Gospel (46 page)

“Ah, those are the bells,” said Lucy, noticing it was ringing four, and now time for mass. “Gotta go now,” she insisted, figuring once the conversation had sunk to weather, that it was time to throw herself upon the mercy of the Church.

“Yep,” sighed Farley, “I'm at the Albergo dee Spoe-letto. If you wanna come around tonight,” Farley began, shuffling a bit, “we could, you know, go eat some Italian food or some'n.” He looked momentarily panicked. “That is, if you're not doing some religious, some kinda
fast
or nothin'.”

Persistent boy. Not letting the nun's habit discourage him. “Maybe I'll stop by later,” said Lucy, before slipping into the church.

“Maybe see you in Rome?”

But Lucy was safe inside the church. And there she sat, worn out, sore from walking, but delighted with Assisi, looking forward to Rome, and sleepy because of her two half-glasses of Rosso d'Assisi.
Santuario.
These churches were sanctuaries from the unrelenting Italian sun. How soothing the caressing shade of the church was. In fact, if she didn't get back to the hostel for a nap, she'd go to sleep right here.

*   *   *

Before Lucy's nap, she dutifully faxed a progress report to Chicago as requested, saying all was going well and other vague things at O'Hanrahan's insistence. She also saw she had received a note, which the sisters presented her.

After her nap, Lucy determined to go into town and started fixing herself up. She sprayed herself with perfume … uh-oh, I bet that's out for the Poor Clares. Well, maybe no one will notice it.

She went to the window to look out on the backside of the Santa Maria Basilica, which was nicer than the front, the exterior so much nicer than the interior. And in the shadow of the early evening there were children playing below her window in the dusty churchyard below, arguing, squealing, tickling, bawling, the big one justifying why the little one was just hit. Children's play, apparently, had only so many variations. Lucy waved to the little girl—five years old? six?—amusing herself in the dust, reveling in it contentedly, wild and tan. The girl looked up and demonstrated that she could make a cross for the sister. Lucy crossed back approvingly. I'm a marked woman in this getup, thought Lucy, checking her appearance again in the mirror before escaping into the Umbrian evening.

Coincidentally, Lucy passed O'Hanrahan in the courtyard, he with two friars, one of them holding a decorative bottle containing an emerald-green liqueur.

“Whewwweeee, Sister Lucy!”

Okay, perhaps a little too much perfume. “I thought,” she said performing a smile, “I'd go see the nightlife of Assisi.”

One of the monks, an American, said, “Nightlife in this town? It hasn't improved since Francis's day.”

O'Hanrahan sidled closer to Lucy, “Now, Sister Lucy, I think you know your vows don't allow such indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh.”

“Good night, Dr. O'Hanrahan.”

“Give Farley my best,” called O'Hanrahan after her. “And remember, we're leaving for Rome at midnight.”

Lucy then took the shuttle bus into Assisi; one of the young men offered her a seat. Across from her was a young couple, who had been entwined like all adolescent Italian couples, kissing every few seconds, hands on each other's legs, snuggling, playing in each other's hair … but they had cut it out when Lucy—Sister Lucy—sat across from them. The girl sweetly smiled at Lucy. Lucy winked back. She could imagine their conversation, once off the bus: Why did you stop kissing me? The girl would say she didn't want the
suora
to feel like she was missing out on romance, poor thing. Then they'd laugh. Then they'd start kissing again, for all the lost seconds.

Before she knew it, she was at the stop for the Piazza del Commune, the center of Assisi, a plaza with a few cafés, daytime souvenir shops, what seemed to be a medieval town hall with an old tower, and—as if Assisi needed another beautiful thing—a crumbling Roman temple. This must be the place, she sighed. She reached into her habit pocket for the note she had been given earlier … the Temple of Minerva, at 8:00
P.M.
As if it read her note, the clock in the square began to clang the hour. She walked to the temple, now pleasantly surrounded by medieval buildings of the same height, which was sort of humorous. Minerva was the favorite virgin Daughter of God to the pagans; now the church was rededicated to Mary. She imagined O'Hanrahan's lecturing: no big difference.

She could hardly wait for Gabriel to arrive.

Lucy had survived her delusions with David McCall—he seemed as remote a possibility as someone standing across a chasm. No, perhaps, it was Gabriel she had better turn her attentions to again; a nice Catholic guy from Bridgeport who understood her—

“Long way from Archer Road, huh?” she heard from behind her.

Lucy spun around to see Gabriel, still in monk's robes, approaching with a smile. He hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, and then stood there on the balls of his feet, virtually rocking with pleasure at seeing his old friend.

“It's all over now!” he said in his high-pitched voice. “My mission is finished, and now I can have the first decent night's sleep in several months! You know I wanted to talk to you in Oxford and Ballymacross but I just couldn't until all this was through, Luce.”

“I understand,” she said sincerely. “It seems to have worked out for the best with Dr. O'Hanrahan, huh?”

They strolled to a nearby café, not too far from where Lucy and the professor had dined that afternoon. There were only four tables outside, so they waited a bit; finally two teenage girls moved on, seeming to scurry away giggling about the brother and sister, imagining some plot out of Boccaccio, philandering
religiosi.
For that matter, Lucy was hoping for much the same thing.

“I love Assisi,” said Gabriel. “It's been really
special
being here and seeing where St. Francis lived. I mean, you know me, what did I care about Francis? But he was like me in a lot of ways. He got depressed a lot, he wrote poetry.” He looked comically to the heavens with his big brown eyes. “Hey, do you remember all my classics? All my great poems freshman year?”

“I remember,” said Lucy.

This was a young person's café and the
ragazzi
seemed to resent the friar and sister invading their scene. The gush of bad, overorchestrated Italian pop music, interrupted by the same Madonna single every other song, blared forth with the video games from the bar behind them. A waiter indifferently brought them their orders, a cappuccino for Lucy, a lime
granita
for Gabriel, who sat there slurping his green half-melted ice drink through his straw.

“Anyway,” he was saying, gesturing with his big, irrelevant hands, “some of the brothers you meet here are something else, Lucy. We got Marxists, we have Third World gunrunners, there was this Canadian brother who lectured and said it was our duty to assassinate people like Pinochet and Ceauşescu—can you imagine?”

He talked on and Lucy fell into an old practice: pretending to listen to Gabriel. Gabriel, she thought, hadn't changed much since his St. Eulalia days; paler than before, a melancholy olive, his large brown eyes more intelligent than he was, used primarily for his great show of being sensitive. Not that Lucy would exactly call that quality
goodness.

“… so anyway, in an effort to avoid my true feelings, I joined the order hoping to make myself proper again, in God's eyes, because I knew what a fuck-up I really was. You know, I've never been able to, like, empower my own self-esteem…”

Yeah, she'll always love him a little bit. A realistic, vintaged, removed-from-the-center-of-the-heart love. Judy, whom Gabriel ironically was fond of, trashed him relentlessly back at the apartment: “I can't see him,” she had said, “making a woman very happy in bed, you know what I mean?”

Judy—world's expert on people in bed.

Gabriel was rambling, “I mean, it comes down to sex, doesn't it always? If you don't get that straightened out by eighteen or so, you really are in for a bad time, and I spent just more time than you know worrying over this thing…”

Poor Gabriel, thought Lucy. And poor me, as well. I should have dragged you when we were seventeen, kicking and screaming back to my bedroom, swept the stuffed animals off the bedspread, turned around the virgin statue on the ledge, and we should have started our lives then and there. How different, how unguilty our lives might have proceeded from such a moment! How normal.

“… and so that's why I really had to see you, you know, to say all this. I mean, for years I thought I ought to quit, because I brought shame to the Franciscans, and then Father Gordon said that if I thought homosexuality was a sin, I should stay with the order and atone for it by doing good with my life. I don't think Father Gordon or a lot of the monks think it
is
a sin…”

What was this about homosexuality?

“… and so I expect to be in El Salvador or Nicaragua this fall, with the mission, and I'll give you my address so you can write me and I've got your address, right?”

“Uh, waita second, Gabe. What was this about being gay?”

He took a restorative sip of his lime-green
granita.
“I think I am. I mean, I
know
I am. But you'd probably figured it out, huh? And I was sure Judy told you anyway.”

“Judy?”

“I'd talked a little with her about it, because she's a psychologist and all.”

Lucy stared at her cappuccino a moment.

Gee, what to be upset about first? The ascension of Judy as confidante or Dad being right about something after all—calling Gabriel from time immemorial “that little fruit.” Goddam it, he's going to go back to Chicago and do it with that loser Christopher.

“It's not too much of a shock, is it?” he asked, looking down his straw. “I'm hoping you can, you know, support me on this.”

Lucy merely asked, “But you're going to remain with the order?”

“Think so,” he said. Lucy noticed his mouth and tongue were green from his drink. “How's Patrick?” he asked a moment later.

She still wasn't quite up to engaging in mental operations, still reviewing the facts: chaste, Franciscan, and gay. Mother told you this wouldn't end in marriage and Mother was correct. And Judy. God, the I-told-you-so of Judy will be heard round the world …

“Lucy? Dr. O'Hanrahan?”

“Oh,” she said distractedly, “the same as always.” It was too early to tell precisely how she felt; she wanted to go sort things out somewhere in private. “Dr. O'Hanrahan,” she began, “was furious—
is
furious about your stealing the scroll. Of course, it seems to have worked out, so maybe you two can patch it up.”

Gabriel took a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. “I was very uncomfortable working with him. He got very … fatherly.”

“You don't think he was trying to…”

“Oh no, no, nothing like
that.
He's straight as an arrow, I'm sure. Or used to be, you know there's lots of hanky-panky stories about him, him and secretaries, him and graduate students.”

No, Lucy didn't know.

“Back in the swinging '60s,” he continued. “I doubt he's up to very much now, you know what I mean?” Gabriel returned to why the professor made him uncomfortable. “I got the impression I was becoming his surrogate son, you know?”

Couldn't be, thought Lucy. O'Hanrahan reaching out for human contact?

Gabriel used his quiet and confidential tone he always said serious things in: “You know he lost his son and wife in accidents a number of years back, right?”

Lucy knew of it, but O'Hanrahan's general rollick and bluster had never suggested he might still be in mourning. “But that was in like, uh, 1973, wasn't it?” she asked.

“Yeah, but you don't get over losing your whole family, do you?”

“No, guess not.”

Gabriel continued, “If I mistranslated any of the Greek in the indices we were using … well, he'd get
way
too mad at me. He kept talking about big plans for me, where he could get me an academic job, as if I were, you know, his little boy or something. And when I tried to run off with the scroll in Rome, he thought, I'm sure, that it was a personal stab in the back.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“He's a very unhappy man, Patrick.”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan?”

“Yeah, can't you tell?”

Well, no. The professor seemed this thick impenetrable wall, this Titan, this walking encyclopedia of the ages combined with a dash of American philistine, a Socrates of toilet humor … no, Socrates was nicer somehow. Tertullian, someone like that. The truth was she was too scared and in awe of him to think he might be a human, let alone a grieving human.

Gabriel asked, “Ever seen a picture of his family?”

“No.”

“His wife was a nurse in the Korean War. She left the sisterhood for him and he left the Jesuits for her. Did you not know this?”

“Not all of it.”

“Anyway, in his wallet, there's a black-and-white of his son, a yearbook picture. We could be twins, really.”

“You and O'Hanrahan's son?”

Gabriel finished his drink, slurping the last of it noisily through the straw. “Patrick's pretty ill too, I have a feeling.”

Lucy sighed. The least informed person on the planet.

“Once in Rome he got in a really bad way. Have you seen this yet? His hands and feet lose their circulation and he gets doubled over. Cirrhosis or diabetes, or something.” The plaza clock rang the half-hour. “Hey, I've got to go. Nine o'clock curfew at the monastery. Don't wanna get locked out or nothing.” He added in a muted gay camp: “Who knows what's going on after the late mass tonight, hm?” Then he laughed at himself. “Just kidding, Luce.”