Ash Wednesday

by Ralph McInerny

  “You have a cell phone?”

  “That’s how I called Edna Hospers.”

  “I think you should call for taxis to take everyone back to the center.”

  Kevin nodded. The suggestion turned him into a figure of authority. He began barking orders, moving the huddled group away, his cell phone at his ear. Father Dowling went to join Cy Horvath.

  Helen’s body was removed with some difficulty, placed on a gurney, and rolled away to the open doors of a 911 ambulance. Before it got there, Dr. Pippen, the assistant coroner, stopped it and made a swift examination. Then she waved the paramedics on, and Helen’s body was put into the ambulance. A minute later, with periodic warnings from its siren, it started toward the road. Traffic had been halted; the ambulance bounced onto the pavement and then, its siren going at full blast, disappeared up the road.

  Photographs continued to be taken. A tow truck was now backing toward the crumpled car in which Helen Burke had departed this Vale of Tears.

  Eugene Schmidt had hung back and was in the last little group awaiting a taxi to take them back to the center. He was holding a slip of paper in his hand that rippled in the slight breeze.

  “He insisted he be given a ticket,” Cy explained to Father Dowling.

  “For what?”

  “That was left blank.”

  Was Cy amused or annoyed, neither, or something in between? His facial expression never changed and had to do duty for whatever he might be feeling. Dr. Pippen, having seen the body off to the morgue, joined them.

  “Did you get here in time, Father?”

  “Just. One of the passengers in our shuttle bus called the center on his cell phone.”

  “Who’ll give me a ride downtown?” Cy looked at her. “How did you get here?” “In the meat wagon.” “I’ll take you.”

  They went off. The last group was getting into taxis. Father Dowling stood for a moment, looking at the bridge abutment. How quickly everything had been returned to normal. Going back to his car, he thought of the verse following the account of the burial of Jesus. And all withdrew.

  Helen Burke’s funeral was one befitting her status in the parish, and her means. Jason insisted that all stops be pulled out and his mother get the send-off of the half century. Not that he put it that way. His great moon face was a tragic mask, his eyes red from weeping. All the remorse for the trouble he had caused his mother sat heavily on his shoulders now, and an elaborate funeral seemed a way of easing the burden. McDivitt the funeral director nodded through Jason’s instructions, the soul of discretion and good taste, not quite rubbing his hands at this bonanza.

  Cars were at the disposal of Helen’s old friends at the senior center—no one could bear the thought of getting into the shuttle bus; it stood now in a far corner of the parish parking lot, a memento mori of sorts. The viewing room at McDivitt’s was almost festive, flowers everywhere, and a portable organ had been rolled in to provide lugubrious music while people took their places in preparation for the recitation of the rosary. A reluctant Eugene Schmidt was led in by Natalie Armstrong, but she couldn’t get him past the last row. Schmidt looked as if the whole assembly would rise as one and point an accusing finger at him.

  “What will they do to me?” he had asked Father Dowling earlier, waiting for Natalie to sign the visitors’ book.

  “Eugene, it was an accident.”

  “But she’s dead. And it’s my fault.”

  “We are not responsible for what we just happen to bring about.” He left it there. This was no time to give Eugene Schmidt a lecture on the nature of contingency. Accidents, by definition, just happened. If they had causes, the event could not be traced to those causes as if they were necessary results. Father Dowling felt that he would sound like Willy Nilly if he tried to console Eugene Schmidt in this way.

  Kevin Brown was lobbying for a requiem Mass in the old manner with Latin and black vestments; Monica Garvey was on the side of the angels, saying that only the Mass of the Angels, with white vestments and the vernacular, was appropriate in this day and age.

  “This day and age,” Kevin growled.

  The two went off to carry on their dispute.

  Amos Cadbury came in, black suit, crisp white shirt with a beautiful tie with stripes of gray and black. He took his place in the line of those waiting to inscribe their names in the book that awaited on a little lectern with a hooded light illumining its pages.

  “The Book of Life,” Amos murmured when he joined Father Dowling.

  “Let us hope so.”

  “I would like to talk with you, Father.”

  “Of course.”

  “Could we have lunch at the University Club on Thursday?”

  Father Dowling nodded. “After the noon Mass.”

  “I’ll be there. We can go off in my car.”

  That settled, Amos went into the viewing room, Father Dowling watched him advance to the closed coffin with the portrait of Helen Burke propped atop it. He knelt on the prie-dieu before the casket and blessed himself with great concentration.

  Just before Father Dowling entered the viewing room, a final figure appeared. Nathaniel Green. Madeline was with him. They went past the visitors’ book, Madeline nodded to Father Dowling as they passed him. Nathaniel wore an indescribable expression. They sat in the back row, at the end opposite Natalie and Eugene Schmidt.

  When Father Dowling went up the little aisle between the groupings of chairs, everyone stood. There are always unlooked-for variations at wakes, and this was one of them. He knelt on the prie-dieu, and behind him the gathering took their seats. So the rosary was said, Father Dowling beginning each prayer, the mourners finishing it. At the end, as he had done at the scene of the accident, he prayed that Helen’s soul and the souls of all the faithful departed might rest in peace.

  “Amen,” came the response.

  When Father Dowling turned, he caught sight of Natalie and Eugene exiting. They were followed close behind by Nathaniel and Madeline. Jason stood and turned his great mournful face on the others.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said, sounding as if he were going to burst into tears. “God bless you.”

  He came to Father Dowling and took his hand and shook it vigorously. The woman at his side looked on. Father Dowling looked at her receptively.

  “I’m Carmela, Father.”

  “My wife, Father. Of course you haven’t met.”

  Marie Murkin had her comment on that. She had not come to the wake—“I’ll come to the funeral Mass”—and dipped her head when Father Dowling told her of the presence of Carmela Burke.

  “Burke? She’s been going by her maiden name.”

  Father Dowling then expressed the thought he’d had when confronting the couple.

  “Tragedy?” Marie said. “And a pile of money.”

  “You’re becoming a cynic, Marie.”

  In his study, lighting his pipe, he acknowledged that Jason’s suddenly altered financial condition might indeed have magnetic properties for his estranged wife. He had been told that she was a financial counselor.

  In the funeral Mass the next day, Father Dowling followed the Novus Ordo, but in Latin, and the vestments were white. Thus neither Kevin nor Monica was completely pleased or displeased. At Jason’s insistence, Nathaniel Green sat with the family in the front pew, between Madeline and Carmela. Natalie Armstrong was there as well. Eugene Schmidt was nowhere to be seen.

  “You don’t like funerals?” Herman asked Schmidt.

  “I’ll go to my own.”

  That was all on that subject, thank God. Herman had heard how Schmidt was going around blaming himself for what happened, expecting any moment to be taken into custody. When he tapped on the door and looked in on Herman after all the others had gone off to the church for the funeral Mass, Herman feared that he was going to be a one-man audience for Schmidt’s crocodile tears. To his relief, Schmidt seemed his usual cocky self.

  “You got anything to drink?”

  It was t
en in the morning. Herman was an over-the-yardarm man, putting off drinking so he could get a mild buzz on while he watched television and then fall quickly asleep when he went to bed. Or sometimes before he got to bed.

  “A bottle of water?”

  “Ha.”

  “All I’ve got is beer.”

  “I want a real drink.”

  “Well, you’ll have to go for it.”

  “Where’s the nearest place?”

  Schmidt was serious. Herman told him of the liquor store two blocks away. Schmidt was on his feet. “I’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  When he was gone, Herman sat there wondering who the hell Jack Robinson was. Oh, he knew the expression, but how had it got started? He considered asking Schmidt when he came back, but he knew the answer—of course there would be an answer, sharp and quick—would have to be checked. Not that Herman really gave a damn about Jack Robinson, whoever he was.

  Eugene returned with a bottle of scotch. Herman told him there was ice in the fridge. Eugene looked shocked.

  “Neat, Herman. It’s the only way to savor it. Of course, if you want ice in yours …”

  Herman didn’t want a drink, but he thought he might have a light one, with water and lots of ice, just to be good company even if he was the host.

  Eugene lifted his glass with the ounce or so of scotch in it, let it slide toward his mouth, and then took a little on his tongue. “Ah,” he said, resting the glass on the arm of his chair. “Always sip scotch.” Herman’s drink didn’t taste weak enough, but he wasn’t the sipping sort. Anyway, he was going to hold himself to the one drink.

  “Life is like a billiard game, Herman. You hit one ball, it hits another, that hits a third, and then on and on.”

  “Where do you play billiards?”

  “Okay. Have the third ball hit the first, which hits the second, on and on.”

  Herman nodded. If they were going to talk billiards, he wanted accuracy.

  Schmidt wasn’t interested in billiards, the game, he said, but the way one thing happened and then another and another, but if the first hadn’t happened none of the rest would have. Herman nodded. He’d had a cellmate who talked like that.

  “I run Helen Burke into the abutment—that was an accident, a pure accident, Herman, just ask Father Dowling—and look what follows. I’ve made all kinds of people rich.”

  Schmidt seemed to have acquired a lot of knowledge about Helen Burke and Nathaniel Green and all their shirttail relatives.

  “Not only does Jason get what his mother had, he’s in line for what Nathaniel will leave her.”

  “Nathaniel will change his mind now.”

  “Don’t say that.” Schmidt had been speaking as if he had endowed Jason; now he was alarmed.

  “Why leave a pile to a dead woman?” Herman asked.

  “He wants to get rid of it. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve talked to him. He sits out on his bench like a monk and says he thinks Helen was right, what would he have if he hadn’t married Florence?”

  “What did he do?”

  “For a living? Not much, I guess. He never mentioned it. Anyway, he thinks of what he has as ill-gotten gains. The solution? Turn it over to his sister-in-law.”

  “Who’s dead.”

  “She’s got an heir. Jason.”

  “What a loser,” Herman said, as if his own life had been an uninterrupted series of triumphs.

  “Some loser. He’s rolling in it. Why do you think his wife came back to him?”

  “Did she?”

  “She was hanging on his arm at the wake as if she were afraid he’d get away.”

  “You take credit for that too?”

  “Billiards, Herman. Billiards.”

  Schmidt’s glass was empty. Full of his subject, he had forgotten to sip and get the savor of the scotch. He replenished his glass and looked inquiringly at Herman. What the hell, why not? Herman extended his glass. He would settle for the ice still in it.

  Schmidt wasn’t through. “There’ll be others, too. Other relatives. What a family. They’re related to one another in ways even they can’t explain. Nathaniel told me there are other provisions in his will, but most of it goes to Helen.”

  “Who’s dead.”

  “Damn it, I explained that.”

  “So who are the others?”

  “Madeline Clancy, for one.”

  “No kidding.”

  “She’s some kind of cousin to Jason. Nathaniel knows that. I’m sure she’s in the will.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “And Natalie. Natalie Armstrong.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  Schmidt smiled smugly. Well, he was a ladies’ man, no doubt of that. Even if Herman believed only a fraction of the conquests Schmidt had ticked off, he’d had a pretty interesting career.

  “Why didn’t you marry them?”

  “Some of them I did.”

  “Come on.”

  “Twice. They didn’t last, of course. I’m a rolling stone.”

  “How come you rolled in here?”

  “I might ask you the same.”

  Herman explained the path he himself had taken to this snug little apartment in the basement of the school. The chaplain at the place, Barney O’Connell, had told him of the way Father Dowling helped graduates of Joliet get settled.

  “My parole officer convinced me to accept. I’m glad I did.”

  “Who could blame you?” Schmidt said, looking approvingly around at Herman’s habitation. He toasted the place, then tossed off his drink. He seemed to have forgotten his theory about sipping scotch.

  They both had another. And another.

  “An Irish wake,” Schmidt said.

  “You Irish?”

  “Helen Burke is.”

  “I’m Polish.”

  “Herman the German?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Schmidt wasn’t interested. He sat there, wearing his smug smile, obviously very pleased with himself. Well, he considered himself a benefactor to all Nathaniel Green’s and Helen Burke’s relatives, shirttail or not.

  “You forgot one thing, Schmidt.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You left yourself out. So all those others got lucky, what’s it to you?”

  Schmidt seemed about to say something, but he didn’t. He just went on raising his glass to that smug smile.

  When Father Dowling told Marie that he was having lunch with Amos Cadbury at the University Club after the noon Mass, she couldn’t understand why they couldn’t eat in the rectory. He told her it was Amos’s suggestion that they eat in Chicago, and then wished he hadn’t. Marie expected and received unstinting praise from Amos whenever she fed him at the pastor’s table. She clearly thought Amos’s decision to take Father Dowling elsewhere for lunch was an implicit criticism of her culinary skills. Father Dowling couldn’t think of anything to say that would not make her feel worse. In the end, it was Amos who mollified Marie and left her purring

  “In Lent, it seemed only fitting to deprive myself of your marvelous skills, Mrs. Murkin.”

  “A Lenten meal,” she said dismissively, trying not to smile.

  “That’s just it. A Lenten meal prepared by you would be a feast anywhere else. No, Father Dowling and I will do penance at the University Club.”

  As they were driven away in Amos’s elongated car, Father Dowling asked the lawyer if he had ever considered diplomacy. Amos professed not to understand the question. Roger Dowling let it go.

  On the drive, they talked of Helen Burke’s funeral. “Sometimes I feel like a doctor, Father. Always burying clients.”

  “You were Helen’s lawyer for a long time?”

  “And her father’s before her. Helen was like her father, Florence favored her mother.”

  “And now you will have to sort out her estate?”

  Amos laid a hand on Father Dowling’s arm. “After we’ve eaten.”

  Amos had reserved his favorite table, n
ext to a window and away from the conversation and sounds of cutlery and china in the center of the room. Crab casserole and white wine for Amos and fantail shrimp for Father Dowling, no wine. During the meal, Father Dowling entertained Amos with stories of Herman, the current parish janitor.

  “You’re rehabilitating him, Father?”

  “Only if leaving him alone has that effect.”

  “He’s still on parole, I imagine.”

  “Paxon.”

  Amos’s eyes rolled upward. “When do virtues turn into vices, Father?”

  “When they abandon the golden mean.”

  Amos was delighted. “In medio stat virtus. Isn’t that the phrase?”

  “Aristotle.”

  “Have I ever told you about the ethics class I had from John Oesterle?”

  Amos was a double domer, as he put it, holding both an undergraduate and law degree from Notre Dame. His loyalty to his old school had been put to severe tests in recent years, and he sought refuge in memories of a better if distant past. The ethics course he had taken from Professor Oesterle was one of his most consoling memories. “You should have heard him on double effect, Father.”

  “I’ve been hearing a version of it from Eugene Schmidt.”

  After finishing their meal, they stood and went into the club library, where they could have the talk that was the reason Amos had invited Father Dowling.

  “Tell me about Eugene Schmidt, Father.”

  Father Dowling was surprised, and it must have shown. Or was Amos merely continuing from his guest’s last remark at table?

  “Natalie Armstrong seems quite taken with him,” Amos said after he had his cigar going satisfactorily. Father Dowling was filling his pipe. “She sent him to the rectory for instructions, Amos.”

  “Did she?”

  “I don’t think he’s serious.”

  “I am afraid she is. What I am going to say may sound like a strange extension of the obligations I owe that family, professionally but also personally. Anything you can tell me about the man, I would appreciate learning.”

  Father Dowling felt suddenly inadequate. When Schmidt came to the rectory with his doubts about the Trinity, he had seemed a familiar type. Someone who enjoys chattering about religion as long as he can keep it at a safe remove. Marie, of course, was curious about the dapper little man who seemed to be the darling of the senior center, but Father Dowling had not quizzed Schmidt about his past.