Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective

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BOOK: Prodigal Father

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From deceitful and cunning men, rescue me, O God.

â
Psalm 43

Marie Murkin would not take vacations and she did not go on retreat. Her role as housekeeper of the St. Hilary rectory was all
she needed of restorative satisfaction in this Vale of Tears and more than she needed to keep a watch over her soul. There were pastors who gossiped with their housekeepers as if they were aunts or older sisters. When from time to time she got together with another housekeeperâGretchen Carey of Mother of God was impossible to keep at bayâshe listened with tolerant amusement to tales of the chatty domesticity of that sybaritic rectory with its two and a half priests (old Father Harrington was in residence, and good for a Sunday Mass, but otherwise Gretchen's foe at pinochle), and she was filled with contentment at her own lot.

Oh, there had been the years in the land of Egypt when the Franciscans were in charge. From day to day, she had never been sure how long she could abide those jolly, incompetent friars under whom St. Hilary's went into a financial nosedive. The exodus from the great old homes in the parish had begun and FOR SALE signs abounded as one ribbon of concrete after another cut off the parish from what had once been the surrounding countryside. With revenue down and parishioners melting away like wax, with the school only half full and run by suddenly discontented nuns, Marie would have thought that any pastor worth his salt would do his best to galvanize the parish and defend against the evil day that was upon it. But Father Felix, the last of the lot, was out of the rectory more often than he was in it, playing golf or having lunch elsewhere with important friends who never gave a dime to St. Hilary's. And then, as if to prove that novenas to St. Anthony were never in vain, everything changed and Marie was confirmed in her suspicion that the Franciscans had wrongly appropriated the saint of Padua as one of their own. Would any Franciscan have heeded her prayer that the parish be rid of Franciscans?
Almost over night they were gone and the cardinal sent Father Dowling to brighten her twilight years.

Marie was not that old, but she became a valetudinarian when her husband disappeared, going off without warning, not to be heard from again for years, as if all those hitches in the Navy had made dry land impossible for him. And so she had become a housekeeper.

“The grass widow's equivalent of joining the convent,” Father Dowling had said with the dry humor that had taken some getting used to.

“The convent!” The nuns were gone then, the school closed, but Marie's memories of the disgruntled band in their silly pastel suits and veils the size of hankies over their permanents were fresh. They had abandoned the convent as cutting them off from the people, and took up residence in one of the larger houses on Dirksen Drive. A crafty developer named Anderson had talked Felix the Catholic, as she ironically thought of him, into converting the convent into posh apartments, causing the few remaining nuns to covet the place they had so cheerfully abandoned. But soon they and Felix were gone and Father Dowling was in place.

“It is the age of delayed vocations, Marie.”

“You mean departed vocations.” Two could play at that game, as she quickly learned.

“You're not thinking of leaving?”

“Is that what you would like?”

“Talk it over with your spiritual advisor.”

The knack of getting along with Father Dowling lay in knowing when he was serious and when he was not. He had been through the mill, as Gretchen was only too eager to tell her, Marie nodding through the narrative as if it was not all news to her. It was difficult
to think of Father Dowling as a man with elbow trouble. He drank nothing stronger than coffee now, and gallons of that, and he ate like a bird. Marie's cooking was legendary, but it was all lost on Father Dowling. She could have served him cereal at every meal and she doubted he would have noticed. But he had the wit of the Irish and kept her on her toes and she flourished under the new regime. And he was always on the job, so much so that his annual retreat and the monthly day of recollection that took him away were equivocal times for Marie Murkin. The days of recollection were not bad, but the weekly retreat in June was another matter.

The first two days, she went over the rectory, scrubbing, scouring, beating the carpets, waxing the floors, doing the downstairs windows, and putting Edna Hospers's boy Carl to work on those on the second floor. He was such a fearless acrobat at the work she couldn't watch him, but Edna told her not to worry.

“He leads a charmed life. And it gets him away from his computer.”

Thank God, Father Dowling shared her disdain for such new contraptions. He had an old portable typewriter in his study on which he wrote his few letters; he kept the books by hand and could have been an accountant if he really cared about money, which he didn't. Not for himself.

“You haven't had a raise in years, Marie.”

“What would I do with more money?”

“You could consult with your spiritual advisor.”

Was he telling her she ought to have one? Once she hinted, after meeting Gretchen at the Crossed Tea, that she had taken his hint. He lowered his head and looked at her through a cloud of pipe smoke and she resolved never to try fooling him again. He did give her a raise and she sent it to Mother Teresa. She realized
that she no longer felt like an employee. It was Marie's little secret that she was in her way a pastoral assistant. Don't get her started on the subject of women's ordination, it wasn't that, but for all Father Dowling's kidding manner she never felt patronized, or worse, ignored, as she had with the Franciscans. Phil Keegan, the Fox River captain of detectives, was a tougher article, but Marie accepted him as the pastor's friend since boyhood.

“I washed out of Quigley,” Keegan said.

“I don't believe it.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

“As a priest, you would have made a good cop.”

“I didn't have to know Latin to be a cop.”

“You wouldn't have to know it now to become a priest,” Father Dowling remarked.

“It's too late,” Phil said, but without regret.

“Oh, I don't know. Marie is thinking of entering the convent.”

“And exiting five minutes later.”

“Oh, they might let you stay.”

There were times when no reply was the best reply. It was good to have a layman in the house as often as Phil Keegan was. His wife had died, and his daughters lived at opposite ends of the country, but between his work and frequent visits to his old friend, he was more or less content with his lot.

“Or you might marry again,” Father Dowling said with a straight face.

Marie harrumphed. “Once burned, twice shy.”

“Is that St. Paul?”

“The epistle to the grass widows.”

“Marie, you know you're eligible. And Keegan is willin'.”

Phil Keegan was more embarrassed than she was by such sallies. Of course Father Dowling did not mean it. He was not an
effusive man, but Marie was confident that he relied upon her and would act very differently indeed if she ever spoke of leaving.

On Wednesday of the pastor's annual retreat week, the house was spotlessâall but the study; she had learned her lesson about touching anything there.

“Don't,” he had said. “I use the Dewey decimated system. I know where everything is.”

“Everything” was largely the books that lined the four walls of the study and were piled on the only windowsill as well. The first time Marie had smelled the aroma of pipe smoke she had wanted to cheer. The Franciscans had smoked malodorous cigars and the house was as full of ashes as a crematorium. But the smell of a pipe was a glorious thing and Father Dowling was a very neat smoker. He only smoked in the study and the room was redolent of sweet tobacco. But how quickly it dissipated. She went into the study now, but the smoky ghost of the pastor had gone with him. It was a sad thought that the signs of our passage are so quickly gone. She had aired the house for days after the Franciscans left, but the smell of cigars had lingered until it was replaced by the pleasant one of pipe tobacco. It seemed a metaphor of life that the effect of Father Dowling's smoking should be so quickly diluted. She would discuss that with her spiritual director. She had long since decided that living in the same house with Father Dowling was all her soul needed, and for special consultation she had herself. No need to confide in some stranger.

From the study window there was a view of the former school, now converted into a center for seniors of the parish to spend their days. Edna Hospers was in charge, something of a sore point with Marie, as Edna had formed the habit of reporting directly to
the pastor rather than to Marie. She never said anything about it, not directly, but Father Dowling knew her views on the subject. He also knew Edna's. A truce was established, more or less friendly between the two women, but Marie longed to exercise the same authority at the Center as she did in the rectory. Not uncontested authority, of courseâthe line was very difficult to discern on occasionâand Marie did not want to be scolded by Father Dowling for interfering with his specifically pastoral work.

She saw Edna talking to a man on the sidewalk that connected school and rectory, a man not old enough to be one of her wards at the Center. Marie lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose, giving up on her bifocals, but her eyes were useless at a distance. She decided to go see who the man was. Perhaps he wanted the pastor and Edna was telling him to come back next week. That certainly was a decision for Marie to make.

“Oh, here's Mrs. Murkin,” Edna said as Marie approached. “Maybe she can help you.”

Maybe! But Marie's stern look vanished when the man turned and smiled at her. He was somewhere in his fifties, trim, tanned, wavy-haired, the kind of man who had been featured in magazine ads when Marie was susceptible to appeals to her lower nature.

“Stan Morgan,” he said, taking her hand in his. Marie half expected to be pulled into an embrace and half hoped it, too, if only to be one up on Edna.

“I'll leave you, then,” Edna said. “Sorry I couldn't be of help.”

But Edna was now out of sight and out of mind for Stan Morgan. Marie asked him how she could be of help.

“And why don't we go to the rectory?”

“Mrs. Hospers said the pastor was away for the week.”

“That doesn't mean I can't offer you tea.”

On the back porch, he sprang forward to open the door for her
and when they were in her kitchen he stopped, mouth open, hands extended, and sighed as he looked around.

“And this is your domain.”

He lost points there, consigning her to the scullery, but he quickly recovered.

“And why would you want to be anywhere else but here?”

“I won't tell you how long I've been here.”

He didn't ask how long, which was probably just as well. She would have been tempted to tell a fib to make herself seem younger than she was. She sat him at the kitchen table and put on the kettle.

“What kind of pie do you like?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Cherry or apple.”

He hesitated, smiled, shook his head. “Apple, I guess.”

“How about a little slice of each?”

“Aren't you having any?” he said when, tea poured, she seated herself across from him.

She shook her head, the self-denial of a woman intent on retaining some semblance of her figure. “So how can I help you?”

“What is the pastor's name?”

Marie sat back. “You're not a salesman, are you?”

“Good God, no.”

They both laughed. She told him Father Roger Dowling was pastor. He thought about it.

“I don't remember that name.”