We spent the same sort of night we had spent last time, though on this occasion we didn’t get past the living room, and we did not wake up until the sun was high in the sky. At least, I woke up. And when I did, I thought I was hallucinating. So I clamped my eyes shut and prayed that the vision I had just experienced wasn’t real. Sitting across from me, in the living room, smoking a cigarette, with what looked like my spare key dangling from his pinkie finger, was a smiling cleric in black with a little white showing at the collar. The Burke case had finally, perhaps inevitably, pushed me over the line into psychosis. I pulled the quilt over my head, groaned, and looked again. But he was still there, as he would always be. Bev was lying on her back farther up the couch, sound asleep, an arm dangling to the floor. The quilt was over her hips. She had something draped over her from the waist up: a leather jacket. Brennan’s?
“Can you possibly be here?” I rasped. “Or did I finally shoot myself and wind up in hell?”
“You really shouldn’t leave this key hanging out there on the shed,” he replied. “The worst sort of people could get in here.” He leaned over. “Are you awake?”
“I hope not. How long have you been here?”
“I found new graffiti in the church.”
I eyed Bev with unease. She was beginning to stir. “Really. Was there a break-in?”
“Broken window.”
“Not the stained glass!”
“No. A window in the sacristy.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Are you
well?
I don’t want the police anywhere near me.”
“All right.”
It was at that point that Bev came to. Her eyes opened and she squinted at me as if she couldn’t quite place me. Then she caught sight of Father Burke in the chair across from us.
“What the fuck?”
“Morning, sunshine,” he chirped.
She looked at me accusingly. “What did you do?”
“Nothing! He just showed up.”
“Like hell.”
“Really, he —”
“I want a shower. Where is it?” I pointed upstairs. She wrapped Burke’s jacket around herself and left the room.
“Did I come at an awkward time?” Insufferable. “I’m afraid I woke your wife from a sound sleep this morning.”
“You did? That means you’re not very popular anywhere today, doesn’t it?”
“She wasn’t too bad. Said she wanted to get the kids going early anyway. I tried you first but you weren’t up yet. I tend to forget that not everyone is up for early Mass on Sunday the way I am. Of course, my Saturday night companions were the Knights of Columbus, so I begged off for an early retirement.” He smiled the smile of the righteous.
“Yeah.” My eyes started to close, then jerked open. “Jesus! What time was that?” I looked at my wrist, but my watch was not in evidence. I groped around in the quilt, found my jeans, pulled them on, then staggered to my feet and batted at my hair.
“When was what?” Burke asked. “When did I call Maura? Around nine-thirty, I suppose. Then I stopped for a bite to eat and came out here. You know, I can’t decide which is the real you, Montague, the woozy half-dressed degenerate or the lordly barrister in his gown and tabs.”
“You may find this hard to believe, Burke, but I’ve had a similar problem trying to get a fix on you — did you say ‘get the kids going early?’”
“That’s what she said. Where would they be going?” There was no need for further speculation. We heard the crunching of gravel in the driveway.
“Shit!” I exclaimed. “I’ll get into —”
“There’s somebody in the shower, remember,” Brennan said helpfully.
And in they barged. Normie launched herself at my neck and clung. I swung her up and kissed her. Tommy got down to business. “Hey, Dad. Hi, Father Burke. How ya doin? Dad, I have to use your Fender. Now. Before I lose this riff.”
“Go right down, Tommy.” Whew. One down, two to go.
Normie spotted Brennan at that point and wriggled to get down.
She went over and held her arms up for a hug. She snuggled against him. “You smell good,” she said. I was left to conclude that I didn’t. “You’re going to stay out of that place now, aren’t you, Your Grace?” she asked Brennan, staring at him with concern.
“I think so, Stormie. I hope so.”
“I can play ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore.’”
“On what?”
At that point I jumped in. “On anything, right, Normie? Why don’t you go down to the music room and practise it. On something. Then you can play it for us later on.”
“Okay.” And she was off. That just left — Maura. And here she was now, standing in my living room.
“Ministering to the drunk and disorderly now, are you Father? And two-handed swilling, by the look of things. Unless, unless, those two glasses mean...” Her voice drifted off and she affected a look of puzzlement. “You don’t look as if you spent the night here, Brennan, so...”
“You’re a great one to talk,” I countered. “I called you last evening, remember? To suggest an evening of nice, clean family fun. Followed by Matt Minglewood. But no, you had shipped the kids off and were about to embark on an adventure of your own. Care to tell us about it?” Brennan’s amused dark eyes left me and homed in on my wife with, I thought, some loss of amusement.
Maura said: “Look at me this morning, then look at yourself, if you dare approach a mirror. And ask yourself whether it is even remotely possible that I spent the kind of night you obviously did.”
Then the morning lurched to its next, unavoidable scene. Bev came into the room, wrapped in an ancient frayed bath towel. She tossed Brennan’s jacket to him and he caught it. I opened my mouth, but discovered I had nothing to say. I shut it again, plopped down on the chesterfield, and stared at the wall.
When no one else spoke, Bev turned to Maura. “Which of these guys are you here for?” Maura gave her a look that could have bored through a lead shield.
“Do you have any clothes?” Brennan asked.
Bev looked around the living room. “Yeah, well, I...” Maura gave a sigh of disgust and left the room. Bev quickly gathered her
clothes, then looked from Brennan to me. “So, where should I... ?”
“The little bathroom,” I said, jerking my thumb in the direction of the hall. She left.
“You’re in the shithouse now, Collins,” Brennan remarked.
“I don’t see why, really, any more than she should be.” I inclined my head in Maura’s direction. But I knew there was only one hole in the shithouse and it was for me alone. Whatever Maura may have been up to in her own life, and I wasn’t sure what or who it was, she would never have stooped to carrying on at home where the kids could catch a glimpse of it. She had poured herself a glass of juice and was drinking it with her back to us all.
Bev returned fully clothed. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” Brennan asked.
She looked at him. “Is it true that in Ireland ‘ride’ means —”
“Here it means a drive, on the right-hand side of the road. Let’s motor.” He ushered her out my front door without a backward glance.
Maura turned to face me. I was once again without words, so I decided to make for the shower, without, I hoped, being subjected to a verbal or physical attack. By the time I was clean and dressed, the kids were with Maura, who looked for all the world as if nothing had happened. I didn’t like it. Wasn’t this an occasion for subjecting old Monty to the tongue-flogging of his life? Was this indifference I was seeing? Had she moved so far from me in her life now that she couldn’t even be bothered?
“Where’s Father Burke?” Normie asked, wide-eyed and on the verge of a major disappointment.
“He had to leave, sweetie,” Maura explained in a saccharine voice. “He had to give a ride to a lady who can’t walk very well this morning.”
“That’s very kind of him, but I wanted to play for him on the keyboard.”
“Sweetheart,” I said, “I have to talk to him later on. Maybe you can play it over the phone.”
“Great!”
Surprisingly, Maura stayed for the afternoon. Guilty conscience on her part? I chided myself for being an asshole and started to relax, and we had some good wholesome family fun playing Scrabble and
charades. I went into the kitchen and put together a pot of chili. While it was cooking Tommy asked me to go downstairs and listen to something he had written for the guitar. I listened and was delighted. He was way ahead of his dad when it came to composition.
The phone rang. I ran upstairs and grabbed it. “I see trouble ahead with this one, Monty,” Brennan said.
“We’re not planning a future together, for Christ’s sake,” I whispered into the phone. “We just met each other’s needs for a night or two! Now, tell me what happened in the church.”
“The vandal wrote: ‘Home of the Fighting Irish=Hell!’”
I thought about the vandal, Jason. He’d called Burke, or maybe it was O’Flaherty, an “Irish bog-trotter.” And we had reports that he’d been asking about priests and where they were from. He had called someone a “real scary Irish guy.” No, Jason hadn’t said that; it was Myers, the guy at Mount A. It was all becoming jumbled in my mind.
“All right,” I said. “Let me have a look at it and then I’ll call the police. You can make yourself scarce.”
“It’s gone.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I painted over it. It looks like shit but at least you can’t see —”
“You
what!”
“I could hardly leave it there for Sunday Mass! Luckily I found it early in the morning before anyone saw it.”
“You destroyed evidence that may very well have come from the killer? Can you really be that stupid? I don’t believe I’m hearing this!”
“It’s not evidence of anything!”
“The police could have photographed the handwriting, possibly traced the spray paint. We’ll have to hire a paint removal guy to get your paint off, and read what’s underneath it.”
“Waste of time. Won’t get us anywhere.”
“We don’t have anything else!”
“I was incensed when I saw it. All I wanted to do was blot it out. I scraped most of it off before I painted over it, so there’s nothing to uncover. And you know as well as I do, it wouldn’t have got us anywhere near the real killer, so spare me any further recriminations. I won’t have my church desecrated.”
“Burke, I can’t believe you would —”
My daughter pulled at my sleeve. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“Is that Father Burke on the phone?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Give me that.” She swiped the receiver from my hand. “Father? This is Normie Collins. I’m fine, thank you. Remember what I said I could play? That’s right. Well, here it is. Daddy, hold the phone up. I’m going down to the keyboard. I’ll play loud.” She barrelled downstairs and played a creditable version of ‘Michael Row the Boat,’ then came up, beaming. She nodded and signalled that I could terminate the call. I did so without another word.
We had dinner, and Maura announced that it was time for her to go. “Don’t let Normie stay up too late. You know how she gets.” She kissed the kids goodnight.
“Do I get a kiss too?”
“I don’t know where that mouth has been.”
I took a deep breath and began to address the first crisis of the day. “About this morning, I —”
“This morning, Montague, was such a pathetic balls-up on your part that I look at you more in sorrow than in anger.”
II
Monday I was in the office making half-hearted efforts to catch up on other files and fill in my time sheets. Several times during the day I tried Burke’s number and left messages with Mrs. Kelly, but didn’t hear back from him. I knocked off work in the mid-afternoon so I could stop by the rectory before picking up the kids at Maura’s.
Mrs. Kelly came to the door when I rang the bell. “Is he in, Mrs. K.?”
“I know he’s up there but he hasn’t been out of his room all day and he hasn’t taken any of his calls. And meals? All gone a-wasting.”
“I’ll go roust him out.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she fretted, eyes looking to the second floor. I smiled at her and went on up.
I rapped on the door. No response. I rapped again, more violently, finally provoking a bark from within. “Who is it?”
“Your long-suffering attorney.”
“Open it.”
He was lying on his back on the bed, uncombed and unshaven, wearing worn jeans and a sweatshirt. One hand was behind his head, the other held a long-ashed cigarette. There was an overflowing ashtray and a glass half full of amber liquid on the bedside table. Dismissing any thought of tact, I picked the glass up and sniffed it. Ginger ale. His face was devoid of expression.
“You’d better cut down on those coffin nails or you won’t be singing Palestrina.”
He didn’t respond. I walked to a window and ostentatiously opened it wide, letting in a blast of glacial air. “I came by to apologize for giving you grief yesterday. Even though you really should have... Well, you don’t need to hear it again.”
“I photographed it before I cleaned it up.” His voice was lifeless.
“Oh! Why didn’t you tell me? It’s not the original but it’s better than nothing.”
“O’Flaherty says the camera’s not working. The flash went off so I thought it worked, but he says it may not turn out. He’ll let me know.” He sounded as if he’d been condemned all over again.
“O’Flaherty has it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’ll wait and see. Why don’t you get up?”
“I’m not getting up. There’s nothing —”
He was interrupted by a tentative knock on the door.
“Christ,” he growled, not moving.
“Come in,” I called out.
The door opened and there stood a vision from a Botticelli masterpiece. In her late teens, she was petite and sweet-faced with long, curly golden hair cascading to her waist. Perched at the end of her nose was a pair of rimless spectacles, which did nothing to detract from the beauty of her light hazel eyes. She wore a long, cream-coloured dress and had a blue coat over her arm. She was looking uncertainly towards the bed, where Burke was still supine and I was sitting. I realized we were both staring at her, stupidly.
She began a nervous opening spiel. “Father Burke?” She looked from me to him and back to me. “I’m Lexie Robinson. I just moved
here. I’m studying music. And, um, I’ve volunteered to start a children’s choir at my church, St. Malachy’s, but I didn’t know how to go about it. Nobody had done it there before so, well, I thought it would be a good idea to call the choir school and get some pointers, and I talked to, uh, Sister Dunne, and she said to phone you.” She was still directing her comments at me. I suppose a clean-shaven lawyer in a business suit looked more priestly than the wretch lolling in the bed beside me. Suddenly picturing the scene from her point of view, I leaned over and dug an elbow into Burke’s leg to get him to sit up, which he did, but not without emitting a smoker’s hack. The lovely girl was going on: “So, I dialed your number a few times but I didn’t get any answer, and then since I was downtown anyway I thought I might as well come here.” She wound down. Her cheeks had blushed to a shell pink. Her eyes were still fixed on me.