“I am sorry. I wanted to eat more.” Leo Tunney paused; his voice was still a bit odd to the Western ear, singsong in inflection. “I thought I did. My apologies.”
“There’s no need to apologize, Father,” McGillicuddy boomed suddenly. “Not after everything you’ve been through, I can imagine how it puts you off your feed. Don’t give it a thought. To tell you the truth…” He waved the unlit cigar again, dismissing the sentence. “I really like rice as well but that’s Mrs. Jones again, all over. I give her a generous budget to manage the kitchen but I swear she buys food of the most wretched kind — convenience foods, fast foods — the other night she served bread stuffing that she had made in a pan on the stove. Served it with ham. Ham and stuffing? My God, I told her, it was an abomination. Now, before Mrs. Jones came to us, we had a real cook. Mrs. Andretti was here for so long — do you remember her from your time before you… went to Laos? A grand cook, God rest her soul, she died two years ago, just fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up. A good death.” In memoriam, McGillicuddy let his cigar lead a silent funeral dirge. “But what a cook,” he said then, returning to it. “She was from Boston, you know she knew how to cook. She cooked like an angel, an angel. Mrs. Jones, on the other hand, well, I’m afraid we’re all not doing as well as we once did. She’s a native of Florida, Father, from the panhandle. Well, there is absolutely no cuisine from this state, nothing at all. And I can tell you, I like most things about the South, Father, I’m a man easily satisfied, I can tell you. But, well, when it comes to cooking, real cooking, well, when these people try to go beyond fried chicken, they’re just as lost as children.”
At that moment, the object of Father McGillicuddy’s scorn entered the room with fresh plates containing wedges of apple pie topped with ice cream.
Mrs. Jones was not young; her thin face was etched with hard lines that suggested she was either a widow or a woman who had never married — not from choice. She put the dishes down before the two men as though she had heard everything Father McGillicuddy had said, and returned to the kitchen through the swinging door without a word.
Leo Tunney stared at the apparition of fruit and ice cream melting into piecrust, at the sauce swimming around the edges of the concoction. He felt sick again. His face was white, his lips were dry. He reached for a glass of water.
“Well,” McGillicuddy boomed, slapping the unlit cigar down on the white damask tablecloth. “I must accept surrender when it comes to her skills at desserts.” He picked up a clean fork, inspected the prongs for a moment, and then stabbed at the piecrust. “She can make desserts with the best of them, I give credit where credit is due, and I can tell you you should taste her pecan pie, there’s nothing like it. It’s probably been years since you’ve had anything like this, eh?”
Leo Tunney did not listen to the words but to the voice rising and falling and interrupting itself with slurps as McGillicuddy shoveled the pie into his mouth. That afternoon, McGillicuddy had insisted that Leo Tunney needed a “little fresh air” and taken him for a drive in his large brown Cadillac. Leo Tunney had permitted everything to be done to him. The cold leather of the interior made him feel an echo of the chills that had alternated with the fevers of the last few days. The air conditioner hummed from the dashboard vents and Father McGillicuddy only turned it down when he noticed Tunney shivering in his cassock, his thin arms folded across his chest. All afternoon, Tunney had endured McGillicuddy’s tourist-guide monologue as the car traveled across Clearwater and over the causeway to the island of Clearwater Beach, then down Sand Key to the tip of Treasure Island. Leo Tunney had listened to the voice and not the words and stared out the tinted windows of the automobile at the unfamiliar landscape: palm trees over stucco buildings in endless rows, old men and women shambling along the sidewalks of Clearwater Beach in shorts and loose shirts and wraparound sunglasses. He had not spoken at all.
At two o’clock, McGillicuddy had insisted they stop at a seafood restaurant on Gulf View Boulevard on the beach. Tunney had not felt hungry but when the fish was brought to the table, he had been surprised by a return of his appetite. He had begun to eat the fish with some relish when he noticed that McGillicuddy was staring at him. Then he realized he had been separating the flakes of grouper with his fingers.
“I’m sorry to embarrass you,” Leo Tunney had said with the ghost of a smile on his white face. He had looked around but no one was staring at him.
“Nothing, nothing at all, Father, don’t give it a second thought,” the fat priest had replied. But it was clear that Tunney was expected to pick up a fork.
Why had he found it so difficult to reacquaint himself with the Western tool after those years away? Even when the Agency had confined him to his room, sending meals up, Rice had noticed his difficulty. Yes, of them all, Rice had understood from the beginning. About many things. They had procured chopsticks for him after the first day in the hotel and even ordered his food from the Chinese restaurant down the street.
The brief excursion in the sun, at the restaurant, driving down the rows of motels and hotels and shopping plazas, had exhausted Tunney. He had slept in the late afternoon, after promising to dine with McGillicuddy in the rectory.
“Don’t you care for the pie, Father?”
“No. Again, I’m afraid I… well, let me apologize. I am not accustomed to so much food.”
“But you’ve hardly eaten, man. We won’t get you fat this way.” McGillicuddy smiled, holding a piece of fruit and melting ice cream on his fork.
“Once, for a time, from full moon to full moon, I think, we lived on bark and leaves. That was after…” Tunney paused, he could not remember the time, perhaps there had been too many times. Perhaps he was still dreaming of it and it had not happened.
“Leaves? God, I know what you must have gone through out there. I was in Morocco myself before I was given charge of the Order, Father. I was in Morocco for many years, in fact. I can tell you a few stories myself.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, yes, I can. I sometimes think I would like to go back there, to see it.… Well, we must serve where we must serve.”
“The motherhouse is so empty,” Tunney said.
“Yes, I’m afraid we have all fallen on bad times. These are bad days for the Church, my friend, bad days. The devil tries us.” McGillicuddy shoved the last of the pie into his mouth. “Old Father Clement is with us, of course, but he prefers to sleep in the old student wing. What a queer old man he has become. And Father Malachy is subbing for the pastor at St. Mary’s over in Bradenton, the pastor broke his leg, jogging, can you imagine it? And Father Cletus. Well, I’ve given permission to Clete to live on the beach a while, I think he’s got a lively prospect lined up, for a benefaction, and you know you’ve got to spend money to make money.”
Tunney stared at the cloth of the table, not hearing, his consciousness flooded again with dreams of the past.
“Father? Are you all right?”
Tunney looked up. “Yes. I’m all right.” He pushed the dish of pie and ice cream away. “I would like a glass of beer. If you have it? Do you have beer?”
The last thing he thought Tunney would ask for. McGillicuddy brought the beer himself.
It was tasteless, yet another tasteless cousin of the milk and the rice and the other food he had eaten here, but it warmed him. The beer they had made in the mountains was different, harsh and strong and smelling like bread. This was not as good but it was good enough.
The Agency had been interested in what he had done that winter in the mountains and he had not told them. He had told them only the things he wanted them to hear. He had wanted Rice to assume he was an idiot and to leave him alone; he did not want to deal anymore with their secrets or with thoughts of war. He wanted to speak only of himself, to himself, to understand at last—