Ash Wednesday (4 page)

“I came upon the distinction Pius XII made between ordinary and extraordinary medical means,” Father Dowling said.

Father Nolan shook his head slowly. “That statement has been the cause of lots of arrant nonsense. Unintentionally, of course. Our friend Basil Spritzer considers water extraordinary means when a patient is in a coma.”

“What would count as extraordinary means?”

“That is the problem,” Willy Nilly said. “What were extraordinary means a generation ago have become ordinary. You mustn’t think that I have become a relativist.” He glared at Father Dowling.

Father Dowling laughed. “That would be extraordinary.”

“Your thinking it or my becoming it?”

“In the case that concerns me, the means were a life support system.”

“That’s too vague, Father. Say it means just oxygen. Would you consider that extraordinary?”

“You’re the moral theologian, Father.”

The old priest sighed. “Medical ethics has become the last refuge of the scoundrel. ‘Extraordinary’ could characterize most of the stuff written in the field. Extraordinary nonsense.”

Father Dowling presented the details of his problem to the moralist.

Willy Nilly sighed. “I don’t think I could responsibly encourage you to believe that what that man did does not amount to depriving his wife of ordinary medical care. The circumstances are extraordinary, no doubt. I can sympathize with the wife’s fear and the husband’s anguish. But what he did, as you describe it, was kill her.”

Father Dowling realized that this was the answer he had expected. He could not regret not having consulted Basil Spritzer.

“Tell him to pray for his wife,” Willy Nilly suggested. “As she is undoubtedly praying for him. That is not sentimentality. I can give you a reference in St. Thomas.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He thought he knew the passage in the
Summa theologiae
his old professor had in mind.

Willy Nilly nodded. “It was the realization that whatever I said in the classroom would become gospel for the men I taught that made teaching such a weighty responsibility.”

“I think you bore it well.”

“That is my hope,” Father Nolan said.

So Father Dowling drove back to Fox River unable to enjoy the beautiful countryside on the return trip. Still, despite what Willy Nilly had told him, or not told him, he looked forward to talking with Nathaniel Green.

Back in the rectory he called Edna Hospers.

“Has Nathaniel Green become one of your wards, Edna?”

“I want to talk to you about him, Father.”

Natalie Armstrong, a handsome widow in her early sixties, came reluctantly to St. Hilary’s senior center, not considering herself a senior, but lonely and bored. Helen Burke’s enthusiasm made her hesitant. The description in the parish bulletin held her attention, but she was certain she was not old enough for that. To her surprise, she found that the age range of the regulars included half a dozen her own age and then rose choppily up the scale until it reached such denizens as Leon Bartlett, pushing ninety, hunched over his walker as if it were a motorcyle threatening to get out of control, and Marlys Logelin, who would never see ninety again and was confined to her motorized wheelchair, in which she zipped around the former gym as if she were engaged in one of the basketball
games that had been played there when she was a girl. Watching her, Natalie felt in the full flush of youth.

The very first day, Eugene Schmidt introduced himself. He was at least her age, with a head full of hair that might have been cotton wool and a dapper little mustache to match. His eyes twinkled at her over his half-glasses.

“You look lost,” he said, as if he meant to do something about it. He did. He squired her around, introducing her—how on earth had he known her name?

“I asked.” He actually squeezed her hand.

They kibitzed at bridge; they followed a shuffleboard match with Eugene whispering critical comments in her ear; they watched a little television, which was what Natalie had come to the center to escape.

“I found myself turning it on at breakfast and not turning it off until I went to bed.”

Eugene shook his head, but there was sympathetic understanding in his bright blue eyes. “I know what you mean. Oh, do I know what you mean.”

“How long have you been coming here?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

At noon they went together up the walkway to the church and attended Father Dowling’s Mass. To her surprise, Eugene sat through the Mass and did not go forward to receive communion. Afterward, he explained.

“I’m a heretic.”

“A heretic!”

He made even that seem fun. “I mean I’m not Catholic.”

“Then why would you come to the center?”

“Until today I wondered that myself.”

Honestly. Natalie hadn’t been at the center a week and she seemed to have acquired an admirer.

That night, she alternated between being pleased and being half
ashamed. She had been a widow for three years; her children, both of them, were gone. One a Maryknoll missionary and the other a Poor Clare. She resolved that the following day she would avoid Eugene Schmidt. Then another thought came. Eugene wasn’t a Catholic. Everybody should be Catholic. Perhaps God had thrown them together so that Eugene would come into the Church. The next morning she went off to the center with some of the zeal that had sent her daughter to a convent and her son into the priesthood.

Over coffee and a doughnut she did not need, she got right to the point. “What kind of heretic are you?”

“How many kinds are there?”

Natalie had no idea. “You just meant you’re not Catholic, didn’t you? You’re really nothing at all, I mean religiously?”

“What are you getting at?”

They had wandered outside on this suddenly sunny day with their coffee and were sitting side by side on one of the benches along the walkway. Natalie hadn’t liked the way Phyllis Pilgrim had talked to Eugene in a saucy way, as if she had some kind of claim on him.

“Perhaps you’ve already talked with Father Dowling.”

“Of course I’ve talked with him.”

Natalie looked away. Phyllis had come outside, and then she saw them. She didn’t look happy when she went back inside.

“I think Phyllis is looking for you.”

“You have to protect me,” he said, grasping her arm. If it hadn’t been for his devilish smile, she might have thought he was in danger. She said as much.

“The predatory widow, Natalie. They’re the bane of my life.”

“Poor you.”

He nodded. “That, too.”

It was difficult to get back to the subject that had led her to take him outside to this bench.

“Now, if you were Phyllis, I wouldn’t be sitting here for a million dollars.”

Whatever he said seemed to indicate that he considered her, well, unlike the other widows. As indeed she was.

“Do you ever think of your soul, Eugene?”

“I don’t think I have one.”

“Of course you do. An immortal soul. Eugene, we’re no longer young. We have to be more serious about what it all means.”

“What does it all mean?”

“Father Dowling could explain that better than I could.”

“I do have a heart. I’m sure of that.”

He just couldn’t be serious a minute, and Natalie found she liked that. He was such fun to be with. After all those dreadful months watching television, being with Eugene was a tonic. Thank God she had decided to come to the senior center. Would she ever have imagined that coming here would mean meeting someone like Eugene? No, not someone like. Eugene himself.

That afternoon Phyllis followed her into the restroom, and when they were washing up, their eyes met in the mirror.

“Be careful, Natalie.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be misled by our Don Juan.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him.”

Phyllis dipped her head and looked at Natalie over her glasses. “A word to the wise.”

Pooh. The word came from a woman who was jealous! Imagine. Did Phyllis think that life still lay before her? That she might meet someone she might want to marry? What silliness. Natalie had half a mind to tell Eugene what Phyllis had said. But she didn’t. It would have seemed, oh, she didn’t know what it would have seemed.

The next day there was an excursion to the mall, and Eugene was at the wheel of the center shuttle bus, the kind one saw atairports
taking passengers off to rental car lots. He drove in an almost reckless fashion, laughing while his passengers rocked back and forth as he changed lanes and sped along.

“Why don’t you sing?” he suggested.

The whole group burst into “Merrily we roll along,” Eugene’s beautiful tenor voice leading them. In a back seat, bracketed by Leon Bartlett with his chin on his chest and Lester Bernard, whose ears were plugged with the largest hearing aids Natalie had ever seen, Phyllis stared gloomily ahead. It was on that jaunt that Natalie was teased about stealing away Phyllis’s boyfriend.

Then one day when they were again outside and sitting on a bench, Natalie noticed the man on a bench farther along on the walkway, reading a book.

“Who is that?” Natalie asked.

“Nathaniel Green.”

“Really? He’s some sort of relative of mine.”

“He is being shunned.”

“What?”

“Helen is his sister-in-law. She’s convinced the others that Nathaniel doesn’t belong here.”

“What right does she have to do that?”

“He did kill his wife.”

Natalie almost wanted to deny it. The sight of that lonely man, reading a book, unwanted inside, filled her with pity. “The poor man.”

“According to Herman, Green doesn’t really mind.”

“Who is Herman, for heaven’s sake?”

“Of course you haven’t met Herman. Come, I’ll introduce you.”

“I’d rather talk to Nathaniel Green.”

“Later. You must meet Herman first.”

Tuttle heard of Nathaniel Green’s release from Joliet in the newsroom at the courthouse. Tetzel had an annoying habit of reading aloud, although to what audience it would be hard to say. The reporter had been alone when Tuttle came in, holding the printout of the wire service story a foot in front of his face as he read it. He turned to Tuttle.

“Good work, Tuttle. How long did he serve?”

When ignorant of the answer, silence is the best response. Tuttle took a chair next to the reporter and reached for the sheet. Tetzel moved it out of reach.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Tetzel said.

“Rephrase it.”

Tetzel’s barking laughter might have been directed at the whole legal profession.

“How did you spring Greenbeard out of Joliet so soon, Tuttle?”

Tetzel spoke, if not with forked tongue, in a slurred voice. It was early afternoon, and he was either still sloshed from the night before or getting a head start on today’s sunset. Or both. Tuttle had trouble with crossword puzzles but not with Tetzel’s unimaginative reference to his former client Nathaniel Green.

“I asked to have him released to your custody, Tetzel.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that SOB.”

“Aren’t you a member of the Hemlock Society?”

“He didn’t claim that his wife asked him to do it.”

“No,” Tuttle said. “I did. Let me see that.”

Tetzel yielded the news story, and Tuttle read it with feigned nonchalance. Nathaniel Green’s release from Joliet was news indeed to his former lawyer. He was not mentioned in the story. Perhaps Tetzel could be induced to correct that omission before it went into the
Fox River Tribune
. He made the suggestion, keeping urgency from his voice.

“Tuttle, it would only be news if you ever got a client off.”

“He might have rotted in prison if I hadn’t persuaded Jacuzzi to change the charge to manslaughter.”

“Careful, careful.”

Tuttle tipped back his Irish tweed hat, an interrogatory gesture.

“Womanslaughter,” Tetzel suggested.

“That would be language slaughter.”

“That’s good!”

“Use it.”

Tuttle was adjusting his hat as he sought to make an exit on that high note when he ran into Rebecca Farmer in the doorway, toppling her to the floor.

“Jesus Christ!” Rebecca cried.