Last Things (16 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Last Things
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“Father Bourke called,” his mother said.
“I saw him the other day. Not to talk to.”
“Where?”
“He was concelebrating the eleven-thirty on campus.”
“You were there?”
He did not discourage her reaction, although perhaps he had sought it. Since his father had seen Father Dowling she clearly believed anything was possible. Was it? As the days multiplied since his arrival in Chicago the distance from Thousand Oaks increased exponentially. His present surroundings, his parents' home, the grim gray urban sprawl that was, in the phrase, the greater Chicago metropolitan area, exerted their familiarity, and the setting of the past decade seemed unreal, almost imaginary. He told himself that he should call Phyllis. He had not told her
of his visit to campus, although as he walked through its altered landscape he had been rehearsing his account to her.
He called her on his cell phone from the parking lot of the hospital after he had dropped his mother off.
“Do you realize what time it is here?”
“Whoops. I forgot.” There was a two-hour difference in time between Chicago and Thousand Oaks. He had an image of a sleepy Phyllis reaching for the phone beside the bed. “I miss you.”
“How is he?”
“He seems to have stabilized.” Since seeing Father Dowling? That was his mother's explanation. The burden of all those missed Masses had been lifted from his soul, giving the body a new lease on life.
Phyllis hummed.
“If I should leave I would very likely be called back here.”
She continued to hum. This familial piety had not been much on display in recent years. He explained to her that he was caught now, whatever he might have done. The length of his visit depended on his father's health.
“My mother has become dependent on me. I'm calling from the parking lot of the hospital.”
“You're trying to make it up to them.”
Of course she would be engaged in long-distance analysis, half awake but on the job, looking for the real reason he was in Chicago still and she was alone in Thousand Oaks.
“Well, shortly I will be making it up to you.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Sound has nothing to do with it.”
“I have been seeing Julia.”
“Professionally?”
“Of course. Raymond, she is infatuated with you.”
“Then the two of you have something in common.”
“Oh ha.”
On something of a light note he brought the conversation to an end, glad to have called her, glad to have it over. He crossed the lot to the entrance and went upstairs to be with his mother. He might try to make the eleven-thirty on campus if his father was okay.
He joined his mother at his father's bedside, but Fulvio did not acknowledge his presence. He did look different, more serene. The head turned, and their eyes met.
“Good morning, Father.”
He squeezed his father's hand, the one without the IV needle stuck in its back. That was all, one dart to remind him. Fulvio was content to lie there silent with a silent Margaret at his side. Raymond went down the hall, avoided the waiting room where television went on night and day, and continued to the cafeteria. In its anteroom was a cigarette machine. He stopped and looked at the familiar brands. There were Camels still, his old brand. Everyone had smoked, it seemed, all the members of the order. He and Phyllis had quit on their way to California. They ran out, and did not want to leave their bed to buy more.
Raymond got out his wallet and began to feed dollar bills into the machine. A package now cost what a carton once had. “Thou shalt not smoke” was the only commandment left, the decalogue become a monologue. He took the package from the machine and realized he had no matches. Outside, smokers were gathered, shoulders hunched against the wind, stamping their feet, puffing, puffing. He decided to wait. He could use the lighter in the car to taste his first cigarette in years.
And he did light up, on the way to campus, neither liking nor disliking it, but imagining Phyllis wondering why he was doing this. He and Father Bourke used to walk in the evening after
supper, smoking, talking, from time to time sitting on a bench. How many cigarettes had been smoked on those evening walks? The number that occurred to him seemed scarcely credible.
It was shortly after eleven when he settled into a back pew in the campus church. The prodigal returned? That was ridiculous. As he sat there he told himself that, yes, he did miss this place that evoked memories at every turn; he did miss the camaraderie of other priests, his status among them, the routine of their day. But the one thing needful was gone. He looked at the distant altar, at the original altar beyond with its elaborate tabernacle. The lamp glowing in the sanctuary signified that the Blessed Sacrament was in repose in that tabernacle. A ciborium full of hosts, with a golden cap from which embroidered linen strips fell. The body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread. As he had said to Jessica, the sacrament was central to the Church because it was central to the faith. And everything else radiated from it. Priests must be ordained to confect the Eucharist, and bishops were needed for the task of ordaining them, bishops who were in a direct line from the apostles, an unbroken chain linking the present Church to its historical past. But the Eucharist was now, here, in that tabernacle, about to be reenacted at that altar. Raymond knew all this, but now there were only words.
Why stay? Because he hoped Father Bourke would concelebrate and he could get another glimpse of his old mentor. Because he hoped that in some unplanned way, some accident, he would find himself again talking with Father Bourke. What the topic would be, what he would say to the old priest, what Father Bourke would say to him—Raymond stopped himself from imagining any of that. But he did wonder whether the old priest's reception would be like his mother's or like his father's. Would he condemn or forgive?
A few people, about the same number as before, began to arrive, distributing themselves through the church at random intervals, banging kneelers, looking around, getting settled. Raymond checked the desire to criticize these people. They seemed the same ones as before; perhaps like his mother they came every day. What better practice if one believed? Still, they were an unimpressive bunch, the halt and the lame, the old and arthritic, many ostentatiously pious. Were they the elite of the race?
Mass began with the tinkling of the sacristy bell and the appearance of the celebrant, not the same priest as before. But after a minute, Father Bourke once more rolled into the sanctuary in his wheelchair and came to a stop to the right of the celebrant. The Mass began.
How many Masses had Raymond himself said? It would be possible to calculate, but the number of Masses said each day around the world was incalculable, the commemoration of the Last Supper and of Calvary, repeated endlessly through the time zones of the world, the words spoken over bread and wine that made Christ sacramentally present on the altar. On this altar and all the others. When he had studied the Eucharist in theology they had talked of the seeming impossibility of this. How could Christ be present in so many places simultaneously? Sacramental presence was different, that was the answer. Raymond had seen the difficulties but had no personal doubts. If God could become man what could he not do? The creator of the universe was not limited by his own laws. As he remembered it, his faith had been untroubled and serene, the air he breathed. Almost with dread he recalled the day when standing at the altar, holding the bread, he could not at first even say the words. How could sound coming from his mouth effect such a miracle?
In class such a difficulty would have been handled easily. It was not a personal power the priest possessed but one that had
been conferred on him by ordination in order to fulfill the command of Christ. Do this in memory of me. But it had been more than doubt that had gripped him. Doubt engaged the mind more than the heart, but his heart had failed him then. Finally he managed to utter the words of consecration. He ascribed it to a sense of unworthiness, but of course that wasn't it. Or he had not acknowledged the source of his unworthiness.
He had been in a state of mortal sin as he stood at the altar. He was a fornicator, one who had broken his vows and with a woman who had taken the vow of chastity herself. What was happening with Phyllis had little of mind about it; a condition of its happening was that he not think of what they were doing. And then they were caught in the web of their desires, in their little conspiracy against the commandments and rules and duties of their state of life. Ah, the sweet secrecy of those weeks during which his faith had seeped away, as had hers. He stopped saying the office. He no longer prayed. He avoided saying Mass. He was assailed by a remembered passage in the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila who had seen devils writhing around a priest saying Mass in a state of sin. So much of what he had read and learned had to be put into escrow, kept from his conscious mind. But the time came when conflict had ceased.
Daydreaming through the Mass. Once he would have called it distraction at prayer. He had sat through the readings oblivious to the words, but then the acoustics in this church had always been bad. Now Father Bourke had wheeled to the altar, and the heart of the rite began. The old arm lifted when the celebrant consecrated in a gesture of me too. He remembered that Father Bourke had been a foe of concelebration.
“A priest should say his own Mass. There's only one Mass when priests concelebrate; many when they don't.”
The angels danced during the subsequent quarrel in the common
room, where drinks in hand, cigars, pipes, cigarettes, the members of the order discussed the ins and outs and pros and cons of concelebration. But whatever Bourke's misigivings, concelebration was approved and accepted by the Church, and that was the end of it.
“
Roma locuta est
…” Father Bourke conceded, but his voice was reluctant.
Once in class that phrase had been mentioned—
Roma locuta est, causa finita est
—and Barwell was asked to translate. “
Rome
is a word,” he had replied uncertainly, “and causes are finite.” It had seemed another argument for the vernacular.
The pews emptied as the people went up to receive communion. Raymond sat. The familiar had become as strange as some alien rite, but he was becoming used to it. Someone tapped his shoulder. It was John.
“I told Father Bourke I saw you the other day. He'd like to see you.”
The earnest expression, the whisper on which rode the smell of tobacco. Raymond was filled with terror.
“Not today!”
John looked sad. “He's going in for an operation tomorrow.”
Raymond found himself nodding. “All right.”
John slid in beside him. “I'll take you over.”
 
 
Raymond felt he was under arrest when John led him under the great oaks to the community dining room.
“I don't want to have lunch.”
“Oh, you and Father Bourke will eat alone. He doesn't come to the refectory often. He's in Purgatory.”
Purgatory was the name given to the building in which the old
and infirm priests lived, nurses on duty, medicines administered, doctors dropping in at intervals.
They turned off the path leading to the community residence building and headed for Purgatory. A faint voice called them, and they turned to see Father Bourke slowly approaching in his wheelchair. John hurried to get behind him and push. Raymond, frozen where he stood, met the gaze of Father Bourke.
“He's going to have lunch with you,” John said over the old priest's shoulder.
A hand stretched, and Raymond took it. “I heard you were back.” His slurred voice was intelligible enough.
“My father is ill.”
“I'm sorry to hear it. You can tell me everything over gruel.”
Raymond took over from Purgatory, wheeling Father Bourke up the ramp to the door, over which in Latin was engraved
Domus Sanctae Marthae
, recalling the semicloistered nuns whose convent it once had been, the cooks and maids and launderers for the community. John scooted off for lunch at the residence.
His earlier question was answered when they settled in at a table in the refectory of Purgatory. Father Bourke's reception was like his mother's. You might have thought Raymond had been on priestly assignment elsewhere for a time and now was back. Around them, in various stages of senility and dementia, other old warriors toyed with their food and looked vacantly about. Some had obviously had strokes. Young uniformed girls helped those who could not help themselves. What a job.
“How changed you must find everything, Raymond.”
“Yes.”
“How ill is your father?”
“Very.”

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