Eve's Daughters (62 page)

“The O’Haras are lucky to have you nearby. And they’re lucky their priest isn’t afraid of a brawl . . . though perhaps he should be, at his age.”

He smiled, but when the corners of his eyes wrinkled he winced. “Ouch! It hurts when I laugh,” he said, tenderly touching his face.

“Why do you stay here, Patrick . . . struggling with these people? Now that Gracie’s on her own, couldn’t you move up the ranks, go to a bigger church, become a cardinal or something?”

“The bishop asked me the same thing just a few days ago. But I can’t leave. These people are my children, my family. Thanks to Gracie, I’m finally learning what it means to be a father to them. Will the next priest be willing to brawl with a drunken fool like Denny O’Hara? I can’t be sitting in comfort in a bishop’s residence somewhere, wondering if the little O’Hara boy will be getting his leg broken in three places like I did.”

“You can’t save the whole world, Patrick.”

“No, but I can save one child.” He gazed into the distance, his eyes shining as blue as the sky. “If I can ever pry some money from the church after the war, I’d like to convert all those grand rooms that are going to waste in the rectory into a place where women and children can go to be safe. I remember how desperate you were when you came here, running from Karl Bauer, expecting a baby. You had no one to turn to, no place to go. Lord knows I don’t need all those rooms.”

Tears came to my eyes. I loved him more with the passing of time, not less. “God answered your prayer, Patrick.”

He looked back at me again. “Which prayer is that?”

“You’re a wonderful priest.”

About a year after Grace and Stephen were married, I heard the news about Patrick—from Sheila Higgins, of all people. I said hello to her in the bank, and her eyes filled with tears.

“’Tisn’t it awful about poor Father O’Duggan? Such a young man, barely past fifty . . .”

A huge fist squeezed my heart. “What happened to him?”

“You haven’t heard? The whole parish is reeling. He’s in Sisters of Mercy Hospital and not expected to live the week.”

“How . . . what-?”

“Acute leukemia. It was very sudden. And the doctors say it’s very deadly. There’s nothing they can do.”

I ran straight out of the bank and hailed a taxi. Patrick couldn’t be dying. He had always been so strong, so capable. Grace and I and everyone else in his parish knew we could run to him whenever we needed him. If I could have prayed, this is the one time in my life when I would have. But I had no right to ask God for anything, especially where Patrick was concerned.

I rushed into the hospital like a crazy woman. The head nursing sister wouldn’t let me past the front desk. “You aren’t the only person in the parish who loves Father O’Duggan, God bless him. There’s been a line of people a mile long asking about him, wanting to see him. Why, there wouldn’t be room to let them all into the lobby, let alone his room! But the doctors are only allowing his immediate family and fellow priests to see him. I’m very sorry.”

“No, listen. You have to let me in. I . . . I am family.”

The nun frowned. “Oh? And how might you be related to Father O’Duggan?”

“Tell him it’s Emma . . . Mrs. Emma Bauer. Please! Ask him! You have to ask him if he’ll see me!”

“Just a minute.” She looked annoyed as she dialed a number on her telephone. “Hello, Sister Angelica? There’s a woman down here asking to see Father O’Duggan and claiming to be a relation. Yes, her name is Mrs. Emma Bauer.” She nodded knowingly as the nun on the other end talked. “Yes, that’s what I thought. All his relations have already been heard from. . . .”

“Tell Father O’Duggan my name!” I shouted desperately. “Let him decide if he’ll see me!”

She frowned again, then spoke into the phone. “She wants you to give Father O’Duggan her name and let him decide.”

I nearly wept. “Thank you!”

“It will take a few minutes for Sister Angelica to check with him, Mrs. Bauer. If you’d like to have a seat . . .” She propped the phone receiver against her shoulder and spoke to three other people while I paced the lobby floor, waiting.

When she finally received the answer, her frown softened. “He wants to see you. He’s on the third floor, Mrs. Bauer, room 315.”

Sister Angelica was waiting for me when I stepped off the elevator. “Please remember that Father O’Duggan tires very easily.”

“Is he really going to die?” I asked, still struggling to absorb Sheila’s words.

“I’m afraid so,” the nun said. Her eyes filled with tears, but she said in a brisk voice, “Visits are limited to five minutes.”

I walked down the hall in a daze of shock and grief. How could I say everything I wanted to say in five minutes?

Tears sprang to my eyes when I first walked into his room and saw him lying against the cold white sheets. His skin was gray, his golden hair as dim as tarnished bronze. Then he looked up at me and smiled—his glorious, radiant smile—and he was Patrick again. I sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand in mine.

“Your hands were always so cold, Emma. They still are.” “And yours are still warm.” We gazed at each other without speaking. We didn’t need to.

“I’m so glad you came,” he finally said. “The doctors say my life is just about over.”

“Is that all right with you?”

“Aye, it’s all right with me. My life belongs to God. Let Him do what He wants with it.” He smiled, and the skin at the corners of his warm blue eyes crinkled. I wanted to lay my face beside his and weep. “No, don’t cry for me, Emma. I’m ready.”

“I know you are.”

“What about you? Are you still angry with God?” When I didn’t answer, he said softly, “You haven’t found God’s forgiveness, have you?”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“None of us do. But when the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who’d been caught in the act of adultery, He said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ That’s grace. It’s our daughter’s name. What we did years ago was a sin, but God will forgive us if we ask.”

“That’s what Papa said too.”

“Then why won’t you ask, Emma?” I looked away. Patrick had his prayer book in the bed beside him. He pressed it into my hands. “Take this with you. Read the passage where the marker is. It’s my favorite one. David and Bathsheba committed the same sin we did. But God can redeem sin and turn it into a blessing. The son of David and Bathsheba became the ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept His forgiveness, Emma. He wants to give it. It cost Him His Son.”

I couldn’t speak. I knew that our five minutes were nearly over. The nurse would be back any moment. I longed to hold him one last time. As if he’d read my mind, Patrick said, “I’m reminded of the last stanza of Yeats’ poem,
Politics:

“. . . And maybe what they say is true

Of war and war’s alarms,

But Ο that I were young again

And held her in my arms!’”

I bent down and gathered him in my embrace. His arms came around me, but with only a shadow of their former strength. I pressed my cheek to his. Patrick’s skin smelled the same as I remembered, and I inhaled him for the last time. Our tears joined and flowed, a single stream.

“If you ever tell Gracie the truth,” he whispered, “make sure you tell her how very much I loved her.”

“I will. I love you, Patrick.”

“I know. And I . . . ‘love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! And, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.’”

1980

“I never stopped loving Patrick,” Emma said. “Not when I married Karl, not when he became a priest, not even when he died. That’s why I didn’t remarry after my divorce. I lived in an era where marriage was a lifelong commitment, like the one Louise and Friedrich had made—till death us do part. I broke those vows with Karl. I never should have vowed to love him in the first place because I couldn’t keep it. My heart was wedded to Patrick. So after the divorce I took a lifelong vow of celibacy, as Patrick had.”

Emma finished her story as Suzanne pulled the car into the parking lot at Birch Grove. She was home again. She felt an enormous sense of relief to have
finally told the truth about Patrick, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her, but she coudn’t help wondering about the consequences.

Suzanne sat behind the wheel of the parked car, her eyes brimming with emotion. Emma rested her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder. “You know, when you chose your major in college, I thought of Patrick. I could never tell you this before, but you inherited your love of literature, your love of words, from your grandfather.”

“I’m part Irish . . . “she murmured. “Jeff always insisted that I was.”

“Yes, you are. I only wish you could have known him. He was an extraordinary man.” Had she done the right thing, telling Grace and Suzanne the truth after all these years? But she could hardly have denied it. Somehow they had unearthed the truth by themselves and had merely asked her to confirm it. Maybe it would help Suzanne and Jeff. Maybe it wasn’t too late for their marriage. But Grace . . . what would happen to Grace? All the way home she had sat in a daze. So silent. So stricken.

Emma opened the car door and climbed out. She longed to hold her daughter, to ask for forgiveness, but she didn’t dare. Grace wouldn’t even look at her.

“Thanks again for the ride,” Emma said and hurried away into the building.

Once she was in her suite, the tears came. What if Grace never forgave her? That would be the worst punishment she could possibly suffer for her sin. She had already lost her parents and her home, and she’d forfeited a lifetime with Patrick to pay for what she’d done, but she couldn’t lose Gracie too. How could she live without her daughter?

Emma wandered through her rooms as if searching for something. She hadn’t felt so alone since the day she had given birth to Gracie. Did Mama and Papa feel this same empty, aching loss when they were separated from the daughter they loved? Did God?

The enormity of Emma’s sin stung her anew. She remembered telling Papa that she wasn’t sorry for what she and Patrick had done, but every time she thought of Gracie’s cold, stricken face she was more ashamed of her sin than she’d ever been before. For the first time, she admitted that if she could go back in time and erase what happened on Squaw Island that day, she would gladly do it. Better never to have given birth to Grace than to be alienated from her like this.

Emma gazed around at her rooms, as if surprised to find herself here in this new place. It was the move that had started her down this long road to
the truth. Moving had raised questions about the past and caused her to tell Louise’s story—and her own. As in the flood of her childhood, it wasn’t until she had picked through the rubble of destroyed homes and lives that she fully realized the impact of the storm of passion that had swept her and Patrick away. And only in examining her own life—and Gracie’s and Suzanne’s lives—had Emma finally seen the terrible aftermath of her sin.

She closed her bedroom door and sat on the edge of her bed. She took Patrick’s prayer book from the drawer of her nightstand. God punished the children for the sin of the mothers to the third and fourth generation, Papa had said. But he’d also said that God would forgive her if she repented. Patrick had said the same thing—God not only forgave sin but brought redemption. Emma opened the prayer book to the place Patrick had marked for her thirty years ago and read the words aloud:

“‘Have mercy upon me, Ο God, according to thy lovingkindness:

according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. . . .’”

THIRTY-FOUR

Suzanne stood on her mother’s porch the next day and pressed the doorbell a second time. Grace’s car was in the driveway, so she had to be home. Where else would she be in the middle of the afternoon? Why didn’t she answer the door?

Sue rifled through her key ring, trying three of them in the lock before the door finally opened. “Mom . . .?” she called from the foyer. “Mom, are you home?”

“Up here, Sue.”

She padded up the carpeted stairs and into her mother’s bedroom. Grace was lying on the bed with a wet cloth over her eyes. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

“I’m battling a migraine.”

“Can I get you something for it? Do you want me to call Daddy?”

“I already took a pill. It’s starting to work, but I still don’t feel like facing the world just yet.”

Suzanne sank into the chair beside the bed. “It’s because of what you found out about your father yesterday, isn’t it.” Grace didn’t reply. “Talk to me, Mom. I feel so bad for forcing you to dig up the past when you didn’t want to. I’m so sorry. . . .”

“It’s not your fault.” Grace removed the cloth and slowly sat up, leaning against the mound of pillows at the headboard. “It’s just that Father O’Duggan was such a godly man. I respected him so much for that . . . and I loved him for it. Now I feel as though his memory has been tarnished.”

“He was also human,” Suzanne said softly. “He made a mistake. You have to forgive him for being human.”

Even as she spoke them, the words seemed to stick in Suzanne’s mouth. She needed to do the same with Jeff. He was human too. He had yielded to the natural human desire
to
accept a job for the money, prestige, and power it offered. And although he was wrong to agree to move without discussing it with her, she would be just as guilty of wrongdoing if she refused to forgive
him. Unforgiveness was causing her mother’s illness—and if Suzanne didn’t make peace with Jeff before he moved to Chicago, it would cause an even larger mess in her life, in the girls’ lives. She had to forgive him for being human. She and Jeff should at least part as friends.

“I wish I had never learned the truth,” Grace murmured. Suzanne turned her attention back to her mother. She looked pale against the pillows, her eyes swollen. “I don’t know if I can forgive them or not.”

“Mom, it’s obvious from what I know about Father O’Duggan that God forgave him for his sin—otherwise, how could he have been used by God all those years?”