Embracing Darkness (13 page)

Father Poole, however, had become increasingly aware of and disturbed by public opinion. He feared that the church was headed for a reputation of being self-centered and impractical, and he was sure that many congregants of different denominations already felt this way.

At the time Miss Dolores Pennywhistle, Holly Orphanage’s head of adoptions, had been up on the hill only once in her life, and for a lifelong resident of Holly that was something to brag about. Dolores Pennywhistle had said: “I was up there one Sunday to speak after the service. I told all twenty-six people present… . Yes, that’s all there were. How embarrassing for them, and what a waste of time for me! Have you ever tried climbing that hill? Oh, my dear. Your heart’d burst if you even tried! It’s more of an incline than I’d ever care to climb, and, what’s more, it takes a year and a day to get to the top. Anyway, as I was saying, twenty-six people heard me solicit funds for our orphanage. And even that contemptuous Father what’s-his-name boasted with a smile that he would set aside ten percent of the collection plate every week for the next six weeks and donate it to the orphanage. But I ask you, Elvira, what is ten percent when you look at it this way? I saw what was in that collection plate when it came back up to the altar. There was barely enough in that basket to make a whole dollar. Disgraceful! But let’s just say it
was
a whole dollar, just to make the math easier. That’s ten percent of one dollar times six weeks. Sixty cents! That’s what we’ll get from the Catholics. Sixty cents! Nearly half of our orphanage is made up of the children of dead Irish and Italian immigrants. He should give us half his collection plate! But then that’d only give us three measly dollars! Let him keep his money. The Pope can wear his robes of gold and that ring the size of Monte Carlo. And St. Andrew’s is perched up on that hill, as if that’ll get them closer to God. It looks like a common town hall with a giant crucifix hanging from the ceiling. They have that ‘hotel’ next to the church that’s twice the size of my orphanage. He should donate that building to the orphanage and keep his stinking sixty cents!”

Dolores Pennywhistle was a talker, that’s for certain. No matter how small the problem or how minor the event, she would blow it up into an utter catastrophe. She was truly a woman of drama, and the way she told stories was proof of it. She also talked a mile a minute, so telling Elvira Nelson about St. Andrew’s took her all of twenty-six seconds, pausing only twice to breathe and continue.

Once she had made the mistake of leaving her teapot unattended on the stovetop in the orphanage’s kitchen. Forgetting all about her afternoon tea, she was called urgently by Elvira Nelson, who was holding down an orphan girl suffering from epileptic seizure. With all of the commotion both before and after the ordeal, Dolores Pennywhistle’s afternoon tea was the furthest thing from her mind. So by 5:30 in the afternoon, when the smell of scorched metal permeated the upstairs bedrooms and the children were screaming bloody murder from the stench, Dolores opened her office door to find out what all the commotion was about.

Immediately upon her opening the door, the smell hit hard. It even hurt to inhale. She began frantically looking for Elvira to help her with the children, who by this time were running amuck. As she searched for the nurse, Dolores Pennywhistle also searched for the cause of the horrendous odor. She checked the bathrooms. She then went upstairs and checked all the bedrooms twice while trying to dodge hysterical children. The last place she’d ever think to look was the kitchen, and that’s because Elvira Nelson was a boney woman who never ate a morsel of food.

Dolores herself, being a large woman, fancied the kitchen quite a bit and took pleasure in indulging in all it had to offer. Her favorite food in the world was strawberries dipped in chocolate. She’d always say how it was the strawberries she enjoyed because they were red, which was her favorite color. This was a stretch, to be sure, since her favorite color all her life had been purple, yet when put on the spot to explain why she always had strawberries in her mouth she didn’t know what else to say. She refused to admit that they went wonderfully with the chocolate she always consumed in mass quantities. So she came up with the story of red’s being her favorite color. But then again Dolores Pennywhistle was a very poor liar because her lies were so unbelievable.

Another thing she wasn’t very good at was that of remembering to take the kettle off the stove.

Dolores finally made her way into the hallway near the kitchen door. There the smell was at its worst. When she flung open the swinging door, there was Elvira opening all the windows and fanning out the smoke. The nurse’s nose was tucked tightly into her shirt collar in an attempt to spare herself from being sickened by the smell of burning copper.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Dolores as she ran over to Elvira, grabbed a rolling pin, and began fanning it in an attempt to clear the air. “This is all my fault!” Dolores asserted.

“What happened?” asked Elvira.

“I-I don’t know,” Dolores began. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I was making myself some tea to have with my strawberries and chocolate, and when I heard all the commotion and you screaming my name, all I could think of was to get to you as quickly as possible. I guess I just forgot! And now the children are all in an uproar. I don’t know how we’re going to get them settled down.”

Elvira’s fanning eventually stopped as the explanation sank in. “Chocolate! Is
that
what was boiling in the pot?”

Dolores Pennywhistle then realized that she had also forgotten about the chocolate she was melting on the stovetop. It lay there in the pot, burnt and black and hard. That, coupled with the burning copper teapot, made for one nauseating stench.

To hear Dolores Pennywhistle tell this story was like hearing her tell any other. She spoke as a ten-year-old would after drinking three cups of coffee. “My stars! How I
must
tell you about the unfortunate event that occurred to me.” She then would relate the story if someone mentioned any of the following: tea, teapots, stoves, chocolate, unruly children, rolling pins, or odors.

“I have to tell you,” she would say, “the one time I plum forgot all about the water boiling in my teapot. I mustn’t have heard the whistle going off with all the commotion. Poor little Rita Partridge, convulsing and foaming at the mouth! We all thought she was a goner. The water boiled into steam, and then the copper got too hot, not to mention the
chocolate
! There was nothing left of it but blackened crud. It was a sight. And the
smell
! Don’t get me started on that smell! It was
not
pleasant, I assure you. And how the children were behaving! They were not making it any easier for us, I can tell you that. And poor Elvira was so panic-stricken that she actually thought fanning a newspaper would do any good in ridding the kitchen of all that smoke and foulness!”

On one occasion Elvira Nelson heard Dolores Pennywhistle relate the story to a couple who were interested in adopting little Rita Partridge. Since Dolores was obligated to tell Mr. and Mrs. St. James about the child’s medical condition, she added her story of the forgotten teapot, once again stating, “Oh! And poor Nurse Nelson! You’ve met her in the hall. She’s wonderful, but in a crisis she panics and doesn’t think clearly. I mean, with the kitchen almost burning down, how she thought that a
newspaper
was going to remedy the situation is beyond me!” Dolores Pennywhistle would never mention her own blunder of using a rolling pin for the same purpose.

So it would be Elvira Nelson who would tell the story in her own way, which happened to be the accurate version. “I know I should have called for the fire marshal,” Elvira would say, “but I thought that I could take care of the mishap myself. I used the first flat thing I could find to fan the air—newspaper. What did Miss Pennywhistle use? A rolling pin! Now have you
ever
?”

Mass ended at 10:30 on the morning of November 3rd. Father Poole said to the congregation, “
Dominus
vobiscum
,” whereupon they dutifully replied, “
Et
cum
spiritu
tuo
.” Father Poole then intoned, raising his hands to the people, “
Ite,
missa
est
.”

Lowering his hands, the priest frowned as he saw Sister Ignatius take her hands from under her habit. Bringing her glue-filled silver flask up to her nose and bowing her head as if to pray, she closed her eyes, pressed an index finger against her left nostril, and breathed in deeply through her right one. For anyone else this would have been a sight to behold, but Father Poole had grown so accustomed to it, routinely during weekday Mass and at least three times during the longer Sunday Masses, that it bothered him only when the nun would do so in the presence of the congregation, though Father Poole was almost certain that no one noticed.

The relationship between Father Poole and Sister Ignatius could be summed up with one word:
unpredictable
. The priest did his best not to irritate his subordinate, but unless she happened to be hitting the glue, she did little to extend him the same courtesy. Father Poole cut her workload significantly. For instance, he asked her to type his letters to Manchester in duplicate rather than the former triplicate practice, sent and picked up the church’s mail by running down to the post office, and even moved her sleeping quarters from the bell tower of St. Andrew’s to one of the vacant rooms in the old Keats house. He hoped that she might see all this as some kind of peace offering.

“We have to do something about you staying in the bell tower.” He began, before ending with the punch line, “I’m always tempted to call you
Quasimodo
, Sister.”

Sister Ignatius’s response, however, made Phineas believe his lighthearted comment had come off as rather boorish. “Well it can’t be the existence of a hump on my back.” she replied. “I know! It’s a reference to my ugliness!”

Accustomed to it as he may have been, her glue habit was something he could not abide when there were people around. During the instances when he would catch her sneaking a whiff in public, he’d show his disapproval in the most appropriate way possible. In church, this would only amount to a slow shake of the head.

Sitting in the front pew with Mrs. Keats beside her, Sister Ignatius quickly frowned back at the priest and immediately stuck out her tongue at him. Father Poole turned away, as if trying to make it appear that he had missed Sister Ignatius’s rude gesture, but his grimace turned to a smile once he became aware of Mrs. Keats, whom he loved dearly. She made her sign of the cross with her head pointed piously downward. The priest’s attention then turned back to the Mass.

Father Poole could see Mrs. Keats mouth the words “
Deo
gratias
.” She had become such a devout woman that, although nearly deaf and half blind, she struggled to follow the Mass. She’d sit in the front pew every day with Sister Ignatius and come early on Sunday mornings to be as close as possible to the altar and do her best to read Father Poole’s lips.

The priest said goodbye to the congregants as they shuffled out of St. Andrew’s, shaking the hands of the men and kissing the cheeks of the women. While shaking Ernie Driscoll’s hand, he glanced over his shoulder to his friend Ben Benson’s house. As always, the old man was sitting on his front porch, rocking back and forth while smoking a non-filtered cigarette. As on every Sunday for the past four years, Father Poole wished that Ben Benson would give in and attend Sunday service in St. Andrew’s.

After Mass, as always, Father Poole headed over to Ben Benson’s porch for a beer and a few hours of conversation. The two men had developed a strong bond. Father Poole had come to love almost everyone on the hill… except for Sister Ignatius.

Before descending the steps of St. Andrew’s, the good Father went to the rectory to retrieve the
Portland
Daily
Chronicle
delivered to him every morning by Jordy Fitzpatrick. He wasn’t much of a newspaper reader himself, but the priest told Ben Benson that he was welcome to share his paper. Father Poole knew that money was sometimes an issue for Ben, so cutting back on a newspaper subscription was one way the old man could save money.

As he walked up his friend’s steps, Father Poole opened the newspaper to read the headlines to him. On the third step he read the name “Johnny Benson.”

“Hey! What d’ya know, Ben? Your grandson’s name is on the front page again!”

Ben replied, “Yep! I swear if he don’t make President by the time he’s forty!”

Johnny Benson had struck it rich through land investments and become a prominent politician in Greenwich, Connecticut. Because he was a local boy, the
Portland
Daily
Chronicle
followed his life faithfully, mentioning any accolades he’d received as well as announcing the birth of their first and only child, a daughter.

By the fifth and final step, Father Poole froze. His face became drawn and his heart began to speed up. He looked over to his old friend.

Ben Benson, seeing the priest’s face, asked, “What is it? Did the boy get himself involved in some corrupt scandal or somethin’?”

Father Poole needed to collect his thoughts and muster up the courage to tell his friend what the headlines read: “
NH-BORN
TYCOON
AND
CONN.
POLITICIAN
JOHNNY
BENSON
FOUND
DEAD.
APPARENT
SUICIDE.”

Twelve
Meeting the Bensons
 

Johnny Benson’s situation was complicated from the start. He came from a line of people who had very little until he did something about it. Ben and Anne Benson had only one son, Jonathan, who was nothing like grandson Johnny. Like Ben, Jonathan was a sensible and hard-working man whose main concern was his family’s welfare.