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“Dreadful man. Dreadful boy, for that matter.”

“Tell us about him.”

Mortimer Sadler, class of 1977, had been an undergraduate during the first generation of women students at Notre Dame. In a flamboyant column he had written for
The Observer,
he had embarked on a veritable crusade, writing again and again that the university had made a mistake in going coeducational. His misogyny stemmed in large part from the indifference those women students showed to his efforts to acquaint them with the marvels of the Mortimer Sadler personality. It should be said that the first women admitted to Notre Dame were the crème de la crème, most of them valedictorians of their high school classes, as a group more gifted than the male students. Mortimer had never excelled as a student, considering his four years at Notre Dame to be a preparation not for the intellectual life but for the career in business for which he was destined. He was the scion of the Sadler family of Minneapolis, who had prospered in insurance as a robust belief in providence waned.

“I once suggested that he could be related to the writer,” Father Carmody said.

“The writer?”

“Mary Anne Sadlier.”

“Despite the altered spelling?”

Father Carmody ignored the question. The point was that Roger now recognized the Catholic woman author to whom he referred.

“He reacted as if I had suggested a female ancestor had been a woman of loose morals.”

“A prude?”

“About the life of the mind. He brought home to one the fact that athletic
fan
derives from
fanatic.
I was prompted to make the suggestion about Sadlier when Mortimer wrote a story, a fantasy of the future when the Notre Dame football team would be coed.”

“Was it any good?”

“It was horrible. Have you read Mary Anne Sadlier?”

“Not yet.”

The conversation turned to what Jimmy Stewart had learned at the hospital. The supposition that Sadler had been felled by a stroke had been dismissed and the family by telephone had agreed to an autopsy.

“He paid for one of the new halls,” Father Carmody said.

“He was wealthy?”

“Reasonably so.”

Once Sadler would have been thought a veritable Croesus among donors, but nowadays Notre Dame was the beneficiary of men of unimaginable riches, not all of them alumni. Not all of them Catholics, either, but for many the university had become an emotional tie with a lost faith. Its prosperity attracted ever more generosity, and those who had known great success in the world took inordinate pleasure in having their names attached to campus buildings.

“Once we named residences after former presidents or great priests like John A. Zahm. And Rockne, of course.”

The priest's voice became wistful as he remembered those better days.

“Who ever thought there would be a residence named after Mortimer Sadler? But God is not mocked.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is a women's residence.”

3

When Mortimer Sadler failed to show up at his scheduled teeoff time at Warren, the three men who had been anxiously awaiting his arrival drove off without him. Unhappily. Reduced to a threesome they were ineligible for the prizes reserved for foursomes, such as the greatest number of putts. There was a prize for the least number as well, but these men were realists and put their hope neither in princes nor in their athletic skills.

“Mort is usually the first one on the tee,” Ben Barley said to Jim Crown, with whom he shared a cart. The third member of the group, Chris Toolin, had a cart to himself.

“I phoned his room,” Ben added. “No answer.”

“Phoned?”

Ben patted the cell phone in a holster on his belt. Chris scowled. Much of his wealth came from investments in telecommunications, but he would cheerfully abolish the cell phone if he could. How many inane conversations had he been made privy to while exhibitionists broadcast their supposed private conversations to the ambient world? Chris remembered the dark day when, napping in the VIP lounge of an airport, a shrill woman's voice behind him brought him abruptly awake. She spoke loudly; she seemed to be addressing him, and he turned in alarm. She ignored him and went on speaking into the instrument she held. Dear God. A monument should be raised to the man who invented the phone booth. Perhaps legislation could be introduced requiring that the use of cell phones be confined to booths. But no. Too much legislation was on the books already. In political theory, Chris Toolin was a species of libertarian, but when he exalted freedom he was thinking largely of his own. Who knew, someday he, too, might have need of a cell phone.

“No answer.”

“I thought he must be out early, practicing.”

“But we agreed to no prior practicing.”

“And a mulligan off the first tee.” Crown had availed himself of that privilege when his first drive went abruptly south after heading out toward the fairway.

Ben Barley, Crown, Toolin, and Sadler had all shared a quad in St. Edward's Hall as undergraduates, and they were acquainted with all the flaws in his character, as he was with theirs. It was perfectly conceivable to them that Mort, after solemnly agreeing to the no-prior-practice rule, would have got to the course early like the big bad wolf and hit a bucket of balls to limber up. But all efforts to locate Mort as their tee time approached had proved futile. If he had been on the course he would have been found.

“Dead in bed?” Crown suggested.

Ben made the sign of the cross. The old classmates had reached the half-century mark and most days still felt in the full vigor of youth. Nonetheless, from time to time, one of their classmates died. Forty of their class had died already. As an insurance man, Mort would have known the statistical unlikelihood of that happening to any of them.

“More likely hung over.”

Crown smiled. Last night the foursome had dined at the Morris Inn, where they were staying, gone on to the bar afterward, and from thence to the suite Mort was writing off as a business expense, a large corner room from which the bedroom was separated by what Barley called a distinction of reason.

“A what?”

“Don't get him started.”

Whenever Ben Barley returned to campus whole lectures came back to him that he had not thought of for years. He was particularly susceptible to remembered philosophy courses. He had majored in theology and mathematics, unsure whether he had a vocation to the priesthood or to high school teaching. In any event, he became a lawyer in Chicago.

“It's funny, when I come down for games it doesn't happen. I think I have to be with you guys. Do you remember the Principle of Sufficient Reason?”

A pillow thrown from across the room silenced him. There followed ten minutes of the kind of mayhem that had characterized their undergraduate life: cushions torn from the couch and used as chest protectors, bottles of tonic water turned into weapons with which to spray others. Crown, remembering a bit of Latin before the liturgical reforms unleashed by Vatican II, intoned the
Asperges me hyssopo
when he shook his bottle and then, with its mouth half covered by the ball of his thumb, directed a spray of tonic water in a wide arc. A lamp was overturned, a chair upended, shouts and laughter filled the room. When the activity subsided, they collapsed on the floor wherever they had stood, filled with fierce and false memories of carefree youth.

“More likely,” Ben agreed. “How's your head?”

“Don't ask.”

The two men took their second shots and drove on to where Chris awaited them beside his drive. Chris was the only one of the four who golfed well and he professed to prefer tennis. But then he played every game well. Effortlessly. He had done well producing infomercials for cable television channels, a once promising creativity directed into lucrative if trivial pursuits. Once he himself as well as the others had expected great things from him in the literary line. But the competent short stories of his undergraduate days had not proved a prelude to anything more. The previous night he had announced his attention to write a book called
Ventriloquism for Dummies.
All had laughed and then fallen silent, as if commemorating the death of his promise.

Toolin, Crown, Barley, and Sadler. The four had kept in desultory touch since graduation. It had been Sadler who convinced a significant number of the class to defy the alumni association and hold their class reunion apart from the five-year intervals that brought other classes back to the campus for bouts of nostalgia. So it was that thirty-five members of the class of 1977 had reserved rooms in the Morris Inn and returned for two days of togetherness at Notre Dame. Paths that had diverged briefly converged and their practice had received the eventual benediction of the alumni association, thereby removing some of the zest from their reunions. Since he had been the initiator, Mort retained the right to devise the schedule of these days. The golf tournament on the second and final day had become de rigueur, looked forward to throughout the year by Mort, who could not abandon his undergraduate dream of athletic prowess. He bought the instructional videos advertised in Toolin's infomericals, he sent off for trick clubs and devices guaranteed to improve his swing, and he was coached weekly by a pro in Minneapolis. And his game improved—so long as he did not play at Notre Dame. Returning to the campus brought back all the ineptitude of his undergraduate days and the faults that had been overcome in Minneapolis returned with a vengeance in South Bend. His old friends were right to suspect that he had stolen some time to practice before the scheduled match, despite previous agreements made with less than clear minds the night before. Perhaps he considered that playing a few holes on the old course did not violate the agreement, though none of his friends would have suspected him of such scrupulosity.

“Maybe he ran away with Maureen O'Kelly,” Barley suggested on the first green, speaking while Toolin was in the act of putting.

Crown barked with laughter. Toolin's ball rolled twenty feet past the hole.

Since the renunion was Mort Sadler's inspiration, it was boycotted by the women in their class.

“Girlcotted?” Barley asked. A return to Notre Dame brought back facetiousness like a plague.

Maureen O'Kelly had taken a room in the Morris Inn as a member of the reunion, accompanied by Francie, her eldest daughter. When Mort had been sent the list of registrants by the Morris Inn he had immediately phoned his old roommates to inform them of the outrage.

“She's a member of the class, Mort.”

“Wasn't she our valedictorian?”

As if anyone could forget the commencement at which Maureen had harangued the twelve thousand people gathered in the Joyce Center for their graduation. Maureen had recalled the campaign carried on in
The Observer
without mentioning Mortimer Sadler by name, but of course every student there knew to whom she referred. Mortimer had sat sweating through the ordeal, which was made worse by his remembering the jocular incredulity with which Maureen had greeted his advances during their freshman year. Her disdainful dismissal of his suit had been the origin of his campaign against coeducation at Notre Dame. And now, on the culminating day of their four-year stay, she was allowed to malign him without possibility of reply. He had seethed. He had seethed during the years since whenever he recalled that ignominious occasion. And now she was registered in the Morris Inn, brazenly present at the reunion that had hitherto attracted only males of the class.

“I understand the poor woman is a widow.”

“Only a trial separation. And she is not a poor woman. She is amply provided for.”

“She is more beautiful now than when she was young.”

This was the unkindest cut of all, because it was so manifestly true. The previous night, before the golf tournament, when the four old roommates—they had presumed to refer to themselves as the Four Horsemen but dropped it when others called them the Four Jockeys—were dining in Sorin's Restaurant at the inn, Maureen had come to their table. Her luxuriant hair was still golden, her features might have adorned the cover of a fashion magazine, her green eyes were playful as she stood over them.

“Ah, the chauvinists reunited.”

This accusation was vigorously protested by Mortimer's three friends. Barley assured Maureen that they had had nothing to do with Mortimer's quixotic campaign.

“But you never repudiated it.”

“We do so now,” Barely assured her, and two other heads nodded assent. During this exchange, Maureen had studiously avoided looking at Mortimer, who sat transfixed by her beauty as he vainly sought some word of repartee that would destroy her superiority.

“Let bygones be bygones,” Toolin said. “After all, you have come.”

“My daughter Francie and I are looking forward to the tournament. She was runner-up for the state amateur championship in Minnesota.”

“How is your game?”

“Not quite as good as hers.”

“Are you willing to wager on it?” Mortimer managed to say.

“Wager what?”

“My score against yours.”

“What is your handicap?”

“Seventeen.”

She laughed. “Think of all the strokes I'll have to give you.”

But the offer had been made and was heartily endorsed by Mortimer's companions. The bet was for a hundred dollars. Belatedly, Mortimer remembered that Maureen had won the women's golf tournament during their commencement week. Even with the strokes she apparently had to give him, he was uncertain that he could beat her.

“What is your handicap, Maureen?”

“The memory of an elephant.” And her green eyes burned into Mortimer's uplifted face. “See you on the course.”

She walked away, and her graceful movements were followed with murmuring approval from Mortimer's table companions. He had walked into a trap. Maureen would beat him tomorrow, and it would stand as the refutation of everything he had written in
The Observer.