“Don’t be a fool,” Geoffrey urged. “You know how well off we are. And you deserve a chunk.”
Amos promised to give it thought, but, of course, he had no intention of profiting from the work he had done. He was not even sure that it had been the right thing for the Athanasians to do. Oh, he was all for American exuberance. The truth was that the American branch had operated in relative independence from Turin almost from the beginning. It had been Vatican II that had strengthened the sense that they were a single far-flung Order. The effort to define the new sense of unity had fragmented them. But the rhetoric of Geoffrey and the changes at the seminary during the months Amos was arranging the divorce from Turin were strikingly different. Renewal, the spirit of the Council, advancing into the modern world, were like clarion calls, but there was a precipitous drop in student applications for the next year and the student body was only a third the size it had been when the Council closed in 1965. An Athanasian at one of their Chicago parishes applied for laicization and was free and clear in a matter of months. Others followed.
A month after the signing of the corporation papers, Amos received a call from Father Boniface.
Boniface ushered him into Geoffrey’s office and took the chair behind the desk. “I hope this doesn’t sound odd, Mr. Cadbury. But I would like you to explain our exact legal status now.”
“Well, as Father Geoffrey no doubt told you …”
“Father Geoffrey is no longer with us. He left.”
He had exacted a sizeable severance package from Bartholomew.
7
I thought of the days of long ago and remembered the years long past.
—Psalm 77
It wasn’t just Father Dowling’s reaction, it was the kids’ as well. Edna felt that she had lost tons of moral credit with them, especially with Jane, the oldest. The boys had liked going to the Cubs game, no doubt about that, and they pigged out on Wrigley Field food, but they’d resisted Stan’s attempts to be a good old buddy with them. The only one he made any headway with was Eric and that, predictably, involved electronics. Stan had a palmtop that seemed to do everything but contact the moon, and he handed it over to Eric without qualm, no warnings, no mention of how expensive it was. Not until Eric asked him how much it cost. And in the fourth inning his cell phone rang and he spoke enigmatically into it for half a minute and hung up.
“It’s a convenience, but it’s a nuisance, too.”
And he let Eric look at the phone as well. The two of them huddled, ignoring the game, while he told Eric of all the things it did.
“Want to call someone?”
Eric looked at her and Edna gave him a noncommital shrug. He called one of his friends and gave him a play by play of the inning. Sosa hit a home run and Eric described it as if he were Chip Carey. The Lord only knew how much that call had cost.
“Wait’ll you see my laptop, Eric.”
It was a slim little Toshiba, silver and gray, and once again Stan just turned it over and let Eric run it through its paces. When it was attached to the cell phone it had access to the Web. Eric was impressed with Stan’s gadgetry if nothing else. But Jane and Carl never broke out of their wary silence until he was gone.
“Who is he, Mom?”
“Someone who came to see Father Dowling.”
She might have been invoking a blessing on the day, on her susceptibility to a man who was so unthreateningly interested in her as a woman.
“They’re wonderful kids, Edna.”
“You and Eric hit it off.”
“When I was his age I had trouble making old-fashioned phone calls.”
“Do you have kids?”
“Not that I know of.” But his smile absolved the remark of any serious meaning. “How long have you been separated?”
“Seven years.” That was worse than a lie. She felt that she was being unfaithful to Earl. But what had she done, really? She had dinner with a man, she let him take her and the kids to a ball game. Not what you would confess, for heaven’s sake. But somehow they felt like sins. She told herself she was dramatizing something that had no meaning at all.
“What’s he do?” her son Eric asked her later.
“I’m surprised you didn’t find out.”
“He must be some kind of salesmen.”
He based this on files he had seen on Ed’s computer. A list of properties in the area. And religious orders.
“Religious orders?”
Eric nodded. “All of them in Illinois. Around Chicago. One in Fox River.”
“He’s a priest, isn’t he, Mom?” Jane said.
This was much later. The boys were in their rooms, Edna was fresh from the shower and sitting in her bedroom looking at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out what she looked like to a stranger.
“A priest!”
“You said he was a friend of Father Dowling’s.”
“No. I said he came to see him.”
“He acts like a priest.”
“And how would that be?”
“I don’t know. He just does.”
“Maybe you’re right.” The suggestion had given her the strangest sensation, casting the dinner and ball game into a very different light, and she seized on it as a way to stop Jane’s silent reproach. But it had been her girlish response to Stan that filled her mind, the too-easy laughter, the desire to please, the sense of being flattered out of her shoes by his interest.
“Didn’t he say what he did?”
“No. And I didn’t ask. Why would I?”
Putting the ball in Jane’s court ended the conversation, but Edna lay awake reviewing the day, thinking again of the earlier dinner with Stan. She had called home and said that something had come up, she would be late, could Jane just make spaghetti and a salad and look after things. But she had not wanted to say what had come up. Now that Jane had mentioned it, she found it all too possible that she’d had a date with a priest.
After a sleepless night, she went to work and sat at her desk. Some time during the night she had resolved to put the question to Father Dowling. The pastor’s reaction to her remark that she’d had dinner with Stan increased her doubt about the man. Finally, she decided to settle the matter.
She went over to the rectory without calling first and faced the formidable obstacle of Marie Murkin.
“Is Father in?”
“Oh, yes.”
“In his study?”
She swept past Marie and went down the hall to the study. The door was open and Father Dowling looked up, surprised, then delighted.
“Edna. Come in.”
She pulled the door shut, sat across from him, and suddenly did not know what to say. Father Dowling waited patiently, giving no sign that he found this visit unusual. Finally, he asked about the Center. She found her tongue and said that everything was fine. She was desperately trying to think of something about the Center that she could use as an excuse for barging in on him like this, when he said, “Any more strange visitors?”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“My Jane asked me a question about him.”
This was so awfully like going to confession, something she had never done face to face, as was sometimes now done.
“About Stan Morgan?”
“Eric looked him up on one of those search engines, Google, and drew a blank.” She inhaled. “Jane asked if he’s a priest.”
Father Dowling laughed. “No, he was looking for a priest. A former priest.”
“And he isn’t one himself?”
“I’m sure that would have come out in our conversation. It didn’t. What made Jane think so?”
“Because I embarrassed her. She didn’t like it at all that I let him take us to the ball game. She thought of it as a kind of date.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“Not in that sense. Oh, I don’t know. Father, I feel awful.”
“For accepting an invitation to dinner? For letting a man show his generosity a
nd take you and your kids to a ball game?”
“Father, I was flattered.”
“Perhaps he was, too. That you accepted. That’s all it was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes! Oh, Father, don’t think—”
“Edna, what I think is that you are a wonderful wife and mother, that there wouldn’t be a Senior Center if it weren’t for you, and that you have a conscience as delicate as a Carmelite’s.”
His words brought all the relief of the formula of absolution after confession. Edna did not cry, she was not given to easy crying, but her eyes welled with tears. If she ever loved a priest it would be Father Dowling; she did love him—how could she not, after all he had done for her when Earl was arrested and then the awful trial and afterward, asking her what she thought of turning the school into a center for senior parishioners?
“It’s just a big white elephant now, Edna,” he had said. “The parish could save money by tearing it down, but I can’t bring myself even to think of that. A center would be a way of justifying the expense of the building, not to mention what it might mean for the old folks. We’re becoming a parish of old folks, Edna.”
And so she had become the director of the Senior Center. It had enabled her to keep the family together and begin the long wait until Earl would be set free. Most important of all, it had lifted the cloud she and the kids were under because of what Earl had done—if he had really done anything, the thing of which he was accused. But he had felt guilty and he had been found guilty and she and the kids shared in it. Yet as director of the Center she had received the endorsement of Father Dowling and now, all these years later, she doubted that many people even wondered where her husband was.
“Why don’t I take you and the kids to the ball game?”
“Oh, Father.”
“How about Saturday? Phil Keegan could come along, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“But it’s an afternoon game and you have confessions.”
“Father Boniface is coming this weekend. He can take confessions for me.”
She felt that she was on a cloud when she left. In the kitchen, she stopped and talked with Marie and accepted the offer of tea.
“Father said that he has a helper this weekend.”
“Father Boniface.” Marie stirred her tea. “He’s all right. Did I ever tell you about the Franciscans?”
She had, many times; it was Marie’s way of establishing her seniority in the parish, her long suffering, illustrating the moral that no matter how bad things look they can get better in a minute.
“Boniface is no Franciscan, Edna.”
“He seems nice.”
“He’s a saint,” Marie said emphatically, as if she were presiding at a consistory in St. Peter’s. But then she changed gears. “Do you remember that man who came looking for Father Dowling when he was on retreat?”
There seemed to be no ulterior intent in the question, but Edna preserved a receptive silence.
“A wonderful man. He sat right where you’re sitting and we had the nicest conversation. I only wished I could have helped him. He came back, but Father Dowling wasn’t any help.”
“He was looking for someone?”
“Some former priest as it turned out. God knows why.”
“Maybe he’s one, too.”
Marie’s laughter was merry. “Edna, when you’ve known as many priests as I have you can tell them a mile off. And he sat right at this table. No, he was no priest nor ever had been.”
Added to her talk with Father Dowling, this assurance sent Edna back to her office with a sense that she had been shriven several times over.
8
My vows to the Lord I will fulfill before all my people.
—Psalm 116
On Saturday morning, Father Dowling awoke to find it raining. But it had stopped by the time Phil Keegan arrived.
“It’s over, Roger. Have no fear. The game is on.”
After saying his Mass, with Phil behind the wheel of the Center minibus they drove to Edna’s where she and the kids piled in, the boys full of excitement.
“This is our second game this year,” Eric said.
“There’s nothing like Wrigley Field,” Phil said. “Win or lose, it’s always a treat to be there.”
“You working on any murders?” Eric asked him.
“Ah, murders,” Phil said. He was on the interstate now and happy to pontificate about the blood and gore that filled his days. “The trouble with interesting murders, you almost never solve them. Does that surprise you?”
“You’ve got a small department,” Eric said.
Phil didn’t like that. Edna told Eric not to bother Captain Keegan while he was driving. A sound suggestion, given the abandon with which Phil was switching lanes and exceeding the speed limit.
“Can a policeman get a ticket?” Jane asked.
“Only if he breaks the law.” Phil let up on the gas and settled into one lane.
“Had Father Boniface come before you left?” Edna asked.
“No. But he’ll be in good hands with Marie. She was miffed that Phil and I didn’t stay for lunch. I told her we’d have all we could eat at the game. Marie will have a most appreciative diner in Father Boniface.”
“She told me you-know-who is definitely not a priest.”
“That settles it, then.”
Jane seemed intent on making up for her sullenness on the previous trip to the ball game. She sat next to Father Dowling and they fell into a deep conversation that Edna made a point of not overhearing. How much more joyous an occasion this was. For all of them. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself at having been flattered by Stan Morgan’s attention. This game would sweep memories of it from her children’s minds. Jane had heard her appeal to Marie Murkin’s authority on who was a priest and who was not. She did not want her daughter to think that it had been a former priest who showed such interest in her mother.
Now that it was safely in the past, Edna could take innocent pleasure from the fact that Stan Morgan had found her attractive. She had tried to convince herself that his attention had only the purpose of pumping her about the man he was looking for. There was some of that, no doubt, but it hadn’t been all and she knew it. Having emerged from the fire unscathed, she could enjoy the boost to her self-esteem. She had told Earl that Father Dowling was taking them all to the game.
“I’ll be watching it,” he said.
“Oh, how I wish we were all going together.”
“We will. We will.”
How often it was she who needed cheering up when she visited him. Earl was resigned to serve out his sentence. He had killed no one, no matter what the court had found, but it was just luck that he had not and that did change the appearance of the evidence. To Edna he seemed like a soul in purgatory, being punished but certain that the day would come when his troubles would cease and he could return to his family. She kept him supplied with recent photographs, but the kids knew him only from the wedding picture on her dresser. How young they both had been, squinting into the sunlight, not knowing what lay before them.
Jane enjoyed the game as much as the boys. And Phil Keegan. He was up and down, cheering, groaning, shouting at the umpire, constantly flagging down anyone selling food.
Phil amazed Father Dowling. He could watch a game in the rectory and never raise his voice, but he was an active participant today. They had hot dogs and peanuts and popcorn and soft drinks, but when Phil waved down the kid selling Frosty Malts, Father Dowling begged to be excused. So did Edna. Jane sat between them, as knowledgeable about the game as her brothers, explaining everything to Edna, and giving Father Dowling a look at her mother’s lack of knowledge. But that certainly didn’t diminish Edna’s enjoyment. What a good woman she was and how well she was raising her children in difficult circumstances. But then the moral resources of ordinary folk never ceased to amaze him. Tragedy struck without warning—an unexpected death, a daughter in trouble, an intractable son—and people rose to the occasion and saw it
through. Who would suspect the burdens Edna bore seeing the calm efficiency with which she ran the Senior Center? And there was not an ounce of condescension in her treatment of the old people, even when foolish little romances flared up among septuagenarians and elderly men and women acted like children on the school grounds of their youth. Edna might have been anticipating her own innocent susceptibility.
On the way home, Eric sat next to Father Dowling on the back seat of the little bus, reviewing the game and analyzing why the Cubs had lost despite two home runs by Sammy Sosa. Like Phil, he regarded any loss as the result of bad calls and lucky hits by the opposing team. But finally they all fell silent, weary from the outing. They were nearly at the Fox River exit when Eric roused himself.
“Mom, you know that guy that took us to a game? The reason my Google search didn’t work was I got the name wrong.”
“How so?”
“I thought it was Moran. But it’s Morgan. I remembered that and got a pile of stuff.”
“Did you print it out?” Father Dowling asked.
“I could.”
“I’d like to see what you found.”
9
Give me again the joy of your help, with a spirit of fervor sustain me.
—Psalm 51
Marie Murkin continued to sing the praises of Stan Morgan. “I wish he’d come back, Father.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t.”
“The way you treated him?”
“I was thinking of the way you did.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
At least Marie had no inkling of Morgan’s interest in Edna. What a thing she would have made of that. It was one thing for her to have tea in her kitchen with the attentive young man, but if she knew Edna had had dinner with him, that he had taken her and the kids to a ball game … Roger Dowling did not like to think what she would have said.
“Why do you call him a young man?”
“Because he is.”
Prodigal Father Page 5