Grosse Ile, an island just east of Trenton, was connected to the mainland by two bridges. In addition to mostly beautiful homes with plenty of lawn, the island also boasted a naval air station and a Catholic parish, Sacred Heart, coveted by many priests as a haven for virtually early retirement as well as for the access it provided to a fine golf course.
Eileen had lived on Grosse Ile almost as long as Koesler’s memory stretched. Her home fronted on the river, across which lay Amherstburg, Canada. The house rested on the water’s edge. Its rectangular lot ran almost forty yards back to the road. Over the years, the property had been guarded by a series of dogs, with none of whom had Koesler been able to make friends.
On his first visit to Eileen’s home many years ago, Koesler had pulled up at the garage displaying the numbered address. A high metal fence delineated the property. Koesler had wondered how to announce his presence; there was no sign of a doorbell. He had rattled the fence; instantly, a small but loudmouthed spaniel mix had hurled himself at Koesler as if the fence weren’t there. The dog, Koesler had reasoned correctly, was the doorbell.
Eileen had appeared shortly after the dog announced Koesler’s arrival. She was distressed that the animal was making such a commotion. Assuring him that the dog did not bite, she opened the gate. Instantly, the animal dove for Koesler’s ankle. But before it could strike, Eileen scooped it up, whapped it across the snout, and admonished, “That’s Father Bob!”
The spaniel proved to be the first in a series of anticlerical dogs owned by Eileen. Once it was established that, for whatever reason, there would be enmity between Koesler and Eileen’s sentinels, she routinely locked them away when her cousin was expected.
Trenton. Almost there.
Koesler thought again on what awaited him. He considered this type of family reunion more a duty than a pleasure. But since he was conscientious in the fulfillment of duty, he nearly always attended the gatherings.
There would be six people. There were always six. None of whom had ever married.
He, of course, had promised a celibate, or unmarried, life. There was no other way the Church would have ordained him. Willingly he had taken on this obligation. He had no other desire in life but to be a priest.
The three sisters were another matter.
Oona, the eldest, whose sixty-fifth birthday they would be celebrating, was an often mean-tempered hypochondriac who frequently actually was ill. Koesler could remember once visiting her in the intensive care unit of a hospital. She complained that she was getting insufficient care. Since she was already receiving the maximum care of which the hospital was capable, he could do little for her.
Eileen, at sixty-one years, was next. As she aged, a bit more rapidly than the others, particularly in recent years, she reminded Koesler of one of the maiden ladies—it didn’t matter which—in Arsenic and Old Lace. Eileen walked in a rush of tiny steps. Her dresses overflowed with an abundance of lace. She managed to be occupied with “busy-work” most of the time. And she seemed dedicated to making peace. There was lots of peace to be made.
Maureen, at fifty-eight, was the baby. She was the nuts-and-bolts practical one. She had been employed most of her life at a series of diverse jobs. She’d been a waitress, a butcher, and a lifeguard. Those were the more colorful occupations in her résumé. In addition, she had been a secretary in a long list of business offices. And it was she who had adopted the two girls.
Each was now thirty-three years old. Both had been foundlings. Mary Lou had been first. And then, because Maureen sensed a loneliness in the youngster’s life, Brenda had been brought into the household.
The two girls had such similar backgrounds. Each had spent her earlier years in various foster homes. Each had found her way to St. Vincent’s Orphanage on Detroit’s east side. The home was owned, operated, and staffed by the Sisters of Charity, those wondrous women whose bonnets brought to mind giant gulls—the precursors of TV’s “Flying Nun.”
Mary Lou had hated everything about St. Vincent’s. Not that she was abused in any way. But she desperately wanted a home. So when Maureen took pity on her and brought her home on holidays and isolated weekends, Mary Lou tried to blend into the furniture, and wept bitterly each time she was returned—dragged back—to St. Vincent’s at the conclusion of each sojourn.
Maureen began bringing Brenda home with Mary Lou, hoping the companionship of the other girl would neutralize the trauma of return for Mary Lou.
It didn’t work out quite as hoped.
Brenda, for the most part, kept her feelings locked inside. She seemed so thoughtful—contemplative. She also seemed passive. On those occasions when they were returned to the orphanage and Mary Lou would go into her tantrum, Brenda would watch as if she were part of the audience at a play.
When the girls reached the fifth grade, all of their care and education to that point having been provided by St. Vincent’s, Maureen was able to take both of them permanently without legally adopting either.
As to the spinsterdom of the sisterhood: It is not all that uncommon for the Irish to postpone marriage. It often happens that this delay in marrying becomes set in stone. To a degree this was the case with the Monahans.
In addition, Oona, as the eldest, took on a heavy load in caring for her younger sisters, as well as supporting the family when their father died prematurely. As sometimes happens in such circumstances, Oona’s social life was all but nonexistent. She glided into her later years having experienced few interpersonal relationships, fewer thrills, and no romances.
Eileen was naturally shy. As a child she seemed foreordained to become a nun. During her formative years, she prepared for that vocation. But when, after high school graduation, it came time for her to enter the convent, a medical exam found her health to be extremely delicate. The doctor’s opinion was that Eileen was destined for a brief sojourn on earth and that she was utterly incapable of enduring the physical demands of religious life. The doctor’s prognosis for her life span eventually proved inaccurate. But for Eileen, the die had been cast. She had been brought up to be a nun, not a wife and mother. Her virginity appeared to her and her family to be a gift from God. And so she embraced it. This much should be said for Eileen: Her celibacy was a much more fulfilling and positive experience than Oona’s.
Of all the sisters, the one most likely to break the cycle of spinster-dom was Maureen. The baby of the family, guarded and guided by two doting older sisters, Maureen enjoyed a relatively carefree childhood. For an Irish Catholic girl attending parochial school, she dated extensively and often. Unabashed, she confided in her sisters, and, through her, the sisters lived a vicarious storybook adolescence. Except that for Oona and Eileen it was fiction.
Maureen hid no dating detail from her sisters’ eager ears. There was nothing much to hide. While her dates included dancing, roller skating, ice skating, swimming parties, and a good deal of necking, she never went “all the way.” So her Catholic conscience did not much trouble her. But for her, unlike her sisters, her social and romantic life was an embarrassment of riches. There were so many boyfriends, some more serious than others, that Maureen never seemed able to settle down and select the one who would be a life’s companion. And so it went until her prospect of marriage thickened and finally congealed. The two little girls became her life.
As time went by, Mary Lou seemed to grow closer to Maureen. She certainly was more dependent. It was likely she never lost the deep fear that she might be returned to the orphanage. That might explain why she virtually became Maureen’s shadow. Occasionally, friends would observe that Mary Lou was becoming a clone of the sisters. As an adult, she flitted from one job—usually clerical—to another. The problem had nothing to do with incompetence. It was more a case of thin self-confidence.
As more time went by, Mary Lou came to alternate employment with learning experiences. The testimonials to her accomplishments piled up. On the walls of her room were certificates of graduation from schools of cosmetology, financia
l management, floral design, and the like. It was difficult for Mary Lou to grow close to Brenda because …
Brenda was the antithesis of Mary Lou. Brenda was filled with quiet self-confidence. Life was marked with goals and achievement of goals. Thus it surprised many when she took a job with the chancery of the archdiocese of Detroit. A secretarial position, even at the top, in the chancery’s Department of Finance and Administration paid only a fraction of what she could have earned in a secular office. The only logical conclusion was that it had to be a stepping-stone to something else—though what that something else might be certainly was a mystery.
That made up the dramatis personae of Oona’s birthday party.
Father Koesler pulled into a parking space near Eileen’s property. As he approached her gate, somewhere inside a dog was barking furiously.
Three other cars were parked nearby. Given the likelihood that all were here for Oona’s party, they were still one guest shy. Eileen’s car would be in the single garage. That left two sisters, two “nieces,” and him. Five. But there were only four cars in the lot. Since he was just two minutes early, someone was going to be late. As he had not memorized who drove what, he had no clue as to who was tardy.
With some trepidation, he eased open the gate. No dog in view. Thank God. But the barking grew more frantic. It must be Eileen’s latest mastiff. As long as the beast was confined to the basement, Koesler could be unconcerned if not downright fearless.
He tried the doorknob. Locked. How like Eileen. If the gate was unlocked, the door certainly would be locked. Come to think of it, she would be happier with both locked.
He knocked several times, loudly.
Finally, the door opened. Eileen, smiling, stood on tiptoes and delivered a cousinly kiss. She gestured for him to go on in, passing him on the porch as she went to let the beast out into the yard. He renewed his vow that he and the dog would not be in the same space at the same time. He would continue the charade of fearlessness, but he would be sure the dog had been confined once more in the basement before he left.
Appetizing aromas greeted him. Maureen and Mary Lou were doing the cooking. Mary Lou checked her watch. “Good old Uncle Bob,” she said, “right on time.”
Because of the age difference and in spite of the lack of blood relationship, both Brenda and Mary Lou always referred to Oona and Eileen as “Aunt” and to Koesler as either “Father” or “Uncle.” However, both addressed the remaining sister as Maureen. Evidently they did not feel comfortable calling her “Mother.”
Mary Lou greeted Koesler with a cursory hug and a peck on the cheek. Maureen was up to her elbows mashing cooked rutabaga. She looked up and winked at him. He returned the wink.
Eileen entered the kitchen, closing the door quickly behind her. The dog’s roar was restored to the yard. The tenor of its bark had changed. It knew that Koesler had breached the neutral zone—but he would never get out alive.
Koesler volunteered to assist or relieve, even to the mashing of rutabaga. But his offer was declined by all, and he was ordered into the living room; dinner would be ready in a little while.
He removed his jacket and clerical collar and hung them in the hall closet.
In the living room, seated near the picture window, was Oona, complete with a white sling supporting her right arm.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “Hurt your arm?”
Oona audibly sucked in a breath of air in the Irish way of foretokening some sort of doom. “It’s getting harder every year. And now … sixty-five! God have mercy.”
“Go on now, sixty-five isn’t that old.” He was speaking from the vantage of sixty-four. But he was convinced it was a matter of health. With good health, great old age had a measure of youth to it. Without health, youth could have all the disability ordinarily attributed to old age. For Oona, then, sixty-five might just as well be ninety. But Koesler did not want to play to her hypochondria. He would try to keep the conversation light. “And your arm?”
She shrugged. “Arthritis kicking up again.”
Was it arthritis? He knew that in her medicine chest was every conceivable medication, palliative, and supportive bandage, pad, and compress that could be found in a well-stocked pharmacy.
Koesler recalled years before when a smattering of male relatives had attended family parties. Oona had stated that if there were anything to reincarnation, she was going to come back as a man, have a huge dinner prepared by womenfolk, then settle into a comfy chair, loosen her belt, and, while the ladies cleaned up, belch.
Maybe the sling was her version of reincarnation. It clearly had gotten her out of the meal’s preparation and undoubtedly would do the same for the cleanup later.
Oona began to detail the extent to which arthritis had limited the few remaining potentials of her already circumscribed life. Oona had the standard number of joints in her body. But he would offer odds that she could match and surpass anyone in afflictions to those joints.
As Oona ran on, Koesler’s attention wavered. He looked past Oona out the picture window. Floes were sweeping toward Lake Erie.
Koesler recalled his recent visit to Charlie Nash’s condo apartment, whence could be seen this very same river. There the river was at such a distance that it was challenging to comprehend that the chunks of ice were actually moving. He’d had to focus on a fixed object, such as a building, on the Windsor shore, to detect movement. Now, close up, he could see the ice moving along at a rapid clip. The current was swift and could be dangerous.
As he continued to tune out Oona and her multiple maladies and lamentations, the word “dangerous” struck a chord.
Koesler hadn’t adverted to it during his conversation with Charlie Nash, but there was an aura of danger to the man, even in his decrepit condition.
The priest had assumed that his first and perhaps only encounter with the famous Charles Nash would involve sacraments. That Charlie was both Catholic and nonpracticing was common knowledge.
So there was Charlie, up there in his aerie, in his midseventies and reportedly so debilitated and ill that it had been many years since he’d been photographed, let alone attended any social function.
In Koesler’s experience, that spelled sacraments. He’d had the foresight to have his sick-call kit packed in the pocket of his topcoat. So he had been prepared to offer absolution, Communion, and the Sacrament of the Sick. Then he would have left, gratified to have been of service, while Mr. Nash would have been at peace with God.
To Koesler’s surprise, Nash had wanted nothing to do with any sacraments. In fact, the old man was dead right in contending that one must be sorrowful about sin and repentant before sin could be forgiven. Any priest could recite the words of absolution to his heart’s content, but God, who alone could actually forgive, would not be fooled.
Koesler had to give the old man credit on that.
It had been Koesler’s observation that people—a significant percentage of those who had come to him for reconciliation—tended to kid themselves on that score. Additionally, there was a tendency on the part of the confessing sinner, a tendency that all priests constantly fought against, to invest confessions with a measure of superstition and magic. Sort of like putting sins into an Automat slot and receiving forgiveness in return. A phenomenon that the late theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had termed “cheap grace.”
Genuine forgiveness was expensive. It might require the forgiveness of an enemy, reparation for harm done, the restoring of stolen property. God did forgive. And Catholics believed that a priest could be an instrument of that forgiveness. But nothing happened unless the sinner was repentant.
Very, very sadly, Nash was correct in refusing the sacraments. Instead of desiring reconciliation, he wanted Koesler to use family ties to get the priest’s cousin to break off her affair with his son. Which relationship was no more than hearsay.
Koesler had heard the rumors. As far as he was concerned, they were based on nothing more substantial than the two having engaged in so
me innocent flirtation at a Marygrove function honoring Ted Nash. Added to that, they had been seen together at a few public events—concerts, exhibitions at the Detroit Institute of Arts, a football or a baseball game. All quite harmless.
In the face of nothing more substantial than this, Koesler would keep his own counsel. He preferred not to intervene uninvited in others’ lives.
But something was nagging at him. It was Charlie Nash’s conviction that Ted and Brenda were having an illicit relationship. Under different circumstances, Koesler was convinced, Nash would not have given a damn. Had Ted been considerably more a chip off the old block, Charlie probably would have cheered him on in the sowing of wild oats.
But Ted tended to be more Catholic than the Catholic Church and had created the reputation of a lavish philanthropist in Catholic causes. The destruction of that image likely would destroy Teddy and, as a corollary, everything that Charlie had created in Nash Enterprises. And Charlie would not stand for that.
And here was where Koesler sensed danger.
Nash, though physically weak, was yet a powerful man of considerable influence. Whether or not his perception of an affair between Ted and Brenda was accurate, Nash was capable of harming either or both. In all probability, if he were to strike out at anyone, it would be the outsider, Brenda.
That is what troubled Koesler. And it troubled him deeply.
“Well, here she is now.” It was the change in Oona’s tone that brought Koesler back from his musings. Sure enough, Brenda was standing in the living room with Eileen at her side.
Koesler smiled at Brenda, but in some confusion. “How did you get in? I mean … I didn’t hear the dog …”
“You mean Rusty?” Eileen said. “Oh dear!”
“Rusty and I are friends,” Brenda said in an amused tone.
“But when I got here …”
“You see, dear,” Eileen said, “You’re the only one. Rusty hardly ever barks at anyone else. He’s the least effective watchdog I’ve ever had. Couldn’t really call him a watchdog at all. But he’s very lovable.”
Dead Wrong Page 5