Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

  Edna was seated at her desk doing nothing. She stared at Marie when the housekeeper entered. “Is he going to talk to the bishop?”

  “He hasn’t decided yet.” She said this matter-of-factly. It was one thing for Marie Murkin to be critical of the pastor, but it wouldn’t do to have Edna follow suit.

  “Marie, is there any hope?”

  “There is always hope.” Suddenly Marie felt like a pillar of strength, the one person in the parish who kept her wits about her and her chin high. “Make some tea, Edna.”

  Doing something is always better than doing nothing. Marie was awash in tea, but it was the principle of the thing. Edna was soon on her feet and a bustle of activity. Marie felt that she had already done good.

  Once the water was on, she suggested that she and Edna go downstairs and perk up the old people. “They’re just moping around, Edna.”

  “Do you blame them?”

  “Of course I blame them. They’re old enough to know that life has its ups and downs. Anyway, we aren’t down yet, not by a long shot.”

  When they came into the gym, they were soon surrounded, and Marie made a little speech, a pep talk. What did they think Father Dowling would feel if he saw them like this? Was he brooding in his study, waiting for the other shoe to fall? You bet he wasn’t. He was going to go downtown and confront the powers that be. They were in good hands with Father Dowling. Everything was going to be all right.

  “So let’s get with it! Let’s …” Marie paused and then in a high voice cried, “Let’s have fun!”

  From the doorway where he had been listening, Willie began a cheer, pounding the floor with the handle of his broom. The cheer was taken up, and Marie and Edna were lifted by it as they went back upstairs for their tea.

  “How long have you been in the parish, Marie?”

  Marie pondered the question and the reason for its being asked. In the circumstances, it seemed understandable, but her old rivalry with Edna made Marie wary. She didn’t like to think how much older than Edna she was. Her fiction was that they were contemporaries, matched opponents in age at least. Was Edna suggesting that Marie’s career had been so long that having it stopped would mean less anguish?

  “It seems like yesterday I came here,” Marie said.

  “I know. I feel the same way. I have gotten so used to it. It just never occurred to me that it could end.”

  “Now, now, cheer up.”

  “You were wonderful downstairs, Marie.”

  Marie harumphed. “Well, Willie seemed to like it.”

  On the way back to the rectory, she realized that she had not set her phone so that it would ring at the school; of course, when she left the house her destination had been the church. She went along the walk to where it intersected the walk coming from the rectory to the church. She stopped and looked at the side door of the church. Go inside and pray? That seemed self-indulgent, a retreat from battle. You couldn’t expect God to do things you could do yourself. Besides, she had to check her phone to see who might have called in her absence. There had been several calls from Jane Devere.

  7

  The grousing in the senior center about the threatened closing of St. Hilary’s took some days to find an appropriate form of expression. Marie Murkin’s pep talk had equivocal results.

  “Have fun?”

  “Dancing on the Titanic.”

  Massimo Bartelli kept his peace, appraising the bewildered men and women around him. They were old, that was clear, creaky of limb, hunched, weighed down by a lifetime of ups and downs. Massimo, too, was old, but in this group he felt young. It was when old Reynolds announced that he was not coming back to the center, it was as good as closed already, that Massimo stepped forward.

  “Nonsense! We must organize.” Long ago, he had led his fellow workers at Fox River Punch and Drill into the union and reigned for years as shop steward before rising into the upper ranks of the union, never more to operate a punch press. Silence fell, and he was surrounded. He smiled confidently into their anxious faces. “In union there is strength.”

  “Bah,” said Reynolds.

  Massimo ignored him and outlined his plan. The first thing was to elect a leader. He looked around, waiting.

  “It’s your idea,” Reynolds said.

  “Is that a nomination?”

  It was. Massimo was elected by acclamation and turned immediately to the question of what the group would be called.

  “SOS,” Reynolds said, chuckling. This was greeted by baffled expressions. “Save Our Seniors?”

  Massimo suggested a broader designation. “It is the parish, not just ourselves.”

  “What’s in a name?”

  Eventually, Massimo’s suggestion was accepted. Save St. Hilary’s.

  “Ssssh,” said the disgusted Reynolds, but he was ignored.

  Marge Wilpert was elected vice chairman and O’Rourke, once a CPA, treasurer. Massimo withdrew to a corner with his fellow officers.

  “First we must let Father Dowling know,” Marge said.

  O’Rourke agreed.

  To Massimo, Father Dowling represented management. “Father Dowling has enough things on his mind. We want to surprise him with the support we can give him.”

  “What exactly will we do?” Marge asked.

  “Publicity,” Massimo said. “A public outcry.”

  “The parish bulletin?”

  Massimo smiled. “I have a better idea.”

  The Fox River Tribune was a force for reaction, but who is more full of grievances than a reporter? Massimo had contacts in the courthouse, and he knew Tuttle, whose father had joined the union after retiring from the post office and going to work for a private delivery service, needing added income to finance his son’s long march through law school. The union had covered the funeral expenses of Tuttle senior, and the son had wept with gratitude. He told his fellow officers he would seek legal advice, a soothing phrase, as he had known it would be. No need to mention Tuttle’s name.

  After ten minutes of waiting for the elevator that never came, Massimo mounted the four flights to the lawyer’s office. Tuttle’s secretary said that the lawyer was expected momentarily and asked his business.

  “What sort of benefits does he give you, Hazel?” Her nameplate was on her desk.

  “Benefits?”

  “Medical care, retirement …”

  Hers was an unattractive laugh, exhibiting a small fortune in dental work. “I’m lucky to get my salary.”

  Massimo shook his head. On another occasion he might have evangelized Hazel on the power of organization. For the moment, he considered the implications of her remark. If Tuttle were in need of business, he might balk at the proposal that he represent Ssssh (Reynolds’s revenge: His hissing acronym was hard to forget once he had made it) pro bono. Such doubts fled when the lawyer arrived, looked at Massimo for a moment, and then swept him into his arms. He remembered his father’s funeral.

  “Come in, come in,” he cried, opening the door of the inner office. “No calls, Hazel.” Tuttle’s office looked like a landfill, papers, plastic cups, Styrofoam boxes, trial records, books everywhere. Tuttle made a ringer with his tweed hat on the top of the coat stand and gestured Massimo to a chair. “Just put that stuff on the floor.” Before sitting down himself, Tuttle retrieved his Irish tweed hat and put it on.

  “I assume you have heard of the closing of St. Hilary’s, Mr. Tuttle.”

  “An outrage!”

  “I have been deputized by those who frequent the senior center at the parish to do something to prevent that outrage.”

  “Good.”

  “I wish we could afford your professional advice.”

  Tuttle leaned forward, making room for his elbows on the desktop. “Mr. Bartelli, I am eternally in your debt. How could I ever forget your support when …” The lawyer’s eyes filled with tears and he looked away.

  Massimo noticed the framed photograph of Tuttle senior, positioned above the law degree. “In union there is
strength.”

  Tuttle nodded, wiping his eyes. “What are your plans?”

  Massimo approached the point of his visit gradually. Of course the news of the threatened closing had appeared.

  “In the Chicago Tribune,” Tuttle said, frowning.

  “You are close to reporters on the Fox River paper, I believe.”

  A hand lifted to tip back the tweed hat. Tuttle’s sparkling eyes indicated that he had made the logical link. Within minutes, they were busy composing the statement Tuttle promised to get prominently into the local paper.

  “What are their ad rates?”

  Tuttle smiled. “I plan an end run. Does the name Tetzel mean anything to you?”

  Massimo sat back. “I am sure it is going to.”

  Hazel tapped up the statement on her computer and printed a copy for Massimo. Tuttle folded his copy twice and put it into his tweed hat.

  “Mr. Bartelli asked about my medical benefits.”

  “Thank God for them, Hazel. Medicare is a marvelous system.”

  As they went down the four flights of stairs, Massimo asked about the elevator.

  “It hasn’t worked for years.”

  “Have you complained?”

  “It’s useless.”

  “We could picket the building. Close it down.”

  “No! Good Lord, no. Where could I match the rent I pay here?”

  8

  Menteur’s residual Methodism sufficed to leave him unmoved by the prospect of Catholic churches folding. On the other hand, local loyalty suggested that the paper should object to St. Hilary’s being threatened. Father Dowling was one of the few priests Menteur had ever felt comfortable with, but Bartelli seemed to be asking that he run an ad protesting the closing gratis.

  “Talk to the business office,” he suggested, frowning at Tuttle, who had brought Bartelli to him.

  “Mr. Bartelli is active in local unions,” Tuttle said, addressing the remark to the ceiling.

  Menteur began to chew his gum furiously. Several years before, his soul had been seared by a strike at the paper. Circulation was dropping, advertising revenue was at an all-time low, editorial was under constant pressure from the business side, and the printers wanted a hefty raise and lots of new perks. Menteur, like an idiot, had pled with them, calling the paper a family whose members had to stick together in trying times. His remarks were considered patronizing as well as a ruse to keep a bigger slice of the pie in editorial. They didn’t believe him when he told them what the entry-level salary for reporters was.

  The strike strung on. They were down to a single sheet, a damned newsletter, before management caved and the presses began to hum again. Menteur’s father had been a plumber, he considered himself a man of the people, but after that strike he seriously doubted the intelligence of the common man. Now Bartelli was looking at Menteur across the editorial desk as if it were a bargaining table.

  “Of course, we could feed what you want to say into a news story,” Menteur said.

  “Good idea,” Tuttle cried. Menteur would have liked to pull that tweed hat down over his ears.

  Bartelli slid a sheet across the desk to Menteur, then began to pat his shirt pocket. “Okay to smoke in here?”

  “No!”

  “You can’t smoke in your own office? I thought this was a newspaper.”

  Menteur could have wept. Bartelli’s remark called up the wonderful days of yore when newspaper work had been done in clinging clouds of smoke. “It’s a city law.”

  “How can they enforce it?”

  “Spies. Informers.”

  Bartelli shook his head. “You should have picketed the courthouse.”

  “You can smoke in the courthouse.”

  “And not here?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Menteur said, chewing furiously. He rose. “Let’s go outside for a smoke.”

  They went down in the elevator and huddled in a shadeless corner, exposed to a brisk breeze. Menteur lit Bartelli’s cigarette for him, then his own, but the smoke was whipped away before he could inhale it. He turned with hunched shoulders to the wall and filled his lungs with soothing smoke.

  Bartelli was shaking his head when Menteur turned back to him. “How can you enjoy a cigarette like this?” He tossed his into the street. “I’d rather quit.”

  Menteur had brought the sheet Bartelli had given him. He assured him he would get out the news of the formation of Save St. Hilary’s. They actually shook hands, and the triumphant Tuttle led his client up the street.

  Menteur tried without success to derive some satisfaction from his cigarette, then flung it down angrily and started, accelerating as he went, toward the courthouse. He spat out his mouthful of gum.

  He rushed through the revolving doors and then across the black and white marble squares as if engaged in a game of hopscotch to the elevators. From the moment he had entered the building, he imagined that he could smell tobacco. When he got out of the elevator and headed for the pressroom he was shaking a cigarette free. He stopped in the doorway.

  Tetzel sat at his computer wreathed in smoke.

  Rebecca Farmer, at the sound of footsteps, put something in the bottom drawer of her desk before turning. “Mr. Menteur!”

  Tetzel swung in his chair and had to brake it before he turned 360 degrees.

  Menteur busied himself lighting his cigarette. He took a chair and dragged blissfully on his Pall Mall. “You lucky bastards,” he breathed. “Sorry,” he said to Rebecca.

  She made a dismissive wave with her nicotine-stained hand.

  “You two know about the threat to St. Hilary’s? Okay. A group has been formed to protest it.” He gave Bartelli’s sheet of paper to Rebecca. “Write it up. Wring the reader’s heart. Appeal to local pride. More than religion is involved here.” He might have been addressing the shade of his Methodist father.

  Rebecca read the sheet, nodding.

  “You came over here just to tell us this?” Tetzel said in a wondering tone.

  “And to have a goddamn cigarette.”

  “Let’s go over to the Jury Room,” Tetzel suggested.

  “Can you smoke there?”

  Tetzel shook his head. Rebecca opened the bottom drawer she had just closed and brought out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red and several glasses. She poured a generous amount and handed the glass to Menteur.

  He took it with tears in his eyes. “Why did I ever want to be an editor?”

  He had another bump and two more cigarettes while Rebecca went to work on a sob story about St. Hilary’s.

  “Is it just the seniors?” she asked.

  “Call them concerned parishioners.”

  Rebecca turned back to her keyboard.

  He had her first draft when he rose to go. He stood for a moment, looking around the smoke-wreathed room, shaking his head sadly. “You lucky bastards,” he growled.

  9

  With Jane Devere, Amos had adopted the attitude of Father Dowling toward the threatened closing of St. Hilary’s. “There is no final list, Jane.”

  “A list was published with St. Hilary’s on it.”

  “Apparently there are several lists.”

  “The Devere family has been in St. Hilary’s parish for generations, Amos. I consider this an attack on us.”

  “We must see how things develop.”

  “Nonsense. We must make sure that things don’t develop. Those old people at the parish center are showing the right kind of gumption. You’re a lawyer, Amos. How can we stop them?”

  “There are several possibilities,” he said carefully, “but anything you do could backfire.”

  “Remember when those idiots in city hall announced they were going to tear down the old courthouse? The one building for blocks around that isn’t an eyesore and they wanted to reduce it to rubble. An injunction stopped them.”

  Amos remembered. The old courthouse was an impressive building. It now served as a local museum instead of making way for the parking garage the mayo
r’s son-in-law had planned to build there.

  “The chancery office is not run by politicians, Jane.”

  “Ha. Anyone will bend to the will of the people.”

  The will of the people in this case meant the wishes of the Devere family. Young James, as Jane called her son, came to Amos’s office. Spurred by his mother, he had brought himself up to date on the threat to St. Hilary’s.

  “Is there a statute of limitations on gifts, Amos? Are donors to understand that after the passage of a few years what they have contributed to will be torn to the ground? Is that the message the cardinal wants to send?”

  “Your mother is thinking of the Menotti windows.”

  “Of course she is, but there is more. My father and grandfather are buried in the side chapel of St. Hilary’s. It would be like desecrating graves.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “My mother intends to be buried there. It is like a family vault.” James paused. “I may end up there myself.”

  “I wonder if there was any special agreement about those graves.”

  “There must have been.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “We’re counting on you, Amos.”

  The piece in the local paper about the group organized by the seniors in the parish center was maudlin. You would have thought that a homeless center was being shut down and its clients thrown into the street. Tuttle, it emerged, had been advising the group, and that in Amos’s mind tainted their efforts. Perhaps there could be a dignified and legal way to dissuade the archdiocese from closing St. Hilary’s.

  When Father Dowling showed Amos the condition of the parish records, Amos blanched. Several old wooden file cabinets whose drawers required real muscle to open were in the basement of the rectory, where the Franciscans who had preceded Roger Dowling had moved them. There were dividers in the drawer they opened, but papers seemed to have been stuffed in any which way.

  “Of course, the records of marriages and baptisms and funerals are in my study.”