“Are we drifting apart?” asked Devlin. He and Ginny sat in McDonald’s again. She had come out after a bad day at Hard Rock, as her friend Betty referred to the city room, eager to drink in a different environment. |
“I never thought I’d hear a phrase like that from you,” she said.
“I never thought I’d say it. Are we?”
“Yes. We are a classic case of drifting apart. Someone should put us ‘in a textbook.”
“Why are we?”
“I am not the expert on human nature. You are,” she said.
“Yes and no. I’ve been a careful observer, not a participant.”
“That’s all right. In fact, it’s better. Being a participant makes you no judge.”
“In this case I’m a participant, which is why I’m asking why we are drifting apart.” He said it with an elaborate smugness, sitting back with a satisfied smile.
“Aren’t you clever,” she said, turning away to look out onto Madison Street, where some children were crossing from the laundromat on the other side. “I wish I knew,” she said.
“All the years I have on you, and I don’t know either. These aren’t the kinds of problems people brought to me. I’ve been a belief-merchant. Then I ran out of belief to sell. Or give away, for that matter. There are places you can’t give it away, you know.”
“I’m sure there are,” she said.
“You know how I feel now?”
“How?”
“Like the spiritual writers say, arid.”
“You feel arid.”
“Yes. Great word for it, huh?”
“Great word for what, Patrick?” Her eyes widened in exasperation.
“For not feeling anything. No motion, nothing. Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Know what I mean?”
“Shitty.”
“No, no. Not it. Shitty gives you something to fight against. Same with the blues.” He waved a hand for emphasis. The kids from the laundromat moved to a table near them, pushing each other. “When you’re arid, you feel nothing. You’re in a dark night.”
“Better than a stormy day.”
“Not a whit. Storms bring out the man in you.”
“In me?” she said.
“In me. When I say you, I mean me.”
“Yes.”
“Stormy weather. That’s worth writing a song about.”
“And Lena Horne singing it.” she said.
“Right.”
“We’re not in stormy weather?” she asked.
He smiled. “Ginny, sitting in McDonald’s discussing our faltering love affair in a disgustingly reasonable manner. You call this stormy weather?”
“You have a point.”
“Are you Irish?” he asked.
“Tl suppose so. Way back. Some Scotch, some English, a little Welsh. Mostly Scotch and Irish.”
“A regular potpourri of the British Isles, right?”
She shrugged. “Where I came from, it was not an issue.”
“It is here,” he said. “Here in Ethnic City.”
“You have to declare yourself?”
“Just about. Not like it used to be.”
“But you still want to know.” Her red hair touched her shoulders. He remembered for a flash the warmth of her face and lips. He smiled.
“Helps you forget how arid you are.”
“As a matter of fact, it does.” He eyed her hair and lips and the near-redness of her skin. “Ruddy Celt,” he said.
“I think I’m being seduced,” she said.
“On the contrary, it is I who am being seduced,” he said, a little louder than he intended. One of the laundromat kids, a girl about fourteen, glanced briefly at him, her eyes white against chocolate skin.
“I don’t think you are feeling as arid as you were a few minutes ago.”
“No, I’m not. The mood has passed.”
“What do the spiritual writers recommend at such a point?” she asked. “To plunge in and forget the consequences, as it were?”
“How’d you know? Abandonment, that’s it. To God.”
“And when there is no God, as you apparently believe?”
“Then to the reality that is its substitute.”
“Which I trust is not your friendly newspaper reporter,” she said.
“No.”
“What is it then? Come on. You got yourself into this. Get yourself
out.”
“It’s . . . “ He hesitated.
“Yes?”
“It’s . . . hard to say what it is. It’s whatever strikes your fancy at a given moment.”
She flinched. “My, you’re honest if nothing else. What a thing to say.”
“The devil made me do it.”
“Patrick, don’t talk that way,” she said. The chocolate-colored girl’s eyes flicked their way again.
“O.K. I’ll stop. No more talk like that. Let’s take a walk.”
Out on the sidewalk, they faced the spanking new village hall complex. “Let’s get married,” he said, pointing across the street. “I’ll bet there’s a J.P. there.”
“There isn’t. You don’t have J.P.’s around here. You have judges in the county building. Besides, I’m not in the mood to get married. It’s not the fancy that has my attention at the moment,” she said.
He threw up his hands in a shrug. “So? What is it you would like? Frozen custard? McDonald’s shake? Burger King delight?”
“I want to go home,” she said, heading for her car.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Mama, guess who I saw. At McDonald’s.”
“Who, Honey?” Melissa William said.
“Father Devlin, with a lady,” said Artie, who forgot he wasn’t supposed to ride that far on his bike.
“Oh?” said Melissa, distracted by the news from the fact that
Artie had wandered so far from the block. “Was it an old lady, Artie?”
“No, Mama, she was young, like you.” Artie had moved from his earlier assessments of age that put anyone over eighteen in the senior citizen category to something more realistic. A year or so before, Ginny Morgan would have been considered old. Now she was young like Mama.
“Red hair?”
“Red hair, Mama. Pretty too.” And for insurance as he began to remember he wasn’t supposed to ride that far, “Like you.” With a sweet smile.
To no avail. “You weren’t supposed to go that far, Artie.”
Artie hung his head, hoping repentance, or its appearance, would help. His mother being distracted, it did.
Melissa Williams was not happy to hear Father Devlin had been at McDonald’s with Ginny. She had hoped that business was ending, though she had no reason to hope it.
“Maybe he dropped her,” she had suggested to Arthur.
“I doubt that,” Arthur said.
“You think they were made for each other, or something?”
“I just don’t think he dropped her. Why should he drop her?”
“Arthur, he’s in a tricky position. He has a lot of reasons to drop her.”
“So he can go crawling to the archbishop, get a parish and pulpit again and return to the old grind? Melissa, he’s been burning bridges for months, if not longer. A priest doesn’t talk in the newspaper the way he did without knowing what he’s doing.”
“Maybe he was misquoted,” she said.
“By Ginny Morgan? He has a funny way of showing his displeasure.”
That was a few days before Artie had made his Devlin sighting in the midst of a long expedition to forbidden territory. Melissa duly reported the same to Arthur that night.
“In McDonald’s? Sure Artie didn’t see them in church? Maybe Artie’s been hanging around church these days and doesn’t want us to know.”
“McDonald’s.”
“More power to them,” said Arthur. “Not prudent, but who cares? Maybe he was counseling her. I don’t think he’s dropped her, at any rate, as you suggested the other day.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
“What do I think?” repeated Arthur. “I think Father Devlin is in the middle of a long, painful process of withdrawing his troops from the field.”
“He’s hardly been in a war.”
“Are you kidding, Melissa? He’s been in a war.”
“Fighting whom?”
“Himself and the powers of darkness.”
“Really, Arthur.” |
“Sure. You don’t think he’s been under warlike strain all these years? Since the bloom went off the rose?”
“Since he was first ordained, you mean?”
“Or some unspecified time thereafter,” Arthur said.
“Arthur, the same goes for any commitment, job, whatever.”
“Right, and he’s leaving a commitment. He’s changing his mind.”
“What if I changed my mind about our marriage?”
“I was waiting for you to say that. Marriage is different. But to answer the question, knowing you, I’d say you’d pull your troops. I picture Father Devlin pulling his with all the neatness of helicopters taking off from the Saigon embassy roof. It’s a messy business.”
“How is marriage different,” Melissa asked.
Arthur laughed. “Geez. How is marriage different? How much time do you have? Mainly, it’s considerably more intimate than being a priest. I mean if he’s married to the church, for instance, or to Jesus — wait a minute, that’s not write. Whatever. If he’s married to the people of God, in the same way I’m married to you, then he’s one hell of a polygamist, sexual switch-hitter and — the old tried and true ghetto word mother-f —.”
“O.K., O.K.,” she interrupted, seeing the word coming.
“Ah me,” he said, looking out the window on to their cul-de-sac, “when shanty became lace curtain, they changed their language too.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Ginny’s story on the psychiatrists was long gone and put away. She’d reported and written it, and it sat in her desk in hard copy taken off the printer. But more importantly, it sat in the memory of the computer, stored for future use every bit as much as nuts and things were stored by the squirrel for the hard winter. The city editor liked her story; so he squirrelled it away for a rainy day, preferably a Monday. SHRINK was safe in the machine. It was buried and would rise again on a rainy day, then to live again in glory or abuse, depending on reaction from sources and readers. There was no telling which would result, Ginny knew from years experience. In any event, it was out of her mind, and she was on to the next triumph.
Not entirely out of her mind, however, because Doctor Margo Gibson remained there, a woman with a mind of her own, used to probing others’ minds and hearts.
“You want to know how he’s hitting me right now, Margo? He’s hitting me like a pain in the rear. He’s nothing but trouble,” Ginny said.
“Trouble? But you love him,” Doctor Gibson said as they sat in her office on Michigan Avenue.
“But loving someone doesn’t mean he’s no trouble. Do I have to be the one who tells you that, Margo?”
“Yes, you do. I know it happens, but I don’t like it, and I don’t think it should happen or must happen.”
“He’s been a celibate so long,” said Ginny.
“He’s been a bachelor, a bachelor priest. Most are.”
“He hasn’t played around. He’s led a consecrated life. Am I, a Protestant, the one who has to tell you that too?”
“Yes and no. I assume, no evidence to the contrary, he hasn’t played around. I know he’s been consecrated. But I also assume, barring evidence, to the contrary, that he has ended up a bachelor priest. As I say, most are,” said Margo.
“Are you against celibacy?” asked Ginny.
“I have my doubts, but I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s Father Devlin we’re talking about, your bachelor priest.”
“Something about that phrase irks me,” said Ginny. “It’s . . .” She hesitated. “. . . contemptuous.”
“No it isn’t,” said Margo. “It’s a balancing phrase. Puts things in perspective.”
“But a bachelor is so everyday. Priests are special.”
“Priests have what specialness we give them. We can be unfair to them, and to ourselves, if we give them what they don’t deserve and can’t use.”
“You want to make them everyday creatures?”
“For the most part,” said Margo. “It’s better that way. For them and for us. We should be sparing in our elevations and go light on the mystery. Are you put off by the mystery part?”
“Yes and no,” said Gimny. “Hah. See? I can talk that way too.” She smiled.
Margo smiled and said nothing.
“He’s mysterious in his own right. That’s r-i-g-h-t,” she said, spelling it out. “Rites, r-i-t-e-s, — are another matter.”
“Do you attend mass?!
“No.
“You should attend his mass.”
“Margo, that’s bizarre. Should I dress in scarlet and sit in the front pew?”
Margo laughed. “You reporters do have a way with words,” she said. “No,” she continued. “Be unobtrusive. But it’s part of his life. You have a right, r-i-g-h-t, to take a look.”
“Why do I have a right?”
“Because he’s on your mind, if nothing else. Anyhow, you are probably going to cast your lot with him. Right? R-i-g-h-t? So you deserve a look at what’s going on in his life. How would he feel about your attending one of his masses?”
“We’ve never discussed it, but I can’t imagine him objecting.”
“Good. Then do it.” Margo sat back with a smile on her face.
(end of chapter 20)
Blithe Spirit 