The Good Shepherd (17 page)

“A kiss of peace?”

“You might call it that.”

He kissed her firmly on the lips. Incredible sensations occurred in his body. When was the last time you had kissed a woman? Seventeen, the night of your senior prom, with your arranged-by-Mother date. The kiss, come to think of it, had come from her, inexplicably, suddenly, as they had said good night. The answer to your question really is: Never. Discounting Mother, you have never kissed a woman before. The realization brought Father McLaughlin very close to weeping.

On this same Easter Sunday evening, Matthew Mahan sat alone in his office, writing a letter to Rome.

The Cardinal addressed the envelope, sealed it, and went rummaging in Dennis McLaughlin’s desk for a stamp. On his way back to his own desk, he paused to gaze wistfully at the visible portion of his shell collection in the cases on each side of the door. He had several thousand more shells down in the cellar, all carefully stored and catalogued. In the past, he had managed to spend at least one relaxing evening a month changing the upstairs display, cataloging new purchases, deciding what he was now prepared to trade. But for almost a year now, he had not had a single night to spare.

He picked up an imperial volute from the Philippines - a large brown and white beauty with markings that resembled ancient Greek and Roman pottery - and let his fingers run along the smooth expanding spirals. For a moment, he was back on a Florida beach, excitedly picking up a local version of the same shell, while a stern-faced man gave him a rare smile. Outside the residence, a taxi horn beeped three times. He sighed and put the volute back in its case.

Riding downtown through the empty streets, he found himself thinking uneasily about the gastrointestinal series that Bill Reed planned to inflict on him the day after tomorrow. Bill had dourly warned him that it included barium enemas and all sorts of other unpleasant, undignified procedures. Bill was unimpressed by his feeble attestation that his ulcer was thoroughly quiescent, thanks to a steady diet of Titrilac and Donnatal. They had to know exactly where it was and how much damage it was doing.

Matthew Mahan popped a Titrilac tablet into his mouth and chewed it moodily. He began brooding over the words he had just written about Dennis McLaughlin. For all the hard work, he sensed an emptiness, a lack of enthusiasm for the job he was doing. Why couldn’t he reach him - or any of these young people? What was he doing wrong? No answers came, and he glumly began reading his breviary.

The words of the last verse of Psalm 95 made him smile.

Even God had his generation gap, it would seem. But where was the blame to be laid today? Who were the people of erring heart? It was too easy to point the finger at the young. He refused to do that because he knew from his own cruel experience with Archbishop Hogan how bitter it could make a young priest - or any young person - feel. Perhaps those early wounds inflicted by old Hogan would at last serve a purpose. Emotionally he was in an ideal position to be a mediator. Why this dismaying sense of failure every time he tried to play the part?

Eileen Mahan and her seven children were waiting in the lobby of the Downtown Athletic Club. All except the oldest boy, Timmy, were dressed in new clothes, bought at Conway’s Department Store and charged to his account. Matthew Mahan made no attempt to keep track of how much money he gave his widowed sister-in-law in an average year. He only knew it never seemed to be enough. Eileen Mahan was not a very good moneymanager. But this was not the moment for negative thoughts. He threw himself into an enthusiastic greeting to each of the children.

“Timmy, how are you?” he said, squeezing his nephew’s limp hand.

Timmy’s hair completely covered his ears. He was wearing an army fatigue jacket with a dozen or so buttons and emblems on it, all in favor of peace, power to the people, and other causes.

“I couldn’t get him to wear anything but that,” Eileen Mahan said. “Not even a sports jacket. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Now, calm down, Eileen,” Matthew Mahan said. “We’ll probably see a half-dozen kids upstairs wearing the same costume - and with even longer hair.”

The expression on Timmy’s face told Matthew Mahan that his easygoing condescension was being scorned. He turned to the rest of the family, five girls and six-year-old Matty. He greeted each of the girls by name and told her how pretty she looked. Alas, if it were only true. All of them had inherited their mother’s buck teeth and narrow jaw. Timmy and his little brother resembled their father. Little Matt was an especially beautiful child, with jet-black hair and a face that exuded Irish pugnacity. He was Matthew Mahan’s favorite. His mother called him a heller and his older brother said he was a spoiled brat, but Matthew Mahan never paid much attention to these complaints. “How are you, young fellow?” he said, taking the small outstretched hand.

“I’m fine, Your Eminent.”

“Your what?”

The girls started giggling, and even Timmy allowed a smile to flit across his sour face.

“Your Eminence,” his mother said.

Matt was totally unbothered by the correction. “Your Eminent,” he said again.

“Now listen,” Matthew Mahan said, speaking to all of them. “No one in this family has to call me by that silly name. I’ve always been Father Matt to you, and I always will be.” Speaking to Matt II, he added, “You don’t call a baseball player by a different name when he gets traded to another team, do you? Well, I’ve been traded to the Cardinals, but I’m still the same guy.”

Matt grinned. “It’s okay with me. What position are you going to play on the Cardinals?”

They were in the elevator now with a half-dozen strangers. Everyone started to laugh.

“I don’t know,” Matthew Mahan said. “What position do you think I ought to play?”

“Center field. That’s where sluggers play.”

“I’m too old and too fat for center field. I think I’d better be a coach.”

In spite of this amusing start, Matthew Mahan found the dinner depressing. He made a half-dozen attempts to start a conversation with Timmy and got nowhere. The girls gossiped and giggled and quarreled among themselves while their mother wearily corrected them. They were all picky eaters and left two-thirds of the food untouched. Only Matt seemed to have a good time, voraciously downing his child’s portion and confiding to his uncle all the gossip from the first grade at St. Damian’s parochial school.

He did his best to converse with Eileen Mahan, but it was hard going. A receptionist at the Furia Brothers Construction Company, she did not see or hear much that was even faintly interesting. Their only link was her pastor, Monsignor Frank Falconer, who was a seminary classmate of Matthew Mahan’s. Frank had been a tremendous help to Eileen in the first year of her widowhood, visiting the house frequently, persuading her to become active in several parish societies, something she had been ashamed to do when her husband was coming home staggering drunk two and three nights a week. Frank, not Matthew Mahan, was responsible for the spiritual resignation that Eileen Mahan had achieved. But after a quick rundown of the thriving state of things in St. Damian’s parish, a comment on a new curate who was fond of liturgical experiments - on Palm Sunday the children had led a procession around the church with forty or fifty banners that they had collected or improvised - a ritual exchange of praise for Monsignor Falconer, the conversation limped.

Outside her job, Eileen never saw anyone except the neighbors in her flat, and they were as boring as she was. Occasionally, she asked him to do one of them a favor - get a son or daughter into one of the diocesan high schools or an eighty-year-old parent into St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged. He usually obliged her, but the people behind the names remained a blur, unrelieved even when they took the trouble to write thank-you letters - which was seldom. Eileen insisted on talking about them as if they were all his intimate friends. He tried to listen, but invariably his mind wandered, and the conversation would end with: “Gee, you’re just like Charlie. You never listen to anything I say. It must run in the family. Timmy doesn’t, either.”

Timmy’s face was a mass of pimples. He, too, ate practically no food until he got to the dessert. He wolfed down a huge chocolate sundae and raided the strawberry shortcake and the peach melba and the chocolate cake that his sisters were eating. His conversation consisted of monosyllables. Was he enjoying his freshman year at St. Francis? No. He’d rather go someplace else? Yes. The state university? Yes. The answers, not to mention their style, did nothing to improve Matthew Mahan’s mood. He had had to twist a few Jesuit arms rather hard to get Timmy a scholarship at St. Francis, leaving him in the uneasy position of owing a favor. It was never a position he liked, and he especially did not like to owe anything to the Jesuits.

Although the Society of Jesus had educated him through high school and two years of college, Matthew Mahan never forgot or entirely forgave the snobbery with which the order had rejected his attempt to join their elite ranks. He would be happier, they told him, as a diocesan priest - coolly implying that he did not have the brainpower to be a Jesuit. One of the first things he did when he took charge of the diocese was organize a Vocation Day at St. Francis Prep. He made sure it was the very opposite of a Jesuit retreat: no emotional appeals - just an informative presentation of how a diocesan priest lived and worked, the variety of roles he played. Each year he had taken one or two, sometimes three or four of the Jesuits’ best prospects away from them.

A few years ago, before Timmy Mahan had lapsed into adolescent sullenness, his uncle had hoped that he might be one of his Vocation Day converts. Timmy had gotten extraordinarily good marks in his first two years at St. Francis Prep. He had been a daily communicant. But with no warning, as he crossed from sixteen to seventeen, he had undergone an almost malevolent transformation from true believer to defiant cynic.

“Timmy,” Matthew Mahan said as the waiter served their coffee, “would you like to come to Rome with your mother for my official crowning?”

“Crowning? Yuh mean they’re gonna make yuh the Pope?”

“No, I’m only kidding. There’ll be a ceremony in St. Peter’s where the Pope will put a red hat on my head. I’ll be dressed in a long red cloak with a train, called a cappa magna.”

“Sounds like something out of the Middle Ages.”

“Timmy!” said his mother.

“In a way it is. But it’s kind of interesting; it reminds us of how old the Church is.”

“Too old sometimes, it seems to me.”

“Timmy! I’m gonna wallop you when we get home. I don’t care how big you are, I’m gonna wallop you.”

“I know what you mean. At least I try to understand what people your age mean when they say that, Timmy. But stop and realize that the Church has seemed too old many times in its history. When the Roman Empire fell. When the Protestant Reformation swept Europe. Each time, the Church was reborn, it evolved new ways of doing things. That’s happening today, too. That’s why I’d like you to come to Rome. To give you a chance to see the heart of the Church in action there.”

“That’s all we’re gonna do? Go to Rome?”