The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  Gwyn could finally say “You mean you’re flipping for your favorite bozoom of the two you’re holding or for whether or not you can live in Gotham, our Latest City of Dreadful Night?”

  “Maybe both,” he said and laughed again, though it seemed to him he might very well mean it. But alone. Remember, it would be flat alone. Forever after? He didn’t say that. He glanced to the window again—full dark. “Shall we scrounge up a supper from whatever’s left?”

  To Gwyn it seemed they’d eaten big sandwiches minutes before, but she said “We could drive into town and find something decent.”

  Mabry said “I promised Pa I’d be here, waiting by the phone.”

  Gwyn said “Then let me run to the store.” It was said in a tone of pure selfless help.

  Mabry told her he’d never stop that. And though again he didn’t explain, he was close to believing he wouldn’t manage to spend a night alone in this house, not tonight anyhow. Fear was likely the main reason, unfocused fear; but he told himself it was owing to the danger of getting an emergency call about Tasker and finding that his own eyes, or hands or mind, wouldn’t let him drive to the hospital safely—not alone and maybe never again.

  At half past nine Gwyn served a good supper, and Mabry tried to tell her about his days in New York. Understandably, she wanted to know about the state of his loft and what he’d seen on his downtown visit with Charlotte and Malcolm. He barely mentioned Miles, and he held off stressing the awful presence of so many dead lives in the air, not one of whom could have died at peace, not to mention the desolate living kin with their Xeroxed photographs and hopeless handouts. Gwyn had after all been to North Vietnam and Cambodia; but even she could see that, despite more quantities of double-strength coffee (real coffee), Mabry was craving a long night’s sleep. When he said he’d help her with the dishes, then scoot for bed, she told him to scoot right then. She’d handle the cleanup. He was at the hall door before he could make himself turn and ask for what he’d hoped to avoid. He said “Dear pal, is there any way on Earth you could manage to stay here tonight?”

  She was already drawing water at the sink; but she turned, mildly curious as to why she was needed. “I didn’t really shut down my own house but—”

  So he gave her an absolute honest plea. “I wouldn’t ask you if I thought I could handle an emergency call in the midst of the night.”

  She hadn’t yet asked and it seemed a hard time to raise the question, but she went ahead. “Did your own doctor warn you?”

  “I told you I was meant to see him yesterday but then Audrey called.”

  “So no word yet on all those tests you took?”

  Mabry waited till he’d choked down the bulk of his anger. His voice was low. “Jesus, friend—there’s no word, no. In my experience, very few doctors’ secretaries tell you on the phone about your M.S. or your cancerous womb. Maybe you found otherwise in the Orient?”

  “Call it Asia,” Gwyn said, “that’s the new polite term. No, Mabry, they’ll hardly tell you when you’re truly on the last day of your deathbed. My cancerous womb was all but hanging between my knees before they told me.” With her voice still solid, low in the air, she turned back to the sink to draw water.

  That was news to Mabry. “Oh Gwyn, I didn’t know a word about this. I beg your pardon.”

  She wouldn’t face him. “You’ve got it, friend.”

  “Want to tell me more?”

  “Please go on to bed. I’ll be here tomorrow. We can talk then—or five years from now—if your interest survives.”

  He said “Of course my interest will be here. Right now I’m just swamped, far more swamped than I expected to be. In another few days, I’ll be a better friend. Meanwhile, I checked and Audrey has got clean sheets on the other bed in my room. Will you please be there?”

  “I will. Guaranteed.”

  He held his place another whole second.

  Then just as he turned to leave, Gwyn thought of something. “You want to phone Audrey now and check on the state of things before bedtime?”

  “Please let’s don’t. She and I’ve got a strong understanding—she’ll call if the least thing goes wrong with Tasker.”

  “Then sweet dreams,” Gwyn said. “Rest deep anyhow.”

  Just before he sank, Mabry raised his head. “Oh girl, did you ever marry a Signor Becchi? You mentioned him once, if I remember rightly.”

  Gwyn waited in hopes sleep would overtake him. When his eyes stayed open, she had to say “Not married exactly. Not on this planet. Anyhow he’s no concern of ours today.”

  Mabry’s eyes shut finally. “That’s a major relief.”

  Gwyn said “Glad to be of service, old friend, however small.”

  Both of them laughed.

  He rested so deeply that, when the only phone rang in the front hall at 5:43 in the morning, he didn’t hear it. When Gwyn had answered and come back to rouse him, she was forced to shake him hard. And when he lurched up and faced her with blurred—crazed—eyes, she said “Mabry, be calm but get up now and speak with Audrey. She’s on the phone.”

  “Pa’s dead,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. I honestly don’t. But get up now. Audrey’s waiting for you.”

  So she was, wide awake at Tasker’s bedside. “Mabry, I’m sorry to trouble your sleep; but your father’s been terribly restless all night. He hasn’t said a word, but he plainly wants to have you nearby. I waited till daylight at least to call you.”

  “He hasn’t had another stroke?”

  Audrey said “Oh no. Just sleepless, as I said, and tossing in his sheets. When I try to ease him—Marcus or I—he waves us off. The same with the nurses. He’s bound to want you.”

  Even groggy as he was, Mabry couldn’t think that was bound to be the case. When, in the past five decades anyhow, had his father ever wanted him urgently? Yet he said “Tell him I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

  He managed a shower, clean underwear, and a cup of fresh coffee. Then Gwyn drove him in his rented car to Roanoke Rapids. He’d told her that Marcus could drive her back to her car in Wells; but once they’d parked outside the hospital, he asked her if she’d mind walking in with him.

  She said “I’ve come close to loving your father for my whole life.” That was her answer and she walked in with Mabry. When the elevator doors opened on the top floor, he actually put his arm through hers and led her beside him into his father’s room.

  Both Audrey and Marcus were there, and Tasker’s head craned up and either grinned or winced hard at the new sight. His skin was flushed a purplish red; the restlessness which Audrey mentioned had plainly been real work.

  As Mabry moved toward him, Gwyn tried to pull back but Mabry kept hold of her arm.

  So Tasker studied them both, like complicated texts he must shortly explain or at least comprehend. His lips even parted; but if he meant to speak, he chewed the words with a terrible groan. Then he looked back at Gwyn and maybe tried to smile but ended by shaking his head—a seeming No. Then his right hand came up and waved her and Audrey and Marcus toward the door. They must leave the room. Only Mabry seemed welcome to stay for a while or maybe forever.

  As it was, here and now, Mabry felt nearly ready—a clean room, light enough, room to stand and turn in, a white enamel sink with hot and cold water, paper towels, a small bathroom with a shower and commode and of course the bed with this old man. Do I love him at all? Maybe that was irrelevant, now at least. He didn’t plan to leave him. Anyhow he thought of Gwyn and the Thorntons. They were likely outside, at the door or in the lobby. So he said to his father “I’ll step outside for thirty seconds and get young Marcus to drive Gwyn home. Should Audrey stay with us?”

  For a long time that seemed too much for Tasker, too many words or too many choices. But then he shut his eyes and signed an apparent yes to all the options.

  When Mabry went out and met with the others in the waiting room, they were plainly ready for a little relief. Marcus would ferry Gwyn to her
car, then go about his regular plans for a Saturday morning. But when he told Audrey that his father had agreed she should stay, Audrey said “Let me tell him I need to run home—his house and my house—to bathe and change and tend to a few chores. You can mostly reach me by phone, and I’ll be back in under three hours. Will that suit you? You saw he wanted you.” It clearly caused her no pain to say it.

  Mabry said “Please come back as soon as you can.” Then he went to Gwyn, hugged her close, and said he’d call her later in the morning. “A billion thanks.”

  Gwyn said “Should I just say goodbye to your father?”

  She hadn’t said farewell so Mabry figured she might be assuming she’d see his father sometime in the future. He said “He seems to have something to do with me. Let’s leave him to it now.”

  Gwyn didn’t ask for more explanation; and when she turned to Marcus, ready to leave, Mabry said “Marc, I’ll no doubt see you later today. You know I’m grateful.”

  Marcus said “I know it” and led the way out.

  When he entered Tasker’s room, Dr. Sharma was there at the bedside, talking very quietly. He turned to Mabry and smiled. “Ah, you’re here, sir. We were missing you.”

  Mabry smiled but said “I had to go missing. I was tired to the bone. Ms. Thornton knew exactly where I was.”

  Dr. Sharma heard the offended note. “I meant no criticism at all. Your father has been hoping for you, however.”

  By then Mabry was also at the bed, his hand on the blade of Tasker’s shin beneath the cover. “Has he asked for me? I haven’t heard him speak since I got here.”

  Dr. Sharma said “I couldn’t say precisely. I think he may have called you by your Christian name late in the night when I was away.”

  “Ms. Thornton told you that?”

  “I think it was her son.”

  Marcus hadn’t mentioned that to Mabry, so he stayed in place and asked about his father’s progress. Tasker’s eyes were fixed right on him.

  Dr. Sharma looked to Tasker, not Mabry, and said “I think we’re doing the expected.”

  Mabry said “And the expected is that my father can go to his own home tomorrow or Monday?”

  The doctor’s eyes were reluctant. Did he recall ever saying such a thing? At last he said “Let’s rest a little longer. We can speak tomorrow maybe.” With very few more words, he ducked and left the Kincaid men, both generations.

  They were there, alone, till late morning except for mumbling visits, every few hours, from a nurse’s aide with a blood pressure sleeve and a fever thermometer. Audrey phoned in midday and asked if she could wait awhile longer. She was babysitting Marcus’s daughter, “a treat and a relief” as she said with welcome candor. She’d never mentioned her grandchild before, not to Mabry anyhow. Mabry said “I’m all the job seems to need till bedtime. Pa’s quiet now and the doctor says what he needs is rest.”

  Did Audrey let it slip, or was she truly near some ending? In any case, she said “Rest—pure rest—is what we all need.” The sound of a young girl’s clamoring voice was clear behind her.

  And Mabry thought Whatever you do, just don’t leave us. But all he said was “Come when you can.”

  She said she’d do her best, or she’d try to send Marcus.

  When he looked back to Tasker, for the first full time Mabry felt a rushing return of what his father might have likely called love. Like any decent boy, brought up kindly, he’d had moments of real delight with this man, waves of thanks as drenching as water, and the need to loop up his small-framed father in embraces that silently promised to honor and protect him forever or at least a lifetime. The human race would surely have vanished long centuries ago without such returns, and so it should have. What did the hugely successful attack on New York buildings and lives eleven days ago, three blocks from his loft, represent but the momentarily triumphant assertion by nineteen young men that people should cease (millions of people, maybe all Americans, surely all infidels) since those young men had simply lacked fathers? Or adequate fathers. Absurd? Well, maybe. But maybe not. The longer Mabry looked at Tasker, the more he thought maybe not. He took the hand that lay on the sheet and held it closely. Then he said “Father Kincaid, tell me something to do” (he heard himself say Father Kincaid for the first time). “Anything you need that Mabry can get?”

  The old head, smaller now by two or three sizes, shook a hard No.

  There was nothing here to read but the pocket New Testament Audrey had brought. Mabry took it up from beside the phone and showed it to Tasker. “Anything I should read?”

  A long wait, Tasker’s eyes loosened their feverish grip on Mabry’s face and looked to the window. Full sun had won its scuffle with fog and was streaming in. Then the old man turned his whole body toward Mabry; and for the first time since his son had come back, Tasker managed to raise his head five inches above the pillow.

  Mabry leaned forward, to catch the head if it tumbled back (he’d seldom seen his father’s bare thin neck before today).

  Tasker again shook his head no.

  Mabry stayed in place but smiled, ready now for whatever might come.

  Then Tasker said, clear-tongued but very slowly—word by word as if they were polished stones he was handing out to be laid carefully by his only son—“She. Gets. A. House.”

  Mabry’s head was nodding. Whatever it meant, he knew he ought to reward the mere words and the effort they took. But what does he mean? What women does he know? Who’s he seen lately?—Gwyn Williams and nurses. He hasn’t talked to Charlotte. It’s bound to be Audrey. He spoke as clearly as Tasker just had. “Audrey Thornton you mean?”

  By then, though, the head had settled back on the pillow; and a blurring screen was lowering between the face and Mabry—Mabry and anything Mabry could see, beyond or around them. Had his own eyes failed again, or was his father truly leaving? When Mabry reached out, the same cool hand was there—Tasker’s, on the sheet. The eyes seemed open still and trying to follow him as long as they could, against strong odds.

  When Tasker actually left at last, it was more than two hours on into midday; and he took his last breath so calmly that Mabry, sitting no farther than three feet away, heard nothing at all, surely not the final breach in the wall of the softest artery in the brain that had thought this first son to life—had actually thought, one bright afternoon on the porch beside his warm but childlike wife, three years into a marriage that was cooling fast, It’s almost certainly time to put a child between us; then had stood and told her “Eunice, let’s rest .” Tasker, as a young man, had napped no more than twice a year; but Eunice had looked up, studied his whole face, understood him, and risen to take his larger hand. These fifty-four hard years later—and with Eunice in the grave for twelve years—by the time that elder son touched it again, the hand was colder than the room around it.

  It was midafternoon before the Kincaid house was plain to see as Mabry turned the last curve, alone in his car, two hundred yards off. His father’s car was parked where he’d left it the day he broke his ankle, in the old horse shed. And though no other car was in sight, he could see Gwyn Williams rocking in the porch swing. Oh Christ, I told her I was already here—that I needed quiet time till sundown anyhow.

  As he stopped beside the tallest oak, Gwyn stood and came forward to the steps. Since morning she’d changed into a navy-blue dress and pulled her hair back in a dark red ribbon.

  Mabry paused halfway to the house. “Gwyn, thanks but I thought I mentioned quiet time.”

  “You did and I mean to be out of here fast, friend; but listen, I’ve buried two people in this town in recent years, and I think I know a few things that can help you.”

  He said “Such as what, pal?”

  “I can call the best mortician and get him under way (the only other white one’s a knee-walking drunk). I can ask for the church on whatever day you want—the church and the priest. I can book the florist and specify the live blooms (otherwise you may get the finest Hispanic plastic). I can
notify your father’s chosen pallbearers and book motel rooms as nearby as possible—”

  Mabry’s hand came up to stop her. “Touché, my darling.” Then he moved on toward her; and after a nearly silent half hour of puttering in the kitchen, they were drinking real coffee at the table.

  Gwyn had finally understood that Mabry had almost no strength left for a verbal grilling, but there was a single thing she knew that needed bringing up. So she finally said “Beg pardon, friend, but this may be crucial when it comes to funeral plans and whatever—”

  Mabry touched her wrist, smiling. “I can guess where you’re headed—did Pa leave a will?”

  Her turn to say “Touché—but you know what I mean: did he name his pallbearers or the priest or the music or the scripture or whatever?”

  “Not to mention whether his elder son is now a billionaire.”

  “Exactly.” Gwyn laughed.

  Mabry said “I believe Pa told me, two or three years ago, that he’d made a will; and that I’d find a copy in his underwear drawer ‘when the need arises and in whatever house my underwear resides in at the time.’”

  “Should you look there now?” Then she felt she’d pushed a step too far. She took her empty cup to the sink, rinsed it carefully, and said “I’d better get on back home. Randy Baynes has got paint samples for me and said he’d drop by the house before dark. Phone me the minute you’ve got any job for me to do.”

  Mabry stood to hug her. “You’ll be my main help, and I’ll call you very soon.”

  Then she was on her way, giving him the time and emptiness he needed.

  First of course he went to his father’s old bureau; and yes a long white envelope was there, under the dozen pairs of dark gray socks and inscribed in Tasker’s strongest large script—To be opened at my death by my beloved son, Mabry Kincaid. The word beloved was unexpected, even in this particular place; it slowed Mabry down. Instead of returning to the kitchen and cutting the envelope open with a clean knife, he knew he should wait a few minutes at least. He hardly anticipated revelations, but yes he must wait till the moment was right.