Cross Dressing (19 page)

Over the next fifteen minutes the elevator delivered several more priests and Monsignors to this foyer. They were all from the larger parishes of Southern California and none of them had the vaguest idea why they were here. Every man kept to himself, unsure if trust was the best policy. Monsignor Matthews wondered if the other men were guilty of the same thing he was, or of something different. Time, he feared, would tell.

Another five minutes passed before a nondescript woman entered the foyer and escorted the group down a hallway to a conference room. They were told to wait. The conference room was even more Gothic than the reception area. The weirdness of the place and the mystery of the conference began to pull the men together. They started to talk. “Nice artwork,” one of them ventured. He was Monsignor Spadini, a round, monk-faced man. He examined a fresco on one of the walls and announced it was from the catacombs of Domitilla, third century, authentic. A series of illuminated manuscripts lined the other walls.
“The Scribe Ezra Rewriting the Sacred Records,”
Spadini said, pointing. “And that’s
The Transfiguration Scene as Seen by St. Apollinaris.”

Monsignor Matthews asked if Spadini had studied art. He shook his head. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said. “Working on a screenplay. Do you know of any Catholic literary agents?”

Before Matthews could respond, a voice came from above, from speakers hidden in the ceiling. “Take your seats.” The men moved to the conference table and did as they were told.

“Anyone know what this is about?” Monsignor Matthews asked. Heads shook. No one had a clue. The mood was uncertain, with each man contemplating his worst indiscretion. Another few minutes passed before the large double doors at the far end of the room opened to reveal a priest. He entered the room pulling an overhead projector behind him like a cross. He looked tired, burdened by something.

Monsignor Matthews recognized him. They had worked together briefly in the administrative office of the archdiocese in Boston. This guy was a serious financial wonk.

The priest said nothing as he plugged the projector in and turned it on. “And there was light,” he mumbled. He turned to face his audience. “My name is Father Carter. I’m with the Church’s accounting office. I’m here to give a presentation on current fiscal matters.” He pushed a button and the room’s lights dimmed. “Oh, by the way, we’re meeting here instead of the diocese office because they’re repainting that conference room.” Father Carter placed a transparency on the projector. “Now, if you will turn your attention to graph A, which I’m projecting now …”

Thus began the most tedious monologue on Church finances to which Monsignor Matthews had ever been subjected. “Let’s start with a discussion on marginal analysis,” Father Carter intoned. Monsignor Matthews slipped his copy of
Speed-the-Plow
from his briefcase and tried to read it by the light of the overhead projector, but after ten minutes, his head began to set like the sun. When his chin touched his chest he snapped back from his brush with sleep. Father Carter’s voice remained languid and dreamy. “Marginal analysis says that full costs are less important than marginal costs and we must be careful when calculating average cost …”

Monsignor Matthews struggled against the drowsiness, but the dimmed lights and the priest’s presentation made it a challenge.
He refocused on Mamet, hoping to stay awake, but the droning priest was aural opium and again the Monsignor’s head lolled. Things remained dull as a High Mass until the door behind Father Carter suddenly opened. This time a man wearing a miter appeared, filling the doorway. He was a powerful, austere-looking fellow. He carried a small wooden box under one arm. He was not smiling. He looked incapable.

Father Carter quickly turned off the projector and scurried to the side of the room. Everyone at the table stood, soldiers at attention. “I am Cardinal Glen Goddard,” said the man in the miter. He looked to be in his early sixties. He entered the room and placed the wooden box at the end of the table. “I have an undergraduate degree in business management from Notre Dame.” He removed his pointy headgear and laid it next to the box. His hair looked like iron styled in the Julius Caesar fashion, which didn’t work for the Cardinal any more than it had worked for anyone since George Peppard. “I earned my M.B.A. at Loyola.”

Monsignor Matthews had never heard of Cardinal Goddard, but ever since Pope John XXIII opened the floodgates established by Pope Sixtus V (who had set the number of Cardinals at seventy), you needed a program to know who was who at that level of the Church. There were Cardinal Bishops, Bishops of the seven sees around Rome, and the Eastern-rite Patriarchs. But this guy was different, Matthews thought. This guy was half disciple, half drill sergeant.

Cardinal Goddard leaned onto the head of the table, assessing his audience. “I have a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago,” he said. “So trust me, I know whereof I speak.” Monsignor Matthews nonchalantly reached for the water pitcher in the center of the table. “Don’t even touch it,” Cardinal Goddard said. “Water is for saviors only.”

Monsignor Matthews froze.
Did he say, water is for saviors
only?
He turned his head to look at the Cardinal as if he was joking.

Goddard stared him down. “You think I’m kidding?” he asked. “Well, think again, Padre.” He paused. “I am here from Rome.” The Cardinal never broke eye contact with Matthews as he pointed at the ceiling. “I get my orders from upstairs, and I am here on a serious mission.” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly until Matthews withdrew his hand from the water pitcher. Cardinal Goddard began to circle the table. “Okay, so you’re sitting there asking yourself, what is this all about? Well, it’s about the future of the Church, my friends, and I’m afraid that means it’s all about mammon.” Cardinal Goddard reached the head of the table. “That’s right, the almighty dollar. In God we trust, all others pay cash. Jesus saves, but the Church invests and has a highly diversified portfolio.” Once again the Cardinal leaned onto the conference table, his hands wide apart. “It’s as simple as this,” he said. “You have got to stop thinking of yourselves as religious men, because to the Church you are something else. You are branch managers in a multinational corporation that is in the business of saving souls.” He cocked his head to the side and opened his eyes wide. “And saving souls … Don’t. Come. Cheap. Revenues and expenditures, gentlemen. Income and expenses. When you’re in business—even the business of saving souls—you need more of the former and less of the latter or you go straight to H-E-double-toothpicks.”

Monsignor Spadini suddenly cracked. He didn’t appreciate being lectured about how much money he was expected to deliver on a quarterly basis. “Hey, I don’t need to hear all this.” He said this with, perhaps, too much zest. Someone in the room actually gasped.

Cardinal Goddard turned quickly, like a wolf taking sudden notice of a wounded lamb. “Ahhh, so
Mister
Spadini has
something to say about all this.” Goddard walked over behind the chubby Monsignor and put his hands on his shoulders. “You call yourself a Monsignor, you pissant?” Quick as a spark he slapped Spadini on the side of the head.

“Hey!” Monsignor Spadini tried to stand, but the Cardinal shoved him back to his seat.

“Sit!”

Spadini was incensed. “The hell …” He rubbed the side of his head, which was already showing the red imprint of Goddard’s hand. “I don’t have to put up with this sort of crap.” Spadini used to teach junior high school, so he was used to being the slapper, not the slappee.

“You certainly don’t, my fat friend,” the Cardinal said. “And you know why? Because as of this moment, you’re fired. Every blessed one of you. You can turn in your collars, dust off your résumés, and hit the bricks.” Disbelief spread from face to face like the Angel of Death going door to door in Egypt. “Orrrrrrr, you can suck it up and get your job back.” He paused, smiling. “The choice is entirely yours.”

The men at the table were stunned. They looked to one another as if to say,
he can’t fire us … can he?
Of course, they knew he could. A Cardinal could drop-kick these guys like an overinflated soccer ball. There was no due process, no administrative hearing, just pack your bags and check your chalice on the way out. Cardinal Goddard stared at the men, still smiling. “Ahhh, now I have your attention,” he said as he began to pace. “That’s good, because you’re all going to want to listen to what I have to say. Starting right now, you’re in a competition.” He turned to face the conference table again. “What sort of competition? you ask. To save souls? To forgive sins?” He closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “No.” He opened his eyes. “It’s a collection contest. See, back in Rome, they’ve noticed the diocesan assessments have been dwindling, and they won’t have that. So here’s the deal.”
Cardinal Goddard opened the wooden box and removed some papers which he handed to Monsignor Matthews. “Pass those around.”

The Monsignor did as he was told. “These are your goals and your potential rewards,” Cardinal Goddard said. “As you can see, first prize is a trip to the Vatican.” He arched his eyebrows. “Anybody want to see second prize?” Goddard pulled something from the box and held it up. “Second prize is a Virgin Mary night-light. Third prize is you’re excommunicated.” He dropped the night-light back into the box. “Starting to get the picture?”

One of the priests pushed the Cardinal’s paper away as if it were a document from Satan. Goddard walked over to the priest, fingering the jewel-encrusted cross hanging from the gold chain around his neck. “You see this cross?” The priest didn’t acknowledge the question, so Goddard smacked him across the head. “You see it, huckleberry?”

Cowed, the priest nodded. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

“This cost more than your car.” Cardinal Goddard paused to let that sink in. “You see, my frocked friend, that’s who I am—and you’re nobody.” The Cardinal walked back to the head of the table and reached into the box. “It takes only two things to win that trip to Rome, fellas.” Goddard stepped from behind the box to reveal a pair of ornate brass balls dangling from strips of leather. “It takes these,” he said. “The money’s out there, gentlemen. All you have to do is collect it. Fail to do so and I will make everlasting damnation seem like a pancake supper. Any questions?” There was a pause as the gathered clerics looked to see if anyone was bold enough to voice an objection. Something caught Cardinal Goddard’s eye. He walked slowly over to Monsignor Matthews. “What about you, Monsignor?” He waited for a response. “Monsignor, are you with us?”

Matthews looked up, startled back from his daydream.
“Uh, Mamet,” he sputtered. “I mean, mammon. It’s all about mammon.”

Father Carter looked at him oddly. “Yes, well, to the extent that we need to see the ten percent increase in your diocesan assessments, that’s true,” he said. “Thank you, gentlemen.” With that, Father Carter shuffled out of the room with his projector.

As the rest of the men gathered their belongings and drifted toward the elevator, Monsignor Matthews gathered his thoughts. On the one hand, he was relieved that he hadn’t been busted for his subversive activities. On the other, he now had a serious problem with Sister Peg—which problem could easily lead to his being … busted. He hated that sort of thing. Matthews knew that the quickest way to improve his diocesan assessment payments was by cutting off his Care Center funding. That wouldn’t be a problem except that he wasn’t supposed to be funding the Care Center in the first place. In fact, several years ago Monsignor Matthews had received a tersely worded memo specifically ordering him not to fund Sister Peg’s charitable enterprise for reasons not divulged in the memo.

Of course, Monsignor Matthews knew the reasons and had dismissed them as irrelevant. He had known Sister Peg for years and he knew that she could help more people with a hundred dollars than most charities did with a thousand. If he cut her off now, there was no telling what song she’d start to sing. She knew at least two tunes that would bury him.

Monsignor Matthews looked across the room at a glass display case containing a sacred ivory diptych, a hinged writing tablet from the second century, decorated with the image of the Virgin Mary flanked by angels, probably worth twelve million dollars on a good day at Christie’s. It sickened him to think of how much good that money
could
do, but never would. Instead, it would sit in this conference room for the
enjoyment of a few men. This was a perfect example of the sort of thing that angered the Monsignor. Still, he knew how to pick his fights and there was no point agitating the peabrained prelates in Accounts Receivable. Monsignor Matthews had a far more dangerous foe to deal with.

D
AN HAD A BOTTLE OF SCOTCH IN THE VAN; UNFORTUNATELY
it wasn’t one of the five vintage-dated single-malt Scotch whiskies produced by the world-renowned Glenlivet Distillery. Still, it was good whiskey, Chivas Regal twelve-year-old. As the sun went down, he sat there with his dirty hands and had a few while looking out over the cemetery. He thought about the good times and he took some comfort in the sentimentality and the sadness, but mostly it came from the Chivas. Dan felt bad about the service he’d performed and wanted to make up for it. After another drink Dan warmed to the idea of a wake. Of course, it would be a small wake—party of one—but it would be good for him, something to wash away his bitterness and anger, something to honor his other half. So he cranked the old VW and drove home.

On the way back, Dan remembered that he had a nice steak in the fridge. That would be a good start. He could open a Sterling Vineyard cabernet and make toasts to his brother’s memory. It would be a nice gesture and far more Catholic than Dan’s service, which was closer to Church of England than anything else. He’d load up the new Fujioka with CDs that Michael would have liked, some Bob Dylan maybe, or Paul Simon. Then, after dinner, he’d sit in the big recliner, finish off the wine, and have a good cry.