“I always thought I would die young. I think that is one of the reasons I entered the convent.”
“Nonsense. You’re going to be well.”
“I thank God for you, Richard.”
Not simply a familiar locution, as became clear. With the prospect of death, religion returned. “I would go back, if it was still there to go back to.”
He rocked her in his arms. Some remarks were better left alone.
“At least I’m certain to have a priest with me when I die.”
And he did give her the last rites, validly if illicitly, considering his severed status, but once a priest always a priest. She knew that as well as he did. Nor was it necessary that he believe it all as she clearly did. Ex opere operato. The efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the sanctity or even the belief of the priest who administers them. Marilyn left him everything in her will.
15
One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
—Psalm 84
Hazel had come to Tuttle as part-time help, hired by the day, but she swiftly brought order out of chaos, computerized his records, such as they were, and nagged him into more vigorous ambulance chasing. It had not helped to tell her that television ads had never worked for him.
“Where did you run them, on a public-access channel?”
She made an appointment at a studio, acted as director and script writer, and the commercial was shown at inexpensive hours on local television, much to the delight of Tuttle’s friends in the press room at the court house.
“Let them eat their hearts out,” Hazel snorted when he told her of his ordeal in the press room.
“They’re not lawyers.”
“That’s what I mean.”
If Hazel ever lost an argument, Tuttle would like to be there. She had turned his office into a model of efficiency, she had gotten him into divorces, despite his principles and vow to his departed father who was the second Tuttle in Tuttle & Tuttle. His father had never lost faith in him, had continued to bankroll him as he repeated course after course in law school until he qualified to fail the bar exams. He got through the fourth time, by cheating, and his father, content, was gathered to his ancestors with his only son an attorney-at-law. Tuttle commemorated the paternal confidence in the title of the firm. Hazel had worked her mouth as he explained it to her but did not comment. Good thing. Tuttle was oriental in his devotion to his parents and any crack from Hazel would have filled him with the courage necessary to drive her from the office. But it was her amorous propensities Tuttle feared more. She had all but driven his closest friend, Peanuts Pianone, from his life; now he and the ungifted member of the Pianone clan, for whom a sinecure on the police force had been a family perk, met at the Great Wall or various pizza parlors. Peanuts had all he could take of Hazel.
“She’s my secretary,” Tuttle pleaded. Peanuts wasn’t much of a buffer, but he needed an ally at the office.
“And what’s that make you?”
A confused question, but a good one. What is the employer equivalent of the henpecked husband? But that was the direction in which Hazel’s intentions seemed to point.
“No regular secretary would work in this pig sty.”
“I’ll give you a handsome severance payment.”
She snorted. “You forget that I keep the books.”
Perhaps when he ran out of funds, she would leave. But he no longer knew the status of his bank balance. Sometimes he feared that Hazel was working pro bono, amassing a debt he would be expected to pay off in the only honorable way.
“That’ll help,” she said sarcastically when he slapped Leo Corbett’s dollar on her desk.
But she perked up as he told her of his new client. A Corbett of the Corbetts? She was visibly impressed. She urged him to have Leo come to the office.
“He’ll be here at ten.”
But it was after eleven before she finished with Leo and ushered him into the office where Tuttle had been awaiting the dreaded news that she had scared Leo away.
“Paper work,” she explained, and closed the door on them.
“Not much of a building, but I’m impressed with the office,” Leo said.
“Why throw money away in overhead?”
“So what’s the plan?”
Tuttle glanced at the notes before him, prepared by Hazel. “We’ll start with the annuity.”
“That still leaves us with Amos Cadbury.”
“Leave Cadbury to me.”
The premier lawyer of Fox River had not succeeded in three attempts to have Tuttle disbarred. Tuttle had come to regard Cadbury with the camaraderie of the old adversary, whatever Cadbury’s attitude toward him. Since his last meeting with Leo, Tuttle had learned that Cadbury had not only overseen the transfer of the Corbett estate to the Athanasians, he was the lawyer of the Corbett estate in the wider sense. It was he who had fulfilled Maurice Corbett’s wish that his son Matthew should have an annuity. Tuttle asked Leo a few questions.
“I already told your partner.”
Hazel. “Right. You get the benefit of the whole team here.” Tuttle angled back in his chair. “Trust me, Leo, and you will repossess your grandfather’s estate.”
“You make it sound like an automobile.”
Tuttle laughed, but Leo hadn’t meant it as a joke. Best to get him out of here and see how much Hazel had learned. He got up and clapped Leo on the shoulder.
“How are things at the country club?”
“I work in the golf shop, Tuttle.”
“Not for long. We’ll have you out of there and on the first tee with the other members before you know it.”
He showed him to the door, he stood in the doorway and watched him onto the elevator with a final wave.
“Fine young man, Hazel.”
“What do you know about annuities?”
“Hazel, I’m a lawyer.”
“What do you know about wills and estates?”
“What is this, a bar exam?”
“If it were you’d probably order a beer. Why don’t I put Denise on it.”
“You think a paralegal knows more than a lawyer?”
“What we need is the basic laws, precedents.”
“Now you’re a law professor?”
“You need help on this.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Anyway, Tuttle, if necessary I’d bankroll this myself. I think you’ve stumbled onto something.”
He ducked out of the way when she ducked to kiss him. She wouldn’t let him wear his tweed hat in the office and this left him naked to his enemies.
“I’ll interview her.”
“We’ll interview her.”
“You could get arrested for practicing law without a license.”
“You could get arrested for practicing law with one.”
It kept him on his toes, such banter with Hazel, when it didn’t knock him back on his heels. The problem was she had been here long enough to make it difficult to think of life without her. Professional life, that is. The IRS didn’t have to upgrade its computers, but he was doing better than he ever had, to the degree that Hazel let him in on the secret. The beauty of the stuff she brought in just answering the phone—she could sell an AT&T salesperson MCI long-distance service—was that it was so routine he could leave the details to her. Sign a few papers, a token appearance in court, cash the checks. Smooth, but it made one rusty.
Denise, the paralegal, was six feet tall and would have looked over both Tuttle and Hazel if she did not have such a pronounced stoop. When she stood up she could have done credit to the bow of a ship, the body of an Amazon, the long blond hair that hid her face when she stooped cascading over her shoulders, her breasts those of an undoubted mammalian, clear blue eyes. Only Denise did not know this. She was color-blind and this had kept her out of the Navy. She offered to get a cornea transplant, she tried to memorize all the variations in the eye test, nothing got her past the tes
ts. An all-man Navy would have shanghaied her, but in the newer, fairer world she washed out, lost her self-esteem, became a paralegal because research kept her away from people.
She nodded at her knees as Hazel briefed her on the case.
“Leo Corbett?”
Were her ears going, too? “Leo Corbett.”
“I went to school with him.”
“This could be an asset,” Tuttle said to Hazel.
“He always was.” Denise snickered at her lap. “I don’t have to meet him, do I?”
“There are no present plans,” Tuttle said. He was signaling to Hazel—bringing a finger across his throat, shaking his head, pointing to the door—all this over Denise’s head. He didn’t care how good she was, this girl was weird. There was no way in the world he was going to hire her.
“You’re hired,” Hazel said.
The two women went into the outer office, where Hazel explained to Denise the kind of things that Mr. Tuttle would want. Tuttle felt like Oz concealed in his office, listening.
“We’re lucky she was free,” Hazel said when Denise had left.
“She’s pretty cool to me.”
“She better be.”
“I won’t be fought over.”
“Don’t worry; I told her about your STDs.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s your naïveté that makes you so dangerous, Tuttle.” She managed to tweak his cheek before he escaped.
16
The wicked prowl on every side.
—Psalm 12
As he was walking past the greenhouse, Father Boniface was hailed by Andrew George. The head gardener’s face never lost its tan, but it had become more leathery with the advent of summer. The gardener tugged at the bill of the baseball cap he wore.
“So is it true, Father?”
“And what is it?”
“One hears that you are about to sell all this to Anderson so he can tear down the buildings, knock down the trees, and build hundreds of ugly houses.”
“And who does one hear this from?”
“Is it false?”
He could condescend to George, put him off as a child is put off, and the gardener would not complain. But he could not so treat a man whose life, whose family’s life, had been so intertwined with that of the community.
“There are no such plans.”
“Are you speaking carefully?” Wild brows grew every which way above the horn-rimmed glasses George had worn as long as Boniface could remember. Did his eyes never get worse?
“If there were, you can be sure that you would be told.”
“I hope I never hear such a thing.”
“That is my hope as well.”
It was not the complete reassurance that George wanted. Why hadn’t he told him that the Order would sell to Anderson over his dead body? That would have expressed his sentiments. But he was only one man in a community, albeit the superior. One man is never in complete charge of the present or of the future. Yet he felt more comradeship with the gardener than he did with some of his fellow Athanasians. Richard had proved an adroit and effective apostle for change. He had come into command of arguments so disarming they could not be directly countered, describing their possession of these wonderful grounds as a species of institutional selfishness, arguably contrary to the spirit of poverty that supposedly governed their lives. What is poverty? Boniface felt like Pilate posing the question about truth. The first generations of Franciscans had divided into two camps on the questions, the Spirituals wanting a total absence of ownership, communal or personal. But the aspiration to be an angel, not a man, was the subtlest temptation, and one they were all susceptible to. Richard had managed to make some feel guilty about the life of abnegation they had lived, yet he himself had spent decades in the pursuit of wealth in the neopagan culture of California. Did he feel no awkwardness impersonating Il Poverello?
By affirmation or denial, Richard’s life seemed defined in terms of money. Now he pursued communal poverty with the same zeal he had sought to amass a fortune, for himself and for his clients. But what did he really want? Selling the property to Anderson would only increase their wealth, not diminish it. What on earth would they do with the proceeds? Where would they go?
“One problem at a time, Boniface,” Joachim said. He had become the spokesman for Richard, who sat silent in the rec room when the matter was discussed. It had become the only item on the agenda of their continuing informal chapter. Still the question remained at a stand-off, there were two who sided with Richard, and two who sided with Boniface. The one sure way victory could be achieved was by telling Richard that his probation had convinced the community that he was not ready to rejoin them. Perhaps later …
But Richard would appeal. How swiftly the petitioner had become a rival. Richard had returned, it seemed, to sow discord. He was hardly unpacked when he began to raise questions about the property on which Marygrove stood, the land, the mansion. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to their vocation to sell it, to give Mr. Anderson the opportunity to create a whole village on the site? You would have thought he was pleading for the homeless. But it was Boniface’s inner life that was under threat. Dark thoughts occurred. Who did this renegade priest think he was to return after decades in the world to preach to them about the demands of their vocation? The prodigal returned to moralize the older brother who had remained faithful to his father. It was an unsettling parallel, putting Boniface is the position of the pusillanimous son. Hadn’t Our Lord told the story in such a way that it was the wastrel who was the hero of the parable? The elder son’s reaction was condemned. Boniface spent an extra hour in the chapel, praying to be rid of the uncharitable thoughts that surged up in him whenever he thought of Richard. (Only rarely could he bring himself to call him Father Nathaniel.) Sometimes he thought that getting the property sold had been Richard’s motive for returning, but why would he want to do that?
Whenever Boniface returned from Marygrove after an absence of even a few days, his heart leapt within him as he came up the drive and the statue of St. Athanasius rose into view. Did he have true poverty of spirit if he was so attached to this place, these buildings, and all the lifetime of memories they invoked? Amos Cadbury’s visit added to his unease, in a way he was sure the Fox River lawyer had never intended.
“I wonder if any records were kept of the discussion that preceded the deeding of this property to the Order. And letters from Mr. Corbett, any memoranda?”
“I am old, Mr. Cadbury, but that was before my time.”
“Surely not. I was the lawyer in the case.”
Meaning, of course, that they were the same age, which was likely true. The Order had come into the property in stages. And those stages were recorded. Boniface and Amos, with Joachim’s excited assistance, found the files in the basement of the main building, in a warm, dry room behind the furnace room. Its lock gave way reluctantly, it had been so long since the room had been opened. Boniface had the sense that he and the other two old men were entering an innermost room in a pyramid.
“I drew up only the final transfer,” Amos said, “but these other documents make clear that it was anything but an impulsive act.”
“Some members of the community think we ought to sell the land to Anderson.”
“Sell! To Anderson!”
Amos Cadbury looked more than shocked. His face was always pale, as if the circulation of his blood after all the years now made minimum demands on his heart, supplying the main arteries but letting the capillaries fall into desuetude. But there are degrees of white as there are shades of paper. Boniface himself was unaccountably ruddy of complexion, a full and jolly face that belied his tendency to melancholy. If Amos paled, he blushed.
“The buildings? The chapel? All of it?”
“Amos, the argument is made that we are preventing choice real estate from being put to a better use.”
“There could be no better use, Father. Surely you are not among those favoring delivery o
f this wonderful property over to—Anderson.”
“No.”
Amos leaned against the table that held the boxes of old documents and closed his eyes. When he opened them, their sparkle had returned.
“I’m not sure you would have the right to sell, Father Boniface.” Amos turned and picked up one of the letters from Maurice Corbett he had been reading. “While initially, it was simply an open-ended use, with the right to build, of course, the transfer is to the Order in perpetuity.”
“But if the Order decides to sell …”
“Such things have happened, I know. Perhaps it can be done in civil law, but there is canon law as well. It could be construed to be alienation of Church property. Do your opponents propose using the money to build an alternative Marygrove elsewhere?”
“The discussion has not advanced to that point.”
“Perhaps that could be justified, legally. But I must tell you, as a lawyer who now spends much of his time administering estates, that there are insurmountable obstacles to acting contrary to the will of the deceased. I consider it a sacred obligation to execute a will exactly as it was written. Of course, they are wills I myself wrote, so I am in that sense an expert on the intent of the testator.”
Boniface could not have been more pleased if Maurice Corbett himself had put in an appearance and warned the community against any thought of selling what he had given them. Would Richard and his allies be willing to confront the prospect of replicating Marygrove elsewhere? Had they looked into construction costs? Had they any idea what comparable land would cost? What new land might not become with the passage of time as valuable as the land they occupied now? Amos was warming to the subject.
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