The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  Miles said “Holy hell! That’s dreadful short change. Who’s cheating us like that?”

  Malc hadn’t heard the details of Miles’s ongoing dilemma; but something in the broad placid planes of his face, his bowed hulking shoulders, and his one word us told her to move ahead slowly. She said “We have so little to give.”

  Miles kept the lid on but his voice warmed a little. “Little? Yet the TV keeps saying many thousands died. Just this evening, they were still saying maybe five thousand were finished.”

  By then Charlotte and Mabry were also fixed on Malcolm. Where would this lead? With all her training, she wasn’t known, among her close friends, for extremes of tact.

  Malc took the time she needed, though. Then she closed her fist and, very lightly, tapped the back of Miles’s great hand on the table.

  His hand rolled over and took hers in.

  She left that brief arrangement in place, and she said what Mabry had thought of days ago. “What the diggers are finding is that—with all that jet fuel—once it ignited, it left us very little in the way of human bodies. However many thousands died, they were truly cremated—vaporized.”

  The other three were as impressed as they should have been, but they said nothing yet. By then they all knew that Miles had prior rights here.

  And at last he said “What could be better, once you’ve got to go?” He shook his head no as if he’d thought of an even better way of departing this one planet at least. But then they all waited half a minute till Miles finally turned them loose with an outright laugh. Then he faced the bar and signaled the barmaid, calling her “Miss” in a voice that was calmer and deeper than before.

  When she came, she was also somehow subdued, as though Miles’s discovery had worked through the intervening air toward her. Everyone joined him in further rounds of their first drinks; and Charlotte, Malc, and Miles each ordered toasted cheese sandwiches with lashings of home fries.

  They were deep into wolfing down their food, and the second round of drinks, when Malc looked to the door. Three strapping men and a hefty young woman were entering. Malc touched Mabry’s arm. “He told me he’d try to make it this evening and here he is.” She pointed to one of the men—both were standing now at the bar, exhausted and dusty still, in denim jumpsuits that had the bartender wincing at the sight—and she said “That’s Fredo, right?”

  It was, though in the month since Mabry had seen him, Fredo had aged a year or more and gained ten pounds, despite the fact that he’d shorn his head almost to the scalp. Since Mabry was seated at the only occupied table in the room, he waited for Fredo to make at least a quick check of the space. Like most good supers Fredo had always been a curious man and politely suspicious of all his surroundings (he was not quite Sicilian, though he was from south of Naples, a bone-poor boy in his mid-thirties maybe who’d immigrated with his beautiful mother fifteen years ago). He didn’t turn and, once his glass of red wine was poured, he fixed on that as if it would be the central magnet of the rest of his life.

  Mabry said to Malc “I’ll go speak to him.” But before he stood he said “Should you come with me? You made this arrangement after all.”

  Malc said “Mabry, he’s your super, remember?—he doesn’t know me except from that one meeting when Charlotte and I came down to your party on the Fourth of July. I just ran into him yesterday evening as I was leaving work.”

  Mabry couldn’t recall more than three or four times when Malc had actually called him by his first name; so he took it as encouragement and went on forward, still feeling as burdened in the few yards of space as any father approaching a son whom he knew to be incurably hurt since their last encounter.

  It was not the case; and in under ten minutes, Mabry confirmed what Malcolm had learned—yes his loft was intact but way too silted up to be a usable residence anytime soon. Nonetheless, Fredo and his present companions were already hard at work in the building, and its neighborhood, as a clean-up crew. Again too polite to state the cost, Fredo could only say “You need me to help you soon, Signor Kincaid?”

  Mabry said “Absolutely—and starting tomorrow if possible” (surely his insurance would pay for the recovery or a hefty share).

  He wasn’t surprised to learn that three other residents of the building had got on Fredo’s list before him. Still Fredo thought that, within another two or three days, the street barricades would finally come down; and Mabry could see the place at least. Then he might begin to know if he could stand to live there again, in that much nearness to so much fear, stopped only by death.

  By the time he’d said good night to Charlotte and Malcolm, though—near two in the morning, back in his hotel—the city beyond his soundproof walls seemed his only home. If he didn’t move back in his loft downtown, he’d sell it and find some less haunted place farther from whatever voices might linger that low on the island. But still here in town. If I can possibly live alone.

  As the girls were leaving (he thought of them always as girls, however hard he tried not to say it), he thanked them for the help and the company; and not thinking hard, he craned to kiss Malc on the crown of her hair before he kissed Charlotte. They each tasted dusty but he didn’t tell them so.

  Nor did they tell him his own face bore the remains of something very much like ash. Who, though, knew the taste of human ash?

  Miles stopped off at the hotel with him; and back in the suite, another drink later, Miles said “Aside from whether or not Mr. Sample left a will, it’s fairly clear he left me jobless. Damned nearly broke too, though my tiny savings’ll feed me for a week or so longer. So if you’re needing a strong back and arms to help you dive into cleaning your loft, I may be your man.”

  Mabry thought All right. It’s clear he’s writing Baxter off; and that triggers another bald truth, this much anyhow. He said “Miles, so far as my work goes, I can’t even think of diving into anything serious—nothing bigger than wiping a swab of solvent across two inches of a painting, and I’ve got no paintings on hand right now.”

  Miles said “You look really fit to me for heavier work then. And the guy down at your place can’t start for—two weeks, was it? I need a job, as you can see; and I need it now.”

  Mabry’s answer flooded him irresistibly. At first he said a mere “Thank you.” But before Miles could race ahead, as he meant to do, Mabry put up a pausing hand. “Look, I think I could need you—or need somebody as strong as you—for a good deal more than you may have in mind.”

  Tall as he was, wide as his shoulders were, Miles by now was a little drunk. His eyes took awhile to settle on Mabry before he could say “Mind saying what it is?” He was vaguely suspicious of something more personal than he’d ever consider.

  And Mabry saw that. He said “Oh at ease, pal. I’ve sometimes thought I’d have been really lucky to have a gay gene or two when ladies got scarce, as they’ve often done. But no, I’m straighter than any rail and have given way more than ample proof of my tendencies to pursue half the women that glance my way. What I mean is, I’ve almost surely got a genuine problem—multiple sclerosis. I’m seeing my doctor again on Friday morning. If he can confirm it—and it’s hard to confirm; he’s been testing now for several weeks—I may wind up with the need for steady company, steady strong care.”

  Miles clapped his hands once softly. “My mother’s oldest sister, back home—she’s come down with it recently too. No big problems yet, so far as they tell me.”

  Mabry nodded. “You planning to stay here for good?”

  Miles said “In America? That was the main hope, yes sir. And Mr. Sample kept telling me there’d be no trouble about a green card. He knew a hundred immigration lawyers. Or so he claimed, and I never knew him to tell a lie. Not to me anyhow.”

  Mabry said “Nor to me. Amazing feat for a lawyer as endlessly successful as Baxter.”

  Miles’s face looked slowly offended.

  And Mabry hurried to mend the cheap offense. “Forgive me. But you probably know that, in the States any
how, lawyers are the main profession that’s joked about.”

  If Miles knew it, he didn’t say yes. His face stayed solemn, but he leaned well forward. “This help you speak of—would it mean staying on here in New York or in North Carolina?”

  Suddenly the wave that struck Mabry downtown rose powerfully again—his sense of the numerous dead on all sides, the chance of a desolating future. “It might be both.”

  Miles said “You understand that I’d need to know before I accepted any kind of offer.”

  Mabry thought Whoa. Move carefully now. He said “You recall I mentioned seeing my doctor on Friday? That’s when I’ll know if I need real assistance.”

  Miles got to his feet and asked again for the bathroom’s whereabouts (he’d been there earlier).

  His absence left Mabry with the panicky urge to phone somebody—just for quick contact with somebody calmer than this young man with his own dilemma—but who at this hour? He’d wake Audrey if he called about his father; and if he called Charlotte, what was there to say?

  Before another name occurred to him, Miles was back and seated. “Could I take you to dinner this Friday evening?”

  Few men or women as young as Miles invited older souls to dinner in a city this costly, yet it didn’t seem wise to refuse him now. Try a compromise. “Thanks very much but let’s call it a dutch date.”

  Miles grinned at last. “I’d rather not call it a date at all.”

  At which Mabry sniffed a recurrent problem. “Miles, I meant exactly what I told you. I don’t have one scrap of interest in your body, except insofar as you look strong enough to lift me occasionally—if I prove to need lifting.”

  Miles said “Roger, sir.”

  “Roger, Mabry, please.”

  Miles agreed.

  “And I may not have a job of any sort to offer.”

  “Roger, Mabry.” Miles laughed, then suddenly leapt to his feet, moved right in on Mabry, and hoisted him up as easily as feathers, then tossed him three times very gently.

  Mabry wasn’t scared. Far from it. He felt a lot safer than he’d felt since leaving Italy; so he almost offered the job, here and now. But before he could speak, Miles set him back easily in his deep armchair and walked to the hall door. “See you Friday at seven—right?”

  Mabry said “Right” and felt that it was. But once he’d proceeded through a calm half hour of minor chores and showered off the dust of his home street, climbed into bed, and read till the magazine fell on his face as sleep folded him in, he was chilled again. I’m almost as young a man as Frances was a woman when she died in an agony I couldn’t ease, couldn’t even touch. She’s anyhow out of it now; but I’m here and—with Tasker’s genes—I could last another thirty years, blind and paralyzed and worse than that, if anything’s worse. Who would be with me—Charlotte and Malc? Kind as they may be, they’re weak-armed women; and whatever monster is burning inside me will strain them way past a normal quota of patience. They’re women though and women can bear far more than men, God bless their hearts.

  True or not, he believed himself and was soon unconscious for a dreamless night.

  Even as he dialed her number, Mabry wasn’t quite sure why he was calling Blair Patrick. They’d spoken fairly often on the phone, but he hadn’t seen her in maybe six months. She was one of his oldest New York friends; and as the sadness of last night’s trip downtown lingered through the morning (and the prospect of his oncoming visit to the doctor was increasingly fearsome), he found himself hunting her number in his book.

  A strange voice answered. “Renaissance Prints. Ms. Patrick’s office.”

  Now she has a secretary at least. But almost before he could ask for Blair, she picked up her phone. He couldn’t resist—“Wow, you’re moving on up!”

  She switched to her school-mistress tone at once. “That’s not a secretary. It’s Emmeline. You met her last time you were in here. She’s just helping me today with a twelve-foot stack of Dürer wood-cuts. How many do you want?”

  Mabry said “Put me down for a two-foot stack at least, assuming they’re free.”

  Blair’s old giggle flowered. “If they have to be free, I’ll bring you twelve inches’ worth. Will that be enough?”

  “Never enough, darlin’ child, but still—I take what I can get. And speaking of which, how about I buy you dinner tonight?”

  “Shit!” she said. “I’m flying to Cincinnati late today—an ancient gent with, he claims, a houseful of Rembrandt and Franz Hals. And he says he ‘just wants to clear the damned walls, at any price, and start over with Dalí.’”

  Mabry had silently bridled at her starting with Shit! As he told his father, he’d broken more than half the Ten Commandments; but the fact that the younger generation said shit as easily as sherbet was still a hard fact for his ears. So he started with “Ugh,” but then he said “I can get him a zillion fake Dalís by lunchtime.”

  Blair said “Every schoolchild could. And speaking of lunch, I’m free for lunch today.”

  He walked the few blocks then, a half hour early, to Christie’s auction house, wandered through a show of several dozen soon-to-be-knocked-down eighteenth-century paintings from Catholic Peru (each Virgin and saint portrayed with the wholly convincing and magnetic plaintiveness of all the best American colonial art, South or North; didn’t it all say Oh bring me home?—home of course being Europe).

  Then he led Blair back to Torre di Pisa, the good Italian restaurant near the Algonquin. The midday was clear. Mabry had sent his clothes to the hotel’s overnight laundry and looked halfway decent anyhow; but Blair looked fine—truly terrific—and the maître d’ at the Torre registered the caliber of her power with an eyebrow lift in Mabry’s direction.

  He’d known her—what?—nearly twenty years, since a friend invited him down to Chapel Hill to demonstrate the mysteries of his craft for a class of art students. Blair was eighteen then, a dazzling girl, from up beyond Asheville; so he knew she was thirty-seven now. He’d behaved himself in Chapel Hill, despite the innocence with which she’d approached him after the master class and asked if he would come to her sorority for supper that night or just a movie with him and her only? That long ago, the gap between them seemed infinite—to Blair anyhow.

  But once Mabry had moved to New York, they passed on the street once; and she recognized him—“You’re Mr. Kincaid?” She was working way downtown, at a trashy gallery; and a fling ensued that broke both their hearts. Mabry honestly believed it had hurt him worse—the morning they woke in his loft and she said “Oh friend, I’m the wrong human being for you. I’m even the wrong human being for me. If we know what’s likely to be good for us, we better jump out of bed right this instant, take separate showers, and forget we ever touched each other below the neck.” Both of them had laughed; but at the moment, he hadn’t asked what was wrong with her or him; and the years had passed so fast he’d never had the inclination to ask.

  But they’d never lost touch, not quite, though sometimes the better part of a year might pass before one or the other would call for consoling company and mostly find it available. Mainly, they met to discuss Mabry’s availability for a given piece of conservation that a purchaser might need on a picture. The restoration of damaged paper was one of his specialties, and Blair encountered reams of torn or discolored old paper. Occasionally, they’d drink enough wine; and then one or the other might venture on a confidence.

  Recently, with Mabry involved in Frances’s last illness and compelled to an unnatural degree of virtue, the secrets came mostly from Blair. Lovely and smart as she was, with the passing of years, she was developing a genius for falling in love with awful heels. At first, her mistakes were largely comic; and both she and Mabry could manage to laugh as he offered suggestions for the best escape routes. But lately she’d begun to offer, without quite knowing it, a discomforting mirror of his own early caddishness. And even now, no more than eight days after the local calamity, as soon as she’d got her glass of Chianti, she launched—unbidd
en—into a detailed account of the latest adventure in self-abasement with a man fully nine years younger than herself and (according to the photo she produced from her wallet) no feast for the eyes, despite her assertion that their sex was phenomenal, aided as it was by his years of study in Tantric yoga which made him available for all-night sessions of mind-boggling gratification.

  Today, when Mabry had heard much more than he enjoyed about Tonto’s ongoing wonders (and Tonto was the Tantrist’s actual nickname), he drained his own wine, set the glass down hard to change the subject, and said “Where were you when the buildings fell?” She lived in Chelsea.

  The suddenness plainly shocked her; and prone as she was to sudden tears, her eyes nearly brimmed. She touched them with a napkin, then nodded deeply as though confirming Mabry’s suggestion that she might have been present in the city on the bleak day itself. When she could answer, she said “I’m hoping we can talk about that.”

  Mabry said “Then what? God knows every other soul alive on Earth is babbling on about nothing else lately.”

  His meanness riled her slightly, enough to help her recall her age. She was very nearly as grown, and as sane, as this old friend. She said “Should we stay on?”

  Laconic as she was, he understood she wasn’t proposing to leave the restaurant. “I was going to ask you nearly the same thing.”

  “Is it home?” Blair said. “Is this big mixture of human beings home for either one of us?”

  Mabry said “As recently as yesterday evening, downtown on Rector Street, I began to wonder.”

  “You got down there? How? Lord, I thought it was closed to all but the president.”

  “Charlotte managed it—Charlotte and her cowboy partner.”

  Blair actually touched him, the back of his hand. With her strong forefinger she all but drilled right through to his palm. “Cow girl, OK? But thank every star you’ve got that your blood daughter has found somebody as strong and kind as Malc.”