Songs in Ordinary Time (53 page)

Her father chuckled and shook his head. “Can you believe it? She ate the mice! So now they’ve got a whole new problem on their hands. It’s the darnedest thing, but they say she’s quite a mouser.” He laughed, looking anxiously for her to join in. She tried to smile. He sighed, with an uneasy glance at the people lining up behind the woman in Indian moccasins. The lunch bell rang, and as the doors opened into the dining room, the line surged forward. Miss Getchell put on her slippers and hurried into the dining room.

“All they think about around here is food,” he said as the faint odor of smoked fish drifted in from the hallway. He kept glancing toward the dining SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 257

room. All the way up here she’d told herself to expect nothing, that it was a just a visit, something she had to do, when in truth she had expected something: that he had finally seen the light, that for her, because of her love and devotion, because she had written, because she had cared enough to come, he would repent and see that this one constant child, this chaste forgiver of his lies, this thirsty tongue lapping at his spilled and reckless love, could save him. But he didn’t care. He wanted her to go. He wanted to be released. He wanted her to leave.

“I’d better get in there. If I miss lunch,” he said, squeezing her hand for emphasis, “then I won’t be able to eat again until dinner.”

She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “That’s all right.” She got up. Her legs felt shaky.

He fidgeted with his tie. “You could wait. What if you wait here while I eat? I didn’t realize you’d be here at lunchtime, and now it’s too late to get a guest pass. Can you wait?”

“No, the priest is coming.”

He couldn’t hide his relief. “Here, don’t forget this,” he said, handing her the box as he walked her to the door. Marlin watched from his chair.

“When you get back, pet, go see Aunt Helen. She has to get me out of here. My thirty days are already up and I’m still here. This isn’t the same as the state hospital. The only way I can leave here is if she tells them to let me out. Will you do that for me, pet?”

Nodding, she tried to smile.

“Will you?” her father pressed. She had to help him, he insisted. Of all the people he had written to, not one had lifted a finger to help him. She was his only hope.

“But what’ll I tell Mom about the money for school?” she asked, the ravenous claws opening slowly, slowly in her chest. His only hope, this dutiful child. What would he promise? What would he give in return?

“Don’t you understand? That’s why I have to get out.” He gripped her shoulders. “What can I do in here? I can’t start putting my life together until I’m out. Will you help me? Will you go see your aunt Helen?”

Just then the intercom sputtered on, consuming her father’s pleas in the staticky announcement of the afternoon’s croquet tournament. You help
me
, screamed a voice in her head. I’m the child! I’m the child! Me!

“She had no right to send me here,” he continued when the intercom clicked off. “But don’t tell her I said that. No sense in aggravating her any more than she is.” His fingers dug into her bones. “What is it? Why are you crying?” He was astonished.

“I don’t know. I’m just tired, I guess.” She turned her head, wiped her eyes. “I get home from work so late, and then this morning there was all this commotion. Norm got in trouble, and that dog Benjy likes is dead, and Mom was all upset, and the priest came and…and Omar Duvall was there.”

She looked at him. “He’s always there!”

“Shh,” he said, pressing his stained finger to her lips. She could smell the tobacco. He had even smoked a cigarette, probably two or three or four, 258 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

while she had been waiting for him. “Look, you go see Aunt Helen. That’s the first thing that has to be done.” He glanced back. People were already leaving the dining room. He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to run, pet, and grab whatever’s left. You write now,” he called, waving as he edged into the dining room. “Write and tell me what Aunt Helen says!”

She turned with a gasp at the light tapping on her shoulder. “Excuse me,”

Marlin said, batting short gray eyelashes. “Where in Vermont do you live?”

F
ather Gannon found Alice walking down the road to the main gate. It had just begun to sprinkle. When he apologized for being late, she said she had left early. They rode silently in the car’s heat. Even with the window down, the air barely stirred. He drove deliberately, studiously, leaning forward, turning, squinting to appraise every sign and intersection as if the success of their journey hinged on each passing landmark. He smoked with the same intensity, taking such long, deep drags that the cigarette was burning his lips. He asked about her visit. It was all right, she answered in a flat voice. Just all right? She was tired, she said, turning her head to the side window.

His sweaty hands grew slick on the wheel. Squirming, he sniffed, wondering with alarm if she could smell his body secreting the fluids he’d never been able to mask with scent or cleanse away. Twice daily he showered. He used the best deodorants and most expensive colognes.

The Bishop had opened the windows before sitting down at his desk.

“It’s not for you to decide,” the Bishop had said, fanning himself with Father Gannon’s request for transfer. “You write in here of needs, spiritual needs, moral needs. You go on and on and on, citing example after example.

What makes you so certain these same needs don’t exist in Atkinson as well?”

“They don’t. It’s not the same,” was all he could answer.

“What’s not the same?” The Bishop had sighed with a frown that wrinkled his deep tan. He was a handsome man, dazzling eyes, silver hair, square-jawed. Before becoming a priest he had been an actor. Some people said he still was. “Everywhere sin is the same, and greed is the same, and poverty and despair and death. These are the same. Only the places, young man, are different and the faces—no, not even the faces.” The Bishop leaned over the inlaid desktop. “After you’ve been a priest for as many years as I have, you will notice that the faces begin to be the same ones hour after hour, year after year. And this will wear you down some days to the bone, to the very marrow of your being. But on other days you will understand that everywhere, for everyone, life is sorrowful. You must minister to all these needs in all these places.” He sat back, smiling patiently, basking in his own eloquence as he stroked his cheek with his ringed hand. “Your ministry, Father Gannon, is wherever you are assigned. Accept that reality now while you’re still young and pliable. Be patient!”

“But don’t you see, your Excellency, it’s because I’m young that I know I can help more where I was than at Saint Mary’s. In New York there were SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 259

people who had to come to me at the rectory for milk for their children, for their babies. Some of them had no decent shoes, no blankets….”

“Blankets!” the Bishop cried, throwing up his elegant hands. “Blankets!

It’s blankets that I hear all the time about you, Father Gannon. Blankets and little boys’ jackets! Will you forget all that and just get yourself back on track? Please, please, please!” Clasping his hands to his dimpled chin, he whispered, “And now I am tired of this whole sophomoric discussion. You will remain in your present assignment until the Provincial sees fit to transfer you.”

“But you don’t understand,” he said, and at that, the Bishop stood up, his face curdling with annoyance. “A bit of advice, Father Gannon,” he said sharply. “You have already strained my desire to be understanding. And now the Monsignor tells me you strain his daily. The Monsignor is a very valuable man to me. And I won’t have him upset just because you don’t think you can set the world on fire in Atkinson, Vermont. To be priestly, Father, is first to learn obedience. And, I might remind you, humility!”

The Bishop stalked out, his cassock swishing through the closing door.

Humility. If he was nothing else, he was at least humble—the proof: this very trip, this sullen schoolgirl, too immersed in her adolescent gloom to even speak to him, much less show any gratitude.

All at once sheets of rain draped the windshield. The wipers were useless.

The car sluiced through puddles that sprayed the top of the roof. Alice sat forward. “It’s really bad,” she said, looking at him.

“It’s coming heavier, too,” he called. The torrent of rain beat on the roof.

He leaned over the wheel. “I can hardly see. I think there’s a restaurant up there.” He braked and the car shimmied, its wet engine sputtering.

“No, it’s just an old shack or something,” she called, her face pressed to the side window. “Keep going.”

“But I can’t see anything. I have to stop here,” he shouted, pulling off the road. A buckled Coca-Cola sign dangled over the door of the boarded-up store. He ran his hands along the wheel. Rain poured down the windshield.

“What a waste of time,” he sighed. Hour after hour, the Bishop had said, year after year.

“I wish I’d never come,” she said, twisting the handle on her purse.

“So do I,” he said. He thought he heard her gasp, then saw that she was crying. “Oh I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I didn’t mean you,” he tried to explain. “Come on, don’t cry.” He raised his hand, then dropped it awkwardly on the seat between them. “It was the Bishop. I had a hard time, that’s all. I meant that I shouldn’t have gone up there to see him the way I did. That’s all I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” she sniffed.

He looked at her a moment. “Was it your father? It wasn’t a good visit, was it? It was a lousy visit. I’m sorry. Blame me. I shouldn’t have interfered.

Alice? Alice, please don’t cry.” He tried to make her laugh. “You can’t do this to me, Miss Fermoyle. I never had this course at the seminary. I was flunking Latin, so they wouldn’t let me take it.” She hunched against the 260 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

door, trying not to cry. He tapped her arm. “Want to know what the name of the course was? They called it Human Relations II, or What to Do When a Young Lady Cries in the Monsignor’s Car on a Lonely Road in a Downpour in the Middle of Nowhere and You Don’t Know What to Say. Please smile, please? Are you hungry?” he asked, opening the glove compartment. “I just happen to have this emergency doughnut here.” He held it up, slimy and shriveled now that its sugar had melted. “Every good priest carries one.”

“It looks so disgusting,” she blurted with a teary laugh, then covered her face and began to cry again.

“Aw, you might as well. Go ahead. Just like the rain, when it’s over, everything’ll look new again,” he said softly, then sat there with his arm over the back of the seat. But the more she cried the more helpless he began to feel. How many times had words failed; and yet it was all he had, words and prayers, his only tools from parish to parish. Words and prayers—when had they ever been enough? Jesus had beckoned the children to his side, then reached out and held them. The Bishop thought he wanted to set the world on fire, when all the time, every waking moment, it was himself that was on fire. His arm slid to her shoulder. “No,” she said, as he pried her fingers from her face, then lifted her wet chin. She would not look at him.

He could smell her mouth, her hair, the sweat on her neck.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he whispered, pulling her closer. He was conscious of the shallow flutter of her breathing at his ribs. “There. There now,” he said, touching her wet eyelids, her nose, her cheekbones, her mouth, her soft mouth, her chin, her throat. The rain beat over the car. Careful. He would be so careful. See, she had stopped crying. That’s all it took. He traced circles around her closed eyes, and then he kissed her.

She sat wedged between the door and the seat, saying nothing, arms at her sides, unresisting. Rigid, he realized with a start. “Alice?”

Her eyes opened wide with a shock that sickened him.

“Alice, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t until he moved behind the wheel that she sat up and smoothed her skirt over her knees. “Alice, please look at me.”

She did and he wished she hadn’t, she looked so cold and angry.

“I mean it, I’m really sorry.”

“I thought you’d be,” she said, with a brusqueness that made him feel worse.

“You mean you saved me from myself, is that it?” he said, with a bitter laugh. She flushed and it was all he could do to keep from touching her soft warm cheek.

“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” she said stiffly.

“Embarrassed! I’m not embarrassed, Alice. I’m ashamed. You’re the one that’s been embarrassed. You are, aren’t you?”

She shook her head yes as she toyed with her purse.

“Oh my God,” he sighed with a bitter laugh, and her head shot up.

“I don’t think this is very funny, Father. I don’t know what I’m supposed SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 261

to say now or what I’m supposed to do.” She looked as if she were about to cry again.

“I don’t, either.” He hit the wheel and groaned. “God, what a fool I am, what a stupid, stupid fool.”

“I think it’s letting up a little,” she said, staring at the windshield.

H
er mother followed her into her room and sat on her bed while she dressed for work.

“How does he look?” her mother asked.

She turned her back as she stepped out of her dress. “He looks okay.”

She threw the damp wrinkled dress onto the bed, annoyed not to have even a few moments of privacy. She felt sweaty and soiled, as if there were handprints all over her body. Father Gannon had barely spoken on the trip back. By the time they got to Atkinson his eyes were heavy and hooded and he was hunched over the wheel, gripping it with both hands, his misery so pervasive that she had gotten out of the car feeling guilty, convinced that by letting the mask slip, by losing control, she had tempted him.

“Is he better?” her mother asked.

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? Well, is he or isn’t he? Was he shaky?”

“He’s sober,” she answered.

“Well, what did he say about the money?”

“Not much,” she said, slipping her uniform pants up under her slip.

“What do you mean, not much?” Her mother’s mouth was thin and white.