The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (62 page)

On the whole, though, they were getting along. There were nights, yes, when Bill had to be called more than once before he came out of his room, before he left off strumming his Spanish guitar, listening to FM, or talking to his friends on the phone. There were nights, too, when Bill returned to his room earlier than Joe would have liked, when Joe had maybe had one too many . . . The truth was these weren’t the nights that Joe had looked forward to during his years as a pastor without a curate, and during his years as a curate with a pastor who avoided him . . . and still they weren’t bad nights, by rectory standards these days. There had been some fairly good talk—arguments, really, ending sometimes with one man making a final point outside the other man’s door, or, after they’d both gone to bed, over the phone. “Bill? Joe.” And there had been moments, a few, when the manifest differences of age, position, and opinion between pastor and curate had just disappeared, when Joe and Bill had entered that rather exalted and somewhat relaxed state, induced in part perhaps by drink, that Joe recognized as priestly fellowship.

At one such moment, feeling content but wondering if he couldn’t do better, Joe had invited Bill to have a friend or two in for a meal sometime.

“Should I call the others, Father?” said Mrs P., sounding apprehensive, for the others were getting kind of loud in Bill’s room.

“I’ll do it,” Joe said, but when he saw himself knocking at Bill’s door, looking in on a scene he’d been more or less excluded from, he phoned over. “
Bill?
” Either Bill or Father Otto should’ve answered the phone—possibly Hennessy or Potter, but
not
Conklin.

They arrived in the study like conventioneers, some carrying glasses, and immediately formed a circle that did not include Joe. He came between them, mentioning Father Otto’s bus, and bumped them over to the food. Then he went and stood at the other end of the table, by the wine—ready to pour, hoping to get into conversation with someone. Father Otto was first in line. “Just like the monastery,” Joe said, referring to the nice display of food on Father Otto’s plate.

“Yes,” said Father Otto, who’d been saying (to Hennessy) that some days were somewhat better than others to visit the monastery if one intended to eat there. “We have a cafeteria now.”

“Wine, Father?”

“What kind is it?”

Joe, speaking through his nose, named the wine.

“On second thought, no,” said Father Otto, and moved off with his plate, which he carefully held in both hands but in a sloping manner.

Hennessy was next, and he also refused wine. But he complimented Joe on his building program, calling the new rectory “a crackerjack,” which suggested to Joe that the works of Father Finn—
Tom Playfair, Claude Lightfoot
, and the rest—were still being read and might have figured in Hennessy’s vocation, as they had in his own.

“You should see the office area,” Joe said to Hennessy. “Maybe, if there’s time later, I could take you around the plant.”

“Oh,
no
!” said Conklin, next in line, and then turned to Potter to see if he’d heard, but Potter was talking to Bill, and Hennessy (“Maybe later, Father”) was moving off, and so Conklin, after more or less insulting Joe, had to face him alone.

“Wine, Mr Conklin?”

“
Sí, señor
.”

It went with the mustache, Joe guessed, wondering whether a priest should be addressed as “
señor
,” whether “
reverendissimo
” or something wouldn’t be more like it, whether, in fact, Conklin had meant to pay him back for the “mister.” At the seminary, as Conklin would know, there were still a few reverend fathers who made much of “mister,” hissing it, using it to draw the line between miserable you and glorious them. That hadn’t been Joe’s intention. What
was
Conklin now, and what was he ever likely to be, but “mister”? It didn’t pay for someone in Conklin’s position to be too sensitive, Joe thought.

And listened to Potter, who was saying (to Bill) that he’d had a raw egg on his steak tartare in München and enjoyed it. “‘
Mit Ei
,’ they call it there.”

“You can enjoy it
here
,” Joe said. “Mrs Pelissier!” he cried, not pronouncing the housekeeper’s name as he usually did, but giving it everything it had, which was plenty, in French.

Joe and everybody (except Father Otto) urged Potter to have a raw egg on his steak tartare, as in München—
Mit Ei! Mit Ei!
But Potter wouldn’t do it, although Mrs P. produced a dozen nice fresh ones, entering the study in triumph, leaving it in sorrow. Joe almost had one himself, for her sake. Potter came out of it badly.

Joe was hoping the Barcalounger would clear when he set forth with glass and plate, but Conklin was in it, and it didn’t, and so he went and sat near Hennessy and Father Otto. “Never cared for buffet,” he told them, and got no response. (Hennessy was saying that the monastic life was beyond one of his modest spiritual means, Father Otto that one never knew until one tried.) Joe tried the other conversation. (Potter was building up the laity, at the expense of the clergy, as was the practice of the clergy these days.) “Some of your best friends must be laymen,” Joe said, and was alarmed to see Potter taking him seriously: that was the trouble with the men of Bill’s generation—not too bright and in love with themselves, they made you want to hit them. “But what about the ones who empty their ashtrays in your parking lot?”

Potter smiled—
now
he thought Joe was kidding.

“Not much you can do,” Conklin said. “Judah took possession of the hill country, but he couldn’t drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron.”

“That so?” said Joe, thinking, What
is
this? He tried his wine. “Not bad,” he said to Potter and Bill (who still had their drinks from Bill’s room), but he didn’t get through to them. Potter was a talker.

“What kind is it?” said Father Otto.

Joe, speaking through his nose, named the wine.

“Grape,” said Conklin, coming back from the table with the bottle from which only he and Joe had partaken so far, and sitting down with it, in the Barcalounger. “Anybody else?”

“No, thanks,” Joe said, and was silent for some time—until he heard Conklin refer to Beans McQueen as Beans. “You a friend of Father McQueen’s?”

“They taught this course together, at the Institute,” Bill said. “Scripture for the Laity.”

“That so?” said Joe.

And the talk went on as before, on two fronts, without Joe, leaving him free to go over to the table for the other bottle of wine. Hennessy wasn’t having any, but Father Otto was. “Grape, you say?” Joe served Father Otto, and also himself, and left the bottle on the coffee table in front of him, but beyond his reach—not that wine, unfortified wine, was really alcoholic, not that
he
was. He just had to watch himself. He wasn’t a wine drinker, but could see how he might have been one in another time and place—one of those wise old abbés, his mouth a-pucker with
Grand Cru
, his tongue tasting like steak, solving life’s problems by calling people “my son.”

Potter was telling Bill and Conklin that the clergy should cast off their medieval trappings, immerse themselves in the profane everyday world, and thus reveal its sacred character.

“That why you’re immersed in that shirt?” said Joe, but Potter just smiled and went on as before. It was odd the way Bill looked up to Potter, odder still the way they both looked up to Conklin—as
what
, a layman? It was a crazy world. Father Otto was telling Hennessy that the monastery should employ trained lay personnel in key positions, replace the kitchen, if not the laundry, nuns, and also certain brothers. “So Brother Gardener has to go?” said Joe.

Father Otto turned on Joe. “
You
,” he said, speaking with deliberation, as if the wine, and whatever he’d had in Bill’s room, and the beer before that, had suddenly gone to his head. “
You. Covered. Up. Those. Flowers
.”

“Flowers?” said Joe, and listened to the silence in the study. For the first time since the party began, he felt that others were interested in what he might have to say. “Things like petunias,” he said, and started to tell them about the leftover sod. At once he saw that they already knew about it, that it was later than he’d thought, that he was not to escape the pastor’s fate, was already being discussed in his own rectory and therefore in others by curates and visiting priests, those natural allies. “Didn’t realize you felt that way about petunias, Father. Strawberries, yes.”

“Humph,” said Father Otto.

“Excuse me,” Joe said, feeling that everybody was against him, and went over to the table, where he had work to do. He had to fire up the chafing dish, pour the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer, place it directly over the flame, bring the juice to a boil, thicken with 1/2 tsp. of arrowroot dissolved in a little cold water, but Potter was telling the others that family life was in such tough shape today because Our Lord had been a bachelor, and so, carrying a dead match to the ashtray, Joe appeared among them again, saying, “We used to ask a lot of silly questions in the sem. Would Our Lord be a smoker, drive a late-model car, and so on. Kid stuff—nobody got hurt. But I wonder about some of the stuff I hear today.”

“People living normal lives can’t identify with Our Lord,” Potter said. “Or with
us
—because of the celibacy barrier.”

“That so?” said Joe. “And where you
don’t
have that barrier? I mean how well do
we
identify with Our Lord?” Joe put the question to Bill and Hennessy, too, with his eyes, passed over Conklin, tried but failed with Father Otto, who was spearing kernels of corn with his fork, making a clicking noise on his plate—rather annoying, since it broke what otherwise would have been an impressive silence.

“He’s got you, Pot,” said Conklin, and then to Joe: “We may be closer than I thought.”

Joe, not seeing why Conklin’s last words should cause Bill and Potter to look so sad, continued, “And when you consider we work at it full time, unlike the laity—well, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“It did me,” said Conklin

Bill sighed, and Potter held out his glass to Conklin for wine—a highball glass with ice in it. Joe said nothing about a proper glass, afraid that Potter (who’d said earlier that he longed for the day when he’d be able to say Mass with a beer mug, a coffee cup, a small flower vase of simple design, because such things were cheap and honest and made, like us, of clay) would refuse a proper glass and, furthermore, would say
why
. In that way, Potter could easily evade the issue he’d raised, the celibacy issue, as he had the egg. Potter was tricky, had to be watched, but Joe was doing that—and then Father Otto had to butt in.

“There’s been a lot of talk in the community about family life, but whatever the future holds for you fellas, I think it’s safe to say our status, or situation—some would say our lot—won’t change. When you get right down to it, a monastery’s no place for a family man.”

“I’ll buy that,” said Joe.

“Oh, well,” said Father Otto. “The community’s family enough for me.”

And that, Joe thought, is why you’re here.

“When you get right down to it,” said Conklin (to Father Otto), “a monastery’s no place for
you
. Priests weren’t meant to be monks, and monks weren’t meant to be priests—and
weren’t
in the Age of Faith.”

“We all know that,” Joe said—Conklin sounded just like an ex-seminarian, or an educated layman.

“Times change,” said Father Otto.

“Status-seeking,” said Conklin.

Joe gave Bill a look for grinning, and to make it absolutely clear where his sympathies lay, as between Conklin and Father Otto, who appeared to be slightly wounded, Joe fetched the bottle. “Father?”

“All right,” said Father Otto.

Joe filled the monk’s glass, also his own, and went back to the table, with Potter’s voice following him. “Why put such a premium on celibacy—on sex, really? Think of the problems it creates.”

“Think of the problems it
doesn’t
create,” said Joe, and while Potter and the others were thinking of those problems (Joe hoped), he poured the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer. That done, he appeared among them again, saying, “The premium isn’t on sex. It isn’t on celibacy. It’s on efficiency and sanctity.”

“Oh,
no
!” said Conklin.

“Oh,
yes
,” said Joe. “Even if we don’t hear much about that aspect of the priesthood today.” And, having given them more food for thought, Joe left them again, for he still had work to do, but before he reached the table the impressive silence his words had produced was cruelly violated.

“
Father, how can we make sanctity as attractive as sex to the common man?
”

Joe had put that question to a Discalced Carmelite before an S.R.O. audience at the seminary during the war years, and Joe could hear it yet, that famous question, and had to expect to hear it yet from certain men—Potter’s permissive pastor was one—of that era, but
not
, Joe thought, from somebody like Conklin, and showed it.

“Got to talkin’ . . . in Bill’s room,” Father Otto said, apologetically, and paused to watch his plate (which he’d been holding in a sloping manner) start down his outstretched leg, jump, and land on the floor, right side up. Once, twice, he nodded, as if to say no harm done, but his head hung down, finally, in an uncompleted nod.

Joe sprang into action. Others, nearer to Father Otto, had already sprung. But it was Joe who removed the fork (in the circumstances, a dangerous instrument) from Father Otto’s hand and thrust it at Potter, who hesitated to take it by the greasy end, and it was Joe who deftly kicked the plate aside and told Bill to pick it up, and Joe who instructed Hennessy and Conklin, instead of foolishly trying to firm him up, to lay the monk out on the couch. Joe then changed his mind about that, in view of the sepulchral effect it might have on the party. “Bedroom! Bedroom!” he cried. “Not mine! Not mine!” Conklin and Hennessy, frog-marching Father Otto this way and that, didn’t seem to know what they were doing. Then Joe saw what the trouble was. It was Conklin. Why, when there were plenty of clergy present, when the person in distress was himself one of them, why should a layman be playing such an important part? “Here, let
me
,” Joe said, shouldering in, but the layman wouldn’t let go. Joe ended up with Hennessy’s portion of Father Otto. And so, borne up by Joe and Conklin, the helpless monk was removed from the scene.