All About Women

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “He gave up a day at golf to come.” A wide grin split Rick’s face.

  “But not a chance to talk about our football team,” Brendan enthused. “The greatest Notre Dame fan in all the world.”

  The crowd of mourners fell away and Monsignor Mugsy, step firm as always, walked toward her with open arms, like she was an empress and he was the papal nuncio.

  “Greetings and salutations.” The words he had spoken as she tripped coming up the steps on her wedding day.

  “Monsignor Mugsy.” They gripped each other’s hands; somehow it didn’t seem right to hug a ninety-one-year-old Monsignor.

  Martin J. “Mugsy” Branigan, the oldest priest in the archdiocese, perpetual member of Butterfield Country Club, sometime (long ago) shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, longtime superintendent of Catholic schools, longer-time pastor of St. Ursula’s, and longest-time-of-all incorrigible Notre Dame fan.

  “I’m so sorry, Margaret”—he stood at the casket—“so very, very sorry.” For a moment the mask of geniality slipped and Monsignor Mugsy was an old man who had come a long way on an airplane to pay tribute to a man he had baptized. He was tired, sad, frail, but still didn’t seem ninety-one.

  Then, the concession having been made to death, he turned to the children and the two solemn-faced grandchildren. “These galoots of yours have grown up, Margaret, not bad-looking kids. This guy, I hear he’s a great tennis player at Notre Dame.”

  “Chess, Monsignor!” Brendan knew that in the game with Mugsy you did not defend yourself. Rather, you attacked.

  “Only the Russians make money on that … did I baptize all of them, Margaret?”

  “Yes, Monsignor.”

  “Well, it seems to have worked pretty well, more than I can say for some of my other baptisms. This one.” He pointed an accusing finger at Rick. “The exorcism part never took on him.”

  “I’ll give you nine strokes and beat you at Butterfield any day next summer.”

  “Twelve,” Mugsy retorted. “Two for each decade of age I give away.”

  He had a joke, a wisecrack, an accurate jab of wit for each of them—someone had surely prepared him beforehand—and moved on to the rest of the precinct, leaving a trail of laughter and love behind him without having to say anything more in sympathy except one sincere “I’m sorry.”

  It was not fair, she told herself as she fell asleep in the strange bed in Ellen’s guest bedroom that night, to compare poor Father Reid with Monsignor Mugsy. Few priests would win in a comparison with the old man. Yet neither of them had said anything particularly religious. One had made them all angry and the other had made them all laugh.

  “Mugsy doesn’t wear his piety on his sleeve.” Dick had defended him once against a woman who complained about the Notre Dame football player in the stained-glass window at St. Ursula’s. “But he’s a hell of a good priest.”

  “My husband, however,” Peggy had observed promptly, “does wear his piety on his sleeve. Prays at least once a year.”

  More laughter; so much laughter, now almost over, only a few traces like the last snowdrifts of winter melting in the pitiless March sun. Laughter yielding to tears. Her own tears had yet to begin. She was still hiding her grief under the blanket of compulsive Irish female bravery. One more day and she could collapse. What would happen then?

  Poor Father Reid. How could one so young be so stuffy and conservative?

  After the homily the next morning, she was not sure that conservative was the right word.

  She had resolved that she would walk down the green-carpeted aisle of St. Finian’s with a steady step. She would not be one of those widows who had virtually to be carried to the front pew by her children. Her courage had sustained her thus far; she would endure the final day.

  An Irishwoman to the end, she told herself with a bitter smile.

  She had almost been undone at the funeral parlor when she overheard a woman remark, not totally devoid of cattiness, that she was an “attractive widow.” She did not want to be attractive; she’d paid a high enough price already in her life because of other women’s envy of her good looks; she did not want to be widow; and most especially she did not want to be the object of a mixture of pity and contempt, an attractive widow.

  Tears were dangerously close as she left Crawford’s, tears which would be the prelude to collapse, and they were tears of anger, not of grief.

  Poor woman meant no harm.

  No, that wasn’t true; she did mean harm.

  St. Finian’s, with all its memories of First Communions, confirmations, graduations, weddings, midnight Masses, always with Dick at her side, muttering an irreverent joke to which she would reply in kind despite herself, was like a brutal slap on the face. The taste of bile surged into her mouth, worse than the couple of hangovers which had occurred in her abstemious life. I am going to be sick, she thought as she walked from the vestibule into the elegant, modern church.

  Yet she made it down the aisle, with firm step, upright head, dry eyes. She stumbled only at the last minute when she slipped into the pew, Rick on one side of her, Brendan on the other. So many friends in church. The sanctuary filled with priests. All the accoutrements of Irish grief for the brave Irish queen whose only goal now was to postpone collapse.

  The Eucharist of the Resurrection, as the transformed Requiem Mass must now be called, is resolutely hopeful; white vestments, hymns of muted joy, ritual movements hinting at eternity. She yearned for the black and purple of the burial Masses for her parents. She did not want to hope. She had not hoped since she found the cold body next to her in bed. There were no grounds for hope. She would never hope again.

  Irish she might be in her repression of public grief, but Catholic she was not in her repression of private hope.

  Not a bad epigram. After all, she had gone back to college after her children were raised.

  Father Reid sang with a rich baritone voice, hitting the notes perfectly, better than most priests. The Gospel was from St. John. The Lazarus story. Read at her father’s Mass and her mother’s, too. “I am the resurrection and the life.”

  Hope challenging me even when I don’t want it.

  “Where is Lazarus among us today?” he began the homily. Nice delivery, good technique. Her speech teacher at the Mundelein College weekend program would approve. “Look around you, my friends, where is the man Jesus raised from the dead? He is dead. Jesus is dead. Richard Walsh is dead. We will all someday be dead. Did Lazarus rise from the dead? Have you ever seen him? Did Jesus rise from the dead? When is the last time you saw Him?

  “Death is the end of all we know. Life is a temporary interlude between two oblivions. We mark an end here today, the end of the Richard Walsh that we knew. All about which we can be certain is this body which we will soon place in the tomb at Queen of Heaven Cemetery. His life is over. Our lives will be over soon. The lives of everyone who has gone before us are ended. Including Lazarus. Including Jesus.

  “Thomas Merton says, ‘That widow’s son, after the marvel of his miracle/he did not rise for long, and sleeps forever.’

  “Is there anything else besides sleep forever after death? Any pie in the sky when we die? The answer is that we do not know. We must not deceive ourselves about this. There is no solid reason to believe that life is strong enough to survive death. If we live with the self-centered hope of personal survival, then we will not accept our social responsibilities in this life. We will flee from the challenges of this world to naive daydreams about the next world. We must dedicate ourselves today not to any foolish hopes of seeing Richard Walsh again, but rather to living as Jesus did and dying for the cause of justice and peace as Jesus died. There is no other way to give meaning to our brief interlude of life.”

  She stopped listening. No, he wasn’t exactly a conservative.

  She did not want hope. Neither, however, did she want her Church to tell her that there was no reason to hope.

  “Death is stronger than life,” he was concluding. �
�That is the only thing we can know with certainty as we say our last farewell to Richard Walsh. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  The congregation behind her stirred restlessly. Catholics didn’t listen to homilies. Someone had said that a priest could announce that a hundred virgins would be sacrificed to Moloch next Saturday at dawn and there would be no reaction from the people in church. However, the congregation seemed to sense that there was something not quite right about this homily.

  Still, pious old women, like herself in a few years, would swarm up to the handsome young priest and congratulate him on his wonderful eulogy.

  In the sanctuary, the other priests seemed untroubled.

  “They’re used to shit like that,” Rick whispered. “Nothing a priest does surprises other priests anymore.”

  She did not tell him to shush. They all should be angry, she supposed, but they were too tired.

  She sank into a passive lethargy, a protective coat sealed by numbness, through the rest of the Mass, the ride to Queen of Heaven, and the procession into the chapel; there were no graveside ceremonies in Catholic cemeteries anymore. They interfered with the work schedule of the gravediggers.

  “Merton ends the poem,” Ellen’s husband Steve murmured to Peggy, “‘And learn the endless heaven/promised to all the widow church’s risen children.’”

  She nodded, not knowing just then who Merton was or what poem Steve was quoting. The Church is a widow like me? Maybe someday I’ll find consolation in that.

  The mourners gathered around the casket in the chapel and waited patiently for Father Reid. Old Mr. Crawford, the undertaker, who had buried both her parents, finally stumbled up to her. “Father Reid said that one of the other priests”—he nervously fingered the rim of his formal hat—“could say the final prayers.”

  Awkwardly she took the prayer card from his hand. Her head whirled, her stomach churned, she was about to float away into peaceful oblivion.

  “Monsignor Branigan,” she said in a loud, clear, controlled voice. “Would you say the prayers for us, please?”

  “I’ll be honored, Margaret.” He waved off the card. “When your eyes are as bad as mine, you memorize the prayers.”

  More laughter. Mugsy laughter. Dear God, Mugsy, you bring laughter everywhere.

  With laughter comes hope. I will not hope.

  But it’s hard to resist it.

  The final act was what Brendan called the “afterwake,” a sumptuous buffet lunch in a wood-paneled restaurant dining room at the Oak Brook Mall. On Saturday someone’s wedding banquet would be in the same room. Death and sex. Maybe Father Reid was right. Maybe there was nothing else in the universe. He didn’t mention sex, of course. Too much hope in that perhaps.

  “Mother,” Ellen whispered in her ear. “Should you ask one of the priests to say grace before we begin to eat?”

  “Monsignor Branigan,” she said automatically, “will you lead us in prayer?”

  The old priest stepped up to the microphone at the center of the head table. “I don’t know about leading in prayer, Margaret. When I was a young priest only Protestants did that. But I will say grace.…”

  More laughter.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with Protestants.”

  Yet more laughter.

  “Some of the best football players at Notre Dame are Protestants.”

  Applause.

  “Not Irish either. To say the least.”

  Louder applause.

  The old priest paused, groping for a word, perhaps for an idea. “This isn’t a very good day. I baptized Dick Walsh, I married him, I buried his mother and father. I baptized these wonderful kids of his. I wonder why God gives me forty years more than he gave Dick. It doesn’t seem fair.…”

  The dining room filled up with silence, like a balloon filling with air. It was a different line for Monsignor Mugsy.

  “He was one of the finest men I have ever known. A great football player at Notre Dame; and his kid, this big galoot Brendan here, is on their tennis team. They had a better record than the football team this year.…”

  Uneasy laughter now. Was the old man wandering?

  “There’s always next year for football teams. Always next year for us. Even after we’re gone.” Behind the thick glasses, Mugsy’s blue eyes were watering. “I don’t know. We heard a lot of talk at Mass about life and death. Well, I’ve had more of life than any of you, more than a lot of you put together. If I’ve learned one thing in these ninety-odd years, and it’s the only thing that matters, it is that life is too important ever to be anything but life. Well…” His train of thought seemed to leave him. It didn’t matter. “Bless us, O Lord, and these…”

  To a person, the Walsh clan rose with a standing ovation. The rest of the dining room joined them at once. Tears pouring down her face, Peggy Walsh embraced the weeping old priest. The two of them sobbed in each other’s arms.

  Now there would be grief, mourning, agony. Beyond that she could see life continuing to be life. She would be all right.

  Paula

  “Good morning, Sister.” Ms. Walsh smiled her sweetest Women’s Altar Guild president smile, trying perhaps to match the brightness of the potted bronze mum on her desk. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  Paula needed all the emotional restraint acquired in the novitiate and all the intellectual discipline learned in law school to control her response. “Are there any messages for me?” she asked, her voice even, neutral, professional.

  Someone should tell the woman that, widow or not, she should not display potted plants, with their funeral-home smell, on the reception desk of a serious law firm; probably none of the men in the firm would have the courage to do so.

  Peggy Walsh, too vain to wear her glasses until she was forced to read, fumbled nervously with them, slipped the temples through her carefully coiffed silver hair, and searched anxiously among the disorderly stacks of paper on her desk. “I think there were two calls, Sister.” Her elegant fingers, an expensive ring on each hand, trembled as she shuffled the papers. “And one last night after you left the office.”

  Dear God, give me patience, Paula pleaded. And protect me from becoming a dithering old woman at fifty-two.

  “Here we are, Sister.” Fingers still trembling, she handed over to Paula three pink message sheets, lost treasures rediscovered; her delicately made-up face beamed as it must have when she placed the crown on the Blessed Mother in eighth grade.

  “Thank you, Ms. Walsh.” Paula glanced at the notes: all calls from women, three more cases, either discrimination or sexual harassment. Would the oppression never end? “Incidentally, I thought I was to be Ms. Flynn or merely Paula during work hours? I’m not ashamed of being a nun, as you know, and certainly not ashamed of my vocation to defend the rights of women in court. But it is improper for me to be treated differently from any other woman lawyer our firm might employ.”

  I hope I don’t sound patronizing, she thought.

  Peggy Walsh blushed, a show of embarrassment she had doubtless learned as an adored and pampered little girl. “I’m sorry, Sis … Miss Flynn. Old habits die slowly.…”

  “Ms. Flynn.” Paula walked briskly away from the reception desk and down the thick beige carpet—appropriate for a highly priced bordello, she had once complained at a partners’ meeting—to her own deliberately spartan office.

  Women like Walsh were victims, she thought as she lit her first cigarette of the morning, not all that different from those for whom she pleaded in the courtroom. But the Walshes of the world didn’t know they were victims. That made them part of the problem. Peggy Walsh’s attractive, late-middle-aged face and trim, well-preserved body, encased in closely fitting designer dresses, confirmed every male lawyer in the firm in his figure-ogling chauvinism. Widow as sex object. Jim Foley merchandising his lovely and now available sister-in-law at the reception desk as surely as though he were auctioning her on a slave block.

  All right,
the poor woman’s husband had died suddenly, she had never worked a day in her life, she had married too young to finish college, she was confused and frightened in her first “job.” I sympathize with her grief, Paula told herself, but I resent the false consciousness which makes her a willing participant in her own objectification. She doesn’t need the money. She is taking it from some poor black or Hispanic woman who does need it and could record telephone messages efficiently and accurately.

  One of her rings could feed a third-world family for a month.

  Paula punched the number on the first message slip. She pulled her weight in the firm, a small but very prestigious partnership specializing in litigation. Some of her work was pro bono, but the courts were now making awards for sexual harassment and job discrimination, which turned such cases into a profitable legal specialty. There was not the slightest suggestion of favors for the big, solid nun—“no nonsense from her closely cut hair to her flat-heeled shoes,” the Sun Times feature writer had gushed—who worked hard for everything she received. There was a different standard, however, for the fragile, beautiful little widow.

  She was definitely part of the problem.

  “The number you have called, nine-five-three, two-nine-six-seven, is not in service,” a computerized voice screeched in her ear. “Nine-five-three, two-nine-six-seven is not in service.”

  I must be patient, she told herself as she ground her cigarette into an ashtray. The woman is a victim even if she doesn’t realize it. So is the woman who tried to call me this morning and will never receive my return call. What if she loses her nerve because she thinks I have rejected her?

  “Ms. Walsh,” she said softly in the phone. “The message for me from Ms. Brand. Are you sure you wrote down the number correctly? Was it really nine-five-three, two-nine-six-seven?”

  “I think so.” The receptionist sounded close to tears, her reaction to the discovery of every new mistake. “I wrote it down somewhere before I put it on the message sheet.… Yes, here it is. Mrs. Marian Brand, nine-five-three, two-nine-six-seven.”

  “The phone company tells me that number is out of service.” She kept her voice clinical and nonjudgmental, the way she had learned to administer reprimands in a summer workshop on sensitivity training in the early seventies.