Stephen stood up in the TV room. White pajamas with firemen on them. His mother, naked and covered with blood, stumbled into the room from the stairs. Carol remembered this as a noisy scene, but she couldn’t recall what the noise was. She also remembered it taking several minutes, but doctors said the whole thing must have taken about forty-five seconds or she’d have lost consciousness and never gotten downstairs at all. Wally stormed into the room right after her. Carol was reaching for the phone. Stephen, dragging Becky, was already going out the door. Wally left them alone, actually passed them, came right for Carol, determined to finish it. How could he show her no mercy, his wife, seeing her hurt like this? His knife was raised high this time, and she raised her good arm to shield herself—and the knife pinned her forearm to the paneling. She didn’t even feel it. Carol pulled the knife out of her forearm and the wall, and faced her husband, who was by then braying and yelling at her. She couldn’t remember what he was saying, even under hypnosis, but his face had a green cast to it, and there was blood and everything was coming loose. Now she had the knife, but was too weak to use it—dizzy, she collapsed to her hands and knees. She didn’t even remember crawling all the way onto the front porch, dropping the knife between the boards down into the dark below, safe.
Father Kelleher was back in the sitting room. “No police yet?”
“Nope,” she said. She was now sitting by the window, parting the curtains to check. “And I don’t know how much longer I can stay, Father. Things seem to be breaking down on the home front. How long ago did you call them?”
“The sheriff lives down the street four houses!”
“Sheriff won’t come. He’s county. You’re gonna get the city.” She smiled at him, but Father Kelleher wasn’t with her—he was looking down and away.
Carol took the liberty of opening the curtains. The sun streamed in with enormous brilliance. When she looked at Kelleher in this light, she was reminded of an old pirate, maybe Ben Gunn. There was a day’s growth of stubble on the man’s face and when his teeth showed, the gums were red, the teeth gray. His lips were cracked. He seemed like one of those pale white bugs you see scurrying for a hole when you lift a rock.
“There,” she said.
He seemed very soft in this light. “What do you think, Carol—what do you think the church council will do about this?” He sat down.
Carol was the head of the church council, had been for three years. “Well. If I want these curtains open, my bet is the council will vote with me.”
He grunted, then laughed grudgingly. “The burglary.”
“We need you here, Father. People love you. The kids are crazy about you.”
“Bah. Be my friend and tell the truth. People think I’m a dump.” He laughed at his own term for it. So did she. “A big dump,” he said. They both laughed. “They do,” he said. “So. What will the council think about this? Really.”
“Well. I think they’ll have a few comments to make about how long it’s taking the police to respond.” She looked out the front window, shook her head. “And I think they’ll use their clout—they don’t have much, you might have noticed, but they’d try—to find whoever did it. And I don’t concede your point about how you are viewed in this community. A lot of people will help you on this. You didn’t burglarize your own place, and obviously whoever did this had to tear the place apart to find what they wanted. So stuff was secured properly, the collection and all that. They took the VCR. Common burglars, Father.”
Just at that time, the police car pulled up in front.
“Ah,” she said, pointing, and he got up to look. Then he went to the door.
Orson Morrell, the chief of police, was hurrying up the walk, dressed in a black uniform, badge and shoes gleaming on this Saturday morning. He was perhaps sixty-five, and had been for about fifteen years. In Carol’s mind he looked exactly the same as he always had.
“Good morning, sir,” he said, doffing his cap but leaving it on. “Sorry to take so long. Weekends are…” When he entered the foyer, he saw Carol. “Ah, good morning.” He smiled. “How’re you doing?” She could sense in the question the weight of Orson’s own memories of her stretched out naked and bleeding on the front sidewalk of her home. Not so very long ago.
“Great,” she said. She nodded cordially. He was wiping his feet on the bristly pad in the foyer. “Have you and Father Kelleher met?”
“Oh sure. The Reverend comes over to the jail, time to time—right, sir? Shoot, he heard Wally’s––er…your husband’s––confession right there in the jail, when all that happened, you know.”
Even hearing Wally’s name was disorienting to her. Wally and Carol had known each other a long time. They’d been good friends in the many years before their marriage. They’d been married to each other four years, the second marriage for both of them. Now he was gone, and his name had shadows on it. Truthfully, until this moment she hadn’t known, hadn’t even thought of, Wally’s experience immediately after the scene at the house. Now she got a picture of him in jail, blood-covered, remorseful, going to confession to Father Kelleher in a cell. Father Kelleher had never mentioned a confession to Carol. She pictured them taking his shoes, belt, and wallet, and putting him on suicide watch.
Orson stared at her, and when she did nothing but stare back, he followed Kelleher on up the foyer toward the office. Bliss trailed along behind.
“So. What we got here—a burglary someone said?”
Kelleher gestured for him to behold the mess.
“Did you touch anything in this room, sir?” Morrell asked, his notepad already out of his pocket.
“Not lately,” Kelleher said. “Except—I was looking to see if they got some things I was…”
“I did,” Carol said. “I touched the chair—then Father said to leave it in case of fingerprints.”
“Okay, that’s good,” Morrell said. He looked in the office a moment and then turned and looked at the rest of the house. He almost ran into Carol as he turned.
“And the VCR’s missing from that room,” Father Kelleher said, pointing.
“Happened last night, did it?”
“Right,” Kelleher said, following him. “Between yesterday at four and this morning around two, when I got home.”
“Between four and two.” He noted this. “Found it when you got home, did you? You were not home, is that it?”
Kelleher nodded. “Right. Er. Actually, it was this morning that I found it, after mass. Last night I just sort of went to bed. I mean, maybe they were still here, do you think?”
The policeman was writing in his notebook. Finally he looked up again. “Were you at someone’s house or something?”
“I was in Springfield, an appointment with the Bishop’.”
“Where’s the Bishop live?”
“Springfield.”
“Ah. Way over there?” Morrell said, but he was only half listening. He was eyeing the ceiling light in the foyer. Father Kelleher looked up there, too, and when he looked back down, Morrell was in the kitchen, leaning over to examine the window sills, his hands back so as not to touch anything. “You got a list of what’s disappeared?”
“No sir, but I can. Make one.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll need to make one then. Any big valuables gone?”
“The Sunday collection, for one thing,” Kelleher said. “I was saying to Mrs. Brown—I was saying that much of that was probably checks—but we hadn’t counted it yet so we don’t know for sure. And there was this gold rosary—maybe it’s under something, but I haven’t seen it.
“Manny’s gone, yeah. I thought about that. He counts the collections. I knew that. What do you think? Estimate?” He poised to write in his notebook, at the kitchen counter.
“Well, like I say, it wasn’t counted, and…”
“Ballpark it, Father.”
“Maybe five hundred in cash—probably not more. That’s confidential, right?”
“Of course. You know, Manny helps at the jai
l sometimes—feeding prisoners and such, during the holidays. I knew he was gone. Funny how things work, around and around. And it wasn’t counted yet, am I right on that, because Manny is out of town presently, correct?”
“He counts the collections, yes.”
“Okay.” Morrell wrote in his notebook, at the kitchen table. Looked around the room from where he stood. Wrote some more.
“Wonder how they got in,” he said after a moment.
“Kicked in the basement window,” Kelleher said.
Carol was amazed at this, amazed Father hadn’t mentioned it before.
“They got in down in the basement—there’s an extra bedroom down there.”
The policeman was writing. No guarantees he was getting it all down. “What was that again?” he asked. “Hold it. The basement? Can I see that?”
Father Kelleher took him down the narrow steps. He explained, “See, I had this door open here, from the basement into the kitchen, for the dog.”
“So, is that your usual practice, or is that the first time you ever did that? How’d they get the safe open?”
Because of a shortage of space in the little church hall across Central Street, the fourth-grade religion classes were held in the rectory basement—Carol remembered when Stephen attended catechism down there. She didn’t go down the steps, but through the floor she could hear Morrell and Father Kelleher mumbling and occasionally pointing things out, and a little broken glass skitter on the linoleum of the basement floor.
“If that don’t beat all,” Morrell was saying as they came back up the stairs. He was laughing.
“What’s that?” Carol said when the two men were back up and standing in the kitchen.
Morrell said, “Well, you remember old Father Hubbard, right? Or was that before your time?”
Carol knew the name, the priest of the parish in the fifties. Three priests ago.
“Well, Father Hubbard’s got a solid gold—what do you call it?”
Father Kelleher sighed, embarrassed. “It’s called a chalice, but I…”
“Chalice, yes—Father Hubbard’s chalice is on a bed stand down there, in the extra bedroom the assailants entered into, but the old chalice is under Father Hubbard’s wig. Being employed there as a wig stand has apparently saved this chalice from the burglary.” He was bent over, smiling rosy-faced and writing in his notebook. “A chalice worthy of a Pope,” he said, “under this ratty old gray and brown wig. Whoooeee.”
Kelleher was agitated. “I’d prefer that not be spread.”
“Now don’t be so all-fired defensive here, Father. Think about it. If you’d had that thing locked up in the safe, it’d be history. This here was a good move, from a strictly criminology point of thinking.”
“Yes, but you understand, word of that, if you don’t mind, it could be embarrassing to the church here,” Kelleher said. He was upset, a little out of breath, trying to keep good humor in a tough moment. He leaned against the doorway to get his balance. He looked at Carol. “It’s no longer consecrated, and it’s among effects we are gathering to ship to his nieces up in Cedar Falls.”
“Well, Father, I would hope you aren’t sending them Father Hubbard’s wig. Are you? The man’s been dead twenty-five years.”
Morrell sat down from laughing and removed his glasses. He wiped them with a gleaming white cotton handkerchief. “Whooboy, that’s a good one.” His eyes went down to his notepad, but for a few moments he was still laughing even as he read what he’d written thus far in the investigation.
“Anybody check for tracks outside that basement window?” Morrell asked, proud of his idea when he saw that no one had thought of it. “Okay—you make your list and just leave it on the counter—either I’ll get it or the boys from the lab will. Anything else you can think of?”
“No, I––”
“Oh yeah, one other thing. About the dust all over the place.”
“I know,” Kelleher said regretfully, “I’m sorry. I just––”
“Fingerprinting dust. I mean to say. Nasty stuff. I apologize in advance, but listen, on your insurance, charge a cleaning person to come in and scrub the place down after our boys are gone. It really is disgusting, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Morrell looked right at him. “And also, you got a gun?”
“Yes, I…”
“Well, make sure they didn’t steal that, and be careful. Just be careful. Some night you’ll sit up in bed and start blazin’ away at the ghost of poor harmless Father Hubbard, just back to retrieve his wig.”
Cordially, Morrell stood back up and patted Father Kelleher on the shoulder as he came by him heading for the door. “Handling this with good humor, Father—it’s an inspiration, truly. I’ll check for those tracks on my way out. And I’ll be back later, okay? Oh, and by the way, we have about one chance in—pardon the expression—hell of catching anybody on this. You know that, right?”
•
Half an hour later Carol and Father Kelleher were discussing Realtors as Bliss towed them up the front sidewalk of Carol’s home. They had walked over, leaving the church rectory to the fingerprint crew. Carol’s place had been for sale since she came home from the hospital, but houses weren’t moving very well. Father Kelleher tethered Bliss in the shade by the front porch, and they walked in—Becky was there.
“Hiya, Becky m’girl,” Father said in his best Irish. And then he coughed. She shied away from him, unaccustomed to the heaviness and rumble of an adult male in the house.
“Where’s Steve?” Carol asked.
“He’s in the kitchen eating toast.”
“Mom,” Stephen called from the kitchen. “I fixed toast but she wouldn’t eat it.”
“Mom,” Becky said, “I’ve been hicking up. Guess what. Stephen let Robby come in the house and play.”
“She’s got the hiccups,” Stephen called.
Carol noted that the house appeared to have been straightened up. Father Kelleher sat in the TV room in Wally’s old recliner. Just above his head, the gouge mark from the knife in the paneling.
“Father, can I get you some iced tea?” Carol called from the kitchen.
“Got any scotch?”
“Yes, I think so,” she said. She bent down and pulled it from a lower cabinet in the kitchen.
“Got brandy?—that’d be better.”
“Fresh out,” she said.
“You know,” he said, “that policeman, what’s-his-name?”
“Orson Morrell.”
“Manny told me he’s pretty sharp. He seemed slow and dull to me. What did you think?”
They rehashed the police work a while, Carol working in the kitchen, Kelleher back and forth between the easy chair and the kitchen doorway. He was in the chair when she finished pouring the drink on ice and brought it to him. She saw him looking around.
“I’ve been thinking of hanging a picture on that poor paneling—to hide the hole,” Carol said, handing him scotch and water. “Maybe Dali’s ‘The Last Supper.’”
“Yeah, Dali’d be about right for that wall,” he said. “You poor girl, I swear I can’t believe you still live here. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”
Father Kelleher sipped his drink.
“Well. It wasn’t the house that did it,” she said, from the kitchen. “And we have to live somewhere.” She was fixing sandwiches. Stephen took his and went out the back door. Becky left hers on the table and brought a book for Father to read to her—Charlie the Broken Steam Shovel. Carol listened to the story, told in the low rumbling brogue that sounded like the voice he used when giving out penance. Becky wasn’t quite ready to sit on his lap, and instead stood and leaned on the chair arm. When he was finished, Becky asked him, “Father, is your dog mean or nice?”
“Don’t you remember Bliss, my girl?” Kelleher said. The dog had often come with him on his visits during the bad days. Carol hoped Becky had put the bad days away in her mind. “She’s a real nice dog, Becky.”
“Is she used to little gi
rls?”
“She’ll like you, but you’re pretty big, really. Scratch her on the head, up there between the ears.”
So Becky went outside and petted the old dog tied in the yard. Both Kelleher and Carol watched the clock so Father would be sure to be back at the rectory about when the police were finished.
Eating the sandwich off a paper plate, his second scotch on the floor next to him, Father Kelleher chatted on. “Do you think of remarrying, Carol?” This was the kind of personal question priests were known to ask abruptly.
“No. I’m not really divorced, you know.” A central life question, answered easily as can be. Carol was amazed, standing there at the counter, cleaning up the lunch. Her mind flashed to that last time she’d met Nick, in that dingy hotel in Coal Grove, his smile and strong hands, the photo in that terrible parking lot, the bundle of letters she’d hidden, so sweet and artful and never once did he ask her to leave Wally.
“Well, I know—but marriage, my dear. That’s a formality really in this situation. Everyone would understand. Wally’s…”
“Sick,” she said.
“Yes. He’s…”
“Absent,” she inserted.
“Well, he is—he’s gone, gone for good. You’re a young woman and you have a right to move on.”
She pictured Wally confessing in jail, this man hearing the confession. “I guess.”
“Of course you do. There are steps we should take. We should begin right away.”
Carol wasn’t into annulments and other shufflings of the deck chairs.
Suddenly Kelleher was saying, “I should have married.” His tongue was loosening now.
“Well.” She stared at him a moment. “Marriage isn’t any easier than what you’ve got now, do you think?”
“For God’s sake, lass, I’m not expecting easier. I’m expecting…”
“Debt? Financial stress? Four-ply frustration, the evaporation of your best years? Endless self-denial, children causing not the postponement but rather the absolute negation of your own needs, and so on?”
They both laughed at her negativity. She kept going. “A gradual emptying out? And then you end up alone anyhow? Is this the sacrament you wish for yourself? Hey. It’s Dali all the way,” she said. “And most married couples I know who know anything are walking the thin line.”
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