by Jane Haddam
“Warm milk and honey and a hot bath?”
“That sounds really awful,” Bennis said. She checked the clock on the wall, the big round L. L. Bean one Donna Moradanyan had given Tibor the Christmas before last. It still wasn’t six o’clock yet. She was moving faster and faster, and time had slowed to a crawl.
Bennis went over to the stove and found the kettle. She didn’t like tea, but she could at least make some coffee for herself. She filled the kettle at the tap and put it on the burner. Then she took a deep breath and tried to slow herself down.
It would help, she thought, if she knew what it was she was really worked up about—Anne Marie, or the possible pickets at the funeral, or Chickie’s story about the rat poison on the altar, or what. Instead, it all went around and around in her head, and she was beginning to suspect that she was worried about nothing but the lack of nicotine in her lungs. Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes, she thought. She used to buy six cartons at a time in North Carolina and then stack them up on the top shelf of her linen closet, above the place where she kept the pillowcases.
Tibor kept a little box of those coffee bags in the cabinet next to his mugs. Bennis got both a bag and a mug and grabbed the kettle as soon as it started to go off.
“The thing is,” she said, “sometimes it makes perfect sense, and that’s what worries me. There are times when I could smash somebody’s face in. But that’s the difference. I couldn’t sneak around about it. I couldn’t plan it.”
She put the mug full of coffee and coffee bag at the place she had cleared for herself and sat down in front of it, wondering if Tibor would realize, as she did, that she didn’t know if she was talking about the rat poison on the altar, or about Anne Marie.
10
When Father Robert Healy first came to St. Anselm’s parish, he had been sure he knew what it was he needed to do. That was three and a half years ago, before Roy Phipps had taken the storefront at the end of the block and put his makeshift “church” there. Father Healy had just finished a five-year assignment as parochial vicar at St. Bridget’s in Radnor, where he had gone right after he came back from studying at the North American College in Rome. The Cardinal Archbishop had warned him that he would not like parish life, and the Cardinal Archbishop had been right—but Father Healy had put it down to the fact that he was an assistant, instead of the head of his own parish. Robert Healy had never done very well when he was forced to take second place. Sometimes he tried to think back to what he had been like, growing up, and found to his surprise that he really could not remember anything. He had graduated from a tough Jesuit prep school at the age of sixteen, valedictorian in his class. Then they had made him go to Georgetown for three years to wait, because he wasn’t old enough to enter a seminary. He wondered if they had expected him to change his mind, or to go so mad with sex that he wasn’t able to think straight enough to pass his theology courses. Instead, he had had three sexual experiences, all with the same girl, which he had liked very much but been a little impatient with, because they were so distracting. Then, as soon as the diocesan seminary would take him, he had packed up his things and come back to Pennsylvania.
Now he moved things around the desk in his office and thought that he was going about it all wrong. This was one more proof that he belonged on the faculty of a theology department, or on the staff of a marriage tribunal or a canon law court, but not in the trenches, where what mattered was how much you knew about people. Father Healy liked people—he liked them quite a lot—but it was like his relationship with that girl at Georgetown: he found them distracting. He also found them puzzling. When he wanted to relax, he sat down with one of Michael Grant’s histories of ancient Greece and Rome, and put Bach on the CD player in the rectory living room. He did not watch television. He had tried to watch television once, when Sister Peter Rose invited him to the convent to have popcorn and take in The X-Files, but he had ended up entirely confused. As far as he had been able to tell, the message of The X-Files was that aliens from outer space were among us, and that they provided the explanation for everything from the tinny taste in well water to witchcraft. The bit about witchcraft had alarmed him. There were no such things as witches—not in the sense of women who made pacts with the devil and could do magic spells—and if there was one thing the reading of history had taught him, it was that religion was very dangerous when it became unmoored from the discipline of reason. That was all they needed now, with the Church under attack from every side—another season of witch-hunts, with stories about exorcisms in the New York Times. It was bad enough, the kind of nonsense that was written about the Church and homosexuality, as if a straightforward moral objection to unlimited sexual license turned you into … Roy Phipps.
Father Healy moved things around on his desk again. There was a small square television in one corner of the office, and he had put it on as soon as he had come in, because he was feeling so guilty about Sister Harriet Garrity. What was on was not The X-Files, but a music video of Christina Aguilera singing “Genie in a Bottle.” This, Father Healy understood. He had understood it ever since he was twelve years old and got his first look at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. It was not true, as some people wanted to make out, that you had to be some kind of sexual oddity to commit to a life of priestly celibacy. Father Healy’s sexual impulses were in perfectly good working order. If he had been a scrupulous man, he would have been driven nearly insane by the way the young women dressed on the streets of Philadelphia in the summer—and forget the University of Pennsylvania campus in the spring, where they seemed to have abandoned the custom of women wearing something on the top halves of their bodies even while sunbathing.
What marked him out was not his lack of sexual response, but the fact that he also responded to other things, and always had, even as a small child. He might remember very little about himself when he was young, but he did remember lying on his bed in his darkened room, knowing he was supposed to go to sleep, and feeling the presence of God all around him, thicker and more pressing than any blanket. He had felt the presence of God around him all the time, in those days. He had carried it with him like a mist. When he received his First Holy Communion, he had felt it inside himself, as heat: the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, Our Lord, not a symbol, but a fact. He was much older when he realized that everybody else did not feel what he felt. If they had, they would behave differently, and there would not be many churches but only one. That was when he knew he had to be a priest, the way some people knew they had to be painters or writers or musicians. Next to the feeling he had when God touched him at the moment of the consecration, sex was nice, but not compelling.
There was a knock on the door. Father Healy said “come in,” and then wondered if he would be doing better here if he were older—fifty-six instead of thirty-six, experienced at living instead of just at argumentation.
The office door opened, and Sister Scholastica came in. Father Healy relaxed. He hadn’t been aware that he had been tense, but now he realized that he had been expecting Sister Harriet at any moment. He didn’t think Sister Harriet was the sort of person to let a matter rest.
Sister Scholastica looked at the television and raised her eyebrows. Christina Aguilera faded, and in her place came something called Smash Mouth, singing something called “All Star.” Apparently, this was a program that showed people singing things.
“You can turn it off,” Father Healy said. “I just turned it on to have background noise.”
“From VH-1?”
“I didn’t pay attention to what was on.” This was not exactly true. Father Healy wanted always to be honest. He might end up on a faculty somewhere, he might even end up a bishop, but he would never be a Vatican politician. “I did like that last song,” he said. “She was very attractive. The young woman.”
“Right,” Scholastica said. She left the television alone. “Do you have a moment? I know it’s six o’clock, and we’re coming up on Mass, but I’m getting a little worr
ied. Do you know that Marty Kelly’s truck is parked in the parking lot?”
“Oh, yes. Somebody told me it was. I’m so glad to have him back. Them. I only hope Bernadette was well enough to make the trip.”
“So do I. What worries me particularly is that she might have made the trip and then become ill, because the truck is in the parking lot, but Marty and Bernadette are not in the church. At least, they’re not anywhere I could find them. With diabetes as volatile as Bernadette’s, she could have fallen into a coma—”
“But wouldn’t Marty have come to someone in the church for help? Bernadette wouldn’t have brought the truck here on her own, would she? I thought she couldn’t drive, because her eyesight was too poor.”
“She was nearly blind.”
“Well, then.”
“The fact remains that I can’t find them. I even sent Sister Peter Rose across the street, to see if they’d gone over to the vigil, but they weren’t there. It would have made a certain amount of sense. Bernadette and Scott got along when Bernadette was coming here regularly. Or at least, Peter Rose says they did.”
“Maybe they went to get something to eat,” Father Healy said. “Doesn’t Bernadette have to remember not to go too long without eating? Surely there must be places that would be open even this early in the morning.”
“I suppose.”
Sister Scholastica went to the window and looked out. This was Father Healy’s church office, not the rectory one, so the window faced the street and St. Stephen’s front courtyard, where the people from Roy Phipps’s church sometimes sat in for hours on end. Father Healy drummed his fingers on the top of the desk.
“Are they going to be over there,” he asked, “Roy Phipps and his people? You know, with the picket signs.”
“What? Oh. I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. The man didn’t die of AIDS. The Reverend Roy is very focused when it comes to that kind of thing.”
“Well. That’s good.”
“On the order of thank heaven for small favors, I suppose.” Scholastica moved away from the window. “I wish I knew where they’d gone. She’s not a well woman, no matter how young she is, and I don’t like the idea of her wandering around loose in a diabetic coma. If you can wander in a coma. I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense.”
Smash Mouth had disappeared from the television screen. In their place, somebody named Melissa Etheridge was singing something called “Angels Fall.” She was not as conventionally pretty as Christina Aguilera, but Father Healy liked the sense he got of her much better. This was a woman you could talk to.
“Well,” Scholastica said, “I’d better get going. I’ve been up all night. I’m going to be a wreck in school today. Maybe I’ll take one more tour and see if they show up.”
“It’s probably a good idea.”
“It probably is. All right, Father. With any luck, you’ll see them both right up front when you process in for Mass.”
Scholastica went out, her long habit skirts hissing in the air just above her ankles, her long veil billowing out behind her as she walked. Father Healy got up and walked over to the window himself. There were people on the stone steps in front of St. Stephen’s, tight little clusters of men leaning their heads together, looking cold. Everything had seemed so clear to him, when he first got here, so straightforward and sure. Homosexual practice was an objective moral evil. That was true, and it was also true that the Church had to take a public stand against its acceptance in the culture at large. A public stand had to be public. If you took a stand that nobody could see, you might as well not have taken a stand at all. It was like abortion. There was a good reason to have people out there on the streets in front of abortion clinics, praying the rosary, even if their acts did nothing to stop a single child’s death. It created a climate of opinion. It made it clear that this act was not celebrated by everyone everywhere, that people all around the world knew it was wrong.
Out on the steps of St. Stephen’s, there was movement. Father Healy focused his eyes on the front doors and saw that Daniel Burdock had come out, dressed all in black with a clerical collar on. In all the years that Father Healy had been in this parish, Daniel Burdock had come closest to being somebody who could truly be a friend. He was one of the few that Father Healy respected without reservation, for his commitment to his vocation, for his scholarly erudition, for his uncompromising attachment to all things anchored in moral principle. The only problem was, Daniel Burdock didn’t speak to him, except to say hello in the chilliest voice possible, if they happened to pass each other on the street. That was because of Father Healy’s insistence on upholding the Catholic understanding of homosexual practice, which Dan seemed to think was—
What?
Father Healy turned away from the window and sat down again. The song on the screen had changed again, this time to something he knew—The Beatles, all four of them together, looking very young. He rubbed the palms of his hands against his face until his eyes began to tear. He could hardly have made more of a mess of things if he had set out from the first day to sabotage himself, and now he was going to make a bigger mess of things by forcing a showdown with Sister Harriet Garrity. Surely, there had to have been a way for him to have said what he had to say to her without sounding as if he were starting a war. Surely Father Kennedy, at St. Bridget’s, would have known how to—finesse—this sort of thing. Then again, Father Kennedy had had a parish coordinator, too, and she had been just as much of an … unpleasant person … as Sister Harriet was.
On television, The Beatles had been replaced by Will Smith, whom Father Healy knew on sight. After the disaster of The X-Files evening, Sister Peter Rose had tried again by asking him over to see the video of Men in Black. Father Healy got up and crossed the room and turned the television off. In an hour, he would be able to say Mass, and then things would be better, by definition, at least until he recessed out of the church with the altar boy carrying the cross in front of him. Other priests might hurry through the seven o’clock Mass, but Father Healy never did. He got lost in it.
He sent up a silent prayer that he might get lost enough in it today to forget all about Sister Harriet Garrity, then he headed out the door and down the stairs toward the sacristy.
11
For Marty Kelly, the six o’clock bell was like an alarm clock. He had been sitting in the little changing room just off the sacristy, with Bernadette beside him, for so long he had begun to feel the tops of his legs going to sleep. He had, as well, been noticing things he had never noticed before. The ceilings in this church were much higher than ceilings were other places. That was what made the rooms feel so big. The windows in this church all had thick panes that couldn’t be seen through—or they did up here. Marty couldn’t remember what it was like in the basement, where the meeting rooms were, because every time he had been there he had resented it. It was the one thing Bernadette ever did that really upset him, insisting over and over that they should take courses together. Bible study, catechism, marriage encounter: Marty had hated them all. He had especially hated sitting at the wide conference tables with a book open in front of him, knowing that anything he could think of to say would be foolish, or worse. It had been like being back in school again, where the only thing he had ever been able to do right was to keep his mouth shut.
Marty got up off the step he was sitting on and went to the door on the other side of the door to the sacristy. It was all a matter of logistics. If he went through the sacristy, he would come out on the altar, and that wasn’t what he wanted. Bernadette would have hated the idea of being laid out there, as if she were some kind of pagan sacrifice. If he went out the other door, though, he would go into the church proper just to the left of the Mary Chapel. That would lead him right to the Communion rail, which was made out of marble and set in place, so that it couldn’t be removed. When they ended the practice of kneeling at Communion, the churches with wooden rails had taken them out. It had happened so long ago that Bernadette hadn’t even been
alive, but she had always refused to go to a church without a rail anyway. At least she hadn’t been one of those people who dropped to their knees in front of the priest as soon as they got to the head of the Communion line, holding up everybody who was waiting and getting themselves talked about, in whispers, until the end of Mass. Bernadette never did anything obvious like that. It wasn’t in her nature.
Marty looked up one end of the narrow hall and down the other, but nobody was in sight, not even the homeless people. If this day was like any other day, Mary McAllister would be rounding them up to take them to the soup kitchen, where they would be given breakfast and kept out of the cold for an hour or two. Eventually, they always wandered off. The ones who weren’t crazy were pickled in alcohol. They never knew where they were. Down at one end of the hall, there was a window. Marty was sure he saw a trace of lightening sky. He always thought of February as the dead of winter. He forgot that spring was only a month away.
Marty went back into the changing room and looked down on Bernadette lying on the floor, curled up as if she were still sitting in the truck—but not quite as curled up as she had been. Her body had been so stiff, but now it seemed to be relaxing a little. He leaned down and touched the skin of her face, then stepped back quickly. She felt like polished rock, and she really was cold. He had heard on television that people got cold when they were dead, but he’d never really understood what that meant before now.
He leaned over and got his arms underneath her. It was true. She had relaxed a little. She was still stiff, but not as stiff. She didn’t feel rigid.
He lifted her in his arms and waited for a few seconds, to make sure he had his balance. She weighed almost nothing, even as a deadweight. When she’d been alive, he’d been able to carry her around like a bag of groceries, taking her from the living room to the bedroom to the kitchen just because they were teasing each other and it was a game they could play. They had played a lot of games in their time together, and made love often enough to make Marty bored with the pictures in Playboy, but what he had loved most was the way they were together in bed when they weren’t making love. That was what Bernadette had given him that he had never had: that sense of companionship; those hours of being easy and without the need for defense. It bothered him that he could no longer remember what they had talked about in the dark. It bothered him even more that they might have talked about nothing in particular, but just rambled on, warming in the sounds of each other’s voices.
