Deadline for a Critic

by William Kienzle

  “I mean,” Groendal amended, “how do you know it was me? How do you know I’m the father?”

  Jane’s eyes widened. She struck at him. Instinctively, he blocked the blow. First, his body was still too sore to endure another onslaught. Second, he was not as willing to accept penance for this sin. This was an affair in which they both had participated.

  “It’s a reasonable question,” he insisted.

  “Didn’t you see the blood? On you? On me? On the floor? It took me hours to clean that carpet! You took my virginity!”

  Another new concept. He knew that women who had never had intercourse were considered virgins. Among others, he had the Blessed Virgin Mary to thank for that information. But how one “took” virginity was another question. Whatever was involved finally seemed to explain the blood that he’d found on himself and about which he’d had all those nightmares.

  Ridley said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. He felt overwhelmed, as if he were being backed into an inescapable corner.

  “Well?” Jane challenged.

  “Well, what?”

  “What do you intend to do about this?”

  Again he was silent. He could think of no practical answer. The idea that he might pray for her occurred to him. But it seemed less than sufficient, so he didn’t mention it.

  “What do you intend to do about my pregnancy? What do you intend to do about our child?”

  The term “our child” grabbed his attention as nothing before had. He began to lose sight of Jane. All he could think of was that he didn’t need this. Not now. He had not yet recovered from the tragic end to his relationship with Charlie Hogan and the loss of a vocation that meant the world to him. He was still reeling from those severe traumas and here was this young woman demanding that he take virtually lifelong responsibility for “our” child.

  In his panic he was not conscious that the muscles in his throat were constricting. In a very short time, he would experience great difficulty in breathing.

  “What about our child?” Jane sensed she had scored heavily and wanted to press home her advantage.

  As if by miracle, the answer came. “Adoption! You can adopt it out!”

  “Adoption! Give my baby—our child away to some stranger! Over my dead body!”

  “Jane, be reasonable. There are lots of reputable agencies. Catholic Charities can do it. And you’d know it would have good Catholic parents who would give it a home. So much more than we could give it.”

  “Not if we get married.”

  “What?”

  “If we got married, we could give our child everything anybody else could give. More, really, because we would have our baby. It’s the only honorable thing to do.”

  “Jane!” Could it have suddenly gotten much warmer? He was perspiring profusely. “Jane! I just got kicked . . . I just lost . . . I have no . . . I can’t . . .” He felt as if he were about to faint although he had never before done that. He couldn’t faint here in the middle of a public park! He had a weird vision of caretakers digging a hole beside his inert body, rolling him into the hole, and covering it over. He had to get out of here, and fast!

  Not caring any longer what Jane might think of all this, Groendal rose and ran. It was not a graceful exit. He moved the way a desperate man would escape if, say, because he’d been tortured he couldn’t run up to his full, normal capability. He more staggered than ran up Vernor. He was oblivious to stares. He assumed he’d left Jane standing in the park with her damned baby. But he could focus on only one thing: He must find sanctuary before he died. It didn’t matter who offered sanctuary, the church or his home.

  It was only because home lay between him and the church that he turned in when he got to his house. By the time he reached the front hallway, his clothing was sweat-drenched. He’d torn open his shirt trying to make it easier to breathe.

  Mary Groendal had been waiting impatiently for her son’s return. She had long since concluded that he was spending entirely too much time with that woman this afternoon. The conviction was growing, too, that her son’s loss of priestly vocation was the fault of that woman. Long before Ridley lurched through the front door, she had decided to have it out with him.

  However, when she saw his pallor, his sweat-covered face and drenched clothing, she gasped. Shocked, she could think of nothing to say.

  Ridley felt as an elephant might upon finding the burial ground. It was now safe to collapse. So he did.

  When he came to, he had the impression he had awakened many times since losing consciousness in the front hallway. But he couldn’t remember things clearly. He couldn’t remember anything clearly. Oddly, he felt rather comfortable without memory. As if there was nothing in his past worth remembering.

  He was too tired to move anything but his eyes. He was in some sort of institution. He knew he’d reached that conclusion before, but he couldn’t recall how or why.

  It was a long, narrow room with an impossibly high ceiling. The walls were an indeterminate mixture of blue and green. Sickening. Except for the ceiling, which was too high, it could have been a room in the seminary’s St. Thomas Hall. But the color was not right. And of course there was no reason why it should be St. Thomas Hall.

  The overhead light was lit. He wondered if they left the light on all the time. He wondered if it was day or night. He didn’t care. He was lost in a blessed void of neutrality. He couldn’t remember the past and he didn’t care about the future.

  He became conscious of sounds somewhere in the corridor. Institutional sounds. People—more than a few—talking. Quietly, mostly. Somebody giving orders: Somebody must stay in his or her room till later. Crockery rattling.

  Then the sound of a loudspeaker. He could hear that clearly. “Dr. Bartlett . . . Dr. Bartlett, please pick up line two.”

  No doubt about it, he was in some sort of hospital. He tried for a moment, but couldn’t remember which one. Gloriously, it didn’t matter.

  14

  It was not at all typical of Bob Koesler. But he wanted very much to see Ridley Groendal and that would require extreme measures.

  When Koesler began summer vacation, he learned, first, that Groendal was in St. Joseph’s Retreat, and second, that only members of his immediate family were permitted to visit him. How was a seminarian, fresh from college graduation, to pierce that defense?

  The solution seemed obvious to Koesler. There was one exception to every rule in most institutions—the friendly clergyman. Spouses and relatives might be denied access to their loved one, but—particularly in a Catholic hospital—not the priest. He could go virtually unchallenged through almost any hospital at any time. The presumption was that a clergyman was always on business and that his business was “higher” than mere regulations.

  In addition, the priest was identified by his uniform. Nothing more was needed. He did not need any ID or hospital garb. À black suit and Roman collar with clerical vest was all that was required. And Bob Koesler had that. Now that he was about to enter the theologate seminary, he was expected to add the clerical vest and collar to his wardrobe, and he had.

  All he needed was an extraordinary measure of self-confidence, perhaps the Yiddish chutzpah. He could dress exactly like a priest out on professional calls. He looked like a priest—albeit a very young priest. Now he had to pass himself off as one. He had to tough it out. Brazenly enter through the front door as if he owned the place, walk by hospital staff in the corridors with no more than a curt nod, and march into Ridley’s room as if he’d been summoned to confer a sacrament or two.

  Carrying off this masquerade was precisely where Koesler anticipated the most trouble. It was not in his nature to dare anyone to call his bluff. Crossing the border between Detroit and Windsor, he never tried to smuggle anything either way. He was certain his guilty countenance would betray him.

  But now he was intent on seeing his former classmate and fellow parishioner. And desperately intent people are led to desperate deeds.

  Th
ree days before, he had made his first foray into the impressive brick structure on the northeast corner of Michigan Avenue and West Outer Drive. Later it would be replaced by a car dealership. But now it was a sanitorium mostly for disturbed Catholics. Run by the Sisters of Charity—who, at that time, wore the imposing winged bonnets—St. Joseph’s Retreat housed every infirmity from alcoholism to schizophrenia.

  Koesler’s initial adventure had been so successful that he had been emboldened to try it again. So here he was in his second attempt. He was under no delusion that this experience would qualify him to fool a border guard. Conning nuns by wearing priestly regalia was one thing; deceiving a customs agent trained to detect frauds and conditioned to expect them was quite another.

  As it turned out, the second time was easier than the first. Then, some of the staff had looked at him a bit dubiously. Undoubtedly because they’d never seen him before and because he was so young—and looked it. Though his was not an impossibly youthful appearance; when he was ordained a priest four years hence, he would not look noticeably older.

  But familiarity, in addition to breeding contempt, also breeds acceptance. Thus, on his second try, not only did Koesler nod to staff personnel as he passed them in the hall, several smiled as they returned the nod. A few even offered, “Good afternoon, Father.” Koesler loved it. He could hardly wait for ordination when, to paraphrase the book title, everybody would call him “Father.” This, then, was a foretaste of bliss.

  Koesler knocked. Hearing no response, he entered Groendal’s room. As had been the case the previous time, Rid, arms crossed on his chest, lay fully clothed in bed. He seemed completely passive and, all things considered, not unhappy.

  Koesler removed his white straw hat, dropped it on the small table and sat in the room’s only chair. Groendal regarded him for a few moments without any sign of recognition. Finally, a light seemed to go on in his eyes. “Bob! What happened? You get ordained?”

  Koesler was taken aback. This was exactly the way they’d started the previous visit. “Of course not. Don’t you know where you are?”

  Groendal shook his head, put both hands beneath his neck on the pillow and stretched. “It’s June, isn’t it? I’m not certain of the year . . . 1950?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmmm. Then why are you dressed like a priest? You’re not ordained. You just graduated from college.”

  “Uh-huh. But we went through this before. This is the only way I can get in to see you. If they think I’m a priest.”

  “You were here before?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  Groendal shook his head again. “Not really.”

  Koesler had never encountered any phenomenon to match this. He found it unnerving. “What’s happened to you, Rid?”

  Groendal frowned and tried to concentrate. “I’m not sure, Bob. I think it’s electroshock. They give it to me every three days or so. It seems to be wiping out my memory . . . at least my memory of recent events. I can remember distant things, but the more recent things I’m not too clear on. This is a good example. You say you’ve been here before. I don’t doubt you were, especially since you say you were. Since I’ve forgotten all kinds of things over the past few days, your visit is probably gone with the rest. Sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry. It’s not your fault. But what are they doing to you?”

  “I don’t know. Curing me?”

  “Of what?”

  “Oh, didn’t they tell you? I had a nervous breakdown. The psychiatrist has a couple more technical names for it. But it comes down to a nervous breakdown.”

  “Holy cow! I never knew anybody with a nervous breakdown.”

  “Neither did I.” Groendal grinned weakly. “Yesterday I didn’t know what a nervous breakdown was; today I are one.” The grin didn’t last.

  “What brought it on?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. At least I’m not sure.”

  “Was it that business at the seminary?”

  Groendal looked at Koesler sharply. “What business?”

  “Uh . . . between you and Charlie Hogan.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “There was talk.”

  “What was it? I want to know. Maybe I need to know.”

  Koesler recited a synopsis of the various hypotheses that had been bandied about, especially among the philosophy students. Groendal listened with more attention than he’d been able to drum up in the recent past. The theories were substantially correct. That surprised Groendal. Scuttlebutt was rarely accurate. Those details that were incorrect were not worth arguing over. Especially not in his impaired condition.

  Without identifying which items in the account were right or wrong, Groendal conceded that the rumors were basically true.

  Ridley pondered what he might say next. Because Koesler was a classmate; because he was a fellow parishioner, a neighbor; and for some other indefinable reason, maybe because he had proven himself trustworthy, Koesler had been privy to nearly everything that had happened to Groendal. Ridley decided to share the final secret. He told Koesler of his meeting with Jane Condon and her announcement

  “Wow!” was Koesler’s comment.

  “Bob, you’re going to have to find some other kind of reaction to news. ‘Wow!’ is not going to get you all that far in the priesthood.”

  “Uh . . . you’re right.”

  “Do you mind if we go out and walk the grounds for a while? I’m permitted to do that . . . I just haven’t felt up to it till now.”

  “I don’t know, Rid. I’m here under false colors. What if they challenge me?”

  “They won’t. If you got this far, you won’t have any more trouble. Besides, if we stay in this room all the while, someone may accuse us of having a ‘particular friendship.’” There was bitterness in Groendal’s tone as he pronounced the last two words.

  Koesler flushed. The thought that he and Ridley might have been suspected of having such a relationship had never crossed his mind. He agreed to the walk.

  They started along the brick path within the grounds, slowly at first, then picking up speed. It was so like the walks they’d taken so often at the seminary. And so different. Now one was still a seminarian and one was not. One was still on his way to the priesthood. The other had no idea of what might become of him. So far, however, Groendal was correct: No one had challenged them.

  “One thing puzzles me,” Koesler said. “You said that . . . whatever it is they’re doing to you . . .”

  “Shock treatments.”

  “. . . is affecting your memory of recent events. But you can remember what happened between you and Charlie Hogan and between you and Jane Condon.”

  “I know, Bob, and I can’t explain it. Except that those things were so important to me. It’s like I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to. Maybe these are the memories they’re trying to erase.”

  “So Jane’s going to have a baby.”

  “So she said.”

  “And you’re going to be a father.”

  “Again, so she says.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “What if she told me she was going to have a baby just to get me to marry her?”

  “Okay, I suppose that’s possible. If you wait a little longer, you’ll know. Either she’ll have the baby or she won’t. What if she does have the baby?”

  “What if I’m not the father?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Rid; I’m no expert in these things. But either you did or you didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did all right. But what if someone else did it after me? What if he is the father?”

  “Hmmm. I don’t know. What can you do about it?”

  “Nothing that I can think of.”

  “Mr. Groendal! Mr. Groendal!” An attendant was calling from the building. “Dr. Bartlett wants to see you now.”

  “I guess that’s it, ‘Father’ Koesler.” Groendal led the way back.

  “Are they going to give you the
shock treatment now?”

  “No, they save that for the morning. Tomorrow morning, I think.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “I don’t think you want to know. Oh, well, they put something in your mouth, then they put these electrodes on your head. I guess it’s something like being electrocuted. They just don’t give you enough juice to kill you.”

  Koesler shuddered. “That’s awful!”

  “You said it.”

  They shook hands.

  “You really put yourself out, Bob. I appreciate it. I won’t forget you.”

  Koesler hesitated. “One last thing, Rid: Have you given any thought to what’s happened to you? I mean, all of it has happened to you. You don’t seem to have been in control of anything. Just a thought. I don’t know why I even mentioned it. Well, good luck, Rid. Oremus pro invicem.”

  “Yeah, we’ll pray for each other. Thanks.”

  Groendal watched Koesler, straw hat in place, walk away from St. Joseph’s Retreat. Koesler was leaving. Groendal was confined. But what was it Bob had said? In effect, that Groendal was passive. Things happened to him. He was not in control.

  These thoughts reverberated through his numbed mind as he approached Dr. Bartlett’s office.

  There were those who would argue that Groendal was lucky to have Dr. Roland Bartlett as his psychiatrist. He was regarded in Catholic circles as God’s gift to emotionally ill priests and nuns. In addition to an extensive private practice, he made himself available almost every time a priest or a nun was committed to psychiatric care.

  Bartlett himself was a devoutly religious Catholic who preferred a revisited or refreshed sacramental life to deep psychoanalysis. Everyone—priests, nuns, and laity—who came to him was queried about his or her religious condition. The next question: How active was his or her active participation in that religion? Backsliders of whatever denomination were ordered to return to their church before the esteemed doctor would treat them.

  Thus, those whose problems were caused by their church got caught in psyche-religious Catch-22. It was only one of Dr. Bartlett’s flaws.