The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (15 page)

   
Eventually he
was able to sleep. But he kept waking with a pounding heart, the
pain in his head responding in kind. He dreamed bizarre, quickly
forgotten dreams that seemed to have no other purpose than to start
his heart and head pounding again.

   
When he awoke
for good his headache was mercifully gone, but he had little
appetite for the midday meal—potted beef, soggy potatoes and hard
peas. There was apple juice to wash it down. The entire
house—retreatants, masters and any other clergy attached or passing
through—dined together in one room, a wood-paneled hall which
looked like a boarding-school refectory. Thirty or forty people
were assembled, all male, at about a dozen tables. They were waited
on by young Latin Americans whose own status was not clear:
seminarians or hired help?

   
He was seated
across from the two retired pastors who, along with the other,
younger priests, made up his retreat group. There was no rule of
silence as there was at some retreat houses. Conversation abounded,
priests being a garrulous lot. The Italian, who had apparently
inured himself to the rigors of clerical food, kept up a steady
stream of talk without missing a beat with his knife and fork. He
was a small, sinewy man, slightly hunched over from some chronic
affliction, but as animated as a monkey.

   “
You from-a dese
parts, Fadda?”   

   
Father Walther
named his parish and pastor. The older priest nodded vigorously and
shoveled in more stew. “You know him?”

   “
Never hadda da
pleasure.”

   
Father Walther
inquired where the man’s own parish had been.

   “
Jersey
City.”

   
It turned out
the priest, Father Barese, had taught at St. Francis but not during
the years Father Walther attended.

   “
It’s a smalla
world.”

   “
Where are you
from originally? In Italy, I mean.”

   
The older man
shifted a piece of grizzly meat to the good side of his mouth,
grimacing like a gargoyle.

   “
Bari!” he
replied triumphantally.

   
Father Walther
laughed. But Barese’s dinner companion didn’t get the joke. He not
only didn’t get it, he shot a disapproving look at the Italian that
suggested something obscene was being discussed. He looked older
than his tablemate, which would put him at least into his upper
seventies. His own name was Deelan. Father Walther suspected that
Deelan looked down on immigrants much as his own father used to,
although the economic and social position of the Walthers hardly
warranted their looking down on anyone.

   “
I knew Coglin,”
Deelan said, referring to the pastor of Holy Name. “We were at
Darlington together.”

   “
Is that so?
I’ll tell him I ran into you.”

   “
The rest of us
are dead.”

   
The man made a
face as if his comrades had fallen dishonorably. Father Walther
waited for him to say more, but the former pastor only stared at
the wall opposite him, his mouth working angrily.

   
His own father
had shown the same anger toward the end of his life, as if he had
discovered some elaborate hoax had been played on him. It was
shocking to see a similar bitterness in a priest, even in an old,
not to say senile, one.

   “
I eata no eggs.
No sirree. Too mucha cholesterol,” Barese offered with a wink.
“Makes you arteries a-hard. Make you-a feeble-mind.” He touched his
finger to his temple with his knife hand. Deelan glared at him
suspiciously. The Italian waited until his companion’s attention
was back on his plate, then winked again at the curate.

   
After lunch he
took a walk. The former seminary’s property extended halfway up a
long hill before turning into woodland. There were ball fields, a
track where paunchy clerics were jogging, and a lawn that ran from
the main building down to the highway. He was able to see it all
from the vantage of the hillside. The sky was still clouded over
but had grown much brighter as if the sun were on the verge of
breaking through. Down below, Staten Island was doing its weekend
shopping, eating fast food and watching televised baseball in
hundreds of single-family homes barely visible through the mist.
The western stanchion of the Verrazano Bridge was materializing
through the haze as if some force were only just then creating it.
Whatever lay beyond the bridge was obscured by fog. The bay and the
towers of Manhattan to the north, plainly visible on a clearer day,
were a wall of gray mist.

   
He wondered if
humidity had caused his headache—some sort of sinus condition. Was
it his imagination, or did a family doctor tell his mother he
needed a dry climate? It was hard to conceive of his parents’
moving thousands of miles just to alleviate their son’s sinus
condition. Apart from his father’s job in New York, there were
relatives, their attachment to the parish and, however infrequently
they visited it socially, the City itself—not to mention his
schooling to consider.

   
He had not given
much thought to his parents’ marriage. He assumed there was love,
but he could not recall seeing many signs of affection beyond a
kiss for Christmas or for one or the other’s birthday. Despite an
unspectacular career in a Manhattan bank, his father had been as
steady as a rock, hardly ever missing a day’s work, and even then
rarely for any illness of his own. He never drank to the point of
intoxication, though when he did drink he became sarcastic,
especially toward his wife. But most of the time he was a steady,
quiet man—until the last few months, when the sardonic streak that
used to show only under the influence of alcohol surfaced, this
time permanently. Nothing relieved it, not mood elevators or
psychotherapy. It was as if something the man had kept bottled up
all his life in the belief that one day his stoicism would be
rewarded was allowed to bubble up for one parting invective. Father
Walther had pitied his mother for what she went through those last
few months of her husband’s life. Like everyone else, he had
thought his father’s sour mood was caused by his illness, much as
he once assumed the man’s sarcasm came literally out of a bottle.
But today, here on the damp, recently mowed grass of a former
seminary, he wondered if he had missed something.

   
Sunday morning
he had another session with the Dominican.

   “
Have you ever
considered psychotherapy, Father?”

   
They had
switched chairs so that Father Walther would not be exposed to the
glare of the window. The question took him by surprise. They had
been discussing his spiritual malaise. At least that was what he
had thought they were discussing.

   “
You think my
problem might not be of a religious nature?”

   
The retreat
master raised his interlocked fingers higher on the front of his
cassock. A crumb of breakfast toast adhered to his right
cheek.

   “
Not exactly,”
the priest replied with a pained smile, the crumb of toast
ascending almost to his right eye. “These categories tend
to...overlap.”

   
To illustrate
his meaning, he covered one hand with the other. His fingers looked
like lines of porpoises beached on a dune of black serge. “We’ve
learned a thing or two—the church has, I mean—in the course of our
lifetimes. Such a suggestion, psychotherapy, would have been
unthinkable to, say, Father Deelan’s generation. They were too busy
fighting the Red Menace and the evils of Secular
Humanism.”

   
He smiled again.
The sheer quantity of flesh in his cheeks made it seem an unnatural
act.

   
But much as
Father Walther had found Father Deelan a poor dinner companion,
when he heard the retreat master speak disparagingly of him, he
felt inclined to defend the old man.

   “
Don’t get me
wrong,” the Dominican went on. “I’m not preaching relativism. I
believe as firmly as you do in the tenets of the faith. All I’m
saying is it’s possible to make the best of both worlds. Take this
business of Creationism. It’s not a new issue, is it? When I was a
kid the nuns never even mentioned Darwin or evolution.... Did you
have nuns in grammar school?”

   “Yes.”

   “But we’ve learned to accept
evolution as a scientific fact. We realize that science has its
truths which in no way diminish the truth, or truths, of religion.
We’re no longer troubled by a conflict between Genesis and The
Evolution of Species. But I’m sure you get my point.”

   
Father Walther
wasn’t sure he did, but he kept his peace.

   “
You’re an
intelligent man, Father. I couldn’t speak this way to...well, you
know what I mean.”

   
The Dominican
leaned forward from the depths of the recliner, making it look like
a piece of children’s furniture. “If we get an infection we go to a
doctor. We don’t try to pray it away. So, why not do the same for a
mental or emotional problem? It’s just good sense. In fact,”—his
voice dropped to a confidential whisper, beads of perspiration
glistening on his high brow; Father Walther suddenly realized what
the man was like in a pulpit—“isn’t it actually our obligation to
seek out such help?”

    “
You think I
should see a therapist?”

   “
I’m not
speaking ex cathedra, Father.” The recliner reabsorbed his great
bulk with a pneumatic sigh. “It’s just a suggestion. As I said
before, there’s an overlap between areas of competency. Certainly,
you did the right thing in coming here. Certainly, you ought to
continue your usual devotions. But self-flagellation is not in
order—I’m speaking figuratively, of course. What I mean is, it
doesn’t do anyone any good if we make our lives more difficult than
they need be. I hope you understand,” he added, “that I’m not
suggesting I suspect any actual pathology in your case.

   “
You’d be
surprised how many men go through similar episodes. Many are too
pig-headed, or too old, to seek help. They remind me of someone
trying to pray away his impure thoughts instead of taking his mind
off them with a round of golf. Do you play golf,
Father?”

   
Father Walther
said he did.

   “
Well, then, by
all means go and play some golf. You said you had another week to
your vacation?”

   
He didn’t feel
like explaining that he had no present means of transportation.
And, somehow, he felt as if he had now come full circle.

   “
But also think
about seeing someone—maybe just for an hour a week. Your diocese
has a list of people willing to provide their services. It won’t
cost that old curmudgeon you work for a cent. And what’s more,” the
retreat master concluded, rising with difficulty, “no one need know
anything about it.”

   
Father Walther
also got up. “Thank you, Father.”

   
The older and,
standing, much taller man extended his hand—a damp pillow with
fingers. “Not at all, Father,” he said, rattling off a quick
blessing.

   
After lunch he
said goodbye to his fellow retreatants and returned to his room to
pack. He had to admit he felt better than he did on Friday, despite
his reservations about the Dominican’s psychoanalytic approach. If
nothing else, he felt reassured that he was not as badly off as he
had feared. As he brushed his teeth it occurred to him that many of
the men the retreat master counseled must have tales similar to his
own to tell.

   
He called
Margaret—there was a message from his mother: she had had a
wonderful time, but was exhausted. Margaret said she indeed sounded
tired. If she was really that worn out he would not make any plans
to see her until the middle of the week. Until then he would indeed
try to get in some golf.

   
The day was warm
and sunny without the previous day’s excessive humidity. He hoped
the rest of the week would be as nice. He was halfway down the long
drive connecting the retreat house with the public thoroughfare
when a car’s horn sounded behind him. He recognized the driver as
one of the men in his retreat group.

   “
Which way you
headed, Father?”

   “
Bergen County.
Holy Name.”

   “
Hop
in.”

   “
I wouldn’t want
to put you to any trouble.”

   “
No trouble. I’m
glad for the company.”

   
Tom Putkowski
was from a parish several miles south of Holy Name. Friday at
dinner they had chatted briefly about some mutual acquaintances,
but had not said a word to each other since apart from a cursory
“How’s it going?” when they passed in the hall on the way to
devotions or the john.

   “’
Walther’ . .
.” Putkowski mused as he put the car in gear. He was completely
gray, but there were no lines on his handsome pink face. He had
bright blue eyes and a thick but solid build. He wasn’t wearing his
black jacket, but his Roman collar was securely in place. “You
didn’t play football for Ridgefield Park, by any
chance?”

   “
That was my
brother.”

   “
A great
linebacker,” Putkowski said. “He made all-state in his senior
year.”

   “
Yes, but he
didn’t graduate. He dropped out to join the Marines.”