The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (8 page)

   
Sylvia
told him Charlie had already gone down to the beach.

   “
Don’t you ever
take time out yourself to play?” the priest asked.

   
She laughed
nervously and went on painting raw spare ribs with a concoction out
of a steel bowl. She was not an unattractive woman. Her brown hair,
which she wore hastily pinned up, had a pretty sheen, and her eyes
were a gentle shade of blue. The rest of her face was just
irregular enough to give it character. But she seemed oddly
negligent of her charms, as if any beauty she had was accidental,
having nothing to do with the person she knew to be her real
self.

   “
Well, I’d
better see if I can find your husband.”

   
The beach was
deserted except for a young mother and toddler. There were no
lifeguards. At first he thought Charlie had changed his mind about
the swim. But then he spotted his close-cropped head bobbing up and
down beyond the breakers. Swimming in rough, unguarded surf seemed
a risky business to a cleric who had never mastered the sidestroke.
But then he recalled that in addition to presiding over the radio
and astronomy clubs, Charlie had been one of their school’s star
swimmers. Charlie yelled for him to come in. Father Walther waved
back but had no intention of venturing that far out.

   
He
tested the water with his toes. It seemed colder that it did last
Saturday in Asbury Park. For a while he played tag with the waves,
only allowing them to reach his ankles, then reached down and wet
himself across the chest and shoulders. There was pink on his
forearms and the tops of his thighs, but otherwise he was
cadaverously white. He rarely looked at his body. He was vain
enough to worry about his weight (his housekeeper would turn him
into a blimp, given half a chance). But his concern was limited to
how he looked in clothes—in a roman collar and suit or in a cassock
or chasuable. What the nude body beneath those garments looked like
did not ordinarily enter his mind. He was surprised now to see how
pale his skin was and how far along he was toward having a spare
tire. You didn’t notice such things when you were shepherding a
bunch of rambunctious altar boys around a crowded beach.

   “
It’s
not bad once you’re in,” Charlie said, emerging from the surf
dripping like a fish. His body was a healthy brown, and despite a
tendency to carry excess weight in the same area where Father
Walther’s own flesh was expanding, his muscles showed plainly, no
doubt from regular use.

   “
I’ll
take your word for it,” Father Walther replied, taking a half step
back from the water. The backstep was a conditioned reflex: one of
the more popular activities on class outings was to throw
non-athletic types like himself into the water. Charlie laughed,
perhaps recalling those same dunkings, and proposed they take a
walk.

   
Until
now, he hadn’t given much thought to why Charlie had chosen to
invite him to his summer home. Charlie must have known well in
advance when his own vacation would fall due, and it was only by
pure chance that their times off happened to coincide. But Charlie
had always been impetuous. His two unannounced visits of the last
decade proved that, but even in high school he was given to sudden
urges for a breath of mountain air or a midnight cruise through an
old girlfriend’s neighborhood. If his friend Richard happened to be
with him when those inspirations struck, he was enlisted to go
along for the ride. The nature of their friendship was such that
Charlie played the role of doer—the volatile, impetuous
fool-rushing-in—while Richard Walther even then played the role of
passive adviser.

   
Thinking
back now on that relationship, he felt a sense of embarrassment.
What business did he have acting as father confessor to a young man
whose experience of the world even then exceeded his own? And yet,
Charlie had been his closest friend. For all the years Frank
Willett and he spent in the same schools, they never confided in
one another. Nor did he make close friendships in the seminary. His
vocation seemed to preclude sharing his real self with anyone but
God. But now, he thought, he would welcome the friendship of
someone who would treat him as an equal. And who better to look to
for such a friendship than Charlie Weeks?

   “Well, what do you think of
her?”

   Charlie couldn’t be referring to
anyone but Sylvia, but the question—rather, the eagerness he put
into it—seemed odd.

   “
You’re a lucky
man.”

   “
Do you really
think so?”

   
Charlie’s
pleasure was obvious and, considering the longevity of his union,
touching. He began taking little half-steps, skips actually. Except
for his slight paunch and bit of gray hair, he might have been the
same sixteen-year-old who exulted at the first buds of spring or,
alternatively, flew into a rage when Richard Walther questioned one
of his scientific canons.

   “
The
trouble with me and Sharon,” he went on, “we were too much alike.
I’m the moody type, and so was she.”

   
He took
a few more steps before realizing his friend had come to a
halt.

   “
This isn’t the
same woman you married seven years ago?”

   
Charlie regarded
him with amazement.

   “I thought I told you, Sharon and
I broke up.”

   “You never said a word,” the
priest replied, trying not to show his irritation. “You and Sylvia,
then, are...?”

   “
Married? Sure.” Charlie suddenly regarded him with shock.
“You don’t think I’d invite you down here—I mean, you a priest and
all…?”

   
Father
Walther realized he should have sensed something was up when
Margaret told him his old friend had telephoned. Charlie had never
been one for purely social calls. Even those star parties of their
adolescence were only forums for the latest crisis in his
intellectual or love life. But that particular evening several
years back when Charlie had dropped by his rectory the curate had
just finished putting in a couple hours in a stuffy confession box
and hadn’t been in a mood to inquire too curiously about his
friend’s marital state.

   “So, now you’re starting
over.”

   “That’s right.” They had reached
the stretch of beach opposite Charlie’s house. The toddler and
mother were gone. “Although I guess I prefer to see it as something
more original. Look here,” he added, paying no mind to the icy
water lapping at his ankles, “you haven’t said you don’t approve.
But you’re wearing the same sanctimonious look you used to put on
when we were kids. I know it’s your job to represent the church’s
position. But I’m not talking to you as a priest, man.”

   
Charlie’s impatience came as less of a surprise than did his
accusation of sanctimoniousness. It had never occurred to young
Richard Walther that his adolescent homilies were resented or,
worse, not taken seriously.

   “
I can’t
believe one thing with my collar on and another when it’s off. I am
your friend, Charlie. But I’m still a priest. I can’t change
that.”

   
The
waves broke noisily beside them, angry like the flush on Charlie’s
face. He had never liked the answers Richard had given him, whether
about extraterrestrials (redeemed or prelapsarian?) or sexual
morality. He had always insisted on a rational explanation based
purely on empirical evidence. But there was never anything logical
about his own emotions. The young priest-to-be once watched him
pound a dead log to pulp with a tire iron during a fit of
frustration brought on by Richard’s insistence that there was
indeed a hell. Charlie was one of those who thought Vatican II had
rewritten canon law to conform with the spirit of the Declaration
of Independence. As it turned out, he had plenty of company in that
view, even among clergy.

   
Father
Walther had hoped to turn this conversation in a direction very
different from the one it had taken. He had hoped to step out of
his clerical persona, to become just an ordinary man taking a walk
with an old friend. But that was not to be. The world seemed
conspiring to keep him in a roman collar, even when he was more
than willing to trade it for a sport shirt.

   
The tide
was coming in. The eastern horizon was dusty purple. A tanker’s
silhouette seemed painted there.

   “
Look, I
didn’t mean to fly off the handle. I understand you can’t say what
I did was right. Okay. But I don’t want this to make any difference
about your staying on. I promise not to bring the subject up
again.”

   
The
priest regarded him without rancor. Charlie’s apologies had always
been endearing, no matter how outrageous his behavior.

   “
You
bring up any subject you please. We don’t have to agree about
everything. God knows we never did in the past. Do you remember all
those times you froze my ass off just so you could look at the
moons of Mercury?”

   “
Mercury
doesn’t have any moons, Richie. But just wait till it’s dark. With
my new reflector I can show you stars millions of light-years
away.”

   “
Do little green
men live there?”

   “
Probably.
Statistically, it’s almost a certainty.”

   “
You used to be
more definitive.”

   
By now they were
crossing the last dune between the house and the beach. Sylvia
waved to them from the second-story balcony where she had set up a
charcoal grill. Charlie waved back. So did Father
Walther.

   
As they
climbed the narrow wooden staircase, they were both laughing about
their attempts to draw Frank Willet into their religious and
astronomical debates.

   “What’s Frank doing now?” Charlie
asked.

   “Accounting, the last I heard. He
lives near the Water Gap. But that information is eight or nine
years old.” It was hard to believe a decade had passed without his
seeing someone with whom he had shared the entire first half of his
life. “We should have a reunion. You and me, Frank, Tommy Giordano,
John McCoy. We could make a night of it.” They entered the kitchen,
where Sylvia was boiling water in a spaghetti pot. He winked at the
new Mrs. Weeks. It was strictly a clerical wink, an ocular nudge in
the ribs, meant to offer reassurance. He felt sorry for her. She
had to have been going through hell earlier.

   
Then
Charlie said, “Richie, I’d like you to meet Rosalie
Sykes.”

   
A young
woman in a two-piece bathing suit—she looked at first like a
teenager, but he quickly advanced that estimate by several
years—was sitting near the glass doors leading out to the terrace.
She was slim, with brown hair the same shade as Sylvia’s, but
better cared-for. Her skin showed the deep tan of a sun-worshipper.
The glare from the glass doors, closed for the sake of the
air-conditioning, prevented him from seeing her face clearly, but
it seemed pretty in a way Sylvia’s was not.

   “
Hi,” he
replied to her indifferent greeting. “Do you live in the
neighborhood?” He wasn’t sure if “neighborhood” was the correct way
to describe the scattering of custom-built homes between the
highway and beach, but experience had taught him that when he met
someone for the first time it wasn’t so much what he said as that
he did in fact say something. People looked to a priest to get the
conversational ball rolling. But the young woman merely stared back
at him as if he had made a bizarre, even indecent
suggestion.

   “
Rosalie’s my cousin,” Sylvia told him. “She’s staying with us
for a few days. She was up on the deck when you got
here.”

   
He felt
a twinge of the same resentment he had felt when Charlie told him
of his divorce and remarriage. He didn’t mind sharing the place
with another houseguest (however anti-social this one seemed), but
why couldn’t Charlie have said something about someone else staying
over? There wasn’t even a proper place for her to sleep unless
there was a third bedroom tucked away somewhere. He wondered how
many other surprises Charlie had in store.

   
A table
was set up next to the terrace doors to catch the evening breeze.
Charlie sat at one end, leaving the priest and Rosalie to face each
other. Sylvia was seeing to the corn. The sky was already dark at
the horizon. There hadn’t been much of a horizon to see at Fords
Pointe. The town of Seaside obscured it to the east, and a scrub
forest blocked the western view.

   
Rosalie
had changed to shorts and a halter top. She had also pinned her
hair up more securely. A pair of gold loops dangled from her ears.
Her complexion had the glow of a woman who spent a lot of time out
of doors in all seasons of the year.

   “
My,
my,” she remarked as Sylvia lit two long white candles.

   “
We like
to put on airs every now and then,” the hostess said, blowing out
the wooden kitchen match. “I only hope the wind doesn’t put them
out. You don’t mind, do you?” she added incongruously.

   
Father
Walther realized it was to him she had addressed the
question.

   “As long as they’re not
blessed.”

   “The wine,” Charlie snapped. “It’s
not still in the freezer?”

   
The
refrigerator door hissed open. Bottles clinked together.

   “How often can you get away,
Father?” Rosalie asked.