“We’ve only been dating about six months, Ben. No need to book the hall just yet.”
“Well, think about it. My appointment calendar fills up rather quickly, and I can’t account for last-minute arrangements that might spring up during the year.”
Dan could not be sure if his friend was joking again, so he said nothing. He flopped down in the chair opposite the priest. Nobody made such a fuss during the brief time he courted a fellow widowed parishioner three years ago, and certainly not during the brief Bailey era. Why now? Did everybody know something about Willie that he had yet to realize? Even Ben, who had yet to meet Willie? Was the Holy Spirit leaving him out the loop?
“You like her, Dan?” Father Ben asked.
Dan nodded.
“You love her?”
“Not sure. We’ve been friends for years. But now, I don’t know.” Dan smiled. “Willie’s just wonderful to be with. We used to talk all through lunch when we had that period in common, about everything, too. She’s warm and funny, laid-back and cultured at the same time, you know? So much like...” he stopped himself before he could say Liza’s name, but he could see Father Ben understood him perfectly.
“I don’t know why I even asked her out in the first place,” Dan continued. “We were talking about the Shakespeare film festival that happened this past winter at the Chrysler Museum, and out it came. Wanna go together, I said.” Dan idly brushed a speck of dandruff from his shoulder. “Later that evening, I began to wonder why I hadn’t asked her out before.”
Later that evening, Dan also remembered, the two shared a kiss. Thankfully, Willie saw no problem with Dan’s pre-marital policies. He had even detected a sense of relief from her, and guessed that perhaps Willie was happy not to be pressured into sex.
“You think it was because Willie is black?”
“Actually, she’s of mixed heritage,” Dan explained. “Her father was black, from New Orleans, and her mother came from Mexico. He was military. They met while he was stationed along the border.”
Dan paused. How he could answer the priest’s question, though? “I don’t think her being, uh, a different race ever deterred me from asking her out sooner. I guess I was thinking more that Willie might not want to date a white man, and that just wasn’t fair of me to presume that.” He looked at his friend pointedly. “Does it bother you that Willie’s, uh, not white?”
“Dan, it’s not for me to decide,” the priest said. “If it doesn’t bother you, and it doesn’t bother Willie, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Do you believe you could come to love her?”
Dan nodded again, this time more convincingly.
“Has Jason said anything to you? Is that why you feel so unsure?”
“Oh, Jason’s happy for me, really,” Dan replied. He glanced at his watch again. Almost six-twenty. He could wait a few minutes more, Willie didn’t live far. “He thinks it’s cool that his dad is dating, even though his misses his mother. He said he doesn’t think I’m trying to replace Liza.”
“Nobody could replace Liza, you’re right,” Father Ben agreed, “but I don’t think Willie would be doing that. Think of her as a, ah, supplement to your life. A new stage.” The priest wiped a blotch of mayonnaise from his chin. “So, what about Jason? Has he been seeing anybody special?”
“Huh? No, nobody steady,” Dan said. Nobody he’s told me about, anyway, he added to himself. Jason was not prohibited from dating, so long as such a relationship did not interfere with his studies and abided by the rules he and Liza agreed upon even when their son was a mere toddler. While more liberal parents were instructing their children on the proper use of birth control, adopting the attitude that teenagers were going to do it anyway, Dan’s heart-to-hearts with Jason centered around the most effective of disease and childbirth prevention method: abstinence. Jason listened, too. At least, that was Dan’s hope.
“He dates casually,” Dan added, “usually in a group with his friends. Caitlin Stevens, Marcia Reeves.”
“He’ll be taking one of them to the prom, I gather?”
Dan’s brows furrowed and his throat dried. The priest’s root beer was looking good. “You’re the second person to ask me that. Why the sudden interest in my son’s romantic life?” He was surprised to hear himself sound so defensive. It was enough the man was bugging him about Willie, who was probably wondering right now what was taking him so long to drive the mile and a half to her condo in the Freemason district.
“Sorry, friend. Just a curious question, is all.” Father Ben held up his hands in surrender. “The prom’s a big event for seniors. Hell, I even went to mine, if you can believe that.”
“Oh, really?” Now it was Dan’s turn to be curious.
Father Ben leaned back in his chair. “Rosalie McClellan. Brightest blue eyes you ever saw, like twin crystals. I brought her home twenty minutes late and her father practically chased me down their driveway with a broom in his hand.” A smile further creased his face. “There was some life before the collar, believe it or not.”
“Did those twin jewels drive you to the collar?” Dan teased.
The priest sighed. “Not really. But her marrying Chuck Clooney was a bit of a shove. His family had money, and some mystery affliction kept him from Korea, unlike me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. ‘I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference’,” the priest quoted Robert Frost.
Amen to that, thought Dan.
“Speaking of getting married...”
“Jason’s too young for that,” Dan said quickly.
Father Ben cast him a stern eye, devoured another bite of sandwich and chewed slowly.
“Right,” Dan said. “I’m not saying it won’t happen—”
Father Ben smiled, his mouth still full.
“...but...”
Father Ben stopped mid-chew.
“...Willie’s not Catholic.”
Father Ben swallowed. “I see,” he mumbled, patting his breastbone gently to guide the food down its rightful path. While the Catholic Church had no policy against people of different races marrying, there could still be complications. As far as the Church was concerned, a mixed marriage was not white marrying black, but Catholic marrying non-Catholic.
“Well,” Father Ben said, “look at it this way: neither were you until after you and Liza married.”
“True, but I had been entertaining thoughts of conversion before then, and then I started RCIA not long after the honeymoon.” Dan’s screaming matches with his dyed-in-the-wool Baptist mother, though twenty years in the past, lingered fresh in his memory. Dan might as well have dived headfirst into the Lake of Fire, to hear her tell the story. With Willie, however, Dan had not bothered to bring up the subject. Just as she had no concerns about the color of her boyfriend’s skin, Willie was not bothered by Dan’s faith, nor he by hers.
Besides, Dan thought, if—big if here—marriage was in their future, the only true concern with regards to religion would be raising subsequent children in a particular faith, and that was a minor concern. Willie was forty years old, Dan forty-three, and he had been unable to give Liza any more children after Jason.
Not that they didn’t try, either.
“She is a Christian nevertheless, correct, Dan?”
Dan nodded. “She attends St. Martin in the Fields Episcopalian.”
“Close enough. I suspect, closer than a Baptist or a Methodist, anyway. As long as she’s been baptized there’s no disparity of cult, like you’d encounter if she were Jewish or a Muslim. I doubt there would be any problems if marriage is in the future.”
“There’s more.” Dan lowered his head. “Willie’s divorced, and were I willing to further our relationship and an annulment was necessary—”
“Assuming Willie would agree to be married in a Catholic church,” murmured the priest. Did not the wedding day really belong to the bride, after all?
Dan was quiet. Terrific, another
thing to add to his growing trough of tortured thoughts. It was good, he supposed, that he felt the relationship was too young to broach the subject of matrimony. Were Willie to really know half the stuff going on in his head, she would likely find him too neurotic and scat, saving everybody the trouble of plans unrealized.
Dan, however, well aware he was not quite ready for the ultimate commitment, did not want to quash anything before reaching that plateau.
For some reason, he thought of Bailey Stone, and the fire alive in her eyes when she believed Dan wanted to marry her. Had their relationship lasted longer than three months, he may have entertained the notion, but her haste frightened him. Fear turned to frustration, which Bailey translated into anger and ultimately rejection.
Would he be doing the same thing to Willie that Bailey did to him? He hoped not.
“Oh, boy,” he breathed, thinking again of Bailey. That same fire was present in her eyes that morning, and it unnerved him, more so than the thought of proposing marriage to Willie.
“Don’t worry so much, you may be making a mountain out of a molehill,” Father Ben assured him. “Has she been divorced long?”
“Long time, about ten years. Her ex-husband’s since died, about five years back. Heart attack.”
“Well, now,” Father Ben shrank back, “that might actually make the situation better. I mean, not for the deceased, but...well, you know what I mean.”
Dan nodded. Despite the confusion, he did know. That Willie’s ex-husband was dead meant the likelihood that an annulment was not necessary since the Catholic Church might treat Willie as a widow. This, of course, was all contingent upon being married in the Church, and Willie wanting to marry, and Dan wanting to ask her.
“You’re right, though. No need to rush things, though I imagine I should have to tell Mrs. Acosta to put her catering ideas on hold. Kidding,” the priest rejoined as Dan’s head shot upward.
Dan slapped the table with an open palm, alerting the dog who came skidding into the kitchen. “I should get going. Enjoy your show.” He retreated to the living room for his jacket.
“I will, thanks. Enjoy your evening,” the priest called after Dan. “I suspect Jason won’t be in ‘til three seconds before the stroke of curfew?”
“He better,” Dan muttered. He was a gust of wind blowing through the kitchen out the side door. “Later!”
“Dan?”
Dan turned back to Father Ben, gripping the knob and pushing outside. “Yeah?”
Father Ben’s smile was encouraging. “Relax.”
“Right.” Dan’s shoulders dropped slightly and he winked before exiting. Ringo took this as his cue to leap forward on the priest’s knees for a second attempt at obtaining a bite of sandwich.
“Okay, boy,” Father Ben chuckled as he tore off a chunk of boiled ham and turkey to give to the beagle. “Just don’t tell your father.”
The two lingered in the kitchen, Father Ben eating and Ringo wagging his tail, oblivious to the background television noise and the news bulletin reporting that Bart Scarsdale of Phoebus was the body found late Thursday night floating underneath the docks at the Waterside.
* * * *
Mitch and Jason arrived at Book Bonanza together, but Mitch was already clocked in and stocking shelves as Jason struggled with his locker combination. After three mistries, the small metal door finally squeaked open to reveal a photo of St. Therese of Lisieux smiling benignly over a bouquet of red roses. In silver ink somebody had scrawled a message over the top of her Carmelite habit: To Jason, keep on rockin’! Love T—
“Cute,” he muttered, stuffing in his belongings and slamming the locker shut. As an afterthought he reopened the door and removed the magazine he toted around in his backpack and slid it inside his history textbook, away from other curious eyes and hands that knew his locker combination.
“Marcia did it yesterday, during study hall. I put it up last night before you came back to clock out,” Mitch confessed when Jason joined him on the sales floor. “She thought you’d get a kick out of it. Everybody else in class did, even the ones who didn’t know who St. Therese was,” he added with a grin.
Jason palmed three thick Robert Heinlein titles and forced them into a cramped shelf in the science fiction section. “Anyone else get a kick out it?” he asked. “Like maybe the rest of the senior class?”
“Dunno. She was still manning the Xerox machine at the library when I saw her last.” Mitch grasped hold of the now empty library truck and wheeled it back to storage, laughing all the way. Jason moved to follow when a cashier paged him over the speaker system.
Jason passed much of his four-hour shift escorting customers from the service desk directly to the books wanted or needed, at times racking his brain to decipher partial descriptions of books and their covers. Feeling frazzled after serving one particularly difficult customer, Jason sighed with relief when Mitch appeared at his side with a library truck brimming with more paperbacks to shelve. “Breathe,” he instructed Jason.
Jason did as told, and Mitch chuckled. He flipped through a Carl Hiaasen paperback; a cloud of book dust floated in their faces. “Dude,” he said, “you’ve got to learn how to hide from those kind of customers. Let Joycelyn handle them.”
“Is that your policy for getting out of shelving, too?” Jason snatched the novel from his friend’s hands and placed it with its twin on the shelf. At least ten more unpacked cartons of books awaited them in the back. Greta, the assistant store manager, wanted everything on the floor by shift’s end to prepare for the usual weekend crush.
Splitting the books between them, they worked apart for the remainder of the business day, reuniting only after Greta shooed a few straggling browsers out the door and locking it behind her. “Oh, I’m glad that’s over,” she exhaled, her voice still lively despite the fact that she appeared dead on her feet. All three employees gathered around her, and Greta singled Jason out with a particularly tense smile. “Okay, Joycelyn and I will count down the drawer. Mitch, take the vacuum and Jason, take the restroom. When you’re both done, get the Grisham display out and set it in the corner.”
She pointed to an empty table by the store’s large picture window, a space reserved for a mountainous display of hardcover legal thrillers. “Don’t wait for one another, either, get started a-sap,” she ordered, halfway to the office with little Joycelyn scurrying behind her. “Make it look nice, too.”
Jason, weary and anxious to clock out and get something to eat, sped through his task. He swabbed the porcelain and swept the tile to his satisfaction; it looked like a restroom he would use, and that was good enough. Mitch had already begun to arrange copies of John Grisham’s latest novel on the table when he returned to the sales floor. Mitch flipped through one copy and placed it carefully atop three others arranged in a triangle pattern.
“She wants something nice, Mitch,” Jason joked. “Don’t get too carried away. Greta’s not giving out points for originality.”
Mitch stood several books close together and gently pushed the stack backwards in a domino effect. “I think I’ll write a novel. I could live with making crud loads of money and having a cutout photo of myself smiling in every bookstore across the country.”
“Not everybody makes Grisham bucks, now. Grisham didn’t even make Grisham bucks in the beginning. You’d be lucky to do as well as John Kennedy Toole.”
“Yeah, but his books didn’t get published until after he died.”
“Exactly.”
Mitch threatened to nail Jason on the head with a book and Jason ducked behind a life-size cutout of its author. A shy tap on the glass storefront window startled them both.
“Hey,” exclaimed Mitch as Caitlin Stevens and Mimi Washburn waved from the other side. “Are we being stalked?”
Jason waved back at the young ladies; Mimi whispered something in Caitlin’s ear and the two giggled audibly.
“Jase, you think Mimi would go with me to the prom if I asked her?”
“You d
on’t have a date?” Jason unpacked a box.
“Nope. You?”
Jason froze. All correspondence pertaining to the big event—the flyers, memos about the photograph fee, order forms for the commemorative champagne flutes and t-shirts bearing the theme A Date with Destiny—had all been stuffed into a binder at the bottom of his school locker. Out of sight, out of mind, he figured, but people kept bringing the subject to the surface and pestering him for details.
Mystery Bundle (Saints Preserve Us, Pray For Us Sinners, Murder Most Trivial) Page 47