“Really, Adele, but see, I got my girl with me so I’m gonna need two butter pecans in sugar cones,” Gar said in an apologetic way, keeping the smile on his face as he felt the woman at the counter recoil in shame. He liked that too. Anyone who thought they were going to get in the way of him and the source would feel pain in relation to the problem they caused. The woman was harmless but he liked batting her around like a cat would a toy. He guessed he was just plain aroused by Marilyn and everything seemed like fair game. He dug the money out from his jeans and put it on the counter as Adele bent over the ice cream cartons, hiding her embarrassment. What a fool I am, she thought, scooping hard.
Marilyn sat on the porch in one of the sweetheart wrought iron chairs at the little table with Rowley underneath her seat. It seemed wonderful to her to be here after walking by it night after night, although she was secretly glad that Rowley was along. It might be just too much too fast to actually go inside the Front Porch, she thought with a little chuckle at her own oddness.
The vinyl-topped Ford LTD pulled in front of the little ice cream parlor and stopped with a small screech. Suzanne Cleary got out from behind the wheel and slammed the door. Damn her husband, she thought, marching up the sidewalk. Ice cream was not a nutritional necessity but he didn’t know that and the fact she had forgotten it at the grocery story yesterday meant she had to stop here now or face the droning complaints tonight while she was trying to watch her favorite shows. She saw the pretty brunette on the porch through the haze of her annoyance and the thought crossed her mind that she knew this woman. But from where, a customer, no, and then it hit her, church, she knew Marilyn from St. Pat’s. Not that she knew her name, she knew she was a waitress, mostly seen at the five o’clock mass on Saturdays when she came, and that some considered her a little off. There was some rumor going around a few years back about someone seeing Father Weston leaving a bar with her. Not that she believed in rumors but that’s what they said.
Gar, holding both ice cream cones, gave the screen door a little a kick and Suzanne Cleary who had always been quick, pieced the scene together. It was Father Troy’s project here again, the one who had helped the carnies, only now he was with the waitress that may or may not have been seen improperly with Father Weston.
Gar saw the sharp faced woman frowning on the sidewalk and his vision scoped the entire field in front of him for other threats. What was she doing here again, he wondered. Then she abruptly turned on her heel and went back to her car and drove away without getting a thing. That bothered Gar, as he remembered the FBI agent who came to the house on an anonymous tip after the last time he saw the Clearys. But he said nothing at all about that and, laughing, he took a big lick of the ice cream, saying in a sexy slow way to Marilyn as he handed her the cone, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Max Cooks
The phone on the little stand in the dim hallway rang insistently, five, six, seven times, as the University of Chicago professor limped towards it, her braced leg thumping on the oak wood floors of her brownstone flat overlooking Lincoln Park. She picked up the handset and growled, “Gretch Wendell, and this had better be good to interrupt my Sunday morning.”
“Gretch, it’s me,” Max’s voice came through the line, warm and assured of his welcome into the archeologist’s fiercely protected Sundays, where she withdrew from the hustle bustle of the campus life and did her most serious work.
Gretch thought the world of her younger colleague and had never made any bones about it, whether to the academic dean or his most vociferous critics. Of course there was talk, but talk swirled around people like Max and Gretch because they refused to let labels of age, gender, or disability define their relationship. Besides Gretch kinda liked the talk, it added to her mystique. So they had been interrupting one another’s Sunday mornings for years, with ideas, articles and the occasional emotional tempest like Max’s divorce or the tragic death of the grad student named Lawrence. She leaned against the deep red wall of the hallway lined with framed black and white photographs of various archeological digs and listened intently as Max explained more fully than his slight and then increasingly more urgent missives about the work he had been doing with the waitress named Marilyn. Gretch heard not only the story but the meta-story behind it, the one that was only told in Max’s inflections and tones: his dashed ambitions, his deep abiding curiosity about the world unseen, and then the emotional pull of his unusual subject. The entire case would make an intriguing study for ICSAR, her newest international project and by far most ambitious one, so Gretch’s ears pricked up when Max laid out the symmetry in Marilyn’s past life narratives.
“So in both hypnotic sessions, she told of a life where she was pursued by a being in the hunt for her essential essence,” Gretch said, running her hand through her cropped silver hair. “You know my schedule is insane at the moment but I’m looking into an arrangement to house the institute at UI Champaign Urbana because as we both know University of Chicago is not the home for this kind of thing. I’m supposed to be down there this coming week so I’m thinking now dinner at your apartment tonight would be just about right. I’m glad you caught me, Max. I want to see you and the girl for myself and we’ll piece it out together. And if that parish priest of yours is truly an ally I’d scoop him up too, we’ve got our work cut out for us. I’ll be there six-ish,” she said replacing the handset in the cradle, chewing on her lip. Max had once again managed to land himself in a hot spot, but this one was not to be handled alone. Gretch Wendell had seen more than most and she was determined not to let her friend wander around unarmed and unsupported. She then thumped her way past the photographs and went into her study, unlocking her middle desk drawer as memories washed over her. She might be an old broad with a brace but she still had a few tricks up her sleeve.
The fact that Gretch thought it was important enough to change her plans had Max keyed up; everything seemed in high contrast. He phoned up the parish house hoping that Father Weston would answer on a Sunday afternoon. He did.
“Listen, Weston, I want you to come for dinner tonight.” Max said.
“I can’t, Max. The Monsignor died yesterday at St. Mary’s, just slipped away, thank God before they carted him to the nursing home to rot. Now there’s a lot of Church rigamarole to go through -- it’s just not the time.” Father Weston said, feeling depressed despite knowing that the old priest’s passing was really the best outcome under the circumstances.
Max paused and swallowed. “I’m sorry. I know that’s hard on you, but listen, the head of the Institute for Consciousness Studies and Ancient Religions is coming down, because of my last session with Marilyn. She asked that you be there,” Max said, the words rushing out. “If she didn’t think it was serious she wouldn’t be coming.”
“Who, Max?” Father Weston, still distracted from the final visit with Monsignor, tried to figure out what his friend was talking about.
“Dr. Gretchen Wendell, the archeologist I told you about. She’s has more research, more experience in the paranormal than anyone else I know. I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but I hypnotized Marilyn again and, Weston, it was scary.”
“What do you mean it was scary?” Father W was struggling but the word “scary” brought him more fully into the conversation with Max.
“Look, I think we should talk it over in person. It’s important we understand as much as we can now. Gretch Wendell could really shed some more light on Marilyn’s sessions. She’s on her way to Champaign Urbana to perhaps broker an agreement with UI to house the center. She must have gotten a boatload of funding somewhere. Anyway she’s decided to stop by here before she settles in for her week of talks. She wants to see Marilyn for herself.” Max tried to sound as urgent as he felt.
“Can’t it wait?” asked Father Weston. The duty of planning the funeral service for the Monsignor had fallen squarely on him. To make matters worse, Bishop Quincy’s chief of staff, who always w
ore a stiffer roman collar than any other priest, was insisting that he and Father Troy drive over to Springfield on Monday morning so they could meet in person to plan the high mass together since the bishop had split the parish leadership role. It was irksome and it wasn’t lost on him that he was supposed to be keeping a low profile with Max now as well.
“No, it can’t. She left Chicago at noon in a taxi.”
“A taxi? What kind of screwball takes a taxi from Chicago to Decatur?”
“A very bright one who doesn’t drive. She’s the favorite customer of Yellow Cab; whenever she wants a taxi, they jump. She should be here by six,” Max said, scanning his apartment; he had been rushing around trying to get ready. “I know its last minute, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense to have you here and I think it might be easier to convince Marilyn, too, if you come. Besides I’m cooking, you haven’t had my cooking.”
Max listened carefully to Father Weston as Father W alluded to the leadership split with Father Troy and the funeral mass planning as having had the effect of making him want a pitcher of martinis and he wondered what Max had in his liquor cabinet if he was going to listen to the taxi-riding professor’s theories about Marilyn’s past lives.
“I was raised a Jew. We don’t stock a big liquor cabinet. Manischewitz, that’s what we’re big on, Father W. Why don’t you put some gin and vermouth in a brown bag and I promise you won’t be sorry. I’m making Oaxacan mole.”
“Never heard of it. Are you any good at it?” asked Father W, trying to imagine what Max might make.
“After two martinis will you be able to tell? Do you want to call Marilyn and ask her to come over or should I? Her last session was intense and she wasn’t feeling well after, but I think she’ll want to at least hear what Wendell has to say.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” asked Father Weston as a jolt of anxiety ran through him. Must be the grief effect, everything was taking on the hue of an emergency, he thought.
“Migraine. Okay, I’ll call her and ask her to join us. I mean she’s right, a priest, a professor and a waitress: it’s a hell of a threesome. And Gretchen Wendell is nobody to miss out on when she’s got research to share,” Max said, feeling the necessity of getting them all together. “Wendell thinks we can we might be able to fit the pieces together on what’s going with Marilyn if we work on this in person.”
“Let me do it, Max. I should let her know about the Monsignor. I’ll ask her then, it might seem less intimidating,” said Father Weston, remembering how upset she had been when she had learned of the old priest’s stroke.
Father W detected a trace of coolness in her voice when he finally reached her around five-ish. She said she had been out that afternoon with Rowley and had just gotten back in. Suddenly shy, he couldn’t think of how to ask a woman to come to dinner with him in a divorced man’s apartment, so he fudged and said could he come over to her duplex for a few minutes. That he had something he wanted to tell her in person. Marilyn demurred at first, saying she was tired, but when Father W said please with a slightest crack in his voice she relented. Father W said he’d be right over.
Trying to look dignified and priestly with his black tunic on over black trousers and roman collar, he climbed the stairs of her shabby duplex remembering vividly with every step the two afternoons and one evening he had spent there. It was as if he had memorized the faded pattern of the wallpaper, and the worn treads that led up to her apartment. She was in jeans and a peasant blouse which threw him off when she answered the door. He had only seen Marilyn naked or in her waitress uniform, so having her greet him looking like some hip youngish woman seemed really nervy. Rowley her dog was by her side, so at least that hadn’t changed.
Standing awkwardly in the hallway of her apartment he suddenly found himself overcome with sorrow, the last moments of Aloysius Lowell’s life playing through his head, confessing his affair with the woman standing before him and how he had tried to find out what had happened so many years ago with the Monsignor and Marilyn in this very place. Father W sagged against the yellowing wall as he choked back a sob. Marilyn cupped his face between her hands in a tender way and said nothing, just looking at him with her own face like an angel’s in that moment. “He’s dead, the Monsignor,” she finally said and all Father W could do was nod. “It’s okay, Father W. It’s better this way,” she said as she wrapped him in her arms and held him for a long moment. Father W pulled himself together and pulled away but without a trace of any embarrassment. Marilyn always had that way of being so present that the ordinary world slipped away.
“Say, you want to have dinner at the professor’s hippie apartment? He’s got a guest coming in from Chicago who’s done some research on, well, you know, the work you’re doing with Max,” he said, trying to regain his balance, “She’s coming all the way from Chicago in a taxi and Max says he can cook, so maybe we need to humor him. Besides I think he’d like to know you’re feeling better.” Father W intentionally worded the invite as casually as he could, knowing from experience that Marilyn would back out if she felt pressured.
Marilyn considered this for a moment, not liking the idea of meeting a stranger who had been researching things about her that she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know. But it looked like Father W could really use some company and the letdown she felt after saying goodbye without even a full-on-mouth kiss with Gar had made her restless. “Max Rosenbaum can cook? We better check this out, if not for ourselves then for public safety, and besides I’d be curious to know what you tip a driver for a trip like that?” she said with a little comic twist and raise of her eyebrows.
They parked the Olds out of sight behind Max’s apartment building and took up a grocery sack with the booze. Max had pulled a table together in his exotic living room using an old trunk covered with an antique tablecloth from his side of the family. He had put pillows on the floor and lit candles and had a stick of incense burning when they came in. Joni Mitchell was playing on the stereo. Marilyn thought it looked like someplace in Chicago or New York and Father W was just glad that Bishop Quincy was safely in Springfield. Father W took charge of the bar, fixing them all a stiff martini on the rocks as Max went back into the kitchen full of mysterious and rich aromas.
“I’m using chiles I brought back from Chimayo, a little community in New Mexico that has the most beautiful adobe church with a dirt-eating cult associated with it. There’s a little pit dug in a side chapel and if you eat the holy dirt it’s supposed to heal the sick and cure the lame. The whole place is draped in crutches and baby shoes. I guess it’s been a sacred site since the Anasazai, the lost cliff dwelling tribes that may or may not be ancestors of the Hopi,” said Max as he stirred the sauce, glad that Marilyn’s color had returned and she seemed herself. “We’re having chicken mole.”
“Chicken what?” asked Marilyn, coming into the kitchen and peering over Max’s shoulder into the big iron pan with a deep brownish red sauce encircling meaty pieces of chicken. It smelled wonderful.
Max wiped his hands on the French chef apron that he had taken from his old life in Chicago. He had prided himself on his world cuisine cooking when he was married but since he had divorced he hadn’t much bothered to boil water. He had found a ripe avocado in the A&P and tossed it with a naval orange and red onion with a squeeze of fresh lime. The chicken was easy enough to find and the grocery store clerk didn’t bat an eye at the jar of peanut butter and bitter chocolate he had found in the bakery aisle. With canned tomatoes, fresh garlic, white onion and the chiles, he had been able to put together a reasonable Decatur, Illinois version of the dish he had learned to love when on his adventures with the shaman who had taught him the mysteries and culture of New Mexico. Marilyn leaned over and dipped a finger into the sauce, tasting it and then pulling back with a sense of real surprise.
“He can cook!” she declared. “So where’s the other professor?”
Father W came in bearing the drinks and they all stood aroun
d in the kitchen like old friends as Max finished making the rice. Father W examined the plastic bag of dried dark red chile flakes with a touch of concern. “There’s nothing funny about these, right?” he asked. “You scholars are an interesting lot.”
“Funny? You mean like drugs?” asked Max sardonically. Father W shrugged sheepishly. “We have martinis, so no. Richly spicy, yes,” Max answered. The door bell rang then and they all looked at one another for a moment. Max felt like a current of anxiety and anticipation run through them. “Why don’t you get down the plates, Marilyn, while I see Dr. Wendell in,” Max said, pointing to the cupboard and loping to the door at the same time.
He ran down the apartment steps in time to see the cab driver waiting patiently like a chauffer for him to collect his guest. The driver waved and said through the open window, “Be back at eight then, Doc, and we’ll make the run over to Champaign. I’m gonna get some chow and take a nap. You have fun. I’ll have the coffee thermos full when I get back.” Then he pulled away and Max was left with Gretchen Wendell on the front step of his apartment in Decatur.
Marilyn opened the cupboard and sighed with pleasure. Vintage Fiesta ware, turquoise, orange and yellow filled the cabinet. She handed four plates out to Father Weston with a sense of solemnity. This must be a pretty important person for Max to go to all this trouble. She wondered with a pang if they were lovers and was surprised that she cared if they were.
Max opened the door to the apartment then and ushered in a limping five-foot- three figure with a brace on one leg wearing a severe tweed suit that looked like it was a man’s and short grey hair that stuck up in an almost crew-cut. “Dr. Gretchen Wendell: Marilyn Newcomb and Father Frank Weston, call him Father W or Weston, though, he hates his first name,” Max said, and the woman smiled warmly. She had to be sixty-five if she was a day, realized Marilyn, as she stuck out her hand shyly. The woman grasped it and held it in both of hers like they were old friends.
Decatur Page 16
