Ginny’s day went well. Downtown, she picked up with a photographer and drove with him south to the mills where the steelworkers were on strike. She milled among the strikers herself, making easy interviews. Nobody wants to be interviewed more than a striker, who is dying for an outlet for his beef, while the photog got candids.
The two ate lunch together after phoning in. The photog was a black guy, John Brown, with a sweet, easy manner. Ginny asked about his kids. He took out pictures, taken by him and very good, of three smiling, happy ones. They headed back, she to write up her next-day story, he to develop.
Luckily, the radio remained silent on the way down the Dan Ryan, and they didn’t have to leave it for a fire, kidnapping, or other unscheduled event. “Thing about newspapering is all the unscheduled events,” Ginny said as they tooled along.
He smiled. “They do interfere with your day, don’t they?”
“I mean, I could be back at the office looking words up in the dictionary, and the damn editor wants me out asking people how they feel about it.”
“That’s what they do, tell you to see how people feel about it?”
“Not first off. They want to know what happened. Then they want to know how people feel about it.”
“How did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln? That sort of thing?”
“Yeah, or how does that bullet feel in your head, Mr. Jones? Does it hurt more or less than your worst toothache?”
“Or just the same,” added Brown. They both laughed.
Back in the city room, she bent over her notes and began to pick and choose, counting on impulse and first impression to decide the best interviews. What she had to do was supposed to be doable in an eight-hour day. She knew this because she would be expected in at nine o’clock the next morning, ready to do it again.
Another sure indicator was that she was working for a daily newspaper, not a weekly or monthly. Another was the 4 p.m. deadline. Another was her date that night with Father Devlin.
She answered her phone. “Ginny?” It was him.
“Yes,” she said breathily.
“You got a cold?” he asked.
“No, I just sound that way.”
“Oh. Listen, we still on for tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Good. How’s your day going?”
For some reason she was stunned by the question. It seemed ages since anyone asked her that. “Oh, it’s going, uh, O.K.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said.
They settled on where they’d meet and when, and she hung up, just slightly rattled. He’d caught her at her most vulnerable time, when she had opened herself to the breezes of creation. The interview story would not be fine art, but it would be the best she could do, and it would be the result of as much concentration she could bring to bear in the next hour or so.
His call came as that concentration was building up, when she was half asleep with it. That’s what the concentration was: focus on one thing to the exclusion of others. Wonderful experience, wonderful — she was careful of the word — therapy.
She brushed aside thoughts of her priest friend and attended to the words on the paper in front of her and her memory of the men and women who had spoken to her in all earnestness just hours before.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“You don’t feel just a little bit uncomfortable about tonight?” Melissa Williams was quizzing her husband Arthur in their living room. She sat on the couch with one arm stretched across its back. He was in a chair. “I mean, when was the last time we double-dated with a priest?”
“Not recently, that’s for sure.”
“Arthur, I know it’s not recently. What I want to know is how you feel about it.”
“I don’t feel uncomfortable.”
Melissa sighed and looked out the window, then turned back. “Well don’t you wonder what’s going on?”
“Yes. Now that you mention it, I do,” said Arthur. “But that’s partly Father Devlin. It seems half the time I’m wondering what’s going on with him. He is not your normal, predictable, upward-mobile priest. He’s different. Frankly, I feel sorry for him.”
“Well he’s a grown man living with his choices. Same as the rest of us. What’s there to feel sorry for?”
“I don’t know. Just something about him. Like he’s going through something he should have a gone through a long time ago.”
“Puberty? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” she said, but her half-meant apology was lost in her laughter and Arthur’s too.
“Oh Melissa,” he said. “You are so mean and vicious. Ugly. Evil. He got up and sat next to her on the couch. “C’mere,” he said.
“What? ‘C’mere’? What you mean, ‘C’mere!”
Arthur reached over and pulled her to him by her arm and nuzzled her. She closed her eyes as he did it. The front door flew open. It was Artie, eight, looking for supper. He plowed through the front hall past the living room where his parents sat and headed for the fridge.
“C’mon,” said Melissa. “Let’s go. Later. He’ll be full of peanut putter before you know it if I don’t get them supper. Later.”
“But I’ve reached puberty,” said Arthur, a woeful look on his face. His wife fled, laughing, to the kitchen to peel Artie away from the fridge and begin ladling out the soup.
Arthur called the other two from upstairs, and in a few minutes the three of them were seated around the kitchen table.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Arthur and Malissa were to get Devlin at the rectory. The three of then were to meet Ginny at a restaurant on Rush Street, near the river. It was convenient for Ginny and not bad for the Oak Parkers, who would take the Eisenhower downtown, which at that hour in that direction was a twenty-minute run.
For a week night dinner out, the evening had developed somewhat beyond Arthur’s original intentions, which had been to enjoy a quiet dinner in the neighborhood. At first it was to be just he and Melissa. They would hold hands and rub knees under the table, eat and drink delicately and return to their Humphrey Avenue house with son Harold in charge, probably sleeping next to the telephone, to enjoy one another’s company in the tenderest fashion.
Then Arthur decided to add Father Devlin, the veteran celibate whom they both enjoyed and who would add a piquant sauce to their social intercourse. Then Father Devlin added Ginny, who would add God knew what to an evening now past all bounds originally set for it.
Melissa knew Ginny from some years back, when they and the times were different. She knew her well enough to have some memories to share worth about five minutes conversations From then it would be a hopeful probing of and by each other, looking for common ground. It had been there once, and there was reason to think it would be there now, but you never knew.
Still, that was life in a big city, and both husband and wife were relaxed about the evening as it concerned them. Melissa was worried about Father Devlin. So was Arthur in his way. Neither was prurient about the possibilities. Nor did they gleefully await an outcome that would put the priest beyond the priestly pale. They knew and liked him wholly as a priest. Chances were, as in the Melissa-Ginny relationship, they would like him also as something else. But the possibility of major change was still unsettling.
The feeding of the children went apace, followed by the washing of the dishes and the dressing of adults and children — the latter for bed, the former for Dining Out.
This dining out had gone from an upper-middle-level North Avenue west of Harlem (suburban-elegant) to Rush Street near the river (Downtown). Nobody noted the difference. There was an unexpressed awareness of slipping past the boundaries of one sphere into the wider boundaries of the next, which surrounded the smaller. A nice little excitement attended the shift. It had something to do with choice of shirt and tie, dress, shoes.
In the middle of dressing, between bra and slip, Arthur embraced his inside smooth-skinned wife, slipping his hands below waist level and panty elastic for a soft squeeze.
Melissa was distracted by preparations. “Please,” she said.
“But you’re mine,” said Arthur, “Yes and no,” she said, moving away after a tongue-rattling kiss.
“Oh?” he said, buttoning his shirt. “There’s someone else?”
“Me,” she said.
“Oh my,” he said. “Her own woman. I married a woman who’s her own woman.” He stood, distracted himself, picking over his tie rack. It was the idlest of chatter, by two people who knew each other’s moves from long exposure to them.
“You didn’t buy me,” she said, stepping into a dress.
“Rented you?”
She laughed. “No, you didn’t rent me either.”
“That’s because you’re a person not a commodity, right?”
“Right.” She checked a dress hem. “You know what I’m tired of hearing, actually?”
“Me complain? The kids fight? Dickie play the violin?” Dickie was the boy next door, who practiced in front of an open window.
“The word ‘person.’”
“Why ‘person’?” He stood tying his tie.
“We don’t say ‘woman’ or ‘man’. Have you realized how people have shied away from ‘woman’ and ‘man’? It’s as if those words have to be sanitized. Instead, we say ‘person.’ It’s become a convention, like ‘water closet’ for bathroom or ‘limbs’ for legs. It’s our new prudery. We shrink from ‘womanhood’ and ‘manhood.’ It’s silly.”
Arthur stopped in the middle of a knot to look at her. She had the hem right and was turning in front of a mirror. In a few seconds she noticed he was watching. “What you lookin’ at?” she asked, smiling.
He just smiled back and returned to his knot. She finished her examination and went to check the kids, who were finishing a desert of sliced oranges. They had groaned when she announced oranges but as usual had eaten the slices with both hands, reveling in their juice and sweetness.
She got them out of the kitchen with rinsed hands and faces, stacked the dishes and sponged the table. She gave Harold some last-minute instructions, including the number of Dickie’s mother next door in case of emergency. Nothing ever happened to warrant calling Dickie’s mother, but you never knew.
Meanwhile, she stood at the ready, as she did when she and her husband went out. When both couples went out and left their kids, neither gave a backup number. The system simply broke down. There were always the Skeltons, some blocks away, or 911.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Arthur rang the rectory door and came back to the car in a few minutes with Devlin, who greeted Melissa with a kiss on the cheek and sat in the back. Melissa turned in the front. Arthur pulled away, down Austin Boulevard, eyeing traffic. He caught a light at Madison Street, a half block away. It was a warming night, dry and spring-like.
Devlin wore a maroon turtleneck under a slightly wrinkled tweed jacket and gray flannel slacks. The return of the turtleneck had solved a nice problem for priests relaxing in public without benefit of collar: they needn’t don tie and go all the way to layman’s status, but they could be more or less dressed up and non-clerical all the same. He was admittedly a cut below his friends in dressiness, but not enough to make him a sore thumb. Eccentric maybe.
“You’re lookin’ good,” he told Melissa, turned toward him, nodding to Arthur to include him in the comment.
“Thanks, my friend,” said Melissa. “When you go downtown, you try harder.”
“I don’t fit,” Devlin said, looking down at himself and grimacing.
“Yes you do,” said Melissa.
He shrugged and sat back.
Arthur got them to the Eisenhower, where they turned left and headed for the Loop.
“It’s a nice night,” said Melissa.
Devlin looked at her. “Did you get me here to tell me it’s a nice night?” |
“No, but it is a nice night, isn’t it?” she said.
“Melissa.” He stopped. “Arthur. Is this the same wife you had a week ago? The one full of bon mots and insights, the scorner of small, meaningless tidbits, telling me it’s a nice night?”
“Same wife, Father,” said Arthur, looking straight ahead.
“Pat.”
“Hm?” Arthur turned around, then turned quickly back to the road.
Melissa gaped. Her worst fears.
“Pat,” Devlin said. “Not Father.”
Arthur turned quickly and looked at Melissa, then looked ahead again.
Melissa turned and faced the front.
“Is there a problem?” asked Devlin. “What’s the problem?”
“No,” said Melissa.
“No what?” Devlin said.
“No Pat,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Devlin.
“Because it’s not you and it’s not me,” she said, still looking ahead. “I still call priests Father. Sorry.”
Silence.
Devlin finally said something. “With or without collar, having dinner downtown?”
“With or without a wedding ring, I’m still Mrs. Williams. And Arthur is —” She stopped.
“Mister Williams,” said Devlin. They all laughed. “Now really, Melissa, it’s the age of ‘Ms.’ and all that, and I have news for you: I will not be the first padre to get along without the title.”
“Can we? That’s the question,” said Arthur.
“Get along without calling me ‘Father’? Well if that’s the question, I don’t know the answer,” said Devlin.
More silence. They rode along the expressway in the last light of the spring day.
“O.K.,” said Devlin. “Call me Father.” He paused. “Where were we?” he asked, “I think this evening is not off to a good start. Arthur, can you explain me a few things?”
“Yes, I was about to, in fact. You’re right. Not a good start,” said Arthur, watching the road. Melissa turned around, the beginning of a sheepish look on her brown, angular face.
“We’re adjusting, but we don’t know to what,” Arthur said.
“Me and my friend and so forth?” asked Devlin.
“Yes,” said Melissa.
“Well look,” said Devlin. “She’s a friend who happens to be a girl, O.K.? I’m still a priest, even if I prefer being good ol’ Pat for the evening. Take it for a quirk, O.K.? And take my friend for a friend, O.K.?”
Melissa gave a sigh. “We’re not going to hear an announcement or anything drastic?” She smiled.
“You are not. You are going to hear wit and wisdom. I have no announcement. I am betraying some of the accepted behavior of a priest, but chalk it up to eccentricity. I*m eccentric. And looking forward to a fun-filled evening with Art and Melissa.”
“And Ginny,” said Melissa.
“And Ginny,” Devlin said. He smiled. “O.K.?”
“Is Ginny going to become a nun?” asked Arthur, grinning.
“Ginny is going to become a nun, yes. She is joining the Sisters of the Holy Typewriter and is going to be Mother Superior of a bunch of reporters. To prove you can be a reporter and still be a moral person, yes.”
“A moral woman,” said Melissa.
“No, person,” said Devlin. “Being a moral woman means you aren’t fallen. If you ‘fall’ as a woman, we know what that means, You have embraced a fate worse than death and have lost your virtue. And a woman without her virtue is a rudderless ship.”
“Stop, stop,” said Arthur.
“I can’t,” said Devlin. “To be a moral person, on the other hand, covers the whole range of morality, but with special attention to honesty and justice. Ask me how I know this.”
“How?” asked Melissa.
He put on a long, serious face. “I know,” he said, and let his eyeballs wander in their sockets in a weak imitation of Groucho Marx.
“That’s just the point I was making with Arthur earlier,” said Melissa as they approached the bridge over the river.
“You were?” said Arthur.
“Yes. People shrink from ‘man’ and ‘woman’ and instead say ‘person’ because they shrink from the varying implications,” she said.
“Well what Father said explains why they do use ‘person’ and not the other. They aren’t the same thing,” said Arthur.
“Bigotry explains it all,” said Melissa. “Sexist bigotry. Women as sex objects and all that. That business about women’s morality being one thing and a man’s another.”
“Well look at Eve,” began Devlin.
“The one that came out of Adam’s rib?” interrupted Arthur, turning the car into the Wacker Drive lower level, where a green light suffused everything.
“The same,” said Devlin.
“Rampant sexist bigotry,”’ said Melissa, “At the heart of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Can you imagine.”
(end of chapter nine)
Blithe Spirit 