The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (17 page)

   “
Please come
in,” Father Walther said, getting up to remove his roman collar
from the room’s one comfortable chair. “Have a seat.”

   
Father George
glanced cautiously at the old plush high-back, and sat down
tentatively. This was the first time he had been in the assistant
pastor’s room. They had no cause to visit each other unless some
parish business required their doing so. When George was first
assigned to the parish, Father Walther was well-ensconced as first
curate. The Monsignor had already begun to fail, though there was
no talk of replacing him—still wasn’t, as far as anyone knew.
George’s predecessor had died just a week before his appointment,
but the former curate had not been able to do much work during the
last months of his illness. Father Walther had been looking forward
to having the extra hand on board. Running a parish was not unlike
operating a medium-size business. It took brains, energy and a good
deal of personal initiative. In those days he still had all three
and had been eager to show the archbishop, who knew very well what
kind of shape the Monsignor was in, that he was capable of
performing the job. But the short, balding priest the chancery sent
him was anything but a dynamo. Despite the negligible accent, he
seemed very old-worldly. Slow and methodical, he showed little
interest in the business affairs of the parish. He never resisted
any assignment, but he made numerous mistakes and sometimes
overlooked overbillings and slipshod work. Exasperating as these
shortcomings were, Father Walther might have accepted them—the man
was overly apologetic about his failings—if it were not that, in
his own quiet way, the new curate made clear that to his way of
thinking such mercenary matters were extraneous to what the life of
a priest should be.

   “
My car is no
more, Father. I had to junk it in South Jersey.”

   
Father George
looked as if his colleague had just announced the death of a close
relative. “I’m so sorry.”

   
Father Walther
laughed nervously. Why did the man’s seriousness make him so
uneasy?

   “
A small loss,
as far as I’m concerned. But it does leave me in something of a
predicament.”

   
Father George’s
heavy brows rose a notch, revealing the dark eyes—they looked
black—under them.

   “
Is there
anything I can do?”

   “
Maybe. But
first, has the place been running smoothly?”

   
The heavy brows
rose again. The corners of his mouth dropped.

   “
The contractor
finished painting the school. I would say it has been
quiet.”

   “
No problems
from our leader?” Father Walther tried to smile but felt his
spirits sink in the face of the other man’s determined
gravity.

   “
He’s been away
from the rectory most of the time.”

   “
Really? Where?”
If the Monsignor was away from the rectory, he was using his car.
That would mean there was no vehicle available but Father George’s
own beat-up Chevy. “He hasn’t been doing the driving, I
hope?”

   
Father George
shook his head. “John drives him.” John was the church sexton.
“You’ll be going away again, Father?”

   “
I thought I
was.”

   “
Is there
anything I can do?”

   “
No,” Father
Walther replied sharply. Then he added more gently, “I mean, no,
thank you, Father.”

   
The only
alternative left him was Margaret’s Dodge-Plymouth dealer. He would
have to buy a new car in any case, much as he hated to cooperate
with her machinations. He had asked the mechanic in South Jersey to
mail the Ford’s license plates to the rectory, but they hadn’t
arrived yet. Even if he bought another car immediately, he would
still have to wait for the plates. So, on Monday morning he
presented Margaret’s Mr. Lowry with a proposition: he would rent
for a week the car she had selected for him, with an option to buy.
Lowry didn’t like the idea, but the curate was happy for once to be
turning the tables on one of the tradesmen who preyed on clergyman
like himself. Lowry made him promise not to tell anyone about their
arrangement. If everyone to whom he tried to sell a car demanded a
week’s trial, he would go out of business. Father Walther did not
point out to him what such an admission said about the reliability
of his product. But he thanked the man in such a way as to make it
clear that they understood each other. When they closed the deal
with a handshake, Lowry was sweating like a glass of cold
beer.

   
Before leaving
the rectory he called his mother. She had had a grand time in the
mountains, she said, until she just seemed to run out of gas. He
told her to get one of her neighbors to look after her for a day or
two. God knew she looked after them enough. But she said she wasn’t
as badly off as all that. She was looking forward to seeing him on
Thursday.

   
The weather
continued hot but dry. As he headed up the parkway skirting the
edge of the Hudson Palisades, the windows of the blue Plymouth open
wide, he felt a delicious sense of freedom. He even sang, his voice
disappearing into the swift wind. He had finally gotten away from
Margaret’s dank parlor, away from the senile Monsignor, and away
too from the emotional morass of the past week. Thursday he would
do his duty by his mother, but until then his time was his
own.

   
His destination
was a resort at the southern end of the Catskills. A number of
priests frequented it, enough to guarantee a threesome at the first
tee on any given morning. The laity who stayed there were older
couples and widows. Not the liveliest of crowds, but when a priest
went on vacation he wasn’t looking for a fast singles
scene.

   
He made good
time, arriving + for a late lunch. The desk clerk, an old man who
had spent his entire life at the resort, made a fuss over him. Of
course they had a room. He could stay as long as he liked. The
priest unpacked quickly, eager to get back to the dining room.
Meals were served only within certain specified hours, and he
wasn’t sure if even a priest would be given special
consideration.

   
On his way
through the lobby he ran into the manager, a man not much older
than himself. He insisted on asking after the Monsignor, recalling
the old man’s younger years when the manager himself was just a
boy. These recollections put him in mind of his father, the
previous manager, setting off still another string of
reminiscences. Father Walther’s stomach was growling. The man was a
familiar type, likeable enough—the garrulous Irishman, ideally and
equally suited to hotel work, bartending and the funeral business.
He might even have enjoyed listening to the man’s blather were it
not that he had had no solid food on his stomach for six hours.
When he finally managed to disengage himself, the girl who came to
take his order told him there was nothing left of the roast beef au
jus advertised in the lobby. He had to settle for a cold
sandwich.

   
A cup of coffee,
though, restored his spirits. He took a walk around the grounds,
nodding to the old ladies who greeted him as coyly as if he were a
rich widower. There were more of them on the golf course, foolish
virgins in duck-billed hats. It was too early in the day for his
own game.

   
There was a time
not so long ago when he enjoyed squiring a bunch of old dolls
around a golf course or into New York for a show. Now it would be a
chore. When he was younger he endured them in his confessional for
as much as half an hour at a time. In those days he also jumped
eagerly out of bed for a sick call, not even minding the many false
alarms the elderly put out during their long dyings. Nowadays he
winced when he heard the rectory doorbell ring, and found himself
hoping the call in the middle of the night would be for a car
accident, whose victims were usually dead or unconscious when he
arrived.

   
There was a
message waiting when he returned to the hotel.

   “
I hadn’t hung
up the phone two minutes, Father, when I seen you coming through
the door,” the old clerk told him, turning to fish a slip of paper
from the pigeonholes behind the desk. “Here it is.”

   
Father Walther
read the shaky but precise writing: “Mr. Small,” followed by a
phone number with a Maryland area code.

   “
That’s all? No
message?”

   “
That’s it. Just
to call him.”

   “
Did he say what
it was about?”

   “
Nope. Nothing
else, Father.”

   “
Alright. Thank
you.”

   “
Care to use the
desk phone, Father?”

   “
No, I’ll call
from my room.”

   
Who the devil
was Mr. Small? he wondered as he dialed his mother’s area code. If
the call was about her, God forbid, it would be the building
manager who would make it. But the manager’s name was
Grupo.

   “
Mr. Small,” an
elderly voice wheezed after just one ring.

   “
This is Father
Walther. You left a message for me to call?”

   
More heavy
breathing at the other end of the line. Nerves or
emphysema?

   “
Yes, Father
Walther. I’m so glad you called.”

   “
Is it about my
mother, Mr. Small?”

   
More wheezes. He
found himself hoping it was emphysema.

   “
Yes, yes. I’m
afraid it is.”

   
He felt the
blood drain from his head just as it used to after the long fast
required before Vatican II. He pulled a chair toward the telephone
and sat down.

   “
Is it serious?”
he asked.

   “
We don’t know
yet. She’s being examined.”

   “
In the
hospital?”

   “
Yes.”

   “
Are you there
yourself?”

   “
Yes. I’m just
down the hall from her room. At a pay phone.”

   
Still short of
breath, he explained that his mother had passed out in her
apartment while washing dishes. She had not answered his knock, so
he had fetched the building manager. He knew that Katherine—Mrs.
Walther—had not been feeling up to par and he was afraid that
something like this might happen.

   “
I’m very
grateful to you, Mr. Small. Has there been a diagnosis
yet?”

   “
Not yet,
Father.”

   
He asked which
hospital she was in. He was not happy to learn it was the municipal
where emergency cases were routinely brought. The one time his
mother was previously hospitalized she had gone into a Catholic
facility in Baltimore.

   
He thanked Small
again and told him that he would start for Maryland
immediately.

   
It would take an
extra two hours to reach Maryland from the Catskills. After he had
already been on the road that long he was no further south than
Camden, not far from where his Ford had given up the ghost. He
thought he could recognize the same configuration of low-rolling
hills to the west. He even thought he spotted the water tower
visible from the mechanic’s back porch. He recalled Martha’s bitter
account of her son’s death and wondered again at the elaborate
subterfuge she and her husband had invented to keep the truth from
the world. He could see her defiant look, her eyes bright and hard
as if issuing an indictment to whoever or whatever it was that had
taken her boy from her. It was hardly a Christian attitude—“I
wanted him more!” Why did it still seem so admirable?

   
He had certainly
not felt a similar sense of rebellion, not even at his father’s
death, and doubted he would when his mother was taken from him. He
had even prayed for his father’s passing, not just to release the
man from his pain but for his mother’s sake. But he had been of two
minds about that prayer. His sense as a Christian and a priest told
him death was a good thing, especially when one was well-prepared
and in the company of loved ones. But another voice whispered that
acceptance, the low-voiced assurances in the corridors of the
hospital and later in the funeral parlor that his father’s dying
was “for the best,” was a travesty, an offense against something
more human and fundamental. That part of him didn’t want to hear
about eternal bliss and the soul’s just reward. That part of him
just wanted his father back.

   
He wept when he
first saw the man laid out in his coffin, but the tears were
quickly finished and never returned. He wondered, though, would he
have that kind of control when his mother was taken from him? If
bishops broke down, would he be given the grace to bear
it?

   
When he reached
the Maryland state line, he called the hospital’s general
information number. The nurse he spoke with said his mother was
resting comfortably. That sounded a lot better than the
possibilities Mr. Small’s account had suggested. He stopped to get
something to eat and took an extra cup of coffee along for the last
leg of the journey. He couldn’t help thinking that if only the Ford
had held out just a few more hours, everything else—his mother’s
illness, his awful experiences hitchhiking, the events at Charlie
Weeks’—might never have happened.