Till Death

by William X. Kienzle

  For Javan,

  my wife and collaborator

  Prologue

  Late autumn. In Michigan, nature had staged its annual show of shows. No artist living or dead could have matched God’s broad strokes of color in stands of trees.

  Now it was gone. Brilliant leaves had faded in turn to dull and fallen to earth.

  There are those for whom spring signifies birth; summer, life; autumn, death; winter, burial. Followed by nothing. For others, the very perpetuity of the seasonal cycle attests to summer as life; autumn, death; winter, burial; and spring, rebirth into eternal life.

  Father Robert Koesler belonged to the latter school.

  And those were the thoughts he mused on as he stood very much alone in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

  He shuffled his right foot, allowing the chilly breeze to waft some leaves, uncovering a grave marker set flush with the ground. The chiseled inscription provided minimal information, a name and two dates, the earlier commemorating birth; the latter, departure from this life.

  In the span between these two dates was a life that changed many others.

  Actually, this story began some forty years earlier.

  Father Koesler, then a young priest, was appointed the unlikely editor of the Detroit Catholic, the archdiocesan newspaper. The Detroit Free Press, reporting the appointment, termed the paper “influential” and was patently surprised that this inexperienced inner-city priest had been given the job.

  Concurrent with the appointment, Koesler was directed to live at the rectory of St. Ursula. St. Ursula’s could have been designated an ethnic parish, having been erected in a neighborhood almost entirely Italian. By the time Koesler moved in, it was almost equally Italian and Polish, with a mix of African-American.

  The most distinctive feature of St. Ursula’s was its pastor, Father Angelico, who succeeded the affable Father Pompilio.

  In the early sixties, the Second Vatican Council was about to break forth upon the world. Few could have guessed the changes it would bring.

  At this time, the clergy were split not along conservative and liberal lines; rather, the line was drawn between pastors and their assistant priests.

  Father Angelico was the one of a trio of east side pastors recognized as notorious tyrants. He virtually imprisoned the two priests assigned to him as assistants, and dictated their daily schedule down to the very minute. In this he was not blocked by current Church law.

  With rare exception, each priest who served under Father Angelico emerged from his five-year stint with a severe case of shellshock or battle fatigue. Whatever one cared to term their condition, they were rubbed raw.

  The one who uniquely escaped Angelico’s tender mercies was Father Koesler. Angelico had no pigeonhole for him. Koesler was not a defenseless assistant. He was “in residence.” Whatever the hell that meant, Angelico had no idea what to do with him, nor what his role might be in the pastor’s fiefdom. For all Angelico knew, Koesler might be a chancery spy.

  So, Bob Koesler ended by, in effect, writing his own ticket. He offered daily Mass and assisted on weekends.

  Father Koesler could not help but be acutely aware of the shameful treatment accorded Angelico’s assistants. Had he been more experienced he would have intervened—although what he might have accomplished was questionable. The chancery, with ultimate clout, though aware of the situation, did nothing.

  Once Koesler left St. Ursula’s, he tried to bind up the wounds of shredded dignity inflicted by its despotic pastor. As part of this effort, he established an informal group dedicated to supporting those who had served under Angelico or were presently imprisoned there.

  The nuns who staffed St. Ursula’s school were in worse condition than the parish’s assistant priests. Not only were they browbeaten and cowed by Angelico’s pervasive presence, they were also dominated by their rigorous religious order. Not until nuns began leaving religious life in large numbers in the wake of the Council were these women free to join the recovering Ursuline group.

  In the beginning, the organization was more or less ad hoc—called upon as needed. Gradually, as a result of the growing priest shortage, fewer and fewer priests were assigned to St. Ursula’s. Then Father Angelico died. The group’s raison d’etre began to wane. Eventually, the group—or what was left of it—met only once a year, on the first Wednesday of June.

  Now, in the year 2000, fewer than ten of the Ursuline club remained. And a peculiar chemistry marked their relationship.

  At this point, Koesler was able to do little more than observe their interaction—an interaction that tore asunder committed pairings and forged others. An interaction that led to death for one of the members and possible complicity for others.

  He felt sorrow for the one at whose grave he now stood and prayed.

  He felt sorrow for just about everyone involved on that fateful day: the first Wednesday in June.

  One

  Never get sick on a Wednesday.

  Why not?

  Because the doctors and priests will be on the golf course.

  Lil smiled at the memory of the old wheeze as she peeled strips of bacon from the package and slid them into the frying pan.

  It was very much an “in” joke for Catholics of long standing who could count themselves well within the loop. Once upon a time, when Catholics fell ill a priest might be summoned as routinely as a doctor. While the doctor scribbled a prescription, the priest would confer the appropriate sacrament, and assure the family of his prayers as well as those of the other parishioners.

  Nowadays, doctors don’t make house calls, and priests, an ever more endangered species, are buffered from callers by answering services. Nonetheless, Wednesday is still a popular day off for those able to arrange it.

  Lil wore only the top half of a man’s pajamas. The man, still snoozing, wore the bottoms.

  The sun was creeping into the basement studio apartment. The tiny dwelling comprised a kitchenette wall, one bath, and an all-purpose space that was foyer, living room, dining room, and bedroom.

  This Wednesday in June promised to be a pleasant day, the type that invited one to get out and enjoy the weather. Many of those left behind at this suburban apartment complex after the majority went off to work—mostly mothers and young children—would gather poolside.

  Not this couple.

  Lil and Rick had to be extremely careful.

  This caution did not concern Rick nearly as much as it did Lil.

  He was by nature carefree, spontaneous, and relatively fearless. She envied him these traits. Still she feared they’d be found out. Her fear was more for him than it was for her. But she too had high stakes in their relationship.

  After all, Lillian Niedermier was principal of St. Enda’s elementary school. She wondered how long she would hold that position if it leaked out that she had for the past ten years been half of a significant-other relationship.

  The marital status of parochial teachers and principals had been taken for granted in the era when Catholic schools were staffed almost totally by nuns. Religious brothers served a few schools; priests—Jesuits, Basilians and the like—taught at some other schools as well as at seminaries.

  That considerable dedication—for that was what it was—solved any number of problems.

  There were no unions in Catholic schools. There was nothing to be negotiated. There were no interviews of prospective teachers to sap the pastor’s time. If St. Paraphanucious school was slated to have twenty-four Dominican nuns, there they were: twenty-four dedicated women all in black-and-white habit.

  None of the twenty-four had volunteered for a specific parish. The pastor did not select any of the nuns. They were sent.

  Like so many other changes in the Catholic Church since 1965, when t
he Second Vatican Council concluded, things were radically different in today’s parochial schools.

  Formerly there was no challenge in finding the layperson on the Catholic school faculty. She was the only one wearing ordinary clothing.

  Now there was plenty of challenge. The nun—if there was even one on the faculty—probably couldn’t find a religious habit to save her soul—literally.

  So, layperson Lillian Niedermier found herself principal of a parochial school in a northwest suburb of Detroit.

  She could have made lots more money teaching in the public school system. Her choice to go parochial was partly because her schooling had been Catholic and also because here she could achieve the rank of principal. A position for which she would have had to wait many more years had she been in the public system.

  But what would the parishioners of St. Enda’s—let alone Father O’Leary, the pastor—think if they were to discover that she had a live-in boyfriend? Marriage and its rules and regulations had for centuries been, and continued to be, an obsession with the Catholic Church. It would not take a canonical major to conclude that Lillian was “living in sin.” St. Enda’s students were not the only ones likely to earn an A.

  Lil began cracking eggs into a bowl. She dropped four slices of bread into the toaster. The essentials were ready to go. All that was missing was a hungry man. Her man would have to wake up to feel hunger.

  As if on schedule, stirrings and grunts emanated from the bed. “Do those sounds,” Lil called over, “mean that you are about to favor me with your presence?”

  There was a pause while he rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes. “If you play your cards right … maybe.”

  She turned up the heat under the frying pan. After some moments the distinctive aroma of sizzling bacon permeated the room.

  “Sweetie,” he said, “you just dealt a royal flush!”

  She smiled as she flipped and flopped the strips in the pan. He liked his bacon uniformly well done.

  Her back was toward him and she swayed slowly as she busied herself at the stove. He studied her appreciatively.

  Her straight dark hair, parted in the middle, fell to the base of her neck. Her shoulders and upper torso were, he thought, incredibly narrow. Yet she was surprisingly strong. On those occasions when a heavy object was too hefty or bulky for him to lift alone, Lil bore the load every bit as equally as he.

  His pajama top was many times too large for her slender figure. The garment hung to approximately mid-thigh. It reminded him of a mini skirt. Below her wasplike waist, the pajama top clung to her hips and suggested the rounded firmness beneath.

  No doubt about it, she was one beautiful woman. And he was one lucky guy.

  Breakfast would be prepared without his participation. Not that he couldn’t prepare food; actually he did that with some regularity. And when he himself was chief cook and bottle-washer, he welcomed the involvement of others.

  Not so with Lil. When she was in charge she firmly warned all others to steer clear of “my” kitchen.

  He’d learned his lesson. He would not approach the kitchen area until everything was on the table. Meanwhile, he would feast his eyes on her generous beauty. He’d never met a curve in her body that he didn’t treasure.

  His thoughts flowing in free association, he contrasted her youth and perfect form with what he brought to this relationship. His gift, he thought, was not all that much.

  In his prime—Lil’s age and younger—he had been a trim athlete. If it bounced he’d played it: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, racquetball. Come to think of it, even if it didn’t bounce, as long as it was a game, he’d played it.

  Now his exercise was limited to bowling, golf—when the season and weather allowed—and sporadic visits to a fitness gym.

  His upper body testified to his youthful athleticism. A thick neck and strong, sloping shoulder and chest muscles suggested strength and sinewy toughness. But that was the end of that. Over the years, he had developed a paunch that now threatened to sag over his belt.

  Well, he said to himself, what could you expect at age sixty? Gravity, as well as other forces such as inertia, tended to remind one of the passage of time. Belying a drooping middle was his rigidly square face displaying the storied map of Ireland, accentuated by brilliant blue eyes and a full head of still-red hair.

  All in all not too disgraceful for a man of sixty years.

  Sixty years! When he was on the way up at thirty, forty, or fifty—even fifty-nine—sixty had seemed ancient. Well, what was sixty supposed to feel like? It all depended on health. He had known men who were old in their thirties and forties. While others—yes, some even in their sixties—were still young.

  However, further complicating things was Lil, twenty-five years his junior.

  Sixty years against thirty-five. Some might say it was the embodiment of a May-December relationship, that he was robbing the cradle. From time to time, he himself wondered.

  On such occasions, Lil would attempt to kiss away his troubled thoughts. And each time she would succeed. But he proved unable to return the favor.

  Lil worried. He was reminded of it more often than not. She worried not about the difference in their ages, not a bit about their love for one another. Lil worried because she was principal of a Catholic school. And because he was a priest.

  Father Richard Casserly, Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Pastor of St. William of Thierry parish in the city of Detroit. Vicar of the East Side Vicariate. A substantial representative of the archdiocese.

  If Lil had her way, no one on earth would have any idea that Father Casserly and Ms. Niedermier were an item. As it was, and due largely to her precautions, precious few suspected and actually only one other person knew for certain.

  The situation demanded constant vigilance. The effort primarily was Lil’s. In her mind, the alternative was disaster. If their secret were to be known by her pastor, or by the archbishop, undoubtedly she would be fired. And Rick? That was pretty much up in the air.

  At very least he would suffer some sort of ecclesial punishment. Suspension, perhaps, which would demand that he not exercise any priestly function for some specified period—a month, a year, whatever the archbishop, Cardinal Mark Boyle, imposed.

  Compared with what other bishops in other dioceses would do in this situation, temporary suspension was pretty mild. That was because Boyle was not confrontational. He would level such a penalty only if backed into a canonical corner with the media’s glare turned on.

  All of this, she thought, Rick could take.

  But there was more.

  The authorities would insist that their relationship be terminated. And that, Lil was convinced, Rick would refuse out of hand. In that sort of confrontation, Rick didn’t have a ghost of a chance. Whatever form of penalty would follow—suspension, excommunication, laicization—he would face the loss of his priesthood, undoubtedly permanently.

  The priesthood or Lil. It would be a gut-wrenching decision for Rick.

  Frequently both would reminisce about how this had begun. The thread that bound them had originated at St. Ursula’s, Rick’s first assignment after his ordination in 1965. Rick became a popular priest in the inner-city parish that had for some time been held captive by a despotic pastor.

  Against the pastor’s wishes—he could not make them orders since his policies were even more harsh than restrictive Church law—the attractive, young Father Casserly had instituted an athletic program in the parish high school, regularly visited the grade school, preached well, and was as open and as healing as possible.

  So popular was he that years after his hitch at St. Ursula’s he was still called back to witness weddings and perform funerals for the friends he had made there.

  It was impossible for the pastor to overlook Rick’s profound popularity. And so he was welcomed back only reluctantly for such parish events as confirmation, Forty Hours, and the parish festival.

  On ma
ny such occasions Father Casserly would meet and greet both the old and new parochial employees. One of these was Lillian Niedermier, who taught in the parish school from 1984 to 1987.

  It wasn’t love at first sight. It was respect, interest, and appreciation. The relationship deepened slowly. At the time she was nearly twenty, he in his mid-forties. He tended to treat her as a daughter, a chronological possibility.

  Metaphorical incest never crossed her mind. He had an aura of wit, good humor, and intelligence, as well as physical attractiveness and an Irish gift of gab that charmed her completely if gradually.

  For him, being a priest in the eighties was vastly different from being a priest in the fifties; for her, being a parochial teacher in the eighties contrasted greatly with being a Catholic schoolgirl in the seventies.

  In the sixties, both priests and nuns were slowly emerging from their cocoon of clerical clothing. The Catholic Church, as well as the country, was in turmoil. But tradition, along with a residual discipline, held most of the Catholic clergy in place.

  However, by the time Lil was in high school, the priest drain was in full force.

  Still, even in the eighties, when Lil began teaching, Rick was very much a priest and Lillian was in awe of his priesthood.

  So they began by being peripherally aware of each other and conscious of the comfortable feeling they had with each other. On rare occasions they might take in a movie or a concert. They took pains not to appear to be together, often even sitting apart in the theater.

  The more they knew of and about each other, the more their initially platonic attraction grew and evolved.

  By 1990, their love had become physical and total. Three years later, he moved some of his effects into her small apartment, while maintaining his residence in the rectory.

  They were together almost every moment they were not on duty: evenings when he had no meetings or sacramental responsibilities; Saturday mornings and early afternoons; Sundays after morning Masses; Tuesday nights and—his regular day off—Wednesdays all day.

  Nothing in Lil’s schedule conflicted with his availability except Wednesday, when, of course, St. Enda’s school was open for business as usual. She was able to clear her Wednesdays only because she was principal and had complete confidence in her assistant principal.