“No, thanks,” Joe said, and was silent for some time — until he heard Conklin refer to Beans McQueen as Beans. “You a friend of Father McQueen’s?”
“They taught this course together, at the Institute,” Bill said. “Scripture for the Laity.”
“That so?” said Joe.
And the talk went on as before, on two fronts, without Joe, leaving him free to go over to the table for the other bottle of wine. Hennessy wasn’t having any, but Father Felix was. “Grape, you say?” Joe served Father Felix, and also himself, and left the bottle on the coffee table in front of him, but beyond his reach — not that wine, unfortified wine, was really alcoholic, not that he was. He just had to watch himself. He wasn’t a wine drinker, but could see how he might have been one in another time and place — one of those wise old abbés, his mouth a-pucker with Grand Cru, his tongue tasting like steak, solving life’s problems by calling people “my daughter” and “my son.”
Potter was telling Bill and Conklin that the clergy should cast off their medieval trappings, immerse themselves in the profane everyday world, and thus reveal its sacred character.
“That why you’re immersed in that shirt?” said Joe.
Potter just smiled and went on as before. It was odd the way Bill looked up to Potter, odder still the way they both looked up to Conklin — as what, a layman? It was a crazy world. Father Felix was telling Hennessy that the monastery should employ trained lay personnel in key positions, replace the kitchen, if not the laundry, nuns, and also certain brothers. “So Brother Gardener has to go?” said Joe.
Father Felix turned to Joe. “You,” he said, speaking with deliberation, as if the wine, and whatever he’d had in Bill’s room, and the beer before that, had suddenly gone to his head. “You. Covered. Up. Those. Flowers.”
“Flowers?” said Joe, and listened to the silence in the study. For the first time since the party began, he felt that others were interested in what he might say. He started to tell them about the leftover sod, but saw that they already knew about it, that he was already — the pastor’s fate — being discussed before outsiders in his own rectory by the curate and the visiting priest, those natural allies. “Thought of putting the sod down around the flowers, if you could call ’em that — things like petunias. Have ’em growing right up out of the grass. Of course, you’d have to cut the grass by hand. I’ve always wondered about flower beds — who wants to look at a lot of dirt?” (Nobody else, it seemed, had ever wondered about this.) “Didn’t realize you felt so strongly about petunias, Father. Strawberries, yes.”
“Humph,” said Father Felix.
“Excuse me,” Joe said, believing that everybody was against him, and went over to the table, where he had work to do. He had to fire up the chafing dish, pour the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer, place it directly over the flame, bring the juice to a boil, thicken with ½ tsp. of arrowroot dissolved in a little cold water, but Potter was telling the others that family life was in such tough shape today because Our Lord had been a bachelor, and so, carrying a dead match to an ashtray, Joe appeared among them again, saying, “We used to ask a lot of silly questions in the sem. Would Our Lord be a smoker, drive a late-model car, and so on. Kid stuff — nobody got hurt. But I wonder about some of the stuff I hear today.”
“So do I,” said Hennessy. “That Our Lord was celibate is a pretty good argument for celibacy.”
“No more. People today, living normal lives, can’t identify with Our Lord,” Potter said. “Or with us—because of the celibacy barrier.”
“That so?” said Joe. “And where you don’t have that barrier? I mean how well do we identify with Our Lord?” Joe put the question to Bill with a glance, skipped Conklin, and tried but failed with Father Felix, who was spearing kernels of corn with his fork, making a clicking noise on his plate — rather annoying, since it broke what otherwise would have been an impressive silence.
“He’s got you, Pot,” Conklin said, and then to Joe: “We may be closer than I thought.”
Joe, not seeing why this, if true, which he doubted, should make Bill and Potter look so sad, said, “And when you consider we work at it full time, unlike the laity — well, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“It did me,” said Conklin.
Bill sighed, and Potter held out his glass to Conklin for wine — a highball glass with ice in it. Joe said nothing about a proper glass, afraid that Potter (who’d said earlier that he longed for the day when he’d be able to say Mass with a beer mug, a coffee cup, a small flower vase of simple design, because such things were cheap and honest and made, like us, of clay) would refuse a proper glass and, furthermore, would say why. In that way, Potter could easily evade the issue he’d raised, the celibacy issue, as he had the egg. Potter was tricky, had to be watched, but Joe was doing that — and then Father Felix had to butt in.
“There’s been a lot of talk in the monastic community about family life, but whatever the future holds for you fellas, I think it’s safe to say our status, or situation — some would say our lot — won’t change. When you get right down to it, a monastery’s no place for a family man.”
“I’ll buy that,” said Joe.
“Oh, well,” said Father Felix. “The community’s family enough for me.”
And that, thought Joe, is why you’re here.
“When you get right down to it,” Conklin said to Father Felix, “a monastery’s no place for you. Priests weren’t meant to be monks, and monks weren’t meant to be priests — and weren’t in the Age of Faith.”
“We all know that,” Joe said — Conklin sounded just like an ex-seminarian, or an educated layman.
“Times change,” said Father Felix.
“Status seeking,” said Conklin.
Joe gave Bill a look for grinning, and to make it absolutely clear where his sympathies lay, as between Conklin and Father Felix, who appeared to be wounded, Joe fetched the bottle. “Father?”
“All right.”
Joe filled the monk’s glass, also his own, and went back to the table, with Potter’s voice following him. “Why put such a premium on celibacy — on sex, really? Think of the problems it creates.”
“Think of the problems it doesn’t create,” said Joe, and while Potter and the others were thinking of those problems (Joe hoped), he poured the juice from the pitted Bing cherries into the top pan, or blazer. That done, he appeared among them again, saying, “The premium isn’t on sex. It isn’t on celibacy. It’s on efficiency and sanctity.”
“Oh, no!” said Conklin.
“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “Even if we don’t hear much about that aspect of the priesthood today.” And, having given them more food for thought, Joe left them again, for he still had work to do, but before he reached the table the impressive silence his words had produced was cruelly violated.
“Father, how can we make sanctity as attractive as sex to the common man?”
Joe had to expect to hear that famous question even now from men of his era at the seminary — Potter’s permissive pastor was one — but not from someone like Conklin, Joe thought, and showed it, saying, “Good thing I wasn’t with you guys in Bill’s room. You wouldn’t have had anything to talk about.”
“Got to talkin’… in Bill’s room,” Father Felix said, apologetically, and paused to watch his plate (which he’d been holding in a sloping manner) start down his outstretched leg, jump, and land on the floor, right side up. Once, twice, he nodded, as if to say no harm done, but his head hung down, finally, in an uncompleted nod.