Punish the Sinners (8 page)

“Of course,” Judy said. “You don’t think I’m going to wait till everyone’s there and then change my dress, do you?”

Karen giggled. “That might be interesting,” she said.

“Maybe for you,” Judy said archly. “I’m a little more modest.”

“In that dress?” Karen said. “I didn’t think you
bought it because you thought it was modest. I thought you bought it because you thought it was sexy.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Judy breathed. “Do you think Lyle will notice?”

“How can he miss?” Karen said sarcastically. “With that neckline, and the way it fits, everyone will notice you.” Then she paused a moment. “What if your mother finds out which dress you bought?”

“She won’t,” Judy said confidently. “Besides, even if she does, I can talk her into letting me keep it” Then, remembering that her mother sometimes stood at the foot of the stairs listening to her when she was on the phone, Judy glanced down the stairwell. No one was there, but she decided enough had been said about the new dress.

“What do you think of Mr. Balsam?” she asked, changing the subject

“I guess he’s okay,” Karen replied, not wanting to commit herself to an opinion until she found out how her friends felt about the new teacher. “At least he’s different from the Sisters. But hell probably change. In a week his class won’t be any different from the others.”

“I don’t know,” Judy said, suddenly thoughtful. “Janet says he’s completely different in Latin than he is in psychology. She says it’s like having two different teachers.”

“Really?” Karen was suddenly curious. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Judy said. “I guess he teaches Latin the same way the nuns do, making you stand up to recite, and all that Janet says she thinks it’s because he doesn’t really know Latin very well, and he’s trying to cover up.”

Karen giggled. “Maybe he’s just crazy, and he’s trying to cover that up by teaching psychology. You
know what they say about psychologists—most of them need one.”

Now both girls laughed, but in the middle of the laughter Judy thought she heard a click, as if someone had picked up the other phone in the kitchen,

“Well, I have to go now,” she said, cutting into the laughter. She hoped Karen would pick up her signal. “So I’ll come over an hour earlier on Saturday, and help you get ready, all right?”

There was a short silence while Karen tried to fathom why Judy was breaking off their conversation so suddenly. And then, with the antennae that teen-agers share, she knew what was happening. “That’ll be great,” she said. “If I can get Penny and Janet to come early too, it’ll almost be like having two parties. See you tomorrow.” She hung up the phone, congratulating herself on how quickly she had caught on and helped Judy fool whoever was eavesdropping on them.

   Judy Nelson replaced the phone on its cradle, then stuck her tongue out at the instrument, as if it had been responsible for her mother’s violation of what Judy regarded as a personal and confidential conversation.

But the click she had heard had not been her mother picking up the downstairs phone; rather, it had been Inez finally replacing the receiver. Now she was back in the living room, and she was fuming. She glanced at her husband, and saw that he was still intent on the baseball game. Well, there wasn’t any use in trying to talk to him anyway. He would simply rebuke her for listening in on something that was none of her business, then tell her that, since tapping telephones is illegal, she couldn’t use anything she had heard against Judy. That, she thought, is what I get for marrying a lawyer. Purposefully, Inez moved to the stairway. George Nelson glanced up.

“Going upstairs?” he said.

“I have to talk to Judy,” Inez said, certain that if she told her husband what she was going to talk about, he would stop her. “It won’t take a minute.”

“Tell her if she wants, I’ll beat her at backgammon in about a half hour,” George said. Then his eyes locked once more on the TV screen. Inez stared at him for a moment, then shook her head grimly. There would be no cozy games between father and daughter
this
evening, not if she had anything to do with it. She marched up the stairs, entered Judy’s room without knocking, and closed the door behind her.

From the bed, Judy looked at her mother, and was about to complain about her having come in without knocking, when she realized something was wrong. Her mother was angry. And then she knew. The phone. The click hadn’t been her mother picking up the phone. It had been her mother hanging up. She had heard the wrong part of the conversation.

“I see you know why I’m here,” Inez began. Judy weighed the chances of bluffing it out. Just how much had she said about the dress? She tried desperately to remember. Too much.

“Do I?” Judy countered.

“I think you do,” Inez could feel her temper rising. “I heard you talking to Karen just now.”

Judy stared defiantly at her mother.

“You bought that dress, didn’t you?” Inez demanded, her voice accusing.

“Which one?” Judy stalled.

“Don’t talk to me that way, young lady,” Inez snapped. “You know very well which one. The one I distinctly told you you couldn’t have. You bought it, and stashed it away at Karen Morton’s, didn’t you?”

“Well, what if I did?” Judy blurted out “That dress
you wanted me to buy made me look twelve years old. And the other one looked nice.”

“Nice enough to help you get into trouble with Lyle Crandall? Well, it isn’t going to work. Tomorrow afternoon you’re going to get that dress and return it to the store.”

“Oh, all right,” Judy said, giving in on the theory that simply returning the dress was a comparatively mild punishment.

“And you can forget about going to that party,” Inez added.

“Mother—” Judy began, but Inez cut her off.

“Don’t!” she said, holding up her hand. “If I were you, I’d think more about my sins than how I could get around my mother!”

Judy stared at her in bafflement. “Sins?” she said blankly. “What are you talking about?”

Inez’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want me to count them out for you? You can start with the lie. You lied about the dress.”

“I didn’t,” Judy said defensively. “You never asked me which one I’d bought” It was a technicality, she knew, but she hoped it would work. It didn’t.

“You would have lied about it, if I had asked you,” Inez snapped. “There’s a commandment about honoring your father and your mother, you know.”

Suddenly it was too much for Judy. She leaped up from the bed, and stood staring at her mother. And then she burst into tears.

“Don’t say that,” she screamed. “Wanting to grow up doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s something I want to do for me, not to spite you! Can’t you understand that?” Then, as she saw that her words had had no effect on her mother, Judy fled to the bathroom and locked herself in. She felt the anger well in her, and
wished it would resolve itself into more tears. But, instead, it turned into more anger, and she suddenly felt trapped. Trapped like that rat in Mr. Balsam’s box. Well, she’d show her mother. She’d find a way to get even, and her mother would be sorry.

Outside the bathroom, Inez Nelson stared at the closed door. She listened for a moment, hoping to hear a sound that would tell her what was happening inside. But there was no sound, and she knew that Judy was sulking again, something that seemed to be happening more and more lately. Well, this time she wouldn’t give in, and she would see to it that Judy didn’t find a way to get her father on her side. But she hadn’t reckoned with her daughter’s determination.

   The thought had crossed Peter Balsam’s mind that it might not be a bad idea to give Margo Henderson a call, and invite her Out for a drink. Then the call had come from the rectory, and he had found his plans for the evening abruptly changed.

Monsignor Vernon—he was still having trouble with that; he had almost called the priest “Pete”—had asked him to come up to the rectory for a “chat.” Something in his voice told Peter it was a summons, not an invitation; it was a command. So he had trudged up the hill and arrived at the rectory at precisely nine o’clock. Monsignor Vernon had met him in the foyer, as before, and led him down the hall to what apparently was his private den; at least, if others used it, Peter Balsam hadn’t seen them yet. The Monsignor had closed the door behind them, and offered Balsam a glass of sherry. This, Balsam realized, was a ritual, and he wondered if he was expected to decline the offer. Well, if he was, it was too bad. The least the priest could do if he was going to ruin Balsam’s evening was give him a drink.
Peter accepted the sherry and took one of the comfortable chairs by the fireplace without waiting for an invitation.

“Well,” Monsignor Vernon said amiably, sinking into the other chair and holding his glass up to the light “This is nice.” Balsam was unsure if he was referring to the sherry, or things in general. He grunted noncommittally.

“How did it go?” tìie Monsignor asked him suddenly. “The first day of school, I mean?”

Balsam shrugged. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” Then he grinned. “I mean, I’m still alive, and nobody even shot a spitball at me.”

Monsignor Vernon smiled icily. “They wouldn’t,” he said shortly. “We leave that sort of thing to the public schools.”

Balsam nodded somberly, a sudden image of Sister Elizabeth flashing into his mind. With her around, he imagined, discipline problems were kept to a minimum at St Francis Xavier’s.

“I suppose I should get to the point,” the priest said, shifting in his chair. So I was right, Balsam thought This was a command performance. He waited quietly for the Monsignor to begin,

“I had a chat with Sister Elizabeth this afternoon,” the priest began. “She seemed a little upset about you. She thinks you have what she called a ‘cavalier attitude.’ “

Balsam smiled at the term, but when he saw that the priest was not smiling, his expression quickly sobered.

“And you agree with her?” he asked carefully.

‘I’m not certain,” the priest said pensively. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you this evening. I’ve been thinking about the talk we had the other day, about
your thesis. It occurred to me that I’m still not sure where you stand.”

“Where I stand?” Balsam repeated, trying to fathom the Monsignor’s meaning.

“I suppose this will sound strange to you,” Vernon said, trying to smile, with very little success. “But I must know exactly where you stand with reference to the teachings of the Church.”

“Well, I haven’t left it,” Balsam said.

“No, you haven’t, have you?” Monsignor said speculatively. “But then, there are various ways of leaving the Church, aren’t there? And it seems to me that your thesis was certainly a step, however tentative, in that direction.”

He paused then, as if waiting for a response from Balsam. When none was forthcoming he continued. “Well,” he said abruptly, “there’s no point in beating around the bush. We’re here to determine whether you do, or whether you do not, accept the Doctrines of the Church. Since you seem to be particularly well versed in at least one of them, we might as well begin with that one.”

Balsam’s first instinct was to simply stand up, walk from the room, proceed down the hill, pack his things, and catch the first train out of Neilsville. Then he thought about it, and decided that there was no point in evasion. If the issue was so important to the priest, he would face it.

‘Fine,” he said at last. “Where do you want to begin?”

“I thought I just made that clear,” the Monsignor said. “Do you accept the Church’s Doctrine that suicide is a mortal and irredeemable sin?”

“I thought I told you the other day that I don’t think I’m qualified to make any judgments at all about that.”

“Are you qualified to have faith?” the priest countered.

“I don’t think it’s a question of faith,” Balsam replied quietly.

“Then let me put it in purely intellectual terms,” Monsignor Vernon said. Unexpectedly, he stood and took Balsam’s glass. “More?” he asked. Surprised, Balsam nodded. The priest refilled the glasses, handed one to Peter, and regained his chair.

“There are reasons why we have the Doctrines, you know,” he said, and Peter could tell from his tone that he was about to receive a lecture. He nodded anyway, on the off chance that it might cut the lecture short. It didn’t.

“The Doctrine against suicide exists for many rear sons,” the priest said. “Most important, of course, suicide is in obvious conflict with natural law, since it involves the destruction of natural order.” Balsam was tempted to bring up the phenomenon of lemmings hurling themselves periodically into the sea. He decided against it. The Monsignor would merely say there could be no comparison between human self-destruction and subhuman self-destruction. During this sequence of thoughts Balsam had lost track of the priest’s line of reasoning. He seemed to have shifted from the subject of natural order to the subject of absolution.

“You realize,” Vernon was saying, “that one of the greatest problems a suicide presents to the Church is the problem of absolution …”

Not to mention the problems the suicide is causing for himself, Balsam thought. He went on listening.

“…  The very act of suicide, if it is successful, precludes the possibility of confession and absolution for the sin. There can’t be any question but that the suicide
has separated himself from the Mother Church, and, therefore, from God.”

“Extra ecclesium nulla solus,”
Balsam muttered.

“Pardon me?” the priest said.

“Outside the Church there is no salvation,” Balsam translated for him.

“I know the Latin,” Monsignor Vernon said dryly. “I simply didn’t hear the words clearly.” Then he paused, and stared hard at Balsam. “Do you have ‘problems’ with that Doctrine as well?”

Balsam shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said wearily. He leaned forward in his chair, and decided to try to explain his thinking to the priest.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what’s been going on here in Neilsville, but everywhere else, at least everywhere I’ve been, a lot of people are raising questions. And these aren’t people who have left the Church, or are contemplating leaving it They’re simply some thoughtful people who would like to see the Church bring itself a little closer to the twentieth century.”