“How was the movie?” I asked brightly, and Helen said, “Good.”
Gabe said, “Not very fair to the bachelor uncles of the world.”
I glanced at Susan, who was blushing beneath her freckles, her eyes cast down. “So I hear,” I said.
“I’ll be forever suspect, I’m afraid,” he said. And smiled that short smile. He still wore his Windbreaker. There was a gleam of perspiration along his lip.
I offered Gabe a beer and then went into the kitchen to pour it. I suggested he take off his jacket and sit outside with Tom, to catch whatever breeze there was through the screens. While the girls set the table and I finished making dinner, I listened to the voices of the two men as they shared the paper and talked about the news.
I served mostly cold meals in the heat of those summers: sliced ham and coleslaw from the deli, cucumbers in vinegar, potato salad, and bakery rolls. Gabe sat at our older son’s place. His manners, as always, were meticulous and elegant. They had been meant, after all, to belong to a bishop. Watching him at my table, I briefly entertained the notion that the lace-curtain pretensions my parents had taught us might well have been meant as a way (frail at best, but a way nonetheless) of cosseting, corralling, patting down, and holding in, whatever it was that had undone him last summer.
I made note to mention this to the girls when they slumped (Helen) or licked the back of a spoon (Susan), that good manners, gracious conversation, might well be all we have, finally, to cosset and confine confusion.
Our two boys, Tommy and Jimmy, our Irish twins eleven months apart, were working in Hampton Bays that summer. Having a fine old time, Tom explained to Gabe over dinner, bringing him in. Attracting girls like flies at their age, he said. Two college boys, he said. Two Mr. Party Guys. Both brown as a berry, last time we saw them, what with lying out in the sun all day. Jumping into the ocean to cure their hangovers, no doubt, and then working in the restaurant at night. Not a care in the world, Tom said. “Not like you and I were, Gabe, at that age.”
“I worry about them,” I added. “What with all that’s going on. Drugs and whatnot. And the way the girls are these days.”
I knew Susan was rolling her eyes.
Tom waved his hand, dismissing my words. “They’re just sowing some wild oats,” he said. It was an ongoing argument between us. “Enjoying themselves while they’re young.”
“Oh sure,” I said. I did not like to be dismissed.
Gabe looked at me and smiled. He had taken off his Windbreaker, and in his white polo shirt he seemed both younger and frailer than he had when he arrived. Maybe more like himself as a boy. Or maybe more like our father, although Gabe was now older than our father had lived to be.
“Do you know the prayer of St. Augustine,” he asked me, “the one he said when he was their age?” Gabe pronounced the saint’s name with a soft ending, in what I thought of as the priestly way, which may be why I felt there was suddenly something reverent in our attentiveness. Even the girls grew serious, or perhaps wary. Despite our best efforts, they were no more pious than I had been at their age, little pagans.
“No,” I said.
There was a warmth in my brother’s brown eyes. “ ‘Grant me chastity and self-control,’ “ he said, quoting the saint, “ ‘but please, God, not yet.’”
We all laughed—the girls with some relief, perhaps, to discover that he was not a solemn man, Tom with all the old affection and admiration for this intelligent brother of mine.
“He’s your guy, isn’t he?” Tom said, “St. Augustine,” and he pronounced the name with a layman’s hard ending—like the city in Florida. He did so, I knew, more out of humility than ignorance. In his mouth, Gabe’s finer pronunciation would have been a pose. “You’ve mentioned him before.”
“I’m an admirer,” Gabe admitted. “The man struggled mightily.”
I stood to clear the table. “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I only know I sleep better when the boys are at home.”
Over ice cream, Susan dissected the four o’clock movie. She outlined its flaws in logic and probability, budding lawyer even at seventeen. How could it be that no one knew, she said, and really people weren’t that naïve, and surely that was way too much of a coincidence.
“What’s the point of watching a movie,” shy Helen asked her sharply, “if you’re going to spend the whole time looking for reasons not to believe it?”
“It is called Shadow of a Doubt,” Susan answered.
“Well, I’d put my faith in Alfred Hitchcock,” Tom said.
Gabe said, “At my first parish,” and nodded to Tom, who would remember, “there was a widow with three children, the youngest twins, who was at ten o’clock Mass every Sunday. I asked our pastor about her when I first got there, thinking we should do something for her, for her kids, at least, and he says to me, ‘There’s a hard case. She’s a drinker.’”
Susan and Helen both laughed a bit, and Gabe glanced at them and smiled.
“No, seriously,” he said. “That’s what he told me. It was well known to everyone in the parish, he told me. She had a drinking problem, three kids and all. She was as neat as a pin in church on Sunday, so were the kids, and the couple of times I’d said hello to her she seemed fine to me, but the pastor told me I was wet behind the ears if I couldn’t see it. She was a real alcoholic, he said. I couldn’t get over it. I started to look for her. She always looked cold sober to me. The kids were quiet in church. They always had money for the plate and never came late or left early. I asked the pastor again how he knew, what the evidence was, had he seen her stumbling or weaving or whatnot, and he called me a puppy, said I was naïve. Said once more that it was well known. I couldn’t figure it out. There was no one else to talk to. I didn’t want to fan any rumors by asking around. But then I noticed that every Sunday morning, as she and the kids were walking to church, she ducked into the candy store just down the block from the rectory. The three kids would wait outside, she’d duck in and out in no time. Maybe, I thought, she was taking a nip then. Maybe that’s what she did.”
“What a shame,” Tom said, but Gabe held up his hand.
“So one Sunday morning when I’m not scheduled to say the ten, I walk down to the candy store at about nine forty-five and go inside for a cup of coffee. While I’m there, sure enough, she comes in. She buys a roll of Life Savers and pays with a dollar bill and goes out again. After she leaves, the owner, the candy store owner, turns to me and says, “ ‘There’s a project for you, Father. She’s in here every Sunday morning buying mints. Covering up the alcohol on her breath. Before Mass.’
“ ‘Did you smell alcohol on her breath?’ I asked him, and I could see by his indignation that he hadn’t. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Why do you think she’s buying the mints?’”
“Why?” Helen said.
Gabe smiled. “To cover the smell of the drink, or so he thought. But I had a hunch. I followed them into the church. I asked the ushers to let me help with the collection. I passed the plate, and sure enough, she adds a quarter, the boy adds a quarter, and the twins each put in a dime. At the second collection only the mother puts in a quarter. Three quarters, two dimes every Sunday. Ninety-five cents. Life Savers were a nickel then.” He sat back. “She’d been doing it for years, breaking a dollar before she went into church. And that, as far as I ever knew, was the sole source of the rumors that had her an alcoholic.”
Tom laughed. “Never assume,” he said. He drew the word in the air, circled the first part and the last: this was not a new routine. “You’ll make an ass,” he said, circling, “out of u and me.” The girls were bearing with him, love and pity in their eyes and their smiles. “You ever explain it to the old pastor?” he asked Gabe.