Last Things (3 page)
Fulvio Bernardo still lived in the huge house on Preswick in which he had raised his family and whose many rooms made it easy for Margaret and himself to avoid one another. Once this had been a neighborhood in which the newly affluent aspired to live, but with the westward expansion that had sent the white residents of Chicago fleeing, new roads had been built to accommodate their coming and going. As a result Fox River was now framed in freeways, and the once quiet neighborhood was assailed by the constant hum of traffic from all sides. But the Bernardos stayed on; Margaret because of St. Hilary's, Fulvio out of inertia. He was an old man with prostate cancer who spent his days contemplating the ruin of his life. His children had given him no grandchildren. Jessica seemed content to write silly stories. Andrew had never grown up and paid quick visits. As for Raymond ⦠Fulvio groaned aloud. My son the priest. How proud they had been when Raymond was ordained. And then one day he had run off to California. Of course he had not told them of his plans. And he had never tried to explain. They never heard from him. It was Andrew who brought them the news, a note from Raymond too ashamed to write directly to his parents.
“It's all on the up and up,” Andrew said.
“Running away?”
“Oh, he'll be laicized.”
Fulvio had taken this to be a euphemism for the conjugal act and snorted accordingly.
“Then he can be married,” Andrew explained. Margaret looked as if she were standing at the foot of the cross.
“Married!” Fulvio cried. “He's a priest.”
“Not anymore.”
“How can you stop being a priest?”
Fulvio had made his living coaxing plants and trees from Illinois soil to adorn the lawns of suburbia, but it was out of respect for his own father that he cultivated the tomato patch out next to the garage, fighting the blight and bugs, waiting for fruit that was all but given away in the market by the time his own was ripe. He might have been nurturing the memory of his father when he fussed away at the plants as the old man had done, as if his family would starve without his tomatoes. Fulvio had been more than successful in business, but he had never had the luck his father had. Oh, he had made money but look at his goddamn children. He had given them every advantage. Maybe that was the problem: all those years of Catholic education and it was doubtful any of them went to Mass anymore. Except Jessica, of course, her mother's child. Well, he had stopped going himself, out of spite, as a complaint against God. At Raymond's first low Mass, offered for his parents, Fulvio began to think of it as an investment. Now he was assured of endless Masses after he went, a daily commemoration by Raymond, standing at the altar. All his sins would be washed away. He had not wanted to hear what his son was doing in California, but Andrew had told him.
“Counselor! Who is he to counsel anyone? He should go to a monastery and do penance.”
That was what fallen priests had always done in the past, a penitential stay with the monks while they got their moral houses in order. Now Fulvio punished God by staying away from church.
Margaret begged him to go with her but he refused. She was a mother and could forgive anything, but Fulvio would never accept what Raymond had done. Did the boy know or care that his father had cancer?
Margaret begged him to go with her but he refused. She was a mother and could forgive anything, but Fulvio would never accept what Raymond had done. Did the boy know or care that his father had cancer?
When young Paul Rocco, the doctor, had told Fulvio the results of the biopsy three years ago it was like a death sentence, and he welcomed it, certain it would change everything. His children would rally around his sickbed; Raymond would come back, sorrowful and apologetic; Jessica would find a husband and have children; and Andrew ⦠Marge had wept when she told him that Andrew was living with a woman, unmarried, no prospect of children, a goddamn pagan. But the prostate cancer had been treated as if it were a bad cold. Even Rocco downplayed it.
“Chances are you'll die of something else before it gets really serious.”
He had had the operation, but another biopsy revealed that the cancer still lurked in his rear end, slowly eating away his life. Fulvio's father had died of prostate cancer, that was clear now when he knew about the disease, but his father had gone to no doctor and had borne his ailment in silence until it brought him low. He was dead within a week of the diagnosis. But not even Margaret regarded her husband as a man whose days were numbered. Fulvio had stopped taking his medicine, regularly renewing the prescription but flushing the daily dose down the toilet. The medicine didn't cure anything. There was no cure.
He stirred in the lawn chair he had put in the shade of an oak tree. The plastic ribbons stretched across the metal frame of the chair ate into the diseased flesh. Sitting there with the breeze rustling his tomato plants he would close his eyes and imagine the cancer consuming him. What the hell did he care? What did his children care? Margaret would mourn him, but she mourned
everyone, attending every funeral at St. Hilary's as if she were a personal friend of the deceased. What else is being old but practicing to be dead?
everyone, attending every funeral at St. Hilary's as if she were a personal friend of the deceased. What else is being old but practicing to be dead?
There were voices from the house, and he opened his eyes to see Margaret and Eleanor coming across the lawn. It was too late to scramble out of the chair and hide in the garage.
“Well, don't you look peaceful,” Eleanor said.
She had seemed a stranger ever since Joseph's death. She married Alfred Wygant, too good to marry another Italian. She was still smitten with Fulvio, but while he continued to respond, he had lost interest in her. Not that he let her forget their stolen moments. They had meant more to her than they had to him, but that is the way it was with women. And she had written him silly letters. Well, God is not mocked. Eleanor was childless. So she had adopted his children, helping to spoil them. She had bought a chalice for Raymond when he was ordained. Did she wonder what had happened to it? Maybe he had it in a trophy case in his counselor's office.
“I talked with Andrew this morning about Jessica's new novel,” Eleanor said.
“I never read any of them.”
“Fulvio, she plans to write about us.”
“Us?”
“The Bernardos, you, Joseph. Even Alfred.”
“What's there to write?”
Margaret went back to the house for iced tea, and Eleanor pulled a lawn chair next to his. “She has no shame; she will make us look like fools.”
“Maybe we are.”
“I don't want her to write about Alfred.”
“I thought it was about the Bernardos.”
“She wanted to pump me about the way he died.”
Fulvio said nothing for a minute. “I am dying myself, you know.”
“Oh don't say that.”
“I have cancer.”
“But they say prostate cancer can be controlled.”
“So can breathing until it stops.”
“Don't be morbid.”
“How's your health?”
“Good.”
“So you can afford to be jolly.”
“I am not jolly. I am worried sick about Jessica. I shouldn't have to tell you why.” She paused. “I spoke to Father Dowling about it. He agreed to talk with her.”
“That ought to help.”
“He is a very wise man.”
Fulvio knew the pastor of St. Hilary's only by name. Margaret too sang his praises. There had been Franciscans in the parish when Fulvio still went to Mass, happy little elves always after your money.
“Has Jessica talked with you about it?”
Jessica had been here a week ago, sat next him as Eleanor did and talked about growing up and the benefit it was to have a family like theirs. It gave a framework to her life, she said. She seemed serious.
“Why aren't you married?” he'd asked.
She laughed. “I haven't met Mr. Right.”
“There may be no men left by the time you do.”
“Everything's different now.”
“You can say that again.”
“I mean young men. Young women too. Nobody believes anything
anymore, nobody trusts the future, no one wants a family. Just an arrangement.”
anymore, nobody trusts the future, no one wants a family. Just an arrangement.”
“Marry one and he'll want children.”
“Even Catholics have lost any sense of what life is all about. They're like everyone else now.”
“Do you ever hear from Raymond?”
“He asks about you.”
“Did you tell him I'm dying?”
“You're not dying!”
“Will you guarantee that?”
“Daddy, what you have is bad, but it isn't terminal. I've asked. The medicine you take controls it. You have years ahead of you.”
For a moment that prospect had stirred him. More time. But for what? To putter over his tomato plants and doze in the yard and wonder what had gone wrong with his children? Jessica was the best of the lot, he knew that, but a man puts his main hope in his sons and look what he had there.
“Tell me about your life,” she had said. And he had, to his own surprise. He was flattered that she wanted to know, and once he had started he realized how little she did know. Did he think his children had inherited his memories too?
“Now I know where I inherited my gift for storytelling.”
“Don't you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you. Who would know better than you?”
He told Eleanor that it was natural for Jessica to want to know about her family. “She paid someone to do our genealogy.”
“There, you see. She isn't just interested in what you care to recall. She will make use of everything, records, newspaper stories ⦔ A pause. “Letters.”
Aha. “What do we have to hide?”
Suddenly Eleanor began to cry, for God's sake, right there in
the backyard, with Margaret coming from the house with the iced tea.
the backyard, with Margaret coming from the house with the iced tea.
“What did you tell her?” he asked.
Eleanor was trying to gain control of herself so that Margaret wouldn't see she had been crying. But Margaret was intent on the full glasses on the tray she carried. Besides, Margaret had never been curious, thank God.
“Did she tell you about her second husband?” Marie Murkin asked Father Dowling some days later, out of the blue. Or so it might have seemed to him, but she had been brooding on Eleanor Wygant's visit, all the more because Father Dowling ignored her leading questions.
“She's a widow.”
“That's the point.”
He dipped his head and looked at her. But she was not to be put off that easily.
“The Franciscans hushed it up, of course.”
“All right, Marie, what is it?”
“The way he died.”
“And how was that?”
“Suspiciously. He was healthy as a horse, and then he was dead, tumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night. She
said he was walking in his sleep after taking an extra sleeping pill.”
said he was walking in his sleep after taking an extra sleeping pill.”
“She told you this?”
“She told Placidus.” Father Dowling frowned. He did not like her referring to his predecessor as pastor in this casual way.
“Who told you?”
“He wasn't as secretive as some people.”
“So what is suspicious?”
“Why was he walking in his sleep if he took an extra sleeping pill?”
“You don't believe it.”
“McDivitt told me he was drunk.” McDivitt was the funeral director, a pink little man with snow white hair who was putty in Marie's hands.
“And you think she didn't want that known?”
“Within months she had sold her house and moved out of the parish.”
“That is suspicious.”
“And why didn't she recognize me the other day?”
“Ah, I understand. A housekeeper scorned.”
Marie could have kicked herself for the clumsy way she had gone about it. How could he take her seriously if he thought that all it was was annoyance at being snubbed by Eleanor Wygant. No, not snubbed. Patronized. Practically ordering tea when Marie had given the pastor a way to get rid of her, taking up his afternoon with some nonsense about her niece's new novel.
“What's it about?” she had asked at the time.
“A nosy housekeeper. She wants to interview you.”
Well, she had asked for it. Marie withdrew from the fray and brooded like Achilles in his tent. Not that she gave up.
“Was there ever an investigation of Alfred Wygant's death?”
she asked the next time Phil Keegan joined the pastor for lunch after his noon Mass.
she asked the next time Phil Keegan joined the pastor for lunch after his noon Mass.
“Who is Alfred Wygant?”
“He was a very prominent man and you know it. His insurance business was one of the largest in Fox River.”
“And he died. When was that?”
Marie had looked it up. “Seven years ago.”
“And you expect me to remember if there was an investigation?”
“There was a coroner's report.”
“How do you know?”
“I don't forget things like that.”
“Then there would be a record at the coroner's office. Hire a lawyer and ask to see it.”
“I was hoping you would look it up.”
Phil turned to Father Dowling. “What is this all about?”
“Marie is afraid someone is going to write a book about her.”
“Well, if they ever do, I'll read it.”
But the seed had been planted. Phil Keegan might scoff like the pastor, but he was a policeman to the soles of his feet. Marie was sure he would take a look at the coroner's report on the death of Alfred Wygant.
The fact was that Marie had not recognized Eleanor when she came to the front door of the rectory. Of course, it had been many years since she had seen or even thought of the woman, and Eleanor had more reason to recognize Marie, having come to the rectory often. Marie remembered herself as having been an ombudsman between Eleanor and the flaky Placidus. You never knew what a Franciscan would do next, and your ordinary lay people had insufficient experience with priests to make allowances. It was when she called McDivitt to make sure Alfred Wygant got a proper send-off that the little undertaker, a faint scent of bourbon riding
his breath, had confided in her about the condition of the deceased. How it all came back to her now. McDivitt had always preferred dealing with her rather than the Franciscans.
his breath, had confided in her about the condition of the deceased. How it all came back to her now. McDivitt had always preferred dealing with her rather than the Franciscans.
“He had a snoot full, that's for sure.” This was crude coming from the dapper little undertaker.
“Drunk?”
“Who's to say what
drunk
means,” McDivitt said and slipped a peppermint into his mouth. On second thought, he offered Marie one. “These household accidents are always mysterious.”
drunk
means,” McDivitt said and slipped a peppermint into his mouth. On second thought, he offered Marie one. “These household accidents are always mysterious.”
“In what way?”
“Wygant never drank.”
“The widow told you that?”
“And the family. Of course they were interested in avoiding any talk.”
“Of course.”
“I suppose the autopsy would have measured the alcohol in his blood.”
McDivitt had known he could tell Marie these things without fear they would go further. “I think he took a dive over the upstairs bannister.”
“No.”
“Sheer speculation of course. Based on a lifetime's experience.
Of people diving over upstairs bannisters? McDivitt was a gossip, no doubt of that, his character all twisted out of shape from simulating grief at the death of strangers. What were such people called in the gospel? They had laughed at Our Lord when He said the child was merely sleeping. She could imagine McDivitt in that derisive chorus.
“If Jessica Bernardo calls I will see her,” Father Dowling said.
Marie had already surmised that the niece was the cause of Eleanor's visit. Jessica the novelist. Marie had tried to read one
of Jessica's novels, but it was not her sort of thing, and she told Father Dowling as much.
of Jessica's novels, but it was not her sort of thing, and she told Father Dowling as much.
“Her aunt is of the same opinion.”
“Of course I'm no judge. I understand they were well received.”
“Do the Bernados strike you as a promising topic for a novel?”
Aha. Marie would have thought less of herself if she had not put two and two together. Eleanor had come to express concern about her niece Jessica. Jessica was a novelist. Now he wondered if the Bernardo family could inspire a novel. It was as plain as the nose on your face. Eleanor was worried that Jessica would stir up curiosity about the way Alfred Wygant had died.
But the moment of triumph was brief. How could Marie not sympathize with Eleanor's reluctance to think that her husband had ended his own life? A suicide presents the ultimate pastoral problem. Of course Placidus would have buried Judas Iscariot with a solemn high requiem Mass. What would Father Dowling have done? It was unnerving to think that in this he would have been indistinguishable from Placidus. But after all, what did anyone know for sure? The deceased deserves the benefit of the doubt if anyone does.
When the call came from the hospital telling her that Fulvio Bernardo had been brought in, having suffered a stroke, Marie exercised similar latitude. No need to tell Father Dowling that Fulvio had not darkened the door of a church in living memory. The call came from the son, Andrew.
“My father is in intensive care at St. Mark's. My mother wants a priest to see him.”
Marie brought the word to Father Dowling, and within ten minutes he was on his way to the hospital.
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