With a thorough cleaning the rectory could be rented for enough money to cover the Faithfuls' rent in a clean new building, and probably leave some over for the general fund.

I said the parish would be deeply distressed to have the rector living far from the church, where they don't know where to find him. “You forget,” I said, “this church once burned to the ground and was rebuilt by the vast generosity of a few loyal members.” Including my husband's grandfather, I did not say. But I did say, “That fire would not have gone undetected had the rector been in residence at the rectory instead of in France on holiday.”

He pointed out that the same thing could happen if he lived in the rectory; a fire could break out and he wouldn't notice as he'd be in the hospital nursing his daughter.

I won't go on. It was outrageous, really. I was trying to help him. I was trying to tell him what people were saying. It was not the kind of reception I expected. I honestly think some people go into the priesthood because they are little tinhorn dictators. They love the thrill of standing in the pulpit decked out like saints, while people gaze adoringly and hand over power to them that belongs, by rights, to God. I went home and said to Paul, this is it. I mean it. I'm going to transfer back to Grace Church or try St. Luke's.

 

Monica Faithful
After we moved back to the East Coast I saw my parents fairly often. Papa had kept his pied-à-terre in New York. He wasn't performing as much as when he was younger, but he loved playing chamber music with old friends and he loved teaching at Mannes. Mother belonged
to the Cosmopolitan Club. When she came into town by herself she stayed there. That's interesting, isn't it? She didn't stay at Papa's apartment. Maybe they both needed their retreats from each other. Maybe all marriages do.

 

Norman Faithful
You ask the search committee for their package, the profile of the diocese, job description, and application. You fill that out and write a heartfelt letter explaining why you would make a splendid bishop, and you get your letters of recommendation. Then you wait to see if you'll make the final cut. Four of us made it; I was called to Honolulu for the “walkabout” in April.

Honolulu! The air was so soft, the birds and flowers were like jewels. I'd had a ticket for the back of the bus, which was going to be quite a spiritual test, since it's more than ten hours in the air, altogether. But I wore my black shirt and round collar, and at the last minute the girl at the gate upgraded me. I blessed her. I have a suspicion she thought I was Catholic, but no harm done. And Honolulu—that was love at first sight. You're shown around the diocese, you meet with various groups, ordained and lay, from the different parishes, and chat and answer questions. In the end they gave us all the same topic and we preached on it.

 

Monica Faithful
I was meeting Mother at the Cos Club for lunch. Mother was all in a fuss and flurry over Norman becoming a bishop. She seemed to think I'd finally done something right. She wanted to know all about the duties, and what kind of mansion a bishop gets, and what's the tall hat called. She liked pomp. Well, it
was
exciting. I was telling
about the investiture, how the new bishop comes to the closed doors of the cathedral and knocks three times, and waits for them to be opened to him. Inside, his new constituents are all waiting in their pews, craning their necks. It's
so
theatrical, which of course would appeal to her.

That's where I was in the story, at the knocking at the doors. In her mind I knew Mother was inside, in the front row with the children and me, waiting to see the sudden sunlight as the doors opened, with Norman's dark figure silhouetted in the middle, then Norman sweeping up the aisle looking eight feet tall in his cope and miter. When I suddenly felt that appalling gush that every woman learns to dread, especially when it's not due. In mid-sentence, I said, “Excuse me, Mother, I'll be right back,” and got out of the room as quickly as I could. She was staring, with her fork halfway to her mouth. I couldn't back out of the room, but I wanted to.

I got to the powder room praying that nothing had soaked through yet. In vain. The skirt was stained so badly I knew perfectly well I must have ruined the banquette. I began to cry while I tried to clean the blood off my legs with bathroom tissue, but the stall looked like an abattoir. Then I heard Mother talking to the attendant. The attendant tapped at my door to ask if I needed help. Of course I did, desperately, but what kind? A bath and a change of clothes? A diaper? What the hell was I going to do? Then my mother bugled, “Monica—do you need a doctor?” I said I thought I probably did. She said she'd call mine, what was his name. And of course I couldn't remember. I'd seen him only once. She said, “Oh, for heaven's sake!”

It was horrible. The club sorted it out, found an ob-gyn who would see me immediately. I think one of the ladies in the dining room was a doctor and arranged it. By the time Norman had finished his chats and his speech in Hawaii, I was being scheduled for a hysterectomy. I guess more than one thing had gone wrong that day, though we never understood what. Well, the fibroids we understood. Which is worse, I wonder, for a woman to lose the organ that makes her a woman and a mother? Or a man whose lifework is made of his trust that he knows what he knows, to find out he doesn't?

 

Norman Faithful
How the hell do you grow a thing the size of a cantaloupe in your stomach and not notice it? That's what I want to know.

 

Jeannie Israel
Norman sets off on some grand folly of his own that he's forgotten to thoroughly sort out with his wife, and Nika bleeds into her shoes. A pattern emerges. You'd think her God could work out some other way of getting her attention.

 

Eleanor Applegate
Mother called me. The way she described how embarrassed she was, you'd have thought Monica had deliberately gored her own ox in the middle of the dining room. I went down to stay with Nika until Storming Normal could get back from Hawaii. In any event, I stayed a day or two longer to be with Edie until Nika was home from the hospital and on her feet. She'd been through a lot and was pretty much a wreck at first.

The night Norman got home, he was on West Coast time
and he was very wound up about how things had gone in Hawaii. I think he knew he hadn't nailed it. We stayed up half the night talking. I'd never spent time like that with him, just the two of us, plus there are some people who are nicest after they've been kicked down the stairs. He was very unguarded and human. I quite got the point of him that night.

However, while I was there, I also took a couple of phone calls from no one. You know, if a woman's voice answers, hang up? I don't know that's what they were. They could well have been wrong numbers. But they happened.

 

Monica Faithful
I cried a lot. It took me by surprise, how sad I was, and I never could tell exactly why. Knowing there would really be no more children? It hadn't seemed like it was going to happen, and I don't know how we'd have afforded it if it had, but still. Really understanding I was going to get old and fail and die? And the surgery itself was surprisingly awful. They cut through your abdominal muscles and leave a big scar, and you can't hold your stomach in and it takes forever to get your energy back. I guess there were also hormone things…anyway I went to Dundee early that summer, as soon as Edie was out of school. Not fun for her. Someone at school made a joke about her parents, Mr. and Mr. Faithful, and she had to pretend it was funny.

 

Eleanor Applegate
Nika was in rough shape. Depressed. I didn't like the way she sounded on the phone, and Jeannie said she didn't either. It's surprising how an organ you've never seen in your life could mean so much. She wanted to get out of New York, go to Dundee and sit in the sun on the
bathing beach with a book, and only talk to people who loved her. She asked Mother if she could stay at Leeway, and Big Syd said no. Can you believe that? The cottage wasn't opened yet and she couldn't put Shirley to the trouble of changing the schedule. (And why, hello, would the housekeeper's convenience be so much more important to her than Nika's?)

I called Shirley and asked her to open
our
house early and of course she was delighted to do it. Everything was ready for Nika two days later. She packed the car and took Edie and the dog and went north.

 

Monica Faithful
That was how I happened not to be in town when the news came from Hawaii. After the finalists preach, there's a diocesan convention with two groups of delegates voting, ordained and lay. They keep it up until one candidate has a majority in both groups. It only took four ballots, and Norman came in third.

 

Norman Faithful
It was all political. I was on the phone with a couple of my supporters, and they went through it vote by vote. Bishop Simmons, who made my nominating speech, had his enemies among the conservatives, and it was felt by some that he'd been so warm in supporting me, I must have promised to make him dean of the cathedral.

Also, I guess, there had been grumbling about my referring to notes during my sermon. I usually don't prepare like that. I usually just pray on my topic for a while beforehand and then get up on my hind legs and see what happens. But I thought it was important to show them I don't always go
around doing things by the seat of my pants, since Simmons told me it was a concern he'd heard. I'd prepared that speech like a lawyer. Maybe I wasn't at my best, I don't know. I think it's all politics. The guy they hired came from Iowa but he had worked in the diocese and had friends there.

 

Monica Faithful
It was like running away from home. Bobby and Eleanor's house has no heat except fireplaces, so it was bloody cold at night still. There were blackflies, which I'd heard about but never seen. They get in your eyes and up your nose. I spent a lot of time walking by myself and, I suppose, crying. Edith was adorable but children shouldn't be made to feel responsible for their parents.

 

Sylvia Faithful
I was in New York that year, working and taking classes at the New School. I was waiting on tables at a tiny restaurant in SoHo that was just getting hot. I worked weekend evenings, the best time because it's busiest. But it meant I was up to like four
A.M.
every Friday and Saturday night, and had no social life of my own at all. Out of the blue, Dad called me and said he was batching it and offered to take me to dinner. I said I'd go if he promised not to show up in his dog collar. I was pleased, actually. I thought maybe this would be a time when we could reconnect.

We went to the NoHo Star, which was kind of my local for after school or after work. My choice. Once we were there I realized it was going to be too loud for Dad. He was beginning to lose his hearing and didn't want to admit it.
Tant pis
.

I didn't really mean to, but I started talking about Mom,
not that he'd asked. Mom has always been kind of high-strung, but lately everything was exaggerated. She was alone too much, she believed things that weren't true. If I called her all the time or went to see her, she came to expect it and lit into me if I missed a day. If I told her I couldn't deal and stayed away, she'd call me up and cry, and tell me she'd been so good, not calling me for six days, that she thought I'd reward her by calling her on the seventh. She thought I knew that was going on in her mind. When she cried it broke my heart and when she attacked me I wanted to hang up on her. Why was her unhappy life
my
problem? Where was everybody else? Where were her sisters, where was Sam? Did she do these things to him? (Answer: no. Sam is a guy. Guys don't like it when women cry, so for him she turns on the charm.) I had just turned twenty-one and no one in my family even noticed.

You want to know something amazing? The only person in my whole family—families—who called me on my birthday was Uncle Jimmy. He called me from California and asked me what I was doing to celebrate. When I told him nothing, he said to get a friend and go to Raoul's on Prince Street. When we got there, he'd called ahead and bought us a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and left us an open tab so we could have dinner and everything. And he'd told them to card me, so soon everyone in the place knew it was my birthday and people kept sending us drinks and we stayed all night. Actually, a great birthday. Go figure.

The more I talked about Mom, the edgier Dad got. He said, “Your mother was always an unhappy woman. I tried to fix it and I couldn't. People choose their paths and if they
don't like where it takes them, they have to figure it out.” I said, “She didn't choose her path. You chose it for her.” He said, “Things happen. If she hadn't been so angry and sad, we might still be together.” I said, “If you hadn't slept with someone younger and fancier you might still be together,” and he snapped back, “Watch your mouth, Rachel.”