The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

by Thomas J. Hubschman

  “You think I should see a therapist?”

  “I’m not speaking ex cathedra, Father.” The recliner reabsorbed his great bulk with a pneumatic sigh. “It’s just a suggestion. As I said before, there’s an overlap between areas of competency. Certainly, you did the right thing in coming here. Certainly, you ought to continue your usual devotions. But self-flagellation is not in order—I’m speaking figuratively, of course. What I mean is, it doesn’t do anyone any good if we make our lives more difficult than they need be. I hope you understand,” he added, “that I’m not suggesting I suspect any actual pathology in your case.

  “You’d be surprised how many men go through similar episodes. Many are too pig-headed, or too old, to seek help. They remind me of someone trying to pray away his impure thoughts instead of taking his mind off them with a round of golf. Do you play golf, Father?”

  Father Walther said he did.

  “Well, then, by all means go and play some golf. You said you had another week to your vacation?”

  He didn’t feel like explaining that he had no present means of transportation. And, somehow, he felt as if he had now come full circle.

  “But also think about seeing someone—maybe just for an hour a week. Your diocese has a list of people willing to provide their services. It won’t cost that old curmudgeon you work for a cent. And what’s more,” the retreat master concluded, rising with difficulty, “no one need know anything about it.”

  Father Walther also got up. “Thank you, Father.”

  The older and, standing, much taller man extended his hand—a damp pillow with fingers. “Not at all, Father,” he said, rattling off a quick blessing.

  After lunch he said goodbye to his fellow retreatants and returned to his room to pack. He had to admit he felt better than he did on Friday, despite his reservations about the Dominican’s psychoanalytic approach. If nothing else, he felt reassured that he was not as badly off as he had feared. As he brushed his teeth it occurred to him that many of the men the retreat master counseled must have tales similar to his own to tell.

  He called Margaret—there was a message from his mother: she had had a wonderful time, but was exhausted. Margaret said she indeed sounded tired. If she was really that worn out he would not make any plans to see her until the middle of the week. Until then he would indeed try to get in some golf.

  The day was warm and sunny without the previous day’s excessive humidity. He hoped the rest of the week would be as nice. He was halfway down the long drive connecting the retreat house with the public thoroughfare when a car’s horn sounded behind him. He recognized the driver as one of the men in his retreat group.

  “Which way you headed, Father?”

  “Bergen County. Holy Name.”

  “Hop in.”

  “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “No trouble. I’m glad for the company.”

  Tom Putkowski was from a parish several miles south of Holy Name. Friday at dinner they had chatted briefly about some mutual acquaintances, but had not said a word to each other since apart from a cursory “How’s it going?” when they passed in the hall on the way to devotions or the john.

  “’Walther’ . . .” Putkowski mused as he put the car in gear. He was completely gray, but there were no lines on his handsome pink face. He had bright blue eyes and a thick but solid build. He wasn’t wearing his black jacket, but his Roman collar was securely in place. “You didn’t play football for Ridgefield Park, by any chance?”

  “That was my brother.”

  “A great linebacker,” Putkowski said. “He made all-state in his senior year.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t graduate. He dropped out to join the Marines.”

  “Is that right?”

  They had reached the main road. Putkowski came to a full stop to let some pedestrians cross, then inched out from the big black iron gate.

  “You’re from Cliffside Park, if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right,” Putkowski replied, palming the steering wheel. “You have a good memory, Father. My own is like a sieve.”

  “I guess I remembered because of the amusement park.”

  “Palisades.”

  “You must have spent a lot of time there as a kid.”

  “Not as much as you’d think. Familiarity breeds contempt,” he observed cheerfully. “Although I spent more than my share after I was assigned to a parish.”

  Father Walther smiled sympathetically. Until the amusement park closed down, several parishes—his own included—had used it for fund-raisers as well as for annual school outings. He had gone on those outings himself as a boy.

  “Back to the salt mines,” Putkowski said.

  Father Walther mentioned that he still had a week’s vacation left.

  “Lucky dog. I took my vacation in June.”

  “How did you spend it?”

  Putkowski frowned and took a firmer grip on the steering wheel.

  “Drying out.” He turned toward his fellow cleric, his thick brow deeply furrowed. “I’m an alcoholic,” he declared as if he were voicing a challenge instead of a confidence. “It usually takes longer than two weeks to dry out, but my pastor couldn’t spare me any longer than that. As it was, I wasn’t exactly performing at full capacity.”

  “You seem alright now.”

  Putkowski scowled at the road ahead.

  “People like us have to take it one day at a time.”

  “That’s not bad advice for anyone.”

  Putkowski nodded, but said, “We have no choice. As soon as we stop living in the present, we’re lost. That’s where half our troubles come from—trying to escape what we have to face in the here and now.”

  Father Walther failed to see how this was different from anyone else’s situation, but said, “It’s too bad you won’t have any real vacation.”

  “That’s the price we pay.”

  The man’s pat responses suggested that he belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous. Father Walther had never actually attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, but he had heard representatives speak at communion breakfasts and Knights of Columbus meetings.

  “You get some kind of...help?”

  “Of course.” Putkowski darted a sharp glance at his passenger. “I’d be a fool not to. “Actually, I shouldn’t be so quick to say that. For a long time I was fool enough to think I could handle it on my own. That was a mistake—a big mistake.” He took a long look at the onrushing concrete. “I’m in AA, and I also go to a therapist. Father Bowa turned me on to therapy, as a matter of fact.”

  Father Walther didn’t question the appropriateness of a referral in Tom Putkowski’s case, but he couldn’t help wondering if the Dominican shunted all his charges to a therapist as a matter of course.

  “The best thing about AA is that when I attend a meeting I’m just like everyone else. I get no special treatment because I’m a priest. To them I’m just another drunk.”

  “You attend anonymously?”

  “Sure. Well, as anonymously as possible. I wear my Roman collar, but no one knows who I am—unless they happen to know me already. After all, some of us are top-flight executives, doctors, lawyers. We even have a politician. He’s been dry for some time, of course.”

  “And you go to a therapist as well.”

  “Twice a week. The diocese has some kind of deal—something like a group health plan. There’s no out-of-pocket expense to my parish.”

  “Is it helpful?”

  “I’d be lost without it. I should say, without it and the AA.”

  Of course, Putkowski was a self-admitted alcoholic, but it was his enthusiasm for AA and psychotherapy that disconcerted. It was the sort of ardor, it seemed to Father Walther, that used to be generated only for religion, the kind of faith that made a Lourdes or a Fatima possible, packed Sunday Masses and kept the seminaries operating at full capacity. Had that spirit left the church only to take up residence in the psychiatrist’s office and the halls o
f self-help groups? What, then, was the function of faith supposed to be? A set of rituals? Backdrops to the more substantial justification one received on the analyst’s couch? If so, he decided as Tom Putkowski headed onto the Goethals Bridge, he was not sure he could make that compromise. If religion could no longer be the meat and drink of his life, he did not see how he could accept it as something less, make peace with the secular order, and become a...well, Unitarian.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Isn’t this a wonderful surprise!” Margaret clapped her hands and looked as if she might embrace him. “Let me take your valise.” He didn’t. “Do you know, I was saying to myself not ten minutes ago, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Father Walther turned up today.’ Isn’t that remarkable? Is that what you would call ESP?”

  He stepped into the parlor where, summer and winter, the blinds were drawn against the afternoon sun. “Everything okay?”

  “Well,” she replied sotto voce as he leafed through the mail, “you know what the Old Fellow is.”

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” he said, opening a plumber’s bill. He whistled at the amount and shoved it back into the envelope. It wasn’t until he dropped the mail back down on the table beside the telephone that he saw the disappointment on his housekeeper’s face. But he was tired of her game that they were in league against Father George and the Monsignor. “No messages? Nothing more from my mother?”

  “No, nothing,” she said. Then, “Wait.” She plunged her hand deep into the pocket of her housecoat and withdrew a couple wrinkled pieces of paper folded carefully into quarters. “Let me see. Let me see.”

  As he watched her unfold the notes he was conscious of the parlor’s dank smell. The same dusty curtains hung on the window. All of this was familiar, but seemed a place he had lived in a long time ago rather than the home he had been absent from for just a few days.

  “Here’s something,”—as if an anonymous hand had dropped the note into her pocket when she wasn’t looking. “Father George must have taken it. Let me see if I can make out his scrawl.” She pushed her eyeglasses higher on the bridge of her thin prominent nose. “I should be getting a pair of bifocals. I’m alright at a distance, but up close I can’t make out a thing.”

  “Can I help?”

  But she took a quick step backward, holding the note at arm’s length and then drawing it slowing toward her. “’Call... Call R-O-something? I’m afraid that’s all I can make of it, Father. Except for the number.” She offered the slip of paper, watching him carefully over the tops of her baby-blue frames.

  The name Rosalie was plainly written for anyone to see. He was furious with her for dissembling, but he was also aware that his face was flushed with embarrassment. It seemed impossible that Rosalie Sykes should call him at his rectory, as improbable as if a character from a dream were to walk up to him on the street and identify herself. But there was no denying what was written in Father George’s miniscule hand.

  “She’s a relation of Charlie Weeks,” he said finally, unable to confront her blue stare. “His mother took ill. Was there nothing else?”

  “No,” she replied, looking as if she didn’t believe a word he had said, “nothing.” He refolded the note and put it into his pants pocket. “You’d better call, don’t you think?” she said.

  He wanted to denounce her as a meddling old fool. But when she took a step toward the telephone, he was suddenly terrified she was going to put it into his hand. But she only straightened a homemade doily their and said, “I’ll say a rosary for Mrs. Weeks.”

  “Is Father George around?”

  “Gone for the afternoon,” she replied as if the curate had finally made off with the silver.

  “And the Monsignor?”

  “Taking a nap. You know he has to have his afternoon snooze. But I’ve got some good news for you, Father,” she added with a schoolgirl grin. Annoyed, he walked over to one of the room’s massive windows, pushed back the heavy blue drapes and tried to force it open. The window wouldn’t budge. She waited until he had brushed the dust off his hands, unconcerned by his failure to get the window open or even by dirt that had accumulated on it. “I spoke to Mr. Lowry, down at the Dodge-Plymouth dealer’s. He has the loveliest blue car for you. Second-hand, of course. But a steal, Father. Plus,” she said, coming closer and almost laying a hand on his arm, “he’ll throw in a six-month guarantee.”

  “Then, all I’ve got to do is get the Monsignor to part with a couple mass collections.”

  “To tell you the truth,” she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, “I’ve already mentioned it to him. I knew you wouldn’t mind, seeing as how Mr. Lowry wasn’t sure how long he could hold the car for you.”

  He was amazed at her audacity, although a week ago he would have taken her interference for granted.

  “What did himself say?”

  “Well, you know how he is. Perfectly alright one minute and then gibbering away about something that happened forty years ago the next. I had a time of it just getting him to understand what happened to your old Ford. He seemed to think the car was still brand new.”

  Father Walther laughed despite himself. This was all the encouragement she needed.

  “I finally managed to convince him you really do need a new car—new-secondhand, I mean.”

  “He didn’t happen to hand you a blank check?”

  “Well, no, Father, he didn’t. But I’d say he’s pretty much agreeable to the idea. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble getting it out of him.”

  He thanked her for her trouble.

  “No trouble, Father. No trouble at all. What are we put on this earth for if not to help one another?”

  He unpacked his suitcase and lay down for a rest before dinner. He had asked Margaret to call him when Father George returned. With any luck, he could borrow the second-curate’s car (the Monsignor could damn well do without his own for a few days) and be away again by evening.

  He couldn’t imagine why Rosalie had telephoned, but whatever the reason, apology or just friendly chat, he did not intend to return the call. It had taken him all weekend to recover from their last encounter. If she continued to leave messages with Margaret, he would eventually have to respond. But for the present he intended to put as much distance as possible between himself and Holy Name.

  He was just dozing off when a gentle knock woke him. He sat up, unsure at first where he was.

  “Come in,” he called, his heart beating palpably.

  It was Father George. His real name was Hempflinger. He was a foreigner, or at least foreign-born, though Father Walther couldn’t recall whether he had come from Yugoslavia, Hungary, or some other Middle European country following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had only the faintest of accents, probably because he had come to this country when he was still young. He avoided the Monsignor as much as possible, not just because the old man kept to himself, using Father Walther as his proxy, but because the pastor treated his second curate with unvarnished contempt. Such intolerance was understandable, or at least predictable, in a man equally grouchy, if not downright senile, about so many other things. What seemed so appalling today, as the stocky, slightly stooped immigrant stood fidgeting in the doorway, was the way the man accepted his diminished identity, as if there really were something about him that warranted the Monsignor’s atrocious behavior. Even the housekeeper felt free to treat him as if he were a certifiable fool who had somehow been assigned to an otherwise respectable parish of the Archdiocese of Newark. And everyone’s use of his first name, George, rather than his surname, which was a challenge but not impossible, seemed a deliberate insult.

  “Margaret said you wanted to see me,” he offered as if he were a student reporting to the principal’s office. His dark curly hair had receded to the middle of his scalp, making him look older than his years, which were about equal with his fellow curate’s.

  “Please come in,” Father Walther said, getting up to remove his roman collar from the room
’s one comfortable chair. “Have a seat.”

  Father George glanced cautiously at the old plush high-back, and sat down tentatively. This was the first time he had been in the assistant pastor’s room. They had no cause to visit each other unless some parish business required their doing so. When George was first assigned to the parish, Father Walther was well-ensconced as first curate. The Monsignor had already begun to fail, though there was no talk of replacing him—still wasn’t, as far as anyone knew. George’s predecessor had died just a week before his appointment, but the former curate had not been able to do much work during the last months of his illness. Father Walther had been looking forward to having the extra hand on board. Running a parish was not unlike operating a medium-size business. It took brains, energy and a good deal of personal initiative. In those days he still had all three and had been eager to show the archbishop, who knew very well what kind of shape the Monsignor was in, that he was capable of performing the job. But the short, balding priest the chancery sent him was anything but a dynamo. Despite the negligible accent, he seemed very old-worldly. Slow and methodical, he showed little interest in the business affairs of the parish. He never resisted any assignment, but he made numerous mistakes and sometimes overlooked overbillings and slipshod work. Exasperating as these shortcomings were, Father Walther might have accepted them—the man was overly apologetic about his failings—if it were not that, in his own quiet way, the new curate made clear that to his way of thinking such mercenary matters were extraneous to what the life of a priest should be.

  “My car is no more, Father. I had to junk it in South Jersey.”

  Father George looked as if his colleague had just announced the death of a close relative. “I’m so sorry.”

  Father Walther laughed nervously. Why did the man’s seriousness make him so uneasy?

  “A small loss, as far as I’m concerned. But it does leave me in something of a predicament.”

  Father George’s heavy brows rose a notch, revealing the dark eyes—they looked black—under them.

  “Is there anything I can do?”