The Abbey

by James Martin

  Dedication

  For M.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  Also by James Martin, SJ

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  When the baseball crashed through his window, he was thinking about Ted Williams.

  Mark had once read that the Red Sox great claimed that when a fastball was screaming toward him at home plate, he could see the stitches on the ball. Mark couldn’t see the stitches, but he was aware that the ball was headed directly toward him. A line drive, the radio announcer would say, and he could almost hear the Red Sox games his father listened to during the summer. Back then, June, July, and August seemed like one endless baseball game.

  For a brief moment the ball appeared motionless, and then grew larger, like a globe rapidly expanding.

  He jumped out of the way just before it crashed theatrically through the glass, smacked the tall maple bookcase behind him as if it were a backstop, knocked out a few yellowing paperbacks, and landed with a demure plop on the carpet.

  “Shit!” he said, to no one in particular. He peered through the jagged glass into the neighboring yard. He knew right where to look. It was where they always played ball and made too much noise. The three teenage boys who lived on his block were friendly, but occasionally bothersome.

  He spotted them now and called down, “What the hell were you doing?”

  “Sorry!” came a trio of adolescent voices. The neighboring yard was several feet lower than his. Mark could never figure out what accounted for the strange undulations in his neighborhood, but some lawns were high, others low. Sometimes he worried about his house being swallowed up by one of those monstrous sinkholes he saw on the news, but it was probably just a natural depression, nothing special. Now it exaggerated his vantage point; from his first-floor glassed-in den, he looked down on the boys as if from a great height.

  “It’s almost the middle of the night!” he shouted. This was clearly an exaggeration—it was only nine o’clock—but anger made him skate over the error. He repeated himself, more loudly.

  “What the hell are you doing playing ball in the middle of the night?” And who, he asked himself, breaks windows with baseballs these days? He felt as if he were in a 1960s sitcom.

  The three boys dragged themselves up the incline and entered Mark’s yard. Standing a few yards from his window, they unsuccessfully tried to hide their fascination at the destruction they had caused, as they contemplated the shards of glass sparkling on the dark lawn.

  It was odd to see the three boys standing still. Normally, he saw them racing around the neighborhood, either on their bikes or, more recently, in one of their parents’ cars. A few days ago he had narrowly missed one of them riding a bike, no-handedly, on the street. But now they were rooted in place, apparently weighed down by guilt. As they inched closer to the broken window, Mark felt his empathy kick in.

  “Uh . . . sorry, Mark,” one said, looking up. Then he corrected himself: “Mr. Matthews.” Their upturned faces made the sixteen-year-olds look younger.

  What a dumb name, he thought, not for the first time. Dull to all but religious people who often asked, “Do you have brothers named Luke and John?” Long ago, he had promised himself that when he had children, he would not name them after anyone who wrote a Gospel.

  He used to ask women he dated what names they’d pick for their children, which either spooked them or prompted them to think that a ring was forthcoming. So he stopped inquiring. But occasionally, before he dozed off at night, he mused on names for his children. At age thirty, he was starting to worry about whether he’d ever find someone . . .

  The three boys stared at him. Mark took a step forward and felt glass crunch underfoot. Tomorrow he would have to tell Anne, his landlady. She’d freak out. So he grew angry again.

  “Who’s going to pay for this mess?” he asked, sounding like his father. Was there an internal script for these events that his mental hard drive automatically accessed?

  “Um . . . us,” said Brad, whom Mark considered the group’s leader. “Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, fine,” he said. “Hey, I know it was an accident. I used to do stupid things too. And I know you’re all good kids.” They brightened at that. One boy smiled in relief, caught himself, and frowned again.

  “So,” Mark said, “just come back tomorrow, and we’ll figure out how much this is going to cost.”

  “Okay.” They dispersed then, in three different directions, one carrying a bat, each with his own glove. The small event was large enough to unsettle them, shatter their evening camaraderie, and drive them homeward.

  Mark remembered what Brad’s father said after his son passed his driver’s test. Mark was washing his car when Brad pulled into the driveway next door, after his long-awaited appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The kid was so excited that he forgot to act cool.

  “Mark, I passed!” he shouted through the open window as he honked the horn. “I passed, I passed, I passed!”

  Brad got out of the car, slammed the door, flew up the steps to his house, taking two at a time, and threw open the door. “Mom! I passed!”

  His father, a heavy man, grinned slyly as he extricated himself from the car.

  “Congratulations,” said Mark. “Sixteen already, huh? I guess they grow up fast.”

  “Are you kidding?” said the father. “Longest sixteen years of my life!”

  Mark looked out at the darkening yard and heard crickets chirping. I should probably cover the window with plastic, he thought, after I clean up this mess.

  2

  As he stretched his rangy body in bed, Mark’s first thought was not that it was a Saturday—and that he could rest after having spent so much of the past week sanding and repainting the monastery fence—but that he would have to tell his landlady about the broken window and ask her for the name of a repairman. Anne was a stickler for that.

  “If you have to do any kind of repairs,” she told him when he first rented the house, “I want to know. And I want to tell you whom to call. I don’t want you calling some idiot repairman.”

  Looking at her levelly, he had willed himself not to remind her that he was an experienced carpenter, not to mention an architect. She seemed to read his mind, something he found both alarming and attractive.

  “I know you’re a carpenter,” she said, “so it’s nothing personal. I just like to know the people who are working on the house. I’m sure you can understand.”

  He nodded politely.

  A few hours later, with the sun overhead and the cicadas proclaiming the coming humidity, he made his way to Anne’s house, just a few doors away. Mark already felt a kind of ownership of the block, even though he had lived there only a year. “My neighborhood,” he liked to say to his friends, something he’d not said since he was a kid in Boston. Built in the late 1950s, the low-slung, split-level brick houses were kept tidy by their owners, mainly young couples with child
ren, empty nesters, and widows. Mark was the rare renter, something that initially incurred not just the curiosity of his neighbors, but also their suspicion. But by doing odd jobs for them—helping one build a stone wall for his garden; helping another perfect his stucco technique; shoveling snow when asked by the elderly ladies, who seemed to hide in their houses except when a job needed doing; and being friendly with the teenage boys, who admired his frequent dates with attractive women—he cemented his place in the neighborhood after a few months.

  The street looks its best in the spring, he thought, with the tall maple trees unfurling their pale green leaves, dogwood trees wearing short-lived white flowers, and ornamental cherry trees sporting puffy pink blossoms. Just this week the lilac bushes lining the side of the house had come into light purple bloom. Yesterday, before he left for work, Mark had paused to enjoy the lilac-scented air. The single discordant note was the braying of leaf blowers, weed whackers, and lawn mowers, which crowded out silence on weekends in the spring, summer, and fall.

  Anne’s house looked like his house; she had made sure of that. The same neatly trimmed yew bushes, the same stone-lined flower beds, and the same tall black lampposts on the front lawns announced to the neighborhood that both number 105 and number 111 were hers. Her ex-husband, Mark had heard, pleaded that the two houses at least be painted different colors. That, apparently, was one of the few battles he had won. So Anne’s house was trimmed in red, and Mark’s—or rather, Anne’s other house—in white.

  There was a long oval of clear glass in the center of the front door, so Mark could see into her living room. He gently knocked on the door. “Anyone home?”

  Immediately, his landlady’s annoying little yap dog, as he called it, tore down the stairs from the second floor, planted himself before the window, and barked frantically. When Mark did not leave, the dog shifted to growling and baring its teeth. While Mark stared down the dog, he examined the reflection of his long, sandy hair. He should probably get a haircut today. What compels people to buy these little dogs?

  Anne appeared and pulled open the door. “Shut up!” Noting the surprise on Mark’s face, she added, “Sorry. This insane dog.”

  She deftly pushed the dog back with her left foot, opened the screen door, and slipped outside, almost pushing Mark off the concrete steps. Politely, he moved backward and down a step. Now he was roughly at her height.

  “Hot!” she said, meaning the day, but she could have meant herself. At forty, Anne looked good. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense style, a few strands hanging over her forehead, and only the faintest lines spider-webbed around her blue eyes. Today she wore gray yoga pants, pink flip-flops, and a green-and-white Eagles T-shirt.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s gonna be pretty brutal later on, I think.”

  “Awful!” she said looking up at the sky. “I hate this humidity. My mom used to call it ‘close.’ So how are you, Mark? Still doing the work those men should be doing for themselves?”

  When Mark had first met Anne and described his job at the monastery, Anne reacted strongly. “Painting, raking leaves, fixing pipes, and dealing with plumbing is something that men should be able to do. I do it!” she said.

  “It’s not that they won’t do it,” he had said, not wanting to get drawn into a debate. “It’s that they can’t do all of it, and some of them are pretty old. Plus, some of them don’t know how. Those guys are great, really great—well, most of them—but put a few of them in front of a hammer and they wouldn’t know which end to grab. Now, some of them are incredibly talented with those things. Brother Michael, you know, built a lot of that monastery himself. In fact, he designed the guest house and . . .”

  “Right,” she had said, looking annoyed.

  Mark wanted to defend the monks, but then remembered why he came, and how she would probably be even more annoyed about the window. Instead, he said offhandedly, “Anyway, I like it at PB&J.”

  She stared at him.

  “That’s what I call it,” he said. “You know they make jam there, right?”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “So they make the jam . . . and their monastery is the Abbey of Philip and James. P&J everyone calls it around here, but I call it PB&J. Peanut butter and jelly? The abbot thinks it’s pretty funny.”

  “Uh-huh.” She was looking at him as though trying to figure out how to get him off her step. “So what brings you by anyway?”

  “Well, you’re not going to like this.”

  “Now what?”

  “Last night some of the kids were playing baseball next door and hit a ball that went right through the back window.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, sounding more tired than angry.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I can call a glazier—you know, someone who fixes windows.”

  “Yes, I know what a glazier is.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, flushing again. “It’s easy to take care of. There was no damage to the frame. And the kids said they’d pay for it.”

  “You mean their parents will,” she said. “Let me give you the name of the guy I deal with.”

  When she opened the door, he felt air conditioning brush his bare legs. The yap dog lunged for him, but was blocked by Anne’s foot as she stepped inside. The dog barked behind the door as Mark watched Anne rummage through the drawers of a cabinet in her living room. On the walls he could see framed photos of Anne and her friends, and many of her son. One was a class picture; in front of a fake background of light blue sky and puffy white clouds he beamed, wearing a white button-down shirt. With his light brown hair and fair skin, he looked like Anne.

  “Here,” she said, handing him a business card through the open door. “You can call this guy. He knows what he’s doing. Sorry if I’m a little rushed. I have a yoga class later on, and a million other things to do. Everything else okay in the house?” The dog yapped insolently.

  “Sure,” he said. “And I really like living there.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said, smiling now. “Enjoy the day. Be cool.” She shut the door. He heard her muffled voice: “Shut up you lunatic dog!”

  As he reached her driveway, the trio of window-breaking boys rolled by on beat-up skateboards, shouting to one another. When they saw Mark, they fell silent, evidently remembering the line drive. But when he waved, their boards crunched to a halt on the sidewalk.

  “Hey, Mark,” said Brad, who offered his hand. “We’ll get that money to you soon.” He took Brad’s hand and shook it.

  The other two, John and Gary, followed suit, offering wordless apologies with outstretched hands. Then they fell into their usual easy banter with him, expressing amazement at how the ball had gone so far and so fast and right into the window. They grew more animated.

  “Oh, man!” John said. “I couldn’t believe it! We were freaking out when we saw where it was going! Glad you’re cool with it, man.”

  “No problem, guys,” said Mark. “Just be careful.”

  John raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at Anne’s house.

  “Yeah, you too, man!” Mark rolled his eyes, as Gary guffawed. Brad frowned and looked at the ground.

  Then they tore off on their boards.

  3

  As Anne closed the door she thought, Yes, I know all about the monastery.

  She wished Mark remembered that she had grown up in the area. He was forever telling her things about Philadelphia, as if she were a tourist. When she was a girl, her father used to take her to the Abbey of Saints Philip and James, a Trappist monastery forty-five minutes away, located on acres of secluded land blanketed with pine trees. He used to drag her along to visit an ancient priest with bad breath, who always called her “Annie,” though she told her father that no one else called her that.

  “Deal with it,” he said more than once. “Father Edward can call you anything he wants. He’s a holy man, and he’s been very good to your mother and me. He made a special trip to our p
arish to baptize you, remember?”

  “Then why doesn’t he know my name?” she had asked more than once.

  I know all about the abbey, she wanted to say. But she hadn’t been on the grounds in years. That part of her childhood, once important, had ebbed away. Mark’s work there had prompted her to think about the place for the first time in years.

  She knew about the jam too. Her father bought it by the case, and she used to buy it for her son, who never seemed to be able to get enough of the blueberry preserves. “Jeremiah, you’re going to turn into a blueberry,” she said to him one Sunday morning, after he’d finished three pieces of toast thickly slathered with the preserves. He must have been eight years old.

  “Tell me when I turn blue!” he responded. Then he inhaled, puffed out his cheeks crazily, and held his breath until he started laughing.

  Thinking of that prompted her to turn toward the photos, framed in gold, on the wall. She still wasn’t sure if she should keep them.

  She had seen Mark staring at them through the front door. She loved that school photo of Jeremiah; it was her favorite. Everyone said he looked just like her, though she thought he looked more like his father. The blue eyes. The snub nose. And especially that pointy chin.

  In the past few months she had thought about removing the photos, not because she couldn’t look at them, which she did frequently, but because they seemed to make others feel uncomfortable. When people looked at the photos, they usually glanced furtively over their shoulder, to be sure that their looking wasn’t too painful for her.

  She noticed a smudge on the glass of the portrait and rubbed it off with her forefinger. The action brought her closer to the image of Jeremiah.

  Anne peered into her son’s eyes and remembered the argument the two of them had over what he was going to wear on picture day at school. Jeremiah wanted to wear the Phillies T-shirt his father had bought him at the game that summer, but she refused. “You’re not wearing a T-shirt for your school picture.”

  During their heated argument, her son, ten at the time, started to cry, a rarity for him. His friend Brad was going to wear his, he pleaded, his voice rising an octave.