Joe entered the rectory by the back door, washed his hands at the kitchen sink, slipped into his illustrated apron (gift of a parishioner), which he wore inside out over his cassock so the funny stuff was hidden, and set about making Father Felix’s breakfast.
When Bill, on his way over to church to help Father Felix with Communion, passed through the kitchen, Joe looked up from the breadboard, from sawing an orange, and said, “This isn’t for me”—what he’d said to explain his continuing presence in the kitchen on Bill’s first Sunday morning in residence, and what had since become a family joke, something to say when making another drink, when not declining dessert, or having a second — and when Bill went out the back door Joe intoned, “The story is told…” Another family joke. So far, there were just the two, but there should be more in time.
Father Felix sailed through the kitchen in his forest-green habit and sat down for his breakfast — or brunch, as he sometimes called it with a chuckle — in the dining room. (Joe and Bill had breakfast in the kitchen on Sunday, in Mrs P.’s absence, but Joe felt that Father Felix deserved better, as a man of the old school and as hard-to-get weekend help.) After serving him, Joe sank down at the other end of the table with a cup of coffee (what he really wanted was a cold beer). “How’s everything at the Big House, Father?”
“About the same.” Father Felix helped himself to the strawberry preserves, praising the brand, Smucker’s. He preferred strawberry to red raspberry, he said, and red to black raspberry, as a rule, and didn’t care for the monastery stuff these days, as the nuns (who spent too much time in supermarkets) went in for short cuts, skimped on the natural ingredients. “And make too much plum.”
“That so?” Joe had heard it all before. As a rule, he didn’t sit with Father Felix at breakfast.
“My, but those were fine berries.” Father Felix was referring, Joe knew, to some strawberries no longer grown at the monastery. “Little Scarlets. Small, yes, but with a most delicate flavor. And then Brother, he went and dug ’em out.”
“Brother Gardener?” said Joe, as if in some doubt.
Father Felix, carried away by anger, could only reply by nodding.
“More toast, Father?”
“All right.” Father Felix helped himself to more preserves. He kept getting ahead of himself — always more preserves than toast.
Joe produced another slice from the kitchen, and also the coffeepot. “Warm that up for you?”
“All right.” But first Father Felix drained his cup. “You make good coffee here.”
Joe poured, sat down again, considering what he had to say. (On his last trip to the kitchen, he had removed his apron as a hint to Father Felix that the dining room was closing.) “Father, I was thinking”—and Joe had been thinking this ever since Bill moved in—“you could go back on the one-thirty bus.”
Father Felix, who ordinarily returned to the monastery on the six-thirty bus, gazed away, masticating, sheeplike. He seemed to be saying that there ought to be a reason for such a drastic and sudden change in his routine.
“Know you want to get back as soon as possible,” Joe said. Monks, he’d often been told (by monks), are never happy away from their monastery. Between them and their real estate, there is a body-and-soul relationship, a strange bond. Monks are the homeowners, the solid citizens, of the ecclesiastical establishment. Other varieties of religious, and even secular priests like Joe — although he’d built a school, a convent, and now a rectory — are hoboes by comparison. That was certainly the impression you got if you spent any time with monks. So, really, what Joe was suggesting — that Father Felix return to his monastery a few hours earlier than usual — wasn’t so bad, was it? “Of course, it’s up to you, Father.”
Father Felix folded his napkin, though it was headed for the laundry, and then he rolled it. He seemed to be looking for his napkin ring, and then he seemed to remember it was at the monastery and he wasn’t.
Bill barged in, saying, “That was Potter on the phone. Looks like there’ll be one more, Father.”
Seeing that he had no choice, Joe informed Father Felix that a couple of Bill’s friends — classmates — were coming to dinner, and that Mrs P. would report at three. “She’s been having car trouble,” he added, hoping, he guessed, to change the subject.
“Who else is coming?” Father Felix said to Bill.
“Name’s Conklin. Classmate. Ex-classmate.”
Joe didn’t like the sound of it. “Dropout?”
Bill observed a moment of silence. “None of us knew why Conk left. I don’t think Conk did — at the time.”
“That’s often the case, Bill. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Father Felix, looking at Joe.
“Who said it was?” Joe inquired, and then continued with Bill. “So now he’s married. Right?”
“No. Not exactly.”
Joe waited for clarification.
“I guess he thinks about it,” Bill said.
Father Felix nodded. “We all do.”
“That so?” said Joe.
“Is it all right, then?” Bill asked.
Joe looked at Bill intently. “Is what all right?”
“For Conk to come? He’s a pretty lonely guy.”
Father Felix was nodding away, apparently giving his permission.
“It’s your party,” Joe said, and rose from the table in an energetic manner, as a subtle hint to Father Felix. “I’d ask you to stay for it, Father. Or Bill would — it’s his party. But we plan to sit down — or stand up, it’s buffet — around five. You’d have to eat and run.” And somebody — Joe — would have to drive Father Felix to the bus.
“But stay if you like,” Bill said.
“All right,” said Father Felix.
Joe and Father Felix were watching the Twins game and drinking beer in the pastor’s study when Bill brought in his friends and introduced them. The heavy one wearing a collar, which showed that he, or his pastor, was still holding the line, was Hennessy. The exhibitionist in overalls and a faded Brahms T-shirt was Potter. And the other one, the one with the handlebar mustache, a nasty affair, was Conklin.
“What’s the score?” Bill asked, as if he cared.
“Four to one,” Joe said.
“Twins?”
“No.”
Potter and Conklin moved off to case the bookshelves, and Father Felix joined them, but Hennessy stood by, attending to the conversation.
“What inning?” Bill asked.
“Seventh.”
“Who’s pitching?”
Joe took a step toward the television set.
“Leave it on,” Bill said. “We’re going to my room for a drink.”
Bill and his friends then departed, Hennessy murmuring, “See you later.”
“Fine young men,” said Father Felix.
“Uh-huh,” Joe said. “Split a bottle, Father?”
“All right.”
Joe carried the empties into the kitchen. “Everything O.K. in here?” he said to Mrs P., and opened the refrigerator — always an embarrassing act for him, even when alone. He had cut down on snacking, though, had suffered less from “night hunger” since Bill moved in.
“Sure you want to eat in the study, Father?”
“It’s Bill’s party,” Joe said, although he felt as Mrs P. did about eating in the study.
But Bill had come out against eating in the dining room. “You at the head of the table, me at the other end — what a drag.” Joe had offered to let Bill sit at the head of the table and not to sit at the other end himself, lest it appear to be the head, but Bill hadn’t wanted that either. “All this formality — what a drag.” Bill had proposed that they start off in the kitchen, get the food right off the stove, and go on from there. “Maybe finish up in my room. Be more natural that way.” “Or out in the yard, like a dog with a bone. Be more natural that way.” Joe had then proposed that they eat in the study, which was roomy and clubby and may have been what Bill had wanted all along.