The Prudence of the Flesh (11 page)

“Everything.”

“About Marvin's father.”

“She wouldn't give her name,” Marie said. “She just wanted to know if the priest would be home this afternoon.”

“And you told her yes.”

“No, I told her you had joined the foreign missions and were now in Nigeria.”

Marie stomped back to her kitchen. She did not look kindly on anonymous visitors, unless they were drop-ins, and then she would quiz them before letting them see the pastor.

Father Dowling assumed it was Madeline Murphy. Tuttle had called to say that he had set the ball rolling, and Roger Dowling felt something of the unease Amos Cadbury did at this suggestion of collaboration. Still, when he had formed the resolution of seeing the woman who had made such serious charges against Gregory Barrett, he could think of no one other than Tuttle through whom he could broach the matter. He could simply have found out her address or where she worked and shown up, but he wanted some assurance that she was receptive to a meeting.

He closed his breviary on his finger and shut his eyes.
Veni sancte spiritus.
It was an occupational hazard to make prayer so routine it ceased to be prayer. “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” It was no pro forma prayer he prayed now, asking for the grace to handle the situation well. Whatever the situation was.

When Gregory Barrett had first come to him, he had accepted his classmate's assurance that the charges against him were fantastic and that he had no memory whatsoever of his accuser. It was ironic that a man who had left the priesthood and had been living a useful, indeed successful, life since should be swept up in the current scandals. A first anomaly of the case was that the accuser did not agree to be a recipient of the archdiocesan settlement with victims of clerical abuse. Barrett's going to Tuttle when he was already a client of Amos Cadbury had seemed a faux pas, but the little lawyer had discovered things that had prompted Barrett to remember his accuser. The help he had given her when she came to him in trouble was just what a priest should have done, even though, in the present atmosphere, such pastoral help could be made to seem ominous: He had smoothed the way for her when she decided to have her baby, and when she changed
her mind about giving it up for adoption, he had supported her decision. The woman's further claim that Barrett was the father of her child had changed everything, though. Barrett might have forgotten the help he had given a troubled young woman years ago, but he could scarcely have forgotten that he was a father. Roger Dowling believed his classmate's denial, even as he sympathized with Barrett's anguish at having to deny such a thing.

He heard the front doorbell and then the passage of Marie Murkin down the hall to answer it. He could hear two voices, one the businesslike voice of Marie, another muted, diffident. Then Marie opened the door, and the woman appeared beside her.

Father Dowling rose. “It is so good of you to come.”

“I was told you wanted to see me.”

“As I do, as I do. Please come in and sit down. Would you care for anything, coffee, tea?”

“I would like some water.”

Marie nodded and withdrew. The silence was not uncomfortable as they waited for her to return with the water.

Madeline Murphy looked around the room and smiled. “I am a librarian.”

“At the Benjamin Harrison branch.”

“I have been there over twenty years.”

“So you must like it.”

“I do. Not that I have any alternative. It's the one thing I'm trained to do. Have you been there?”

“The Benjamin Harrison branch? No.”

“You don't look as if you need any books. Not that the frothy stuff we feature would interest you. Do you know we don't even have a complete set of Dickens? Not that it matters, Nobody asks for him.”

“And what is popular?”

“Movies on video and CD. Music discs. The computer.” She shuddered. “Our branch has become a haven for derelicts. They commandeer the computers and spend hours looking at garbage.”

“And you yourself love Dickens?”

“Just recently I read
The Pickwick Papers.
I thought I was rereading it, but if I ever had read it I had forgotten.”

“Memory is a strange faculty.”

“I know why you want to talk to me.”

“Good. I should tell you that Gregory Barrett was a classmate of mine. When I saw him recently I realized I hadn't seen him since he left the priesthood.”

“He was a priest when I knew him.”

“Tell me about that.”

“I think you already know.”

“Only what others have said. You should know that my desire to see you is completely unofficial. Gregory Barrett does not know you're here, either.”

“I wouldn't care if he did.”

“Did you ever consider talking with him?”

“What would be the point?”

“Each of you might remember things. He said he had no memory of you until the record of your bearing your child connected him to you. He remembers now.”

“He should.”

“How old is your son?”

“Twenty-four.”

“What does he think of all this publicity?”

“What I would think if I were he, I suppose.”

“Tell me, what brought all these things back to you? For Barrett, it was the records. They make it clear that he sponsored you at the place where you had your baby and supported your decision to keep your son.”

“That's true.”

“And you had forgotten it?”

“If he could, why couldn't I?”

“And now you have both remembered.”

“Does he admit that he is the father of my child?”

“No. But neither admission nor denial matters anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the charge were simply that he had acted improperly with you, it would be your word against his. If he denied it. Now all that has changed. Now we can be certain whether he is the father. There are tests . . .”

Her eyes widened. “Is that why you asked me here? Is that what you want me to do?”

“What I might want or not want doesn't matter. No, my interest is you.”

She sat regarding him in silence, wary, curious, perhaps a gleam of trust.

“Let me tell you how all this seems to an old pastor.”

He spoke softly, finding the words easily, not looking at her but, as it were, consulting the spines of the books he stared at without seeing. What must it be like for a woman who had kept and raised her child suddenly to remember something that put her in a very bad light? Oh, times have changed, of course. Statistics tell us of the number of children born of unmarried mothers. He doubted that she considered herself like one of those. “I am sure you thought of what you had done as a sin.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you confess it?”

“How could I go to another priest after . . .”

“You have come to me.”

“This is different.”

“One priest is very much like another.”

“Not in my experience.”

“If you had come to me as you did to Gregory Barrett, I hope I would have done what he did. Thank God you had your baby.”

“I do. He is all I have.”

“Have you raised him Catholic?”

“I stopped all that.”

“To punish God?”

“What has God ever done for me?”

“What he did for all of us. He died for our sins so that we could put them behind us. You believed that once, didn't you?” She nodded. “I wonder what your son thinks life is all about.”

She smiled. “Some friends of mine have been attending your Mass. I can see why.”

“I won't say that I would like to be your friend. The best friend you can have is God.”

She had sat there, holding the glass of water Marie had given her, not tasting it. “You're trying to trick me, aren't you?”

“God forgive me if I am. I think that what you really want is for a mistake you made long ago to stop being a mistake. Your son is not a mistake. What is his name?”

“Marvin.”

“Is he baptized?”

She hesitated. “I did it myself.”

“And you knew how to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know?”

“I never told him.”

“Yet you knew why you baptized him. Don't you think he has a right to know? I wish I could talk to him.”

“And turn him against me?”

“Quite the opposite. He should know what a wonderful mother he has.”

“Thank you.” Her eyes were moist now, and she took a sip of water.

“I hope he understands the sacrifices you've made for him.”

“I don't know what he understands.”

“He must understand that. And it is important that he does, whatever lies ahead. If your accusation proves true, as now it could well do, you will want your son firmly at your side. You will be subjected to all kinds of publicity.”

“I don't want publicity.”

“And you didn't want money, either.”

“No!”

“It was when I heard that you had refused money that I wanted to meet you.”

“I am not going to take back what I have said about Father Barrett.”

“Have I asked you to?”

“So why did you want to see me?”

“I've been trying to explain.”

“So I could go to confession?”

“That's up to you. I would like you to remove any barriers there are between you and God.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Good. And I'll pray about it. Maybe you could come to Mass here with those friends of yours.”

“Maybe.”

He stood, and she seemed almost surprised that it was over. He took the glass from her.

“I will think about it.”

“Come back and see me, whatever you decide.”

He went with her to the front door and watched her go out to her car. He was filled with a sense of inadequacy. Gregory Barrett would survive what lay ahead, he was sure of that, but what did that poor woman have but her son? And some friends who had come to Mass at St. Hilary's.

Hell hath no fury like a writer scorned. Ned Bunting was furious at the treatment he had received when he visited the cultivated voice of
End Notes
. The bum's rush. It occurred to him that the
Tribune
would be interested in the way one of its writers had been treated.

“It happens all the time,” Quirk told him. “Don't call yourself one of our writers, by the way.”

“But my piece on Father Dowling . . .”

“Well, we all make mistakes. I should have had someone put that into better shape.”

“Listen, I have a real scoop.”

“A piece on the housekeeper at St. Hilary's?”

It was all Ned could do not to blurt out that Gregory Barrett was the father of the child borne by the woman who had accused him of sexual misconduct. Here was proof positive of her charge. But if he told Quirk, he would be giving away the story. His dream of being a published writer would be nipped in the bud.

“And if I write the story and give it to him, he would steal it,” he said to Gloria later.

“So keep it for your book. That was the original idea, wasn't it? Write that book and publish it and no one can steal it from you.”

He was the victim of his own bragging. Apparently Gloria believed that he had written much already, meaning published much. She had asked him why none of his books were at the Benjamin Harrison branch of the Fox River library. Various answers occurred to him. Censorship? No, she would tell him about Madeline's complaints that the branch was a conduit of pornography.

“This will be the first book I publish under my own name,” he said, treading a fine line between fact and fiction.

“Ned, I want to see some of your work.”

So he picked up in a used bookstore a novel by an unknown writer and gave it to her as his own.

“Why Harry Austin?”