Decatur

by Patricia Lynch

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Getting Real

  Max’s apartment was in a new building with big square windows that overlooked the parking lot. He had done the best that he could to make it seem less like something that had come off a factory line with the label ‘divorced man’s dwelling’. He had put down a Tibetan prayer rug in the entry way and hung brass Indian bells that came in triangles along one wall. He had a black-and-white photograph that he had taken in the New Mexican desert of an adobe church with a crow flying over it blown up and framed over a maroon leatherette bench. It looked pretty good. He bought Italian fabric from the import shop in Champaign, Urbana and used a thick cotton with a modern black-and-white egg print as his bedspread and had a couple of matching pillows with saffron fringe borders made by a woman he dated briefly who was in the music department at Charlesworth. There were plants in macramé holders hanging by the windows that came from his former home in Chicago. Black-and-white photographic postcards he collected of jazz greats were tacked on a wall in what he hoped was an insouciant way. A good stereo setup was on the floor with wooden crates crammed full of albums. Stacks of books were everywhere as the one big shelf was overstuffed. Next to that he had a real leather Eames chair, his best piece of furniture, and its matching ottoman. That also came from Chicago. The kitchen, though was pretty much right off the rack with white walls, green Formica counters, and ivy-patterned wall paper. That alone screamed his divorced status to Max but he didn’t have the will to tackle a room where he spent time only to make coffee or eat the occasional sandwich. He hated cooking for one.

  To Marilyn and Father Weston standing in the entryway of Professor Max’s Rosenbaum’s one-bedroom apartment on North Main Street, the whole thing seemed exotic. The priest couldn’t help himself, he felt a rush of pleasure at the riotous stacks of books and records and couldn’t wait to thumb through both stacks. Then he checked himself and nodded in a formal way to the professor. This wasn’t a social call. Marilyn shyly tucked her hand into her waitress uniform pocket, she had never seen anything so sophisticated, the postcards on the wall looked like they came from all over the world and the furniture was so mod and no one she knew kept a statue of Buddha on top of their stereo crates.

  Max held the door for them and they came into the living room. He went right to the big square window, took a quick look and lowered the bamboo blinds. It was just a little past seven, so Father Weston must have picked up Marilyn right after work.

  “So you are being watched by the FBI?” Father Weston said a little more sharply than he meant, but he seated himself on the maroon bench while Marilyn sat on the leather ottoman tucking her ballet-slippered feet to one side and under.

  “Oh, Max, it doesn’t have to do with what happened in Chicago, does it? We parked in the back by the trash bins,” Marilyn offered. She was wearing Charlie perfume and was glad suddenly that she had washed her glossy black hair this morning. This was almost like being in a movie.

  Father Weston was frowning. “An agent came asking about you in church today, in the confessional, the nervy bastard. I sent him packing but we have to get everything out in the open now. So what did happen in Chicago?”

  Max bit his lip. “A tragedy, Frank. A graduate student of mine went off the rails and committed suicide. The more conservative elements of the school blamed it on some of what I was teaching. I should have told you more about it from the beginning. I’m a “person of interest” to the FBI. The kid died while taking an acid trip that I didn’t have anything to do with, but I was open with my students about how shamans and oracles used psychotropic drugs to access the Divine - so there you go. My critics had a field day.” The words rushed out of Max, let loose from the dam of his emotions. He looked at Father Weston who nodded slowly, taking it in.

  “I believe him, Father W. I think people can be so narrow sometimes when you aren’t like everybody else,” Marilyn said softly.

  “You would know,” Father W said with a little smile, “Nothing to do with the mob, then?”

  “No, where’d you get that idea? Let me guess, the feds,” Max said.

  “See,” Marilyn chimed in.

  “So the post at Charlesworth is your penance,” Father W said but his voice didn’t have its usual warm tones.

  Max felt the familiar dread knotting in his stomach. He could tell the priest was deeply unsettled and the fact that he had brought Marilyn along meant he was worried about her too. These were the only people in Decatur that mattered to him right now. They couldn’t just drift out of his life although maybe that’s what should be expected after what happened in Chicago. So much had already been lost.

  “I asked Marilyn to come along, Max, because now we’re all in this together. I introduced you two and I think that may have been a rash decision on my part,” Father Weston grimaced.

  “You were only trying to help, Father, maybe Max can give me some tools to help me understand why things happen the way they do. I can’t just keep pretending that it’s normal. ” Marilyn said as she fished a cigarette out of her bag.

  “Let’s have some bourbon on the rocks, talk this out, and stop acting like we’re at a funeral. We’re three grown people thrown together for some reason that we can’t quite yet see,” Max said and moved without waiting for reply to the kitchen where he kept his meager stock of booze.

  Father Weston thought he should refuse but Marilyn was up on her feet asking if she could help Max and the next thing he knew there were ice-trays being cracked and a bottle of Jim Beam was on the kitchen table.

  “But do you have to use hypnosis and all the talk about past life regression, it makes me nervous, how would it look if it ever got out?” asked Father Weston, getting up himself now and pacing the room. “It’s innocent bad luck enough that I would hire a couple of drug dealing carnies that some person unknown kills - along with a third victim now. But it doesn’t look so great, as Bishop Quincy points out, that I’m associating with a “person of interest” to the FBI.”

  “I’m still getting used to being a person under suspicion, Frank. It’s not something I volunteer easily,” said Max truthfully.

  Father Weston sighed. “The Bishop isn’t happy, Max.”

  “What do you think we should do?” asked Max.

  “I think you should stop the work you’re doing with Marilyn for starters.” Father Weston took a sip of the bourbon poured into a jelly jar. It went down sweet and hot. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Max breathed deeply. “What do you think, Marilyn?”

  Marilyn was looking at the Buddha. “The jewel is in the lotus,” she said slowly like trying a foreign phrase out. Max and Father Weston took a quick look at one another over the rims of their drinks.

  “Did you tell Marilyn about the Monsignor?” asked Max on an impulse. Marilyn cocked her head like a bird and her dark eyes widened.

  “What about the Monsignor?” she asked in a quick breathy whisper, her bosom heaving ever so slightly under her black uniform.

  “I’m sorry, Marilyn. I thought you knew,” Father Weston said cautiously.

  “Knew what? What happened to him? I know I don’t go to mass much but I have a right to know what’s going on.” Marilyn tried to keep the panic out of her voice.

  “He’s important to you then, Marilyn?” Max asked softly.

  “Of course he’s important, he believed in me once, once when I really needed to be believed,” Marilyn said impatiently, feeling wave after wave of anxiety washing over her.

  “Was that when he attempted the exorcism?” Max tried saying the word in a neutral way that would rob it of all its threatening import.

  “Max! You’re treading on ground you have no right to, this is parish business,” Father Weston broke in, feeling shocked at the way Max used the story he had told him in a bar to pry into Marilyn’s past.

  But Marilyn wasn’t paying attention: she was falling down a rabbit hole of sorrow for the old man. The Monsignor. He had been so kind so long ago on a
night that was full of the things that had tortured Marilyn for her entire life. Now he was hurt, he was badly hurt. She knew it. In her mind she saw the old priest with his wispy white hair slumping over in his recliner. There was someone with him. Who was with him? She couldn’t quite see, but he was leaning over him, a big shadow leaning over him. “He’s not well, is he? He’s been left on a shore he can’t get back from. Oh, no,” she moaned and sat down, taking a sip of her drink to steady herself as she felt Max’s hand on her shoulder. The Buddha on the Max’s stereo crate seemed to be gliding towards the edge under its own power. Father Weston drew a sharp intake of breath.

  “Watch it!” Father Weston exclaimed as Max let go of Marilyn to catch the bronze statue just as it started to fall off the crate. “I’m sorry you’re upset. The Monsignor has suffered a massive stroke. It’s unlikely he’ll recover,” said Father Weston evenly. He had experienced one of Marilyn’s telekinetic episodes when they had first met, strayed and gotten carried away. He had never forgotten it. “I didn’t know you cared so much for him.” Tears shone in Marilyn’s eyes. “I know he cared about you.” Marilyn nodded.

  “Why don’t we ever talk about the things that matter until it’s too late?” she asked in a way that made the world seem big and Max’s exotic living room with them inside of it the only haven on earth. “I don’t think I want to stop working with Max, Father. I need to understand and to be understood before I die.”

  “Can you tell me about the night he came to your house? He told Father Weston a little bit about it, that he was called over by your mother and that she was worried you were possessed of the devil, Marilyn. I think it’s important that we uncover what happened then,” Max said, feeling the urgency of unraveling the mystery that surrounded Marilyn and her past lives.

  “The Monsignor told you about it, Father W?” Marilyn asked feeling like someone had ripped off a layer of her skin.

  “He was ashamed about the whole thing, Marilyn and he didn’t tell me much, because I think it was so hard for him to talk about, he felt guilty in mistaking you in that way,” Father Weston said, nearly unable to bear how Marilyn’s full lower lip was trembling.

  “So you want to know, alright then. It was my mother who had the Monsignor come on a Friday night, right after fish sticks, to cast out a demon in me, her only daughter. The hallway clock chimed and he came in, with a black briefcase. Unbelievable; of course there was no demon. But J. J. Charlesworth must have put the idea in my mother’s mind, just like he said I had taken something from him. And my mother had turned against me then. I was in fourth grade. It was all a misunderstanding. I hadn’t stolen a thing from the big house…” Marilyn broke off then as the memory of it began to fire up in her brain like a dry forest in August that lightning strikes, big memory plumes ignited and she felt like her head might explode. It was just that something from the big house had found her. Marilyn shuddered, seeing herself as a small girl in a rumpled white shirt and plaid uniform skirt pressed against a wall in their apartment, feeling the thing in her hand and not wanting it to be there. Smooth glass throbbing in her sweaty palm, she didn’t want it, no, it had found her. “No one ever understood why things moved on their own around me but the Monsignor did that night and he believed in me and my innocence and I never forgot that.”

  “It doesn’t have any power over you now, Marilyn. The Monsignor believed in you, as we do,” Max said.

  Father Weston nodded, feeling a relief that Marilyn had been able to talk about it finally. In that moment the priest decided he was going to have to ask for forgiveness, not permission, from the bishop and the FBI when it came to Marilyn and Max.

  Marilyn took a deep breath and looked around Max’s apartment to steady herself. Maybe Max was right and it didn’t have any power over her.

  Father Weston patted her hand. “Do have any more of that Beam? And I think you can put the Buddha down now,” he said in his old joshing way to Max as the tension in the room began to evaporate. Max poured another drink for each of them. They sipped on the drinks for a little bit and Max put on some smoky jazz as Father Weston indulged himself by reading the introduction to The Golden Bough. Marilyn knelt on the floor and looked through the record collection with Max.

  “Anyone want to go get burgers at the Steak and Shake?” Max asked after a while. He loved the way that Marilyn smelled next to him and didn’t want them to go and just leave him in the apartment to heat up a Swanson’s. “Never a good idea to drink on an empty stomach.”

  “Okay, only if we get o-rings and I get to tell you about the strange case of Father Troy and his latest project.” Father Weston shrugged his shoulders a few times letting the last of the bourbon run down his throat. He would ask Max to lend him The Golden Bough. “Because, God forgive me, but I think we have a permanent boarder at the parish house. I’ll drive.”

  They put their empty glasses in the sink and hustled out of the apartment to Father W’s dark blue Olds, parked as Marilyn had said in the back by the trash bins. By the time they got to the bright lights of the drive-in Father Weston had schooled himself to be discreet and really told them very little of Gar over the French fries, onion rings, and cheeseburgers. Still, they had reaffirmed their bond, off-beat as it was, and that was what really mattered to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A Sweet Spot

  Adele Mason who owned the Front Porch, ice cream and old fashioned candy shop located in a burgundy clapboard cottage on the western edge of downtown, hadn’t ever thought she would be scooping big fat rolls of ice cream out of metal rimmed brown cardboard containers for young marrieds, high school-ers, and kids with their parents at her age. She had worked in ad agencies, written jingles for radio stations -- a couple of them really pretty good -- and done copywriting for magazines. She had been a career gal in Indianapolis who modeled herself after the new Mary Tyler Moore show, which she flat out loved, and had pretty much given up any thought of marrying, just had her cat and her apartment until she met Kurt Mason, a shy bio-engineer, in the waiting room at her dentist’s office. Next thing she knew she was wearing a white mini at the county clerk’s office and was married before the first season of the Mary Tyler Moore show had even concluded. So much for woman’s lib. Kurt had taken the job at Staley’s one month after they wed and they moved to Decatur then. He had gone to work downtown in the stone tower that looked straight out of Superman’s Gotham City and they had made friends with other young Staley engineers, bought a house in the South Shore neighborhood on Lake Decatur and counted themselves satisfied. Until Kurt got sick, and then her young married life turned into one long grueling home nursing stint as Kurt’s organs shut down, unable to stop the tide of cancer devouring him from the inside. When she buried him in Fairview cemetery there wasn’t much left of the insurance policy after the debts. Just enough to now be stationed at the real marble-topped counter (she had found the counter at a country estate auction along with almost every other thing in the store) at The Front Porch on a mild spring night, waiting for the old-fashioned clock to chime eight so she could lock the doors and go home to the ranch on South Shore drive and put up her feet.

  “How late are you open, miss?” The man at the door smiled in a friendly relaxed way and Adele felt a corresponding smile tug at her lips. It had been a long time since someone had called her ‘Miss’.

  “Eight, same as always,” Adele said, noticing the biceps on the guy who was wearing a t-shirt tucked into jeans. She ran a dish towel over the top of the counter, proud for a moment again of her little endeavor with its striped wall paper, vintage coca-cola trays hung on the wall and big glass candy jars filled with rock candy (mostly for effect) sour balls in lemon, grape, and watermelon, hot cinnamons, milk chocolate malt balls, and long whips of licorice, both red and black. The Front Porch was a sweet spot in Decatur, Illinois, and Adele had poured all of her heart into it after Kurt died because this was what she had left.

  “My bike’s out front. Is it alright if I sit out ther
e and wait for my friend? She should be here in time. I’d order for her but it might melt.” Gar brushed the hair out of his eyes eyeing the woman behind the counter in his easy animal way. “Nice place. You do this up yourself?”

  Adele felt a flush of pride and nodded. “Take your time. We have Raspberry Chocolate Chip tonight.” She wished she was wearing some lipstick. Maybe it was time to stop thinking about covering the grey streaks in her hair and do something about it. She had once been considered handsome with her square jaw line and strong eyebrows but the grey hair was making her look older than she was. It had to go, there, decided, thought Adele, looking at the man. Who was he?

  “Nice,” said Gar, looking her right in the eye so that Adele couldn’t tell if he was commenting on her or the ice-cream special. He went back out and the screen door shut behind him with a little slam. Adele winced internally, hoping the screen door would make it through the busy season what with the increased summer foot traffic. She had wrestled up it from the basement this morning and just barely had managed to get it on with some hot cuss words and a pinched finger. Some things just needed a man’s hands. Oh yes, they did.

  Gar sat on the steps of front porch of the ice cream shop waiting. The sun was nearly setting, twenty minutes past seven. Marilyn should be walking by any minute on her way home from work but he didn’t feel his nerve ends tingling the way they usually did when he was closing in on the source. He pressed down the memories of long vacant years spent in fruitless search, the missed opportunities and wrong turns. She was here, now, in Decatur. She must have eaten at the Surrey tonight and was running late was all. He had skipped dinner entirely at the parish house, feeling claustrophobic from his time sitting with the ruin called Monsignor Lowell in the hospital who didn’t seem know anyone was there at all. Well, the old man had served his purpose and soon he would be called home to his God so Gar had no particular feelings of guilt watching the old priest sleep, drooling in his hospital bed. It had been his time. Beating Father Troy on the bus as he ran home from St. Mary’s, he had made himself a hurried mustard and bologna sandwich and was already out the door, leaving Mrs. Napoli’s shepherd’s pie for the two priests to eat by themselves. That ought to be an interesting dinner hour, he thought wryly. He was sure Father Weston would be none too pleased about Bishop’s Quincy splitting the parish leadership between the two priests. Too bad.