There were not many Reverend Fathers in Ginny’s life before this. (Nor many now, for that matter.) She’d grown up in a northern Ohio town where priests were held suspect by most of the people she knew. The Reverends of her acquaintance wore turned-around collars only on state occasions, and never black suits. There was the Methodist and the Presbyterian and the Baptist, and for a little something exotic and tony, Episcopalian. Rabbis? Forget it. Pentecostal? She’d heard of them. The next town had revivals to which she’d never gone, and there were snake-handlers in the next county.
The Cleveland paper had written them up once. And there were the Romans. Something slightly un-American clung to being Roman.
There was a Rome Georgia, she knew from geography, and an Athens, for that matter. But this was an odd American tribute to the ancients. To be called a Roman, as with Catholic, was another matter. Roman priests for one thing.
“You mean these who go ‘round tellin’ people how to behave and they ain’t even married?” an illiterate woman once asked. “Well, they don’t have wives,” she was told. “It’s still impossible,” she said.
From Ginny’s point of view, it was as if there were some men out there who pursued not only foreign allegiances (Roman) but also foreign practices. Not unmentionable ones. She’d been spared the grosser diatribes against priests and nuns. There were no underground tunnels between convent and rectory in her mythology, no babies being murdered. But there was an abiding suspicion of someone who inexplicably flouted one of the mainstays of organized society, namely the married state.
There was among some a real anger at it as well. Only after she’d been at college and seen a priest or two up fairly close — the Newman chaplain helping to organize a clothing drive for poor kids — did she begin to lose the suspicion she’d been raised on.
Then she got to Chicago eventually and began newspaper work and found out that lots of people took priests for granted. At the very least, they became for her just another of the city’s oddities. With deviant behavior all over the place, from men dressed like women to Mexican families spending the day cooking incredible things over a fire at 12th Street Beach, priests got lost in the shuffle.
Some went to jail for breaking the law for a cause while others were police chaplains. Some wrote for the newspapers, while others denounced them. Some fought legal abortion publicly (though not many) while others treated it as a Side issue. Some even got married. Truth to say, with her Ohio upbringing and all, these were to Ginny the most interesting — from a distance. Now in Berghoff’s she was with a priest who was developing into the most interesting priest she had met so far.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I like German food,” said Devlin.
“Are you German?” she asked.
He looked at her to see if she were kidding, then laughed.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“In itself, nothing,” he said. “Some of my best friends, et cetera. It’s just that I was never asked that. Never in my life.”
“Never?”
“No. Can’t you tell? Can’t you tell I’m Irish?”
“Well, no. To be honest, no.”
“That’s all right,” he said, patting her hand. He tingled when he did it. Like a teen-ager.
She smiled hesitantly. “You’re funny,” she said, leaving her hand on the table where he had touched it.
“Why am I funny?”
“You know you never were asked if you’re German. Couldn’t you have been asked, then forgot? How can you be sure?”
“A, when you put it that way, I’m not sure. B, I’m still probably right because it’s usually assumed I’m Irish, especially since I started wearing this.” He fingered his collar. “This is Chicago, and if you’re German, start squirmin’. If you’re Italian . . . ” He stopped. “Gimme a rhyme,” he said. “C’mon, gimme a rhyme.”
“Quit stallin’?” she said. They both laughed.
“If you’re Polish,” he began.
“You better be squeamish?” she said.
“If you’re Irish . . .” he began.
“Take over the damn city,” she said, laughing.
“Would you care for some dessert?” It was the waiter. They both said no, but they wanted coffee.
They sat with their coffee. Ginny asked what brought Devlin downtown.
“Business,” he said, and smiled.
“Mysterious business? The sort of mysterious thing priests do? That kind of business? Eh, Father? Eh? Eh?”
“Very mysterious. And getting mysteriouser.”
“Why don’t priests marry?” she asked.
“That’s mysterious. I was just discussing it the other day with my friend Dolan. He says it’s to point up the end times.”
“What are they?”
“When the four last things come to pass. The eschaton. The end of the world. Celibates are signs of the eschaton.”
“Like the guy with a sandwich board in a New Yorker cartoon?”
“To think I’ll squirm uncomfortably in response to that.” He paused. “No. Like the monk who immolates himself.”
“What?”
“The Buddhist monk. Who lit himself.”
“My God!”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s the idea. Who said east doesn’t meet west? It’s all . . . ” He paused. “Immolation. Setting yourself on fire.”
“Doesn’t apply a hundred per cent.”
“None of them do. Comparisons,” he said.
“No, I mean the monk’s a celibate too, like a western monk, right?”
“I think so,” he said. “I only know what I read in the papers.”
“Back to newspapers,” she said. She pointed at him. “But you didn’t read in the newspapers that they’re celibate. Just that they burned themselves.”
“You’re making a point?”
“About what’s an effective sign and what isn’t.”
“Oh. Did the war end when they burned themselves?”
“No,” she said. “But they got ink.”
“Getting ink is not the essence of being an effective sign. John Lennon got ink. He and Yoko, staying in bed, and that didn’t end the war either.”
“Is the war still on?” she asked.
“Not the one we’re talking about, no.” He threw up his hands in a mock display of defeat. “I simply have to throw up my hands at that one. I’m done.”
“Get back to not marrying,” she said.
“I told you. We are signs of the end of the world. And,” he held his hands apart, palms out, “the second coming.”
“Jesus?” she said.
“Yep. He will come again and save us from ourselves.”
“We are always ripe for saving, my dear. No doubt about that.”
“You say that like you mean it,” she said.
“Ripe for saving?”
“No, my dear.”
“Hmm. I don’t trifle with a lady’s affections.” He was relaxed and smiling as he said it. It was easy to say. He didn’t feel so adolescent any more.
“That’s nice,” she said. “Trifling in that case is a heinous matter. Don’t you agree?”
“You lay a heavy burden on a young fellow when you talk that way,” he said with mock indignation. “Talk about trifling. Here I sit wounded to the quick. And talk about not getting married,” he said, looking at her ringless finger. “How will you ever know your opportunity if you can’t tell a young fellow when you see one?” Now he was very relaxed and able to josh her. Back to being a grownup.
“My golden opportunity?” she said. “To get myself a man? Get a home and kids? Fulfill myself? That what you mean, you old patriarch you?”
He held up his hands as if to ward off the assault, laughing harder.
“I can’t cope. I can’t cope. Help, help.”
They ended their inconclusive lunch in peals of laughter.
— — — — — — — — — — — —
Devlin said mass the next day for three nuns and four widows. They seemed to appreciate it, and he did not begrudge the effort. Afterwards, at breakfast in the rectory kitchen, he took a call from Mimi Skelton, mother of seven and incipient newspaper columnist, who wanted to know about the help he had promised her with her sample columns. She and Carol Goodman, her co-columnist, were getting antsy after four months of waiting for the Sun-Times to tell them what they thought of them.
“We’re getting antsy,” said Mimi. He said he’d do what he could.
He called Ginny, catching her at her apartment before she left for the city room.
“Good morning. It’s your friendly neighborhood pastor.”
“Hi there. Make it short? I’m late already.”
“Yes, ma’am. Did you ever ask about my two friends’ columns?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“Yes. They gave them to the editorial page editor months ago, unsolicited. The Catholic-Jewish columns. One’s Catholic, the other’s Jewish.”
“I remember. I’ll see about it. That all?”
“One other. Want to join me and two other friends of mine for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Sure. Where? When?”
“Don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you,” he said.
“Good. Call me. See you.” She hung up.
Devlin sat back at the telephone in his room. Now what have I done? he thought. Now I’ve got the Williamses in on this too. He had the queasy feeling of one who was stepping out of bounds but liking it as he did so.
He called Melissa at home.
“We’re going out tomorrow night, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I take a friend?”
“Sure,” said Melissa. “Some old seminary buddy from out of town?”
“No. A girl friend.”
“Father Devlin, what’s going on here? You, a girl friend? What will you think of next?”
“Just kidding. Not a girl friend. A woman who’s a friend. How’s that? Better?”
“I don’t know if it’s better or not, but it’s less surprising. I didn’t know priests had women who were friends. I mean, I didn’t know they had women for friends. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, Melissa. But priests are people too, Melissa. If you prick them, they bleed, et cetera.”
“Come now, I know that. But fine,” she said. “Let’s expect the two of you. Do I know her?”
“No. She writes for the Sun-Times. She wrote me up a few months ago.”
“Ginny Morgan.”
“Yes, you know her?”
“From college. She was a cage-rattler. Raised sand right and left. Mostly left. Mad at the world.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? Many’s the black who grew up in the ghetto, would have been freshly scrubbed and bushy tailed. But things didn’t suit her. Very moral. Things bothered her. As if she found what was wrong with the world too late in her life, in a rush. She hadn’t been introduced to it slowly, so as to get acclimated. That’s theory. I could be all wrong. Maybe she just had toothaches all the time. I don’t know.”
“She was fated to be a priest’s friend,” he said. “She felt it in her Protestant bones and it set her teeth on edge.”
“Not until college? She wasn’t that way in high school, I heard from friends. She didn’t see her fate coming until college?”
“Sometimes they don’t. They go blithely along, unsuspecting, not knowing there’s a father in their future.” |
“Oh my,” said Melissa.
“Thank you for inviting me and letting me bring a friend.”
“They’ll blame it on the black folks. When the Irish find out, it will be our fault. Wait and see. Poor innocent black folks, caught again the midst of white folks’ tricks. That’s why we stay away from you all. You’re nothing but trouble.”
“Melissa, you’re so wry. You’re wonderful.”
“Never mind how wry I am. You just watch your step, hear?”
“Yes’m,” he said. “Talk to you later.”
That morning, Devlin had a sick call, at West Suburban Hospital. He blew into the place like the Lone Ranger, spreading cheer with abandon. He brought euphoria in jumbo lots, radiating “Good morning” on the floor and in general acting the part of Friendly.
Back at the rectory in an hour, he sat in on a meeting of the parish religious education staff, sitting back and offering comments that the two sisters and younger priest and two lay catechists received with gratitude.
Many’s the session of this group he had sat through waiting only to catch one of them in a fine point. This time he waited to support and encourage.
When he had to leave them early to get over to the school, they seemed sorry to see him go.
At the school he conferred with the principal in an expulsion case A kid had slapped a teacher, something unheard of in years past, and his parents got defensive when the principal told them about it. Devlin discussed the matter with the principal, who obviously appreciated his interest.
A cool, competent woman, she had on occasion been miffed at Devlin’s apparent lack of interest in the school and had let people know her feelings in the matter.
He and she discussed the boy. He was a hard case, prickly and lashing out at twelve years old. What to do? They decided to go it with the parents again. The principal would make an appointment. Devlin would be there.
The two of them and the parents. The boy too? They should bring him along, have him wait outside part of the time. Insist on both parents, or the boy goes with Devlin and the principal would go one-two the parents, then the boy with them. Maybe even nice guy-hard guy them.
They considered this, then decided no. They would both be hard guys — why not? They laughed at the idea. The principal shook his hand when he left her. She seemed relieved and ready to attack the problem with some degree of hope.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Devlin got back to the rectory and found a bum at the door. “A street person,” the staff called such in this enlightened age. The word among them was to hope they didn’t get the pastor (Devlin) when they knocked on the St. Denis door. He was an impatient mother who had been known once or twice to send them away with nothing.
This one, a white man about Devlin’s age, had what the staff agreed later was not a bad story, but it was a story none the less. Devlin asked the man in, and they sat in the parlor while the man spun his hard-luck tale. Normally Devlin looked him hard in the eye for a few seconds, then whipped out the few bucks he was looking for, stood and showed the bum the door.
Today he kept interrupting the man, injecting comments to throw him off balance but paying attention to him. The guy got a little nervous under Devlin’s steady gaze. Finally, Devlin asked him, “What do you want?” The man needed bus fare to Davenport to connect with his brother, who had a dry goods store there. “Dry goods?” said Devlin, looking at the man unblinkingly.
And so he could pick up his social security check.
Well it was too much even for a relaxed and benevolent Devlin. “Look,” he said. “I’ll give you this money and this advice. Don’t come back for a month. This place can afford to be your monthly stop.” He got up to show him the door. Once there, he stopped. “Of course, we’re very disorganized, and you might take your chances no one will recognize you sooner than that.”
Devlin looked past the guy, who hadn’t been jawed like this since he hit the mission downtown. “As far as that goes,” he said. “I might not even be here to enforce the policy.” He turned back to look at the bum. “I’ve got cancer, you see, and I might be dead by then.”
The man hit the front walk shaking his head and muttering.
Devlin went back to the kitchen for a sandwich, but the phone rang, and he had another call to the hospital. By the time he got back, it was three o’clock. The day had roared past him. It was teen night that night, and he had some readying up to do. The young associate pastor had a sick mother in Waukegan, and Devlin the venerable pastor was going to double as youth worker.
That was all right. He just wasn’t going to take any of their shit, that was all.
As he sat down to dinner, alone thanks to the associate’s sick mother and the rectory’s resident’s night at a poetry reading, he realized with a shock that he was so hungry because he hadn’t eaten lunch.
Geez, he thought, and a few months ago he was dying on the vine, mewling in his room on a Saturday morning because he couldn’t think of anything to do and didn’t believe in God any more. Did he believe in God now? He didn’t have time right then to decide. He ate alone, relishing the peace and quiet.
(end of chapter 7)
Blithe Spirit 