In the Still of the Night: Tales to Lock Your Doors By

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “He’s a good man, Kate. There! I’ve called you Kate, and it didn’t hurt a bit. Or did it you?”

  “No, monsignor,” she said, more stiffly than she’d intended.

  He chortled. “I know when I’ve been put in my place. Well, as I was saying, I hope I’m not taking advantage of you, asking you to come and see the work in progress.” They were standing beneath the scaffolding, before the mural of the crucifixion, the figures life-size. The garments and much of the background had been vividly repainted, so that the unfinished hands, feet and faces were pale and strangely ghost-like; the heads put her in mind of executioner’s hoods. “You don’t think the colors are too gaudy?” the old man ventured.

  “Monsignor, shall I speak frankly?”

  “Would I ask you otherwise?”

  “You’ve put the restoration into the hands of a man the museum recommended. He’s far more competent than I am.” Kate was several notches above amateur status, but she was keenly aware that if it weren’t for her husband’s patronage, his financial influence, her standing in the art world wouldn’t be much above that of a dilettante. Furthermore, she suspected the monsignor knew it as well as she did. He was courting favor with Martin. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, she said, “We’ve got to remember the restorer is working toward the original colors, not the faded pictures we’ve grown used to.”

  “You must be right. I only know what I like and I like what I’m used to. I’ll get accustomed to this if I live long enough—and if I’m not shipped out.”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Kate said.

  “Wouldn’t they now? Just watch in the next months. It will be me or Father Morrissey. I’ll go to pasture, but they have their eye on him as a comer. And it’s time. These young priests now—not that he’s a youngster—but he goes along with the new generation: to them the priesthood is a profession, not a divine calling.”

  Kate murmured something. Her lips had gone dry. Her heart had gone dry. Not that she and Dan were unaware of the possibility of his being transferred. She sometimes thought Dan prayed for it, since he still prayed. Or so he said. Now and then they assured one another that they had no guilt, as though it were not bred in their bones. A parish of his own, what he had always wanted before his collision with her. Now it would be a kind of solution, however desperately she dreaded it. She waited while the monsignor stepped carefully over the drop sheets and turned off the floodlights.

  “We’ll go bankrupt keeping him in light,” the monsignor said, returning to her side. “But I don’t suppose Michelangelo was bargain basement either.”

  “I’d better get back and relieve Father Morrissey,” Kate said.

  “Did you ever meet Melodosi?” the monsignor asked, staying the course of his own thoughts. “It’s funny. I thought you knew him, too.”

  Kate waited for him to let her go, giving no sign of her impatience. The light of day had all but disappeared in the November twilight, the color of the stained glass high in the chancel window all but vanished. A stooped, shuffling, white-haired old man was silhouetted against the glow of many votive lights as he approached the statue of Virgin and child. He selected a taper and lit yet another candle among the glowing bank of them. The monsignor detained her, watching the petitioner. Kate could not remember having ever lighted a candle in church. It was a practice belonging to an earlier time than hers, or to a different class of people of whom, for some undefined reason, she felt envious at the moment.

  The monsignor cleared his throat and a few seconds later a series of noisy clangs reverberated through the church as the petitioner dropped coins into the metal box.

  The monsignor chortled quietly. “There’ll be a few pesos in that lot,” he whispered. Then: “Kneel down and I’ll give you my blessing.”

  Kate went down on one knee and made the sign of the cross in unison with his.

  The monsignor left her at the door to the passageway between church and school, and went on himself to the vestry and office, passing behind the main altar.

  She felt choked, as though something in her chest was blocked. She sucked in the dead air of the passageway. It was such a little distance to the school door and yet the fire light above the door seemed remote. Two low-wattage bulbs caged in ceiling outlets scarcely lit a place already without shadows. No wonder it was called the tunnel. She wanted to hurry, to escape the echo of her own footfalls—if that was what she was hearing—but an inner warning held her back. The last few feet and she crashed into the brass bar that ought to have opened the door, but it did not budge. Again and again she pushed, but it was solidly in place, locked tight. She drew a deep breath and listened for the sound of the children: their room was not far from the door. But she did not hear a murmur. Could Dan have sent them home? And if he had, would he not have come this way himself and waited for her in the passage?

  It came to her then that there had been a recent change in the lock-up system. Looters had come through the church and vandalized some of the classrooms. Now, at a given hour, you could pass from the school to the church, but not from the church to the school. Her panic eased and she turned back. She opened the church door to confront a figure palely lighted and seeming about to enter the passage she was leaving. He turned abruptly and went the way the monsignor had gone, passing behind the altar.

  “Father?” she called after him. It might have been one of the other assistants. He did not return. She had only seen his face darkly, but she was sure it was the same she had seen reflected in the museum door that morning.

  Morrissey was waiting for her, alone in the classroom she was allowed to use for her after-school art class. They both spoke at once, Kate asking where the children were, and Morrissey saying she’d been gone a long time.

  “You look terrible,” he said then. “What happened?”

  Kate shook her head. “Nothing. I take it you dismissed the children?”

  “They dismissed themselves, the little villains. I sent the one called José to the boy’s room. He’d wet himself. And when he didn’t come back, the youngster who sat next to him said he’d gone home. How she knew I don’t know. I’m no good with children, Kate, and Monsignor Carey knows it. But every chance he gets, he throws me in with them.”

  “Daniel to the young lions,” Kate said.

  “It’s no joke. That José or Rafael or whatever his name is a troublemaker.”

  “He’s not,” Kate said. “He’s full of imagination and his home life is dreadful. He has an older brother he adores, but who beats up on him regularly.”

  Morrissey remembered how the youngster had not even flinched when he had come near hitting him. It crossed his mind that the boy wanted to be struck. “What did the monsignor have to say? I have to go in a minute.”

  “The troublemaker is the youngster who tattles on him all the time, Annabelle.”

  Morrissey was impatient. “Do you think the Old Man suspects us? That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t think he does. If he did, I think he’d come right out and ask what was going on between us.”

  “Just like that,” Morrissey said, mocking her. “And what would you say to that?”

  “Nothing, monsignor.”

  She could premeditate her lies, Morrissey thought. She was more honest than he was, who, at best, could figure out ways to evade the truth. “I must go,” he said again. “I can go through the tunnel. You had to go around, didn’t you?” She nodded. “Don’t hang around here, Kate. These days you never know. Dear God, this place is depressing. No wonder kids grow up hating school.”

  “You’d better go, Dan. As you say, you never know.” The only sound in the building was the pipes, the heat going on or off.

  Neither of them had the impulse to embrace, to throw away caution, as was so often the case. As soon as the heavy door to the passageway closed behind him, he wanted to go back and at least say he loved her as he had never hoped to love a woman. But the day so full of promise in the morning and
its brief ecstasy in the afternoon had come to an end in a cold, bleak classroom under the merciless eyes of a too-curious child.

  Kate slept with her husband that night. They had gone out to dinner with a client of Martin’s. She had offered to make dinner, but Martin preferred a restaurant where, frankly, Kate could carry the principal burden of entertaining a man not easily entertained. She flirted with him openly, flatteringly, or as Martin put it, like a courtesan. It was intended as a compliment. There were not many things Martin liked better than to be the envy of his peers. She took a painful pleasure in making love with him when he was already so greatly pleased with her. She was great at giving pleasure, she thought ironically, and making do herself. The rites of married love had become mostly an agony. She had not reached the peak of self-deception where she could substitute one man for another in her fantasy. Afterwards, when Martin had returned to his own bed, contented and full of sleep, she was free to dream of Dan and a life with him.

  Martin soon was breathing with deep regularity, while sleep was beyond her. She got up and went to the adjoining sitting room where, when Martin was away, she used to come up early in the night and read. The house had seemed too big. Now it was not big enough. At one of the deep, high windows with the shutters folded into the wall, she parted the drapes and stared out at the night.

  There was no longer the street traffic after midnight in the East Nineties such as used to continue into the early hours of morning. An occasional taxi, a furtive pedestrian, drunk or lost or homeless, with all his earthly goods stacked in a grocery cart headed for a bench along the Central Park wall. What would it be like to be in need, to be among the pitied or among the despised, an object of surreptitious nudges? They had been cast out of paradise, she remembered jesting to Dan in the museum. But suppose they were discovered? They must not let that happen. If there was to be a future for them, they must themselves take the first step at bringing it about. They must salvage some small dignity at least. Theirs was not the first such love in history, only the first for them. The children would understand, Sheila certainly, in time. And Martin: she could name a half-dozen women who would open their arms to him. His hurt would pass, perhaps even his outrage. Dan could make a good confession and petition the archdiocese, the Vatican if necessary, to be released from his vows. They had spoken of it: such release could only happen after a period of separation from her and from the most sacred of his duties. It would not happen, she knew that. Dan would rather wait and pray for the day that priests could marry, so self-persuaded the day was coming he could grant himself premature indulgence. And to tell the truth and shame the devil, she too preferred to wait. Be honest, Kate: now is forever.

  Her thoughts became as a thousand tongues babbling half-finished sentences from her subconscious. Try as she might, she could not hold those flashes of memory she wanted most to dwell on now—their first touch, love first spoken, promises, longings shared, such as for the sweet peace they had never known of sleep together after love. She stared at the street lamp beneath her window, to hold onto that longing at least. But it became a halo, then a face: it might have been the image of St. Francis as on the prayer card that memorialized her mother’s death. She could not hold to that either: it had become the face as she had glimpsed it in the museum door, the face confronting her at the tunnel door. The pounding in her ears had to be her own heartbeat and not the rhythm of running footsteps. When she closed her eyes, opened them, and looked again, there was only the street lamp and its misty halo.

  At dawn, Martin, an early riser, found her curled up in an afghan, deep in a sedated sleep on the divan.

  Most Sundays Father Morrissey said the Spanish language mass at twelve-thirty. The monsignor insisted. He was very proud of him, his non-Hispanic assistant pastor who had learned the language of the growing majority of their congregation. When Morrissey pulled a blooper during his homily, the Old Man said of the barely suppressed giggles, “Never mind. It keeps them alert waiting to catch you up.” These Sundays Morrissey had more to overcome than his mistakes in Spanish grammar. He had no choice, he told himself, but to say mass: the people expected it of him, and too, a priest, once ordained, never lost the power of his priesthood, no matter into what delinquency he strayed. He could be forbidden to use the power, but he could not be deprived of it, and the bread and wine he consecrated in the Lord’s name became the living presence as truly as if St. Peter himself stood at the altar.

  Robed in the purple of Advent, he waited at the back of the church with the new priest and the readers and servers taking their places for the processional. In the sanctuary, the musicians were tuning up, the choir arranging chairs to their liking. He watched the latecomers scrambling for seats. The youngster José came with his mother. If the boy had not looked around at the assembling processional, Morrissey might have happily missed him. His mother dragged him forward and then pushed him ahead of her into a pew. While she covered her face in prayer, he turned and stared back blatantly at the priest.

  To Morrissey’s dismay, Kate entered the church. She was alone. He had never seen her at this mass before. She generally attended the eight o’clock with Martin or the ten-thirty if she came on her own. If she saw him, she gave no sign. She sat near the back, but close enough to José for him to see and recognize her. Surreptitiously, his hand half-hidden by his shoulder, he waved at her. The little demon had a crush on her. Whether or not Kate saw him, the priest couldn’t tell. She gave no sign of it. He tried then to convince himself that José might well be waving to someone else. Everybody knew everybody in their community, and the latecomers were still scrambling into the church, dodging the barricades set up to protect the restoration riggings. The monsignor himself was routing traffic.

  The musicians struck up, the pandereta, the maraca, the guitars, and the fervent, harsh voices of the choir. As the monsignor had said to him once: if they couldn’t beguile you into heaven with their singing, they could scare you half the way. The congregation rose and sang with the choir as the procession got under way, white-robed servers, girls and boys, readers, the new associate just up from Puerto Rico, and the censor-swinging acolyte, laying down a smoke screen before him.

  Morrissey sat, three-quarter face to the congregation, the young associate at his side. There was so little for the celebrant to do in the contemporary mass, so much of the ritual given up to the lay participants, with a solacing share to the women. Clouded with incense before reading the gospel, he lost his concentration. There would be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars … the roaring of the sea, men fainting for fear and for expectation … they will see the son of man coming upon a cloud with great power and majesty…. He stumbled over the Spanish word, and the new priest whispered it, the loudspeaker picking up his voice as he had not intended.

  With the offertory of the mass finally upon him and with effort beyond what he had been equal to until that moment, he said the words of the consecration—This is my body … this is my blood—words he knew the Lord himself would keep pure.

  As far as he could see, Kate was not among those who thronged to the sanctuary steps to receive communion. He would not have expected her to, but suddenly before him was José, his small hands fisted at his side when the priest offered him the wafer, his lips, too, tightly closed against it. The boy’s mother prodded and scolded him from behind. He had come to the table but he would not partake. His eyes were coals of defiance. Father Morrissey moved to the nearest server and changed places with him. There was only a small disruption until José’s mother grabbed her son’s arm and flung him away, crying out, “Perdido! Perdido!” Lost: it had the ring of a flamenco lament, and it carried through the church. José spat in the direction of the altar and ran from the steps.

  Kate could not see what had happened at the altar steps, but those who had seen it were calling out condemnation after the fleeing youngster. She would have been willing to swear that José Mercado was not a bad boy. Troubled, yes, and obviously now in trouble. S
he left the church, trying to draw as little attention as possible. She was well known as Martin’s wife and for her own outreach as well. She squeezed the numerous hands extended to her, and made it to the vestibule before the mass was finished. She ought not to have come to this mass. Besides her own unease, it was not fair to Dan, and encountering the monsignor on the church steps, she tried to think of an excuse for being there at that hour.

  The monsignor had something else on his mind. “Did you notice the youngster flying out of the church? I tried to lay hold of him. Slippery as an eel. Do you know what he did? He spat out the sacrament. They’re not being well taught, you know. That one should never have made his first communion.”

  Kate, not about to debate the boy’s demeanor with the monsignor, gave a nod to indicate concern and escaped. Someone was following her. She knew an instant of fear before she realized it was José. She waited for him and they walked in silence for almost another block before Kate finally said, “Do you want to tell me what’s the matter?”

  José shook his head and they walked on. He was wearing a fake leather jacket, frayed at the cuffs and at least two sizes too big for him; the T-shirt underneath was thin, the red apple on its front badly faded. His jeans were clean and his sneakers had been new at the start of the school year. His dark hair rose and fell as the wind tossed through it.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Kate asked. She was wishing herself that she had worn a sweater beneath her coat.

  Again he shook his head. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. They walked on.

  They had almost reached Kate’s building. She wondered if it was wise to let him know where she lived, and then decided, wise or not, it showed some respect for his fiery young person. Once in class she had boosted his ego by calling him a young Matisse and showing him pictures of the artist’s windows. He took everything he did in class home with him after that. Or said he did. He liked to please her. He spoke English as well as any of the children. His mother spoke Spanish. His older brother spoke both languages, but beat José if he did not speak English. José loved him, anyway.