If stripped of the clothing of his profession—the black suit, white band collar—the priest could be any professional. An accountant. Banker. Teacher. Salesman. Well, broadly speaking, I supposed he was all of those. Just not on my damned turf. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m Father Paul Gervase.” Given his slight build, the priest’s voice was deeper, more resonant than I expected but still held the softness and lack of aggression I associated with the lower strata of the male Catholic hierarchy. I couldn’t imagine why Sophie would think I’d ever talk to this inconsequential functionary, this man apparently not bothered by the prospect of time squandered on a fool’s errand.
“From Holy Apostles,” the priest said. He hesitated. “I, ah, I don’t know if you recall me.”
I stared blankly, waited.
“I celebrated the Mass for your daughter. For Lucy.” He ran a palm over his head, smoothed his hair flat. His color was pale, tinged with gray, the look of a man with a disease not yet diagnosed. There was a saffron-colored smudge on his left lapel, a color I associated with the pollen of daylilies. A shade of marigold or cadmium.
It took a minute until I was sure my voice would be steady. In fact, I barely remembered the priest, but then I’d managed to block all details of Lucy’s funeral, a Catholic service I had agreed to only because it meant so much to Sophie. “Yes?” I said and steeled myself for the inevitable opening, the empty words, the unbearably condescending expression of pity or sympathy wrapped in infuriating platitudes. In the past months, I’d heard enough of them to last a lifetime. I don’t know what to say, people say. And then they would say it anyway. One woman had actually had the nerve to tell Sophie she was young enough to have another child, as if a dead child could be as easily replaced as a burned-out lightbulb. The woman had added that if we had a second child, we would again be a family, the loss might be diminished. Like that horrid phrase the Brits used for the royal family. An heir and a spare. What a fucking dumb-witted thing to say. The priest looked straight at me, blue eyes gazing out from behind wire-rimmed glasses, revealing nothing. I waited, then broke the silence. “You’re wasting your time, Father.”
Father Gervase smiled, an unexpectedly appealing smile but not false. “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that.”
I bet, I thought.
“May I come in?”
Our eyes caught for a long moment, reminding me of a schoolyard game of chicken. Ridiculous really. I stepped back and invited the priest in with a sweeping gesture, an Elizabethan mockery of a welcome. The priest coughed, a noise as dry and insubstantial as the riffling of the pages of a missal, and then stepped inside. He looked around, admiring the foyer, the crown moldings, the parquet floor with inlaid marble squares, the rococo sideboard. What had Sophie told him? What had he expected? Dirty floors? Empty booze bottles? Food-crusted dishes?
“Amazing,” the priest said. There was a note in his voice I couldn’t identify.
“What’s that, Father?”
The priest seemed not to have heard. “Amazing,” he murmured again. Finally he roused himself. “This house,” he said. “I grew up in a Victorian very much like this. In Milwaukee. Yes. Very like this one.”
Was this true? I wouldn’t take odds. I trusted nothing, no one, least of all priests, especially the small talk of this one.
“Is this the original flooring?”
I nodded.
“It’s beautifully restored.”
Once I would have taken pride in the compliment, but no longer. We should have sold the damned house. Damned was not too strong a word for all that had happened, but there really was no question of moving. In spite of everything, there remained too much of my father in me to just let the place go completely. Even today I can hear my father’s words—we are but caretakers of our belongings—and I can recall the Saturdays of my boyhood when, in a companionship that required little conversation, we undertook weekend chores. Scraping worn shutters. Re-grouting bathroom tiles. The first gift I remembered receiving from my parents was an undersized carpenter’s box with my name stenciled in navy blue on the side. It contained a nail set and hammer, screwdriver and miniature crosscut saw, socket wrench and pliers, a wooden hinged rule. I still have it somewhere in the basement. For future generations, my father would say as he instructed me in how to rewire an outlet, how to miter a perfect corner as if salvation could be found there, how to replace a washer. Of course that was back when faucets came with washers. When things were simpler to fix.
“Izzy bell tower,” the priest said.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Is that a Belter?” The priest pointed at the intricately carved sideboard.
“It is.” I was forced to a quick reassessment. Counting myself, I doubted there were more than five or six people in the entire state who would recognize the cabinetmaker’s work. “I inherited it from my grandparents.”
“My parents had a bench of his.”
I nodded, realizing how easy it was to forget that this priest had a history that predated his vocation, a prior life that even vows couldn’t erase. Once, he was only a man, before that a boy.
Father Gervase coughed again, setting off a spasm. “I wonder,” he said when he regained his breath. “Might you have a glass of water?”
No, I thought. No, I have the only goddamn house in the state without plumbing. “Yes,” I said. “Of course.” As we crossed the hall, for the first time I noticed the priest walked with a limp. Arthritis? Surgery? It seemed like every week Sophie relayed news of someone else she knew who was having a knee or hip replaced. People in their forties and fifties, for God’s sake. In the kitchen, I retrieved a tumbler from the cabinet, turned on the tap. While I let the water run cold, I stared out the window at the last of the vernal flowers on the elm in the backyard. My eyes were caught by movement, and I watched the invisible hand of the wind stir the swing hanging from a low branch. I’d made it for Lucy when she was not quite two, too small for it really. She could only use it held in the safety of Sophie’s arms. I’d taken a photo of them the day we put it up, a picture I can see clearly even now. Sophie in a long peasant skirt, Lucy dressed in miniature overalls. Pink, I remember. Both sheltered by a canopy of ovate leaves. That snapshot had been the start of a tradition. Each year I’d photograph Lucy on the swing, a visual record taking her from toddler to girl to teenager. The memory pains even today, although now of course for a different reason. A soft rustling behind me brought me back from the reverie. The priest had settled himself at the table, set his package on an empty chair. It was a mistake to have let him in. Too late, I understood this. I filled the glass and passed it to him. In the light cast through the bank of windows that lined the south wall, he appeared younger than I’d first thought.
“Tan zoo.”
“Pardon?” I said.
“Thank you,” the priest repeated.
“No problem.” Lately I had been having hearing difficulties. Words were jumbled; there were long moments when entire chunks of conversation were lost or when the CD or television audio went silent, as if I had hit the mute button. Sporadically, I heard ringing, a persistent pestilent tone. Tinnitus. I hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, least of all Sophie, who would have insisted I see someone. Was I going deaf? Developing a tumor? Well, what if I was? That was not the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen had already happened. At least that was what I believed on that spring day. Had you asked me I would have told you I had nothing left to lose, but of course there is always more to lose. I poured the last of the morning coffee into a mug and nuked it. I made no apology for not offering any to the priest.
“Myself, I never learned the knack,” Father Gervase said.
“What’s that, Father?”
“Brewing coffee.”
“It takes no great skill.” A fleck of paint rimmed my thumbnail. Cadmium yellow. Like the smudge on his clothing. “It’s in the measuring.”
>
“Now my maternal grandmother, a first-generation Swede she was. She could perk a pot that would make Satan himself weep. She’d spoon in the grounds, add water and an egg, and smash it with a spoon. Shell and all.”
I could picture it—the brown coffee grounds, the shards of shell, the viscous strings of albumen, the bright splash of yoke bleeding into the mix—and I felt slightly queasy. A memory rose, unbidden. Lucy at the breakfast table, refusing to eat her scrambled eggs with implacable determination because her sixth-grade science teacher had informed the class that an egg was the embryo of a chicken. A band tightened across my chest. That was the cruelty of memory. The way it could ambush you. Take you out at the knees. Our entire house was a minefield. Once I’d come across Sophie sitting in the living room with tears running down her cheeks, a bronze hair clip she’d found in the recesses of the sofa held in her palm. Or I would find a note Lucy had scrawled and left unfinished in the back of a drawer, and the sight of her handwriting would take my breath away. So many things in this minefield. A simple word. An empty swing swaying in the breeze.
“Have you ever heard of that?” the priest was saying.
“What?”
“Beating an egg into coffee?”
“No.” I managed a breath. “Can’t say that I have.” To steady myself, I concentrated on words. Egg. Eggplant. Egghead. Eggbeater. Egg in one’s beer. Egg on. Eggnog.
“The idea is that the shells bind and settle the grounds.”
Egg timer. Egg tempera. Eggcup. Egg roll. Egg hunt.
Egg hunt. Easter. In the field of memory, land mines were buried everywhere, easily tripped. Lucy with a purple straw basket, systematically searching the yard for the foil-covered eggs Sophie and I had hidden in the night. She was a methodical child, our Lucy. Sophie used to tease her about it. Lucy, you’re an old lady dressed in a girl suit. A pain heated my chest. I forced my mind to the present, to this room. “I doubt you’re here to talk about coffee, Father.”
“No. No, of course not.” The priest took a sip of water.
“Well, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here. I’m sorry for your trouble.” The hypocrisy was not even a small bone in my throat. Of all I had to regret and mourn, the inconveniencing of this priest didn’t even make the extended list.
“You know why I’ve come, then?”
“I assume Sophie asked you to come by.”
“Sophie?”
“Yes. Sophie. My wife.”
“Ah, Sophia. Well, no, actually it was the archbishop who sent me.”
I frowned, confused. What the hell could the archbishop have to do with anything?
“Cardinal Kneeland,” Father Gervase said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course. Of course. How would you?” He smiled, sipped again from the glass. “I should have explained. He wants to meet with you.”
“Well, I have no interest in meeting with him.” So I had misunderstood his mission in coming. This whole business had to have something to do with Sophie’s work, a futile, do-good mission I wanted no part of.
“Let me explain. He wants you to come to Boston. Of course, I’ll drive you. I’m happy to drive. We wouldn’t expect you to drive.” A slight tremor of his hand on the glass revealed the priest’s nervousness, or, it occurred to me, perhaps an early symptom of Parkinson’s.
“If your cardinal wants to see me, he could have come himself. We’re wasting time here, Father.”
“Yes, well.” The priest hesitated, then forged on. “It’s about the new cathedral,” he said. “He wants you to see the cathedral.”
At last I got it. Money. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Father. I’m not interested in donating to the building fund.” If the cardinal wanted someone to pay for the damn cathedral, then let him ask the Vatican to open its coffers. A trace of a smile flicked across the priest’s face, as if we shared a secret. “I won’t change my mind,” I said.
“No. I don’t imagine you will.” Now the priest did smile. It was like fencing with a cloud. I wondered what it would take to offend him.
“But it isn’t about a contribution,” Father Gervase said.
“Then what?”
“Are you at all familiar with the new cathedral?”
“Not intimately. I know an awful lot of people think it’s a mistake to expend money on a monumental building when it would be better spent elsewhere.” Restitution for victims of priest abuse, for instance, I thought but managed not to say.
“I’m not unaware of the controversy about the cost,” the priest said. His tone held a wry note that surprised me. “No, I’ve come because Cardinal Kneeland wants to commission you to paint portraits of the saints. To hang in the nave.”
“Saints?”
“Yes,” Father Gervase said. “A series of paintings of the saints.”
The saints. I nearly laughed. “Sorry. I’m not interested.”
“You know that before you even talk to the cardinal? Before you hear what he has in mind?”
“I know that.”
“I wonder,” Father Gervase said. “Might I ask why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you dismiss the idea so readily. Why you won’t consider it?”
Which reason do you want? I thought. Because I want nothing to do with your church. Because I don’t believe in your saints. Because the very idea sickens me. Because I want to be left alone.
Father Gervase waited patiently, his eyes kind.
Perhaps it was this show of kindness, but I surprised myself by saying, “I don’t have the heart for it. Not anymore.”
The priest studied me for a moment. “You might be surprised at the capacity of your heart.”
Christ, I thought. Next he’ll be giving me some shite about turning the other cheek. “I’m not your man, Father. Tell your cardinal he’ll have to find another artist.”
A small sigh escaped the priest’s lips, the briefest of exhalations. He began to speak and then stopped.
“I hate to be rude, Father, but if there is nothing else, I’d like to get back to my work.”
“Of course. Of course.” The priest rose, slowed by hips that clearly pained him.
Still holding my coffee, I led him to the foyer, both surprised and relieved that he had surrendered so easily.
At the door Father Gervase turned toward me, his eyes studying my face in a way that gave rise to a deep discomfort which I must have betrayed, for he broke the gaze and said, “It was kind of you to see me.”
“Not at all.” Now that I was nearly rid of him, I could be generous. I allowed myself a flash of sympathy for this man sent on the orders of his superiors. Orders of his order, I thought. I offered my free hand.
Father Gervase enfolded it in both of his but said nothing. His blue eyes again fixed on me, and I was acutely aware of being assessed. “All right, then,” he finally said, and then, as he turned to go, “Doughnuts in pairs.”
I closed the door, thought, That was freaking weird. I carried my empty mug back to the kitchen, left with an uncertain sense I had missed something. It was then I saw the yellow packet on the chair. Swearing, I grasped it and hurried to the door, but I was too late. Even as I shouted and lifted my arm, waving the damn packet like a semaphore, the priest backed out of the drive. I shouted again, but he pulled away. I exhaled my irritation in a long sigh. Either he would return when he realized what he had forgotten, or I would have to drive over to the rectory and deliver it. Neither option appealed.
I felt from the package’s contours that it was a book. Without hesitation—I owed the priest nothing—I slipped it from the bag. The Illustrated Book of the Saints. I snorted at the cover, a garish depiction of Gabriel kneeing before Mary. The Annunciation in gaudy purples and magentas and greens. I could just imagine the art inside, if one could call it art. I pictured romanticized renderings in Technicolor. Golden rays of light spilling from the heavens. Lutescent halos big as meat platters. Illustrations similar to those in th
e Bible I’d received as a child, another of my parents’ gifts. I could picture them still. Joseph and the coat of many colors. Daniel in the lion’s den. Mary and Joseph in the stable. Bowdlerized Disney versions of biblical history. No cow dung in that manger. I understood then that the priest had fully intended to leave it behind. And what? This was supposed to make me what? Make me want to paint saints? I snorted again, this time at this pathetic transparency.
Instantly the rage—the anger that lay low but never disappeared, that had been stirring since the moment in the attic when I’d looked out and seen the priest walking up the steps, the anger Sophie told me was transference and thought would ease if only I would talk to someone about it, the anger she said was driving us apart and she could no longer live with—this rage woke. I flung the book at the door, narrowly missing a sidelight, and it fell to the floor with a thud. Screw you, Father Gervase, I thought. Screw you and the horse you rode in on. I was trembling. Sophie was right to be afraid of my anger. So dangerous. Unpredictable. A grenade, pin pulled, ready to obliterate all that had not already been destroyed.
Perhaps, like my wife, you are repelled by my anger, but before you judge me imagine yourself in my shoes, and just by doing so can’t you feel the heat spreading through your chest, the release of it? Can’t you understand? Once I would not have believed this, but now I understand too well that there is in all of us, even the most pacific and composed, an enormous capacity for rage, asleep maybe but present nonetheless, waiting for the single thing that will uncage it.
A faint hissing echoed in my head, then ringing, and then all was muted, as if I were paddling underwater. In this liquid void, the priest’s parting words rose up.
Doughnuts in pairs.
CHAPTER TWO
Doughnuts in pairs.
Even through the veil of rage, I could picture this nonsensical image, saw them partnered in a glass-fronted pastry case. Pairs of chocolate-covered rings and irregularly shaped halos with dustings of cinnamon and sugar or coated with coconut. Chopped nuts. Plump glazed ones. Crullers. I could almost smell the grease, taste the coating on my tongue, as if I were standing in the Italian bakery on Prospect that Lucy and I would walk to on Saturday mornings and take our time selecting cannoli or ricotta tarts from the case to bring back home for a late breakfast. Our weekly father-daughter tradition.
The Halo Effect: A Novel Page 2