The Father Pat Stories

by Patrick Gossage

  Muffled against the cold with his father’s old hat with the fur flaps, Father Pat left a brief note for Brenda, hugged his little dog good-bye and plunged into the cold, already breathless thinking of the half mile walk to the little commuter station in Ridgewood.

  He leaned into the wind, nodded to an equally bent fellow trudger who he almost crashed into on the unplowed sidewalk and finally reached the little cabin, which was already beginning to plug up with drifts. Alice Alnick was reading a tabloid and looked up to see her friend knocking at the window. Removing the metal plate that closed the lower part of the wicket, she turned on her microphone, smiling.

  “Where is Father Pat going on this terrible day — and why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I was feeling trapped in my study if you must know, Alice. You can provide my ticket to freedom!”

  “Coming right up — central downtown, I presume?” Father Pat nodded, pleased with his ability to tell the truth flippantly. Nobody knows, he thought. I really did feel caged today.

  “Well, if you’re bored with being shut up with nowhere to go — think of me!” Alice read his mind. Father Pat felt like saying — Ah, but that’s your job, but caught himself. His priestly bedside manner returned.

  “How’s your daughter — and Joe?” he asked.

  “Oh, we’re OK. He’s still sober. But it’s hard. Well, you know.”

  “I suppose I do. Anyhow say hello to both. Is the train on time?” Father Pat was already in big city mode.

  “Yup. Should be by any minute.”

  He took up his position in the nearest shelter to catch the last door of the last car. He liked to stare out the small rear window and watch the landscape disappear.

  He was daydreaming about the three women in his life, Priscilla, of course and that ongoing problem, but now Brenda and Deirdre, wondering how he could resolve his manufactured dilemma that was now more than twenty years old and coming to the same non-conclusion, when a huge horn blast and an explosion of snow from the engine’s blade almost engulfed him. As he pulled himself into the warmth of the car, he looked back. Alice was gazing fixedly toward him.

  The car was almost empty. He sat on the lower level and watched as the little station disappeared in the snow. Then he glazed over as the rolling countryside transformed into the ugly outskirts of the city. It was quiet.

  He had not seen Deirdre for more than two weeks. Their regular Wednesday lunch of the previous week had been canceled. Her brother had been in town and she had taken the day off to take him to lunch and a visit to the Art Gallery. Father Pat had been a bit annoyed that he wasn’t included. He’d heard enough about the thrice-married, sometime artist to be convinced Deirdre supported him from time to time. But she had been firm.

  “Come on, Pat,” she had said when she phoned to cancel. “You’re not family. You don’t impose yours on me and I’m not going to impose mine on you.”

  Sensible and the truth, but a bit cold, Father Pat had thought.

  That, in fact, was the trouble with Deirdre as far as Father Pat was concerned and he found his mind drifting out and fixing on very concrete memories. She was the best of companions, but she guarded her private geography like a Doberman. The exact opposite to Priscilla, who was an open book, perhaps more a gaping wound. But with Deirdre you were never sure where the boundary was. It changed occasionally and in memorable ways.

  Father Pat remembered a moment at a Liberal rally just before the last election when he decided not to run. They found each other at the back of a big former bingo hall. His Prime Minister was elegantly carving up Leader of the Opposition who seemed poised to deny him a return to office (he succeeded); the militant crowd was clapping on cue. Father Pat was standing just behind Deirdre. When his leader referred to his opponent as an apostate for lying to the public about a land deal that had favoured his friends, Father Pat had leaned towards Deirdre, taken her shoulder and whispered in her ear ironically. “I hope he knows what it means!”

  Deirdre, surprisingly, had turned and placed her left hand firmly and affectionately on his, turned and with a seductive and malicious wink, purred, “Ah yes, but you do my darling, don’t you?”

  Father Pat had to admit, as he had many times reflecting on this tiny incident, that this might have been a little performance. Or it could have been a rare display of some sort of closer connection with him as a person and man than he liked to dream possible. He could almost feel her long hand on his now and smell her thick dark hair as he tightened his own hands together, which were folded neatly on his lap.

  “Have you got your ticket?” He was jerked out of his reverie by a stern female voice. A tall young woman in tight-fitting gabardine pants and sporting an enormous nightstick was towering over him. Father Pat fumbled for the receipt, already feeling anxious about being perhaps caught like a schoolchild without the note from Mom explaining yesterday’s absence. He awkwardly fished out of his pant pocket a disorderly bunch or receipts, notes to himself and phone number slips. There it was. Thank God. By this time the female enforcer was staring down at him impatiently.

  “Good. Hmmm, haven’t caught one yet today,” she said as she scrutinized the date with what Father Pat thought was a tinge of bitterness. Ah well, we all measure our performances in life in different ways, he thought.

  As her ample hips swung away, Father Pat wondered why he had been so anxious. He always was when accused of anything by a woman or for that matter treated with anything less than warmth and respect. Obviously this applied particularly to his relationship with Brenda. He saw her in a flash, standing over him on Friday in his study demanding the dry cleaning receipt in similar tones. Of course he couldn’t find it, and the episode dragged on with an increasingly frantic search as Brenda stood in the doorway.

  “They are starting to think I’m crazy at the cleaners. I feel a fool,” she remonstrated.

  Well at least she didn’t have a nightstick, he thought. He had spluttered his usual apologies, which were wearing threadbare. They just didn’t seem to have the same priorities, and Father Pat’s somewhat careless approach to life certainly didn’t make living with him any easier. Then there was the unavoidable constant that they hadn’t been able to have children.

  Why is it so difficult for wives to simply accept their husbands as they would friends? This was an endlessly recurring theme of Father Pat’s approach to marital relationships since he had returned to Ridgewood, and it was clear that his once intimate and loving relationship with Brenda had reached a stasis of sorts. He had even used it in a sermon when he again took up the active priesthood.

  He had used the Pauline verses from Corinthians 13 about faith, hope and charity — using the more accurate modern translation for charity as love. But he still regretted that a loaded word like love had to be used in this context. For now it was normally used in the sense of eros — erotic love, not the more friendship-like agape that he was sure Paul had intended. He had carefully explained this to a congregation that was still looking over their new minister pretty carefully.

  His text was a sort of gloss, combining the ringing Elizabethan prose of the St. James version of the Bible with the leaner vocabulary of the more contemporary Revised Standard. He learned it by heart. He could still recite:

  Love suffereth long and is kind. Love envieth not and is not boastful or arrogant, it is not puffed up. Love does not insist on its own way, is not easily provoked or irritable. Love does not rejoice at evil, but rejoiceth in the truth. Love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends …

  He had talked emotionally of how often we were let down by our outrageous expectations of love. How Paul had it right and that when you got down to it, the finest and most long-lasting relationships were based more on acceptance and forbearance than on the false prospect of an everlasting glue-like bond on which many new marriages and not a few early friendships were based. He thought of his own seemingly never-ending yearnings that had begun long ago on the b
oathouse with the redoubtable Stevey. How it was Brenda who finally brought him to completion as a man, and with whom he now had to make the kind of adjustment he sermonized about. What a never-ending and complex paradox.

  He watched a long row of abandoned factories slowly turn by signaling the commuter train’s entry into the old downtown core. Father Pat knew in his heart that he tended to blame Brenda for not performing these basic rights of friendship after their strong physical relationship had slowly withered in the last ten years of their marriage. But ironically he himself had seriously failed the exhortations of his own sermon. On the other hand, and with this thought the train started to slow as it reached the station area, both Terry and Deirdre had met these criteria for this precious, more spiritual and constant kind of love. And he basked in that as he gathered his coat around him and headed into the station’s underground labyrinth.

  In the subway on the way to Terry’s midtown office, Father Pat’s eye was caught by a young couple sitting just opposite him firmly holding gloved hands between their faded jeans. He looked down and they were grasping each other very tightly indeed. The woman, her round ruddy face showing between her upturned collar and woolen hat, had piercing green eyes. As Father Pat turned to look away, he caught their reflection in the subway window and saw her gently put her head on her friend’s shoulder, and while he looked ahead lost in some personal daydream, she cocked her head and looked up at him with immense affection. He gracefully turned and their gazes met. Gazes so full of peace — and promise.

  Father Pat rubbed his eyes and left the subway car. He found his way to Terry’s office over the Submarine Sandwich shop. But, still in his strange Monday reverie, he took a wrong turn on the stairs and ended up totally disoriented facing a large blonde woman in a small office combing her hair while a large man shouted on the phone by a window.

  “Can I help ya?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, it’s Father Pat for Terry. Are you new?” He started to realize that he was in the wrong office.

  “No, perhaps you’ve got the wrong office, Father. This is Cohn and Company. We book exotic dancers!” And with that she burst out laughing, quickly followed by gales from the large man who had put down the phone and shouted, “Father, have we got a way to liven up your next mass!” Father Pat, tongue-tied, turned and fled.

  “You won’t believe this, Terry, but I stumbled into your exotic dance neighbour just now. They wondered if I was there to book one to spice up a mass and thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.” Father Pat stood at the door of Terry’s office and launched immediately, as he often did with his friends, into a story.

  “I don’t think you could take it,” Deirdre said, getting up to give her friend a peck. He put his free arm he had just extricated from his worn coat around her shoulder and offered his cheek. “Hmmm. You smell nice Deirdre. Good to see you.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “I’ve just been giving Terry the lowdown on what we think of one of his more sleazy clients and why.” She always used the word “we” when describing the paper, the alleged profession of journalism or simply to put her own views squarely on the side of the public interest, as she usually thought they were.

  “Not what I wanted to hear either,” Terry said. “Anyway, nice to see you too, Pat. I suppose after hearing that the guy who operates my pizza client’s business is a crook I’ll have to buy. Any objections?”

  It was an eight long blocks to Bradley’s, but the snow had let up, and they decided to walk, despite Father Pat’s complaints that he had had enough fresh air walking to the station to last him several days. The odd trio set out, Deirdre a good two or three inches above and between the two shorter men.

  “Come on, you ancients,” Deirdre said, grabbing the hands of her two friends. “We’ll never get there at this rate.” And she broke into a lively trot, pulling the two behind her like some young au pair girl with two kids in tow.

  “Wait a minute, I’m loosing a rubber,” Terry said, hopping on one foot trying to flip it over the back of his shoe. This turned the line around as Father Pat, fully into the fun, kept going ahead and pulling. They all started hooting with laughter, and Terry, his rubber now secure, took the lead and pulled them along faster in a line that snaked through a dense knot of astonished pedestrians at the next busy intersection. Father Pat was now the tail of the line and closed his eyes, hoping nobody would recognize him. He was glad he hadn’t worn his collar. In another block he was enjoying the whole silliness of the adult “crack the whip” game like a ten-year-old.

  They arrived breathless at Bradley’s and scanned the room. There was only one empty booth at the very back of the bar, and saying their hellos to the rotund barkeep, they settled into it. Deirdre, feigning being cold, cozied with Father Pat opposite Terry, who was trying to rearrange his sandy hair, which was all over his face from the four block dash.

  “It’s OK, Terry, you look wonderful,” Father Pat said.

  “Well, if I’m going to play footsy with Deirdre, I have to make sure she has something to look at,” he said wickedly.

  “I don’t consort with those who consort with criminals, Terry. I feel like I need spiritual guidance after spending an hour with you!” And she cuddled Father Pat demonstratively.

  Father Pat was enjoying this immensely. Deirdre often played one against the other in a harmless fashion. Today it was his turn.

  “Sounds like you need absolution, Terry. Don’t know, though. Sounds like evil hasn’t done your business any harm.” Father Pat said.

  “The worst thing about this pizza horror is that he doesn’t even pay his bills! I read every day in the papers how much he’s ripped off his franchisees. For millions. I sure haven’t seen any of it. Anyway I do need some absolution, and I guess I’ll have to go up and get it.”

  Deirdre had not moved away from Father Pat, and, as Terry got up, she moved closer. He turned to look at her. She had on a black jacket with straight lapels and straight tailored black pants and leather boots. She sported a red-and-black silk scarf which bordered her low V-neck. She had her full black mane of hair in an elaborate bun, which set off her long white neck.

  Catching herself being looked over appreciatively, she poked at Father Pat. “You look almost human today. Where’d you get the nice shirt? I’ve never seen it before.” She had a way of reminding Pat that he was more than a passing acquaintance.

  “I think I bought it to wear at the outdoor bazaar last spring and then forgot about it. Not part of the uniform, you know,” he said, rolling his eyes and curling his lips as he said “uniform”. “But thanks. You look great.”

  “Don’t talk to me about your uniform so hatefully. You decided to go back to preaching, don’t forget,” she said pointedly.

  “Yeah. You made your bed, Pat,” Terry said as he passed the glasses and sat down. “Now I have to save you from total boredom by bringing you into the big city and plying you with liquor.”

  “So it’s let’s get Pat now, eh?” said Father Pat who spent an inordinate amount of time pondering and contemplating his lot. In their courting days Brenda always credited him with at least “thinking” about his life. But he hated talking about it with a passion, and willy-nilly because of a one-word slip, the conversation was turning on him.

  “No. But Deirdre and I were talking about it before you came. I worry that except for our odd adventure, you may feel life closing in on you, and it’s showing.” Terry raised his glass and the three toasted each other silently.

  “Pat, have you thought of perhaps coming back to the city and going on to something else — perhaps writing or teaching?”

  Terry waded in before a now unhappy-looking priest had a chance to reply. “You know, Pat, Deirdre told me that the religious editor of the Record just died. And your local columns aren’t bad at all. I don’t know, Deirdre, what do you think?” This was a plot, Father Pat thought.

  “Well, it would get him out of Ridgewood and out from under the watchful eye
of all those zealots who don’t approve of him. And out of the clutches of the fastidious and fatuous Bishop Feld!”

  Wait a minute, Father Pat thought. You can’t sit there, however close we are as friends, and dismantle my carefully balanced life. And anyway, he thought as the two continued to offer further solutions with better and more imaginative ideas, what about Brenda? At least in Ridgewood we go our separate ways and there’s a respectable equilibrium.

  As he tuned back in to the conversation, as if by osmosis, it had turned to his marriage. This was a first.

  Terry was leaning across the table intensely. “You know, Pat, the other thing that worries me is that frankly, and I’ve never said this before, I think Brenda, much as I like and respect her, is holding you back. I think you went back to Ridgewood to please her and ’settle down’ again. I remember her saying that. I think you’re too young — at least mentally — to settle down that way.”

  This was a conversation stopper. Deirdre could say little about Brenda and never had. In fact she had never mentioned her name, although Pat had given her a pretty full account of their courtship and life. Terry had perhaps overstepped the boundaries of friendship and knew it. Love rejoices in the truth, Father Pat thought.

  Deirdre had been listening intently to Terry. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she turned to look at her longtime friend and ally. “I agree,” she said very slowly and very tenderly. Father Pat was mystified as to what this was intended to signal, but he kept silent.

  Terry saved the lunch by launching into a tirade about Joe Lamarre, the pizza client who was wanted in Illinois for perjury and who had been siphoning off pizza franchise funds for years. Terry had only met with him a couple of times. He had shown a stupefied Terry a large revolver in his desk drawer and had joked a little pointedly about how dangerous some of the franchisees could become and how he had to protect himself.

  They ordered a simple lunch and it was Deirdre’s turn to share some exaggerated stories of her artist brother who had just gone back to his cabin in the north for a lonely winter of painting and, as Deirdre indelicately put it, “screwing his eighteen-year-old popsy.” She drew a hilarious image of her lethargic brother being chased around a paint-stained cabin by a hungry nubile.