The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

“Lest that young fellow be scandalized,” said Frank with rumbling gravity, pointing to Dennis, “the chef is a French woman.”

  Hoots, whistles, cries of ooh-la-la. “She does the cancan between courses,” Eddie McGuire bellowed.

  “Sixty-five years old. Just an ordinary French cook. Which means that the food on my table is a 150 percent better than anything these barbarians ever see, even when they eat in restaurants in our fair city.”

  “I’ll vouch for that, Frank,” said Matthew Mahan. “I had my best meal in a year the last time I visited St. Damian’s.”

  Cries of bribery, conflict of interest. George Petrie suggested that Madam Proudhomme was Satan in disguise and was planning to force Frank to sell his soul for a perfect soufflé.

  “Do I get to taste it before I make up my mind?” asked Frank.

  “Come on, Matt, give us an imitation of the Wheezer,” Eddie McGuire begged.

  The Cardinal only had to gasp out a line or two, and they were all in convulsions.

  “And Coyne. Give us Coyne, Matt,” Eddie McGuire choked, laughing already.

  Coyne had a high-pitched voice and a very feminine speech pattern. “Honestly, you fellows are awful. If you think I’m going to stand up here and discuss the liturgy while some joker blows soap bubbles around the room. Mahan, it’s you again, isn’t it? Admit it.”

  “No, Father, it’s Foley.”

  More roars of laughter while Peter Foley grinned good-naturedly.

  “Foley!” Matthew Mahan said, his voice contralto once more. “If there’s one person in this room who’s well behaved, it’s Peter Foley. The only one, I might add.”

  They were boys again, Dennis thought, listening to the guffaws, watching them pound their fists on the table with glee. Maybe they were always boys. Maybe they never became men. Maybe manhood always eluded them; they were condemned forever to cavort in the boys’ playground behind chastity’s barbed-wire fence.

  Was that really true? Were they acting any differently from any other random group of alumni, thirty years out? Probably not. If anything, they were remarkably normal for a group of celibates. No matter how hard you try to disapprove of their humor and style, no matter how excluded you feel by the generation gap, there is a link between you and these men. No, more than a link. That word suggests chains, bondage. What held you was living, a sense of something shared. During lunch, they had accepted him as one of their own, kidded him about being a runaway Jesuit, wanted to know how he survived working for the “Eminent Slave Driver.” It had been a new experience, at first strange and then exhilarating. But the bond? What they shared - he suddenly realized - was this big smiling man, sitting in the seat of honor.

  They were talking baseball now. It had been a major topic during lunch. They had lamented like obsessive Jeremiahs the city’s perpetually losing professional team. Now he gathered that their class had been the seminary champions six years’ running, thanks largely to Matthew Mahan on the pitcher’s mound. “Tell the truth now, Matt, once and for all,” croaked Eddie McGuire, swirling his almost empty brandy snifter, “didn’t you use a spitter?”

  “Eddie. I only had two pitches, and you know it. The curve and the fastball.”

  “What did you throw when you brained Osterhouse?”

  “That was a fastball. I was dusting him off because he knocked you down three times the inning before.”

  “Go on,” said Eddie. “I was playin’ center field. I could see what that ball was doin’. It curved in, out, up, down. Osterhouse dodged six different ways, and still it hit him. You coulda made it in the majors, Matt. It musta broke your old man’s heart when you went for the sem.”

  Suddenly Matthew Mahan saw for the first time the stricken look on his father’s face when they shook hands that first seminary day. Bart Mahan had stepped back and watched while his wife embraced their son. He had said so little to his father, really. During the previous spring, when he had been leading the local college league in strikeouts, there had been that abortive conversation about inviting an old friend who was a scout for the New York Giants to see him pitch.

  But I’m going in the seminary, Pop, didn’t Mom tell you?

  The seminary? No, no, she didn’t.

  “Ah, I wasn’t that good, Eddie. If the old ump felt that way, he knew he was wearing rose-colored glasses.”

  “That ain’t true,” said Eddie. “My old man tended bar for him, remember, at the Hawthorne Avenue place? All he talked about was his son the pitcher.”

  A wave of weakness, of inner trembling, swept over Matthew Mahan. The truth, how often it comes hurtling at us unexpectedly, the truth on the lips of poor old Eddie McGuire, the class joker, with the pallor of death on his face. Father, forgive me for I knew not what . . . For a moment, he almost wept. But he commanded himself to smile. “No kidding,” he said. “Well, I’m glad he didn’t talk to me. My head was big enough in those days. Where would I be now?”

  “Now? You’d probably be in the Hall of Fame and be simultaneously managin’ St. Louis. You’re one of them guys, Matt, who can fall in a cesspool and come up with a diamond ring.”

  “Oh, is that what explains this?” He held up his Cardinal’s ring.

  Roars of laughter. “I move that the metaphor be accepted,” said Peter Foley.

  “Hey, listen to the jailbird,” said Eddie McGuire.

  Matthew Mahan finished his milk. Two dishes of cream of wheat and a dozen or so Titrilac tablets had dampened the pain, but the inside of his body felt raw, scalded. It was time to go home, he thought gloomily, time and past time. He needed to think about what was happening inside him, physically and spiritually.

  Eddie McGuire was on his feet now, making a speech. He vowed that they had debated for weeks over what to give their new Cardinal to commemorate his elevation. They had no money, he said. “You take it away from us as fast as we rake it in.” They thought about giving him Madam Proudhomme, but Frank Falconer wouldn’t part with her. He didn’t need a trip anywhere. Every time they called him at the chancery office, the switchboard operator informed them that the Archbishop was in Rio or Santiago or Las Vegas. They thought about renting a nun to do his thinking for him, but they found out that nuns were the only thing that Hertz didn’t rent. They tried prying one of the doors off St. Peter’s, but the Swiss Guards caught them at it. So they decided to give him something personal. A certificate proving that he really was a Cardinal written by George Petrie, the best Latinist in the class, and surrounded by their pictures, which proved they weren’t fictitious witnesses.

  “But then when we got here,” Eddie continued, as the legal-looking document was handed up the table to Matthew Mahan, “we found ourselves with all these lire in our pockets and we went slightly nuts. We thought we had some real money. So we decided to get you a real present, one that would really serve a purpose.” Bending while he talked, Eddie fished from under the table a sleek-looking multiband radio in a walnut case. “The guy we bought it from guaranteed us that you can get the Vatican on it. We couldn’t think of anything a Cardinal needed more these days.”

  For an appalling moment, Matthew Mahan did not know whether he was going to laugh or weep or snarl. I am Joseph, your brother. The infinite sadness in Pope Paul’s eyes. Did they know? Did they suspect? Were they mocking him, too, this little circle, the old reliables, the ones he never had to worry about? Michelangelo’s Moses. Mary Shea’s fragile fingers touching his hand in the lamplight. Mike Furia’s bitter face. I solemnly swear that I shall not divulge . . . I am Joseph, your brother.

  It was too much, too much to bear.

  What should he, what could he, say to these old friends? Could he share with them his appalling sense of failure - and thereby ruin this happy occasion? Weren’t they a mirror image of what had gone wrong? They were confusing themselves with the Church, confusing the affection, yes, even the love, they felt for each other with the extension, the multiplication, the agonies, the failures, the triumphs of love which was their mission. Ha
dn’t all of them - or almost all of them - settled for something much safer, more dependable: doing the job?

  No, that was unfair, Matthew Mahan told himself, desperately trying to regain his emotional balance. It is unfair, unjust, to pastors like Frank Falconer and Harry Hall and a half-dozen others around the table, men who rose unhesitatingly in the middle of the night to bring the sacraments to the dying, who rode and walked around their parishes tirelessly visiting the old, the sick, the widowed, who counseled unhappy wives and angry husbands and rebellious teenagers, and tirelessly made small talk with mass-goers outside church every Sunday, who simultaneously struggled to balance books and lead souls to grace and worry about their own souls. Don’t, the new Cardinal told himself, let your own sense of personal failure ruin your appreciation of these good men, or even worse, infect them with your malaise.

  But it was true of others, not just those sitting here at this friendly table, but too many others among the 672 pastors and 1,982 curates of the archdiocese. Too many of them were satisfied with doing the job. And it was his fault, he was guiltier than all of them together, because he had failed to lead them in the right direction. He had been too busy doing his job, keeping the lid on the archdiocese, trying to balance liberals and conservatives, young and old, pastors and curates, optimists and pessimists.

  But the gang, the class, sitting there in front of him, their faces wreathed in smiles, what better place to start changing this complacent mediocrity than here, with them? A beginning, Matthew Mahan felt desperately, a beginning had to be made.

  “Matt - are you okay?”

  Eddie McGuire’s familiar croak returned him to reality.

  “What? Sure I’m all right, Eddie. I’m just a little stunned by SO much thoughtfulness from you lugs. In one sense - it’s almost out of character - but underneath all those insults we dish out to each other, I know there’s a lot of love. And believe me - it’s reciprocated.

  “But it’s not enough for us to reciprocate it. I would like to see us share more of it. Share it with the people that we serve. Sitting here just now I couldn’t help thinking - there isn’t a man in this room who isn’t doing a good job. And that includes me. But is that good enough for us?”

  Smiles were fading fast from every face. He was losing them. The last thing they expected or wanted now was a pep talk. But this wasn’t a pep talk. This wasn’t a summons to the old class, team spirit. This was from his soul to their souls. How could he make them see it? Only by sharing his failures with them.

  “The other night I met a woman here in Rome, a woman from our diocese. I sent her here fifteen years ago to get an annulment. But that wasn’t the real reason I sent her. I sent her because I didn’t have the spiritual strength to cope with her agony. She’s spent fifteen years here. She still hasn’t gotten her annulment. She knew she could never get it. She came here to spare me, yes, even to save me from my guilt, my failure. We’re all doing our jobs. But too often our jobs don’t seem to include reaching out, going out, searching for these people. The lost sheep. Yet we know how important our Lord thought they were. When I get home, I’m going to dedicate myself, and if possible our archdiocese, to this mission. I’m depending on you for support.”

  The smiles had faded into bafflement now. George Petrie’s had declined to obvious dismay. They didn’t even know what he was talking about. As far as they could see, Big Matt was losing his marbles.

  His eyes blurred with tears. One way or another, God seemed determined to make a fool out of him. He picked up his certificate and his Vatican radio and walked dazedly away from them, his head down. In the silence, he heard Peter Foley say softly, “God bless you, Matt.”

  Eddie McGuire began to roar out “Auld Lang Syne,” and in a moment everyone was singing it, changing the last words to “Good old thirty-nine,” as they often did at their annual reunions. Matthew Mahan stood in the doorway smiling at them for a moment and then walked unsteadily down the hall toward the elevator. He did not realize Dennis McLaughlin was beside him until he heard him murmur anxiously, “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. They stepped onto the elevator. Alone with Dennis in the wood-lined capsule, he slumped against a burnished wall. “They didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Some of them did. I did.”

  Dennis’s voice trembled slightly. For a moment, the memories, the burdens, the pain, vanished from Matthew Mahan’s body and mind. There had been a beginning, a new beginning after all.

  A full moon filled the Roman sky with golden light. Cardinal Mahan sat on the terrace of Mary Shea’s penthouse sipping the sweet dessert wine known as Lacrimae Christi. Mary sat a few feet away from him, the moonlight glistening on her silver hair and white dress.

  “I’m so glad you could give me this last night, Matt.”

  “You would have had it anyway. I’m glad I was able to give you - the rest of it, Mary. What we said.”

  “What you said.”

  They had eaten alone in her apartment. Soft, savory fettucini, a delicately herbed roast lamb, cool red Valpolicella wine, endive salad. Most of it was off his diet, but two days of living on mush had soothed his stomach, he hoped. It was not his stomach that worried him anyway; it was his spirit, and in some profound, mysterious way it was linked with this woman’s spirit. To heal himself, he must heal her.

  So he had reached out, clumsily but urgently opening himself, confessing everything, beginning with his physical wound, the ulcer, then sharing what he had seen and felt on their first night in Rome in the Church of Saint Peter in Chains. He had told her everything, concealed nothing, not even the Pope’s tormenting words, Frater noster taciturnus, Paul’s sadness, the insane temptation to reassure him, the agonizing attack of pain in St. Peter’s, but above all the desolating sense of failure, of guilt, of remorse, that involved her and the Church and his priesthood.

  Mary had listened, deeply moved, at times almost weeping. When he began to tell her about his floundering speech to his seminary classmates, she cried out, “Oh, Matt, don’t be so hard on yourself, don’t.” But she had let him silence her with a wave of his hand. She knew she was too intelligent, too sensitive, not to know what he was doing. He was stripping away the Roman collar, the black uniform, the sacerdotal robes; he was coming down from the altar in a nakedness that was more real, more meaningful, than flesh.

  Were they two in one spirit now, truly one? Otherwise, what he was about to say would be rejected with scorn, rage, perhaps with despair. “You know what grieves me most, Mary? I’ve been afraid to say it to you, afraid for - all the reasons you can imagine I think you should marry again. I think you should have married again four or five years ago.”

  “Why, Matt?”

  “Because you’re a loving person, Mary, and you have no one to love.”

  “I have my son. You. The Church -”

  “Your son doesn’t need your love anymore. I can’t return your love in the way - the only way - it deserves to be returned. And the Church - you can’t love the Church, Mary, the way you’re trying to love it, without being wounded.”

  “You’re speaking from experience?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. But I can bear it, Mary. I hope I can, because it’s my choice.”

  “I made some choices, too, Matt, fifteen years ago.”

  “They were inflicted on you. You were born to love a man, Mary, to make him happy with your hands, your body.”

  “Oh, Matt, stop it, please. I can’t bear it.”

  “Yes, you can. We can both bear it. You’re only forty-four years old, Mary. You can love someone else if you open your mind, your heart, to the possibility.”

  “Are you telling me to walk out of the Church?”

  “No. I’m telling you that if you marry and come home, you have nothing to worry about. I’ll receive you into the Church. I’ll even give you my blessing. I’m going to begin a program in the diocese, Mary, for people who have divorced and remarried in good conscience. It’s within my p
ower as a bishop to do this; there are bishops doing it already. I didn’t have the courage to do it before. I thought of what the conservatives would say. I thought of the people like you who had spent fifteen, twenty desolate years. I didn’t know how I could face you. But now - I’m facing you.”

  “I don’t know whether I can ever love anyone but you, Matt. And tonight makes the possibility even more dubious.”

  “That saddens me, Mary, saddens me terribly. Promise me this much. You’ll try. You’ll at least consider some offers.”

  “Now you sound like a marriage broker. What are you going to do, raffle me off to the highest bidder?”

  “If I could, it would solve my fundraising problems overnight.”

  “Don’t. I don’t want to joke about it.”

  “Why not? We celibates live paradoxically. We laugh and cry at the same time.”

  Mary said nothing. He sensed she was looking past him into the darkness. He turned his head and saw Saint Peter’s dome riding on the gloom in the floodlights’ glow.

  “Have they approved this program, Matt?”

  “No. That’s another reason why I hesitated.”

  “What if they say no?”

  For the first time all night, his stomach throbbed ominously. “Let’s face it when - and if - it happens.”

  “I’m not worrying about myself, Matt, it’s you.”

  “I know.”

  The big jet poised at the head of the long sun-baked runway, like a sprinter waiting for the gun. They were off, racing down the concrete for a nerve-twisting sixty or seventy seconds, and into a forty-degree climb. At 3,000 feet, the pilot leveled off and said: “Thanks to His Eminence, Cardinal Mahan, we have been cleared to give you a last look at Rome. We’re going to circle the city so you can say goodbye to St. Peter’s, the Via Veneto, the Forum, the Colosseum, and all the other fabulous places you’ve visited during the past week.”

  The plane resounded with unbuckling seat belts. Heads twisted, necks craned toward the windows. Cries, groans, of appreciation and excitement.