Green Thumb

by Ralph McInerny

  “Jimmy has to be told,” Phil said. They were all three back in the cart. He turned the key and they rolled silently away across the grassy expanse.

  41

  Cal Swithins continued to stand motionless beside the grave, his head bowed as it had been while he watched the girl dig beside the fence. A small smile played on his thin lips. He had witnessed their exodus from the Morris Inn some time before and watched without comprehending what took place when the trunk of a parked car was opened and a golf bag extracted. When Phil went to the Knight apartment, Swithins had followed, not even trying to formulate to himself his reason for doing so. He was seated on a bench, keeping vigil, when the girl arrived. He recognized her then, as he had not in the parking lot of the Morris Inn. The daughter of Maureen O’Kelly. When the three emerged from the apartment and set off, he followed at a discreet distance, easily keeping the slow-moving cart within sight. When they arrived at the golf course, he followed along the outer road to the cemetery and then took up his station beside a randomly chosen grave.

  Now, he walked slowly to his own car in the parking lot of the Morris Inn, letting what he had seen over the past hours move across the screen of memory uninterpreted, not forcing an explanation. That, he was confident, would come.

  He was settled behind the wheel when the cell phone in his pocket rang, causing him to yelp. He felt like a parolee under electronic surveillance. It was Maddie Yost.

  “Where’s your column? We’re going to press.”

  Her barking voice induced the guilt it was meant to. His first defense was a lie.

  “Check your e-mail, Maddie.”

  “You sent it in?”

  “I’ll resend it when I get home.”

  “Keep it short. I don’t have time to whittle it down to size.”

  Profanity was not a prominent element in Cal Swithins’s linguistic repertoire, but on such occasions he could summon from the byways of memory, and most recent films, the requisite words. He was still sitting in his parked car in the lot of the Morris Inn when he spoke aloud of Maddie Yost as no woman has ever been spoken of before, at least by Cal Swithins. Something caused him to turn and see in the next car an elderly lady staring at him with bright and startled eyes. He hadn’t noticed her before. What was she doing, just sitting there in a parked car? Had she been abandoned? In any case, he had obviously shocked her sensibilities.

  “I beg your pardon,” he called across the gap between the cars.

  “What?”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  She nodded her head in comprehension. “In a few minutes.”

  “I had no idea you were there.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  She was deaf as a post. He smiled at her and she frowned back. He started his car and backed away. He could have gone on with impunity consigning Maddie Yost to the infernal regions. Ah well, iratus interruptus. But wrath returned as he recalled her suggestion that she must edit what he wrote. He felt like a missionary among savages; he was perhaps the only literate person on the staff of The Shopper. This was cause for shame rather than pride. How in God’s name had he sunk so low?

  This familiar thought was more tolerable now because of the promise the Sadler story held for bringing about a dramatic turn in his career. He would take a first pass at writing the story as soon as he got home. Appearance in The Shopper scarcely counted as publication. His dry run at an account of the strange happenings on the Notre Dame campus would doubtless go unread. Maddie would only count the words, not read them. Cal Swithins would be limbering up for the quantum jump into the pages of the Chicago Tribune.

  At home, restored with a TV dinner, he sat at his laptop in that holy moment before composition begins. The world and its allurements fell out of consciousness, a small pinpoint of light far down the tunnel of his mind grew in size, absorbing him into it. His fingers began to move upon the keys: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” He stopped. No. Something else. “All unhappy families are alike but the Sadler family is unique.” Ah. Better. His fingers began to move more rapidly over the keyboard of his computer and he seemed literally inspired as he wrote.

  He had written a hundred words when the screen went blank. He yelped as if in physical pain. The battery was depleted; he had not plugged in the laptop when he sat down to work. That lovely beginning was lost! But minutes later, wired and fired up, his fingers flew across the keyboard as what he had previously written came back to him verbatim. It was difficult not to stop and send up a prayer of thanksgiving.

  42

  When Samuel passed Dr. O’Kelly on the way into the dining room, he merely bowed and went on. Nor did O’Kelly show any inclination to exceed mere civility. The fact was that neither man really knew the other; they were connected only through a common acquaintance with Laura Kennedy. Acquaintance. What a quaint way of putting it. Samuel took a table near the window and looked out at a squirrel busy on the lawn. The old sadness descended, pushing away his reaction to the awful events of recent days.

  Over the past year he had come to love Laura Kennedy. Late at night, in his condo by the lake, he wrote poetry for her, in pencil in an examination booklet, one of the dozens brought with him from the college where he had taught. It did not matter that the poetry was bad. Writing it was a species of therapy. Of course he never showed it to her. His reluctance had a double source.

  The first was the sense of disloyalty he felt to his late wife to be mooning over a woman as old as himself, however better preserved. Laura Kennedy had never married but she was the most matronly and aristocratic woman Samuel had ever seen. The sight of her stirred him as nothing had since his bereavement.

  The second source was his habitual lack of self-confidence. Like so many others, he had been attracted to the academic life by its implicit promise that the inchoate years of adolescence could be indefinitely prolonged. It was like declaring oneself neutral in the battle of life. His had been a modest career on a mediocre campus. Seldom had he ignited in students his own passion for the authors they read. Over the years, he realized he had become a figure of fun as a teacher. Nothing malicious, just the cruel condescension of youth for age. His own youth had ended when his wife died and the stable point of reference of home and family was gone. Paul had been twelve when his mother died. It seemed to mature him. Such continuity as there was between his earlier life and now was provided by Paul. Never before had Samuel felt so thoroughly that his life was a failure. Everything Paul said or did announced his belief that his father was a failure.

  As I suppose I am, Samuel conceded to himself. As success is judged by Mortimer and Paul, I am a failure. He retired early and took up his solitary life on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. It was when he had reluctantly responded to the importuning of his pastor and given a weekday evening talk to a handful of people on Moby Dick that Laura Kennedy came up to thank him afterward.

  “You make me want to read it again.”

  “So you have read it.”

  “Oh yes.” Her head turned slightly but her eyes remained on him. “You realize that I have known you forever.”

  He stepped back as if he needed a better look. From any vantage point she was an impressive woman.

  “Laura Kennedy. St. Mary’s ’74.”

  “Good grief. I wish I could say I recognize you.”

  “I wouldn’t believe you if you did.”

  They went off together for coffee in a little place in Wayzata, he following her car in his. A first encounter between two people who had known one another, however imperfectly, so long ago, is necessarily spent in filling the gaps. Samuel surprised himself when he told her he had lost his wife.

  “I’m sorry. I never married.”

  “So what do you do?”

  A wry smile. “Manage money.”

  He thought it was her job, but she meant she looked after the Kennedy money. “You could say I husband it. God knows I often feel married to it.”

  On the way home it occu
rred to him that he had been at ease with her from the first moment that she came forward after his talk. Their conversation at the coffee shop had been similarly smooth. She was the first woman he had really talked with since his wife died. Their subsequent get-togethers brought back the excitement of college days, talking about what one was reading, each of them unbound by any of the usual ties that bind those their age. He could not understand why she had never married. Surely men in number must have come pounding on her door. One night he dreamt first of his wife, then of Laura, and it was as if he was being given permission to be bold. It was the following day that he saw Laura with O’Kelly.

  It was in the restaurant in Wayzata, one Samuel had come to think of as theirs. Laura was even sitting at the table they had shared, her winsome smile turned now on O’Kelly. Samuel turned and left the restaurant. That night he burned all the silly poetry he had written. He sat up late sipping scotch and water and apologized to his dead wife, as if she could care that he was such a fool. It hurt him to realize that O’Kelly was a far more fitting match for Laura, a head taller with thick, silver hair and an expression that seemed the end or the beginning of a smile. When Samuel heard that Jack had taken a swing at Mort for an ungentlemanly remark, he wanted to call Laura and dissociate himself from his brother’s words.

  Learning that O’Kelly was married had slowed Samuel’s sense that he had been replaced. After Mass one Sunday, he ran into Laura and they talked brightly on the sidewalk outside and he felt the faint stir of hope.

  “Do you know Jack O’Kelly?” she asked.

  “The doctor.”

  “You were classmates, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “We all were, if you’ll count St. Mary’s.”

  “Did you know him then?”

  Cool gray eyes moved across the middle distance and came to rest on him. “Yes.”

  That one word was enough. The details he got, whether he wanted them or not, from Mortimer. Laura and O’Kelly had been engaged, more or less informally. She wore his class ring. But a freshman named Maureen had put an end to that.

  “So she never married,” Mort concluded.

  “Brokenhearted?”

  “After all these years, he would like to mend it.”

  “But he’s married.”

  “Not for long.”

  “I don’t believe Laura Kennedy would ever marry a divorced man. She’s Catholic through and through.”

  “You may be right.”

  43

  Dennis Grantley was sitting in Father Carmody’s room in Holy Cross House nursing a gill of Powers while the old priest talked on the phone to Phil Knight. Grantley would have felt like an eavesdropper if the old priest’s voice did not carry to the nurses’ station and beyond. If Carmody spoke that loudly in the confessional he would bring back public penance.

  “Nonsense,” Carmody shouted. “Have you talked to the man? All right. He’s incapable of such a thing.”

  He hummed as he listened, frowning at what he heard. He began to nod. “Of course. It has to be her. She’s the one.”

  When he hung up he looked at Grantley as if he had snuck in uninvited. Grantley lifted his glass; its moisture all that was left of the tot the priest had poured.

  “Have another.” Carmody nodded toward the bottle.

  “And for yourself, Father?” Grantley said, already on his feet and gripping the bottle.

  “No, no. I have it here for friends. And visitors,” he added, as if making a subtle distinction.

  “How goes the investigation?”

  “It’s over. It’s that woman. If he were still alive Mortimer would claim she proves his case against women at Notre Dame.”

  “Mrs. O’Kelly?”

  “Guilty as sin, however provoked by that idiot Mortimer Sadler. Of course, even if found guilty, she will be out in a year or so. Even the pope is waffling on capital punishment.”

  How bloodthirsty Carmody seemed. Of course, it was all abstract. His single great emotion was loyalty to Notre Dame, and the events that had disturbed the campus in recent days were all viewed in the light of their effect on the university. Grantley could both see the narrowness of the point of view and share it.

  “Well, you have to be on your way,” Carmody announced abruptly, reaching for Grantley’s glass. Grantley immediately brought it to his lips and drained the contents, lest he be robbed of the whiskey. He stood and handed over the glass. Carmody came with him to the door and then outside, where they stood in the cool of the evening, a sky full of stars above.

  “Peaceful,” Grantley said.

  “Every man in this house would prefer commotion to peace.”

  “Sound the fire alarm.”

  “What?”

  “They’re bored in the firehouse, too. They’d like a little commotion.”

  “A false alarm?”

  “Half of them are.”

  “Bah.”

  Carmody turned and went back inside. Grantley took the long way to the firehouse and his lonely room on its second floor. He thought of Agnes, felt a twinge of remorse seasoned with desire. He almost wished he had earned the guilt he felt, wished he had risen from the couch and knocked on her bedroom door. For all her flirtiness, she probably would have called the police if he responded to her tireless come-ons. A false alarm.

  At the firehouse, he did not go upstairs but to his car parked in the crescent of Flanner Hall. He stopped at the Morris Inn to verify that this was indeed Agnes’s night off.

  “She was looking for you,” Willa the butterball said, insinuation in her voice. Had Agnes been indiscreet and regaled her fellow waitresses with the story of his night on her couch? “She’s in there.” Willa pointed to the bar.

  Habitués of bars grow used to the dim and kindly lighting. They were silhouettes at best to Grantley. His name was called, but not by Agnes. He smiled into the darkness, stopped at the bar, and ordered a scotch and water. Be you Dewars of the word and not hearers only. Shame on him. He turned and made out the grinning face of Armitage Shanks, who had called his name. Agnes sat with him at a table. She beckoned to him and he moved, helpless, toward the Siren.

  “My night off,” she said brightly.

  “And mine on,” Shanks said, and then look horrified at what he had said. Grantley sat.

  “How’s the arthritis?” But Shanks had taken himself from the game by his ambiguous remark, no matter that Agnes had laughed. To her Grantley said, “Willa said you were asking for me.”

  “Willa,” Agnes said with mock disgust, but a simpering smile played on her painted lips.

  “Suspicion has settled on Maureen O’Kelly.”

  “Shhh,” Agnes said, laying a hand on his arm and tilting her head. And then Grantley saw Maureen O’Kelly at a corner table with Toolin.

  44

  Grantley’s remark reached them at their corner table and Toolin took Maureen’s hand.

  “It’s true,” she said. “They think I did it.”

  “They think I did it.”

  “Not any more.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  How matter-of-fact she sounded, ticking off the case against herself. Francie’s certainty that Paul Sadler had planted the plastic bag of deadly nightshade in her golf bag was dismissed as a daughter’s loyalty.

  “So how did it get there?”

  “God only knows.”

  “Someone put it there.”

  “Someone?”

  “Your husband?”

  She smiled. “He doesn’t have to get rid of me. He’s already left me.”

  “For Laura Kennedy.”

  “If she’ll have him. I broke them up long ago and neither can forgive me now.”

  “What exactly have the police said?”

  “I was advised to get a lawyer.”

  “You must. Someone has to talk sense to them.”

  “It’s not wise of you to be seen with me.”

  “I’ll never leave you.” His hand closed
over hers.

  * * *

  When Maureen went up to her room Francie was watching television without much interest.

  “Mom, let’s go home.”

  “They won’t let me.”

  “Who won’t let you?”

  “The police very politely asked that I stay here longer.”

  Francie rose and took her mother in her arms and they stood for a time in silent embrace.

  “Daddy was here.”

  “Oh.”

  “He stayed for fifteen minutes before he left. Maybe you should call him.”

  Maureen considered it. “You call him.”

  Francie picked up the phone and asked for her father’s room. A minute passed. She hung up. “No answer.”

  “It’s just as well.”

  * * *

  At two in the morning Francie made another call, a frantic summons for help. Her mother was in the bathroom gagging. Two men from the firehouse came in a red pickup and thundered up to the room in rubber coats and huge boots.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A pale Maureen looked out of the bathroom at the firemen.

  “I think I’ve been poisoned.”

  45

  Roger sat at his computer playing chess with an opponent halfway around the world, but his mind was full of a conversation he had had with Jacob Climacus. The botanist acted like the defense attorney for deadly nightshade.

  “If you ate the plant, or any part of it, sure, that would do you in. But in water? I doubt an amateur could pull that off.”

  Was Mrs. O’Kelly less of an amateur in this sense just because she had the plant in her garden? Climacus referred to the skill necessary to extract the poison and mix it with water. That was not the skill of a gardener.

  “How would it be done?”

  “A prescription for belladonna would make it easy.”

  On the screen, after ten minutes of inactivity, a move was made. Roger smiled and began to tap on his keyboard. Checkmate.

  Roger rose, the game of chess forgotten, and walked as if in a trance to the door. Outside, he got behind the wheel of his golf cart, turned the cart, and moved silently off across the campus walks to the Morris Inn.