Deadline for a Critic

by William Kienzle

  “Fine. I’ll meet you at the comer of Vernor and Clark.”

  Groendal went home to breakfast and one of the most intensive interrogations he had ever undergone. To his credit he did not break. The girl: Jane Condon. Where had they met: She was an usherette at the Stratford and everyone knew how regularly Ridley went to the Stratford to keep abreast of the film industry. See her? Just casually; she’s a Redeemer grad. Don’t know what she wants to talk about; will just have to go and find out. No, of course she’s not the reason for leaving the seminary. Don’t be silly; one doesn’t make a decision that serious over a mere girl.

  There was much to be said for Mrs. Groendal’s perseverance. She kept up the inquisition till it was time for him to leave and meet Jane. There was much to be said for Ridley’s patience. He repeatedly fended off his mother’s thrusts without ever contradicting or implicating himself.

  He walked down Vernor Highway lost in thought, paying no attention to the stores and bars all serried one next to the other and all respectfully closed for Sunday. He was oblivious to the Baker streetcar clanging past.

  He was conscious of his surroundings only once—when he passed the Stratford—where it all had started.

  If only he had not been taken in by the attention given him by the only female in his life besides his mother. If he had not put even one foot into the trap, at least that low point of his life would have been avoided.

  But he had done it, there was no denying that. Now he had to face the girl.

  Well, he supposed, it was the least he could do. He would listen to whatever she had to say. If there were too many questions, he would fence with her as he had with his mother. One meeting and it would be over. And none too soon; he had enough problems facing him without resurrecting this mess.

  There she was, at the southeast corner of Vernor and Clark, by one of the corners of rectangular Clark Park. She looked forlorn standing there all by herself. She was still wearing her spring coat. He caught himself trying to remember what she looked like nude. But he couldn’t. At that point in the evening his senses had been blurred by alcohol; now he could not dredge up even one detail. Besides, the attempt to remember embarrassed him.

  As he crossed toward her, she looked up and smiled. When he reached her, she turned and began walking up one of the paved paths. He fell in step.

  A wind had come up. It was beginning to get chill. He regretted having selected a light windbreaker. But there was no going back now. He jammed his hands deep into his pants pockets and tried unsuccessfully to conceal a shiver.

  “Cold?” she asked.

  “No, it’s okay. I just didn’t expect it to be this windy. I’ll get used to it.”

  “You’d think it would be warmer by the end of May.”

  “Yeah. Well, that’s Michigan: If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute and it’ll change.”

  The weather! What a thing to talk about. Still, he could call to mind bits of stage business and snatches of movies where characters did just that. When people were faced with discussing some awkward subject they frequently started with some remote, harmless topic-like the weather.

  In any case, he wasn’t about to bring up anything serious. After all, it was her nickel—the current price of a phone call.

  “What did you think of the sermon this morning?”

  Wow! That had to be further removed from whatever she wanted to talk about than the weather. “The sermon?”

  “Yes. Father Buhler’s sermon.”

  Ah, yes. Good old deaf Father Buhler. Refuge of all who wanted absolution without having the priest hear the sins. “It was okay, I guess.”

  “I suppose you’re used to better sermons in the seminary.”

  Groendal smiled at the memory. “Yeah. Funny thing, though; the faculty are all diocesan priests who fear the Redemptorists.”

  “Fear them!”

  “Well, maybe not fear them. Have an inordinate respect for them. The diocesans are probably more conscious than the Redemptorists that the order was founded by Alphonsus Liguori basically to preach and refute heresies. Sight unseen, secular priests probably would concede the preaching title to the Redemptorists without a struggle. But that would, for the most part, be wrong. Actually, they’re all alike. Some are good speakers and some aren’t. Some work at it and some don’t. Doesn’t make much difference whether they belong to a diocese or to the Redemptorist Order.”

  “And I take it Father Buhler doesn’t fit into the good speaker category.”

  “I’d guess old Father Buhler stopped really preparing his sermons years ago.” Groendal suddenly remembered that it was Buhler who had absolved him from his sin with Jane. And it had been Buhler specifically because he was nearly deaf but wouldn’t take himself out of the confessional box. Once again, Groendal felt embarrassed.

  “Speaking of sermons and the seminary, you didn’t go back after Easter. Is anything wrong?”

  “Wrong? What could be wrong?” Groendal sensed she was nearing the heart of what she wanted to talk about Oh, in a roundabout way, but she was getting there.

  “Are you ill?”

  “Ill? No. I had a slight injury. Sports. But I’m okay now.” He wondered if she’d seen him moving about slowly and painfully at Easter time. Outside of lying to his parents, which, due to his mother’s incessant questioning, he’d had to do repeatedly, he had not discussed the seminary with anyone.

  “But you haven’t gone back.”

  “I decided not to. At least not for now.” He was strongly tempted to tell her it was none of her business. Some sense of chivalry prompted him not to.

  “I thought maybe it had something to do with us.”

  “No, of course not” He flushed. Absolutely the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about. Especially with his partner in sin. Why else had he taken his confession to a deaf priest?

  “I just thought it might have been. And I felt bad about that”

  “No. No. For one thing . . . that . . . happened at New Year’s. And I went back to the seminary after Christmas vacation. So . . . that—had nothing to do with my staying home now. Nothing!”

  It was Jane’s turn to feel a stab of anger. “Nothing! It was hardly ‘nothing’!”

  “I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that at all. I’m sorry. I just mean it had no bearing on my not returning to the seminary. But I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “About what happened between us? Or about not going back to the seminary?”

  “Neither one. I don’t want to talk about either one.”

  They walked in silence for a while. It occurred to Groendal that this was not unlike the seemingly endless walks he used to take around the seminary grounds. Except of course he had never walked those sacred paths with a girl in tow.

  “That was an accident you know.”

  “What?”

  “What happened between us.”

  Hadn’t he just told her he didn’t want to talk about that? This had to be it. This is what she simply had to talk to him about. Well, maybe if he let her get it out of her system she’d be satisfied and she wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.

  That’s what some of the priests out in the field had told the seminarians in conferences. The students had been told by men who were on the firing line that just listening could be an apostolate in itself. If they would just listen while some troubled soul got the problem off his or her chest, he or she might get rid of an intolerable burden.

  Maybe it would work now. He certainly prayed it would. One more time. Then he would never have to think of that night again.

  He sighed. “You really want to talk about it”

  “I think we have to talk about it.”

  Why, he thought would they have to talk about it? “Well, if you really feel you have to . . .”

  “Do you suppose we could sit down? Do we have to keep walking?”

  The request took him by surprise. It had never occurred to him that not everyone walked endl
essly while talking. He looked about. Unlike the seminary, here benches lined the walkways. And—something he had not adverted to before—there were very few other people in the park.

  “Sure. We can sit down.”

  They did, at the next bench, near the deserted pavilion. They were silent for a few moments.

  “This whole thing started out innocently enough, Rid. I had a schoolgirl crush on you. I used to time it so I could see you when we went to school. You always left at the same time, so I did too. Of course I was younger than you, and the girls and boys almost never got together at Redeemer, so you wouldn’t have noticed me.”

  That was true. He’d never really seen her before that night at the Stratford when something—something indefinable—had happened. But with the careful and continued surveillance she was describing, he wondered how he had managed not to notice her.

  “I used to daydream about going out with you. And then you went away to the seminary, so that was that as far as a date went. But I never quite got over you. I used to watch you serve Mass when you were home on vacation. And I never missed any of your piano recitals.”

  Groendal felt haunted. How could he have overlooked someone who described herself as in almost constant attendance on him? Either he had instinctively avoided looking at the girl—a testimony to the custody of the eyes he’d been so carefully taught in the seminary—or it was a monumental lack of awareness.

  “When I got that job at the Stratford I never thought I’d see you there. It never crossed my mind that you’d be so close to me.”

  She shivered. It was colder sitting on the bench than it was walking. And all she had was that thin coat. Tentatively, he put one arm across her shoulders. She settled gratefully against him. Immediately he regretted his action. But, having given the arm, he could not in good grace withdraw it.

  “Something happened, didn’t it? You felt it too, didn’t you? When you handed me your ticket. Something happened. Didn’t you notice it?”

  “Yes, something. I guess I noticed you for the first time.”

  “It was more than that. There was no need for me to walk up and down the aisle as often as I did that night. But I could feel you looking at me. And I liked that . . . a lot”

  All she was saying was true. He had felt something akin to a not unpleasant shock when their fingers touched as he’d handed her his ticket. And he had noticed her as she repeatedly walked by that night. He’d supposed—correctly, as it turned out—that she’d taken many unnecessary trips, all for his benefit. And it hadn’t been wasted. He had studied her each and every trip. Unobserved, he had thought. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten away with it.

  “Then when you came back the next night I knew you had come back to see me. I can’t tell you how happy I was. I never expected it. I could hardly even believe it”

  Well, part of the reason for his return was to see that excellent movie again. But why tell her that? She would never believe it. Besides, she was on the right track: A good part of his reason for going back had been to see her. What had the priests told the seminarians? Listen.

  “Just knowing that you had come back to see me made me really happy. Then when you asked me out after the show, I was nearly delirious. But—and this is very definite, Rid—I didn’t have any reason for inviting you over on New Year’s Eve except just to see you again. I wanted to see you and I knew you’d have to be going back to school soon and I just figured you were in the right mood to see me again. And that if you went back to school you might forget me. I was sort of striking while the iron was hot . . . do you know what I mean, Rid?”

  He shrugged. It was up for grabs. Who knew what she’d really had in mind? It was certainly possible she had just wanted an innocent date. After all, how could she have come up with such an elaborate plot when she had no way of knowing he would come back to the movie or ask her out after the show?

  On the other hand, once he did return to the Stratford and asked her out, she had the entire length of the movie to make her plans for New Year’s Eve. He’d put a judgment on that matter on the back burner for the moment.

  “Everybody goes out to parties on New Year’s Eve,” she continued. “I didn’t think you’d want to do that. Besides, as long as we had this date that it seemed like I’d been waiting for most of my life, I wanted you all to myself. There didn’t seem to be any better place than home.

  “I swear, Rid, I would have invited you over even if my parents had been home. They would have let us alone. But since they were going to a party, it seemed just perfect.” She hesitated. “The very last thing in the world I wanted to happen was what happened . . . you do believe that, don’t you. Rid?”

  Again he shrugged. What had happened he had tried to put out of his mind. As time passed and particularly with the relationship that had grown with Charlie Hogan, Groendal had been quite successful in suppressing the memory. Now she was dusting off an old recollection that he preferred keeping buried.

  He felt himself begin to flush. He tried to check his embarrassment. But the more he tried, the more he was conscious of the reddening that betrayed his emotion.

  “I’ve thought it over many, many times. It was the whole thing, don’t you think, Rid? The holiday. New Year’s Eve, and the heat of the house. But most of all the liquor. Getting out that Scotch was one of the dumbest stunts I ever pulled. That’s what really did it, Rid: the Scotch . . . Rid, you’re not saying anything.”

  “I guess you’re right. It probably was the Scotch.”

  She moved slightly. His hand touched her breast which was delicately outlined beneath her thin coat. He moved his hand away.

  They were silent a while. She shivered and moved closer. He did not move away. After all, it was cold and she was just trying to stay warm.

  “So, what are you going to do about school?” Jane asked. “I mean, in a week or so you would have graduated from college. Isn’t it kind of strange not to go back after Easter? When you’re about to graduate?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. What was the use of fooling with it? “I’m not going back, Jane. I’m not going to be a priest. Things have changed. I can’t explain it to you. Things have just changed.” Most times, he had found, confession was good for the soul and the psyche. But, having confessed his radically changed status to Jane, he felt not one bit better.

  “You’re not going back to the seminary! Not ever?” Jane pulled herself away and sat facing him from farther along the bench. She clearly had been taken by surprise.

  “I’m not going back,” he affirmed.

  Happy, she slid back across the bench and snuggled beneath his arm. “Then things can be different for us, Rid. One of our problems before—our main problem, really—was that we had no time. Now we can back away and do it right. We can go on dates. Go to a show. Go for a ride. Go on a picnic. We can get to know each other. We can forget what happened and start all over.”

  “No, we can’t Jane.” He said it softly.

  She felt a flash of panic. “What do you mean, we can’t? What happened was a mistake—something neither of us was responsible for. It just happened. It was a special, tender holiday. We had too much to drink. It was an act of love!”

  “It was an act of passion.”

  “Passion is love!” She moved away, facing him.

  “Passion is an irrational, animal act”

  “I was in love!”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “So,” she had now become quite angry, “that’s the type you are, after all! Just get your kicks with a girl and then leave her!”

  “Jane, that’s not the way it was. That’s not the way it is. You know better than that.”

  “What makes it any different?”

  “You said it yourself. It was an accident. We didn’t know what we were getting into . . . at least I didn’t”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Bringing out the Scotch and having good-sized belts of it on a nearly empty stomach wasn’t my idea.
”

  “You mean to suggest that I planned the whole thing!”

  “No, that’s not what I mean!” Now he was becoming angry. “Just that it was not all my idea. Or all my fault. It wasn’t an act of love.” (God, how he hated talking about this!) “If we must face what happened squarely, we were just getting to know each other when you brought out the liquor.

  “We got intoxicated, to put it bluntly. We were no longer rational. We were animals. And we did what irrational animals do: We got carried away by our emotions. It’s silly to say we were in love. We were just getting to know each other. It’s silly to say it was an act of love. It was an act of drunkenness. That’s all it was.”

  “That’s all it was, was it? Then what’s this?” In a few rapid motions that seemed rehearsed, she flung open her coat and raised her blouse, exposing bare midriff.

  Groendal was stunned. “Jane! What are you doing? Cover yourself! People can see!” He looked around quickly; not only was no one watching, he could see no one in sight. Nevertheless, what she was doing seemed shameful. “Pull your blouse down!”

  “Not until you look! Long and hard!”

  He forced himself to look. If anything, she seemed to have put on a little weight. “Well?”

  “It’s just beginning to show!”

  “Show? Show what?”

  “That I’m in the family way!”

  “You’re what?”

  “Pregnant!”

  The word hit him a stunning blow. He had no reply.

  “Yes, pregnant!” she repeated.

  “How—”

  “How else? What you did to me!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I haven’t had a period in almost four months.”

  That meant little to him. Oh, he certainly knew of pregnancies. He had some vague ideas of how that was accomplished. Such information, in the seminary curriculum, was postponed until the final courses in moral theology. Good Catholic parents scarcely ever discussed such things either with their children or each other. In effect, Groendal, in his ignorance of conception, was somewhere between delivery by the stork and the flood of sexual information that would inundate society in just a few more years.