Thy Brother's Wife

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Yes, of course,” said the Delegate mechanically. “Of course. But now, unfortunately, I must talk to you about the future instead of the past.”

  Sean was immediately guarded. Had they chosen someone else? Oddly enough, he felt a tinge of disappointment. He expected to turn the appointment down, not to be passed over. “Of course, Your Excellency.”

  “It is, Archbishop, the Holy Father’s wish—” That was the second time the Delegate had called him “Archbishop.” The canny Frenchman could not have made the same mistake twice.

  “No.”

  “The Holy Father expressly commands you, in virtue of your vow of obedience—”

  “Henri.” He called the Delegate by his first name, something he had never done before. “Tell the Holy Father to go to hell.”

  “Oh, Archbishop Cronin, your response will not deter him in the least. He absolutely insists. Moreover, he told me confidentially that he is planning a Consistory before Pentecost—only seven weeks away—and then I shall have to call you Cardinal Cronin.”

  “No, I will not do it.”

  “Sean, yes, you will.” So the Delegate was using first names too.

  “Archbishop, we can sit here and argue about this for the next hour, and my answer will still be no.”

  “We will not argue about it at all. I will phone you again tomorrow before the Holy Thursday services, and you will give me your formal acceptance.” The line went dead.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang again. “Overseas operator,” said a muffled voice. Then Sean heard the usual gibberish of transatlantic confusion followed by a bewildered Italian operator wanting “Monsignor Cronin” while a nasal Bronx voice insisted that they had a “Bishop Cronin” on the line. Finally, a soft but firm voice said, “Montini aqui.”

  Sean felt an emptiness in his stomach as he had as a little boy when Mike gave him orders. “Cronin aqui,” he said. “Buona sera, Santità.”

  “We have called”—Paul VI spoke in hesitant but precise English, just as he had at Castel Gandolfo—“to state again what Monsieur le délégat has told you. It is our hope that you will agree to take up the burden of serving the Church in Chicago. It is a very important city. We need you.”

  A gentle voice, but Sean felt the same reaction as when Mike ordered him to leave the seminary and marry Nora. Only now he was not the same Sean.

  “I cannot, Santo Padre,” he replied. He felt his chest wrench with the trauma of refusing a parent.

  “We are sorry about your brother’s death, Monsignor,” said the Pope, ignoring his refusal. “Life is very short for all of us. That is why—”

  “My conscience does not permit it, Santo Padre,” Sean interjected.

  “We hope you will at least do us the honor of praying over it for a day.” The Pope sounded even more hesitant, vulnerable as he always was to the appeal of conscience.

  Eager for a compromise solution, even a transitory one, Sean agreed. “Of course, Santità, I will pray for it.”

  “Monsieur le délégat will call you again, my son.”

  After the papal voice faded, Sean rushed to the bathroom and retched violently. He had said no to a parent. It was not easy, but this time he had done it. Now he had merely to stick to his decision.

  * * *

  Sean looked at his watch again. Nora was going to visit and the Delegate was going to call him before he would go down to the cathedral. There, in his recommitment to priestly service, he would move his lips but he would say no words.

  Then Nora was at the door, beautiful in a light blue suit; skirt, jacket, and sweater impeccably tailored. The touches of age around her eyes and her mouth somehow made her more endearing.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” she asked.

  “Of course. Come in and sit down. I have something I want to talk about.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I didn’t wear black because I’m not going to be able to stay for Mass at the cathedral. There are a couple of things I’ve got to do, and I guess I never really believed in black anyway.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sean said automatically. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “No, you first,” Nora insisted. She leaned forward, hands folded.

  Sean took a deep breath, gripped the edge of his desk tightly and began. “Nora, I’m going to resign from the priesthood. I want to marry you. You need a husband. I need a wife. It’s time to correct all the mistakes we made twenty-five years ago.”

  “I can’t,” she said in a small voice. “I simply can’t, Sean. It’s impossible. Please don’t ask me.”

  “Why is it impossible?” He was anxious, ready to explode. “Don’t you love me?”

  She leaned forward. “Of course I love you, Sean. I’ve always loved you. If you weren’t a priest, I’d marry you tomorrow. But you are a priest.” She shook her head slowly, tears forming in her clear blue eyes.

  “Holding me to my commitment?”

  “That’s right. I’ve tried to honor most of my commitments, even if a lot of them were those I made because of other people. Now I’m going to start making my own commitments freely and independently for myself. I still believe in commitments, Sean.”

  “You won’t change your mind?” He felt as though a light had gone out inside him.

  “No, I won’t. Anyway, how can you possibly think of turning your back on all the priests of Chicago who love you so much, and the laity for whom you’ve become the Church?” She leaned forward even more intently, her face wrinkled in a frown. “How can you possibly think of letting them down?”

  “Goddammit, Nora,” he shouted. “I don’t believe in any of it anymore. I never did. I have no commitments.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sean, of course you do. Uncle Mike was wrong about a lot of things. He was right about you.… Has the Apostolic Delegate called to tell you you’re the next Archbishop of Chicago?”

  Sean hesitated. What was the point of keeping it a secret? “Yes, both he and the Pope called, and I turned them both down.”

  “Sean, call and tell them you’ve changed your mind. Do it before they have a chance to offer it to someone else.”

  “The Delegate is going to call me back sometime in the next half hour,” he said lamely.

  “Well, I hope you come to your senses before then,” she said. And then she smiled sweetly at him. “Oh, Sean, I do love you, and I always will love you, but I won’t be your wife.”

  He nodded, competing emotions struggling within him.

  “What will happen to you? What will you do with your life?”

  Nora straightened up, her back strong and firm. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The Governor has decided to appoint me to the Senate to fill out the remainder of Paul’s term. I’m going to accept. The Governor has an odd notion that I’ll step down two years from now and give him a clear shot at it. I’ve let him think that’s what I’m going to do—but he’s wrong.”

  “In God’s name, Nora, why?”

  “Because I’ll be good at it. I have all the right political instincts. I’ve known that for years as I watched Paul’s successes and failures.” Nora stood up. “Well, I’d better leave now. I must buy the proper sort of dress for the announcement that I’m the new Senator from Illinois.”

  “I wish you happiness,” Sean said, putting his arms around her.

  For a moment they stood silently together. She was soft and sweet, an angel of love. He could feel her determination begin to melt into surrender. If he insisted now he could have her, he was sure, have a life with her in which the sweetness would never end. Images from their past love tumbled through his mind. Oakland Beach … Amalfi.… Yet surely the sweetness would be short-lived. Having her, he would lose her. Not having her, he could love her forever. Not for Jimmy McGuire, not for the Delegate, not for all the priests of Chicago, not even for the Pope, but for Nora … yes, for Nora … he would do what his damn fool Church and his damn fool God wanted him to do. He disengaged himself from the embrace.
“I’ve got to get ready for Mass.”

  Nora walked to the door of his study. Her firm shoulders sagged. She paused and turned slowly; her face was streaked with tears.

  Oh, God, Nora, he thought, his heart sinking, don’t blow it now.

  She bit her lip. “Buy you lunch in Washington next week?”

  “In the Senate dining room,” he insisted. Waves of warmth and grace surged across the room and enveloped him.

  She grinned through her tears. “Where else?” She hesitated, then her head tilted up. “You will say yes to the Delegate.” It was more an order than a question. She smiled and left the room.

  Her warmth and peace lingered with Sean. He picked up a pen and a sheet of paper from his desk, since his journal was in his bedroom.

  “You damn fool,” he wrote. “You missed God’s sign for thirty years.”

  He crossed out the words, tore the paper into little pieces, and threw them into the wastebasket. Because he had lost his mother, God sent him Nora, the best sign of God’s love he would ever have. The same father who had taken away his mother brought the shy little girl into his life so long ago. Talk about the twisted lines of God.

  The phone rang. “Cronin,” he said.

  “I trust, Archbishop Cronin, that you have changed your mind.” The Delegate was being brusque and businesslike. “I assume that now you will accede to the wishes of the Holy Father imposed upon you in solemn obedience.”

  “Nope, Henri,” said Bishop Cronin. “I don’t really take that holy obedience stuff seriously.” He hesitated for just the right dramatic effect and grinned to himself and said, “But I freely decide to serve.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line as the shrewd old French ex-missionary tried to sort out the meaning of those words. “Well, then, that is so much the better, no?”

  “If you say so, Henri.” Sean was now beginning to enjoy himself. There were many things he was going to enjoy in the years ahead.

  “Congratulations, Sean,” said the Delegate. “This makes me very happy personally.”

  “I think you’ll live to regret it, but that’s your problem.”

  The Delegate merely chuckled.

  After he hung up, the new Archbishop of Chicago donned his black cassock, buttoning up carefully each of the purple buttons. He could hear the cathedral choir practicing the Holy Thursday music. They were singing a haunting medieval hymn, “Ubi Caritas et Amor.”

  Sean Cronin walked down the steps of the rectory to go into the cathedral and repeat with his priests his vows of commitment. He sang softly the words of the hymn to himself.

  Where charity and love prevail

  There God is ever found;

  Brought here together by Christ’s love

  By love are we thus bound.

  With grateful joy and holy fear

  His charity we learn;

  Let us with heart and mind and soul

  Now love him in return.

  Forgive we now each other’s faults

  As we our faults confess;

  And let us love each other well

  In Christian holiness.

  Let strife among us be unknown,

  Let all contention cease;

  Be his the glory that we seek,

  Be ours his holy peace.

  Let us recall that in our midst

  Dwells God’s begotten Son;

  As members of his Body joined

  We are in him made one.

  No race nor creed can love exclude

  If honored by God’s Name;

  Our brotherhood embraces all

  Whose Father is the same.

  A PERSONAL AFTERWORD

  Why would a priest write a novel, particularly a secular novel, about adultery, incest, and sacrilege?

  Why would Jesus tell parables about secular events like wedding banquets and ne’er-do-well sons and treasure hunters and adulterous women? Why would writers in the Jewish scriptures tell tales about passionate love affairs between unmarried young people (the Song of Songs), about adulterous kings (the David Cycle) and hateful, incestuous and murderous families (the Joseph Cycle)?

  The answer is that, since the beginning of humankind, religion has been most effectively communicated in stories that appeal to the whole person instead of being communicated in doctrinal treatises aimed at the intellect alone. The purpose of the religious tale is not to edify but to shatter preconceptions, to open up to the imagination new possibilities of living in the world and relating to the Ultimate.

  This particular religious story will be successful if the reader is disconcerted by a tale of commitments that are imperfectly made and imperfectly kept—but that are still kept. And by the image of a God who draws straight with crooked lines, who easily and quickly forgives, and who wants to love us with the tenderness of a mother.

  A.M.G.

  Also by Andrew M. Greeley from Tom Doherty Associates

  BLACKIE RYAN MYSTERIES

  The Bishop and the Missing L Train

  The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain

  The Bishop in the West Wing

  The Bishop Goes to the University

  The Archbishop in Andalusia

  NUALA ANNE MCGRAIL NOVELS

  Irish Gold

  Irish Lace

  Irish Whiskey

  Irish Mist

  Irish Eyes

  Irish Love

  Irish Stew!

  Irish Cream

  Irish Crystal

  Irish Linen

  Irish Tiger

  Irish Tweed

  THE O’MALLEYS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

  A Midwinter’s Tale

  Younger Than Springtime

  A Christmas Wedding

  September Song

  Second Spring

  Golden Years

  All About Women

  Angel Fire

  Angel Light

  Contact with an Angel

  Faithful Attraction

  The Final Planet

  Furthermore!: Memories of a Parish Priest

  God Game

  Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women

  The Senator and the Priest

  Star Bright!

  Summer at the Lake

  White Smoke

  Sacred Visions (editor with Michael Cassutt)

  The Book of Love (editor with Mary G. Durkin)

  Emerald Magic (editor)

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THY BROTHER’S WIFE

  Copyright © 1982 by Andrew M. Greeley

  Originally published by Warner Books

  All rights reserved.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-2324-8

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-2324-9

  First Forge Edition: June 2009

  eISBN 9781429939843

  First eBook edition: May 2014