The Prudence of the Flesh (7 page)

How deceiving looks could be, Marie Murkin mused. Put a presentable man into well-tailored clothes and send him over to the St. Hilary rectory and Marie Murkin would praise him to the skies. A serial murderer? But he had such gentle eyes. Bah. She really wasn't angry with herself. Of course she had known of men who left the priesthood, sometimes on the sly, sometimes with a certificate or whatever saying it was okay, and most of them got married, as often as not to a woman who had been a nun—but don't get her started on nuns. At the moment, Marie wanted to concentrate on the duplicity of the male.

Ned Bunting was another case. A fine figure of a man, always dressed to the nines, though what he did for a living not even Barbara had been able to find out. Her guess, and it was only a guess, was inherited money.

“Any more on the floozie?”

“Gloria Daley. Apparently a widow.”

“Apparently?”

“She never properly registered in the parish. People seldom
do nowadays. They just keep shopping around. No collection envelopes, so who knows what they put in the basket? We get a lot of dollar bills at St. Bavo's, all folded up so maybe the usher will think it's more.”

Marie knew all about such tricks. The empty envelope, or one filled with discount coupons. “I gather she lives alone.”

“Very arty. Some of her paintings were on display in August at the parish picnic.”

“Paintings of what?”

“Oh, they're not
of
anything. Art is about art.” Barbara's voice had become a lazy drawl. “That's how she talks. And that is exactly what she said when people asked about her pictures.”

“Sounds like a flake.”

“Oh? She's home painting pictures and we're working our fingers to the bone, so who's nuts?”

“Barbara, if you ever retired they'd have to close St. Bavo's.”

“Right after the funeral.”

An hour later, there was a tap on the kitchen door and there was Ned Bunting, big as life. Marie banged her hip on the corner of the table in her haste to get to the door.

“Ned Bunting!”

“How on earth did you know my name?”

Marie had the door open. “Come into my kitchen, said the spider to the fly.”

“I came to the back door because I didn't want to bother Father Dowling.”

“You're out of luck if you want to see him. This is the day of his monthly retreat.”

“But I want to see you.”

She got him seated; she made tea; she cut him a large slice of her pineapple upside-down cake and then sat across from him.

“Why would you want to see me? No, go ahead, eat.”

He had stopped a fork full of cake on its way to his mouth, and Marie wanted to see someone enjoy the food she prepared. God knows, Father Dowling would be content with graham crackers and milk. That was his idea of a treat. That and popcorn. Anyone can make popcorn.

“Mmmm. Delicious.”

“You can take some with you when you go.”

“But I just got here.”

This visit would have been easier to handle if Marie hadn't had the persistent thought that Barbara was tuned in to the scene, monitoring her every move, listening to what she said. She remembered that imitation of Gloria Daley's drawl.

“I don't suppose you know I'm a writer.”

“A writer.”

“Let me tell you about my current plans. You know as well as I do the kind of pleasure the media have been taking in raking priests over the coals, all priests, because of a few bad apples.”

Marie was nodding her head and tipping back and forth in her chair. She knew, she knew.

“My idea is that this story deserves more serious treatment, one that will put it into perspective. Why have I come to you? I want to give a sense of what the day-to-day life of a good priest is, the work he does, the long hours, the whole picture.”

Thank God he had come to St. Hilary's. There were parishes where most of the work was farmed out to laypeople. What the priest did besides say Mass was hard to say. Marie had seen parish bulletins with rosters as long as the page, listing all the
“ministers” of this and that. No wonder some priests got in trouble. Idle hands are the devil's workshop.

“You want a sketch of Father Dowling's day?”

“That's right.”

So Marie gave him a portrait of the Curé d'Ars moved to Fox River. The man must sleep, but when, that was the question. He was still up when she went to bed and as often as not was already up when she came down to prepare breakfast.

“Not that he'll eat anything special. That cake? I made it three days ago. He had maybe a sliver. For him, that's pretty good.”

“It's delicious. Does he pray a lot?”

“I don't spy on him, Ned.”

She mentioned the study, and he asked if he could see it, so she took him down the hall. He put just the upper half of his body in the door and looked around at the books.

“Do I smell tobacco?”

“His pipe.”

“He smokes?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe I won't mention that.”

“No need to. It isn't that he couldn't stop in a minute. Is that a camera?”

Standing next to him, she was at eye level with the case that hung from his shoulder.

“A tape recorder.”

“I hope it isn't on.”

“I usually plug it in.”

*   *   *

Two days later a photographer from the
Fox River Tribune
showed up at the rectory.

“We need a few photos to go with the story.”

Father Dowling emerged from his study and came down the hallway toward Marie and the visitor. Suddenly the hall was filled with flashing light. The man had taken two pictures.

“What is this all about?”

Marie would have liked to flee, but the question was directed to her.

“He wants your picture.”

“For the Ned Bunting story about you,” the reporter explained. “ ‘Profile of a Faithful Priest.' ”

“How could he write a story about me? I've never met him.” The pastor turned slowly. “Marie?”

“It's a long story,” she murmured.

“Not fifteen hundred words,” said the photographer.

The photographer, Topolino, would have to settle for the shots he got of Father Dowling coming down the hall.

“I'd like to check some things in the story, Father. It's by a freelance . . .”

“There won't be any story if I can stop it.”

“First Amendment, Father. First Amendment.”

Father Dowling's call to Quirk, the editor, had no effect. The story would be run. No, the priest said, he didn't want to see it before it appeared.

“I didn't mean you could edit it, Father. Just a heads-up.”

Listening on the kitchen extension, Marie knew she was in deep trouble. It was all Ned Bunting's fault. She had been Eve to his snake in the grass. She waited for the wrath of Father Dowling to fall on her, but minutes passed, then half an hour. She
crept to the kitchen door and listened. No sound. She pushed it open slightly to see that the study door was closed. The silent treatment? Back in her kitchen she groaned. She infinitely preferred a scolding to the silent treatment.

What the
Tribune
called a profile of a faithful priest by Ned Bunting shook the even tenor of Roger Dowling's day. Since his assignment to St. Hilary's he had receded from public view, no longer part of the archdiocesan aparatchik, able to give his all to the demands of his parish. To call him or anyone else just doing his job “faithful” was about as flattering as it would be for a husband to be called that, or perhaps “nonadulterous.” He didn't blame Marie Murkin as much as she deserved to be blamed, and for a time he hoped that the sheer illiteracy of the piece would rob it of any power to disturb his life. Unfortunately, it was the very awfulness of it that attracted.

“Could I speak to the faithful pastor of St. Hilary's?” One classmate after another called, asked this question, and then congratulated him for running that ad in the
Tribune.

Roger took his punishment like a man, not least because it was undeserved. Beneath the kidding they detected that no one was more amused and bemused by the article than the Reverend Roger Dowling, the faithful pastor of St. Hilary's. It was the accompanying
photographs that drew the most attention, though. In one, Father Dowling was coming down the hallway, a look of astonishment on his face. The other was a studio portrait taken while he was still on the archdiocesan marriage court.

“Is that your ordination picture, Roger?” His classmate Holt grinned when he said this.

He was almost sorry he hadn't let the photographer have his way and get some current shots.

“What can I say?” Marie said abjectly.

“It would be best if you took a vow of silence.”

“He plans to write a book about the priest scandal.”

“Good Lord.”

“It's about time. And that was the point of the article, to show what most priests are like.”

“I can't believe he could write a readable book.”

“People eat up scandal, you know that.”

“I was thinking of his prose.”

“Well, you're a better judge of that than I am.”

“Oh, I don't know. I had no idea you had become such a magnet for aspiring writers.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Ned Bunting called several times, but Marie told him it probably would be best not to talk to Father Dowling.

“What a response I've gotten,” Ned enthused.

“That's his complaint.”

“Of course, he's being modest.”

“He commented on your style.”

“Did he? Well, well. Just pass on my appreciation, Marie. I hope I haven't got you in trouble.”

“Trouble? Me? By the way, who is that older woman I've seen you with at Mass?”

“Older?” He laughed, almost a giggle. “It's just that I seem much younger than I am.”

“Hmph.”

“Her name is Gloria, Gloria Daley.”

Ned Bunting was in seventh heaven. After years of drought, his first published piece had caused a mild sensation. Thank God, he had Gloria with whom to savor this belated recognition.

“There should have been a picture of you as well,” she said.

Ned would have accepted any terms Quirk of the
Tribune
had offered, short of asking that he use a pen name. All the years of dreaming, those awful times when he had paid through the nose for nothing, the demeaning interview with Zubiri at the writers' conference, faded into insignificance. He sought parallels in the life of other writers, those who after years of rejection had finally broken into print. Of course, his dream had been to write fiction, and this was a report on an actual person, but he had employed the fictional techniques he had learned, however imperfectly, dramatizing the life of the reclusive Roger Dowling.

“I'll bet Monsignor Sledz is eating his heart out,” Gloria said. “Not that you could have made much of his day-to-day life.”

Ned felt awash with magnanimity. His opponents of yore were now enveloped in the sense of triumph that suffused him.

“Ned, now you
have
to write that book.”

A sobering reminder. It was one thing to put together a few pages from the conversation with Marie Murkin he had recorded, but a book suggested an extended effort, and in his heart of hearts the worm of doubt entered. When he compared the printed version of his story with the file on his computer, he realized that much editorial discretion had been exercised in preparing the printed version. He sought in vain for unaltered sentences from his original. He did not find the altered versions an improvement. There was a lesson there. The prospect of publication had made him docile to a fault. As long as his name appeared on the result, he would be satisfied. Not that he put it so baldly even to himself.

“We seldom run things by freelance writers,” Quirk had said.