Edna was charmed by the young man who knocked on her office door and smiled in greeting.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Come in, come in.” She actually felt her heart flutter.
He strode toward her and extended his hand across the desk. “Charles Ruskin.”
He took the chair she indicated and looked around the office. “It still looks like the principal's office.”
“Don't tell me you were a pupil here.” He would not be the first former student of the school who had come back for a nostalgic visit and sat across from her like this. She had almost come to enjoy their reminiscing.
“Would that surprise you?”
Edna studied his face. Can a man be beautiful and still a man? Charles Ruskin could only be described as beautiful, and he was indeed a man. Not many men could wear their hair long and not recall the scruffy sixties, but his had a natural curl. And that cleft in his chin!
“I am trying to think how many years ago it was that the school closed.”
“It was long closed when I took this job. I can't believe you go
back that far.” She sounded like a gushy girl and didn't mind it a bit.
He laughed. “I have a portrait in my attic that shows the ravages of time.”
“So you were a member of the parish?”
“In a sense I still am.”
“Your parents still live in the parish?”
“Oh, no. They have both gone to God, and I have been out and about in the world.”
“Oh?”
“I attended college in California.”
“Now you're back.”
“Business has brought me back.”
“Business.”
“Willie Lohman is employed in the center, I understand.”
Willie! Edna became apprehensive. Willie had spent time in Joliet, as had her husband, and while Edna did not like to think of him and Willie in the same thought, the years when she had been alone with the children, waiting, waiting, came rushing back, and with them the resentment, however irrational, she had felt toward those who had been responsible for Earl's prison term. She still felt edgy around Captain Keegan and Lieutenant Horvath. Was Ruskin a member of the enemy camp?
Of course, she said none of this. “He has an apartment in the basement of the building.”
“I'll want to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“I wonder what contacts he has had with other graduates of Joliet.”
Edna grew aloof. “You'll have to ask him.”
“Have you yourself ⦔
“No.”
She would give anything if she could rush downstairs and talk to Willie before Ruskin got to him. Had there been visitors of the kind he meant? Edna had noticed nothing, but Willie was a furtive fellow, still distrustful of the world into which he had been released.
“I have been reading about the stained glass windows in the church.”
“The stained glass windows?”
“They were designed by Angelo Menotti. I suppose they attract many visitors.”
“You would have to ask Marie Murkin about that.”
“Who is Marie Murkin?”
“The housekeeper at the rectory. She has been here forever. I'm surprised you don't know her.”
“I don't think I was ever in the rectory.”
“Ask her.” For once Marie's crusty manner seemed a blessing. She would know how to handle this young man. Or would she, too, be undone by his handsome face? There is no statute of limitations on female folly. Edna did not feel disloyal to her sex in thinking this, but then there was enmity between her and the housekeeper, who persisted in trying to treat the center as part of her domain. Only Father Dowling had prevented open hostilities from breaking out. “Marie Murkin is just the one to see.”
“After I talk to Willie.” He stood. He seemed about to extend his hand across the desk once more, but he must have noticed the change in her attitude. “In the basement, you say?”
“Down two flights.”
“You've been very helpful.”
He was gone. Edna slumped in her chair. Had she been helpful? She couldn't see how. She sat there thinking of that impossibly handsome man confronting Willie. The little maintenance man would tell him nothing, she was sure of that, and she was glad. No matter how many of Willie's old companions might have dropped by
to see him, Edna felt protective of them all. Of Willie, too. If only she had directed the man to Marie Murkin first.
She got up and went to the window and looked down at the walk that led to the church and rectory. There was no sign of Ruskin. How long had he been gone? Was it possible that he had hurried over to the rectory to see Marie? Back at her desk, Edna looked at her phone. She could call Marie. She could call Willie. Oh, why hadn't she called Willie as soon as Ruskin left and told him to go into hiding?
The next hour passed with glacial slowness. Was he talking with Willie? Would he learn things that would bring back all those lost years when Earl was in Joliet? Of course, Earl was not at all like Willie; there was no comparison. Any sensible person would know that Earl had been innocent of the crime for which he had spent all those years away from her and the children. Earl had insisted on his own guilt, wanting a punishment he did not deserve. There had been something noble in that. Father Dowling himself had said so. There were tears in Edna's eyes now, and anger in her heart. Why, oh why had Charles Ruskin come to spoil an otherwise perfect day?
When finally she did go downstairs, Edna looked into the former gym, where seniors were occupying themselves in various ways, bridge, shuffleboard, television, knitting, talking. She had learned that it was best not to try organizing things for them. They did not want to be treated like children who must be amused. They did very well by themselves. When she left the gym she went down the hall to Willie's room.
She knocked on the door, her heart in her throat. What if Ruskin was still there? Surely he would wonder why she was checking on Willie. She never checked on Willie. It was silly that she should let some stranger affect her comings and goings. She knocked on the
door again, harder. Still no answer. She turned the knob and pushed, but the door was locked.
Her spirits soared. Willie must have disappeared before Ruskin came down. She turned and went with a light step toward the stairs, until she thought of Marie. Marie! She went up the stairs two at a time, as if she were ten years younger, and hurried into the office. She snatched up the phone and called the rectory.
“St. Hilary's rectory,” an unmistakable voice said.
“Marie, this is Edna. Did a man named Ruskin come see you?”
“See me?”
“Apparently a former student here. He was curious about the stained glass windows in the church.”
“What was his name?”
“Then he hasn't come.”
“Edna, you're not making much sense.”
“I know. Marie, I'll be over in a jiff, okay?”
“Edna, you are welcome in my kitchen any time you like.”
Having hung up, Edna enjoyed the sense of relief she felt. Ruskin had not found Willie, and he had not gone to the rectory. She took the steps one at a time going down.
At the first floor, she stopped. The hallway here was lined with pictures of graduating classes. She went to the first on the right, the last class to graduate, and studied the faces of the boys and girls. None of the boys looked at all like Charles Ruskin. She went on to the next class, and the next. She examined all the pictures on the right-hand wall, beyond those that could even plausibly contain Charles Ruskin, no matter how untouched by age. Dorian Gray indeed. Who was he?
Marie Murkin welcomed James Devere to the rectory almost with the degree of unction with which she admitted Amos Cadbury, but the confident man of business, scion of what amounted to the leading family in the parish, seemed to Father Dowling just a son concerned about his parent.
“Father Dowling, I want to talk to you about my mother.”
In answer, the pastor busied himself with his pipe, an operation that for the moment seemed to relax his guest.
“A pipe,” he said wondrously.
“Do you smoke one?”
“I did. Margaret mocks me for surrendering to the zeitgeist. She dedicates every cigarette she lights to the surgeon general.”
“Why did you quit?”
“It's a long story.”
Father Dowling wondered if James's wife hadn't represented the voice of the zeitgeist for Margaret. That formidable woman had been unsparing in talking of her sister-in-law.
“To think that I brought them together! When we were young together, Diane was a sensible woman. Oh, the ravages this culture has made on so many.” Margaret slid a bracelet halfway to her elbow and then brought it down again. It might have been the blade of
the guillotine. “Susan is her mother's daughter.” Diane had had her consciousness raised, in the phrase, and seemed to devote herself to every cause that Margaret considered antithetical to pure reason as well as to the tradition of the Deveres.
It was his mother, not his late wife, that had brought James Devere to the St. Hilary rectory. “You see Mother regularly, I know. She thinks the world of you.” He paused. “Father, does she strike you as ⦔ He stopped, trying to find the right words. “She is very old.”
“Yes.”
“What do you know of the Devere Foundation?”
“Why don't you tell me what you think I should know.”
Speaking of the details of the family foundation enabled James Devere to regain his practical authority. He outlined the formation of the foundation and explained the original endowment, the amount of which surprised Father Dowling.
“The board is made up of members of the family. We meet regularly and have the usual disagreements as to people and projects worth backing. My mother is the director. This is not quite an honorary position. She has the discretion to make awards up to a certain amount on her own sole judgment. In principle, the board can veto these at the next meeting, but, of course, that is both unlikely and impracticable. Money once given is difficult to retrieve. Are you aware of the project to produce reproductions of Angelo Menotti's stained glass windows?”
“Amos Cadbury has mentioned it.”
“Amos!” James Devere threw himself back in his chair. “He drew up this absurd agreement with Carl Borloff.”
“Absurd?”
“Unwise. Borloff is at best a minor figure in local art circles. I rely on my daughter for this assessment. I have no independent views, but I have asked around, and I find that Susan is right.”
“You have spoken to Amos?”
“Of course. His argument is that he is our lawyer; he facilitates and does not make our decisions. That is disingenuous. He is himself a member of the board. It was one thing for my mother to support Borloff's little magazine, a magazine nobody reads, but to place a sizable sum in his hands and to promise subsequent funding into some indefinite future goes over the line. Of course, it is the connection with Angelo Menotti that explains her weakness.”
“The board will discuss that further agreement?”
“It must come to a vote, but rescinding it would mean war. Father, what is your impression of my mother's clarity of mind? You realize how old she is.”
“Ninety-two?”
“Ninety-two.”
“I know you do not expect any clinical judgment on your mother's mind from me.”
“No, of course not. A pastoral judgment.”
“I have always found her alert and quick-minded.”
James Devere nodded vigorously. “On most things, yes. On most things. On anything concerning Angelo Menotti she takes leave of her senses.”
“I know how impressed she is by his work. The Menotti Madonna in her apartment is marvelous.”
“The man is a great artist. At least he was. My grandfather was his first patron. The Deveres have been generous to Menotti over the years. But, Father Dowling, Carl Borloff is not Angelo Menotti. The sum promised to him rivals the total we have given Menotti himself. And for what? A book of photographs. A book to be prepared by a man whose track record amounts to a few issues of an amateurish little art magazine.”
“I'm not sure why you're telling me this.”
James Devere stared at the priest. After a moment, he said, “Neither
am I. Maybe I expected you to talk some sense into her about this project. All I have to do is say it out loud to know how ridiculous that is. No, I can't put the burden on anyone else. The only way to stop this folly is by a vote of the board.”
“Did Amos look into Carl Borloff's ability to carry out the project?”
“Father, he is putty in my mother's hands.”
“You seem to have a sense of Borloff's abilities.”
“We looked into it as soon as we heard of the discretionary grant. My daughter and I. She knows a good deal more of the art world than I do, of course. A good deal more than my mother, since that world has changed so much in recent years. Nothing Susan told me about this man suggests that he is worthy of such confidence.”
“I wonder what Hugh thinks of him.”
“I haven't discussed it with him. He is away at school, you know.”
“Is he a member of the board?”
“Of course, but, like Susan, a rather infrequent presence. Of course, he was away in California for years, at college there.”
“Thomas Aquinas College?”
“Do you know it?”
“Indeed.”
James sat forward. “I myself like the place.” As opposed to whom? “How much better to give them money rather than Borloff.”
On the whole, it was a confusing visit, but at the end of it James had made a decision. “I am going to have a talk with Borloff. I have never met the man. Perhaps I am being unjust to him. Everything I've said about him is at second hand.” They had risen and gone down the hall to the front door. “Yes, I'll talk to Borloff.”