“Your Eminence, are you free?”
“What’s on your mind, Jack?”
“I got a priest on the line speaking for a family who wants to make a Donation to the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing.”
“Splendid!” the archbishop said.
“He wants to know when Prudence went to paradise,” the monsignor said.
“Oh,” the archbishop replied.
“I told him you’d tell him,” the monsignor said.
“Thanks a lot, Jack,” the archbishop said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been off on another of your regular twice-a-month liquid lunches with Father dePresseps.”
“As a matter of fact, Your Eminence . . .”
“Put him on,” the archbishop said. “I’ll handle it.”
“Thank you, Your Eminence.”
The archbishop picked up his phone.
“This is the archbishop,” he said. “I understand that you’re interested in the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing.”
“Actually, Your Eminence, since Monsignor Clancy has assured me that it is a reputable institution, I’m more curious about the Blessed Prudence MacDonald herself.”
“And a splendid institution it is,” the archbishop went on. “It serves as the nurse-training facility for our Gates of Heaven Hospital.”
“And what about the Blessed Prudence?” Father Huaretto pursued.
“Actually, Father, that’s a question of semantics. While there is no doubt in my mind that Prudence is blessed, lower case b, she is not—at least not yet— Blessed, capital B.”
“Forgive me, Your Eminence,” Father Huaretto said. “I don’t quite follow you.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Father,” the archbishop said. “I’m going to transfer you to the office of the chief of staff of Gates of Heaven Hospital, Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes, M.D., F.A.C.S. I’m sure that she’ll be able to answer your questions satisfactorily. Would you hold on a moment, please?”
He pushed theHOLD button on his telephone, picked up another telephone, dialed hastily, and waited impatiently. “This is the archbishop,” he said. “Connect me immediately with Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes.”
There was a pause.
“Hello?” a female voice said impatiently.
“This is the archbishop. I wish to speak to Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes.”
“I knew it would either be a major medical catastrophe or you,” the female voice said.
“I didn’t recognize your voice, Bernie,” the archbishop said. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“I just jerked a gallbladder, Paul,” the Reverend Mother said. “One of the surgical residents can close. What’s on your mind?”
“You’re in the operating room?”
“You got it, Paul,” she said. “What’s the big flap?”
“We’ve got a little problem, Bernie,” the archbishop said. “One right down your alley.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ve got a priest on the line, speaking for a family who wishes to make a contribution to the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing.”
“That’s a problem? They can sure use the dough. I was going over the books with Margaret just the other day. You have no idea how much food sixty healthy young females can put away, Paul.”
“And how is Margaret?” the archbishop asked.
“What’s the problem, Paul?” the Reverend Mother asked.
“They want to know when Prudence went to paradise,” the archbishop said.
She laughed.
“What’s so funny?” the archbishop demanded sharply. “What am I supposed to tell him?”
“Prudence was there—getting some female-type advice from Margaret about the care and feeding of husbands—when I saw Margaret. I asked her how she liked being married, and she said it was paradise.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly the paradise Father Huaretto of Miami and the family Gomez y Sanchez have in mind, Bernie.”
(It should, in the interests of clarity, be parenthetically noted here that the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing, formerly the New Orleans Christian Mental and Physical Center, and, prior to that, Madame Eloise’s Sporting House, a well-known New Orleans landmark, was established as one of the major—in fact, the only—good works of the American Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens Society. Ms. MacDonald , then a journalist in the employ of the New Orleans Picaroon-Statesman, had come into the possession of certain information concerning the TA & VD Society. In exchange for her promise not to publish this information, the TA & VD Society had purchased the building from its former owners and placed it at the disposal of the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, R.N., of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., for use as a nursing school. A name for the new institution being required, it was decided between the Reverend Mother Emeritus and Doctors Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, who were involved in the negotiations, that it was fitting to name the school after Ms. Prudence MacDonald . Not only had she been responsible for the TA & VD Society’s remarkable generosity, but she was about to enter into the bonds of matrimony, to exchange her name for that of one Lemuel “Ace” Travers, a fellow journalist. The Reverend Mother Emeritus had felt that so naming the institution would perpetuate the name of one of New Orleans’ most prominent women’s libbers. Doctors Pierce and McIntyre agreed, but went a step further, at least privately. They felt that anyone who looked up at the name chiseled into the marble over the entrance to the structure would be reminded of happier times, when the place had been a sporting house.*)
(* The sordid details of all this, for those with a prurient interest in such matters, have been recorded in what has been described as “certainly an unusual style” in a neat, stoutly bound volume entitled M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans. The publishers, Pocket Books, as a public service, have made this tome available on racks in better bus terminals, five-and ten-cent stores, and other gathering places of the literary congnoscenti.)
“Well, what am I supposed to tell them?” Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes demanded. “If you think I’m going to do your fibbing for you, Paul, think again.”
“You’re speaking to your archbishop, you know!” he said, somewhat tartly.
“Any time you’re dissatisfied with my services, Paul,” the Reverend Mother said, “I’ve got a standing offer from Dago Red to take over the American Hospital in Rome.”
“No offense, Bernie,” the archbishop said. “You know we couldn’t do without you. Who else could I turn to with a problem like this?”
The Reverend Mother paused thoughtfully. “Well, they need the dough. Put him on, Paul.”
“I knew I could rely on you, Bernie,” the archbishop said. ...
Five minutes later, Father Pedro Huaretto put the telephone down and turned to face Doña Antoinetta Gomez y Sanchez.
“Well?” she said.
“Doña Antoinetta, you may put your understandable fears to rest.”
“Indeed?”
“I have spoken not only with Monsignor Clancy, the chancellor of the archdiocese, but with His Eminence the archbishop himself.”
“Indeed?”
“And with the chief of staff of the Gates of Heaven Hospital, Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes, M.D., F.A.C.S.”
“And?”
“The Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing is a highly respected institution of impeccable reputation. Moreover, as the Reverend Mother Bernadette of Lourdes put it, ‘they need the dough.’ “
“Reverend Mother,” said Doña Antoinetta, herself something of a closet women’s libber, “is in charge of the institution?”
“No, Doña Antoinetta, the nun in charge is the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret.”
“Did you speak with her?”
“She was not available. She is in Las V
egas, Nevada. Probably at some medical or religious conference.”
“Well, that’s that, then,” Uncle Salvador said. “Find out what a hospital around here would charge to dress a bad cut, set a broken bone, and send this place a check for twice that amount.”
Doña Antoinetta began to weep. Her brothers looked very unhappy. Finally Uncle Carlos gathered his courage.
“Is something wrong, sister dear?”
“God is cruel!” Doña Antoinetta announced.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I devote myself to a life of Christian piety, with one exception which is none of anybody’s business but mine, and what is my reward?”
There was no reply.
“I’ll tell you what my reward is!” Doña Antoinetta said. “Three brothers like you, that’s my reward! That’s my crown of thorns. Three brothers, who when faced with a matter of honor affecting the good name of the family Gomez y Sanchez and with the prospect of sixty-two devoted young women on the brink of privation and malnutrition, think more about their pocketbooks than good works. That’s what my reward is!”
She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief, and continued to sob.
“Well, then, what?” Uncle Carlos asked.
“Four times what it’s worth?” Uncle Juan asked.
Doña Antoinetta wept louder.
“Ten times?” Uncle Salvador asked.
Doña Antoinetta howled—in a ladylike manner, of course.
“Might I suggest a scholarship?” Father Huaretto suggested. Doña Antoinetta’s mournful weeping stopped entirely for a moment, and then resumed at half its previous volume.
“Two scholarships!” Uncle Carlos cried triumphantly. “We’ll set up a trust fund!”
Doña Antoinetta stopped howling. She dried her tears with her lace handkerchief.
“Send them a small check,” she said. “Say . . . twenty thousand, and ask them to be good enough to come up with an adequate figure for a trust-fund endowment.”
They nodded agreement.
“And now, Father,” she said. “Will you hear my confession?”
“Of course, Doña Antoinetta,” Father Huaretto said. Truth to tell, he wasn’t looking forward to it. For twenty years now, in Cuba and in Miami, on Friday afternoons he had heard Doña Antoinetta’s confessions.
It was always more or less the same confession. When Doña Antoinetta (then Señorita) had fallen from the path of righteousness and, more to the point, chastity, a quarter of a century before, she had fallen spectacularly.
Father Huaretto, himself then a young man, had been impressed with her confession at the time. Señorita Antoinetta had recalled every detail, sordid and otherwise, and every nuance, every subtle shading, in her first confession. When he had granted her absolution, he had felt that she truly recognized her errors, and that that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t. While she had never repeated the offense itself, she had been unable to put it from her mind. In every confession afterwards, she had sobbingly admitted that she had been dwelling on the details of the first sin and even hoping for the opportunity to repeat the offense. Since the desire was tantamount to the act, she had been weekly in need of confession and absolution.
At first, Father Huaretto had thought that sooner or later some nice young man would come along and ask for Señorita Gomez y Sanchez’ hand in marriage, and that the one indiscretion of her maidenhood would be forgotten as she assumed her natural role as wife and mother.
But, although a long line of eligible young men had sought her hand, she had never married. It was clear that she preferred the sinful memory of her first dalliance to what Father Huaretto thought of as “the joys of matrimony.”
Chapter Five
Jimmy de Wilde, rings on his fingers and bells on the toes of his Gucci loafers, hovered nervously, reeking of My Sin, near the entrance of International Headquarters, God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., on St. Anne Street in New Orleans. He was awaiting the return of the Rev. Mother Emeritus Margaret H. W. Wilson, presiding cleric of that religious denomination.
Mr. de Wilde served as executive secretary of the religious body and as personal secretary to the Reverend Mother Emeritus. He was, in addition, one of the founding disciples, having been present in Finnochio’s Restaurant in San Francisco, California, during what The Official History of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc. referred to as The First Supper.
At The First Supper, Baxter (“Buck”) Wilson (now referred to as “Blessed Brother Buck”) had announced that, after prayerful thought, he had come to see it as his duty on this earth “to found a church for those children of God whom the extant religious bodies seem to either reject or ignore.”
The Official History said: “The first dozen members, known as the founding disciples, included an artist, two hairdressers, a writer, two ballet dancers, a male model, an interior decorator, and the quarterback and two defensive tackles of the San Francisco Gladiators professional football team.”
Mr. de Wilde, who had just changed his name (from Oscar Dunlop, Jr.) after coming into his patrimony, had been a major financial supporter of the new religious body, and had, in fact, financed the move of its headquarters to New Orleans, Louisiana, several months later. Blessed Brother Buck had announced that New Orleans was, so to speak, virgin territory, and should be fertile ground in which the GILIAFCC, Inc., could take root.
Despite a number of problems (the New Orleans Council of Churches, to phrase it gently, reacted most uncharitably toward the GILIAFCC), the a-borning church prospered in New Orleans. The bitter editorial crusade waged against the church by the New Orleans Picaroon-Statesman (and Col. Beauregard C. Beaucoupmots, chairman of the board and publisher) served not to drive the GILIAFCC from the Crescent City, but rather to drive hordes of potential parishioners from their closets and through the doors of the temporary temple on Bourbon Street.
There were other problems, of course. Some of the founding disciples (who came to be known as “the conservatives”) objected bitterly to the admission of females to the church. Blessed Brother Buck, however, with the support of the “moderate” and “liberal” elements, insisted that the church be open to anyone who embraced its principles, without regard to race, ethnic origins, or gender proclivity.
The greatest challenge to the GILIAFCC, Inc., which for some time threatened to tear it asunder, was Blessed Brother Buck’s whirlwind courtship of, and subsequent marriage to, a lady known variously as the “Widow Wachauf,”
“El Witcho,” and other things even less flattering and certainly unprintable.
Even before the ceremony, two of the founding disciples were so incensed that they took a full-page ad in the Picaroon-Statesman denouncing Brother Buck for betraying the most sacred of the sect’s principles. They were summoned before a hastily formed ecclesiastic court and formally excommunicated.
Things got worse. On the night of his wedding, literally on the nuptial couch, Blessed Brother Buck was summoned to sing in that great choir in the sky. Although the official report of the New Orleans coroner’s office clearly stated that “the deceased, the Rev. [sic] Baxter Wilson expired of coronary failure, most probably brought on by overexertion,” the cry of “witchcraft” immediately went up from the laity, and even from three of the remaining founding disciples.
There was talk of burning the newly widowed Mrs. Wilson at the stake. But cooler heads, led by Mr. de Wilde, prevailed. It had come to him, he announced, that Blessed Brother Buck had made the greatest sacrifice of all—marriage to a woman—to prove his devotion to the principle that the GILIAFCC, Inc., was indeed open to all kinds of people, even the heterosexual kind.
After some heated debate and just a little hair-pulling, the founding disciples announced that not only was the Widow Wilson not a witch, but was in fact an instrument of the Divine. A delegation of founding disciples called upon the Widow Wilson that very night to offer her a position high in the hierarchy of the GILIAFCC, In
c. She was from that night to be their Reverend Mother Emeritus.
Subsequent events, starting almost immediately, proved the wisdom of that decision. Even before the Reverend Mother Emeritus had been fitted into her newly designed vestments, the problem of how to properly plant Blessed Brother Buck was solved.
Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer, arrived by chartered jet from Paris to console the lady he touchingly described as “my ol’ army buddy” in her hour of sorrow. He was prevailed upon to sing at the funeral, and at a memorial service held later at the New Orleans Center for the Performing Arts. The revenue from ticket sales was more than sufficient to provide a solid bronze casket and a Canberra marble mausoleum for Buck in New Orleans’ most prestigious cemetery. The mausoleum itself was later topped with a marble statue of Blessed Brother Buck pictured as St. George at the moment he slew the dragon.
(It was, to be sure, necessary to have some “additional work” done on the statue after it was pointed out that the dragon bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Reverend Mother Emeritus. The founding disciple responsible for dealing with the sculptor was, following another ecclesiastical trial, excommunicated, but later, after a public recanting of error, he was accepted back into the fold.)
The Reverend Mother Emeritus herself, first thought of as nothing more than a figurehead, soon brought disorder out of the chaos of the business and financial affairs of the GILIAFCC, Inc.
“You can’t spend twenty years as an army nurse,” as she herself said, “without learning how to straighten things out.”
Unofficially, the Reverend Mother Emeritus also soon began to provide a broad female bosom on which the members of the congregation could rest their tearful heads and confess their innermost thoughts.
With the Reverend Mother Emeritus’ firm hand on the rudder, the GILIAFCC, Inc., prospered. Branch temples were opened in suburban New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, and Terre Haute, Indiana. An International Headquarters Building was erected on St. Anne Street, overlooking Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cathedral.
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