Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

“Would you like some wine, Bishop?” she asked when she had filled his plate.

  “Do you have beer, Mrs. Murkin?”

  Bishop Wilenski opened his napkin and draped it over his episcopal tummy. What was it that was said of a man when he became a bishop? He would never again have a bad meal or have the truth spoken to him. Wilenski put his hands on the table and looked around benevolently. “What a wonderful place you have here, Father. No wonder you like it. I’m looking forward to being shown around.”

  Marie, having heard this, became ever more unctuous. Surely the bishop had come with good news.

  After lunch, Roger took the bishop first to the senior center, where Edna Hospers explained her operation. The seniors seemed intent on showing the bishop what a good time they were all having. On to the church, then; Roger first showed Bishop Wilenski the side chapel, and then they moved slowly down the main aisle, studying the stained glass windows. It was impossible to read Wilenski’s expression. Finally they were settled in the pastor’s study.

  “I wish I had good news for you, Father. I’m afraid that the protest of the old people and the threat of an injunction have displeased the cardinal.”

  Roger waited.

  “I have sent out a few letters of reprieve.”

  “Father Sledz called me.”

  “The cardinal told me to wait when I suggested sending one to you.”

  “Then nothing is settled?”

  “Father, if it were my decision alone …” He stopped himself. “What I would suggest, and I’ve given some thought to this, is that you make an appointment with the cardinal. No one could make a case for the parish better than you.”

  “Did you mention this to him?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He said it couldn’t do any harm.”

  “Could it do any good?”

  “I have long since given up trying to read the cardinal’s mind.”

  Two days later, Roger Dowling was admitted to the cardinal’s residence and put in a room to wait for him. In a few minutes, he heard the heavy step of the cardinal, who in a moment was in the room. He held out his hand but prevented Roger from kissing his ring, and they simply shook hands.

  “Be seated, Father. Be seated.”

  The domed hairless head of the cardinal, the object of jocular remarks from the clergy, seemed oddly shaped. Youthful polio had affected the cardinal’s gait, but the smile on his smooth unlined face was beatific. He was a native of Chicago, as he reminded Father Dowling, and had come by what seemed an inevitable if circuitous route to his present post. His smile faded slowly as he looked at Father Dowling.

  “You certainly have loyal parishioners, Father.”

  “It is the parish they’re loyal to.”

  “Of course. You have no idea how I envy pastors. My life has been largely academic and administrative. Of course, I am myself a pastor now.” A pastor who had taken part in the conclave that had elected the present pope, the cardinal having been assigned to Chicago by John Paul II. “It still pains me that any decision I make must anger as many people as it pleases.”

  “Whatever you decide, Your Eminence, will not displease me.”

  The cardinal looked at him, as if to see whether this was merely the pro forma remark of one whose obedience he could claim. He joined his hands, elbows on the arms of his chair. He studied the ring on his right hand that the late pope had put there. “In any case, your anger or pleasure will have to wait. I am still undecided about St. Hilary’s. Bishop Wilenski gave an excellent account of your parish.”

  “I have enjoyed being there.”

  A cardinalatial smile. “You are careful with your tenses, Father. How long have you been there?”

  Roger told him. “I was in Yakima then.”

  Was he suggesting that he had had to move more than once at the pleasure of his superiors?

  “Tell me about the Devere family. Some of them have been buried in your church?” The little side chapel did not seem much of an impediment to whatever the cardinal might decide. He was interested in the Menotti stained glass windows. “Some beautiful windows from older parishes have been relocated in new churches in the suburbs.” He paused. “Not always with aesthetic effect. Still, it is a solution.” He paused again. “One that would prompt another public letter from the artist.”

  Roger said nothing.

  “He was certainly eloquent. I had no idea he was still alive. Have you met him, Father?”

  “No.” He seemed to be exonerating himself from prompting Angelo Menotti’s letter.

  “But we cannot be as temperamental as artists.”

  For ten minutes, the cardinal reviewed for Father Dowling the pressing economic reasons for retrenchment. Churches could not be retained as museums. Roger found himself sympathizing with the problems this frail-looking man faced. A prince of the Church. There must be times when that exalted title seemed ironic to him.

  A young priest appeared in the doorway and gave a nod. Time for the next appointment. The demanding schedule must go on. Roger knelt for the cardinal’s blessing.

  “God bless you, Father.”

  The remark might have been addressed to a condemned man.

  20

  Menteur called the pressroom, and Tetzel answered. “Did you like my latest piece on St. Hilary’s, Lyle?”

  Menteur asked, “Is Rebecca there?”

  “I haven’t seen her in days.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Is she on leave?”

  “Tetzel, that woman is a bundle of energy, a model for us all.”

  “Rebecca?” Was Menteur talking of the overweight, chain-smoking, man-hating bimbo who occupied the desk next to Tetzel’s?

  “Check out her story on Menotti. It’s already on the Web site.”

  “Menotti! But he’s part of my assignment.”

  “How so?”

  “He designed and installed the windows in St. Hilary’s, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Let’s not get into motives. The church closing story is dead, Tetzel. Have you seen the new list?”

  Tetzel had his own list, but Menteur was already on it. Rebecca came into the pressroom then, and Tetzel said, “I’ll pass on your message.” He hung up.

  Rebecca was whistling tunelessly as she collapsed into her chair and turned first east, then west. “Any good news about St. Hilary’s?”

  Tetzel tried to smile knowingly. Was she referring to the list Menteur had mentioned?

  “Your stories probably will have a lot to do with getting St. Hilary’s off the chopping block.”

  Tetzel was astounded. Was Rebecca actually praising him? The woman had been in the grips of professional jealousy since being assigned to the pressroom, eclipsed by the presence of a seasoned and renowned reporter. She knew of the novel he wasn’t writing, too, and there was nothing more likely to anger a colleague than the suggestion that one of their own was at work on a novel. Novel. Madeline Schutz. My God, he had to write that up before Rebecca decided to go back to it. From now on he would concentrate on the woman found hanging in Amy Gorman’s garage. Rebecca avoided violence, except of the verbal kind.

  Tetzel turned and tapped a key, bringing up the Tribune’s Web site. Rebecca smiled at him from the screen. He turned the monitor so she couldn’t see herself.

  Rebecca seemed able to see around corners, though. “Is my interview with Angelo Menotti already on the Web site?”

  “It’s a slack news day.”

  Rebecca took umbrage at that, doubtless because she expected him to reciprocate her praise.

  He took a deep breath. “Great story.”

  “Thank you. I would have thought Menotti would be happy about the project to make a book of all the stained glass windows he designed.”

  “He isn’t?”

  “He says over his dead body.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Ancient. You may be right. As long as he’s alive the project is dead.”
r />   There was no reason not to read her story about Angelo Menotti, and he did. It was largely big gobs of quotations from the artist, Rebecca confining herself to crisp questions that got the old man going. She should have given him co-billing. My life, as told to Rebecca Farmer. Maybe he would try that technique in his account of his interview with Madeline Schutz. He should have brought a camera with him. Well, maybe not. He wanted to portray her as a phenomenally successful writer, and the setting told against that. Her account of how she had been jobbed out of royalties on the first three hundred thousand—three hundred thousand!—copies of each of her chronicles should be shouted from the rooftops.

  “Good idea,” Rebecca said when he told her he intended to go on with that story.

  Tetzel could reconcile himself to the prolific author because of the way her publisher was shafting her.

  “Want to go over to the Jury Room?” Rebecca asked.

  “Maybe I’ll meet you there later.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “This last chapter has been giving me trouble.”

  “Chapter!”

  “Sometimes I wish I had never begun the damned thing, but I’m in the home stretch now.” He sighed a creative sigh. Rebecca muttered something and lumbered from the pressroom, wearing her laurels. Featured on the paper’s Web site. He groaned. Scooped by Rebecca! What now seemed to Tetzel the heart of the series he had been doing on St. Hilary’s had been purloined by a crafty colleague. If she hadn’t been put up to it by the loathsome Menteur. The editor brooded in his smoke-free office knowing that the courthouse had been exempted from the draconian antismoking ordinance that had been patched together in a smoke-filled room and rushed to a vote when there was a bare quorum in the city council. It would be like Menteur, his mouth full of chewing gum, to send Rebecca down to Peoria to interview the great artist Angelo Menotti. Spite, pure spite. Well, he would show them what real reporting was.

  “What do you know about publishers, Tuttle?”

  “What’s your next question?”

  “Argyle House, ever hear of it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I want you to go there with me, as my counsel. There are legal sides to this.”

  “Can you afford me?”

  “Take it!” came from the outer office. Hazel.

  Tuttle shouted back. “Run a Google on Argyle House.”

  “I already am.”

  A minute later there was the racket of the printer in Hazel’s office, and then she bustled in. She was about to toss it on the desk when she was given pause by the mountain of books, papers, briefs, foam containers from Chinese restaurants. She handed the printout to Tetzel.

  “I’ll read this to you on the drive, Tuttle.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Wisconsin.”

  “Wisconsin!”

  “Just across the state line. We’ll leave Hazel here if you’re worried about the Mann Act.”

  Hazel took a playful swing at Tetzel and went rhythmically from the room.

  21

  Flying back to Chicago from a lecture in Tucson, Margaret Ward sipped her sorry excuse for a drink and wished she had flown first class. On domestic flights, that hardly seemed worth it, but you did get a decent drink. Drinks, if you wanted them, and after some lecture crowds the plural seemed called for. Good heavens, what was known as the conservative movement! All those complacent people she had just left, residing in the very state Barry Goldwater had represented, yet who seemed to think it was just a matter of hanging on to their money. Not that she herself had the least qualms about prudently increasing the amount that was hers as a Devere. She had been a conservative, a philosophical conservative, an Edmund Burke conservative, long before she gave a thought to money. At first she had fought the love she felt for her husband, Bernard. He had been more of a Devere than she was, of an artistic temperament. All they’d had was five childless years. Only her brother, James, seemed to realize that what August Devere had amassed had to be managed and multiplied, and not just by investment. Devere Inc. had made its money from the coal mines of southern Illinois and was now into various sources of power, the proud owner of several nuclear power plants. How long had it been since a new such plant had been built? Devere platforms rose above the angry waters of the Gulf, pumping oil from the depths below. Thanks to James, Devere was in the front ranks of those who scoffed at the folly of ethanol, wasting all that corn to produce a fuel that cost more than gasoline. Only in America, America as she had become.

  Margaret put her head back, closed her eyes, and thought about Margaret Devere Ward. Know thyself. That sounds so easy, but what is more difficult, really? She knew a priest in New Orleans who always greeted her with “What’s it all mean?” Father Boileau seemed to be kidding; you had to know him to know what a serious man he was. Never be serious about serious things? That wasn’t it. Has anyone ever become what he set out to be? Until she met Bernard, Margaret had thought seriously about becoming a nun. The only one she had ever told this to was her grandmother.

  The old woman, not so old then, had nodded. “It is a temptation.”

  “Temptation?”

  “Unless you become a Carmelite. Or better still a Carthusian.”

  There were no Carthusian convents in the United States. Margaret had visited one, nestled in the foothills of the French Alps, but she had been unable to imagine herself a member of that community. It would have been like emigrating. As for the Carmelites, well, it turned out there were Carmelites and there were Carmelites, and she had met some bad apples. Bad Carmelite apples. It was then that she became aware of what was happening in the Church. It proved to be a detour of more than a decade. She had given up then, referring it all to the Holy Spirit, and had broadened her horizon, encouraged by Michael, who really hadn’t the least interest in any of it. Was that why she had loved him?

  What an odd thought. Of late, she had been reading a lot about acedia—a neglected capital sin. Translating it as sloth didn’t begin to capture it. Distaste for spiritual things? Too often now she thought of her enthusiasms as trivial. Was that a temptation? Finally, at Jane’s urging she had gone to Father Dowling.

  “Do you ever get bored, Father?”

  “Not when I have visitors like you.”

  Margaret smiled. “I’m growing tired of doing what I know are good things to do.”

  “Take a vacation.”

  “I recently spent months on a freighter. Once I thought I had a religious vocation.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She told him about it, she mentioned what her grandmother had said, and she spoke of her books and lectures, and while she did she began to feel ashamed, coming here to whine. She fell silent. “I sound pretty silly, don’t I?”

  “Your grandmother is a wise woman.”

  “All this is a temptation?”

  “The slough of despond.”

  “Where does that phrase come from.”

  “Bunyan.”

  “Paul?”

  Had she ever seen a priest laugh so heartily?

  “Your family may very well save this parish, you know. Bishop Wilenski was quite interested to know that you live in the parish and that August Devere commissioned the stained glass windows by Angelo Menotti.”

  “A funny thing. His grandson was a sailor on that freighter I was on.”

  “His grandson.”

  Margaret smiled. “Our family seems haunted by Angelo Menotti. My mother insists on helping a third-rate art historian just because he professes an interest in Menotti.” She stood. “I’ve wasted enough of your time.”

  “I’m glad you stopped by.”

  He came with her to the door, and when she got into her car and looked back he was still standing there. What a fool he must think she was.

  22

  Tuttle suggested taking Peanuts Pianone along, just for the ride, hardly for company.

  “Is this his day off?”

  “A day like any other
.”

  As Tuttle had hoped, Peanuts offered to take them in a police cruiser, and he tanked up in the departmental garage before coming for them. He was wearing a uniform. “My suit is at the cleaners.”

  Tetzel groaned and got in the backseat, which was separated from the front by wire mesh. Thank God Peanuts hadn’t brought a dog. Tuttle almost got the passenger door closed before Peanuts took off. For the first several miles, he used the siren, zipping along, changing lanes, leaning over the wheel, a manic smile on his face. Once he got that out of his system, he turned the siren off and settled into a steady eighty miles an hour. They had turned onto I-94, headed north, before Tuttle solved the mystery of his seat belt.

  “Keep your eye out for a McDonald’s,” Peanuts told Tuttle.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any Chinese on the highway.”

  “South of Beijing,” Tetzel said. It occurred to him that he had fallen in with fools. What after all was the reason for this trip? The suggestion had been his; he had to take the blame. J. J. Rudolph was Madeline Schutz’s editor at Argyle House, and Tetzel had wanted to interview her before running the risk of libel in his story about the exploited author. Imagine showing up with this menagerie. His idea had been to call ahead when they were on the way. Now he just hoped the editor would not be in her office and he could rely on his imagination and the legal department in writing about her.

  Before they left Illinois, Peanuts swung off when he saw a McDonald’s sign. The drive-through? No way. Tuttle and Peanuts wanted the comfort of the plastic seats that accommodated the average American rear end. Tetzel had often wondered if they sold beer at McDonald’s. Now he knew the sorry truth. He settled for a small order of french fries and munched them while his companions did away with several Big Macs and slurped soft drinks from quart-sized containers.

  “Want to take something along, Peanuts?” Tuttle asked.

  “We’ll probably find another.”

  “Another?”

  Tuttle smiled at Tetzel. “It’s his car.”

  Well, the taxpayers’, anyway.