Ash Wednesday (18 page)

They stood for a moment outside the door, and it did not seem just a business relationship to Agnes. The woman came with Jason to the clunker. Agnes had rolled down the window, and their voices came to her, audible but not intelligible. Tilting her side mirror, she could watch them. After Jason got behind the wheel, the woman looked about to give him a kiss, but she didn’t. When she walked back to the entrance of the Avanti Group, she no longer gave the impression of the levelheaded businesswoman her outfit suggested.

Jason pulled out, and Agnes let him go. She wasn’t going to follow him anymore. Then the woman burst out the door again, a phone in her hand, looking desperately in the direction that Jason had gone. She slumped, and then, talking into the phone, went back inside.

On the way back to Fox River, Agnes got their police band on her radio. That was how she learned of the death of Helen Burke.

Edna called the rectory, relaying a cell phone message from Kevin Brown, who had been on the shuttle bus, and Father Dowling, grabbing the oils, ran out to his car. This took him through the kitchen, and Marie came to the back door and called after him, “Where are you going?”

He just waved at her. Minutes could mean everything. Once he got going, he brought the old Toyota up to almost maximum speed, roaring along Dirksen Boulevard. Where is a cop when you need one? He could have used a police escort. He went through several yellow lights—at least, they were yellow when he approached the intersections, but as he shot through cars were coming at him from left to right. He commended himself to St. Anthony of Padua and kept the accelerator depressed. At last he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance as he approached the accident scene.

The effort to extricate Helen Burke from behind the wheel of her car was still under way when Father Dowling came up. The firemen paused and let Father Dowling through. The engine of the car had been driven into the front seat, pushing it back. The steering wheel seemed embedded in the woman’s chest. It was Helen Burke. Father Dowling lifted his hand to bless her and absolve her from her sins. The eyes fluttered open. Could she see him? He continued
with the blessing, and despite the still-growling sirens, the flashing lights, the general pandemonium of the scene, Father Dowling heard Helen sigh. It was more than a sigh. It was her last breath. But he had uncapped the oils now, and he traced a cross on her forehead, her half open eyes, her mouth …

He stood then and stepped back so that the grim and now pointless rescue could continue.

The parish center shuttle bus had careened onto the shoulder of the road and had come to a stop, slightly tipped. Its passengers now huddled in a horrified group beside it, looking toward the demolished car. As Father Dowling went to them, Kevin Brown came forward.

“I called the center, Father.”

“Thank God you did. That’s why I’m here.”

“Is she still…”

He shook his head.

“Then it was too late?”

“Just in time, Kevin. Just in time.”

Kevin seemed relieved. “I only hope someone does as much for me.”

Father Dowling decided not to ask Kevin what had happened. Eugene Schmidt was talking with a police officer. When Father Dowling came up, Schmidt turned and stared at the priest.

“I was driving, Father. Some guy just swerved in front of me. I don’t know how it happened.”

Father Dowling looked at the officer, an expressionless young man he didn’t know. He took Father Dowling aside.

“How did it happen, Officer?”

“He says someone swung into his lane and forced him over.” And that in turn had forced Helen from the lane?

Schmidt had come along with them. “I didn’t see her in the mirror, Father. I didn’t have time. Oh my God.”

Out of a dozen fragmentary and incoherent remarks, something that had taken seconds in the occurrence was pieced together. It came down to the fact that the shuttle bus had forced Helen to swerve, and that had taken her into the bridge abutment and her death.

“Why wasn’t she in the bus?”

“She insisted on showing me the way,” Schmidt said. “She never rode in the shuttle bus.” The object of the trip had been a park overlooking the river. In the bus were the baskets packed with the lunch they had meant to have there. Schmidt tagged along with Father Dowling, keeping to his side, as if anxious to hear how the others would describe what had happened. Monica Garvey had been seated in the center of the bus, on the right side, and had seen it all.

“I tried to call out, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make a sound.”

Everyone had his or her account, what they had or had not seen, emphasizing the reaction of the speaker. Few had realized what had happened when it did. Most spoke of the terror they had felt when the bus left the road and bumped to a stop on the shoulder, twenty-five yards from Helen’s demolished car.

Encircled by the seniors, Father Dowling suggested that they say a prayer for Helen.

“Is she …”

“Yes.” And he began the Hail Mary. They were asking that Helen’s and the souls of all the faithful departed might rest in peace when Father Dowling saw Cy Horvath. He was with the group by the car, where an acetylene torch was being used to gain access to the body. Father Dowling hesitated. The old people should be taken back to the center. But how? In the bus? He doubted that many would care to board it now. He beckoned to Kevin.

“You have a cell phone?”

“That’s how I called Edna Hospers.”

“I think you should call for taxis to take everyone back to the center.”

Kevin nodded. The suggestion turned him into a figure of authority. He began barking orders, moving the huddled group away, his cell phone at his ear. Father Dowling went to join Cy Horvath.

Helen’s body was removed with some difficulty, placed on a gurney, and rolled away to the open doors of a 911 ambulance. Before it got there, Dr. Pippen, the assistant coroner, stopped it and made a swift examination. Then she waved the paramedics on, and Helen’s body was put into the ambulance. A minute later, with periodic warnings from its siren, it started toward the road. Traffic had been halted; the ambulance bounced onto the pavement and then, its siren going at full blast, disappeared up the road.

Photographs continued to be taken. A tow truck was now backing toward the crumpled car in which Helen Burke had departed this Vale of Tears.

Eugene Schmidt had hung back and was in the last little group awaiting a taxi to take them back to the center. He was holding a slip of paper in his hand that rippled in the slight breeze.

“He insisted he be given a ticket,” Cy explained to Father Dowling.

“For what?”

“That was left blank.”

Was Cy amused or annoyed, neither, or something in between? His facial expression never changed and had to do duty for whatever he might be feeling. Dr. Pippen, having seen the body off to the morgue, joined them.

“Did you get here in time, Father?”

“Just. One of the passengers in our shuttle bus called the center on his cell phone.”

“Who’ll give me a ride downtown?” Cy looked at her. “How did you get here?” “In the meat wagon.” “I’ll take you.”

They went off. The last group was getting into taxis. Father Dowling stood for a moment, looking at the bridge abutment. How quickly everything had been returned to normal. Going back to his car, he thought of the verse following the account of the burial of Jesus.
And all withdrew
.

Helen Burke’s funeral was one befitting her status in the parish, and her means. Jason insisted that all stops be pulled out and his mother get the send-off of the half century. Not that he put it that way. His great moon face was a tragic mask, his eyes red from weeping. All the remorse for the trouble he had caused his mother sat heavily on his shoulders now, and an elaborate funeral seemed a way of easing the burden. McDivitt the funeral director nodded through Jason’s instructions, the soul of discretion and good taste, not quite rubbing his hands at this bonanza.

Cars were at the disposal of Helen’s old friends at the senior center—no one could bear the thought of getting into the shuttle bus; it stood now in a far corner of the parish parking lot, a memento mori of sorts. The viewing room at McDivitt’s was almost
festive, flowers everywhere, and a portable organ had been rolled in to provide lugubrious music while people took their places in preparation for the recitation of the rosary. A reluctant Eugene Schmidt was led in by Natalie Armstrong, but she couldn’t get him past the last row. Schmidt looked as if the whole assembly would rise as one and point an accusing finger at him.

“What will they do to me?” he had asked Father Dowling earlier, waiting for Natalie to sign the visitors’ book.

“Eugene, it was an accident.”

“But she’s dead. And it’s my fault.”

“We are not responsible for what we just happen to bring about.” He left it there. This was no time to give Eugene Schmidt a lecture on the nature of contingency. Accidents, by definition, just happened. If they had causes, the event could not be traced to those causes as if they were necessary results. Father Dowling felt that he would sound like Willy Nilly if he tried to console Eugene Schmidt in this way.

Kevin Brown was lobbying for a requiem Mass in the old manner with Latin and black vestments; Monica Garvey was on the side of the angels, saying that only the Mass of the Angels, with white vestments and the vernacular, was appropriate in this day and age.

“This day and age,” Kevin growled.

The two went off to carry on their dispute.

Amos Cadbury came in, black suit, crisp white shirt with a beautiful tie with stripes of gray and black. He took his place in the line of those waiting to inscribe their names in the book that awaited on a little lectern with a hooded light illumining its pages.

“The Book of Life,” Amos murmured when he joined Father Dowling.

“Let us hope so.”

“I would like to talk with you, Father.”

“Of course.”

“Could we have lunch at the University Club on Thursday?”

Father Dowling nodded. “After the noon Mass.”

“I’ll be there. We can go off in my car.”

That settled, Amos went into the viewing room, Father Dowling watched him advance to the closed coffin with the portrait of Helen Burke propped atop it. He knelt on the prie-dieu before the casket and blessed himself with great concentration.

Just before Father Dowling entered the viewing room, a final figure appeared. Nathaniel Green. Madeline was with him. They went past the visitors’ book, Madeline nodded to Father Dowling as they passed him. Nathaniel wore an indescribable expression. They sat in the back row, at the end opposite Natalie and Eugene Schmidt.

When Father Dowling went up the little aisle between the groupings of chairs, everyone stood. There are always unlooked-for variations at wakes, and this was one of them. He knelt on the prie-dieu, and behind him the gathering took their seats. So the rosary was said, Father Dowling beginning each prayer, the mourners finishing it. At the end, as he had done at the scene of the accident, he prayed that Helen’s soul and the souls of all the faithful departed might rest in peace.

“Amen,” came the response.

When Father Dowling turned, he caught sight of Natalie and Eugene exiting. They were followed close behind by Nathaniel and Madeline. Jason stood and turned his great mournful face on the others.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said, sounding as if he were going to burst into tears. “God bless you.”

He came to Father Dowling and took his hand and shook it vigorously. The woman at his side looked on. Father Dowling looked at her receptively.

“I’m Carmela, Father.”

“My wife, Father. Of course you haven’t met.”

Marie Murkin had her comment on that. She had not come to the wake—“I’ll come to the funeral Mass”—and dipped her head when Father Dowling told her of the presence of Carmela Burke.

“Burke? She’s been going by her maiden name.”

Father Dowling then expressed the thought he’d had when confronting the couple.

“Tragedy?” Marie said. “And a pile of money.”

“You’re becoming a cynic, Marie.”