“Let’s take it up on the deck.”
CHAPTER SIX
Waking up in a real bedroom was a treat. Even the sheets smelled good, neither the sterile odorlessness of a motel’s bed linen nor the soapy anonymity of Margaret’s laundry. This was someone’s home. This was how real people lived.
Even his mother’s apartment didn’t look and smell like this. How could it, when she was living in an institution herself?
He lay beneath the bedclothes (it was cool enough for a blanket, imagine, in July), lingering in the warmth of his body as he never would have done in his parish rectory. Nothing about the big room he occupied there induced him to spend any more time in it than was necessary. Perhaps that was as it should be; he did not become a priest so he could sleep late or curl up with a novel and a box of chocolates. But he could not help envying those who took for granted the aromas of their own homes, whose possessions bore the stamp of their own individual identities. It was not inconceivable that a touch of hominess might even enhance one’s ministry. The Protestants didn’t seem to be going out of business—quite the contrary. One could surely improve on Margaret’s funereal housekeeping without risking one’s immortal soul.
He said mass on the dresser, then put on his khaki pants and the Hawaiian print, which he had washed by hand in the motel. In deference to his vacation mood he did not tuck it inside his pants. He also spent extra time shaving and combing his hair, noting again the gray strands interlaced with original black. He felt extraordinarily well-rested—the result, he assumed, of the sea air. He could hear noises in the kitchen below. He had a huge appetite, so rather than start his office with his mind distracted by the thought of food, he decided to have breakfast. Then he could begin it on the terrace, in full view of the Atlantic and the morning sun.
“Good morning,” Rosalie greeted him. She was dressed in culottes and a white top, the female equivalent of a golf shirt. She looked quite a different person from the sulky feline he had confronted the previous afternoon.
“How do you like your coffee?”
“Black, please. With sugar.”
She invited him to sit down and brought him coffee in an earthenware mug. The brew in it was infinitely better than the slop Margaret made. He emptied the cup, burning his tongue, before attempting more conversation.
“Are Charlie and Sylvia up?” he asked.
“The day is half gone before those two roll out of bed.”
She scraped egg onto a plate and placed it on a woven mat in front of him. “They’re not earlybirds like us. I hope you like fried.”
He assured her fried were fine and that she needn’t have troubled herself on his account.
“No trouble. Can’t accomplish much without a good breakfast. Although I don’t eat eggs, when I have a choice.”
“What do you eat?” he asked as she sat down in the place Sylvia occupied last night.
“Whole grains mostly. Wheat, oats. I’m not a health nut, but I try to eat good stuff.”
He wondered if Margaret had ever heard of health food. Not likely, if the daily doses of bacon and sausages, not to mention the pork and pot roasts that turned up regularly on the rectory’s dining table, were any indication.
“Sleep well?” she asked.
“Very well indeed.”
He glanced at the living room couch, which showed no sign of anyone having spent the night there, and regretted his enthusiasm. She probably had a backache herself.
“Sea air does it every time. Gorgeous night. Best thing about the shore, sleeping under the stars.”
“You slept on the beach?”
Her mouth full of toast, she pointed at the light fixture on the ceiling.
“The deck?”
“Best place to catch the ocean breeze.”
He had heard creaking sounds but presumed they were just the house adjusting to the cooler night air. He and Charlie had spent about an hour stargazing. Then he had gone to bed, leaving his hosts and Rosalie chatting in the living room.
“You should give it a try,” she suggested.
“I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your spot. Besides, the bedroom’s quite comfortable.”
“You wouldn’t be depriving me. There’s plenty of room. Charlie has another sleeping bag.”
It was half an hour before their hosts appeared, still in their pajamas and looking like sleepy children. Father Walther had spent the interval on the balcony. Charlie and Sylvia mumbled a greeting and sat down at the table. Rosalie served everyone coffee.
“Sleep well?” the priest asked with the proprietary attitude of the first up. Charlie groaned, moving his head from side to side not so much in denial as to indicate he was not yet up to using his brain.
“These two bright-eyed creatures are off to Philadelphia, if they ever come to,” Rosalie said.
“What time is it?” Charlie asked. Rosalie told him.
“Jesus Christ. Drink up, Sylve.”
This was the first Father Walther had heard of the trip. But he had endured bigger surprises than this from his old friend; why should he suddenly act out of character and inform him in advance of an excursion to the other side of the state?
“Shopping?”
Sylvia shook her head. “Mother-in-law’s birthday. Duty fu-- ...family obligation.”
Father Walther nodded, not comprehending.
“Sylvia and my mother don’t exactly get along,” Charlie explained.
“How old is your mother?”
Father Walther hadn’t seen Mrs. Weeks in twenty years. He remembered her as a tall, angular woman. For a while she was active in a campaign to eliminate pornography from stores in the Paterson area. He wondered what she would make of the hard-core stuff that was now so easily available to anyone with a computer. Charlie once told him he wished his mother would not leave her smutty spoils lying around the house. To her they may have represented a moral victory over Satan, but to her son they were a constant temptation.
“Seventy-something.”
“She’s seventy-three,” Sylvia said. “And full of piss and vinegar. Oops. Sorry, Father,” she said, clapping her hand to her mouth.
“’Richie,’” he replied automatically, more concerned with the flush that had come over Charlie.
“Well, I’m off to the links,” Rosalie announced, taking off the short apron she had put on to protect her culottes.
“Golf?” he asked.
“Sure. Do you play?”
“Well...”
“Great. I won’t have to play alone.”
“I’m afraid I don’t own a set of clubs.” His parishioners would have bought him a set, but he kept his hobby secret from them: there were more important things to spend money on. Besides, he only played on vacations and the odd weekend.
“You can rent,” she said. “It’s settled. You two are off to Philadelphia, and Richie and I are for the links.”
It was a warm morning, but not humid. He liked to be out on the first tee as early as possible; either that or wait until the sun’s strongest rays were spent. He liked the smell of grass when it was still dewy and enjoyed the deepening shades of twilight—gold, amber, and final rust. He hadn’t yet mastered the basics of the game, but the wide fairways reminded him of the yard of the house where he had grown up. That entire lot could have fit easily into some greens he had played, but when he was still a boy its green lawn seemed an immense expanse. It took him an entire afternoon to mow it with the rusty hand mower his father kept beneath the front porch. His mother made pitchers of lemonade to quench the ferocious thirst he worked up. But even the lemonade was not as good as the heady sense of manhood he felt. After the family moved from that house they never again owned a home of their own, and consequently there were no more lawns for him to mow. But to this day he could not understand why anyone would shirk the task of pushing a mower around a green yard on a summer afternoon.
“I guess you know the difference between a links and an ordinary course,” Rosalie said,
hauling a lavender golf bag out of her Toyota. He wanted to lend a hand but was afraid she would take offense. “A links is a genuine Scottish course, more or less flat and usually located near the sea. Golf architects try to imitate them in the most unlikely places. I prefer links courses. There’s no nonsense about them—just plain golf. Shows what sort of game you’re capable of.”
This wasn’t encouraging. He already knew what sort of game he was—wasn’t—capable of.
She set her heavy bag down outside the clubhouse, a white bunker no larger than a concession stand. A few handcarts were scattered about. He was used to a grander arrangement. When he played in the Catskills or on one of the private courses in Bergen County, the clubhouse offered lockers and showers as well as a full-service restaurant where you could enjoy a leisurely lunch before playing the back nine.
The “pro,” as the man inside the bunker was designated by a hand-lettered sign, eyed them as if he expected someone to produce a gun. Rosalie bought some balls and asked to see a white glove on display. While she tried it on, the proprietor kept one eye on the priest, like a candy-store owner watching a couple of chocolate thieves. Father Walther turned his attention to an empty lunch counter. A sign in plastic lettering gave the bill of fare. Some of the letters were missing. Ham and ch s. $3. 5.
“What do you think?”
She held her hand up to catch the feeble daylight from the high cellar-style windows. Her hands were small, but the fingers were long and delicate.
“Looks okay,” he said.
“It’s not cheap.” She examined her hand some more, this time for no other reason, he suspected, than to draw attention to its symmetry.
“Genuine leather,” the pro put in, pronouncing “genuine” so that its final syllable rhymed with “fine.”
“I really could use a new one,” she said. The priest was starting to feel like any husband on a shopping trip. “Why don’t you see what sort of clubs the man has for rent?”
The proprietor led him to a dark room at the back of the shop. A number of dilapidated or obviously broken golf clubs stood propped against the cinder-block walls like veteran inmates of a dungeon. He seized a dusty bag containing half a dozen mismatched and badly scuffed clubs and yanked it forward.
“This here’ll do you,” he said, giving the bag a shake. “You got your woods”—he ran knobby knuckles over a dented driver and three-wood—“and your basic irons. Here you go,” he said, reaching for a rusty shaft beside a bent sand wedge, “I’ll throw in this here putter.”
There was no one waiting to tee off. In fact, there was no one else on the course. Father Walther was used to pairing up with whoever was waiting at the first tee. He had assumed Rosalie and he would do the same.
She screwed her tee into the sunbaked ground. She had added a white visor to her pinned-back hairdo, while her partner had to squint hatless against the sun. She seemed oblivious to the heat and glare. When she had the tee secured she began surveying the first fairway, a straight-forward par-four with low rough on either side. Then she set herself beside the ball, her head tilted to one side. She held that position for a few seconds, her small bottom jutting out, her knees slightly bent. Then she began her swing. He heard a smart click and watched the ball climb into the sky at a perfect angle, heading straight down the middle of the fairway.
He tried to insert his own tee into the ground, but the baked dirt refused to accept it. He tried another spot, also without success. He finally settled for the same hole Rosalie had drilled. It had been widened by her hit, causing his tee to wobble when it took the weight of the ball, but it would have to do.
He set himself in orthodox fashion, the ball on a line with his left heel, left arm straight, head steady. Usually he didn’t think twice about how he addressed the ball; he just stepped up and hit. Sometimes it went down the fairway, and sometimes it went into some other fairway, into the rough or merely dribbled off the tee. As long as he got off a few decent hits each round and didn’t lose too many balls, he was happy. The people he played with were generally of the same mind.
This time his ball took off in a straight line, rose hopefully for a while, then as if under remote control veered sharply to the right and into the next fairway.
“Got a bit of a slice there.”
He took an eight on the first hole. Rosalie notched a five. She entered her score on the card, her tongue lubricating her bottom lip like a schoolgirl. He never kept score himself unless he was playing with someone who insisted on doing so.
His second drive did not bend as badly as the first, but it carried scarcely a hundred yards. Rosalie waited while he pulled a three-wood out of the bag for his second shot. He might just as well have chosen an iron—his fairway hits usually traveled only a few yards—the turf taking the major impact of his swing.
“You’re setting up wrong,” she said. “You’ll make better contact if you move the ball back. Swing down. Try to bury it.”
The idea was absurd. The clubface was angled back so as to cause the ball to rise. Why should he frustrate the design by hitting down on the ball?
“If it doesn’t work, you can hit another.”
He set up as she suggested and drew the club back slowly, determined to hit the ball just as she said, leaving no excuse for the consequence of her silly advice.
He was so careful not to move his head that he didn’t see the ball until it was sailing down the fairway high above its normal parallel with the ground. At first he thought she had played some kind of trick—hit a ball herself while his own shot angled into the rough. It was only after he saw the ball drop in a graceful arc, then observed Rosalie standing exactly where she had been a few moments ago, one hip jutting out sportily, that he was convinced of what he had done.
“O ye of little faith.” She smiled as brightly as if it had been her own shot. But he suspected she was far too self-critical to lavish that kind of congratulation on herself.
“You know, you could be a good golfer. Not tour class, maybe, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t shoot in the low eighties.” They were sitting in a roadside bar. Two green bottles of beer stood perspiring between them. “All you need is a few hours instruction.”
She paused to take a pull at her beer, which she was drinking directly from the bottle. He sipped his own from a tumbler. They had played the entire eighteen holes without a break. Rosalie’s game improved steadily through the early holes. By the time they completed the front nine it was commanding. She faltered for a while on the back nine, so pumped up that she started to overswing and hook the ball. But then she settled down and added three more pars before bogeying the last hole. By the time he bungled his own way to the eighteenth hole he was so exhausted he didn’t object when she suggested they stop for a drink.
There was no one in the bar but themselves and a fat man in overalls whose pickup was parked outside. He was busy exchanging small talk with the bartender. Despite his fatigue, Father Walther had the same sense of playing the spy that he had felt earlier that week. No one was showing him undue deference, not even Rosalie who knew him to be a priest. He might have been any middle-aged duffer cooling off after a day in the hot sun. But what would the Monsignor say if he could see his assistant pastor? Would the bishop take disciplinary action? Would Margaret’s colossal priest-worship be shaken? Whatever, it felt good to sip cold beer in this anonymous roadhouse. It even felt good listening to Rosalie’s preposterous scheme to make a sub-hundred golfer out of him. Dignum et justum est, he thought, recalling the words of the old Latin mass.
“You’re not paying attention.”
She emptied what was left of the bottle into his glass, then waved the empty at the bartender, who was still jawing with the man in overalls. Before the priest understood the purpose of her gesture, the bartender was approaching with two fresh bottles. He covered his glass, but Rosalie simply removed his hand and poured more beer into it.
“What’s so funny?” she asked after a second attempt to get h
im to sign up for golf lessons.
“Do you have any idea what my schedule is like—I mean during the fifty weeks of the year I’m not escorting young women around golf courses?”
“You don’t look overworked.”
“Maybe not. But I’m lucky if I get one day a week off—and that’s usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday, when there’s nothing to do but play catch with the kids in the schoolyard. Still,” he reflected, turning the green bottle slowly, “I shouldn’t complain. Nuns have it harder: up at dawn, teach all day, then prepare lessons and do housework. More chores after supper until late prayers and bed.”
“Those women aren’t any better than slaves!”
“Actually, their lot has improved. Since the Vatican Council. But you see,” he said, putting the bottle aside and hunching his shoulders over the table, “the whole idea is precisely to give of yourself—become a slave, if you will. I’m not saying nuns haven’t been driven too hard. There’s still a lot of sexism in the church. Theoretically, priests are freed from the drudgeries of housekeeping because our work is spiritual—the administration of sacraments, and so forth. A question of Marthas and Marys, I guess.”
“I know that story. Why should one woman do housework while the other does nothing but philosophize?”
“So you do know something about the Gospels.”
“Very little. I don’t happen to like your Jesus. He was a sexist and a prude.”
He took a sip of the fresh beer he had resolved not to touch.
“Actually, he was a great friend to women. Do you remember when their brother Lazarus died? Jesus was still on the road when Martha ran out to tell him. But he had no reaction—told her to go back home. Then her sister Mary did the same thing—threw herself at his feet and wept. Same dead brother, same reaction on the woman’s part,” he said, sipping again, his eyes filling up. “But the evangelist tells us this time Jesus broke down and cried.”
The Jew's Wife & Other Stories Page 7