The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)

by J.F. Powers

  The next morning, he drove to the city with the traffic, and swiftly negotiated the items on his office list, including a desk, Model DK 100, and a typewriter with different type, called “editorial,” and said to be used by newscasters.

  “Always a pleasure to do business with you, Father,” the clerk said.

  The scene then changed to the fifth floor of a large department store, which Joe had visited the day before, and there life got difficult again. What had brought him back was a fourposter bed with pineapple finials. The clerk came on a little too strong.

  “The double bed’s making a big comeback, Father.”

  “That so?”

  “What I’d have, if I had the choice.”

  “Yes, well.” Joe liked the bed, especially the pineapples, but he just couldn’t see the curate (who?) in it. Get it for himself, then, and give the curate the pastor’s bed—it was a single. And then what? The pastor’s bed, of unfriendly metal and painted like a car, hospital gray, would dictate nothing about the other things for the room. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to the curate, would it?

  “Lot of bed for the money, Father.”

  “Too much bed.”

  The clerk then brought out some brochures and binders with colored tabs. So Joe sat down with him on a bamboo chaise longue, and, passing the literature back and forth between them, they went to work on Joe’s problem. They discovered that Joe could order the traditional type of bed in a single, in sev-eral models—cannonballs, spears, spools (Jenny Lind)—but not pineapples, which, it seemed, had been discontinued by the maker. “But I wonder about that, Father. Tell you what. With your permission, I’ll call North Carolina.”

  Joe let him go ahead, after more discussion, mostly about air freight, but when the clerk returned to the chaise longue he was shaking his head. North Carolina had gone to lunch. North Carolina would call back, though, in an hour or so, after checking the warehouse. “You wouldn’t take cannonballs or spears, Father? Or Jenny Lind?”

  “Not Jenny Lind.”

  “You like cannonballs, Father?”

  “Yes, but I prefer the other.”

  “Pineapples.”

  Since nothing could be done about the other items on his list until he found out about the bed—or beds, for he had decided to order two beds, singles, with matching chests, plus box springs and mattresses, eight pieces in all—Joe went home to await developments.

  At six minutes to three, the phone rang. “St Francis,” Joe said.

  “Earl, Father.”

  “Earl?”

  “At the store, Father.”

  “Oh, hello, Earl.”

  Earl said that North Carolina could supply, and would air-freight to the customer’s own address. So beds and chests would arrive in a couple of days, Friday at the outside, and box springs and mattresses, these from stock, would be on the store’s Thursday delivery to Inglenook.

  “O.K., Father?”

  “O.K., Earl.”

  Joe didn’t try to do anymore that day.

  The next morning, he took delivery of the office equipment (which Mrs P.—Mrs Pelissier—the housekeeper, must have noticed), and so he got a late start on his shopping. He began where he’d left off the day before. Earl, spotting him among the lamps, came over to say hello. When he saw Joe’s list, he recommended the store’s interior-decorating department—“Mrs Fox, if she’s not out on a job.” With Joe’s permission, Earl went to a phone, and Mrs Fox soon appeared among the lamps. Slightly embarrassed, Joe told her what he thought—that the room ought to be planned around the bed, since it was a bedroom. Mrs Fox smacked her lips and shrieked (to Earl), “He doesn’t need me!”

  As a matter of fact, Mrs Fox proved very helpful—steered Joe from department to department, protected him from clerks, took him into stockrooms and onto a freight elevator, and remembered curtains and bedspreads (Joe bought two), which weren’t on his list but were definitely needed. Finally, Mrs Fox had the easy chair and other things brought down to the parking lot and put into his car. These could have gone out on the Thursday delivery, but Joe wanted to see how the room would look even without the big stuff—the bed, the chest, the student’s table, and the revolving bookcase. Mrs Fox felt the same way. Twice in the store she’d expressed a desire to see the room, and he’d managed to change the subject, and then she did it again, in the parking lot—was dying to see the room, she shrieked, just as he was driving away. He just smiled. What else could he do? He couldn’t have Mrs Fox coming out there.

  In some ways, things were moving too fast. He still hadn’t told Mrs P. that he was getting a curate—hadn’t because he was afraid if he did, she’d ask, as he had, “Who?” Who, indeed? He still didn’t know, and the fact that he didn’t would, if admitted, make him look foolish in Mrs P.’s eyes. It would also put the Church—administrationwise—in a poor light.

  That evening, after Mrs P. had gone home, Joe unloaded the car, which he’d run into the garage because the easy chair was clearly visible in the trunk. It took him four trips to get all his purchases up to the room. Then, using a kitchen chair, listening to the ball game and drinking beer, he put up the curtain rods. (The janitor, if asked to, would wonder why, and if told, would tell Mrs P., who would ask, “Who?”) When Joe had the curtains up, tiebacks and all, he took a much needed bath, changed, and made himself a gin-and-tonic. He carried it into the room, dark now—he had been waiting for this moment—and turned on the lamps he’d bought. O.K.—and when the student’s table came, the student’s lamp, now on the little bedside table, would look even better. He had chosen one with a yellow shade, rather than green, so the room would appear cheerful, and it certainly did. He tried the easy chair, the matching footstool, the gin-and-tonic. O.K. He sat there for some time, one foot going to sleep on the rose-and-blue hooked rug while he wondered why—why he hadn’t heard anything from the curate.

  The next day, Thursday, he gave Mrs P. the afternoon off, saying he planned to eat out that evening, and so she wasn’t present when the box springs, mattresses, student’s table and revolving bookcase came, at twenty after four—the hottest time of day. He had a lot of trouble with the mattresses—really a job for two strong men, one to pull on the mattress, one to hold on to the carton—and had to drink two bottles of beer to restore his body salts. He took a much needed bath, changed, and, feeling too tired to go out, made himself some ham sandwiches and a gin-and-tonic. He used a whole lime—it was his salad—and ate in his study while watching the news: people starving in Asia and Mississippi. He went without dessert. Suddenly, he jumped up and got busy around the place, did the dishes—dish—and locked the church. When darkness came, he was back where he’d been the night before—in the room, in the chair, with a glass, wondering why he hadn’t heard anything from the curate.

  It was customary for the newly ordained men to take a few days off to visit and shake down their friends and relatives. Ordinations, though, had been held on Saturday. It was now Thursday, almost Friday, and still no word. What to do? He had called people at the seminary, hoping to learn the curate’s name and perhaps something of his character, just in the course of conversation. (“Understand you’re getting So-and-So, Joe.”) But it hadn’t happened—everybody he asked to speak to (the entire faculty, it seemed) had left for vacationland. He had then called the diocesan paper and, with pencil ready, asked for a complete rundown on the new appointments, but the list hadn’t come over from the Chancery yet. (“They can be pretty slow over there, Father.” “Toohey, you mean?” “Monsignor’s pretty busy, Father, and we don’t push him on a thing like this—it’s not what we call hard news.”)

  So, really, there was nothing to do, short of calling the Chancery. Early in the week, it might have been done—that was when Joe made his mistake—but it was out of the question now. He didn’t want to expose the curate to censure and run the risk of turning him against his pastor, and he also didn’t want the Chancery to know what the situation was at SS Francis and Clare’s, one of the
best-run parishes in the diocese, though it certainly wasn’t his fault. It was the curate’s fault, it was Toohey’s fault. “Letter follows.” If called on that, Toohey would say, “Didn’t say when. Busy here,” and hang up. That was how Toohey played the game. Once, when Joe had called for help and said he’d die if he didn’t get away for a couple of weeks, Toohey had said, “Die,” and hung up. Rough. If the Church ever got straightened out administrationwise, Toohey and his kind would have to go, but that was one of those long-term objectives. In the meantime, Joe and his kind would have to soldier on, and Joe would. It was hard, though, after years of waiting for a curate, after finally getting one, not to be able to mention it. While shopping, Joe had run into two pastors who would have been interested to hear of his good fortune, and one had even raised the subject of curates, had said that he was getting a change, “Thank God!” Joe hadn’t thought much about it then—the “Thank God!” part—but now he did, and, swallowing the weak last inch of his drink, came face to face with the ice.

  What, he thought—what if the curate, the unknown curate, wasn’t one of the newly ordained men? What if he was one of those bad-news guys? A young man with five or six parishes behind him? Or a man as old as himself, or older, a retread, a problem priest? Or a goldbrick who figured, since he was paid by the month, he wouldn’t report until the first, Sunday? Or a slob who wouldn’t take care of the room? These were sobering thoughts to Joe. He got up and made another drink.

  The next morning, when he returned from a trip to the dump, where he personally disposed of his empties, Mrs P. met him at the door. “Somebody who says he’s your assistant—”

  “Yes, yes. Where is he?”

  “Phoned. Said he’d be here tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” But he didn’t want Mrs P. to get the idea that he was disappointed, or that he didn’t know what was going on. “Good. Did he say what time?”

  “He just asked about confessions.”

  “So he’ll be here in time for confessions. Good.”

  “Said he was calling from Whipple.”

  “Whipple?”

  “Said he was down there buying a car.”

  Joe nodded, as though he regarded Whipple, which he’d driven through once or twice, as an excellent place to buy a car. He was waiting for Mrs P. to continue.

  “That’s all I know,” she said, and shot off to the kitchen. Hurt. Not his fault. Toohey’s fault. Curate’s fault. Not telling her about the curate was bad, but doing it as he would have had to would have been worse. Better she think less of him than know the truth—and think less of the Church. He took the sins of curates and administrators upon him.

  That afternoon, he waited until four o’clock before he got on the phone to Earl. “Say, what is this? I thought you said Friday at the outside.”

  “Oh, oh,” said Earl, and didn’t have to be told who was calling, or about what. He said he’d put a tracer on the order, and promised to call back right away, which he did. “Hey, Father, guess what? The order’s at our warehouse. North Carolina goofed.”

  “That so?” said Joe, but he wasn’t interested in Earl’s analysis of North Carolina’s failure to ship to customer’s own address, and cut in on it. He described his bed situation, as he hadn’t before for Earl, in depth. He was going to be short a bed—no, not that night but the next, when his assistant would be there, and also a monk of advanced age who helped out on weekends and slept in the guest room. No, the bed in the guest room, to answer Earl’s question, was a single—actually, a cot. Yes, Joe could put his assistant on the box spring and mattress, but wouldn’t like to do it, and didn’t see why he should. He’d been promised delivery by Friday at the outside. He didn’t care if Inglenook was in Monday and Thursday territory. In the end, he was promised delivery the next day, Saturday.

  “O.K., Father?”

  “O.K., Earl.”

  The next afternoon, a panel truck, scarred and bearing no name, pulled up in front of the rectory at seven minutes after four. Joe didn’t know what to make of it. He stayed inside the rectory until the driver and his helper unloaded a carton, then rushed out, and was about to ask them to unload at the back door and save themselves a few steps when a word on the carton stopped him. “Hold everything!” And it wasn’t, as he’d hoped, simply a matter of a word on a carton. Oh, no. On investigation, the beds proved to be as described on their cartons—cannonballs. “Hold everything. I have to call the store.”

  On the way to the telephone, passing Father Otto, the monk of advanced age, who was another who hadn’t been told about the curate, and now appeared curious to know what was happening in the street, Joe wished that monks were forbidden to wear their habits away from the monastery. Flowing robes, Joe felt, had a bad effect on his parishioners, made him, in his cassock, look second-best in their eyes, and also reminded non-Catholics of the Reformation.

  “Say, what is this?” he said, on the phone.

  “Oh, oh,” said Earl when he learned what had happened. “North Carolina goofed.”

  “Now, look,” said Joe, and really opened up on Earl and the store. “I don’t like the way you people do business,” he said, pausing to breathe.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Father, but didn’t you say you liked cannonballs?”

  “Better than Jenny Lind, I said. But that’s not the point. I prefer the other, and that’s what I said. You know what ‘prefer’ means, don’t you?”

  “Pineapples.”

  “You’ve got me over a barrel, Earl.”

  In the end, despite what he’d indicated earlier, Joe said he’d take delivery. “But we’re through,” he told Earl, and hung up.

  He returned to the street where, parked behind the panel truck, there was now a new VW beetle, and there, it seemed, standing by the opened cartons with Father Otto, the driver, and his helper, was Joe’s curate—big and young, obviously one of the newly ordained men. Seeing Joe, he left the others and came smiling toward him.

  “Where you been?” Joe said—like an old pastor, he thought.

  The curate stopped smiling. “Whipple.”

  Joe put it another way. “Why didn’t you give me a call?”

  “I did.”

  “Before yesterday?”

  “I did. Don’t know how many times I called. You were never in.”

  “Didn’t know what to think,” Joe said, ignoring the curate’s point like an old pastor, and, looking away, wished that the beetle—light brown, or dark yellow, sort of a caramel—was another color, and also that it wasn’t parked where it was, adding to the confusion. (The driver’s helper was showing Father Otto how his dolly worked.) “Could’ve left your name with the housekeeper.”

  “I kept thinking I’d get you if I called again. You were never in.”

  Joe moved toward the street, saying, “Yes, well, I’ve been out a lot lately. Could’ve left your name, Father.”

  “I did, Father. Yesterday.”

  “Yes, well.” Standing by the little car, viewing the books and luggage inside, Joe wished that he could start over, that he hadn’t started off as he had. He had meant to welcome the curate. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t—look at the days and nights of needless anxiety, and look what time it was now—but still he wanted to make up for it. “Better drive your little car around to the back, Father, and unload,” he said. “The housekeeper’ll show you the room. Won’t ask you to hear confessions this afternoon.” And, having opened the door of the little car for the curate, he closed it for him, saying, through the window, “See you later, Father.”

  When he straightened up, he saw that Big Mouth, a neighbor and a parishioner, had arrived to inspect the cartons, heard him questioning Father Otto, saw, too, that Mrs P. had decided to sweep the front walk and was working that way. Joe called to her.

  “I’ve bought a few things—besides the bed and chest here—for the curate’s room,” he told her, so she wouldn’t be too surprised when she saw them. Then he gave her the key to the room, saying, pe
rhaps needlessly, that she’d find it locked, and that the box springs, mattresses, and bedspreads would be found within. The other bed—the one that should and would have been his but for the interest shown in it by Father Otto and Big Mouth—the other bed and chest, he told Mrs P., should go into the guest room. “Fold up the cot and put it somewhere. Get the curate to help you—he’s not hearing this afternoon.”

  Turning then to the little group around the cartons, he saw that his instructions to Mrs P. had been overheard and understood. The little group—held together by the question “Would he take delivery?”—was breaking up. He thanked the driver and his helper for waiting, nodded to Big Mouth, said “Coming?” to Father Otto, since it was now time for confessions, and walked toward the church. He took the sins of curates and administrators and North Carolina upon him. He gave another his bed.

  That evening, after confessions, and after Father Otto had retired to the new bed in the guest room, Joe and the curate sat on in the pastor’s study. Joe, doing most of the talking, had had less than usual, the curate more, it seemed—he was yawning. “Used to be,” Joe was saying, “we all drove black cars. I still do.” Joe, while he didn’t want to hurt the curate’s feelings, just couldn’t understand why a priest, even a young priest today, able to buy a new car should pick one the color of the curate’s. “Maybe it’s not important.”

  “Think I’ll turn in, Father.”

  Joe hated to go to bed, and changed the subject slightly. “How’s the room? O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  Joe had been expecting a bit more. Had he hurt the curate’s feelings? “It’s not important, what I was saying.”

  The curate smiled. “My uncle’s the dealer in Whipple. He gave me a good deal on the car, but that was part of it—the color.”

  “I see.” Joe tried not to appear as interested as he suddenly was. “What’s he call his place—Whipple Volkswagen? I know a lot of ’em do. That’s what they call it here—Inglenook Volkswagen.”