Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (25 page)

A
fter his McGuire-mandated exercise trek downtown, O'Rourke took a seat in McCarthy Square, opposite his apartment building. McCarthy Square wasn't a square at all, but a triangle of concrete, surrounded by Seventh Avenue, Charles Street, and Waverly Place. A flagpole, rescued from the 1939 World's Fair, stood in its middle. From his perch O'Rourke could look up Seventh Avenue and had a clear view of the Village Vanguard. As a kid, O'Rourke and his friends used to play stoopball off the monument's front. The pink spaldeen caused havoc as it rose and hit apartment windows six stories up. Back then, in the' 50s and '60s, no one thought about who this fellow McCarthy was.

Bernard Joseph McCarthy was a twenty-two-year-old Marine Private First Class when he was killed on Guadalcanal in August of 1942. He was the first Greenwich Villager killed in the Second World War. He was one of the first of sixteen thousand New Yorkers who would give their lives in World War II. There are not many monuments to war in Greenwich Village. In fact, the only ones O'Rourke could think of were the statue of the World War I doughboy in Abingdon Square Park, the Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground over on Gansevoot and Hudson Streets, named for a Village kid killed in Vietnam, and the bronze plaque on the front of St. Joseph's Church over on Sixth Avenue. On that monument were the names of all those in the parish that had gone off to war. The ones with the asterisks did not come back. O'Rourke had double-checked and Private McCarthy was on St. Joseph's list also, marked in death by an asterisk. He had also noticed that, although the names on St. Joseph's “Honor Roll” were alphabetized, McCarthy was misplaced. He was stuck between McCarthy, Charles, and McCarthy, Daniel, who also earned as asterisk. O'Rourke shook his head, hoping that they were not brothers, making Mrs. McCarthy a twin Gold Star Mother.

O'Rourke wondered about this Bernie McCarthy, as his friends surely called him. Like O'Rourke, he was Village Irish and had gone to fight for his country on the far side of the Pacific. O'Rourke was twenty-four when his ass landed in Vietnam and Bernie was even younger. He wondered if Bernie McCarthy had gone to mass in St. Joseph's on Sunday December 7, 1941 or had he lay in bed with a hangover from carousing with his buddies the night before? Probably not, for the missing of mass was a mortal sin and wouldn't sit well in the eyes of his mother. Was he eating dinner when he heard the news about Pearl Harbor, or was he looking at the sports section of the
Daily News
? Maybe he was listening to the football game on the radio that was being played at the Polo Grounds uptown when the announcer broke in with the news bulletin. Did he have brothers and sisters? Must have, because all the Irish had lots of brothers and sisters. And the next morning, what did he do? Did he take the subway to Times Square and enlist in the marines? And did his mother cry when he proudly told her he was now a marine?

And how did he die?

Was it a Jap sniper, or maybe, like in the movie
Guadalcanal Diary,
was he gunned down charging a machine gun nest? Or did he get dysentery and die of the shits?

Although he will be always part of the Village because of this tiny plot of land, it is doubtful that McCarthy ever made it home. They probably just bulldozed him into some mud trap on Guadalcanal.

That was a war different from O'Rourke's war. Many of the GIs killed in Vietnam made it home. Probably even Corporal John A. Seravalli. O'Rourke did not know Seravalli, but both were born in the same year, 1946. He wondered if Seravalli's coffin was closed or if it had one of those Plexiglass windows so the dead hero soldier could be viewed. Was he waked in one of the Irish funeral parlors on West 14th Street or was it in one of the Italian funeral homes over on Bleecker Street?

He wondered if they had a solemn holy high mass for PFC McCarthy in St. Joseph's. Was his mother from the old country, and had she seen the same in Dublin twenty-five years beforehand? Then it was the Black and Tans. Now it was the Japs. Death, as always, was cheap. Did they send useless medals to his mother that just made her cry and cry? Washington gives you medals and a little Gold Star flag to hang in your tenement window, but they take your child forever and you're supposed to be satisfied.

It was a beautiful spring morning and O'Rourke circled the flagpole to see what was written on its base. “Brave Men and Worthy Patriots Dear to God and Famous to all Ages.” It also said that it was erected by residents of the vicinity and a local American Legion post. After reading the inscription O'Rourke felt fatigued and went to sit down on one of the two park benches. He was more than fatigued, he was deflated. “Brave Men and Worthy Patriots,” O'Rourke repeated aloud. What absolutely cheap crap, he thought. They couldn't come up with something better than Milton's English shit poetry for an Irish-Catholic American marine? Bernard Joseph McCarthy's death fiftyeight years ago had taken the optimism out of O'Rourke's day.

O'Rourke sat looking up Seventh Avenue. Every time he looked at the corner of Seventh Avenue, Waverly Place, and Perry Street—now called Max Gordon Corner in honor of the late owner of the Village Vanguard—he thought of Thomas Merton, because Merton had lived down the block on Perry. For some reason guilt-ridden middle-aged Catholics had taken to the trappist. O'Rourke had read
The Seven Storey Mountain
and had been appalled. It was full of smug pseudoholiness and flippant remarks about “drunken Irishmen.” His inflated ego even went so far as to what kind of rosary beads he preferred. “I used them,” he wrote importantly, “in preference to the strong, cheap, black wooden beads made for workmen and old Irish washwomen.” O'Rourke wondered what his mother, an old Irish washwoman—with varicose veins like taut wire cables—would have thought of that.

The thing that amazed him so much about Merton, the selfproclaimed Englishman, was how he avoided the three Irish parishes in the Village. He was always going up to Xavier on West 16th Street, Our Lady of Guadalupe on West 14th Street, or St. Francis of Assisi up on West 31st Street, where all the hard cases were supposed to enjoy confessional anonymity. There was no record of him ever venturing over to St. Bernard's, O'Rourke's parish, on West 14th Street. Founded by the Irish who worked on the booming docks after the Civil War, St. Bernard's Church, built in 1870s, had the rare gift of peace and solitude. It was dark, quiet, and beautiful, and even in the hectic New York day you could feel that maybe there really was a God and he just might be listening to you.

Another Irish parish tied to the stevedore trade was St. Veronica's on Christopher Street, established in the 1890s. It had died in the early 1960s as container ships ended the career of longshoremen, who were forced to leave the Village to find new jobs. Now St. Veronica's was a dead parish administered by St. Bernard's and famous for Mother Theresa's AIDS hospice.

The last Irish parish was St. Joseph's on Sixth Avenue, which was the oldest Catholic Church building in New York City. It had once been the home to John McCloskey who was to become the first American cardinal when he succeeded Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes during the Civil War. To O'Rourke, St. Joseph's reminded him of a ballroom because chandeliers hung from the ceiling. It was all white, antiseptic, and hard, holding none of the grace of St. Bernard's or St. Veronica's. Every time he went by St. Joseph's he thought of his Marine buddy from Vietnam, Kevin Griffin. Griff had taken his mother, Helen—Bronx-Irish hardened by life—to mass there on a Sunday and she was appalled. “What are you taking me to a Protestant church for?” she demanded of her son. “And what,” she continued, “do chandeliers have to do with Our Lord, Jesus Christ?”

Like Merton, Dorothy Day had also sowed her wild oats in the Village. In
The Long Loneliness
she speaks of the Village and its importance in her life. She preferred Our Lady of Guadalupe where apparently all the old Commies hung out, but she often went to mass at St. Joseph's after drinking all night with Eugene O'Neill and gang members of the notorious cocaine-sniffing Hudson Dusters at the Golden Swan Café across the way on the corner of West Fourth and Sixth Avenue. O'Rourke was always bemused by the fact that both Merton and Day enjoyed sexual hijinks in their youth—he fathered a child out of wedlock who he abandoned and Day had an abortion—then went on to take stringent views on the morality of others.

They were true believers, possibly because they were converts to Catholicism. Converts are always the most rigid ideologues, rigid because they are secretly afraid what they passionately believe in may be just an illusion. Now there were demands that they both be made saints. Merton and Day, thought O'Rourke. They sounded like a religious vaudeville team. Suddenly, O'Rourke perked up, buoyed by the memory and sacrifice of PFC Bernard Joseph McCarthy, a Marine who died for his country. He could see him in the Guadalcanal jungle cursing as only a Catholic kid from Greenwich Village would. O'Rourke smiled, imaging every third word a heart-felt “fuck,” and realized that maybe Bernie McCarthy had more saint in him than either of the Catholic egotists, Merton and Day.

T
he
Bourne-in-the-Morn
radio studio was in chaos.

The Cardinal was due within the half hour, and Bourne was slumped forward in his chair, his head on the console, hidden by his oversized cowboy hat. “His man,” Barrymore—big, black, and disgusted—took the hat and flung it into the corner. He grabbed Bourne by his long, stringy hair and pulled him up so he could see his eyes. They were open, but weren't seeing a damn thing. Bourne was something to look at in his present state—stoned out of his mind, yet resplendent in his jodhpurs, buckskin coat, and cowboy boots with spurs. He looked like a gay Marshal Sam McCloud after a bad night.

“Where's his shit?” said Barrymore to no one in particular as he dropped Bourne's head back on to the console. He ran his hand through Bourne's coat pockets with no success. Then he pushed his fist into Bourne's right pants pocket. He came away with one of Fischbein's aluminum packets, which he opened, dumping its entire contents on the desk in front of Bourne. He frisked Bourne's shirt pockets until he found his straw, then shoved it up his nose and barked in Bourne's ear, “Hoover left!” Obediently, Bourne vacuumed half the cocaine off the desk. Barrymore moved the straw to the other nostril and commanded, “Hoover right!” Pavlov's dog couldn't have done it better. The desk was clean in seconds.

For the first time since Barrymore had found him unconscious in the back room of Hogan's Moat, Bourne's eyes flew open. Then his nose started to twitch, and eyes started darting about separately in random directions, which is how he came to be known as “Ricochet” down at the Moat. With a tremendous sneeze, a small cloud of cocaine billowed up in front of Bourne's face, as though announcing a papal election. Barrymore relaxed because he knew Bourne was going to be all right.

Bourne thought he was a kingmaker. The kingpin of political radio. The man who could make or break politicians as they came, hat in hand, to be on
Bourne-in-the-Morn
. They came to trade barbs with “The B-Man,” but they prayed for his benediction. It had started with Bill Clinton back in 1992 trying to reach out to a segment of voters that had until then been ignored. That was Bourne's demographic: young, hip, affluent, spoiled. If you loved politicians,
Bourne-in-the Morn
was a must-listen. On any given morning there would be the future heroes: Giuliani, the mayor with two girlfriends and one pissed-off wife, or Pataki, the clueless governor. There would be boring senators from Connecticut and obscure congressmen from Nevada, all trying very hard to show their wit and their concern, to convince America that they were just, well, regular guys.

Clinton's election had signaled a rebirth for Bourne. For years Bourne had been radio's original bad boy, the man for whom the term “shock jock” was invented. He had jolted New York awake back in the 1970s upon his arrival from Cedar Rapids. There had been stunts, suspensions, and annual visits to Betty Ford, but he never actually sobered up. It was all for show. “Yes,” he would say, “January 11, 1991, was the most important day of my life, the day I stopped using drugs and alcohol.” He had been clean for about a month when he ran into Fischbein one morning in the men's room at the Moat. He had been out all night and had to start his show in about two hours. One Fish-pack kept him awake, two made him funny, three had him screaming to get Cokie Roberts on the phone “right this minute.” When she sweetly cooed, “Good morning, B-Man,” Bourne would wax poetic like Robert Duvall in
Apocalypse Now
, “I love the smell of Cokie in the morning.”

By 7:20, Bourne was functioning. He had Dan Rather on the line talking about the appearance of Our Lady of Greenwich Village. “If this appearance is legitimate,” said Rather in that voice that signaled that he was so excited he was about to have an asthma attack, “it could be a devastating blow to the Democrats.”

“Geez, Dan,” said Bourne, “you mean the Virgin Mary is a registered Republican?”

“I'm not saying that, B-Man, but the consequences to such an appearance can't be overestimated.”

“Dan,” replied Bourne, beaming after his second Fish-pack, “is there any hope you could get Our Lady of Greenwich Village on
60 Minutes
next Sunday?” Rather never got to reply because Bourne pulled his thumb across his throat, and Rather disappeared from the airways. “Guess the Virgin must have gotten Dan on his cell phone,” said Bourne as the Cardinal walked into the control booth, along with Dr. Costello and Father Dowd. “We'll be back in a minute,” said Bourne, “with a very, very special guest.”

Bourne shook the Cardinal's hand then helped seat him in front of a hanging microphone, which he adjusted in front of the Cardinal's face. Bourne noticed Costello in the control booth and waved to him. Bourne wondered what made Costello tick. He had first contacted Bourne about making a contribution to Bourne's Bivouac for Boys, where homeless children got to spend the summer. Costello had sent a check and had even come up to the Catskills to bless the camp and told Bourne how it reminded him of Reverend Cockburn's GodScou✞s. As long as the checks kept coming, Bourne thought, what the hell.

Dowd took a seat in the control room next to the engineer and watched Costello. The good doctor was beginning to come out of his shell. He reached into his ubiquitous briefcase and took out a stack of bumper stickers that said SAVE THE FETUSES and a brown bag of campaign buttons that declared SWIFT FOR CONGRESS. He pinned a Swift button in the lapel of his black suit and offered one to the engineer and Dowd. The engineer took one, but Dowd declined with a slight smile. As the media spokesman for the archdiocese, he had no intention of playing the partisan.

“Our guest this morning,” said Bourne after the station break, “is Declan Cardinal Sweeney, the archbishop of the Diocese of New York. Good morning, your Eminence, how are you this morning?”

“Bourne, I feel like a million bucks.”

“That's not surprising, Eminence,” said Bourne,laughing, “considering the vast real estate holdings the Church has in New York City.”

The Cardinal gave Bourne a perfunctory smile that said, “Move on.” “So, Cardinal, what do you really think about Our Lady of Greenwich Village?”

“I think, Bourne, it is an important sign from God.”

“A sign?”

“Yes, Bourne. Who is the most important person in God's life?”

Bourne laughed, imagining what kind of a life God might lead. “I don't have a clue, your Eminence.”

“His mother, Bourne, his mother.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, this is a sign from God that abortion must stop now.”

“Now, Cardinal,” said Bourne, “you upset a lot of people—mostly Catholic politicians—last week when you had your little press conference with that fruitcake Cockburn.”

The strain showed on the Cardinal's face as he gave a little laugh that signaled he didn't want to get into Cockburn. “Oh,” said the Cardinal, “let's give the Reverend Cockburn the benefit of the doubt. The press ambushed him.”

“Well, Cardinal, a lot of Catholic politicians wish that you'd give
them
the benefit of the doubt on this Wafer Watch you've imposed.”

“Bourne,” said the Cardinal severely, “you should not reduce the Holy Eucharist to such a frivolous term as ‘Wafer Watch.'”

Trying to get a straight answer—or a funny one—out of Sweeney was beginning to grate on Bourne. He went right after the Cardinal, saying, “You've been accused of politicizing the Eucharist.”

The Cardinal shifted in his chair and turned reflective. “You know, Bourne, maybe you're right. Maybe we should all take a breath and reflect on the events that have taken place in the last week.”

Bourne was so surprised by the answer that he stammered, “Are you apologizing, your Eminence, or perhaps flip-flopping?”

The Cardinal would not be baited. “You know, Bourne, you made a good point. Maybe we have become too combative with each other. Maybe all of us should allow each other ‘the benefit of the doubt.' It couldn't hurt.”

“What's wrong with him?” said Costello through clenched teeth as he bolted from the booth, ran into the studio, and pulled a chair up alongside of the Cardinal, startling the old man. Dowd was shocked and his mouth dropped open in surprise. Bourne frowned on the interruption, but there was nothing he could do. “We've been joined by the Reverend Dr. John Costello, an old friend of the
Bourne-in-the-Morn
program. How are you today, doctor?”

“I'm fine, Bourne,” Costello replied with a canned affability. “Could I interest you in a SWIFT FOR CONGRESS button or a SAVE THE FETUSES bumper sticker?” For some reason, all Bourne could think of was Flipper.

“Sure, Doctor,” said Bourne without enthusiasm, “anything you say.” In the control booth, Dowd wondered what made Costello tick. He was pushy, but his answers to difficult questions were platitudes printed on bumper stickers and campaign buttons.

Costello was about to insert a little backbone into Declan Sweeney. “I just want to reiterate,” said Costello, commandeering the Cardinal's microphone, “what the Cardinal said the other day about denying the Eucharist to politicians who flout the Church's teachings.”

“Dr. Costello,” said the Cardinal, placing a hand on Costello's right arm.

Costello ignored the Cardinal. “It is objectively dishonest for Catholics who publicly dissent with the church's pro-life teachings to receive Communion,” said Costello. “No one has an absolute right to the Eucharist.”

“Are you saying—” said Bourne.

“John,” said the Cardinal gently, tugging on Costello's sleeve.

Costello ignored both of them and continued, “Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem-cell research, or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences. It is for this reason that these Catholics, whether candidates for office or those who would vote for them, may not receive Holy Communion until they have recanted their positions and been reconciled with God and the Church in the Sacrament of Penance.”

“Cardinal Sweeney,” said Bourne, “do you agree with that?”

“We should all strive for some middle ground,” said the Cardinal, before Costello cut him off.

“Anyone who professes the Catholic faith with his lips,” said Costello, quickening the pace, “while at the same time publicly supporting legislation or candidates that defy God's law, makes a mockery of that faith and belies his identity as a Catholic. On the basic moral teachings of the church, there is no wiggle room.”