18
AMANDA ZIKOWSKI FOUND THE STORY involving Jay’s father more interesting than he did, apparently. After the first burst of publicity—for a week there had been follow-ups of the original story in the campus publications, but then they stopped—Jay seemed annoyed at her continuing interest. How could she be interested in the past when there was this wonderful present containing him? Well, males grow up more slowly than females, she knew that, but what a romantic glow was cast over the campus by those long-ago dramatic events. Three men and one woman and all the interesting things they had done. Amanda went to the archives, where Greg Walsh found a copy of Patrick Pelligrino’s play Behind the Bricks. It seemed to foreshadow what was to happen. A bright golden moment, that group illumining the campus with their acitivities, and then one of them, Timothy Quinn, mysteriously disappeared. Now, two decades later, it turned out that he had been alive all along.
The archivist let Amanda photocopy the script, and she tried to interest Jay in it. “A revival, Jay. Think of it.”
“A revival implies that something was once alive.”
“Oh, Jay.”
“Casey Winthrop is the most interesting one of the whole damned bunch. My dad thinks so, too. Have you read Tumbleweed?”
“A Western? You’re not serious.”
“We should invite him to campus to talk about his work.”
“Jay, he writes paperbacks.”
“Readable paperbacks. What a sense of story.”
He was serious. “Okay. I’ll go along with you if you go along with me.”
That became their agreement. She helped him write a letter of invitation to Casey Winthrop, editing out his claim that his books were all the rage on campus—there wasn’t a single title available in the bookstore—and offering an honorarium of a thousand dollars, plus travel, etc.
“Where are we going to get a thousand dollars?” Amanda wanted to know.
“I’ll donate it.”
He had told her that his mother had left him money, and she had resisted asking how much. Well, it didn’t have to be a fortune to enable him to come up with the honorarium and expenses. They walked to the post office and sent off the letter.
“He won’t accept,” Jay said.
“You can’t know that.”
“Given his productivity, he must never leave his computer.” He asked his father if he would put in a word for them anyway and came back with the story of Peaches.
“Peaches!”
“His wife. She’s expecting. She’s a child bride, much younger than he is.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Why not Peaches?”
“You couldn’t baptize a child Peaches.”
“I never tried.”
As she had feared, he dragged his feet when she turned their attention to putting on Behind the Bricks. Amanda wanted an amateur group and somewhere other than Washington Hall, although that was where the play had been put on before. There was a stage in the auditorium of the Hesburgh Center.
The manager thought they were kidding when they asked about putting on a play there. “It’s an auditorium, not a theater.”
“We’ve looked it over. It would be perfect.”
The manager let his head roll from side to side. “Look, you check at McKenna, and if they give it a go-ahead, okay.”
It took two days to get through the red tape. The initial answer was no, absolutely not, but the woman who said this seemed to find Jay interesting, so Amanda let him do the talking. All three of them went over to Hesburgh to look at the auditorium.
“Impossible.” Her name was Hazel, and she seemed to hope her negatives would get a rise out of Jay.
“Did you ever see Thornton Wilder’s Our Town?”
Hazel hadn’t.
“Minimalist settings. You enlist the imaginations of the audience.” Jay paused and studied Hazel. “Have you ever acted?”
“Me!” she giggled, putting a hand over her ample bosom.
Jay turned to Amanda. “What do you think?”
“You’re the producer.”
“I think you’d be perfect for the second lead.”
Did he mean the character that bricked up the victim? Hazel was flattered, but she wasn’t insane. They went back to her office, and she pulled out forms, continuing to say that there was no way in which this could be done.
It was done. Before leaving, Jay asked Hazel if she was a senior. She inflated in indignation. “A senior?”
“A graduate student?”
“Get out of here.”
“You’re shameless,” Amanda said when they were outside.
“You have to understand the feminine psyche.”
“Ha.”
“I thought she was kind of cute. Sweat off a hundred pounds or so …”
“We’ll need a third.”
“Whoa. One Hazel is enough.”
“A third actor. You and I and who?”
“How about Roger Knight?”
“Have you written any good poems lately?”
“I don’t write good poems.”
She told Roger Knight their plans after his next seminar. Jay had stopped coming after having failed to discredit the Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies, whom he now referred to as Sherlock.
“Greg Walsh told me you had been asking about the play.”
“Oh, you know him.”
“He’s one of my best friends.”
Why should she be surprised? A stammering archivist and a three-hundred-pound professor. She also told him about the invitation to Casey Winthrop.
He was delighted. “I have been toying with the idea of devoting a semester to Notre Dame authors.”
“Do you know what he writes?”
“I am one of his most devoted fans.”
Amanda gave up. She had tried to read Tumbleweed but hadn’t made it to chapter three.
Some days later an excited Jay told her that Casey Winthrop had responded to their letter with a phone call. “He said he never gives talks.”
“Oh, well.”
“Of course he wanted to be persuaded. So I persuaded him. All we have to do is settle on a date.”
“Hazel will veto it.” Hazel seemed to control the use of all the campus buildings.
“My dear, you underestimate my persuasiveness.” He closed his eyes. “Moonlight can be so cruelly deceptive.”
“Who are you imitating?”
“Noël Coward?”
19
MAME CHILDERS, NÉE SAYERS, WAS the picture of affluent sophistication, the kind of woman Father Carmody did not like, but then he hadn’t liked her as a student either. When she called from the Morris Inn to ask him to dinner, his first impulse was to say no. Not because of her. He realized that he was no longer patient with unforeseen disruptions of the even tenor of his ways. If he didn’t know himself better, he would think he was getting old. He accepted her invitation, but with foreboding.
She rose from a lobby chair when he came into the Morris Inn and swept toward him with a radiant smile. There was no way of avoiding her embrace. He felt enveloped in the invisible cloud of her perfume.
“Father, what is your secret? You don’t look a day older.”
“Just years older?”
She actually squeezed his arm. “I have been sitting here wondering how long it has been she we were last together.”
The suggestion that this was the resumption of a warm friendship did not improve his disposition. He told her that the last time she saw him must have been 1989.
“Shhh,” she said. Another squeeze.
Into the dining room then, Sorin’s, where Mame posed by the receptionist desk, keeping a grip on his arm. As they were led to their table, Father Carmody did not look around, not wanting to know who might be witnesses of this grand entrance.
He declined a drink when the question was put to them, and Mame protested. “I want this to be a celebration.”
“Of what?”
She
looked mysterious. “Later.”
“I never drink.” It seemed a pardonable exaggeration.
“Then I won’t either.”
“Nonsense. Have something.”
“Well …”
While they waited for her martini to arrive, she sat across from him, smiling possessively.
“Tell me what we’re celebrating.”
She hesitated, then opened her purse and took out an envelope, which she handed to him. He recognized the name of the Manhattan parish.
“What’s this?”
“It’s from Monsignor Sparrow.” A pause. “My pastor.”
“Aha. You plan to enter the convent.”
She stared at him, then burst into laughter.
Father Carmody opened the envelope and took out the letter, surprised to find that it was addressed to him. He read it, read it again. Monsignor Sparrow informed Father Carmody, somewhat officiously, that there were no canonical impediments to Mame’s marrying again.
“Again?”
Her drink came. She lifted it in a toast, and he raised his glass of water.
“Why don’t I just review the whole thing, Father.”
So he heard of her marriage to Wilfrid, a wonderful man in many ways, and they continued to have the highest respect for one another, despite the differences in their outlook on life. She looked at him significantly.
“He isn’t a Catholic, Father. We weren’t married in the Church.” She adopted a naughty little girl expression.
“Any children?”
She looked away for a moment. “That was one of the differences.”
“So you divorced.”
“We divorced. So much you will have heard from David Williams.”
“David Williams?”
“Father, you remember the group of us here. We seem to be back in the news again. Isn’t it astounding that Timothy Quinn has been alive all along? Anyway, David has been my financial adviser in recent years. We realized that even after the passage of time there remained an attraction.” She stopped, and her expression became sorrowful. “Why did you tell him I cannot marry again?”
Suddenly the letter from Monsignor Sparrow began to make sense. In it he seemed to be reproving Father Carmody for his deficient knowledge of canon law.
“You want to marry again?”
She pursed her lips. “You’re teasing. I know Dave has spoken with you.”
They were interrupted by the waitress, thank God, and went about the business of ordering. This gave Father Carmody time to realize the position he was in. Mame, the affluent divorcée, and David Williams, widower, had been thrown together in the fleshpots of Manhattan. Whatever their relationship, Mame interpreted it as the prelude to marriage. For all Father Carmody knew, Dave had proposed to her, but it was equally clear that Dave had used him as an excuse for not going ahead with it. The problem this posed was a difficult one, but one that had its attractions for a man who had spent so many years in the devious ways of administration. Of course, he could simply blurt out that he knew nothing about it, that he had never discussed the matter with David Williams, nor vice versa, to make that crystal clear, but that simple path did not appeal.
“What does David make of the monsignor’s judgment?”
“He invokes your veto.”
He sipped his water. “Veto is a little strong.”
“Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that.”
“Canon law was never my strongest suit.”
“But Dave said you were so positive.”
“It’s my manner, I suppose.”
They were served and for some minutes busied themselves with food. But already Mame was aglow with relief. The supposed veto of Father Carmody was not as firm as she assumed.
Anyone in authority must learn that, while always telling the truth, he is not obliged to tell the whole truth to every party. This carries with it the note of dissembling and can easily lead into outright duplicity. Father Carmoldy could cite instances. There was no need to tell Mame that he had never discussed a possible marriage with David. He was already looking forward to talking with David about this amazing conversation.
“He has been your financial adviser?”
“Yes.”
“These have been difficult economic times.”
“I have lost money, yes. Is there anyone who hasn’t? Of course David feels very badly about it. Not that I am stony broke, far from it, but he takes personal responsibility for the recession. He has even offered to reimburse me the amount I lost.”
Ah. The bequest from Brother Joachim. The Trappist alumnus was a useful diversion, and Father Carmody went on about that. “You mentioned your group. There is also Beth Hanrahan. Have you kept in touch with her?”
“Hardly. She has become a saint.”
That was not how Beth would have described herself, but doubtless Beth’s selfless life in Minneapolis would suggest heroic virtue to a Manhattanite.
They got through the meal without any need for Father Carmody to tell an outright falsehood. Except about never drinking. In recompense he joined Mame in a brandy when the table was cleared.
“I’ve been told it is a tasty drink.”
“Father, I can’t tell you the trepidation I felt coming to you like this. I had no idea how I could broach the subject.”
“Monsignor Sparrow’s letter did that.”
“Didn’t it? I’ll say it again. I am so relieved. Will you talk to David?”
He pretended to hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “I will talk to David.”
He suffered another embrace and another envelopment in perfume. When he went out to his car, he was rather pleased with himself. He would have called his performance jesuitical, except that he knew too many Jesuits.
20
JAY WILLIAMS SAT IN LEAHY’S Lounge in the Morris Inn across a little table from Mrs. Childers, who had surprised him with her call, telling him that she was on campus and hoped they could get together. With the egoism of youth, he assumed she had flown to South Bend just to see him. Ever since their meeting in New York, he had been puzzling about what she had said then. Once he got out from under the zillion-kilowatt floodlight of her sophisticated charm he had found himself strangely depressed. It was her possessive attitude toward his father and her zany notion that she would buy the condo on Longboat Key so his father wouldn’t lose it that had been her big surprise. If she bought it, though, she would own it, not his father.
“Bourbon and water?” she asked Jay when Murph the bartender came for their orders.
“Beer.”
Her elegant eyebrows lifted, but she said nothing. “Martini,” she told Murph.
She had slipped off her coat and draped it over the back of her chair. Now she drew it over her shoulders. “It’s chilly in here.”
“My dad has taken the condo off the market.”
“Isn’t that wonderful?”
“You knew that?”
“Of course.” She seemed to be reading his thoughts. “Casey Winthrop’s wife is the Realtor in the case. Peaches.” A little laugh. “Only in Florida. I suppose it might have been Oranges.”
“Have you had a chance to get around the campus?”
“Oh, this is just an in-and-out trip. Do you know Father Carmody?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“He was such a power, Jay. The man behind the throne. It is painful to think of him filed away in Holy Cross House.”
“You’ve seen him.”
“That was the point of the exercise.” A hand fluttered out and rested on his. “And to see you, of course. I want us to be friends.”
He fought the surge of pleasure. Of course she was nuts about him, what else? Middle-aged woman makes fool of herself over Notre Dame undergraduate. Thomas Wolfe had had an older mistress.
“I had hoped you’d bring Amanda.”
“She’s all wrapped up in the revival of Pelligrino’s play.”
“Of course.”
“It’s a lousy
play.”
“I always thought so. Still, it was so much fun putting it on. Dave was such a good actor.”
Dave. Well, what the hell, they had gone to school together—but that was a long time ago.
“Why did you have to see Father Carmody, Mrs. Childers?”
Murph brought the drinks, and she fell silent until he left them. “I’ll let your father tell you.”
His father! He pushed away the glass Murph handed him and brought the bottle to his lips. She followed this as if he were performing some Olympic event, smiling wondrously.
“I haven’t drunk beer from the bottle since …” She pursed her lips and half turned her head, her eyes never leaving him. “But there. I sound like an old woman.”
“You’re not an old woman.”
Not at all, my dear, What’s a decade or two difference in age? They can be erased by the ardor of our love. I will make you young again.
“Thank you. And stop calling me Mrs. Childers, please. It’s Mame.”
“Is Mame short for something?”
She laughed. “Does it sound like Peaches to you?”
Banter. Persiflage. Repartee. Bullshit. As he talked with her, playing the Ping-Pong of patter, saying what you don’t mean and meaning what you don’t say, the depression he had felt after their meeting in New York put in a reappearance. What were his plans for Thanksgiving? “I plan to be with my father.” She acted as if she had already known that. He was relieved when the flunky looked in the door of the bar and told her her cab had come.
She gave a little cry and got to her feet. He held her coat so she could get her arms into the sleeves. On the way out, she put money on the counter, twice what the drinks cost, and sailed out. Her bags were being put into the cab when they went outside and stood under the canopy. She turned to Jay, a look of pained pleasure on her perfect face, then gathered him into his arms. Her lips pressed his cheek. She stepped into the cab and looked up at him.
“Wipe that off your cheek, Jay. Amanda will be furious.”
The door was pulled shut, a flutter of her hand, and the taxi moved away. The doorman smiled at Jay.
“Your mother?”
“No!”
The doorman’s expression changed. He actually winked. Jay got the hell out of there.
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