The Good Life (8 page)

He thrust it back, resisting the impulse to curse. The mannequin's balance, he finally saw, was thrown off by extra weight in the pockets of the jacket. They were distended, stuffed like chipmunk cheeks. How had he not noticed this? Father Murray stabilized the mannequin with one hand and rifled the pockets with the other, his heart thundering.

He knew upon the first touch. Handfuls of dainty chocolate kisses, fresh-smelling, the silver wrappers still crisp. He dropped them on the bureau and let them shower, glittering, around his feet. The air in the room thickened with the smell of chocolate; he imagined it sealing his lungs. A full minute might have passed before he fished out the last piece and sank to the floor beside the pool of candy.

He thought of Adreson: grinning, amiable, dumb. Seminary record-holder in the 440, possessor of a young, strong body. He didn't look capable of true malice. He didn't look capable of spelling it. But above Adreson's constant, supplicating smile sat tiny eyes that never showed pleasure. They were busy eyes, the eyes of a bully or a thug. Eyes like Adreson's missed nothing, and Father Murray had been a fool to think otherwise. He had attributed the nervous gaze to self-consciousness, even to a boyish desire to make good, a miscalculation that might have been Christlike if it weren't so idiotic. Like mistaking acid for milk, a snake for a puppy.

Pressing his fist against his forehead, he saw himself illuminated in the silent midnight kitchen, the overhead light blazing as he shoveled food into his mouth: a fat man making believe he had dignity, and the community of men around him charitably indulging his fantasy. Only Adreson withheld charity.

He fingered the candies on the floor. Unwrapping one, he placed it on his tongue, the taste waxy. He unwrapped a second and held it in his hand until it softened.

 

The next day, Father Murray waited in Adreson's room, hunger making his mood savage. Before him on the desk sat two textbooks and a dictionary that Father Murray found in the furthest corner of Adreson's single bookshelf. Father Murray's legs, clad only in running shorts, spread pallidly on the hard wooden chair. He had propped the mannequin against Adreson's closet, draped in a sheet for modesty's sake.

“Whoa! Father, you don't get it. The whole point is not to be caught in somebody else's room.” Adreson's smile lacked anything like mirth, as Father Murray supposed his own did.

“I read your paper,” he said. “I'm here to save you.”

“I'm doing fine in all my other classes,” Adreson said.

“That's hard to imagine,” Father Murray said. He gestured toward the desk chair, but Adreson did not sit down.

“You're not dressed for teaching, Father.”

“I thought we might have an exchange. I'll help you, then you can coach me at the track. I need some coaching.”

Adreson needed a moment to process this. Once he did, the expression that crossed his face made Father Murray shiver.

“Don't look to me to cut you any slack,” Adreson said. “I take running seriously.”

“It's your great gift,” Father Murray said.

“I just want to make sure you know what you're getting into.”

“I know,” Father Murray said. He hoped that Adreson could not hear the light edge of fear in his voice, but even if he could, it would change nothing. Father Murray was committed. “But I'm going to help you first.”

 

 

 

A
FTER THE SCREAMING
and the poisonous accusations, after the broken vase and rib, after the gonorrhea, waking up to find Anthony gone was not the hardest thing. It was not the hardest thing to sleep on the fluffy clown rug between the girls' beds or to come to school to pick up Stephanie the day a rash bloomed across her chest. It was not even so hard to forward Anthony's mail and to review the bar association's list of divorce lawyers, so many of whom Anthony had gone to law school with, and mocked.

The hardest thing was sitting in church, where the scalding sense of failure shot from Beth's hairline to the soles of her feet. Surrounded by intact families with husbands who looked proud of their wives—Anthony had not looked proud, ever—Beth read the ads on the back of the bulletin for funeral homes and CPAs, leafed through the hymnal, distracted herself in every way she could think of until the hour was over and she could race to the parking lot, always one of the first to gun it out.

“You don't know how hard it is,” she said to Father Marino. “If it weren't for the kids, I wouldn't come back here.”

“Then thank goodness for the kids,” he said.

The easiest thing after Anthony left was Beth's talks with Father Marino. Every week he made room for her in a schedule filled with Social Justice Committee meetings and intramural soccer and daily hospital visits—needs more legitimate than her small loneliness and sorrow. Every week he opened his office door and produced his cracked-tooth grin, and she saw the sort of boy he must have been, round-headed and cocky, sure of the world's affection.

He had long ago captured the affections of everybody at Holy Name. After cranky Father Mestin had retired and nervous Father Torbeiner had been whisked away with so little explanation—people still murmured about him—parishioners recognized their good fortune in Father Marino. He had a friendly habit of snapping off his Roman collar in midconversation. “Enough of this. Let's
talk
.” People confided in him—guilty teenagers and angry mothers and the whole Men's Club, which took Father Marino on a trout-fishing trip every June, returning sunburned, hung over, and sheepishly low on trout. Beth wondered whom Father Marino confided in, but she recognized her curiosity as the question of a freshly divorced woman half in love with her priest and kept it to herself.

Instead, she told him about her job at the Women's Services office on the weedy outskirts of town. Now she was working as a receptionist and sometime counselor, but she was planning to become a paralegal and, after that, an attorney. “That would kill Anthony,” Father Marino said.

She said, “My point, exactly.”

Anthony had already asked her how she, a Catholic, could work in such a place, a question she thought rich, considering that he had been the one with the girlfriend. “The women who go there need help,” she said shortly. She wasn't about to give him details on the sullen, exhausted mothers who edged through the office door, needing health care, legal advice, babysitters. Sometimes they needed abortions, and Beth counseled them about facilities, a fact she'd confessed to Father Marino and that he told her didn't need to be confessed. More than anything, these women worried about their children, and Beth told them with real compassion, “Children are the fear that steals your heart. I know just what you mean.”

When she said this, her eyes slid to the desk photo of her two daughters, laughing and proud on their new Rollerblades. They were older now and laughed less. The divorce had hurt them. Ten-year-old Alison threw tantrums like a first-grader, and seven-year-old Stephanie refused to read her colorful schoolbooks. Beth told Father Marino about this, too. “Ali screams until she's blue. Anthony would never have stood for it.”

“No kidding. He left.” He leaned forward, resting his bony elbows on his thighs. Despite his apple-round face, he had a lean frame, freckled skin stretched over long bones. “Don't you feel like screaming?”

“No more than ten times a day. But for the last six months Anthony was home, I wanted to scream all day long, so I should be grateful.”

Father Marino shook his head. “You don't ask for enough.”

“I ask for plenty,” she said. “I just don't get.”

“We'll have to see about that,” he said.

 

Beth understood that she should not take Father Marino's vague promises too seriously. Everybody knew that he liked to make promises. He especially liked to make them on the telephone, at night, when people heard the sound of ice cubes rattling in a glass not far from the phone.

There weren't rumors, exactly, and no incidents—unlike the case of Father Toole at St. Agnes, who had been pulled over for DUI and was abusive to the officer: the whole parish council had had to swing its weight to keep the story out of the paper. Still, so many people had run into Father Marino at the Liquor Barn. At so many parties he had gotten tipsy. Holy Name parishioners were accustomed to a priest who took a drink—if anything, they liked the little touch of worldliness—but sometimes when they called the rectory late, they heard a wildness in Father Marino's voice—too much laughter, too-quick sympathy. He spoke very knowledgeably about wine.

Beth's own mother had drunk too much and had died of it. Beth knew the signs. Still, she didn't blame Father Marino. Lately, when the girls were at Anthony's condo, Beth had been learning about the stillness of an empty house, how a person could wade through loneliness as if through mud. One night she'd sat in front of the blank TV until one in the morning, unwilling to turn it on because eventually she'd have to turn it off again and hear the silence sweep back down. Who could be surprised if Father Marino took a snort too much now and then?

Nevertheless, when the Parish Life Committee started planning Father's birthday party, Beth voted with those who said the only liquor should be jug wine, and not too much of that. Already teens from the youth group were writing a skit, and the Men's Club had planned a roast. It would be the sort of evening that a pastor should enjoy, and Beth meant to make sure Father Marino enjoyed it. “Sorry,” she said to Frank Burding, who wanted to bring his special punch. “This is family entertainment.”

“What are you, the den mother?”

“That would make you a Boy Scout?” She meant it as a joke. Father Marino would have laughed.

Maybe Frank had a party for Father before the party, or maybe Father had a little party for himself—as soon as he entered the parish hall, to applause, Beth could see how his eyes wandered and slid. “Happy birthday to me,” he said at the door.

“How old are you, Father?” said Amy Burding.

“A gentleman never tells.”

“You're not a gentleman. You're a priest.”

“And that is where my troubles began.”

Amy didn't so much laugh as cough, and Father Marino, companionable, did too. Beth strolled over to the refreshments table. It pained her to watch her pastor pretend to be sober.

The party was moving now. All over the hall people were laughing, and a pile of gifts sat near the door. Beth knew what some of them were—two pounds of smoked trout from the Men's Club, a soft wool cardigan from the Altar Society. From Beth, a card that said only
Happy birthday
. She was confident that he would be able to read into it her larger feelings—if not tonight, then tomorrow. For now, she busied herself with refreshments, cutting cake and making sure everyone had a napkin. She spotted Father approaching her but didn't meet his gleaming eyes until he said, “Can a fella get a Sprite around here?”

“I think we can manage that.”

He hoisted the can she handed him. “Alcohol zero percent. Do you approve of me?”

Beth glanced up, but no one was standing quite close enough to hear. “For now.”

“What a whip cracker you are.”

“My ex-husband said the same thing.”

“He was a jerk. Forgive me, but I always thought so.”

“I forgive you.” She ambled toward the end of the table, away from the knot of people beside the wine. If she had been more concerned for his reputation, or her own, she would have led him into the group. Already she could see the flickering glances, parishioners noting how Father Marino spoke so closely to the divorcée.

“You forgive. That's a great virtue.”

“I forgive
you
. Anybody else is on a wait-and-see basis.”

“I'll bet it's a long line. The only thing people should want is to be forgiven by you. Well, not the only thing.” His face was blazing, light pouring out of the skin, and Beth knew exactly how she and the priest looked at that moment.

“Your appearance of scandal is going off the chart,” she said.

“‘Appearance.' I get the name without the game.” In answer to her look, he added, “From
Clever Phrases for All Occasions
. It's a cheat book for priests, to make us look like we've got the common touch.”

“As if you needed it. Everybody loves you.”

“Beth doesn't love me.”

She felt the blush spreading across her face and throat, ignited by dismay and drumming, triumphant joy. “Of course I love you,” she murmured. “You know that.”

“And what does your love lead you to do? Pour me a Sprite?”

“Hush.”

He lowered his voice, which was almost worse; Beth had to lean close to hear him. “I wasn't going to come tonight. I could have called somebody and said that I had the flu or there was a crisis at the hospital. My feet fell off. But I knew you would be here. Knowing I would see you here, I got up and put on my clothes. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Would you shut
up
?”

“People have to make choices in their lives. Anthony made one when he left you. He found a door in his life and opened it.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“But he opened a door in my life, too. All I have to do is walk through. Should I do that, Beth?”

“You should open your presents, go home, and sleep.” She was proud of the evenness of her voice over a heart that was clanging like a fire alarm. “You need to get a grip.”

“I'm trying.” He brushed his hand across his glistening eyes. “I'm trying to hold on. But it's up to you now, not me. Will you hold on to me, too?”

At least those were the words Beth thought she heard. Noise banged through the high-ceilinged, uncarpeted room, matching the din inside her skull. She wanted to ask Father Marino to repeat himself, but it seemed crass to ask a man to declare himself twice. Anthony had hardly done it once.