He was good with people when he wished to be, as he did now. He sparkled in maternity wards (“Bring us another round of orange juice, Sister, and this time put something in it”); sparkled at parish meetings, of which there were more since he’d decided to come to grips with Youth, Young People, and Young Marrieds (“What are we waiting for? I’m here”); sparkled at home (“My compliments to the chef, Mrs Cox”). Occasionally, he even sat with Mrs Cox in the evening if there was a game of some kind on TV; at first he had to get her to switch channels and to instruct her, but now he had to do neither, and it was gratifying to see her interest in sports quicken and to know it was genuine (with so many women it wasn’t) — to come in from a meeting and find her and Boots watching the NBA play-offs. With Boots, however, Joe was still persona non grata, and still went about the house with his cane, which he left on the back porch when he stepped out and picked up when he returned.
But the best times for Joe were those times when he could be of real use to people as a priest — those times of trial, tragedy, and ordinary death — into which he entered deeper than he had before. “After years of trying to walk on the water, you know,” he told Bob, who was increasingly impatient with parishioners (and Mac), “it’s good to come ashore and feel the warm sand between my toes.”
This was not to say that Joe couldn’t get enough of people. He could. And when he did, after a tough day, or when he just craved faster company, he went to play poker with Cooney and the gang at St Isidore’s, a hard-drinking rectory, and the next morning it wasn’t easy for him to get going. (He did not believe in Beeman’s solution: “Weak drinks, more of ’em — that way you get more liquids into your system.”) All in all, though, he felt better about himself both as a priest and as a person, as others appeared to these days — certainly Mrs Cox, and even Cooney, who was becoming his best friend again.
“Joe,” Cooney said one night at St Isidore’s, “know who you are?”
“Who?”
“Lemme put it another way. Know who Van is?”
“Who?”
“Mary. You’re Martha, Joe.”
Only now and then, late at night before he got to sleep, or early in the morning before he got going, did Joe look back and regret the change in himself.
A tough day. Coming to breakfast, talking to himself, Joe had simply said, “Somebody ought to poison that bitch,” meaning Boots, and now Mrs Cox wouldn’t speak to him. Later that morning, while trying to sparkle in a maternity ward, he’d simply said, “So that’s the little bastard,” and had been asked to leave by its mother. That afternoon, he had a visit from a young lady in real estate whom he’d just about enticed into fleeing the world and joining the Carmelites, and learned that she’d received a big promotion and would be staying in the world after all. Early that evening, two converts in the making, Tex and Candy, who’d been taking instructions with a view to marrying Margie and Mike, failed to show, and it developed after a couple of phone calls that they’d eloped together. While Joe was working this out for Margie and Mike in the office, on hold in the living room he had an old parishioner who was upset over a nine-dollar error in his account — under Joe’s new system, actually Bob’s, receipts were mailed out to contributors at the end of the fiscal year — and who, though Joe tried everything, even offering to reimburse the old devil on the spot, wouldn’t go away until he’d seen the pastor.
“He’s in the church,” Joe said, and fled.
Later, Joe went over to St Isidore’s for poker, and it turned out to be a tough night too. He was there to relax, but the others wouldn’t let him. Bob, who had just come from driving Mac to the sanitarium (and felt a little sad about it, though it was all for the best), kept after Joe to talk to Van about checking in to a cloister. Beeman, not for the first time, advised Joe just to look Boots in the eye, which was what he’d always done at Holy Faith. “And don’t let her see you’re afraid of her,” he said, and suggested (though he admitted he had only heard about this, hadn’t done it himself), “Chuck her lightly under the jaw. Try it.” When Joe mentioned the nine-dollar bookkeeping error, Beeman advised him in future just to say, “We all make mistakes. That’s why they put erasers on lead pencils,” which was what he always did in such a case. “Try it.” When Joe mentioned the young lady who’d received a big promotion and let him down, Bob said, “Hell, you can’t blame her,” and then, presumably referring to his two weeks as a contemplative, had the nerve to misquote Joe without attribution, “It’s kind of lonely out there, dangerous too, trying to walk on the water, and it’s good to come in and feel the warm sand under your feet.” Joe was grateful for Cooney’s comment, “Bob, you never went out without your water wings,” but a moment later he applied it to himself, with remorse. And Cooney, perhaps sensing this, tried to do his “Know who you are?” business with Joe again, but Joe foiled him by answering right away, “Martha.” Then Cooney’s pastor, one of the few really good poker players in the diocese and MC of its weekly TV program, said to Joe, “Found y’self, baby,” and asked him if he’d ever considered how much he owed the Arch for sending him to Father Van Slaag at Holy Faith. Joe said he had, but unfortunately didn’t leave it at that.
“Just one thing wrong with Van,” he said. “Not doing his job.” Joe had never said this, or anything like it, before, and immediately regretted it. Only the truth, yes, and they all knew it, but from him a betrayal.
From that point on, Joe, who hadn’t taken a pot, won steadily. Later, much later, after a lot of standing around, though Joe himself was sitting down, and a lot of talk about cars and driving, Joe left St Isidore’s with Bob, he thought, and the next thing he knew, not counting a bad dream—“Mrs Boots, come and get Cox!”—he was in bed and it was morning. He couldn’t remember how the night had ended, and didn’t want to, but had the presence of mind not to phone the police after he looked out the window and saw his car was missing from its usual place in the driveway. He took a hot bath, and in the course of it, soaping himself, he discovered and examined the marks on his right ankle — superficial wounds, five in number. They made him think of Our Lord but otherwise didn’t hurt. He painted them with antiseptic, dressed, and went downstairs, armed only with a ruler (his cane was on the back porch), and got going again.
7. CARRYING ON
THE END OF another day, another month, another year, the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, and the rest of the staff at Archdiocesan Charities had left early, or so Joe had thought until Mrs Hope looked in on him.
“A young priest to see you, Father.”
Joe was glad to see a young priest dressed like a priest.
“Ed Butler, Father.”
The name meant nothing to Joe, but for the young man’s sake he said, “Oh, yes. Sit down.”