The Good Life (10 page)

The speech hung formally in the air between them. Beth slipped from the fire of her anger into woolly embarrassment, which would probably mean that she would talk to Cessy and draw her a map to the nearest clinic, fifty miles away. Father Marino said slowly, “When did this happen to you? Was it me?” His face looked strangely excited, which Beth thought was the wrong reaction. She was about to tell him so, but Alison cried out, the hoarse squawk that signaled a nightmare. “Please go home now,” she said.

“I can go in and talk to her.”

Too easily, Beth could imagine her daughter's terror if she woke to the sight of her priest bending over the bed. “It's time to go home.”

“You'll help me?”

“I have to talk about adoption. It's the law.”

“That's not what she needs to know.”

“I'm sure you're right. I'm sorry, Father. My daughter needs me.” She steered him toward the door, then hurried to her child, who was crying but not feverish. Beth smoothed back Alison's clumped hair and said, “Father Marino was here. He wants you to get better right away.”

“Is he still here?” Alison said.

“I told him to go home.”

“I guess I should feel special that Father came to see me. Even if I didn't see him.”

“You don't need to see him,” Beth said. “I can tell you everything you missed.”

 

After twelve years, Father Marino mostly remembered Beth in nights of brilliant, corrosive dreams, from which he woke up sizzling. On those nights he rolled out of bed and counted off pushups until his arms gave out, then drank glass after glass of water. He'd been taught the techniques in rehab, and they helped.

Beth had left the parish not long after Alison's wrists healed, and the bishop had offered Father Marino a sort of vacation—six months at a facility in Mexico, drinking iced tea under swags of purple bougainvillea where green hummingbirds darted as if stitching the air. The other priests talked ceaselessly about margaritas and piña coladas. “Even a beer,” muttered Father Spurling, Thad. “Wouldn't you sell your own mother?”

“Don't think about it,” said Father Marino.

“If you start talking to me about detachment, I'll take that slice of lemon and shove it up your nose.”

Father Marino felt sorry for the other man, who one night at dinner had clenched his water glass so hard he snapped its stem. “I'm lucky, that's all. You wouldn't believe the things I cannot think about.”

During the sharing sessions, he acknowledged his misdeeds: Cessy; the blurry nights; the inappropriate jokes; and Beth, a misdeed he didn't know how to name. He wished he had more. Other priests described their police records and suspended driver's licenses. Thad Spurling had walked out of a department store carrying three silk shirts still on their hangers—one, he recalled wistfully, had been yellow. Of all the men there, only Father Marino had never been transferred to another parish.

He had broken no marriage, created no crisis, not even dented a fender. During his whole life nothing had happened, just as nothing was happening now. Like a boy having a tantrum in an empty room, he had struck furiously at the air around him and hadn't been able to scrape a knuckle. He should have been grateful, but a peevish sense of loss spread through him. At the end of a sharing session, the priests were encouraged to shake hands or embrace, but Father Marino walked stiffly out, stiffening further when he saw Father Spurling's approving face.

He came home after his six months, and a noisy crowd waited for him at the rectory with balloons and cake and sweet punch. Frank Burding offered him a soft drink. This was how it would be from now on, Father Marino realized with a spark of fury, but then the spark winked out, and that was all.

Gradually he understood that Anthony had bankrolled the holiday. Anthony never stopped attending mass at Holy Name, and he donated handsomely to the Bishop's Annual Appeal. His law firm bought advertising space on the church's weekly bulletin. He passed two years in admirable parish service before making a private appointment with Father Marino, and then he started talking as soon as he sat down. He was ready to marry again. He was ready to make a lifetime commitment, in his own eyes and the eyes of the Church. But first he needed to have his marriage to Beth—never a real marriage, Anthony said—annulled. “I can't do anything about that,” Father Marino said. “Do you think I have pull? I don't.”

“I know,” Anthony said. “I went to the chancery office and read up on procedure. But you can speak for me.”

“They want statements from people who knew both parties. Who knew the marriage well.”

“Beth talked to you enough,” Anthony said. He did not bother to smile, so Father Marino didn't either.

After the other man left, Father Marino read through the questionnaire Anthony had left—six pages—with mounting dismay. Why had Anthony and Beth decided to marry? it asked. What occurred on their wedding night? Did Father Marino have reason to believe that the marriage had been entered into without proper understanding? He couldn't begin to answer the questions, although he would answer them anyway. To the paragraph asking about his qualification to make such judgments, he wrote,
I was their priest
.

The annulment was granted fourteen months later, and Anthony leased Father Marino a new car. “This will help you get around, Father. It's for the good of the parish.”

“Like everything you do,” Father Marino said. Anthony looked surprised, but he didn't fire back. Nobody ever did. Sometimes Father Marino lay in bed, appalled at himself for having told Marnie Francis that her son wasn't smart enough to go to medical school, Elaine Williamson that she was drinking too much. But Mamie's son did go to medical school—in the Dominican Republic, yes, but he still came back and passed his boards—and Elaine kept right on drinking. Was there a word for a man whose acts were uniquely useless?

Catching himself, Father Marino poured a glass of water, downed it, and poured another. The parish relied on him to baptize infants and bury the dead. Who could mark life's way stations, if not Father Marino? Now, for instance, this steamy morning in July, he was needed to officiate at the wedding of Anthony's oldest daughter.

Alison
, Father Marino reminded himself, taking deep breaths of the sacristy's waxy air. He slipped the heavy green vestment over his head and waited for the storm of memories. But he had to strain to recall the girl, her scowl and dual wrist casts, and her mother. Then he remembered Cecily, who had gone away after her abortion—her second, as Beth had guessed. Father Marino had been relieved to learn that, and then ashamed, and then relief had turned to forgetfulness. In the end, nothing had changed.

The rented organist started the familiar measures of “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring,” and Father Marino strode to the altar. Anthony's new wife billowed out of the pew beside her three teenage sons. Behind her sat Beth, a slim blur dressed in blue. The night before, at the rehearsal dinner, she had shaken Father Marino's hand. Then she and her new husband had joined her daughter's table, while Father Marino spent the evening in conversation with the groom's great-aunt.

Impatient now, he watched Beth read every word of the wedding program. Nothing would have changed if, the night before, he had pulled up a chair beside her, fingered her bright hair, and whispered to her through the meal. Nothing if he had sipped from her glass of champagne—his first drink in eleven years. Nothing if he had followed her home. Still he would be standing in these hot robes, and still she would plan to drive away with her dull husband after the reception. They were all trapped, every one of them, but he, the priest, was trapped in the smallest room of all.

“Hi,” he said, when the couple stood before him. “Here's the big day. Did you get any sleep last night?”

“No,” said the groom ruefully, getting a chuckle from the congregation.

“That's all right. You'll sleep from here on in. You might sleep more than you ever meant to.”

Hearing his words slip into dangerous waters, Father Marino hurried into the wedding liturgy. He generally riffed a lot at weddings, making warm jokes about pets or the new wedding china. It was one of the reasons couples wanted him. But now he stuck to the succession of formal blessings and invocations. To do so was steadying, and he felt his heart settle down. Before him stood Alison and her groom, their shining eyes impatient. From the pews the congregation looked on with mild affection, perhaps half-hearing the weighty words about trust and steadfastness. Beth sat beside her husband and looked at Father Marino, her face like stone. Anthony had been the one to insist that the wedding be held here. Father Marino would not, he knew, have been Beth's choice.

Holding Alison's and the groom's hands, Father Marino looked up from his prayer book. “People think weddings are about permanence, but that's not right. Vows change us. In five years you won't be who you are now, or even who you'd meant to be. In twenty years you won't recognize yourselves. Here you are, looking beautiful, standing at the altar. Can you know what comes next?”

“The blessing of the rings,” Alison said, her clear voice so like her mother's that Father Marino closed his eyes for a moment. The memories that had eluded him earlier were now showering down. He had loved his office because Beth came there. He had loved his office telephone because he talked to Beth on it.

“You're in a hurry,” he said, and the congregation laughed. “That's good. You should be holding your arms wide open. Today is the day to embrace your future.” The groom, who had a roguish side, pulled Alison into a showy clasp, and Father Marino stepped back and led the quick applause for the couple, forestalling the biddies who would later complain that the ceremony had lacked dignity.

“They're examples to us all, these two,” he said. “Why don't we follow their lead? There's no better day than a wedding for a hug.” In the pews, people relaxed and smiled at one another. This was not so different from the weekly exchange of peace at mass, so no one was surprised to see Father Marino fondly embrace first bride, then groom, then move down from the altar to the first few pews. Working the crowd. He was famous for it.

Even Beth must have softened. When he rustled to her, she raised her smiling face to his, and he had the sudden, hectic thought that he could kiss her mouth. What could possibly happen? Father Marino hesitated, then lunged, but at the last second Beth turned, and his lips dragged merely across her cheek. Even then he clung to her for a moment past propriety, until he heard Anthony stand. Only then did Father Marino, his heart plunging, let Beth go.

Anthony's big arms were already open. He clasped the priest in a real
abbraccio
that was as much a blow as an embrace and whacked the air from Father Marino's lungs. Then Anthony turned to kiss his wife, Beth to her husband, and other members of the congregation murmured and touched cheeks. At the altar, Alison and her groom kissed again, as prettily as dolls. Shaken, Father Marino watched what he had set in motion. All around him people embraced. Happiness sang through the hot church air. He felt it himself. Meanwhile, the feel of Beth's lips dissolved from his face.

 

 

 

N
OT A QUARREL
, exactly. Lili and Ron had exchanged words, that was all, about tonight's guests at their western Maryland B & B: a couple en route to Florida and another couple coming in from Baltimore with their son. Taking the reservations, Ron had forgotten to ask about allergies or food requirements, any medical conditions, even coffee or tea preferences for the morning. “What in the world did you talk about?” Lili said. “You were on the phone long enough.”

“I told them this is the best time of year to come.”

“Liar. It's fifteen degrees.”

Ron gestured toward the window. “Tell me that doesn't beat Baltimore.”

Lili laughed. Outside, softened by a foot of blazing, billowy snow, the valley wall reared up as if to crack the sapphire sky, and the sky itself stretched sheer and tight as a window. A thin file of green-black firs sentried the ridge; otherwise the view was all white, all blue, hues so hard they hurt. Guests often told Lili and Ron that they were living in paradise, and Ron always said, “It's more than we deserve,” a bit of humility that Lili found both corny and touching.

“We're going to have to take our chances with dinner,” she said. “I hope I don't wind up at the last minute trying to whip up something with no wheat, eggs, or sugar.”

“The guy I talked to didn't sound demanding. He sounded nice.”

“They always sound nice to you,” she muttered, but patted his arm as he slipped past her.

Now she swatted back a rebellious strand of hair and tapped her pencil. The notepad was printed with the Heaven's Pride logo Ron had designed—wings cupped around a tree-lined valley. Lili scrounged half-used pads from the guest rooms for grocery lists.

Pork medallions. Even picky eaters picked at pork. To go with fried apples, cornbread, some of the beans she'd put up. She wasn't convinced that her home-canned beans tasted one jot better than the Del Montes at the store, but during their first summer here she'd done everything she could by hand, imagining she was creating a pure life. She hadn't learned to pace herself.

Along with shopping stood the rest of the chores to be knocked down one by one: vacuuming, laying fires, fresh linens. Setting out flowers she had to remember to buy. And there was still dessert to be thought about, and marinade for the pork.

She slipped a Turns from her apron pocket. She did not, of course, resent the guests, although she was already certain they would place unforeseeable demands on her. She did not even resent the demands. But she didn't think she was breaking any hotelier's code of conduct by wishing that she and Ron could have one night off to eat frozen pizza, drink a couple beers, and watch the nickel-colored moon rise over their beautiful valley.