The Good Life (23 page)

“I've started, all right. It's a little late now for the clean slate.”

“Nothing is clean. Who do you think taught me that?” Reaching across the table, I took a sip from Gloria's can of celery juice, which was brackish. Luis, my partner with the production company, owed me a favor. He didn't usually do commercials with young women, but he could start. I had just the model for him. “Your mother sent you out here, to my house. While you're here, I'm your mother, do you understand? Listen to what I tell you. You're listening to your mother from now on.”

 

 

 

F
ATHER DOM
was pleased with his reflection in the mirror. To the front of his cassock he had stapled a big dot cut out of white paper; below the cincture he had stapled two more. Tonight was the seminary's Halloween party. He was going as a domino.

He was ready to enjoy himself, although the party was one of the things that had turned iffy around St. Boniface. Some of the younger seminarians, shiny men of God who ran every five minutes to look something up in one of John Paul If's encyclicals, had raised objections: the proper end-of-October celebration for Catholics was the Feast of All Saints, not Halloween.

“We'll celebrate the All Saints mass,” Father Dom told the stern contingent who came to his office. “We always do. But the Halloween party is harmless. People like dressing up.”

“The magisterium has not approved Halloween as a holiday for the faithful,” said Sipley. His beefy face, above the Roman collar he'd worn every day since taking his first vows, was implacable. Two of the men behind him shook their heads. Father Petrus called this group Rome's hall monitors.

“It isn't forbidden,” Father Dom said.

“We won't be attending,” Sipley said.

“There'll be punch,” Father Dom said wearily. He wouldn't miss them, but he hated to add mortar to the wall separating the men who fluently discussed the mystical gifts of the Holy Father from the rest of them, eating pizza and telling jokes down the hall. Father Dom had bought the pizza.

He smoothed one of his dots. He himself had been on the admissions committee the year Sipley applied. Even then the man was talking about Holy Mother Church, coming on like cutting-edge 1600s. Still, the committee had voted to admit him. The committee had voted to admit every applicant, all five who sought one of the thirty slots. St. Boniface's picking-and-choosing days were long gone. But every time Father Dom thought about a priesthood filled with Sipleys leaning over their pulpits and confidently instructing their congregations, his heart hurt. Father Dom had never felt as certain about anything as Sipley felt about everything.

Hearing voices in the hallway, he opened his door. Several men were heading toward the lounge, laughing, dressed for the party. McCarley wore a cardboard cone taped over his huge nose; he'd drawn lines of scurrying bugs around the end. “Anteater,” he said cheerfully. Father Dom's spirits started to rise.

“I hope you have a good sacerdotal defense. You never know when the magisterium's going to be checking up.”

“Anteaters are God's creatures. Nobody can challenge me. What about you?”

“I'm a domino. I intend to impart valuable lessons about tipping over.”

Behind McCarley, Terley shook his blond hair out of his eyes and fiddled with one of his pencils. He had a dozen or so, sharpened and taped to his shirt as if they'd been shot into him. There was always at least one St. Sebastian. And beside the two men, to Father Dom's delight, walked Joe Halaczek, dressed in salmon-pink Bermuda shorts, a plaid shirt, dark socks, and sandals. A cushion under his waistband gave him a burgher's paunch. “I give up,” Father Dom said.

“The Race Is Not to the Swift. It's a concept costume,” Joe said. Then his voice took on its usual marshy unease. “Is that all right?”

“It's perfect,” Father Dom said, hoping the white leather belt came from the secondhand store and not Joe's closet. Someone must have helped him with this—the concept of a concept costume was beyond him. With his frightened hands and unsteady eyes, ordinary conversation was often beyond him. Father Dom could hardly bear to think about his arriving at a parish, this damaged lamb attempting to lead the obstreperous sheep. But right now it was a hoot to watch Joe stroll along, hands behind his back, imitating a confident man.

“We tried to get him to come as Joan of Arc, but nothing doing,” said McCarley. Already his cardboard nose was starting to work loose.

“I was afraid someone would set me on fire.”

“Only if you had started hearing voices,” Father Dom said, smiling when worried Joe glanced up.

Inside the lounge, festivities were puttering along. Four men shared the couch in front of the TV, talking and half watching an NFL roundup. Another group was playing darts. Everybody else was hovering over the snack table, making a clean sweep of the buffalo wings. Most of one pizza—cheese—was left.

“‘The Assyrian swept down like a wolf on the fold,'” said Father Benni, the rector, nodding at the decimated food.

“At least they're not letting the pizza get cold. Where's your costume?”

“This is it. The Good Priest.” He folded his long arms and assumed a benevolent expression, and Father Dom forbore reminding him that generations of students, reacting to his firm command, had called him Sheriff. “Bing Crosby will play me in the movie. I don't know who's going to play you.”

“Robert Redford.” Father Dom reached over to the table and snagged a wing.

“What do you think, Joe?” Father Benni said. Joe's head snapped around when he heard the rector say his name. “Do you think Robert Redford could play Father Dom?”

“It wouldn't be easy. A man of Father Dom's experience,” Joe said carefully.

Father Petrus, standing nearby, snorted. “Hey,” Father Dom said.

The rector was still looking at Joe. “Have you asked Father yet? I think this would be a fine time.”

It wasn't a fine time, whatever they were talking about—Father Dom both did and didn't want to know. Joe was braiding his fingers, looking at the carpet, and the color had dropped from his face. When Joe spoke, Father Dom had to lean close to hear. “Father Benni would like to observe our class tomorrow. I told him I'm not the one who makes the decisions.”

“You are, actually. You can say if you'd rather not be watched.” At this moment Father Dom would happily have strangled the smiling rector, who was of course within his rights.

“What's the point of the class if you're not watched?” Joe said.

“The practicum is the best of all the seminary classes,” Father Benni said. “Getting feedback is a real gift. You're able to see yourself as others see you. I miss that.”

Joe's face was expressionless beside Father Benni's basking, nostalgic smile. Father Dom said, “We can give you a taste of the old medicine, Greg.”

Father Benni said, “I was seminary champion in practicum. Everybody wanted to confess to me because I gave the easiest penances.”

“What made you change?” Father Dom said.

“I haven't changed,” the rector said sunnily. “I'm a lamb. Isn't that right, Joe?”

Joe was studying his shoes. “When I first got here, the fifth-year guys told me that you were easy.” His mouth twitched. “They said you were easy, but to go to Father Dom if I had anything bad. He forgave everything.”

“That's why we have him teach the practicum,” Father Benni said equably. Glancing at Joe, he added, “It will go fine. You'll see.” His voice was full of reassurance, but Joe's proto-smile had dissolved, and Father Dom guided the rector to the other side of the room.

“The practicum isn't Joe's best class,” Father Dom said quietly. From the couch came a small whoop; the TV was showing a beer ad that everybody liked.

“I'm not sure Joe has a best class,” Father Benni said. “His paper for Mission & Ministry was a page and a half. In homiletic practicum he fell apart completely—got up and just couldn't speak. He doesn't look like a man on his way to ordination. He looks like a man on his way to the electric chair.”

“So what do you want?”

“To be reassured.”

Father Dom studied Joe, standing in line for darts. He lingered at the side of the group, not the center, smiling at someone else's joke. But there was no rule that said the priest needed to be the life of the party. Plenty of parishioners would appreciate Joe's gentle manner, his ability to listen rather than talk. While Father Dom watched, Joe hitched up the cushion that held his shorts in place—his concept costume, worn in wistful good faith.

“No problem,” Father Dom said.

 

Problem, all right. No course could be designed better than the penance practicum to showcase Joe's shortcomings. Every week, in front of the rest of the class, the students role-played priests hearing confession, with Father Dom as the penitent. He tried to keep things light, presenting goofy sins—once he'd played a woman who had visions of the Blessed Virgin saying to her, “You must wear natural fabrics.” Sometimes the hardest thing for the students was keeping a straight face.

After the simulation the other students provided feedback, pointing out where the role-playing student had done well and where he showed room for improvement. The men were considerate with one another, but there were still so many ways to fall short—hints gone unheard, hobbyhorses saddled up. In their responses the students revealed themselves, which was why Joe had been ducking the role-play all semester. Now Father Dom would have no choice but to call on him. He'd have to call on Sipley, too, who volunteered all the time.

Father Dom lay sleepless until three-thirty. Then, moving softly—the walls separating the priests' rooms were like cheesecloth—he turned on the light and started reviewing notes. His desk drawer was stuffed with class outlines, files he kept because he'd been trained to keep files, though he almost never returned to them. Now he was grateful. Surely these hundreds of pages held some forgotten scenario that would demonstrate Joe's particular gifts.

Working without method, Father Dom riffled through the syllabi, glancing now and then at a note he'd written. He searched for a confession that required from the priest more sympathy than guidance, some transgression that would turn Joe's shy heart into a bridge between the penitent and God. No splashy sins like murder or embezzlement. Nothing requiring close discernment or tiptoeing among competing ethical schemes. Nothing about girls, it went without saying. Simply the extension of forgiveness, which had always seemed to Father Dom so easy.

At one time that ease had worried him. He had yearned to be valorous, rich in the grace that comes from spiritual struggle. He had worked with burn victims, telling them how a turn in life's road, even a terrible one, could be the beginning of a happiness never guessed at. “How, exactly?” asked a sixteen-year-old girl, gesturing at a face that had become a cluster of shiny ridges when she stumbled into her parents' sizzling barbecue grill. Another patient, once a mother of three, had been folding laundry in her basement when the house caught fire. Of all her family, only she was still alive, and every day she cursed God with brilliant inventiveness, then yelled at Father Dom, “Are you going to forgive
that?
”

He did. The more he looked, the more he saw only God's carelessness, work left undone when God got distracted, when God moved on to something else, when God went to get a cup of coffee and left Father Dom's mouth filled with inadequate words. Father Dom had been called, he knew, to be God's hands and voice in the world. He was just sorry that God couldn't find a better class of servant. Helplessly, he got the woman more ice chips and rested his hand tenderly on the side of her bed. Anybody could be forgiven for cursing in a world where somebody like Father Dom was left holding the bag for the Infinite.

He tried not to think about these things anymore. Seminarians of his generation had been taught that every priest was given his particular struggle of faith—the struggle, Father Dom's novice director had said often, that would last a lifetime. But Father Dom turned instead to the easier tasks of ministry, which were so plentiful—teaching, outreach. He could be a good priest without trying to solve the questions of suffering that even Augustine admitted were insoluble. He could help Joe.

He read until early gray light began to seep into the room and it was time to go to chapel. There he prayed his usual wordless prayer with more than common urgency, through breakfast, rising only when it was time to start class.

In the classroom students were seating themselves and pulling out their folders and books. Joe volunteered to fill the water pitchers. Then he volunteered to get cups. His face was the color of dust. He stopped beside Father Benni and murmured something; Father Dom watched the rector shake his head and gesture for Joe to sit down as Father Dom stood up. This week's assigned reading had centered on difficult confessions, surly or abusive penitents. It was important to have coping strategies, Father Dom said.

“You have to
listen
,” said Hernandez, a thin-faced student with a smile like sunrise. “Don't just listen to what they're saying, but how they're saying it. People bring in their shame and guilt, so they're angry. If the only person nearby is the priest, they'll get mad at him.”

“Have you ever had a penitent threaten you, Father?” Sipley asked Father Benni.

“I had someone pull a knife,” the rector said. “He said he would cut out the screen between us to get to me.”

“What did you do?”

“Gave him three Our Fathers and a Glory Be.” Father Benni waited for the mild laughter to die down. “All you can do is be a priest. Of course, that's a lot.”

Father Dom returned to the text, dragging out the discussion as far as he could, but after half an hour every syllable had been covered, and Sipley volunteered to do the first role-play, striding to the front of the room where two chairs stood, separated by a screen. The burly man kissed the stole lying on one chair, placed it around his neck, and said, “Hello, my son,” as if he'd been doing these things all his life.