Devlin married the son of an old school friend on Saturday, driving out to the South Side to officiate. He knew the pastor, who greeted him warmly.
“How you doin’, Dev? You holding up?” he asked.
“Doin’ fine,” Devlin said, shaving the truth. “I’m living with Terry Dolan now, you know.”
“I heard that. Until you get a new parish.”
Devlin was known to be in hot water, having preached wildly and gotten some bad publicity, including the gossip-column item about him at the Corona, which most fellow priests suspected referred to him. But he was far from lost to the cause. He wasn’t a lush, for one thing, which meant he could probably make a comeback without a big to-do. He was eccentric, most priests thought. Ginny remained a well-kept secret. Devlin’s double life so far was charmed.
“Right,” said Devlin to the “new parish” explanation. He greeted the other priest warmly too. Getting out to Beverly was a break for him. The church was a low, modern structure, of the “two thin lines” variety, as he and Dolan referred to a certain style of church architecture and decoration.
The two thin lines were the “modern” cross which eschewed the flat, wooden naturalism of crosses and crucifixes they had grown up with. In their place had come the cool, metallic symbolism of the thin-lined cross — two pieces thin as dimes. If a Jesus were there, he was thin and symbolic too, with none of the medieval bloodiness and contorted body. The Beverly church was bright and airy and rounded, with no pillars to obstruct a view of the altar. Its neighborhood was overwhelmingly Irish.
“I forget what an Irish neighborhood looks like until I come out here,” Devlin told the pastor, a priest named Coughlin.
“This is it,” said Coughlin, pointing Devlin to the belt-high counter, the vesting table, where his liturgical garments lay.
Then Coughlin picked up the “Irish” remark. “It’s an ‘old’ neighborhood. I mean it’s like an enclave, but smoother around the edges. Identities are clearer, and there is less worry.”
“Was there worry in the old neighborhoods?” Devlin asked Coughlin, who was in his middle fifties. “I always heard from my father how carefree people were.”
“Yes and no. There was a sort of innocence, at least where the economic situation was in good shape, but there was a sort of huddling together too. Lot of suppressed worry about where they stood on the totem pole.”
“Well, being Irish in Chicago couldn’t have been too low on the pole,” said Devlin.
“Politically, no, though even that was really a 1930s thing, and tainted too, because of the corruption business. Economically too. Opportunities were there, you didn’t need a hell of a lot of education. But socially, outside the neighborhood or other enclaves — that was another story.”
“Doesn’t everybody live in enclaves?” asked Devlin, surprised to hear Coughlin go on so.
“I don’t think so. I gather there are people so secure in their situation that they look down — no, out — on other people’s enclaves. The Swifts and Armours don’t live in neighborhoods. Or didn’t. Did they? I heard they owned Lake Shore Drive.”
“Case in point,” said Coughlin. “They gave the drive to the city, and the shore rights to Lincoln Park. Which is why there were no toilets at Oak Street Beach until the middle “30s. My father told me about that. The Italian people from what’s now Cabrini-Green area went in the water. The beach got polluted. Because the original agreement, by the Lake Shore Drive people, was to keep buildings, apparently including outhouses, off the beach. Now that was a neighborhood that wasn’t an enclave. The rest of the city needed permission to use it.”
Devlin shook his head in disbelief. Coughlin went to his vesting area and began the process of draping himself in white linen and cords around his waist. Two altar boys watched. Devlin caught the eye of one and winked.
The kid smiled.
“What’s your name?” Devlin asked him.
“Pat,” the kid said.
“Same as mine,” said Devlin, widening his eyes in appreciation.
“You serve much?”
“Mass?”
Devlin looked at him as if to say, “You thought I meant dinner?” He nodded. The kid looked at him with big green eyes under red hair, like Ginny’s. He’ll have to ask her how she got so Celtic-looking, he decided.
“You like to serve?”
The kid shrugged. “Some of the time.”
“Beats squirming in a pew, that it?”
The kid nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“You go to St. Barnabas?”
“Yep. Fifth grade.”
Devlin decided to give up. He and Pat weren’t made for each other conversationally.
He was already starting to sweat around the neck, and the service hadn’t started yet. He wandered over to Coughlin, who was cinching up his alb and tightening his cincture.
“Where are the Swifts and Armours today, Tom,” he asked.
“God knows, Dev. They don’t live in St. Barnabas. At least, I don’t think they do.”
“There was Cudahy too, remember.”
“Oh yes. Catholic meatpacker. Irish, I suppose. Has buildings named after him at Loyola.”
“He used to shut down on Friday, I heard.”
Coughlin looked at him, blank-faced. “Shut down his# packing operation? On Fridays?”
“Sure. In honor of the prohibition. Against meat on Friday.”
Coughlin looked at him, blank-faced. “Shut down his packing operation on Fridays?”
“Sure. In honor of the prohibition. Against meat on Friday.”
Coughlin got it and laughed. “Dev, you’re full of it. Very good, very good. Cudahy Packing, closed on Fridays till further notice. Waiting for the Reformation.”
Devlin remembered how Coughlin regularly referred to the post-Vatican Two period as the Reformation, sometimes as Reformation Two. It was his way of recognizing the changes while keeping his distance.
“Can you imagine what it would have done to your faith to be a meatpacker during the meatless Friday times?” Devlin asked. “Worse than being a butcher. A butcher could always lay in a supply of fish. But packers were committed to meat.”
“While Cudahy’s church was making it a six-day-a-week affair,” said Coughlin. “He never thought to question it, though, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure he didn’t,” said Devlin, noticing that Pat the server was taking it in. “Would you have closed on Fridays?”
“What do you think, Pat?” he asked the server. “If you were a Catholic meatpacker, would you have closed on Friday?”
“I don’t know,” said Pat, unblinking.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
The wedding reception was at the Martinique, on 95th Street, a fancy place that matched St. Barnabas Church in its metallic, airy aspect. Staircases your could see through and brightness, brightness everywhere. Admit no gloomy, the place seemed viewpoint. You came with a smile plastered on, and it better stay there, or you might end in the huge parking lot, nursing new misery.
Devlin heard a man ask, “What is this, St. Patrick’s Day?” halfway into the M.C.’s introduction of the day’s proceedings. The M.C., who beamed unremittingly, laid it on thick and green.
“Anybody here from Cork?” he said. But most of it was about Chicago. “Anybody here from Mount Carmel?” He named a South Side high school. A cry went up.
He had his quartet play “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and “Galway Bay” and a dozen other favorites. There was roast beef and dancing and liquor. Guests sat at tables of eight, some meeting for the first time and making connections: “You’re Tom Gilhooley’s cousin, right. I knew Tom at Fenwick.” Or. “Denny Moran? He’s my father’s brother. He’s married to your aunt? We’re cousins.”
Devlin sat at a center table with the groom’s family, swapping stories.
“You’re out in Oak Park, Father?” the groom’s uncle asked him.
“At St. Emma’s for now,” said Devlin. “They’re picking out a good parish for me. I used to be at St. Denis.”
“Oh yes, that was Monsignor Gavin’s parish years ago, wasn’t it?”
“He built it,” said Devlin. |
“I hear he was quite a ballplayer. Had a tryout with the Cubs.”
“That’s what we used to hear. I grew up in the parish.”
“Did you? Did you know the Corcorans?”
“Did I? We lived next door to them. Big family. He was in politics, right?” |
The uncle grinned, knowing more than he let on, his red, bald head wrinkling with the effort. “You might say so,” he said, which Devlin took as being as good as saying so, or better.
“I tell you this though, Father,” the uncle said, leaning toward Devlin and lowering his voice. “They never laid a glove on ‘im. Never touched him.” The man shook his head and made his jaw tight.
“They never did, you say?”
“Never did,” the uncle said, sitting back.
Devlin turned to a woman on his other side, smiling, eager, just off the pace in her dress and hairdo, probably ten years or so older than he. She waited for Devlin to speak.
“I’m Father Devlin,” he said.
“How do you do, Father? Mary Ryan.” She continued smiling, expectant.
Devlin searched for a gem. “What a lovely place,” he said.
“Lovely place indeed,” she said.
“Quite popular out this way, is it?”
“Quite popular.” Plunk. Just like that, plunk.
Devlin glanced around. No, he thought, return to her, she’s a fountain of vivacity ready to be opened up. Give it another chance.
“I think the band is quite good,” he said.
The woman paused, looked thoughtful for a fraction, then said with the mildest of brogue, “As a matter of fact, I think the M.C. lays the Irish part on a bit thick.” She didn’t add “Don’t you?” either.
Devlin’s eyes widened. He looked at her more closely. She looked back at him with unblinking blue eyes. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “you’re absolutely right.” He grinned, but she didn’t.
“He ought to realized,” she continued
Devlin felt blindsided. He looked ahead for a moment, then turned to Mary, who was looking at him. “The people seem to like it,” he said.
“Very few do, in my estimation. They either look like they do, because that’s expected, knowing no better or they think they do, knowing no better. Once they knew better, they would never put up with it.
“You’re being harsh,” he said.
“No, I’m setting great store by what people are capable of. I’m being very optimistic, in fact.”
The quartet broke into “McNamara’s Band.” Some of the young people began dancing to it, taking their contemporary movements and adapting them.
“I like that,” said Mary Ryan.
“McNamara’s Band?”
“Yes, it’s lively and doesn’t take itself seriously. But especially the dancing. They’re going along with their own creation.”
A couple embraced in the middle of pounding out the obvious rhythm, then held each other polka-style and pounded out some more “McNamara” steps.
“Great fun,” Mary said, smiling at Devlin.
“What are they doing now, “Mary?” he asked. “Pretending or not knowing any better?”
“The people here?”
He nodded.
“Having fun,” she said. “I gave you a thesis, not a photographic description.”
“Sociological not photographic, right?”
“Yes, except some photography is sociological, isn’t it?”
Devlin smiled. From hearing they never laid a glove on Davey Corcoran to this sort of badinage in one turn of the head. Wonderful.
Mary Ryan sat there, hands on lap, looking out on the dance floor, back straight, eyes focused, a thin smile on her face.
“What’s your business, Mary?” Devlin asked.
“I teach.”
“Chicago schools?”
“McDade Classical.”
“Black?”
“Upper-class black.”
“Smart kids?”
“If you mean do they have advantages, yes. Adequate food, clothing, shelter, parents who work steady at respectable jobs.”
“Not smart?”
“The word means little to me. It’s not a useful description. What can I do with a dumb kid?”
“What can you do with a smart one?”
“Oh, let him know it. Let her know it. Don’t talk down. Press hard. Don’t let anyone get away with anything. I don’t know what I’d do with a dumb one.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Moving about later on, Devlin ran into the couple who polka-stepped to “McNamara’s Band.”
“Hi, Father,” the young man said.
“Hi, yourself, Your feet can’t keep from dancing, right?”
“We like it,” the girl said.
“You two goin’ steady?” he asked.
“We’re engaged,” said the young man.
“We’re gonna have a dozen kids,” said the girl, a round-faced brunette.
“That’s gonna make you very unusual.”
“It’s the only way to go,” the young man said. “Except the way you went, of course,” he added, with a gesture towards Devlin. They both grinned.
“See you, Father,” they said, whirling away.
“Father, can I buy you a drink?” A man came up to Devlin, smiling easily.
“I heard they’re givin’ ’em away,” said Devlin.
“Sit down a minute. I want to ask you something,” he said.
They sat and Devlin heard the man’s tale of woe: the man’s son, a communist, was living with a woman — a black woman, the man added sheepishly, as if he didn’t want to muddy the waters with what the Father might think irrelevant. What should he do?
Devlin and Dolan had discussed this ancient-mariner syndrome many times: the guy with the tale to tell and a collared face while he told it. They had considered various strategies: tell him to grow up and solve his own problems, immediately offer the name of a psychiatrist, change the subject, just sit and listen. They had decided that sitting and listening was the only out, painful as it was. Just don’t get sucked in, that’s all.
In the midst of a wedding party, Devlin heard the guy out. He had to admit it was real pain the man was experiencing. But the was nothing like drug addiction or being in jail either. The man heard the basic advice — wait it out, don’t cut communication — and mercifully broke it off.
“It’s living in sin that gets me, Father,” he said as a final comment. “Thanks, Father, for your help.” He shook Devlin’s hand warmly and left to join the party.
Devlin wandered back to Mary Ryan. “I just counseled restraint,” he said, sitting beside her, looking out at the dance floor.
“The older you get, the better it looks,” she said, looking out also.
“Restraint, you mean.”
“Restraint,” she said, turning him, then looking back at the dance floor.
“You mean you look back and realize it’s better you didn’t?”
“Didn’t what?” she said, looking at him again.
“Whatever it required restraint not to do,”
“Oh. You think it’s better.” she said.
“It might not be.”
“Father Devlin, what is it you are thinking of doing? Leaving the priesthood?”
“I didn’t say a thing about leaving the priesthood. What a thing for you to say?”
“How old are you?” She looked back at the dance floor.
“Forty-nine.”
She looked at him. “Normally, I’d say you’re too old, but maybe not.”
Devlin didn’t say anything.
“You have a girl friend?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Is she smart?”
“The word has no meaning for me,” he said.
She looked at him, her eyes widening for a fraction, then laughed. “Good one. Very good. You got me.”
He grinned. “What if she is smart? Then what?”
“If she isn’t, she won’t know what she’s getting into, and that would be bad for you both.”
“She’s already wondering what she’s gotten into.”
“At this wedding?”
Yes”
“That’s an interesting question.”
“She’d better, because you do.”
“I do?*
“Father Devlin, come on. This is your turf. You realize that. These are your people, like it or not. You’re part of all this.”
“I’m part of other things too.”
“Not like you’re part of this. You move in this crowd like you own the place.”
“Well I wouldn’t if I had red-haired Ginny with me. You certainly realize that.”
“Behold the problem, of course. Is she Irish?”
“Some kind of Celt. Protestant, though, more or less.”
“Your average secular modern woman.”
“Not average.”
“I expected you to say that. I know she can’t move with you in the same way. But she should be one who would fit in. You’d need a new identity but you’d never shake the old one completely. Somehow she would have to fit in. Unless you plan to help colonize the moon with her.”
“Moon people have souls too.”
“Souls? One of the first things you better forget about is people’s souls. You’re leaving the soul business.”
“What business am I getting into?”
“Now that’s a good question. It’s a new life, Father, full of annoying little realities.”
“You going to lecture me on the difficulties of earning a living?”
She looked at him, saying nothing.
“I take it back,” he said. “I brought it up, I know. Forget it.”
The band broke into a slow melody Devlin remembered from high-school days. He had an inspiration.
“Shall we dance?” he said.
“Let’s,” she said.
He took her hand and they moved out onto the floor, Devlin in his clerics, his white collar shining under his ruddy face, Mary Ryan in her off-the-pace dress and dated hairdo. They moved into the crowd, the fiftyish priest and the sixtyish school teacher. The band played “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.”
Devlin held her right hand in his left and with his right held her around her back, feeling her thinness. She took his lead well, and they glided about. People smiled to see them.
“See?” she said. “You’re dancing in your clerics at a wedding. You can do anything you want, Father Devlin. The sky’s the limit.”
She smiled as she said it, but she didn’t smile. Restraint, thought Devlin. She’s got restraint. What I counsel, she’s got.
“You’ll have to meet her some day. My friend,” he said.
“I look forward to meeting her,” said Mary. “I certainly do look forward to meeting her.”
The band finished the pretty song with a flourish, and Devlin and Mary Ryan joined the rest in standing and clapping.
(end of chapter 18)
Blithe Spirit 