“You’ve changed, Gug,” said Steve. “When I slept with you on that three-quarter bed in the attic, you wouldn’t even move over. And now you go five miles out of your way just to see me. Ego te absolvo … How do you like the law?”
“She’s a stern mistress, Steve. As Cicero said, ‘Advocati nascitur non fit.’”
“Advocatus, Georgie. In Latin, as in English, subject and predicate must always agree in number.”
“You see what happens”—George appealed to the table—“in the case of Upside-Down Collar vs. Gentleman and Scholar. The defendant—me, the gentleman Latiner—hasn’t got a chance against a professional. Stuffy, remember the time you sat up all night coaching me for my Latin entrance exams at Holy Cross? Showed me just what verbs to study and what syntax to bone up on? Well”—George drew his listeners into the magnetic realm of his anecdote—“when I got the examination paper next day, I could have sworn that Stevie must have snitched it in advance. Every detail. Come clean, Steve, how’d you know those questions ahead of time?”
“I didn’t know the questions, George. But I did know the questioner —Lawrence Burke, S.J. A merciless Jebby. So I figured out what a merciless Jebby would ask—”
“And bejabbers, the Jebby asked it,” said Bernie, screwing up his features in mimicry of a vaudeville Irishman. The crude caricature was good enough to make everyone laugh. Din, well pleased by his three sons tossing the ball around, caught Celia’s eye. “Ours,” the glance said. The moment was one of those perfect gifts which only family life at its best can offer. It swelled for a slow second of ripeness, then Din held out his teacup again to his eldest daughter.
“More of the same, Florrie.” Tea drops clung to the ends of his mustache. Steve watched Florrie as she leaned toward her father, napkin in hand, to wipe the drops away. Love and criticism were in the gesture. Poor Florrie.
“Tell us about the Holy City, Son,” Celia was saying. “Is it so wondrous as I’ve heard? Full of shrines and cathedrals all blazing with candles, and services going on at every hour of the day and night?”
Stephen swallowed a mouthful of salty cod and sweet bread crust. How convey in a few dinner-table sentences the grandeur and timelessness of Rome, its temporal monuments and abiding purpose—all in words that Celia could understand? He must try.
“Rome is even more wonderful than you’ve heard, Ma. Time runs both ways there—backwards to the beginning of history, and forward to—well, a promise of something world-wide, universal.” He geared his description closer to her needs and understanding. “You should see the churches, hundreds of them, named after saints we never hear about in America—Apollinare, Filippo Neri, Cosmas and Damian—every one a hymn in a different kind of stone.”
“Did you make visits to all the churches, Steve?”
“Many of them, Mother.”
“And the Holy Father—have you seen him, too?”
“Many times. When Benedict XV was crowned, all the seminarians lined the aisles of St. Peter’s. What a procession! Golden candelabra flaming like the tongues of the Paraclete; music brought down straight from the choirs of seraphim, and cardinals of all nations in their great purple copes all swinging censers as Benedict approached the Fisherman’s throne.” Stephen paused to let the color run. “And right in the midst of all this grandeur, what do you suppose happened?”
“What happened, Son?”
“Just when the ritual was becoming almost unbearable, a cowled monk stepped in front of the Pope and halted the whole procession by holding up a little twist of smoldering oakum—a half inch of burning rope.”
Celia’s mind couldn’t grasp the symbolism. “Why did he do that, Stephen?”
“The twist of oakum represented the temporal glories of the world, destined to pass away, burn to ashes in a tick of time.”
Celia sighed. “’Tis wonderful, Son, how you explain things. You always had the gift. Once when you were a little boy you told me how lightning rods work—all so clear that I never forgot it. And do you know,” she added, “I’ve never been afraid of lightning since.”
“That’s because you were well grounded, Ma,” said George. Only Steve got the pun. Bernie, mystified, found solace in buttered gingerbread, and longed for the simplicities of sheet music.
“What do you make of the war, Steve?” asked Dennis. Maybe this fine talker would make a false move. Then the battle could begin.
“We’ll be in it sooner or later,” said Stephen calmly. “American loans to the English are too big, too binding. We can’t let our dear British cousins down, you know.”
Din’s gingerbread stopped halfway to his mouth. “American loans to—to who did you say?”
“To the English. A billion dollars. Don’t they know about it yet in Boston? Isn’t it in the Globe?”
“It is not. And where did you hear this monstrous business?”
“I heard it first from Monsignor Quarenghi, my professor of sacred theology, way back last fall after the British defeat at Mons. It’s his belief that Wilson is being led down an alley by the Morgans, and won’t be able to turn back.” Steve looked around the table. “It’s common talk in every chancellery of Europe. ‘Wilson’s pickle,’ Quarenghi called it—meaning the grim cleavage between the President’s ideals and the position he’s being forced into by the international bankers. Surely I’m not telling you anything new.”
“It’s news to me,” said George.
Steve could see that it was news to Din, too. The idea that America was lending money to the hated lobsterbacks took the starch out of the Fermoyle mustaches, dampened the flints in his eyes. His great fist did not pound the table in rebuttal. Steve’s news had subdued him quite, though how his son could have information not found in the columns of the Globe was something of a puzzler. Din munched his gingerbread, a temporarily broken man.
“Any news from Ellen, Ma?” Steve’s question was the gesture of a duelist firing into the air.
Celia Fermoyle fished in the pocket of her apron and pulled out a letter. “This came in the afternoon mail, Steve. Your father hasn’t seen it yet. Read it out loud to us, Son.”
Steve drew a single sheet of dime-store paper from its envelope and gazed for a moment at his sister Ellen’s familiar handwriting—ethereally light, almost floating, as though the writer were too gentle to bear down even on the nib of a pen.
DEAREST MOTHER AND FATHER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS:
I know you will all share my great joy when I tell you that I am preparing to take my first vows in a few days. With the permission of my Superior, I have chosen the name Humilia Theresa, the first to signify my lowly unworthiness, and the second in honor of the Great Soul who founded our Order. I ask you all to pray for my special intention so that my own poor pleadings will be supplemented by your loving devotions.
My heart is overflowing with mixed feelings of fear and delight as I approach this great moment in my life. Please believe, dear earthly loved ones, that I think of you constantly, but I want you to know also that I am never lonely in the service of One who possesses all my heart. With increasing devotion through Him, to you, I am
Your loving daughter and sister,
ELLEN
In every member of the family Ellen’s letter struck a private chord of feeling. In Dennis Fermoyle it awakened the old unhappiness his daughter had caused when she first entered the convent. It had meant that he was losing her forever; the rule of her order decreed that its members should leave the world behind, never see their families again. It was bitter to lose Ellen’s gentle presence; Din had never reconciled himself to the parting. As for Celia, she worried constantly about Ellen’s weak lungs. How could such a sickly girl stand up under the stern Carmelite regime? Florrie, though she couldn’t admit it, had experienced a definite feeling of relief when Ellen left for the convent; it meant that another rival for Din’s affection was out of the way.
Stephen caught the note of ecstatic rapture rising from the cheap gray paper. Here, authentic and
rare, was the voice of the true mystic whose goal was to lose her own identity in a larger Being, to become a drop of water in the vaster sea of God’s love.
“I hope her health holds out,” Celia was saying. “Walking without shoes on those cold floors. And the long fasts they go on, too.”
Steve comforted her. “Don’t worry, Ma. The genuine mystic is the toughest thing in the world. Why, St. Theresa practically never ate—but listen now to what she did.” Father Steve launched into a description of St. Theresa’s life and achievements. “She reformed the Carmelites, built convents, found time to write her autobiography, and all this, mind you, while she was in such bodily agony that they had to carry her around in a sheet.”
“She must have been a very holy woman,” said Celia.
“She was more than a holy woman. She was a saint. A genius, too. Sanctity is only part of the secret. Theresa was a creative artist as great as Raphael, Shakespeare, Dante, or any of those fellows who moved the world.”
The names meant nothing to anyone but George. Only Celia’s desire to hear her priest-son keep on talking prompted her question, “We don’t seem to have any saints these days. Why not, Steve?”
Celia could always bring out the exhibitionism in her oldest son.
“Well, Ma, it seems that sainthood as a career fell off rather sharply, oh, around 1400. Plenty of reasons why. For instance, when Petrarch stood tiptoe on a little hill and conceived the notion of dedicating his poems to Laura—an earthly mistress instead of a heavenly one—a different set of values began to prevail. Geocentric, earthbound values, reflected in the paintings of Giotto and Masaccio. That’s odd, too, when you come to think of it, because very soon afterwards Galileo clearly demonstrated that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe at all.”
For a moment Steve glimpsed the lean brown profile of Monsignor Quarenghi nodding encouragement; this was the kind of thinking his teacher liked. But the vision faded as Steve felt his immediate audience falling away from him. Ashamed of his intellectualism, Father Stephen subsided. He was not talking to Quarenghi now, but to some rather ordinary people that he happened to love very much. This was no time for showy learning. His words and thoughts from now on would have to be those that simple minds and hearts could understand. The winged horse of speculation must put on the harness of the parish hack.
“Let’s have a little music, Bernie,” he suggested.
“A God-marked and constructive idea,” said Din.
George peeked at the kitchen clock. “I’ve got to be ducking out, Stuffy, or I’ll miss my class. Sorry to bust this up.” He kissed his mother, swept up an armful of books. Steve followed him to the front door. “Let’s see a lot of each other, Georgie,” he said, shaking his younger brother’s hand.
“As much as you can take, Father.” He put his arm affectionately around Steve, then ran down the front stoop.
RITA, with Dr. John Byrne behind her, came in around nine o’clock. Dark like the rest of the Fermoyles, she was slenderer than Florrie, not so fragile as Ellen or so beautiful as Mona. But of all Steve’s sisters she was his favorite, his counterpart, and his emotional equal. A public-school teacher, Rita struck the good balance between sense and sensibility not uncommon among American girls of the middle class. Pleasure rayed from her face and voice as she threw her arms around her brother in a full-sized hug.
“Stevie… it’s so good to feel you. You’re so handsome. The girls of St. Margaret’s will be mad for you.”
“That’s what you tell all the young curates,” laughed Steve. “Hello, John.” He held out a cordial hand to Dr. Byrne, tall, bony, and too pale with the labors of internship; the seal of undramatic honesty was on Dr. John’s forehead. A good man to have in the family.
“Nice to have you back again, Father Steve.” Having said so much, Dr. Byrne quietly sat down on the sofa in order to give the highly charged Fermoyle current a freer opportunity to flow about the room.
The current leapt in polar exchange from Rita to Stephen. There was no rivalry between these two; each supplemented and advanced the other without competitive tension. She showed Steve her engagement ring, a thin gold circlet with a tiny chip of a diamond clutched in a Tiffany setting. Stephen had never seen a smaller stone. He thought of the old wheeze, “Love is stone-blind,” but could not mar Rita’s happiness by repeating it. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured.
“We’re getting married as soon as John finishes at the Maternity.”
Steve addressed himself to Dr. John, “Isn’t that one of the best internships in Boston? I thought the Back Bay Brahmins kept those jobs for themselves.”
“They can’t turn down brains,” said Din. A cramping pain passed upward from his swollen leg veins, pinched his mouth into a grimace. It occurred to him that he had better get into bed before Dr. John’s professional eyes could focus on him too closely. He lowered his leg from the chair and started to rise. Something about his eggshell manner caught Dr. Byrne’s diagnostic eye.
“Veins still troubling you, Mr. Fermoyle?”
“A mere whinge of a twinge now and then.”
Celia, sensing the presence of allies, put in a word. “May the Holy Ghost forgive you, Dennis Fermoyle, for the lie you’ve just spoken.” She turned to Steve. “Lumps big as eggs stand out on his legs, and he’ll do nothing about it.”
“Lumps big as eggs, is it?” said Steve. “If we had a doctor in the house—”
Dr. John Byrne gravely caught the ball. “Varicose veins can be dangerous, Mr. Fermoyle.” He put his hand on Din’s shoulder. “Let’s go upstairs and have a look.”
No escape for Din now. Cross as a mustached bear, he limped upstairs with Steve and Dr. John behind him.
“Get undressed and into bed,” said Dr. Byrne. A moment later his bony fingers and impersonal eyes were moving clinically up and down Dennis Fermoyle’s right leg, noting the blue distended veins, knotted and ugly-looking. He turned Din’s foot this way and that, bent it gently at the ankle, pressed his finger under the arch of Din’s knee.
“This has been neglected too long. You need surgical attention, Mr. Fermoyle.”
“In a hospital?”
“You’d get better care in a hospital, Mr. Fermoyle. There’s really not much to the operation. The Mayo brothers report success with it—and I’ve had good results with a few cases myself.” Dr. Byrne was one of those surgeons who believed in explaining things to a patient. “We excise, that is, cut out the damaged vein, and keep you in bed till the circulation finds its way back to the heart through smaller veins. The whole business won’t take more than two weeks.”
“Two weeks!” Violent agitation seized Dennis Fermoyle. He tried to rise from his bed. “No, no, I couldn’t stay away two weeks.”
Steve pressed a restraining hand against his father’s chest. “Look at it this way, Pa. It’s either two weeks now—or,” he turned to Dr. Byrne for confirmation, “or a permanent lay-up with open sores and crutches maybe. You can’t run a trolley car on crutches. Which’d you rather be, a martyr or a motorman?”
Din temporized. “There’s a cost to these things,” he mumbled.
“The hospital bed will be two dollars a day,” said Dr. Byrne. “You’ll get no bill from me.”
“That’s kind of you, Doctor. But—“ Din struggled to get off the surgical hook.
“But what?” asked Steve. He sensed that something other than the expense was troubling his father. Something as yet unstated, and not plain stubbornness, either.
“How about an elastic stocking?” The craft of the devil was in Din Fermoyle tonight.
Dr. Byrne wasn’t the man to talk a patient into an operation. “In my judgment your leg has passed the elastic-stocking stage. Still, if you want to try one”—he undipped a pen from his vest pocket, wrote a name and address on a card—“go see this fellow McGuire. He’ll fit you.” Dropping the card on the bureau, Dr. John left the room.
Alone with his father, Steve boiled over. “Pa, you’re as stubbo
rn as O’Shaughnessy’s pig. What’s all this nonsense about elastic stockings and expense? Tell me now, what’s really holding you back?”
Dennis Fermoyle grinned up at his son. “Is it in the confessional we are?”
“The confessional of father-and-son confidence. What is it, Pa?”
Dennis took his son’s fine hand between his calloused palms. “Sit down on the bed, Stevie, and listen to what I’ll be telling you. It may be that you won’t understand—though it’s no fault in a young man, even though he’s a priest, to lack understanding. That comes only with age.”
Din hesitated. “The fact is, Steve, that Marty Timmins, since his wife passed away, has taken to knocking down company nickels.”
“What’s this got to do with your varicose veins?”
Din gazed at the ceiling. “You don’t know, Son, the thing that grows up between men who’ve run the same car for a million miles. They lean against each other. Even dumb animals pulling the same beer wagon know the feeling. Well, as long as I keep my eye bent on Marty, he runs straight and honest. But if I were to leave him alone a couple of weeks, he’d begin knocking down company nickels, and get caught at it. Lose his job. They’d send him to prison. That’s why I must stay on the job with him, Steve.”
“You’ve talked to Marty about all this—warned him what will happen?”
“Many times. He weeps, promises he won’t even let himself be tempted. Then next day he comes and tells me that he’s tempted again. It’s a running fight, Steve, and Marty may fail in the battle. It gives me the good feeling, Son, to help him over the bad places.”
A muteness came over the ready tongue of Father Stephen Fermoyle. What could he say to this large stubborn man on the bed? No counsel would solve the problem of Marty’s temptation, or free Din from his duty to support a stumbling friend. He wondered what Monsignor Quarenghi would have made of the problem? Was there anything in Aquinas or Liguori applicable to the case? Steve’s glance traveled about the shabby room and came to rest on the small ebony crucifix on the faded wallpaper above his father’s bed.
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