There would be no return to exclusive parties and chauffeur service when he finished his time at Hattonvale Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. After agreeing to plead out, he was offered the choice of resigning his post or being removed. He chose to resign quietly and began serving his sentence the same way. The world that would greet him at the end of his sentence was bound to be harsh and unforgiving. The long stretches of silence between his job assignments in tutoring and landscaping would leave little to do but reflect on his choices and search for anything that might quiet the ugly truth buzzing in his head. That the only person who would have stood by him throughout this—in the back of the courtroom, during Hattonvale’s visitor hours—was no longer there in part because of his failings.
Owen would ponder this irony every day in his cell, as he thought about James Ingram, a man he admired, loved even, but could never emulate. In the same way Jimmy had unwittingly tortured him by being born with an intellect that would always best him, Owen had come to accept that there were men in this world who were simply better. More true, more righteous, and just more good than everyone else. And that God had created them that way. He was less sure how it all would’ve turned out if he’d only faced Jimmy that last time, on the freezing cold night that he died. But of Jimmy’s God-given superiority, at least, he was certain. Just as he knew Jimmy would still be alive if he’d had the courage to face him.
The many long hours in his office at the Conference had presented him with distractions from this truth following Jimmy’s death. So also had the media appearances, the meetings, and the ever-present adrenaline that coursed through his body when faced with another challenge to the Church’s authority. Now, from the confines of his squat habitat, where, two months on, the bland gray jumpsuit still chafed his delicate skin, he spent nearly every waking moment reliving those lost twenty-five minutes on the night of Jimmy’s accident.
It seemed strange and anticlimactic that Jimmy had died, not surrounded by friends and loved ones as Feeney always imagined he would, but alone, in a random battle against chance and nature. Someone as “chosen” as he’d always viewed Jimmy to be should certainly have passed away in the middle of a papal audience or while addressing a crowd of admirers. But perhaps that was the purest expression of earthly relationship with God. That when our time came, we could only ever be what we made of ourselves here, not what the opinions and reverence of others created.
*
On the night he died, James Ingram brought a gust of wind into the diner on Kraft Avenue in Bronxville. He hadn’t planned on going to a movie by himself. He had driven down earlier that afternoon from Connecticut to meet Owen for dinner, but got a call from Owen’s overbearing assistant to say his meetings with the archbishop of New York were running late, and he would be unable to join him until closer to eight or nine. The local theater was showing the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn as part of its romantic lead-up to Valentine’s Day. He’d always liked Audrey—in part for her smile and in part for her roles as a nun—and he also had a weakness for movie popcorn.
When the film let out, James looked at his cell phone. It had never failed to amuse the Ignatius students when they saw him wandering across campus chatting away. They were even more amused when they heard his ringtone—a movement from Carmina Burana—and the sense of impending doom it created. There was a missed call from Owen and a message. Owen, slightly out of breath, explaining that he wasn’t blowing him off, that he’d thought about what he said and that they could discuss it tonight. He’d make it to Bronxville by about 9:00 p.m. at the latest.
So Ingram wandered from the movie theater, down the block, across the alley where he’d parked his car, and to the diner at the next corner. He’d asked the shop owner by the alley if he’d be towed. She promised him he wouldn’t. He entered the diner and shut the door as soon as he could, noticing the thin fabric of the waitresses’ uniforms and the way most of them wore sweaters to protect their exposed forearms.
Since waking that morning, he’d been battling a stomachache—a dull churning that had even managed to temper his enjoyment of popcorn. The delay in meeting Owen didn’t help. He expected it would be a less than friendly encounter. In truth, the intensity of Owen’s anger when they discussed it the week before had shocked him. He hadn’t meant to issue that ultimatum. Even as he pushed the folder across the table (“Do the right thing, Owen. Do it or I will.”) it felt so forced and unfamiliar to him. But he was unprepared for how blasé Owen was about it all. The way he shook his head and told him he simply didn’t understand how these things worked because he’d spent too much time serving academia, not his church. That’s when James realized he’d have to set a deadline.
He knew Owen had a temper—on more than one occasion he’d seen it when they were in high school, and he’d definitely recognized the rage simmering below the cool surface when Owen appeared on television shows and at press conferences to address anything from Roe v. Wade to the latest lawsuit filed against a diocese. But what surprised him about this recent flare-up was that it hadn’t come in response to a headache caused by someone else. No, the rage had erupted as James matter-of-factly presented the information he’d assembled. Based on the evidence he’d managed to amass, not without some difficulty, the range of Owen’s involvement in numerous cover-ups was clear. It was equally clear that Owen needed to formally turn it over to the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. Not just because he was legally obligated to do so according to the rules of exculpatory evidence. But because, as Ingram bluntly put it, after allowing the lives of so many to be irrevocably damaged by not putting a stop to it sooner, it was simply the right thing to do.
“The right thing to do, is it?” Owen had said, not even opening the brown envelope James gave him. “And what about the rights of all the people who will lose a place to worship when we have to close a parish to pay for this? What about the spiritual abandonment when we have to file for bankruptcy?”
Ingram smiled good-naturedly. “Practicing our faith began in clay chambers thirty feet below the ground, Owen. You must remember that feeling—the first time you went to the catacombs in Rome. It amazed you, didn’t it? That what we’ve devoted our lives to began there by candlelight. And despite that, it didn’t just take hold—it spread all over the world. People don’t need a physical church to practice their faith—they need their belief in the convictions of that faith to be honored. To be upheld.”
Owen shifted in his seat, rolled forward with his elbows on the table. “Come on, Jimmy. You know it’s not that simple. It’s never been that simple.”
Ingram nodded. “It hasn’t been in a long time. You’re right. But to say it was never that simple is more than a lie, Owen. It’s a denial of the very things that made our faith what it became.” He looked at the envelope, at the way Owen had managed to avoid acknowledging it. “It’s not going away just because you pretend it’s not there. None of this is.”
They were testing the limits of their friendship, he knew. And deep down, a part of him knew that Owen was unlikely to do the right thing on his own. But he hadn’t wanted to just assume that. He had needed to give Owen a chance to prove otherwise.
That’s why he’d come today. When they had parted that last time, after Owen calmed down and stopped shouting, James made him take the brown envelope containing evidence he had collected along his journey to right all those wrongs. Notes from conversations with parishioners where Hartnett and others like him had poisoned the community. Photocopies of letters secretaries and rectory matrons gave him despite explicit instructions not to share them.
“You’re not just anyone, Father Ingram,” one of them, Dorothy Bailey, had said when he visited Claremont looking for answers. He remembered Dorothy from his days as the retreat coordinator. She was older now, with the hunched posture of burgeoning osteoporosis, but that wasn’t what struck him. It was her changed attitude. Years before, she moved through the parish offices with an expression of awe. Ever
ything Ingram said was the most important thing she’d ever heard. She followed him around like a lost puppy dog, trying to anticipate his every need and mothering him in a way that made him at once grateful for the Church’s restriction on marrying, but also deeply touched. In those days, Dorothy didn’t speak unless spoken to, and whatever was requested of her was performed in the same fashion—with no questions and absolute supplication.
He prepared to give her his pitch. By the time he got to Claremont in his travels, he’d already met with resistance in other offices. Places where the secretaries were reluctant to help and always wanted to “check with the monsignor first.” He’d had to learn how to read the situation very quickly and size up how sympathetic the women were to the object of his quest. With the older, more severe ones, manipulating their antiquated notions of male superiority in the Catholic tradition worked well. On being told no, Ingram gave a stern look and asked them to repeat what they had just said. Invariably, the second time around, the refusal was significantly less firm.
With others, he lied. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he sensed he would be forgiven for the transgression. He was just looking for sample response letters since they were dealing with a similar situation up at Ignatius, he told them, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper to indicate just how special they were for being made privy to this information. He was driving back from a conference, you see, and thought he may as well stop by in person and pick their brains, since they were so clearly more advanced than his staff and worked in an office far better run than his own.
He began this way with Dorothy. A charming stammer, embarrassment at having to impose. She interrupted him halfway. “It’s about damned time someone started looking at this stuff,” she bellowed before clapping both hands over her mouth. “Pardon the language, Father.” He barely contained a laugh.
“Can you believe this mess?” she went on. “I mean, growing up we always made jokes about it but now—I didn’t think it was true, you know? I wouldn’ta joked about it so much if I thought it was. I promise you.”
“It’s okay, Dorothy,” he said. “I don’t imagine you would have.” She led him down a musty hallway, far from the main rectory office, to a storage closet.
“But it’s all over the place. Everywhere I turn,” she called over her shoulder, the hallway too narrow to accommodate both her girth and his broad shoulders at the same time. “I think that’s what makes me so mad about it. How they used me—used everyone in this office. It’s like they were laughing at us. Here we were, showing up every day, doing what they told us to do. And they were laughing at us, Father.”
She pulled open the drawer of a filing cabinet with some effort and blew off a layer of dust. “I don’t mind telling you—five years ago? If you’d come here telling me you needed to look up these records, I wouldn’ta let you near them. I’d have been nice, of course. I always did like you, Father Ingram.” Her fingers flipped through folder after folder with expert speed and ease. “But I wouldn’ta let you back here to see these letters. You couldn’t’ve convinced me there was anything wrong with them letters. With doing a good turn for the new guy at his new job. Making him feel welcome, you know?” She pulled out one file and tucked it under her arm. The other folders sped by, her eyes darting at the first page of their contents before returning them or pulling them out. “But now? Just thinking about it makes me sick. Thinking about how many times he did that in how many other places, and we got such nice letters from the people who sent him here, even though they knew. They knew, Father. Aha!” she whooped. “Here we go!”
The exclamation surprised him. She half pulled a folder out of the cabinet and tilted her head sideways to look at the first page of the contents. Then the second page. Then she spot-checked a page in the back. “You’re going to want to see pretty much everything in here.” She took off down the hallway with all the folders and headed straight for the copier in the main office.
“Used to be I didn’t believe a priest could do this. But I know better now, Father. And no offense to you or nothing, but these days you’d have a harder time convincing me a priest was innocent than you’d have telling me he was guilty.”
It was a remarkable shift and one Ingram had felt stirring for quite some time, this loss of the immediate respect that was once as much part of the role as the Roman collar. His decision to enter the priesthood had never been connected to the automatic deference it earned from total strangers. In his youth he held the opinion, and still did, that respect was not something you acquired by wearing vestments. It was something you had to earn in order to be worthy of the clothing. In his days as an altar boy, it wasn’t the grand ceremony of Mass that attracted him the way it had Owen. It was the confidence the priest at Saint John’s exuded. The confidence in his belief and his role as a servant to his parishioners.
His personal connection to Claremont, the way he felt in many ways responsible for having inflicted this upon them, made Dorothy’s comments that much more welcome. But they couldn’t assuage his guilt. Not even forcing Owen to acknowledge his role in it could do that. Justice was a prismatic experience, unique to each person seeking it and only fully reached when they could forgive. He was prepared to spend the rest of his life finding justice for the Erik Baders, Kevin Garritys, and Anthony Terzullis of the world. But first, he had to forgive Owen.
To passersby at the restaurant where they quarreled the night he issued the ultimatum, it would have seemed like he and Owen were locked in a profound theological debate. Owen reiterated, with very little variation each time, the idea that one’s vocation applied as much to answering his church’s call as it did the grandiose notion of learning your place in this world directly from God Himself. With eyebrows peaked in incredulous arches, Owen leaned forward on the table so he was mere inches from James’s face. “Of course I don’t like it, Jimmy. I’m disgusted by the entire thing. But I’m not, in fact, the one who did this to these children, and I did what I had to do in order to remove them.”
“What you had to do, under the laws governing the nation where you live, Owen, is report these men to the authorities. Make them face the same justice system that governs everyone. Barring that, you had an obligation to warn anyone who might come into contact with them.”
“I did what was asked of me, and I did what was best for the Church. That’s all anyone can demand, Jimmy. Even you. You’re losing sight of the true culprits in all of this. The sin rests squarely at their door.”
“Am I?” Ingram replied. “And what of the sin of omission?”
Owen rolled his eyes. The exaggerated gesture hit its mark, landing like a kick in the gut to James. “For Chris’sakes, Jimmy. This isn’t catechism. I’m not a twelve-year-old, and I don’t need to be reminded of the Church’s teaching. I live it, breathe it, and spout it every day.”
“Tell me, Owen,” Ingram said, standing up and digging in his pocket to throw money on the table. “Was it worth it?”
“Was what worth it?”
“Becoming a bishop? Was it worth all those kids? Those ruined lives?”
Feeney glared at him.
“But you’re right,” Ingram continued. “Maybe this isn’t a sin of omission.” He reached out and rubbed the edge of Owen’s simar between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe it’s a sin of commission.”
Feeney threw his hands up in mock defeat. “Fine, Jimmy. You found me out. I like being a bishop and would like, one day, to become a cardinal. I’m a fundamentally flawed person.”
“Flawed is not what I would call it,” he’d said at the time. “Flawed implies that some part of it is beyond your control, Owen. We’re talking about negligence here—the willful and deliberate refusal to act even though you knew you should.” He’d pushed a battered brown envelope across the table at Feeney. “You have a chance to do the right thing now,” he said. “Don’t make me wonder if you got lost in your zeal to become cardinal, or if you were this way from the start.” He put on his
jacket and looked at the date on his watch. “I’m giving you until next Friday to come clean. To make it right. And if you don’t, I’m going to turn over the evidence myself.”
So after all that, the many hours spent in a car traveling to the homes of victims, the afternoons holed up in dingy rectories in small towns from Connecticut to Wisconsin, James Ingram sat at a diner table in Bronxville on the coldest night of the year, waiting—hoping—that his friend would come. After ten minutes and the third inquiry from the waitress, Ingram ordered a cup of coffee. He nursed it for as long as he could, taking tiny sips until he grew close to letting it go cold altogether, morphing into a bitter, tepid soup. At every jounce of the sleigh bells still attached to the front door from Christmas beside a cardboard Jolly Saint Nick, Ingram looked to the entrance, filled with momentary hope. But Owen did not arrive. An hour passed. Then another forty minutes.
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