When he was at last forced out to pasture at the age of seventyfive and urged to spend the rest of his years in some cushy old priests’ community in the Midwest, Father Curran threatened to expose to the alumni the overspending engaged in by the treasurer and supported by several emeritus Jesuits who had continued to live on campus after retirement. He was given a choice: preside over a seminary for the diminishing order of American Jesuits or give last rites to his colleagues in that cushy rest home—but get off the grounds of Freeland.
Of course he chose to be rector of a seminary: He loved young people and abhorred stodginess, stultified thinking, and an opulent lifestyle. Too old to be a provincial superior or a rector any longer he was assigned the job of spiritual director to the small group of novices who were nowadays out in the field most of the time, fulfilling mission assignments during their years of discernment.
Seated in the cracked tan leather recliner that caters to his age (his vascular surgeon has ordered him to keep his feet up as often as possible), his ruddy and liver-spotted scalp with its white furry rim is nearly lost in the pilly beige afghan his sister knitted for him when he graduated from seminary and that he keeps draped over the back of the chair. The blue eyes magnified by wire-rim glasses get tired at age eighty-nine, and he needs to rest them, along with his veiny legs, from time to time. His laptop is propped up where it was intended to be—on his lap—with the screen open to an article from Religions when Jason’s knock wakes him from a sound nap.
“Come in.” The priest makes no attempt to sit up straight as he clears his throat of phlegm.
“I apologize, Father. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I saw your light was on.” Jason knows Curran is far from being done for the day: He’s still wearing his black shirt and collar.
“I couldn’t reach the switch and was too lazy to get up,” Father Curran says, referring to the brass floor lamp beside him with its dusty yellowed shade. “Just kidding, Jason. Odds are at my age you’re going to wake me up more often than not, so why turn out lights? I’m beyond embarrassment about it. I was trying to get through this article on fighting self-deception by means of the dramatic imagination. Should know better than to deceive myself by reading at this hour, since I haven’t been able to make it past the first paragraph.” He lifts his right hand as if to give a blessing, though it’s merely to emphasize the inconsequence of Jason’s interrupting him. As though obeying gravity, the hand floats back down to the armrest. “What can I do for you?”
“Can I ask you a personal question, Father?”
“All questions are personal, Jason. Even the most objective ones are clouded by perception.”
Jason chuckles, his turquoise eyes cast downward at the cracks in the dull oak floor, at his too-long toenails, at Father Curran’s thick white compression stockings. How generous is his license to speak candidly with his superior, to make assumptions about Curran’s sense of humor?
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s the fact that I do that I find amusing. You don’t disappoint, Father. You always provide the expected, which is the unexpected.”
“Sit down. Is it time for a Scotch?”
Jason, in khaki shorts, gray T-shirt, and sandals, sits in the wooden rocker opposite Curran. Hands on his hairy thighs, he leans closer to his advisor, as though he were about to give him a shoeshine.
“So let’s talk turkey,” Curran says.
“Okay. Why’d you become a priest, Father?”
“You mean you didn’t come in to chew over Saint Augustine or Thomas Aquinas?”
Jason chuckles again, but this time it’s a nervous laugh, and his gaze slips away from Father Curran. “Not today.”
“I like to think of it more as why I became a Jesuit.”
Talking to Father Curran is like talking to a human vegetable peeler. A crazy comparison, but that’s the way Jason sees him—always shaving, further, further, further, until you’ve been pared down to some odd-shaped seed of truth that no one has ever noticed before.
“I went to Saint Louis University,” Curran says. Jason sits attentively, like a child awaiting his favorite bedtime story. “I wanted to be a lawyer—like you. My dad was a first-generation Irish college graduate—an optometrist. He hated it. He wanted to be a politician. He was always involved with some political organization, from Young Democrats to city council. Even ran for mayor, but lost. Good for the family but disappointing for him. What I’m getting at is that I didn’t want to be disappointed with my life, so I thought that if I started out in law, I’d be on the right road to politics, because as the only son in an Irish family of five sisters, aligning myself with my father to the point of fulfilling his ambitions was a given. Wouldn’t I want what would have made him happy?
“But at Saint Louis, I got involved with this Jesuit business, and I started to think about what God wanted me to do. It wasn’t terribly profound, but I had a feeling that I had the religious life thing going on and sort of liked—from a distance—those Jesuits. I liked the intellectual life and social questioning that I probably got from my father, and I liked the Jesuits’ association with academia and teaching. Diocesan priests tended to be pious in a way that wasn’t attractive to me. But I became anxious. Would I be getting into the pious nerdtype stuff anyway for the rest of my life? So I get to the seminary in Florissant, Missouri, and the director of novices, whom I didn’t know, says to me, ‘Ambrose, welcome to the novitiate.’ And I’m thinking, how does he know who I am, and he says without my asking, ‘Because you’re the last one to arrive.’
“Well, that’s how I got started: the last one to arrive. So here we are, forty-five first-year novices in my class, if you can believe that. Over two hundred in the seminary! That night one of the guys, Eddie Sullivan, a war vet, told a dirty joke at recreation time, and I went to bed thinking, these guys are all right. Not going to worry about being stuck with a bunch of pious nerds. I’m not saying that’s the cause of my remaining a Jesuit, but it certainly was a contributing factor—this dirty joke, which I can’t remember. I wish to hell I could remember it. But you’re not worried about being with a bunch of pious nerds.”
“No.”
“You’re not even worried about being with a handful of pious nerds, as the case may be.”
“What was your father’s reaction to your becoming a priest?”
“‘Damn Jesuits!’ But he came around.”
“But how did you know, really know, it was right?”
“I’ve never thought about leaving, if that’s what you mean. My coming in was problematic and whatnot, but it’s been a done deal. Once I got away from the routine of the novitiate life—the daily order, the rising at five, the hours of silence, the constant cleanup, gardening, interspersed with meditation and prayer—once I got to the University of Michigan to earn my doctorate in political science, once I got into the world of academia—well, that changed my whole life.
“First I had to take on my theology studies for four years while being a hospital chaplain in Minneapolis. Oh, that was hard. You go around and try to console people. Then you go to bed, and at 2 a.m. you get a call about somebody dead on arrival—some guy on a motorcycle, the family there crying.
“Then I spent a month out in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on the Sioux reservation. Total failure. I was supposed to give a series of talks, and I talked about the latest scripture criticism. Oh, I totally misjudged the thing.” He laughs hard. “But I just loved being at the University of Michigan. I mean, I could stay up until 2 a.m., working on mathematics and economics. It was a luxury after going through the Jesuit thing, where you had to go to bed at a certain time. But I could stay up now until two! It was just about physical pleasure. They offered me a tenure track position, and I taught there for twelve years. I loved being a Jesuit in a secular environment. In a curious way, it made me more of a Jesuit. But then I got the call about the presidency, and I was back with the Jesuits.”
“So that was planned—to be back with
the Jesuits.”
“I’ve never really planned anything. My life, Jason, has been blessed. Really, it has.”
“Father, was there ever a woman? I mean in your decision.”
“Hell, there’s always a woman. From the minute we’re conceived there’s a woman. You didn’t get here on your own, kiddo.”
Jason smiles.
“That was the other problem I had, Jason. You see there was this girl I dated in college from a sister university—Our Lady of Fatima. A smart girl. A beautiful girl. I didn’t think we were particularly serious, but she was my girlfriend. When I told her about going into the novitiate to try it out, I told her she could come and visit me. Well, that didn’t happen. Like I said, she was a smart girl. A selfish girl, in the good sense of the word. She knew what she wanted, and she knew how to take care of herself. I learned a lot from that girl. Only at the time I didn’t recognize it.”
“What was her name?”
“Dorothy. Her name was Dorothy.”
“Did you ever think about her after you entered the novitiate?”
“It was all a little easier back then. Out of sight, out of mind was the attitude you were supposed to adopt. Modesty of the eyes, my novice master recommended: control what you look at, close your eyes and grit your teeth, or else you’ll have a hell of a time being a Jesuit. But that was before television, mind you, let alone the Internet. Nothing’s out of mind nowadays.”
Jason’s next smile is guarded. He doesn’t want to take privileges with his advisor. Ryan used to say he didn’t allow himself to relax often enough; took too many things too seriously.
“Look, just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the menu. I’m not saying this isn’t serious stuff that’s plaguing you, but don’t forget you are Irish, lad. Lighten up a bit.” Father Curran reads him well. The priest’s eyes drift away from Jason on a moment’s search into the past, then land back on the novice. “I thought about Dorothy a lot. But not in the way you’re thinking about your girl. What’s her name?”
“Ryan.”
“A lassie!”
“No. Half Italian, half Jewish.”
Curran gives a hearty laugh, then gets serious. “It’s not about forgetting, lad. You never forget. It’s about what file in your brain you put it into: Fond memories give me a thrill to remember, maybe even fantasize about, but wouldn’t really want to exchange what I have for it; or the one that always sinks down into my gut, disturbs my meditation, makes me sick to wake up in the morning because I may be making a mistake.”
The older and wiser of the two places his palms on his thighs to support his torso as he leans toward Jason and stares squarely into those pools of bluish green. “Do we need to put in for a leave of absence, son, to get that dramatic imagination checked?”
“Maybe. I think so, Father. Yes.”
Chapter 11
Wednesday, February 12
“YOU DID WHAT?” Michael hands Eric a bottle of beer and plops down alongside him on the sofa.
“I kissed her.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”
“It’s not like we banged or anything.”
“That’s fucked.”
“Okay. I’m a degenerate. What can I say? Becca’s not home, is she?”
“Food shopping. Too late. She already thinks you’re a player.”
“Everyone’s a player ’til they find the one. Besides, I can’t even remember the last date I had, it’s been so long. She’s really hot.”
“You wanna fuck up your big plan? You want some football hero to come and beat the shit out of you?”
“I don’t get the sense he’s a football player. Stocks and bonds type. She said not to be sorry. Really. She said that.”
“Oh, that makes it all good.”
“I liked it.”
“Of course you did!”
“No. I really liked being with her—talking to her. She gets me, Mike.”
“Nobody gets you, Eric.”
“Seriously, she gets me.”
“Well somebody already got her. You’ve got to hit the eject button.”
“Yeah. For sure. But I think she has doubts about getting married, which scares the shit out of me about the contest.”
“Whatever baggage this chick is hauling around is her business. You just better hope she’s not crazy.” Michael shakes a fistful of peanuts from a jar and deposits them into his mouth.
“She didn’t even act like she has a man. You think she might not even be engaged?” Eric asks.
Michael’s look indicates it to be a strong possibility.
“She liked the shot I have of you and Becca and me.”
“Maybe she does have taste. Listen, not to change the subject, but this is Lambert’s last season, as you know.” Michael has turned the conversation to baseball and the longtime high school coach, who was Eric’s coach. “You’re going to put your name in, right?”
“I don’t know, Mike.”
“What don’t you know?”
“If I’d be any good.”
“You’ve been the assistant coach for two years. You want me to kiss your ass, Eric? You know you’re good. The kids love you. Put your name in. Make my life easy. You know you’re a shoo-in. I’ll leave Brackton if you don’t.”
Eric looks at him. “Don’t play like that! You know I don’t like it when you talk about that shit. You’re not leaving, are you?”
“Someday.”
“Why’d you take the job, Michael? Seriously. I never asked you.”
“You did. During my interview.”
“I don’t mean that bullshit answer. Why’d you really come?”
“I like to ski—why’d the search committee pick me?”
“There were two other finalists,” Eric says. “One was decent. One wasn’t on the same level. You were the best candidate.”
“I was black.”
“That too. You were good and you were of color. The diversity card definitely didn’t hurt.”
As he talks, Eric leans forward and passes his hand over the top of the Mission-style oak coffee table as though trying to detect any imperfections in the grain, any unevenness in the finish. He has a habit of examining the surface of an object in front of him in this way when he’s anxious about approaching a topic. He moves his fingers back and forth along the lip of the table, presses the palm of his hand into the wood, around the sharp point of the right angle of the tabletop, as though he had made the object himself or is trying to determine how someone else might have made it.
“It’s a pretty liberal town, always has been, but even more now than when I grew up, but I’ve been here a long time, Mike, and there’s an old guard—especially in the surrounding towns. I never know how they think, or maybe I can’t forget how they think.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“I’ve lived around here a long time.”
“And I’ve been black a long time.”
“You could have gotten something in a city. School systems are crying for principals.”
“You mean in the hood?” Michael smiles and shakes his head. “I grew up in northwest DC. Far from the tough neighborhoods. My dad taught African American Studies courses at AU. We lived in Georgetown. One summer night when I was in high school and my parents were out of town, I went down to M Street to pick up something to eat. It was late. I was studying for a test. Here I am sitting on the stoop of our townhouse enjoying my pita pocket when a rookie cop pulls up. I had the key and money on me but no ID—had left my wallet inside. The cop wouldn’t even let me go in and get it. It was absurd, but I stayed calm. Didn’t put on a scene.”
“Like Louis Gates at his door.”
“I believe Gates made a scene, but then again, he’s Gates.”
“What happened?”
“Like I said, got taken down to the station.”
“But you had the key.”
“Now you’re talking like a white boy. I was lucky. The
y finally got hold of my dad, who lost it on them and called his best friend, the dean, who also laid into them. The same cop drove me home.” Michael shook his head, remembering the incident.
“You should get a Ph.D. and teach at a college like your dad.”
“I like working with teenagers. And if I ever take a job in the hood, I want to bring everything I have to the table.”
“So we’re your guinea pigs.”
“Basic training. There’s something to be learned from everyone. And something to be taught.” Michael goes into the kitchen and gets two more beers.
“You are the educator,” Eric calls after him.
“I’m not under any illusion. I’m not trying to prove anything. And I’m not running away. If I was running away, I wouldn’t be the only black dude in the heart of Vermont, would I?”
“So what are you?”
“I’m who I am and not afraid of that. Whatever it brings.” He hands Eric a bottle of beer and resumes his seat on the couch.
“I don’t know how you do it. Seriously.”
“My parents taught me to forgive but not excuse.”
“My mother’s down with the forgiving part but I think she’s excused too much.”
“That’s still you—your view of her. And that’s what eats up your soul, man. Your mom’s a beautiful lady. A courageous lady.”
“’Cause I can’t forgive or excuse? I know. I’m supposed to chalk it up to ignorance.”
“Now, there’s an excuse, if there ever was one. Another thing my father taught me was that no matter how much you try to teach something, there is always going to be some kid like you who will never get it.”
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