The Good Priest's Son

by Reynolds Price

  “He’s not still awake?”

  Marcus said “I can’t tell you. When I laid him down at eleven, though, he was worried sick. If you’re asking me, you better go see him.”

  “But then I’ll wake your mother.”

  “Don’t worry about her; that’s why she’s here.”

  Mabry held out his right hand. “I’ll go see him right now. You get your own rest.”

  Marcus shook the hand lightly, then turned to leave. “I’ll see you Monday, if you want me then. If you don’t, tell Audrey; she’ll cancel me out.”

  Mabry thought I’ll just bet she can; but he said “Thank you, yes. I don’t have a plane reservation yet. I’ll call when I do.”

  Marcus said “I’m your man.”

  “That’s all I was hoping.” And then Mabry actually said to himself I can see this fellow walking away. Even in dim light, I see him still. His eyes worked that far.

  And they took him straight on to the kitchen without the need to turn on lights. At the kitchen door he thought he should speak so as not to startle Audrey. He said her name clearly, then apologized.

  And from her cot, she spoke at once. “I could hear you coming. Everything all right?”

  “Pretty much so. And Marcus has gone. He said my father wanted to see me, whatever time it was.”

  In the faint starshine it was plain that Audrey was still lying down, but her voice was wide awake. “He said that, yes.”

  Before they could think or speak again, Tasker called through his open door. “Son, step in here. I need you for a second.”

  And when Mabry crossed the doorjamb, Tasker said “Let’s stay in the dark, but close the door and sit down yonder in the Morris chair.”

  One thing about Pa, his orders have always been clear as knife cuts. So Mabry obeyed. But once he was seated, he could hear undeniable snoring from Tasker—soft but still a hint of sleep. He sat for maybe three minutes till he himself was drifting off. Then at last, for reasons he couldn’t imagine, he started reciting a poem his father had always said was the best in the English language, Cowper’s “Castaway.”

  “No voice divine the storm allay’d,

  No light propitious shone;

  When, snatch’d from all effectual aid,

  We perished each alone….”

  As Mabry quit, he thought Goddamn, those lines have likely caused more men to kill themselves than any brand of liquor. And he got to his feet again. Let the old bastard sleep. He was at the door before he could think Have I ever called him that? Then his hand was on the doorknob.

  Tasker said “This morning—” Then he paused again, so long it could have been another nap.

  Mabry turned the knob.

  “Hold on, son. I asked you to sit.”

  “Reverend, I sat for the better part of five or ten minutes.”

  Tasker said “That’s got to be a lie.”

  “A stretcher maybe but not a real lie. I doubt you could prove I’ve ever lied to you.”

  Tasker said “I’ll choose to believe you.”

  Mabry had gone to the chair again but was upright still.

  “When you’ve sat down, son, I’ll finish my business.”

  So he sat, exhausted now and on the verge of anger.

  “This morning, as I told you, I made a real mistake.” But that seemed to be it—no immediate sign he’d say any more, not tonight.

  Mabry couldn’t quite settle for that. “You’re referring to what you said to me at my brother’s grave?”

  “That’s it, yes sir—your brother, my son.”

  Mabry said “Your second son. But, sir, I think I’ve heard all I want to hear on that sad subject—you loved him, nobody else apparently.”

  “I hardly said that.”

  Mabry said “I can tell you every word you said; I wish I could forget it. You looked square at me and said ‘Gabriel Kincaid was the one human being I ever truly loved.’”

  Tasker was punching his pillows up beneath him, and Mabry could just see his tortured efforts to sit more nearly upright in bed. He didn’t ask for help, and Mabry didn’t offer it. Finally Tasker could breathe deep enough to say “I surely never meant to say that—or not that much, not then and there.”

  “You’re a priest of God, sir—or so I’ve been told all my life, by every voice on all sides of me—and that’s what you said: the only human being you ever truly loved.”

  Tasker said “Then forgive me please.”

  Mabry said “Is that why you wanted me to see you, this late?”

  “I think so, yes,”

  Mabry said “Then I can finally go on to bed?” and he actually stood. But when he’d got halfway to the door, he turned full-face to his father. “Forgive you for what—for not loving me and any other soul or for hearing you misstate your feelings this morning? Maybe you didn’t love Gabriel either. From what I’ve seen of the human race—the male half especially—it wouldn’t surprise me if you loved nobody. That’s pretty much what most men truly feel.”

  Tasker said “All right. Then who have you loved? Not me surely.”

  Mabry started to take the question in earnest. His mother came at once to mind—and Frances, in her last agony. But he heard himself say what he must have felt. “I don’t have any duty on Earth to give you that list, however long or short.”

  Tasker said “That’s correct. You have no duty whatsoever regarding me.”

  Mabry said “I’ll bury you surely.”

  Tasker said “I’ve made those arrangements already with Audrey Thornton and her able son Marcus. You’ve met them both.”

  Mabry said “I have.” No other words or ideas dawned on him. And the only sound he heard from his father was the rustle of a body rearranging covers. So he said “Good night, sir.”

  Tasker said “The same.”

  As Mabry passed Audrey’s dark cot, he wondered if he should pause and speak—a word of explanation or apology, maybe a word of comfort from her. She was likely to have heard, at least, some scraps of what had just passed between a legitimate son and his father; and in the past day or two she’d seemed more understanding of his setup—Mabry’s, down here. But Audrey said nothing as he moved on through the dark, and slowly he took his silent way forward to the room he was born in (he thought of it that way one more time).

  And in his own bed, he was shockingly calm in the face of what had happened. Was there anything left to speak of between Father Kincaid and himself? When he left here on Monday—and why wait till Monday?—would he ever come back? Why and for what? But before he could bring up even the vaguest answers to such questions, Mabry was asleep. Deep untroubled sleep, the best he’d had since his nights in Rome on the edge of the Villa Borghese gardens in the old pensione where he’d stayed since his first student trip to the city.

  It was more than a long hour later when a sound at his front-porch screen slowly woke him. In the late summer warmth, he’d raised the nearest window; and now a hand scratched lightly at the wire. Or was he dreaming? With his tendency to spring to full awareness the instant he woke, Mabry lay flat in mild annoyance and thought “This Marcus needs a real talking-to.” But when he called “Marc?” a woman’s voice said “It’s me.” It seemed to be a stranger. He said “Who’s me?”

  “Your friend Audrey Thornton.”

  That’s at least a step forward. Finally I’m her friend. He thought she was bringing bad news about his father. Why to the window though? Somehow he didn’t wonder if she was offering herself. He’d slept in his briefs; so he stood now, fumbled for his robe, and moved toward the voice. He hadn’t switched on a single light; but since it was pitch dark, he guessed they were still in the midst of night. And since Audrey didn’t speak again, he stopped and asked if she’d called the ambulance. Almost before he’d said the word, he knew he had to be more than half asleep. He got all the way to the screen and raked his own hand across the dry surface before he managed to say he was sorry to be so groggy. Anywhere else in the world, this late and a stra
nger at the window, I’d run the other way.

  Audrey said “No, Mabry, we don’t need an ambulance. Since you left your father an hour ago, I haven’t slept a wink; so I figured you might be in the same shape, and this might be the last chance we get to talk about things we need to settle.”

  By then he could see a little starshine on the backs of his hands. “What time is it?”

  “I really don’t know. Nowhere near morning.”

  Mabry said “You want to come in here? I guess we wouldn’t wake Pa by talking.” But is that anywhere near a good idea?

  Audrey had thought the same thing. “Warm as it is, you could come out here; we could sit and talk.”

  He went out the side door and joined her on the porch. In silence she led them toward the front door. She’d left that open so she’d stand a good chance of hearing Father Kincaid if he called for her. She’d also brought out a bottled Coke in case Mabry might need something to wake him. They sat in two of the heavy old rockers.

  Mabry took two swallows of the drink, thought This meeting is somehow immensely peculiar, then spent a whole minute hearing a whippoorwill call its quick three-syllable name again and again across the road in Edwin Russell’s pasture. Any human being that self-obsessed would get hauled off to the mental ward, no questions asked. At last he said “You think that could be the same whippoorwill I heard every summer through my boyhood, right here in this spot?”

  Audrey said “Don’t forget I’m a big-city girl. I truly couldn’t tell you.”

  Mabry said “Then I had far better luck.” Before she could start reciting her luck, he said “And what brought you down here to stay?”

  She wasn’t eager to spell that out; but deep as the night was, she went ahead. “A hundred things. My mother had been staying with me up north, and she nearly died homesick for this place. I’d liked it myself, on childhood trips, but hardly enough to draw me here for good. The main thing was Marcus. He told me he’s already mentioned to you that he might have stabbed his brother.”

  Mabry said “He didn’t say might have. He just said he stabbed him and that’s why his own daughter bears the same name.”

  Audrey held back a long while. She even leaned forward more than once—laying her head flat on her knees, then rising straight up like ancient Jews in prayer by the Wall. At last she said “Mabry, honest to God I know this is true. You can count on this. Marcus sometimes thinks he killed Master Thornton, his younger half-brother. I doubt they ever spoke ten mean words to one another, not in my hearing. But the facts are these. For all the love and attention I gave them, I’m sure you can guess I couldn’t afford to raise them in the best part of Baltimore; and by the time they were into adolescence, both boys had started hanging out with older fellows that were doing drugs, selling drugs, even running full-time prostitutes—whores that were not a day older than my boys. Anyhow, one Christmas Day they were hanging out a few blocks from home (I was off at church, may God forgive me, when my own children were what needed me); and a scuffle arose involving a bad older man, an actual dealer. He was just a supermarket of every kind of drug. And it turned out I knew him. I’d taught him in grade school. Back then he was smart, handsome and smart and ready to please. But late that Christmas afternoon, a big fight broke out, as I said—pistols with the older boys, knives with the kids, cocaine on the sidewalk before it was over, strewn all around like common sugar. And two dead boys—my son, Master Thornton, and the fellow I mentioned, named Sadney Simmons. Sadney not Sidney, one of those strange names young mothers make up or get from TV. When the coroner finished his autopsies, and the police finished their billion questions, the truth seemed to be this—so far as my sons were concerned at least. Master had taken one shot through the chest, plumb through his aorta, and two deep cuts on his upper left thigh. Marc wasn’t touched anywhere on his body. He was scarcely fourteen at the time, and he did own a knife. I knew about that and had begged him to sell it to some other boy or let me keep it till he got a little older. He told me later that—once the fight started—he had the knife out, protecting himself and Master, who loved to get right down in the midst of a fight. But Master worshiped Marc (maybe you’ve seen why), and Marc took every chance to stand between his kid brother and any kind of harm. In the end, no charges were ever filed on Marcus Thornton. He had never laid hands on a gun; and when he’s thinking straight today, he knows he never harmed his brother. But as I told you, sometimes he convinces himself he did. Sometimes I think he tells other people just to season his quiet life a little. But he’s harmless as a rabbit, except for getting that wild girl pregnant. So you can rest easy; he would no more hurt your father or you than St. Francis would, if he was nearby.”

  Mabry said “Don’t we wish he were?”

  Audrey said “I’m no kind of Catholic, you understand; but if St. Francis had any way of sending that boy to college, I’d scrub his stone floors two times a day the rest of my life.”

  Mabry thought I better not take that road, not now if ever; and I surely won’t probe into Marcus’s innocence. If the Thorntons turn out to be loyal to Pa, then maybe I can help. What he said was “You’ve finished up at Duke, right—your course work anyhow?”

  “I have and they’ve been thoroughly generous to me with financial aid, but I still have various sums to pay, so I’ll still need to hold down a job for my own expenses. I told you I take my prelims in the spring, and then I start work on my dissertation.”

  He felt bareboned in going straight to it; so he stood, watched a single car pass down the road, then took a seat on the railing and faced in Audrey’s general direction. When he was sure he could see the outline of her head in the dark, he finally said “How long do you think you can stay with my father?”

  “You mean will my studies draw me away? I’ve thought a good deal about that already. Easy as he is to take care of, and interesting to know (you’ve heard him helping me with my Greek), I can’t imagine I’ll need to leave him often. The books I need, I can check out from Duke and bring up here. Once his ankle heals, he can ride down with me and read in the library while I hunt down what I need. Other times I can get Marc or somebody else to sit here with him while I go to Durham. If you and he want me, then I’ll try to hang on.”

  Angry as he’d been with his father all day, Mabry’s great relief surprised him. He told her so firmly; then he rushed on to say “Once his ankle’s healed, of course you can stay in my bedroom. I’ll get the roof fixed right away.”

  Audrey made the sounds of agreement and thanks, then she went so quiet that Mabry thought she might have lapsed into sleep.

  Turning aside, he straddled the rail and finished his Coke, then finally asked a question in his normal voice. It should either wake her or prove she’d never dozed at all. He said “You’re divorced from your husband?”

  She answered at once, a little harshly. “Is that necessary to any agreement we’re making here?”

  Mabry said “Not really. I was only hoping to understand how free you are, what needs you may have at home or wherever.”

  Audrey said “There was never a husband or any kind of regular man in my life. When I was a girl, I lived like most of the girls I knew. So no, there was no one permanent man; and there’s no one now, of any description. But long as it took, I put myself through four years of college at Towson State. That’s some satisfaction; and maybe I’m a little sad to say it, but my life is fair enough now.” There might have been more natural light by then, or the fury with which she’d told him that much might have lit her face.

  In any case, Mabry could almost see her excellent eyes. He thanked her again.

  “Is that enough?” Her tone by then was almost teasing.

  “A gracious plenty, as my mother used to say.”

  Audrey said “Mine too.” But though her voice had calmed considerably, she pushed on, fearless. “Maybe now you’ll tell me something about your personal history—your daughter’s mother, any partners you’ve had, anything in that line.”
r />   “My father hasn’t told you?”

  “Not a single word and I wouldn’t dream of asking him. I’ve got at least normal human curiosity but I’m no detective.”

  Mabry said “Thank goodness.” Then without thinking, he slung his empty Coke bottle way out behind him in the yard.

  Audrey said “That’ll be your first duty tomorrow. Is that a deal?” Though she chuckled, she meant it.

  He thought through his options here and finally decided The pure whole truth or nothing else. And he said “I was married to a well-fixed woman, nearly two years my senior, for thirteen years. She was fine to look at, always beautifully dressed, way more intelligent than me, and a flawless mother to our only child. She was damned nearly flawless in our relations too, hers and mine; but she did tend to look at me more than I needed. I’d be at work in my studio or reading on the terrace alone; and then I’d look up and find her silently somewhere behind me, just watching me as if she thought I was some form of nourishment that I never was and couldn’t become—still can’t, to this day. Once I got my degree in conservation, we moved to D.C., the fringes of Georgetown—she was well-to-do on her father’s side. I knew I could get steady interesting work there, and both her parents lived nearby (likely too nearby). A couple of good years passed—us together and Charlotte just born. Then I started the trouble. I couldn’t be faithful and I’ve never known why. I kept my tracks clean, though; and if she found out, she never mentioned it, not for many years. Then when Charlotte was twelve, a friend of mine—an old friend at that, oddly a fun-loving male himself—filled her in at an April Fools’ party one night. The next day we talked, and she asked me to quit. I said I would but of course I didn’t, and eventually she asked me to leave. Wrong as I was, I had no choice but to pack my things. The day I left we sat in the breakfast room and told each other that, for Charlotte’s sake, neither one of us would seek a divorce unless a perfect partner should come our way. I lived on in D.C. for a while; and for both their sakes, I kept my private life extremely private. I also saw both of them often, and we got along fairly fine. But after a while I knew I wanted a fuller life, so I moved north and did well there with a one-man business. No feasible partners materialized for her or me, though. Frances had a good job in real estate (her name was Frances Kenyon), Charlotte had good schools; and as I said, New York made a genuine home for me—till Tuesday at least. What changed everything actually came earlier this year, one calm Sunday night. I was in my loft alone, watching a movie, when the telephone rang. We’d called each other fairly often, right along, mostly to deal with some problem of Charlotte’s, some trouble she was having in college or wherever. But this time Frances just outright told me the news was bad and was all about her. It turned out her doctor, a close friend of ours, had phoned her on Saturday to say he’d just got all her studies back; and she was well-gone with double breast cancer, stage four. It was completely typical that she said well-gone. Anybody else would have said the cancer was terminal, but Frances Kenyon said well-gone. I said ‘Jesus, Frances.’ Then the next thing I heard myself say was ‘Can I come back?’ I meant what the words meant; and just as fast, she said ‘If you’re free, I’d be glad.’ I laughed and said ‘Not free but cheap.’ Then I told her I was utterly free of other women and would stay that way for as long as she needed my presence or even the sight of me. I kept my word. I stayed beside her, at home and in the hospice, for the rest of her life.” When he stopped, he thought That sounds too good. I’m claiming sainthood. Then he said as much.