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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Triple Pursuit
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“I ran into Maud Gorman and her new conquest on the way over.”
“Which one? She has half the men at her feet.”
Edna Hospers said it with something of the reluctance with which any woman attributes such power to another. In earlier years she had known women like that, effortlessly drawing men mothlike to the flame. She had not expected to have a recurrence of the phenomenon
in the Senior Center, but with someone as old as Maud it could almost be enjoyed.
“Men are fools,” Marie burst out, and then fell silent. Edna said nothing. Their own men had not been the most fortunate of creatures. Marie's had simply disappeared, and Edna's was serving a lengthy term in Joliet.
“Celibacy would be better for most of them.”
“Not a good prospect for the human race, Marie.”
“Don't worry about the human race.”
Somehow this had turned into one of those conversations. Father Dowling had assured Edna she had complete authority in the parish center and he would make that clear to Marie. Edna did not blame the pastor for not succeeding. Marie sometimes acted as if she were the pastor and Father Dowling her assistant. She was notoriously nosy, and bossy besides.
“What brings you here?” Edna asked.
“A young woman named Gallagher told me her father had gone to school here, and for the life of me I can't remember.”
“Why should you?”
“Edna, I pride myself on my memory of such things.”
“But that must have been long before your time.”
This was said without ulterior motive but it mollified Marie. “I suppose you're right. Austin Rooney says this Gallagher is a relative of his and they were in the same class.”
Marie really did treasure such little tidbits of parish lore, though why, Edna failed to understand. Sufficient for the day were the evils thereof. Of course Edna knew Austin, a distinguished-looking newcomer who had been unable to resist the blandishments of Maud Gorman. How would the other smitten old men take being supplanted by the newcomer? How would, for example, Desmond O'Toole?
Although Desmond had been a barber, he took pride in saying that he had been associated with the
Fox River Tribune
. “The literary page,” he had explained to Edna importantly. He was a thin rail of a
man whose complexion had been marked by some childhood disease. He had a way of seeming to call to order any group he joined in order to make some pronouncement or another. Old people on the shelf needed a sense of importance, and enhanced memories of what they had done usually figured in this.
“What does that mean?”
Desmond made a fluttering gesture with one of his long-fingered hands. “Arranging for book reviews. Interviews.”
“That's what you did?”
“That's what kept me alive, spiritually. Cutting hair was drudgery.”
“The
Tribune
doesn't have a literary page,” Austin Rooney had remarked on his first day, when Desmond had mentioned his past eminence.
“Did you work there? I don't seem to recall you.”
“No, but I've read the paper all my life. There are only a few book reviews on Sundays, and most of those are short.”
“I did many of them myself,” Desmond confessed.
“They seemed to have been plagiarized from the dust jackets.”
This had been the beginning of Austin's campaign with Maud, since up until then she had been ever at Desmond's side.
“Some people read books, others read reviews.”
“I taught literature,” Austin said.
“What high school?”
But Austin had been on the faculty of the local campus of the University of Illinois. Here was eminence indeed. It was the last time Desmond mentioned his literary past. But enmity toward Austin had entered into his soul. To compound his fault, Austin was a magnet to more than Maud, and his apparent indifference to female attention increased it. From his second day at the center, he always had a book under his arm. It might have been a warning to Desmond. Maud, of course, wanted to know what this fascinating man was reading, and soon Austin was giving an impromptu little lecture on the author he was reading—“Of course I mean rereading”—James Joyce.
“A fallen-away Catholic,” Desmond said in solemn tones.
“Whatever the faults of his practice, his mind and imagination remained Catholic.”
“I don't see how that is possible. Either you're a Catholic or you're not.”
But Austin was telling Maud of Nora Joyce, the author's wife, and she leaned toward him as if from fear of missing a word. Desmond's day with Maud was clearly over. He came to Edna.
“I want your advice.”
“Of course.” Edna dreaded that Desmond had come to seek her aid in winning back Maud.
“I think I should go to Father Dowling about this, but since you are the director of the center I felt I should talk to you first.”
“What is it?”
Desmond had taken a seat in her office and was arranging his bony limbs as he searched for a way to say what he had come to say. “It doesn't seem right to have a man in the center who advances heretical opinions.”
“You mean Austin Rooney?”
“You've noticed it too?”
“Austin was a professor … .”
“Exactly.”
“What has he said that disturbs you?”
“I am not worried about his disturbing me. But there are those who may not recognize how dangerous his opinions are until it is too late. His comments on James Joyce could not be made by a sincere Catholic. And he actually claimed that Willa Cather was one of the most important Catholic writers in American literature!”
“Isn't she a good writer?”
“Excellent. But she wasn't a Catholic. She was Episcopalian!”
“You should tell Austin.”
“I did. He already knew. He says that does not affect his judgment of her as a Catholic writer.”
Desmond's shock doubtless owed more to losing Maud than to what Austin Rooney had said. It did not seem to Edna that such remarks were harmful to her wards in the Senior Center, but she could think of no way to get rid of this lanky Torquemada.
“Maybe you should talk to Father Dowling.”
“I will!” And Desmond sprang from the chair. “I'll do it right now. I will tell him that we discussed it.”
Colleen Gallagher's relations with Mario Liberati ascended to a new plateau after their dinner together, but then seemed to be stuck there. When she dressed in the morning to go to work, she realized she was dressing for him. She would not of course go so far as the miniskirts Aggie affected, even though she was certain she had far better legs. Such display seemed out of place in the offices of a firm as prestigious as Mallard and Bill. But whenever Aggie crossed her legs in the studied way she had, every senior partner paid attention. All Aggie's alleged independence seemed canceled by this shameless appeal to her feminine charms. Her theory was that she would make it in a man's world with her talents and her mind, but her popularity with the partners owed far more to the ritual exposure of her shapely thighs. Colleen wavered; she actually tried on some short skirts, but she could not bring herself to buy one. She had assumed that Mario was as susceptible to Aggie's allurements as the other men in the office. How wrong she was.
“If she were my sister, I'd tell her to go home and get dressed.” There was real distaste in his tone.
“Oh, lots of women wear short skirts.”
“Not any woman I respect.”
Colleen wondered if Saint Anne had been protecting her unbeknownst to herself. But Mario was not through.
“Why can't she just act like a lawyer?”
“Do you want her to wear slacks?”
“Why not?”
Colleen was half ashamed to take such pleasure in this revelation of Mario's distaste for Aggie. “I don't like touchy-feely women, not in the office,” he said, and that was the end of it. But Colleen heard more in the rest room.
One of the secretaries swore that Aggie had made a play for Mario, putting a hand on his arm, moving close and lifting her face to his, ostensibly to hear his reply to a legal question she had posed.
“He actually shook her off and went around behind his desk. So what did she do?”
“What?” chorused half a dozen voices.
“She half sat on the side of his desk, crossed her legs, of course, and began examining her knee.”
“No!”
“He left the office. He left her sitting there. It was a full minute before she strutted off to her own office.”
This was sweet indeed for Colleen. Still, a rival dispersed is not a victory won. Her relationship to Mario settled into that of co-workers. Colleen was no longer at the disposal of the other lawyers; it came to be understood that as a paralegal, she was permanently assigned to Mr. Liberati. Simply on a professional basis, he was a joy to work with. He had an unerring sense of what was relevant and irrelevant in a case, and nothing stimulated him so much as an opponent with a battery of lawyers and limitless supplies of money to sustain those lawyers. Given the prestige of Mallard and Bill, he was not often cast in the role of underdog, but his suit against a major pharmaceutical firm for selling a supposedly surefire way to quit smoking, was David against Goliath.
“The judgments against the tobacco companies gave these people a license to steal.” Mario's client was suing because he had not quit
smoking after using the product longer than the minimal period during which his desire for tobacco was supposed to have faded away.
“Does he still smoke?” The client, Harrison, a burly little man, bald, both his arms and legs bowed as he stood, had never asked to smoke during the depositions.
“No, he quit.”
“But …”
“There's no relation. It was months afterward. He went on retreat and made a novena to Saint Anthony of Padua. He hasn't smoked since.”
“Saint Anthony!”
“Haven't you heard of him?”
“Of course.” Colleen was about to tell him that her special devotion was to Saint Anne; and then she did—why not?
“I was stationed at Santa Ana when I was in the Marines.”
“Santa Ana,” she repeated. “What a coincidence.”
The pharmaceutical company settled out of court. Mario was more than ever the rising star in the firmament of Mallard and Bill. He and Colleen had their private celebration in the same restaurant where they had dined before, but not until after an office party in which Mallard himself announced that young Liberati was to become a junior partner in the firm.
“I met your brother,” Aggie said to Colleen one morning. “You didn't tell me there was a lawyer in the family.”
Aggie had met Tim at a legal seminar. Her eyes widened as she spoke of him and Colleen forgave her. Let this lithe Venus with the petulant lips talk of married men. It seemed an ultimate concession of defeat.
“Is everyone in your family blond?”
Her raven-haired mother had marveled at her four blond children, as in a way had her father until his sister, who had married Austin
Rooney, reminded him of the golden-haired Gallaghers among their relations.
“Ireland is alive with blonds,” her aunt told Colleen, she of the prayer to Saint Anne. “It all goes back to the Danes.”
Aggie tapped her plush lower lip with a philosophical air. “Of course Italians go wild for blonds.” And Agatha Rossner shook her brunette locks as if they explained her failure with Mario.
Their private dinner was only intermittently private. Mario had informed Luigi of his good fortune and Luigi and his family surrounded their table and serenaded them with Neapolitan songs. Is this what the wedding would be like? Mario's own parents had returned to Sicily and a property where they would receive the news of their son's triumph, looking out at the azure Mediterranean.
“If you saw the place, you'd understand why they went back.”
“I'm sure it must be beautiful.”
He hunched toward her over the table. “So Timothy Gallagher is your brother. I should have known.”
“Did Aggie tell you?”
He nodded, but there was a frown on his face. “Tell your brother to buckle on his chastity belt around her.”
“He is a married man with children.”
“It would take more than that to deter Aggie.”
She did not pursue it. Her brother was married to Jane, a most beautiful woman, now a wife and mother. What more could a man want? But of course Tim was a man.
“I'll warn him,” she finally said.
Mario laughed. “I'm only half serious.”
But would he become fully serious about other things? The night seemed ideal for a declaration and any number of times she was certain it was on the tip of his tongue. But then the restaurant was not the place for it. He took her to her door and lingered there and some dark instinct told Colleen she should ask him in. What that might lead to
was hazy in her mind but wasn't this the time to cast aside all barriers and let him know how much she loved him? It was remembering his remarks about Aggie that deterred her. Suddenly he took her in his arms and hugged her as he had so many others at the office celebration.
“You've made my big day perfect.”
A chaste kiss on her cheek and then he was gone. Before she went to bed, Colleen scolded Saint Anne and then, repentant, repeated the prayer.
Good Saint Anne, get me a man as quick as you can.
“Now that I've got him, make him mine,” she added.
“Did you see the young man with Colleen Gallagher at Mass this morning?” Marie Murkin said to the pastor one Sunday.
“I leave it to you to survey the congregation during Mass, Marie.”
“Pooh. I ran into them in the vestibule.”
He remembered Colleen and her request that he say a Mass for her special intention.
“I told her that you never miss.”
“Good Lord, I hope you didn't say that.”
“With the young fellow right there beside her? Don't be foolish.”
Marie Murkin's faith was a mixture of rigorous orthodoxy and half-superstitious beliefs. The former sat in judgment on the latter, but in moments of emergency, Marie resorted to almost magical rites. A dash of Lourdes water at a reprobate would bring him to his knees in repentance. A novena was not a sustained petition but a guarantee of the outcome. How much such advice Marie dispensed in the parish Father Dowling was not sure, but it had never got out of hand. Marie was a good woman and he did not like to think what his life at St. Hilary's would be like without the housekeeper.
“You'll be marrying them before long,” Marie predicted.
“We'll see.”
It was that day that Edna Hospers sent Desmond O'Toole to the rectory with his complaints about the heterodoxy of Austin Rooney.
“You know the author James Joyce, Father.”
“Of course.”
“They won't even let the man be buried in Ireland. There was a petition but the Church and everyone else opposed it.”
“I didn't know that.”
“It's all in Edna O'Brien's little book.”
“I don't know the book, I'm afraid.”
“I reviewed it for the
Tribune.
I was involved in the literary page, you know.”
“I think you've mentioned that before.”
“And now comes Austin Rooney with the most outlandish statements to these good old people. It is shocking that women and men in the twilight of their lives should be subjected to such opinions as his. The professor of literature!”
This last was said with disdain, and then a litany of complaints. Joyce was a difficulty, but surely the remarks about Willa Cather were understandable. A woman who had written
Death Comes for the Archbishop
and
Shadows
on
the Rock
had a claim to be called a Catholic writer, with the emphasis on “writer.”
“The woman lived and died a devout Episcopalian.”
There was woolly-headed ecumenism abroad, no doubt, but there was also a narrow sectarianism. Not that Father Dowling felt that Desmond O'Toole was motivated by a passion for orthodoxy. Edna had forewarned him of Desmond's coming and made it clear that his heresy hunting was part of his campaign to win back Maud Gorman from Austin Rooney. It seemed an ignoble indignation.
“Tell me about your literary work.”
“I would have severed my connection with the paper if any book by James Joyce was reviewed in the
Tribune
.”
“Well, I suppose his reputation is secure.”
“I don't know how much of Joyce you've read, Father.”
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
“Oh, I read it all. As a professional duty. The poetry is a thing apart, lyrically beautiful, but things already start to go wrong in
Dubliners.”
Father Dowling rose to stop the oral book review he was certain threatened. He told Desmond that he would have a word with Austin Rooney. Of course he did not say what about.
“You are a good pastor who looks after his sheep,” Desmond said unctuously, and left.
“He's just jealous of Austin,” Marie said when he was gone.
“Oh, you heard. I didn't realize he was speaking so loudly.”
Marie ignored this. “Austin, by the way, is Colleen Gallagher's uncle. Her mother was his sister.”
“Was?”
“She's gone to God.”
The following day Father Dowling stopped by Edna's office and they talked generally about the Center. Under Edna's direction it had flourished. She knew how to strike a balance between too much fuss and too little, leaving alone those who just wanted to be there, providing games, excursions, and shopping trips on the parish shuttle bus for those so inclined.
“I've talked with Desmond O'Toole.”
Edna's eyes drifted heavenward. “About the dance?”
“Dance? He came to me about Austin Rooney's literary opinions.”
“Well, the dance has just come up. Austin and Maud got the idea when he did a few waltz steps with her in the gym and others applauded the performance. Austin invited the others to dance, but they held back, and that's when he suggested that the center have a dance some evening, with a band and everything. The enthusiasm carried them all right up to my office. What do you think?”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, it would take their minds off that girl who was pushed into the street during the rush hour a few days ago. Some find a morbid fascination in her death.”
“Her name was Linda Hopkins. I've talked with Phil Keegan about it.”
Edna observed a moment of silence.
“A band would cost money.”
“I have one restriction, Edna. No rock band. It must be a band that plays music.”
“Oh, there's no danger of rock with this group. They want golden oldies. Desmond O'Toole is a lonely voice in opposition.”
“How can he oppose a dance?”
“I didn't encourage him to tell me why.”
Desmond was downstairs, a dour Savanarola surveying the inane recreation going on in the converted gymnasium.
“I haven't had a chance to speak with Austin yet, Desmond. Is he here?”
“He is doubtless off on the primrose path of dalliance with some unsuspecting lady.”
“The mark of the literary page is still on you.”
“Perhaps you will support my idea of an excursion to visit the cathedral.”
“That's quite a distance.”
“But such an objective.”
“Work it out, Desmond. But be sure to schedule it to avoid peak traffic times.”
“It will only be possible if we take the interstates.”
“Keep me posted.”
Austin Rooney was seated on a bench, looking pensively over the parish grounds. Father Dowling sat beside him, intending to have a
word about something or other with Austin, to redeem his promise to Desmond.
“Why so somber, Austin?”
“Life is a mystery and a maze, Father Dowling.”
“How so?”
“Take the actuarial tables. They assure us that it is the female that outlives the male, yet look at the people who come to the Center. It is almost fifty-fifty. I was thinking of my own case. I did not retire at sixty-five, as I could have, but decided to teach until I was seventy. Seventy came and I still was not willing to step down. My wife and I could postpone the delights of retirement. But of course she died before that time came.”
“Retirement may be oversold, Austin.”
The former professor chuckled. “Young people now begin to talk of retirement before they've done any work. Do priests retire?”
“We're given much the same leeway as professors.”
“My niece is going out with an Italian.”
“They have souls too.”
Austin Rooney laughed aloud. Father Dowling asked him to come on to the rectory. In the study Rooney explored the books on the pastor's shelves before taking a chair. He accepted a cup of tea and they chatted about James Joyce.
“He was an odious person, Father, no doubt of that. But it is not for his person that he is acclaimed.”
That was all. Austin did not parade the knowledge he no doubt had.
“Don't misunderstand my remark about my niece and her Italian. I was thinking that Italians have a stronger sense of family than the Irish. If she marries him, we will lose her.”
“Isn't that the definition of marriage?”
It was pleasant to hear Austin Rooney's educated laughter. Among the mysteries of life he probably had not been pondering on that bench, was that he should be attracted to someone as silly as Maud Gorman.

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