Father Poole read the inscription a second time and then wondered whether he ought to run after Father Carroll and return his Bible. But Poole rejected the idea and justified his unwillingness by the obvious lack of importance this Bible had for Father Carroll.
The man used it to keep the table level, thought Father Poole. I’m sure he won’t miss it. He probably forgot the darn thing was even there.
Father Poole then looked from the book down to the busted leg on the nightstand, back again to the Bible, and managed a second genuine laugh. “I don’t think that was the support your mother had in mind, Father Carroll!” he chuckled. After determining that there wasn’t much else to explore in his bedroom, he scanned it one last time, thinking how dull it all seemed.
But Father Poole couldn’t have imagined how interesting the rest of his day was going to be.
FOUR
A Less Than Auspicious Beginning
5:30 p.m. It was customary at this time of day for Father Poole to have his supper, yet in this new place he was unfamiliar with even the simplest protocol. His body was tense, as though he were afraid of precipitating a series of unfortunate events throughout the rectory. A sudden clumsy turn could knock something over, such as the small framed photo of a much younger Father Carroll sitting, carelessly forgotten or intentionally abandoned, on the dresser that now belonged to Father Poole. The crash of the frame onto the floor would surely shatter the glass, alert whomever was downstairs to Father Poole’s presence, and prompt that unknown person to scold him for making excessive noise just before dinner.
Is there a kitchen in this building? he wondered, assuming from Father Carroll’s girth that there not only had to be a kitchen within the rectory but a fairly sizeable one at that.
He then remembered what Manchester had promised him—a staff of his own. He also could hear Carroll’s voice bellowing, “Y-y-you’ll have a staff, alr-right!” Father Poole recalled the only name Father Carroll had mentioned, Sister Mary Ignatius.
Is there no one else? Father Poole continued to himself, as he walked to the solitary window in his room.
He glanced out and saw Father Carroll waddling down the hill toward town. Again he wondered whether he should rush out to return the priest’s Bible to him, but no sooner had the idea crossed his mind than Father Poole said, “What’s the use? He wasn’t even the sort of fellow you’d want to do a favor for. And really, if the shoe were on the other foot, and it had been my Bible, would he have returned it? He appears as happy as a clam to be done with this place once and for all.”
Father Poole noticed a slight feeling of envy toward Carroll, and he now wished that he had visited St. Andrew’s prior to accepting the position. But he was a devout man who believed that God always did things for a reason. For priests everything has a purpose. Mosquitoes, tree sap, weeds, a human appendix, the unbearable summer humidity—all things were put here on earth for some reason or other.
Walking away from the window, as he had no desire to set eyes on Father Carroll again, Poole recited part of a lecture he had memorized by one of his teachers at seminary:
And if at first we cannot find a reason why something is what it is, then we must search deep within ourselves to find the answer. And if even then, after much searching, we are still unable to find a reason, then it is God’s will to keep us ignorant of such matters; and there is a reason why God would choose to do so, if such an enigma existed.
The young priest remembered writing this quotation in his notes because he found it to be laughable, and he had appended a passage from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
This summed up Father Poole’s outlook on the mysteries of life, and he was quite content with it.
“What was that?” Father Poole gasped as he heard a loud crash downstairs. It sounded like a set of cymbals.
DONG! There it goes again! he thought.
He went over to the door of his room very slowly, shuffling his feet as he walked. Halfway across the room he realized he’d been shuffling and picked up his feet. Even with the door closed all the way, the noise had been loud enough to make Phineas jump. He was afraid to open the door at first, worried that once he’d opened it the noise would sound even louder and possibly make him jump even higher, lose his balance, and fall on his backside. He’d be embarrassed if that were to happen. But embarrassed in front of whom? He was alone, or was he? Someone had to be in the rectory. The priest was determined to find out.
Father Poole opened the door to his room. Once again staring at him on the other side of the hall was Pope Leo XIII with a sober look on his face. Immediately the priest was reminded of the soap advertisement: “GRUBER’S TOILET SOAP! THE SOAP OF CHOICE FOR HOUSEWIVES ALL ACROSS NEW ENGLAND! CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS!”
Stop that! he thought. Father Poole now wished that he had never packed the soap. It brought back too much all at the same time. The advertisement. The Pope’s picture with the bubble coming out of his mouth. The park. His father. The kite he always had to fly by himself. Mrs. Fisher. His mother. The shed. INSIDE the shed.
The priest made his way to the top of the stairs. As he walked, he couldn’t help but notice something odd, something he hadn’t seen when first walking up the stairs a short time before. “Maybe it was because Father Carroll’s fat ass was in my face the whole way up here,” said Father Poole. He grimaced almost immediately and made a mental note to add the rude remark to his list of sins to confess for the week.
But confess to whom? he thought. Am I not the only show in town? He paused and then said aloud, “I can wait until I have some spare time on my hands, walk to Exeter, and confess to one of the priests there!” This last observation didn’t ease Father Poole’s anxiety, as his survey of the premises quickly brought his mind back to the strange sound he’d heard downstairs.
St. Andrew’s rectory had three floors, the topmost being where Father Poole’s room was. On the second and third floors were five rooms, one toilet and shower, and one walk-in closet at the end of the hall. Father Poole couldn’t help but think of his former church, which had twelve full-time priests in a rectory half this size.
What a waste of space, he thought. I mean, if this were an affluent community, perhaps the expense of such a structure could be justified. Or if the congregation were large enough to warrant a larger staff of priests, but good Lord! This is a hotel!
DONG!
Phineas had almost jumped out of his skin upon the previous alarm, and this latest one just about robbed him of whatever composure he had left. The new resident slowly walked down the narrow staircase to the second floor and then halfway down the second set of stairs. As he descended, the crashing sound resounded once again through the halls, this time louder than before.
By now Father Poole had prepared himself for the sound. Since he was getting closer to the source, he tightened his jawbone in order to block out some of the noise. He had learned this trick from his mother. Once the family went up to Stratham to watch a fireworks show on the Fourth of July. Neither Phineas nor his mother liked the ones that made the sound Mary Margaret Brennan-Poole called a “sonic boom.” “It’s not ladylike for your mother to stick her fingers in her ears, Phinny,” she had told him in her thick Irish brogue. “You can do it if you like, but I’m gonna yawn a lot and, of course, cover my mouth when I do so. No noise is loud when you’re yawnin’.”
Father Poole continued to walk down the stairs, tightening his grip on the banister. He now found himself standing in the middle of a hallway on the first floor, which was more spacious than the upstairs corridors. To his left was a large sitting or common room with an upright piano and a divan. To his right was a dining room with a table that could accommodate fourteen people.
As he began to walk toward the dining room, Father Poole began to feel a bit more at ease. The downstairs for all intents and purposes was quite charming. The furniture seemed outdated but was in near-mint condition. Phineas felt like a young boy of ten who had just been given permission by his mother to explore an empty, abandoned house.
He began looking all around the room. The rug beneath the solid oak dining table was an intricate pattern of blues and grays. Father Poole wondered whether this could be an authentic Persian rug. Feeling a sudden urge to examine the rug more closely, he bent down, put his hands on the rug, and kneaded it with his fingertips. Although he hadn’t the slightest bit of knowledge about carpets, this one was just too extravagant-looking not to take an interest in it. He thought that a luxurious rug like this belonged in the mansion of a wealthy steel tycoon whose wife did nothing but think of new and inventive ways of spending her husband’s money.
Father Poole pressed both of his hands into the woven fabric to see how thick it was. Fascinating, he thought. So supple and deep. I wager that this rug weighs in the area of . . . .
Suddenly the priest was startled by another loud sound that made him raise his upper body, but not before smashing the back of his head against the bottom of the dining room table under which he’d been crawling. “Goddamn it!” Father Poole shouted, and then realized that someone might have heard him. Someone had to be nearby.
He knew that he was not alone downstairs and now ascertained the source of the noise. The sound of a cymbal crashing was coming directly from the other side of the door, in front of which Father Poole was now standing.
FIVE
Anything Can Stir Memories
The whitewashed door was all that stood between Father Poole and the curious noise. He realized as he walked cautiously toward the door that the wood had been split almost entirely down the middle from top to bottom. Although the crack seemed superficial, the priest became preoccupied with it, almost forgetting why he was there. His imagination got the better of him, as it does with anyone when we see something intriguing enough to redirect our thoughts.
Something strange about the door other than the crack concerned him. He fixed his eyes on its peeling paint. The door, whose need for renovation equaled that of the rest of the building, was in a state of dreadful neglect.
“A small church with an even smaller congregation,” he said to himself, “an enormous rectory for the size of this church, beautiful and apparently expensive pieces of furniture, and still this place appears to be going to the dogs.” He grasped the doorknob and added, “This just doesn’t make any sense.”
Indeed it didn’t. The place was kept very clean and tidy to a fault. The windows were spotless; the wood floor was freshly scrubbed; and the walls, with the exception of peeling paint, had scarcely any markings at all. As for the furniture, it appeared never to have been used. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, the priest thought, and then winced as he remembered why that phrase had stuck in his head.
As Father Poole turned the knob, he studied it. It felt familiar. It was smooth, completely round, small and brass—the exact same doorknob as in the house on 35 Faulkner Street in Portsmouth when he was a boy.
He could remember everything about that house: the doorknobs, the porch, the squeaky stairs, the cellar that reeked of cigarettes because his father smoked down there. In fact, Dr. Poole did so at Mrs. Poole’s request. Cigarette smoke bothered her just as much as loud noises. She always did her best to keep her home clean and odor-free, restricting her husband’s nasty vices to the cellar. Along with his cigarette-, pipe-, and cigar-smoking, Dr. Poole also retreated there for his infrequent drinking.
Mary Margaret Brennan-Poole was a pious woman, a good Catholic who believed drink to be the devil incarnate. Even though she knew she wasn’t strong enough to sway Robert Poole into complete sobriety, she did manage to quarantine his frankly light drinking. She once told him, “If I can’t smell it, hear it, or see it, I can convince myself it’s not around.”
One day after his wife’s ultimatum Robert decided to get some wood from a neighbor down the road and build himself a shed a good distance behind the house. This way he would have a place to do what he needed, things he was unable to do with his wife underfoot. And so it was agreed upon. The virtuous Mrs. Poole kept her house clean, both spiritually and physically, while Dr. Poole retired daily to his shed out back.
Dr. and Mrs. Poole were a mismatched pair. She was a fairly attractive, petite woman with red hair, freckles, and a pleasant smile. Her strict Irish Catholic upbringing, however, gave her a hardness and a mistrust of people who were not like her. And this was how Robert Poole saw her during their first meeting.
Robert, on the other hand, was a New England WASP whose family could well have come over on the Mayflower. He was in almost every respect the antithesis of lovely Mary Margaret Brennan. A tall, skinny man, he was already beginning to show signs of balding and still had acne at thirty-two. Initially raised a Congregationalist, Robert Poole had abandoned religion at a young age. By the time he graduated from school at eighteen, he’d forgotten all about God and turned his faith toward medicine.
It wasn’t until Robert’s last year in residency that he met then nineteen-year-old Mary Margaret Brennan. Her father had brought her to the hospital in Exeter to be examined after she’d splashed boiling water on her arm while emptying a pot full of potatoes.
“I’ll be askin’ ye ta be lookin’ after me daughter like you would yer own sister, Mr. Doctor-Whatever-Yer-Name-Be,” Seamus Brennan had said to Robert. “An’ don’t be givin’ me none o’ yer shenanigans!” he added angrily. “I’m wise ta all yer pokin’ n proddin’, lookin’ fer sometin’ tha’ taint there! Tryin’ te get more money outta poor folks what don’t know the insides o’ the human body any better ‘n they know what the inside o’ Buckingham Palace looks like!”
Amused by the accent of this old fool, Dr. Robert Poole was beguiled by the beauty of Brennan’s daughter and so simply smiled at the wary father. “No need to worry, Mr. Brennan.” Robert stated, winking at Mary Margaret. “I’m sure I haven’t been practicing medicine long enough to cheat you. I’d obviously need twenty years of experience to put anything over on someone as alert as you.”
“You tell me what you gotta do to get me daughter right as rain again,” Seamus Brennan continued, as though Robert had said nothing to him. “She’s got chores ’round the house. Her ma’s been taken from us early with the consumption. Always cold she was. Even in dead o’ summer, an’ always coughin’ up blood! It got so’s I had to sleep in the barn. I couldn’t take the coughin’ no more. The trials and tribulations, I tell ya! After she passed on, we came here to America, me daughter an’ me. But what I be doin’ tellin’ ya me life story for when you got work ahead o’ ye, boy? So do what you need to, sonny, an’ remember. I’m on to you and yer shenanigans!”
Seamus Brennan, not taking his eyes off Robert Poole for a moment, sat in the chair opposite Mary Margaret’s bed. Robert held her burned arm gently. He could feel the old man’s eyes trained on him, so he turned his back fully on Seamus and winked at Mary Margaret.
“Hush now, Da,” she said softly to her father, and then turned her head back to look at Dr. Poole. “Tell me, Doctor. Just how bad is it?” she asked in a warm, congenial voice.
“Oh, it’s serious enough to require lots of bandaging, some high doses of morphine, and a six-month hospital stay,” he said. Seamus Brennan was not at all amused. But Mary Margaret got the joke, and she afforded herself another giggle.
The young and beautiful immigrant girl was completely unaware of how she would soon learn a great deal more about the doctor who had examined her arm. She discovered he was not Irish, and certainly not a Catholic, yet she quickly came to the conclusion that in this life no one is perfect.
Father Poole’s eyes were closed as he reflected back on the old house and his childho
od memories. The more tightly he squeezed the doorknob, the more memories flooded his brain. Just then a shiver ran down his spine and his skin erupted in goose bumps as a voice from behind him spoke.
“What’s this? A priest afraid to open a door? Why, what will the Archbishop think of a man who’d be afraid to open the gates of heaven once St. Peter had given him the go-ahead?”
He immediately thought, Sister Mary Ignatius, I presume.
SIX
Father Meets Sister
Father Poole turned around slowly and found himself face to face with his “staff.” He was surprised to see how close Sister Ignatius was standing to him. She looked like a young woman who had aged badly. Poole perceived the nun to be about ten years older than he, although twenty was probably more accurate.
She had blond hair and blue eyes, with a small mouth and paper-thin lips. The nun wore a white blouse buttoned to the very top. Below this she had on a dark gray skirt, which hung down to just below her knees, and black stockings. Her shoes were light brown, very long and narrow, with thick heels about one and a half inches high. Father Poole observed that she was about an inch or two taller than he, so it was safe for him to assume that without her shoes the nun and the priest were about the same height.
Father Poole himself stood five feet, ten inches. His hair, not nearly as light as hers, was a darker blond, and his baby-blue eyes paled in comparison to her sapphire ones. Like his father, the priest had begun to bald early, suffering its effects mostly at the crown but also beginning to show signs of hair loss at the front.
Father Poole’s eyes locked almost immediately on her nose, which, being long and narrow like his own, seemed redder than it ought to have been.
“I’ve been anxiously anticipating your arrival, Father,” she said, narrowing her eyes at the priest. “And since you’ve come down from your room, I’ve been watching you.”
Embracing Darkness Page 4
