3
At first, Sheila Lynch had thought of it as second best, making someone else’s child their own, but that thought was quickly erased by the elation of being a mother. She had been devastated when she miscarried twice and then was told that she would never have a baby. Ever since she had ceased being a little girl there had been warnings about getting pregnant, from the nuns and from her mother, not that the message was ever that direct. A girl should save herself for the man she would marry. Her body was a temple to be kept immaculate until marriage, and then what had been a danger would become a beautiful opportunity. Oh, how wonderful she had felt when she first became pregnant and George was as expectant as she was. His decision to take a residency at the Mayo Clinic in pathology had sent a chill through her.
“Pathology!”
“It’s lab work, mainly. I love working in a lab.”
Originally he had intended to do graduate work in chemistry, but the pull of medicine was strong. Pathology represented, in a way, the best of both worlds. The years in Rochester had been like a vacation. They lived out of town in a huge house with enough land to be a farm. They had kept horses then, and three dogs. George received an offer to stay at the clinic and teach the pathology he had learned there. It had been a very difficult decision, but he had a long talk with her father and decided instead to join a group of pathologists in Fox River.
It was in Rochester that Sheila became pregnant for the first time, but not even the resources of the famed clinic could save her baby. The next year, she became pregnant again, and after her second miscarriage she was told her fate. It was like being told she really wasn’t a woman. Part of the sadness was due to her parents’ obvious longing for grandchildren. Now their only hope lay with her younger brother, Maurice, and what kind of hope was that?
There had followed several very bad years. At first she refused to accept what she had been told and sent up a barrage of prayers, asking for a miracle. Wasn’t every pregnancy a miracle of sorts? In the end, even God had seemed against her. She thought bitterly that she might just as well have become a nun. George had been so patient with her, in his inarticulate way, that somehow she got through the terrible despondency. But the first time he mentioned adoption she didn’t speak to him for a week. She realized that she was waiting for him to bring it up again. He didn’t, so she did.
“I suppose we could get a black baby easily.”
“Or Chinese.”
When she was a little girl, Sheila had an African-American doll, not that it was called that in those days. The thought of that doll becoming a living breathing child filled her with mixed feelings. It would have seemed like an extension of the charity work they were already involved in.
“I suppose it takes forever anyway.” Adoption agencies were notoriously more demanding than God in allotting children to couples.
“Not necessarily.”
One of the places they volunteered was the Women’s Care Center, devoted to talking young women in trouble out of getting an abortion. The center could arrange for the Lynches to adopt one of the saved babies. Sheila agreed that they should look into it.
The girl whose baby they would have was so beautiful it was impossible to imagine that the man who had made her pregnant would not marry her.
“That’s not unusual,” Irene told them. Irene managed the center, inspired to do so by an abortion she had lived to regret.
“Oh.”
“Madeline could decide to keep the baby.”
“A single mother?”
“It’s not unheard of now. Anything is better than abortion.”
“When will she decide?”
“After she meets you.”
“I couldn’t ask her to give up her baby!”
“Then don’t. Just get to know her.”
Sheila murmured, “I already know her.”
“I mean really know her.”
“Have you told her…”
“Wasn’t that all right?”
Suddenly Sheila felt manipulated. All they had done was talk about the possibility of taking some baby; there had been no decision, no promise.
“It was all right,” George said. Sheila was flooded with emotion. She herself desperately wanted a baby, but she wanted her own. Hadn’t she realized that George, too, had lived through the months of her pregnancies with visions of fatherhood dancing in his head? Of course he had. It helped Sheila to tell herself that she was doing this for George.
Their conversation with Madeline had never touched on the reason they were having the conversation. It was an hour of chitchat, about everything in the world but the baby Madeline was carrying. How must it have been for the girl to think that the life she was carrying would be separated from her forever at birth? Sheila tried to think of Madeline as a daughter, but that was impossible. She wasn’t three years older than the girl. So she imagined Madeline was her sister, to whose aid she was coming in time of trouble. What had Madeline imagined?
“Taking the baby home,” Irene said. “And facing her parents with a bundle in her arms.”
“Do they know?”
Irene shook her head. How was it possible for parents not to know their daughter was expecting a baby? It turned out they lived in California. Madeline was a student at Northwestern; as far as her parents knew she was dutifully going to classes. That was what Madeline told them in her letters home.
“She likes you, Sheila,” Irene said. “She says you will be the mother she can’t be.”
Sheila burst into tears that washed away any reluctance she had to take Madeline’s baby. The last time Sheila saw Madeline, she was nearing term. Sheila took her in her arms, and they sat for a long time in silence.
“Thank you,” Madeline said, and began to sob.
“Thank you,” Sheila said, and she, too, was crying. Two weeping women who would never see one another again.
The transfer was almost sleight-of-hand. George assisted at the birth, and the baby was taken away immediately before Madeline came out of the haze. It was brought to the waiting Sheila.
“You have a girl,” the nurse said.
George came out in street clothes, and they drove away with their baby.
Fifteen-year-old Maurice, fresh from his most recent expulsion from school, was godfather at the baptism, at her parents’ insistence; they thought it might help him grow up. But afterward he had taken the second cousin who was godmother out to his car, where they had been surprised in a sweaty embrace. Of course the Dolans blamed the girl. Why were others always leading Maurice astray?
4
If Marie Murkin had to pick the alpha and omega of the people who made use of the senior center Edna Hospers ran in what once had been the parish school, she wouldn’t hesitate, not for a minute. It would be Martin Sisk and Dr. Henry Dolan, and Martin would be the end of the alphabet. The rectory housekeeper often lamented the liturgical revolution that had changed the Church of her not so pious youth into, well, no need to go into that, but one thing she didn’t miss was altar boys. There had still been a gang of them when she came to work at St. Hilary’s, fussed over by the Franciscans, little urchins transformed into miniature friars when they vested to do their duties. It had been the Fe Fi Fo Fums—as Marie had irreverently dubbed the OFMs in the privacy of her own mind—who insisted on a surplice with a cowl, as if the kids, too, were friars. Part of their training seemed to be learning how to treat the housekeeper with the same merry contempt the priests showed. Honestly, there were days when Marie went up the back stairs to her room and looked in the mirror to see if she really was invisible. But she had toughed it out and fought the temptation to leave on a fiery note, and in the fullness of time the Franciscans left and Father Roger Dowling was made pastor, so the parish was back in the hands of a real priest. It seemed a clear case of virtue rewarded.
“What do you know of Martin Sisk, Marie?” Father Dowling had asked some weeks before.
“What’s he done?”
The pastor la
ughed, but not like a Franciscan. “He wants to serve Mass.”
“That’s your department,” she said, after an icy silence.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“It would be a mistake.”
“Why?”
“I should tell you he spoke to me first.”
“And that disqualifies him?”
Well, it had almost made Marie overlook the man’s faults. She was not immune to a reminder that in a sense she had seniority over the pastor, and Martin had been what Father Dowling would have called unctuous.
“Why don’t you like him, Marie? He never left the parish.”
“He couldn’t afford to.”
“That can’t be the reason. Tell me.”
Where to begin? Of course, she hadn’t known Martin as a boy, but he had retained the look of the urchins who had been one of her crosses. At first she thought he was reading her mind when he said he would like to serve Mass.
“A priest should be assisted, Mrs. Murkin. The Mass loses something when the priest does everything for himself.”
Marie bristled at this implicit criticism of the pastor. She explained to Martin that with the changes in the parish, there just weren’t a lot of little boys around anymore. Or girls either, she added, as if to sound him out on the subject of altar girls.
“I used to be an altar boy here.”
“With the Franciscans.”
“Of course.”
“Father Dowling doesn’t belong to an order.”
“The cardinal does.”
They actually had a little argument, Martin presuming to lecture her on the varieties of priest. “A religious takes vows. That makes a difference.”
“The Franciscans were still here when I came.”
“Mrs. Murkin, please don’t think I’m criticizing Father Dowling. Do you think I should talk to him?”
“About taking vows?”
Martin simpered. “Would you raise the matter with him?”
“Maybe you’d better do it yourself.”
Afterward, she had thought of a preemptive strike, warning the pastor about Martin. It was difficult to know how to put her objections, though, so she had waited in silence, and prayed. And Martin had spoken to Father Dowling. The one great consolation was that the pastor saw the wisdom of consulting her on the matter.
“The camel in the tent,” Marie said tersely.
Father Dowling stopped in the process of relighting his pipe and looked at her through clouds of smoke. Marie loved the smell of pipe tobacco, not that she would say so. How could she then complain of the mess it made, tobacco scattered about, ashtrays overflowing—those usually containing Phil Keegan’s cigar ends as well.
“He smokes?”
“You know what I mean. Ask Edna.” This last was an inspiration. If there was anything Marie and Edna agreed on, it was Martin Sisk. “When he isn’t talking about his late wife he is flirting with the widows.” It was thus that Edna captured Martin Sisk in a sentence.
Martin spoke to the pastor, and Father Dowling went on saying Mass without a server. When it was clear the danger had passed, Marie asked what had happened.
“I found out he has arthritis.”
“Does he?” Marie had arthritis herself, but in Martin’s case it seemed a punishment.
“He said Dr. Dolan might want to serve Mass, too.”
“That would have been different.”
“Maybe I should agree.”
It was a tempting thought, but not if alpha meant omega, too. The Dolans had been members of the parish and been married in the church, but affluence had taken them to the suburbs along with so many others. That and the Franciscans, or so Marie liked to think. Of course, the Dolans’ connection with St. Hilary’s antedated her own time as rectory housekeeper. Now, retirement and nostalgia had drawn them to the senior center.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Marie advised.
“And camels?”
5
Marie looked around the door of the study and announced that Dr. Dolan wanted to see him, unable to conceal her delight.
“So you make house calls?” Father Dowling said when Marie ushered the doctor in.
“Not likely. I was an anesthesiologist.”
Baldness had become a kind of fashion, but not every boy who shaved his head had the noble shape of Henry Dolan’s, high domed, seemingly tanned. Father Dowling was tall, but Dolan was taller.
“You still smoke?” Dolan said.
“You make it sound temporary. Please sit down.” Behind him, Marie pulled the door closed.
“Everyone smoked when I was young.”
“Nine out of ten doctors.”
“You remember that.”
This initial exchange had not been a guarded sermon. Dolan brought a large hand downward over his face, stopped it, and looked at Father Dowling over his fingers.
“My family has a problem, Father.”
The best response to that was receptive silence.
Dolan took a breath. “I had best start at the beginning.”
He did, and went on to the end. At first his words had a rehearsed air, but soon he was speaking from the heart. His granddaughter was adopted, something that had never seemed to bother her before, but now she wanted to know who her real parents were. He repeated the phrase.
“You can imagine what that phrase does to my daughter and son-in-law.”
“What explains the sudden interest?”
“She has become serious about a young man.”
“Ah.”
“I have to tell you that I understand why she would want to know. Of course I sympathize with my daughter, but it isn’t a criticism of her and her husband. I’m sure it isn’t intended to be. Martha is a wonderful young woman. I couldn’t possibly love her more than I do.”
“I suppose it would be easy for her to find out nowadays.”
“Not in her case. There wasn’t any agency involved. It was all quite legal, of course.” He paused. “Do you know Amos Cadbury?”
“Amos and I have become friends.”
“He took care of everything.”
“Then I know it was all legal.”
“Legal but informal.”
Other people’s problems are sometimes difficult to see as problems. Why should the Lynches feel devastated because their adopted daughter, now a young woman, wanted to know her true origins? If she was about to marry, their relationship would change in any case. No doubt the young woman’s curiosity seemed an implied criticism, as if she regarded the Lynches as impostors.
“My wife is almost as upset as my daughter.”
It seemed plausible that women would feel more strongly than men about such a thing. Father Dowling said this aloud.
“Not than George Lynch.”
“The foster father?”
Dolan winced. “I have never heard him called that before.”
“St. Joseph was a foster father.”
“I don’t think George would take comfort from that.”
“So what do you think will happen?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He smiled, an unhappy smile. “That is why I hesitated about coming to you. Whatever happens will happen, I suppose. Difficult as it might be in her case, I am sure that, with the proper help, Martha could find out what she wants to know.”
“Is your daughter your only child?”
“Oh no. There is Maurice.” He seemed to consider saying more but added only, “He is another story.”
Portrait of a man whose hopes for his children had been but imperfectly realized. Father Dowling caught the implications of that “another story.”
“I could talk to Amos Cadbury.”
“Would you do that? I thought of going to him myself but dreaded the role of the interfering grandfather. It would be different in your case.”
“I will see Amos. And then we can talk again.”
Dolan actually seemed relieved when he stood. He paused. “Sometimes I think of
taking up smoking again myself. It can scarcely affect my longevity.”
“I won’t tell the surgeon general.”
* * *
Two days later, Father Dowling had dinner with his old friend Amos Cadbury, often referred to as the dean of the Fox River bar. Father Dowling mentioned the Dolans and then asked about their son.
Amos sighed. “Ah, Maurice.”
The account Amos gave suggested that he had given thought to the difficulties of his friend Dr. Henry Dolan. “Father, the dark side of doing well when one has risen from the most modest of beginnings is that one’s children are apt to be spoiled by the lack of a sense of insecurity.”
The Dolans had been blessed in Sheila, Amos added, and George was in every way the son-in-law Henry would have chosen. A medical man, soon at the top of his specialty, a solid and faithful husband. But no life is without its trials, and for the Lynches it was Sheila’s inability to carry a child to term. That great gap in their lives had been closed by the adoption of little Martha, and both Henry and George had been present at the birth, Henry administering the anesthesia, George just standing by. Henry had told Amos in a husky voice that he would never forget the image of George taking the newborn child in his arms. What a contrast between his son-in-law and his son.
Maurice had managed to get into DePaul after Henry had a talk with the university’s director of development. “Of course, I wrote a letter of recommendation,” Amos said. “Ah, the letters of recommendation I have written for that boy.”
“Boy.”
“Of course you’re right. He will soon be forty.”
Henry Dolan’s name was soon added to those supporting the university fund drive. Maurice hadn’t lasted a full year. Perhaps it was just as well. Not even a father’s blindness could enable Henry to imagine Maurice as a doctor.
“The fact is they had spoiled him. What want or whim of Maurice’s had ever been denied? I suppose that at first it seemed innocent indulgence, and always there had been the hidden hand of the father making things easy for the son.” Amos had seen on the wall of Maurice’s room a photograph of him in Wrigley Field, in the center of the picture, surrounded by the Cubs, ten years old and wearing a uniform. Half the players had signed the picture. There were signed baseballs as well, even one from the White Sox. Maurice had loved uniforms, even the military uniform of the school in Wisconsin from which he was expelled for misdemeanors neither Vivian nor Henry wanted to hear about. They agreed that the discipline at the school was foolishly demanding, certainly not Maurice’s cup of tea.
Blood Ties Page 2