Chameleon (13 page)

In his heart of hearts, Bash was intimidated by Jeffrey. Quentin Jeffrey had been a recognized success in the public relations field. It was awkward for Bash, who had no formal training or experience, to function while a professional looked on and conceivably evaluated his performance. Bash could bulldoze his way through almost any situation. But, inwardly insecure, he was cowed by Jeffrey’s talent, experience, and proven ability. So Bash reacted to his deserved inferiority complex by striking out at the better man.

Quentin Jeffrey was unruffled. He really didn’t care whether or not his suggestion was implemented. He considered it good advice. But he was keenly aware that it would not be easy to make it work. It would require diplomatic and adroit handling. Something the ham-fisted Bash was incapable of.

Cardinal Boyle did not like his people to engage in confrontation. Some carping was unavoidable as he tried to steer a middle course, faithful to the mind of the Church while permitting as much freedom and initiative as possible. But here at a staff meeting was not the place for angry recrimination.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Boyle said, “Now I am sure that Reverend Mr. Jeffrey did not mean to impugn the abilities and accomplishments of the office of communication. Mr. Jeffrey’s suggestion is worthy of consideration. And I am sure it deserves further examination. In any case, Father Bash, nothing that Mr, Jeffrey said need trouble you.” The Cardinal smiled as he toyed with his pectoral cross. “You must develop a tougher hide, Father Bash. These are troubled times,”

“Yes, eminence.” When it came to the Cardinal Archbishop of Detroit, Cletus Bash was the quintessential yes man.

Larry Hoffer’s hand was raised. Bash thought that a good sign: The meeting was returning to order as decreed in Robert’s Rules of Order.

“Mr. Hoffer.” Bash recognized.

By leaning heavily on his right elbow, Hoffer was able to get his left hand in his pants pocket and jingle coins, “I feel as if I ought to apologize for what I’m about to say, but as director of finance and administration, I must see things in dollars and cents and very little else,”

Jingle, jingle.

“I can’t help remembering how things were when I was a boy. The recollection was jogged by Archbishop Foley’s recalling a time when Catholics had to confess a mortal sin if they were not sending their children to a Catholic school. At that time, I was going to a parochial school—so my parents were spared that embarrassment.”

Particularly from the usually dour Hoffer, that was a humorous line. For that very reason, no one laughed. They couldn’t believe he would be treating this matter lightly. They were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Earlier in this meeting,” Hoffer proceeded, “Monsignor Young referred to the virtual disappearance of the teaching nun. I put that together with what Archbishop Foley said and came up with a picture of the school I attended. And all the nuns. Sisters I still remember. Rarely if ever did a layperson teach in a parochial school. Whoever came up with the teaching nun, it was, indeed, an ingenious idea. She gave of herself completely, selflessly. She is a golden memory for all of us old enough to have attended that kind of parochial school.

“And that is gone. We all know that. Now, I don’t pretend to understand all of the complex reasons it’s gone. I am concerned only with the aftermath, the consequences of the loss of the teaching nun.

“Even if we were able to bring back the nuns in anywhere near the numbers we once had, I doubt that we could keep our schools open regardless. The cost of everything else has risen so much—there’s the age of the buildings, their desperate need of repair and replacement; there’s utilities, insurance, supplies; the cost of attaining a teaching degree now. All that overhead would have to figure into the tuition we’d have to charge.

“Still, if we had the nuns, it might be worth a try. But … we haven’t got them. When you lack food, you lack a meal.

“What we have now is what Father Bash and Sister Joan—from different perspectives—have agreed on: Our city schools are in desperate need of subsidization. Deacon Jeffrey suggests that our suburban schools should do the subsidizing. There’s merit in that approach, except that most of our suburban schools are already draining an increasing percentage of their parishes’ income. Deacon Jeffrey cites the remarkable power of money to seem to multiply. But not infinitely. And that’s what would be needed for our schools to survive: money raised to infinity. Because the cost will continue to rise dramatically, and there is no end in sight.”

Hoffer left off with no attempt to state any sort of conclusion to his argument. There remained a prolonged and expectant silence. Then, for the first time, Irene Casey spoke. “So … so what do you propose, Larry?”

Hoffer did not reply.

“You can’t mean you’re recommending closing all our parochial schools!” Irene pressed. “City
and
suburban?!”

“That,” Hoffer said, “is exactly what I am recommending: Close them before they eat us alive.”

From the reaction this statement received, it seemed evident that no one present had ever considered the possibility of eliminating the entire parochial school system.

In the hubbub that ensued, Monsignor Young finally made himself heard. “You don’t understand! You don’t understand, Mr. Hoffer! You don’t understand how interdependent some of our parishes and schools have become. Some pastors have told me that their parishes were almost inactive—lifeless from Monday through Friday—before they built their schools. Then a real community was formed. You don’t understand this!”

“That’s not my concern,” Hoffer replied. “I have no way of speaking to that point. My job is to deliver to the Cardinal the best advice I can give him as his chief financial resource person.”

Monsignor Young—along with others—was coming unglued. “But … but, Mr. Hoffer, don’t you see, if you close those schools, you might as well close those parishes!”

“As a matter of fact,” Hoffer replied, “there are quite a few parishes that are in the same situation as the schools. They should be closed.”

“What!?” was the reaction of almost everyone, especially Monsignor Young. No parishes, no schools. Superintendent of nothing. Ten years to go and no niche for him. That would not do, That very definitely would not do.

From this point on, the dispute grew heated. Father Bash lost his prerogative of directing this meeting. In fact, with all the wrangling he was shouted down several times.

The feverish dispute ranged widely. Some contended that, after all, without the nuns and the clear-cut dogma and morality of the past, what was the use of having Catholic schools anymore? Or, Catholic schools were needed more than ever today when public education, generally, had been intimidated from teaching religious values by the Supreme Court.

The dispute went so far afield as to include the shrinking number of priests. With that in mind, maybe it was a good idea to circle the wagons more closely and close a few marginal parishes. Or, looking at that same diminishing priest supply, it was absolutely imperative to keep the parishes open. Where in the world were the desperately needed candidates for priesthood going to come from if the kids hardly ever even saw a priest?

And on and on it went.

One of the few who did not dive into this cacophony was Irene Casey.

Technically she was not a department head. But, as editor of the
Detroit Catholic
, she felt she needed to be familiar with the background of what was going on and what was being planned by the archdiocesan administration. Besides, her predecessor, Father Koesler, had always attended these meetings. She had made her case before Cardinal Boyle, and because it seemed a reasonable request and also because Boyle genuinely liked her, he had approved.

In all the meetings she had attended since her initial invitation to join the group, Irene had never witnessed anything like this.

These were very angry men and, in two instances, women. A few of them were saying things she was sure they would regret having expressed. Even occasional interposings on the part of Cardinal Boyle could not restore either Robert’s Rules or civility.

Mrs. Casey felt the slacker for not joining in the various arguments. But confrontation, for her, was more a matter of necessity dian choice. Besides, the debate had begun to take on abusive tones as well as including personal insults. It seemed to Irene that she detected a vituperative quality which barely sheathed an undertone of violence that disturbed her deeply.

A Steve Allen song came to her mind:
This could be the start of something big.

The Hoffers lived in a rambling old house on Birchcrest near the University of Detroit in Gesu parish, which was staffed by Jesuits.

They’d lived at this address for most of their married life, raised five children, who were now all married and moved away; they themselves had no intention of moving. The neighborhood was racially mixed but stable—such stability being rare in the city of Detroit. There was a tad more danger than in the average suburban neighborhood—or at least that was the created impression. But there were neighborhood watches, block parties, a form of Welcome Wagon, and interested and interesting people.

Georgeanne—friends called her Georgie—Hoffer had served beef burgundy, one of Larry Hoffer’s favorites, for supper. The two were now seated in a very lived-in living room. She was reading a book, her reading glasses barely bonded to the tip of her nose. He was reading the
Detroit News
, the city’s afternoon newspaper. Curled around her feet like a small white muffler was Truffles, her dog.

One might have referred to Truffles as
their
dog, except that the poodle belonged to Georgie. Larry tolerated the animal. His philosophy regarding pets was, If you’re going to have a dog, have a big dog; if you’re going to have a little dog, have a cat. But Georgie loved the little mutt—who understood completely that he was his mistress’s dog—and that was good enough for Larry.

The softly playing radio was tuned to WQRS-FM, the area’s classical music station. The station, at this moment, was torturing its listeners with a Béla Bartók chamber piece. Larry was preoccupied enough to pay it no mind. Georgie, having missed the introduction, did not know who had composed the piece, and was enduring it to the end solely to discover who had perpetrated this insult to the human ear. At long last, as was inevitable, it ended and the announcer identified it.

“Bartok,” Georgie said. “If I’d been paying attention before it began, I’d have switched stations.”

“Um.”

“Well, they’ve got it out of their system, I hope. Maybe now they’ll stick to the big guns.”

“Uh-huh.”

She couldn’t see his face behind the paper. From the sounds he was making, she knew that he was awake and probably not paying attention. There were ways of finding out whether his mind was here or elsewhere. “Did you come across the item in the paper yet about how Mayor Cobb is going to move all the bodies out of Gethsemane Cemetery so he can enlarge City Airport?” She’d invented that.

“Uh.”

“Yes. He’s going to replant them in the salt mines under the city and create our own version of the Roman catacombs.”

No response.

“In time he thinks it will increase tourism.”

Still no sound.

She tried another tack. “Peter”—their eldest son now happily married and living in upstate New York—”called today. He’s getting a divorce and coming back home to live.”

Slowly the paper was lowered. He looked at her quizzically. She was smiling. He smiled. “Was I that far away?”

“Afraid so.”

“Sorry.”

“Was the
News
that absorbing?”

He crumpled the paper in his lap. “Not really. Well … I shouldn’t say one way or the other. I haven’t been reading it.”

“You certainly gave a good imitation.”

“One of those times when you find yourself reading the same item over and over with no comprehension.”

“Anything wrong?” She became slightly apprehensive. After many satisfying years of living with each other they had grown finely tuned to the smallest signs. There was, for instance, nothing particularly noteworthy in his not paying attention to what he was reading. It happened often enough to nearly everybody. One becomes distracted and preoccupied with something—anything—and cannot concentrate on whatever is going on at the moment.

But there was something different tonight.

Georgie had been merely playful, toying with him by making up outrageous items to see what it would take to get his attention, to draw him back to reality.

But even after he shook off his reverie something was still not quite right. It was nothing anyone else would catch. But, sensitive to his every mood, she knew something was troubling him.

He hadn’t answered her question. She repeated it a fraction more urgently. “Anything wrong?”

“Nothing of any importance.” He paused, then realized the futility of trying to hide anything from this beloved woman. “Well, there was that meeting this morning.…”

“The staff meeting?”

“Yes. The special topic for discussion was the parochial school system.”

“Oh?” They had discussed the topic before, more frequently recently as he and his department were drawn into bandaging this hollow giant in terminal condition.

“So many of them—the staff members—want to hold on to the schools—even more the parishes. I think perhaps a majority agree on saving the system.”

“But it’s impossible,” she said. “We’ve talked about this before. How about Cardinal Boyle?”

The furrows in his forehead deepened. “I can’t read him on this one. Ordinarily I’m pretty good at figuring out which way the wind is blowing. But not on this issue,”

“And that’s critical, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely. It’s not that the department heads are window dressing, as they are in so many other dioceses. The Cardinal really listens to us and weighs the evidence we bring him. But in the end, he is the Cardinal Archbishop of Detroit. By law he runs everything. We go with his decision. That’s all there is to it.”

Georgie thought a few moments. “If the staff is divided and you can’t read the Cardinal, this thing really is up in the air.” She now understood in more depth what was troubling him.