Father George had already administered the last rites, so there was nothing for Father Walther to do but sit and watch Monsignor’s mechanical breathing. Actually, there was little difference between his present state and the condition he was in when he was supposed to be conscious. As far as Father Walther’s job as assistant pastor was concerned, anyone with a knack for small-business administration could handle it. A high school diploma would suffice. Holy Orders certainly wasn’t required.
A nurse took the pastor’s vital signs. It was odd to see a pretty woman making physical contact with the old celibate. The girl—she didn’t look a day over nineteen— smiled at Father Walther when she finished. He had put on his roman collar after leaving Rosalie’s house, but had gotten so used to being treated as a layman that he returned her smile with a willing frankness. She was young enough to be his daughter. Despite all the children he had confessed, sermonized and baptized, never once had he looked upon any as a figure of the child he would never have. Other priests did. What had excluded even the possibility of parenthood from his mind? Until the lethargy that had set in in recent years, he had assumed his freedom from sexual desire was a divine gift to make possible his vocation to the celibate life. Naturally, the procreation of children was excluded along with the sexual act. But he had never given any thought to the emotional deprivation involved. He had heard of priests adopting children (not without difficulties from their bishops), but assumed they did so out of charity. It was only now that it struck him that they might have taken in those kids out of their own need to have an individual human being to love. Loving all God’s children for the reflection of the godhead in them was all well and good in theory, for saints. But perhaps mere mortals, even those granted the special grace of a religious vocation, needed to root their affection in something more specific, immediate, even selfishly “their own.”
The Monsignor’s clockwork respiration was broken by a sudden sigh. His face quivered for a moment like someone having a bad dream.
Father Walther looked at his watch. At about this time he could have been starting out on the back nine with Rosalie. He couldn’t help feeling that this old buzzard had somehow timed things this way. The notion was preposterous, yet his resentment persisted as he sat watching the measured breathing. Even a prayer for charity could not dispel it.
A young man in hospital whites entered the room and, after a cursory nod at the curate, began monitoring the patient’s pulse.
“How is he?” Father Walther asked as the intern flashed a light into the old man’s eyes.
“No change.” He fingered the stethoscope around his neck, eyeing the Monsignor as if he were a box of questionable goods. “He may have been lucky. Still,” he added, “you never know with a cerebral occlusion.” He looked more carefully at Father Walther. “Are you a relative?”
“His assistant.”
The young doctor nodded and pursed his lips.
“All we can do is wait and see.”
Back at the rectory Margaret was in a funk. Her normal Sunday routine of late breakfasts and early gargantuan dinners was upset. She didn’t even remember to give Father Walther her usual conspiratorial greeting, only an, “It’s you, Father,” as if he were just something else she must now worry about on this already difficult day.
“I just came from the hospital,” he said.
“You saw Rafferty?”
“I did not. Has he called?”
“Not since this morning. He summoned the ambulance himself. Said he’d meet it at the hospital. How did he look—himself, I mean?”
“I spoke with an intern. He sounded hopeful.”
She clapped her hands fervently. “Please, God, if it’s only true.”
He was surprised by her intense feeling. Considering her usual way of talking about the Monsignor, he would have thought she had been expecting something like this any time. A few years ago her sister had died of heart disease, but apart from one teary moment when she announced the death and her imminent departure for the wake and funeral, the event hardly seemed to break her stride. There had certainly been nothing comparable to her present upset.
“Where’s Father George?” he asked, lingering over a cup of stale coffee while she flew from one room to another for no apparent reason.
“The school,” she said. “No, he was there earlier. Where did he go?” This was a Margaret he had never seen before—flustered, out of control, abandoned by her characteristic misanthropy. “The chapel. To count the collection.”
“And Donovan?”
“He’s long gone, Father. Left after the last mass.”
Then she suddenly stopped her senseless rushing about and came to a sudden, desperate halt, wringing her hands. “You don’t think he’ll...?” But the rest of her thought was washed away by her tears. Despite his altered feelings toward her, or perhaps because of them, his instinct was to take her in his arms and comfort her. He did not do so, not from any inhibition but because he suspected she would never get over such a gesture.
“He’ll pull through, Margaret. He’s too tough to let a little stroke do him in.”
She wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron.
“Please, God,” she said, blowing her nose with the tissue she kept tucked up her sleeve. “I’d better be getting back to my beads.”
He had only spoken to be encouraging, but after Margaret left to say her rosary he began to think more seriously about what would happen if the Monsignor did die, or recovered, or got back only the partial use of his faculties. What would each of those different contingencies mean for him, Richard Walther? The old man’s death would certainly mean the appointment of a new pastor. But even if he could consider himself in the running for that post (the odds were only about fifty-fifty that a resident curate would be appointed in such a situation), he no longer wanted the job. A few years ago a parish of his own was all he thought about. Bishoprics held no allure for him. Ever since his childhood, his ambition was to have a few thousand parishioners, a school and a couple curates to show the ropes to. Odd, that such an aspiration meant so little to him now. He no more desired to take the Monsignor’s place than he wished to become potentate of a South Sea Island.
If, however, the Monsignor recovered, or even partially recovered, there might be no appointment of a new pastor for some time. He would then go on serving as first curate but in reality bearing all the responsibilities of the pastor’s job. He had had enough of that. There had to be an alternative. What he had felt while saying mass this morning ought not to be just a fluke. Mass should not to be a duty but a celebration. And no one, not even a priest, should allow himself to be cut off from the kind of human contact he had enjoyed, and suffered, the past two weeks.
“It’s for you, Father,” he heard Margaret say, realizing that the telephone had been ringing throughout his cogitations. “Doctor Rafferty.”
From the way she was tugging at her fingers he couldn’t tell if the news was good or bad. He picked up the extension in the musty parlor and cleared his throat.
“Praise be to God!” the voice, incongruously young for a man in his mid-sixties, cried. “He’s come out of it. It’s a miracle!”
Father Walther waited for a sense of relief to come over him, but nothing like that happened. Rafferty was the rectory’s medical factotum. He gave them all physicals every year and ministered to their backaches and upset stomachs. He was serious, even solemn, a man whose attempts at levity were strictly for professional purposes and usually fell pathetically flat. Hearing such a person speak of miracles was like learning that Margaret could speak in tongues. But then he recalled that if the Monsignor did not pull through and remain as nominal head of the parish, Rafferty would lose not one but four patients.
The news caused a fresh burst of tears from his housekeeper.
“Thanks be to Our Blessed Mother!” she declared. “A minute hasn’t passed that I haven’t offered a prayer to her.”
After they congratulated each other,
he went up to his room. He was glad the Monsignor would recover. He wished the old man well. But the benevolence he felt seemed no more relevant to his own life than did the resentment he had earlier felt. Whether the Monsignor remained head of the parish or whether a new one was appointed suddenly didn’t matter.
His room was neat as a sacristy. The bed was carefully made, the old rug vacuumed. Even the windows had been washed. Every object in the room was familiar, yet looked alien, distanced by his experiences of the past week. Margaret had turned down a corner of the bedclothes just as Martha did the afternoon he napped in her son’s room. The blinds were closed to shut out the sun. All that was missing were the sports pennants on the walls. He had spent much of the last decade in this room, or one like it. And yet, it already seemed a place where he used to live rather than one where he still resided. Perhaps it was for that reason he found himself regarding the bed and bookshelves, the small desk and leather armchair, with something like fondness, but without nostalgia. It was as if he had already moved out. Father George, he thought, would be happy to have the extra space.
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Also, if you liked Father Walther's Temptation there's a good chance you will also enjoy reading Thomas J. Hubschman's other fiction:
Song of the Mockingbird
"A story of two women, both of whom have lost their husbands. By the end, one has discovered how to achieve happiness; one is on the road to a bitter, angry loneliness. The forces do not operate quite the way modern feminism or a youth-obsessed society might predict. Which is what makes this novel worth thinking about after one has turned the last page." - Reader's Review
Look at Me Now
"Look at Me Now" follows Deidre Davis as she finds herself finally free of her dominating husband after twenty years marriage.... A novel of gaining strength as an independent woman, Look at Me Now is inspiring and entertaining, highly recommended. - Midwest Book Review
Billy Boy
“Hubschman has brought together all the ingredients for a riveting read: a sexy anti-hero, a persistent cop with a boyhood grudge, the gritty urban war zone of Brooklyn, NY, where the cultural melting pot is stuck on slow-boil…. Billy Boy is as real as it gets, a tough, disturbing, unsentimental account of life on the mean streets of New York City.” – WordWeaver
My Bess
"This is a great read for anyone who has ever loved another human being, regardless of gender or sexual orientation." - Reader's Review
The Jew's Wife & Other Stories
The Jew's Wife and Other Stories is a fine collection of short stories from a newly debuted master of storytelling...a solid and recommended pick for short fiction fans everywhere. - Midwest Book Review
"First-time readers of Thomas J. Hubschman's short stories can be forgiven for thinking they have discovered a forgotten master of the form: his fiction is classic in tone, yet remarkably current in its concerns. It's old-fashioned to speak of heart and moral vision and the redemptive power of narrative, but this book has all those. It's astonishing to think this is a first collection and not a "best of.” It reads like the culmination of a life's work." - Richard Cumyn, author of The View from Tamischeira (Dundurn Press)
The Jew's Wife & Other Stories Page 19