He seemed to be saying that Father Furty was weak and that he, the Pastor, was strong. And we were strong, too! It was our duty to pray for the weak, to help save their souls. It was what Christ did — gave himself to other people and propped them up and helped them enter Heaven. He had done more than that — he had died for the sins of the world. Christ took that burden upon himself, and therefore we should follow his example and take this burden upon ourselves — Father Furty! In so many words, that was it.
“And not to please ourselves!” he kept saying. And this refrain meant it wasn’t pleasure — no fun, no enjoyment, not even any conscious satisfaction. It was suffering. He said: Pray. He said: Forgive. He said: Do penance.
And all this because Father Furty was a sinner. The Pastor didn’t use that word — he said “weak” and “almost lost” and “struggling”—but it was clear that he meant that Father Furty was a sad case. Because the poor man had needed help when he was alive (what help? That small dark room in Holy Name House?), now that he was dead the help had to continue, for alive or dead the weak were still weak and needed prayer.
Every time he said dead I died.
The idea was that Father Furty was in Purgatory, but we had to do the work to get him out.
I saw from this sermon how much the Pastor disliked him, and how he had turned poor Father Furty into a test of faith. But none of this really bothered him, for the emotion that was clearest in what he said was relief. Father Furty had been a problem as a live and lively man, but now that he was a soul in Purgatory — and not in Heaven or Hell — he was less of a problem.
Father Furty’s sermons were so different. “He went to the dogs,” he used to say. “Let me tell you what happens when you go to the dogs. Think of it — the dogs!”
I laughed when he said that, thinking of a pair of cocker spaniels my uncle owned. Father Furty laughed too. It was a good sermon. The message was: Don’t give up — Keep the faith — You’re not as bad as you think you are!
“On your knees,” the Pastor was saying. There was a sort of terror, like a black flame, hovering over the congregation. Father Furty had been a problem. He was better off dead — death in fact had come just in time. He was lucky to be dead, because he had been a failure, and now it was up to us to get him out of Purgatory and into the sight of God.
It was awful, it was horrible, I wanted to cry; but if I had the Pastor would have bawled me out from the pulpit.
There was a little more about penance, and then as suddenly as he had begun, the Pastor blessed himself—“And the Father, and the Son, and …”—and the sermon was over.
Eetay mee-sigh est.
Dayo grah-see-ahs.
I picked up my candlestick and as we filed slowly in front of the altar, and as the casket was rolled away, I realized that my mind was made up: I wanted to be a priest. It must have been God’s will, for how else could the thought have been planted there? I was glad that Tina had been at the funeral, because now it would be easier to explain my decision.
“Hey, Parent,” Chicky said in the sacristy.
His voice was gentle and friendly: it was his way of showing there were no hard feelings.
“Hey, that’s your third funeral.”
I had not thought of it as a funeral. It had been something much gloomier, more intense and final and private than anything I had ever known. I gave Chicky a blank look. I had lost my voice.
“Hey, you got a wedding coming to you.”
9
It was too painful after that to pray for Father Furty, because as soon as my prayer produced his friendly face my memory told me he was dead, and I missed him more than ever. I thought hard about becoming a priest. Did God want me? And I thought about Tina. I wanted to be the sort of priest who would have a friend like Tina, and it seemed a good life — being a priest, with close friends. Father Furty had been human in that way, and his example gave me hope.
There were my sins. I was still not in a state of grace, for whenever I thought of Tina — whenever she shimmered into my mind — I undressed her. Not all the way, but to her satiny slip, with little straps, and lace at the bottom edge, and the light showing through it and outlining the contours of her panties, the way she was packed into them. She always stood up in my imagining, with her arms at her sides, and slightly smiling, like a model in a Sear’s catalogue. This vision made the blood in my head pound, yet I knew it was wrong, it was Circle Two, and I had to hurry out and run, or break bottles, to get rid of it. But of course it was too late: it was just another terrible sin overlapping the others stuck on my soul like black patches.
Not seeing her made everything worse. I wanted to see her, but her mother and mine had come to some agreement to prevent our meeting. And of course, wanting to see her was not the same as having the willpower to see her, and I often thought I would be content just to go on imagining her in her underwear.
Then, two days after the funeral, the telephone rang.
“It’s me,” she said.
“Hi.” I was afraid to say her name.
“I saw you at the church.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How come you went?”
“Because I liked him, and I wanted to say goodbye. That sounds stupid. I mean, I didn’t want to stay away.”
“How did you know when to stand up or kneel down?”
“I just guessed.”
“Did you pray?”
“Sort of,” she said. “I saw you carrying that candle. Was it heavy?”
“Not really.”
“You looked cute in that altar boy outfit.”
I did not know what to say. I let a moment pass, but she spoke quickly and filled that silence with her whisper.
“Andy, my mother just went out to a sale at Filene’s and I’m all alone in the house, so why don’t you come over?”
The hammering began in my head, my mouth went dry. I said, “I don’t know.” I could sense her lips against the phone.
“We could listen to records,” she said.
“I’m pretty busy,” I said — a terror was taking hold of me. It was not dragging me away — it was thrusting me nearer to the danger of saying yes. Tina’s warmth came through the phone like heat through a pipe. “Let’s see, what time is it?”
From the next room, my mother said, “It’s half-past one.”
She had been listening!
“I just remembered something,” I said.
“Who’s that?” my mother called out. “Who are you talking to?”
“I’ve got to go,” I said, and hung up.
“Who was that?” my mother said. She was ironing in the kitchen, a laundry basket on the floor, a stack of neatly ironed clothes on the kitchen table. She was shaking water out of a tonic bottle fitted with a nozzle, and sending up hissing steam by pushing her iron over it. She always looked older and tireder when she was at the ironing board. Your shirts, she sometimes said in an accusing way, making me responsible for having to do this work. “Tell me.”
“No one.”
“I think you enjoy tormenting me,” she said. “Was it a girl?”
“No,” I said, because I was afraid of the questions that would follow my saying yes.
And yet they followed all the same.
“Andy, do you have a girlfriend?”
I shook my head: it seemed to make the lie less vicious.
“Is it that Tina Spector — the girl you promised me you wouldn’t see?”
When had I promised that? My denying grunt was “Uh-uh.” Again, a grunt seemed milder than an outright lie.
But my mother persisted, demanding the lie. “Are you sure?”