The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  He got to Gwyn’s with no more blindness. She was cold sober, in a dark green dress (one of the few human beings Mabry knew who could wear green clothes and not look as though sprouts of ivy were waiting to flood from her lips); and she’d just started cooking herself a homemade dish of macaroni and cheese with country-ham bits. There was plenty to share, and she was glad to share it; so before Mabry told her about the blind spell, he made his two phone calls.

  Audrey thanked him for calling, said his father was fine, they were watching Rebecca with Joan Fontaine and would leave the porch light on for whenever he returned.

  Charlotte answered in New York and, at first, was not quite as warm as her letter; so he gave her a quick but honestly scary account of his ordeal at the pond, and that brought her round.

  Most of his friends would have been alarmed and urged him to get to a doctor at once. Charlotte took a long pause and said “Are you in a safe place?”

  “I just drove my rental car to Gwyn Williams’s. She’s making us macaroni and cheese.”

  Charlotte paused again. “That should cure you for a week or so anyhow.”

  There was no trace of meanness in her voice, and Mabry recalled how she’d loved macaroni as a child—her mother had also made it, from scratch. He said “It does smell promising, I’ll grant you.”

  Only then did she say “You planning to get up here very soon, I trust?”

  “For my doctor, you mean?”

  “For him and me and the rest of the people who can take care of you.”

  What had softened Charlotte since he left for Rome? He had no time to consider the options before the undeniable fact of her present kindness swamped him (it had to be kindness; Charlotte was flat incapable of deceit). He’d wept only once before in her presence—when her mother finally asked him to leave and he had to obey her, walking out with one suitcase the week before Christmas when Charlotte was twelve—so he tried hard to keep her from hearing the fact that his throat had closed on him for nearly a minute.

  If she noticed, she didn’t mention the strangeness. She waited to see if he’d answer her assurance; and when he couldn’t, she said “There’s millions of hotel rooms going begging—all the tourists understandably scattered. I’ll get you a good room. You like the Algonquin and so do I. You can check in there and then let your doctor tell you you’re fine. If you aren’t, he won’t have much to offer; or so you’ve said. But Malcolm and I can take you under our wide wings for Temporary Long-Term Care, as they call it in the ads; and by then we can surely get down to your loft and start cleaning up enough at least for you to have your bed and shower and a few square feet for your tools and your table.”

  He decided on the spot. “I’ll fly up this coming Monday then, assuming I can get a plane and a hotel room. I’ll let you know tomorrow at the latest. And listen, darling girl—deep thanks.” Nothing like that had passed between them for more than a year, since before he’d gone down to D.C. and sat by her mother in the last hard weeks. Charlotte had found it immensely unlikely that his motives were unselfish; and once he’d learned that Frances had left him a sizable sum from her own father’s leavings, he’d expected even harsher treatment.

  Now, though, she said “You want me to meet you at the airport?”

  “Won’t you be at work?”

  “I can call in sick.” That didn’t seem too good an idea since she’d only just begun at the adoption center.

  Mabry said “Let me call you if I think I’ll need help.”

  With a little more talk about Malcolm’s new job on the edge of the disaster site, they finished up just as Gwyn called from downstairs, “A fine dinner’s ready.”

  It was—few in the number of dishes but fine, in the smallest details of preparation. Mabry was hardly alone, in the United States, in holding macaroni and cheese high on his list of favorite foods. Since he’d parted from Frances and Charlotte in ’86, he’d eaten many a bachelor supper consisting of nothing but Stouffer’s mac and cheese and the simplest green salad. Even Kraft’s box version of the same dish (which tasted more like the cardboard it came in than anything else dreamt up by human minds) could see him through in a desperate pinch. Still, a chance at the actual homemade concoction was all but sufficient recompense for the whole day behind him—his father’s painful words at Gabe’s tombstone and then the blind episode at the pond. More and more, he was working to believe it had been nothing worse than a long intense dream—that eerie voice and the soft hand were surely the key.

  So he sat not two feet from Gwyn’s left hand—at a table set with all her mother’s best in the way of china, silver, and glass—and ate what she gave him: the macaroni with its salty flecks of local smoked ham, old-fashioned cabbage slaw on a bed of Boston lettuce (a salad green his mother would never have known, dying as she did before it reached the South), and a glass of honest dry California Merlot. And they hardly spoke for the first ten minutes, politely wolfing down their late supper. When he’d said yes to Gwyn’s proffered second serving, he also said “You’re looking better by the day, old friend.”

  She was serving her own plate, as liberally as his. “Darling, it’s only been two days since you saw me for the first time in three thousand years—am I truly that magic when it comes to bending time to my advantage?”

  “You are, beyond doubt.”

  “Then maybe I can thank your visit two nights ago.”

  Mabry said “You know what Marlene Dietrich said?”

  “On which of her many themes, the old bitch?”

  Mabry said “‘A good lay is the best facelift.’”

  Gwyn set her plate down carefully, took a step toward Mabry, took all the fingers of his left hand (which was lying on the table), and bent them backward, very painfully. When he howled sincerely, she said “Are you claiming you’re still the dispenser of excellent lays? Wouldn’t I be the judge of that—around here at least?”

  “Oh yes ma’m,” Mabry said. “Far be it from me.”

  Gwyn sat at her place again and finally smiled. “Was it truly a lay? I was so nearly drunk, I couldn’t swear to it, though I do recall we did lie down and both dozed awhile.”

  Mabry said “I’ll confess that’s my impression too. Whatever, it’s a pleasant memory already.”

  She said “But, darling, you’re peaked tonight. Are you bearing up?”

  If I tell her, won’t she panic and haul me off to whatever doctor saw her mother to the grave? But he wanted someone nearby to know, and Gwyn was the best possibility at hand. “No,” he said, “I’m not bearing up.”

  “Tell Mama what’s wrong?” She’d gone back to eating, and her mouth was working.

  He gave her the briefest possible account of what happened at the pond.

  Gwyn said “You’re convinced it wasn’t a dream?”

  “No, I’m not,” he said, “but it sure as hell seemed real. What’s your guess?”

  She shook her head firmly. “No guess at all. It was something real.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “A good many things—but mainly the child, if the voice was a child’s. That doesn’t sound at all like a dream you’d have.”

  Mabry laughed a little. What does Gwyn Williams know about my dreams? We’ve never spent two nights in the same bed. But then he understood she was right. Somehow she was right. The child’s voice and hand was not a touch he’d have invented, asleep or awake—too sweet for his taste. Whatever on Earth it was, it was there. He nodded to Gwyn. “Now what do I do?”

  “You want to go to New York tonight?” She glanced at her watch. “Too late to get you to Raleigh-Durham. But, darling, I’ll drive you straight up the map—just eight or nine hours. If we get you to Wells within the next hour, you can pack. I never need sleep as long as I’m driving, and we’ll be at your loft by just after daylight.”

  For maybe ten seconds it seemed entirely feasible. But no, that was way too much of a strut—too hard on Tasker, mean as he’d been, and too half-cocked in seve
ral other ways. He thanked her but said he had a few earnest chores before he could leave; he’d go on Monday.

  “I’ll drive you to the airport on Monday—what time?” Gwyn had all but lived on planes for thirty years; flying to New York, even in a catastrophic week, was no more to her than crossing the street.

  Again Mabry thanked her but invented a tale. “I’ve already set up a ride with Marcus, Audrey Thornton’s son.”

  “Is he safe enough for you?”

  Mabry said “Meaning what?” Does she think the boy might cut my throat for what’s in my wallet?

  “Meaning can he drive safely?”

  “He delivers prescriptions all over the county; I guess he can drive in a straight line to Raleigh.”

  “How’ll he get back home? I can meet him at the rental agency and bring him back.”

  Has Gwyn ever seen him, kind-looking as he is? She might jump his bones, and he’s way too polite to tell a white lady no.

  “No, darling. He’s got a girlfriend and a daughter in Durham. Maybe, when he’s eased the girlfriend’s pain, he’ll catch a bus home.”

  Gwyn searched Mabry’s face like a burnt-out store. Then with what he thought was semi-affectionate exasperation, she said “You’re the same old slop-eating chauvinist pig you’ve been all your life. You just think women sit on the porch waiting, every spare minute of their pitiful lives, for the next passing peter.” When Mabry didn’t speak, Gwyn said “Right or wrong?”

  He chose his best Steppin Fetchit imitation. “Lawd, Miss Gwwyyyn. I reckons you’s bound to be right about dat. Course, me—I ain’t even got no peter, this late in life nohow.”

  Gwyn said “Precious man, don’t ask my opinion on that. Like I said, I was floating on dreams the last time I saw you. Whatever may have happened or didn’t, I’m still in one plump piece tonight—no major bruises and no important tissue lost.” When she looked and saw that maybe she’d joked too close to the bone—that Mabry was truly losing himself by the day and here she was laughing at him and his pain—she reached out to cover the back of his hand.

  He drew it away, gradually but firmly, with the sense that this was the awful moment—his final move as an intact creature before he retreated, or was brutally hauled by something like fate, toward one of the slowest deaths available to middle-class light-complected men (and even more women).

  Yet he and Gwyn sat on calmly through the natural end of supper—very little more wine—and then adjourned to more comfortable chairs in her father’s old office, a room off the kitchen. She offered him the sofa as a place to lie down. Mabry said if he took it, he’d be asleep fast; and he didn’t want that.

  Gwyn said she never meant to sleep another minute, the rest of her life.

  Mabry said “That may be the strangest thing I’ve heard.”

  “And I’m the strangest woman.” They both laughed at that, then kept quiet awhile.

  Mabry finally spoke. “I’d drink to that, if I’d drink to anything else tonight—it’s why I’ve sought you out here lately. The trouble is with me though. I’m the normalest man in the Western world and maybe the East—Katmandu has hardly got a duller soul. I think my eyes went blind today just to protect me from plain reality.”

  “What brand of reality is troubling you?”

  “Did I tell you about our little ride this morning—mine and Father Kincaid’s?”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Well, after the customary fieldhand breakfast, I offered Pa a ride—anywhere we could reach and return from by dark.”

  “The cemetery.” Gwyn said it before Mabry could even draw breath.

  “How’d you know?”

  “His age,” she said. “Wait till you and I are ancient. Everybody we ever loved, or even liked, will be underground; so we’ll want to go visit.”

  Mabry had hoped for more of a revelation than that, but he went ahead. “I complied and drove us straight there—it’s practically on the back porch anyhow—and he insisted on leaving the car and limping over to all the dead Kincaids. I held back awhile, to give him privacy for what you mentioned—talking to the dead.”

  Gwyn seemed to be taking Mabry a lot more earnestly than he intended. “Some people can do it, I’m absolutely sure. My mother could. But your dad? I doubt it. He’s more educated than is safe for graveyard conversation.”

  Mabry said “Absolutely. I’m sure he can’t do it.”

  “You know that for certain?”

  It seemed an odd question. Surely she hadn’t been serious to begin with, so what could she mean now?

  Mabry said “Ma’m, all I know is this. He stood at the grave of my dead brother and cut me deep.”

  “Something he said?”

  “Don’t make me repeat it.” Then “He said my brother Gabe was all he’d ever loved.”

  Gwyn said “You sure he said all?”

  Mabry nodded strongly.

  “I thought he loved your mother.”

  When Mabry could speak again, he said “I’m telling you what the man actually said. Of course, I’d always known how he felt, long before Gabe died; but now Pa’s gouged it deep in me just in case I ever need to check.”

  Gwyn said “Then that makes him at least half as mean as my dear mother—she told me, in every letter she sent me through her last twenty years, that I had utterly ruined her life. Just tell yourself your last surviving parent is a vicious shit and get on with your business.”

  Mabry laughed till he made himself sneeze. Then he thanked her sincerely. But at last he had to say “What made you come to him for communion then?”

  “Who told you that—prissy Miss Audrey Thornton?”

  “No, the high priest himself.”

  Gwyn said “I thought they kept their pastoral secrets, like doctors and lawyers.”

  “Wrong, darling girl. They chatter like lovebirds.”

  “There goes this girl’s last illusion then.” Gwyn got to her feet. “This calls for a thoroughly unsanctified drink. What’s the worst I can get you from Daddy’s old stash here?” She’d already opened the door of the cabinet where Walker Williams, a criminal lawyer as close to a criminal as small towns afford, had laid in an infinite stock of liquors going back to decades before his death in the eighties.

  But Mabry said “Let’s postpone Daddy for a while longer, could we?” He’d also risen by now.

  Gwyn said “You want to go upstairs, I can tell—you feeling bad?”

  Mabry looked down at his trousers—a plain boner, a rare occurrence in these troubled days. Being a man, he couldn’t help grinning. The nation had entered dreadful straits four days ago, he was likely entering straits at least as awful for one human being, and his father had told him he’d hardly loved him ever at all, yet a hard-on proud enough to announce itself in a mighty protrusion as true as any schoolboy’s ruler had cheered him sufficiently to yield a grin as goofy as Goofy. He managed to wrestle his grin back down to where he could whisper for the first time tonight—“No ma’m, I may just be feeling proud of myself.”

  Gwyn took a good look. It was hardly a welcome sight at the moment—the moment, the evening, or maybe the year. But she knew her part, and she read it well. “Oh sweetheart, please, let’s burp that baby and put it to bed.” As she passed Mabry, she whispered “Make him last till I lock up.” Then she went to lock the doors.

  He lasted all right.

  —And lasted so well, so encouragingly, that at two in the morning Mabry drove himself safely back to his father’s and entered the house as quietly as he could through the front door (the side door was always locked at bedtime). Again, despite Audrey’s promise, there were no lights on anywhere; and again when he tried to creep down the hall and on to his own room, Marcus sat up on the sofa in the pitch dark and said “Sir, it’s me. Are you bearing up?”

  Mabry only whispered “Come on back.”

  In his room he swore Marcus not to mention one word of what he said to anybody, and then he told him of the scare with his vision.
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br />   Marcus said “I grant you, that’s a first-class scare.”

  “It means I’ll need to fly to New York on Monday and see my doctor. Any chance you can drive me to the airport and leave that rental car? I’ll pay you and, of course, pay your bus fare home.”

  “You just say what time we leave; and Mabry, you’ve paid me five times over already for any time I spend attending to you.” He said the attending phrase as naturally and coolly as though he’d been Mabry’s footman all his life and only felt the dignity of the job.

  It riled Mabry badly. “Christ, man, you’re not attending to me. I’m not a pure cripple—not yet apparently. It’s just a piece of hauling I’m asking you to do, like hauling your prescriptions.”

  Marcus held up a hand and his eyes were hot, for the first time in Mabry’s knowledge of him. “Hold it yourself, man. I’m not into hauling—except my own ass. If you’re not careful, I’ll haul my own black ass out of here in the next ten seconds; and you can find you a boy of your own to haul you to the plane.”

  Mabry was scared, for the second time today. But still he said “Wait, Marcus, before you get any hotter—what are you doing here in my house this late in the night?”

  Marcus said “So it’s your house? Then I’ll go right now. I thought it was your dad’s—the man I work for.”

  That calmed Mabry to the point where at least he could think This is heading into waters I don’t understand and never have. Late as it was, he smoothed at the air with two flat palms. Then he said “Whatever my mistake here, Marc, I apologize. I was trying to respect your grown man’s rights and reimburse you for the work you’ll miss. That’s all I was doing.”

  And Marcus began his own calming down. “I can thank you for that much. Sorry I sounded off. I must be tireder than I realized.”

  Mabry said “Were you waiting up for me?”

  Marcus took a long moment to recall. “I was waiting to let your father know you were safely home. He made me promise him I would.”