Cecilian Vespers (6 page)

“A former colleague. We taught together at Sacred Heart Seminary in upstate New York. I began teaching there in 1979.”

“Logan’s the priest who left to get married?”

“Right. He has been ‘laicized,’ as they say.”

“An ex-priest.”

“Thou art a priest forever; the sacrament of Holy Orders imprints an indelible spiritual character on the soul. But, informally speaking, you’re right. He left the priesthood a couple of years after I met him. He and his wife are here, staying in the house of a friend in the suburbs somewhere. So. Did you approach MacNeil about having the party at her place?”

“Systems are go-all-go. What were you saying on the phone about women?”

“Logan thought it would be nice if the schola people got to meet a few locals while they’re here. I guess it didn’t escape his notice that the students of the schola are predominantly male. That must be why he stressed women, to even things up. Not a bad idea. I’ll pass the word around to some of the women at the church.”

“MacNeil and I could invite a few of the people we know.”

So that Saturday night, the last day of November, I was answering the door of my old house as if I were still in residence. I admitted Brennan, who was in his clerical suit and collar. He arrived bearing several bottles of wine. Maura joined me in relieving him of the burden.

“Sacramental wine, I presume, Father?”

“All of nature is a sacrament, Professor MacNeil, and the vineyards of Tuscany are particularly rich in God’s grace.”

“Not in civvies tonight?”

“Had to meet a troubled parishioner and didn’t have time to change.”

“We’ll have that collar off you before the night is done. Excuse me. I have to go down and get the finger food out of the freezer. I forgot to thaw it out.”

She headed down to the basement. Her baby chose that moment to start whimpering and, within seconds, he was crying as if his little heart had been broken. After a few minutes of this, and a glance in my direction, Brennan went to the corner of the dining room where Dominic lay in his crib, reached in, and picked up the squalling baby. The child’s
dark hair was damp and his face red from crying. I could almost feel his frustration: an early lesson in “nobody understands me.”

I wanted to go to him myself. It’s hard not to fall in love with a baby, especially if you’ve been through the baby stage as a parent yourself. But the circumstances of his birth were, to put it mildly, a sore point. The pregnancy wasn’t planned; that much I knew. But that did not make it any less painful for me. My wife now had three children, the last of whom was just as precious to her as my own. Try as I might, I could not see myself getting past this. Not that little Dominic was to blame, obviously. He was a sweet baby, and I often felt the urge to pick him up, play with him, get to know him. But so far, I had not been able to make the move.

Now, in Brennan’s arms, the infant ceased his wailing. He gave a little gurgle of contentment, then fell peacefully asleep. Brennan placed him gently in his crib, and tucked a blanket around him.

The doorbell rang, and I found Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre on the doorstep, garbed, as always, in a soutane with a cape. He looked like a sinister figure from another time, making his entrance on the operatic stage. Two young boys struggled in his wake, burdened with overflowing bags. I recognized the kids as choirboys from St. Bernadette’s. Before I had a chance to greet them, they had dumped their load and scarpered. I turned to see Maura coming up from the basement with two plates full of the frozen, store-bought food I had provided. She gawked at Enrico.

“You!” she began. “You make
him
—” she pointed to Brennan, standing in the hallway, looking as imperious as ever in his Roman collar “— look
so
low church! Who
are
you?”

“Permit me to introduce myself.”

“Oh, I insist!”

“I am Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre. Please call me Enrico.” He held out his hand, on which there was a large, ornate gold ring; he gently took her own hand and brought it to his lips.

“I’m Maura MacNeil.”

“Piacere, signora!”

“Come in, Enrico. Are those bags full of groceries?”

“Yes. I have here all the ingredients for Italian antipasti. Hors d’oeuvres. If I may take command of your kitchen.”

“I won’t stand in your way.” She turned to Burke: “Brennan! Were you telling tales about my cooking skills?”

“Em, no. Well, I may have said your training in Italian cookery was cut tragically short with the arrival of your latest child.”

“Right. So maybe I should put this stuff back in the freezer.”

“Allow me,” Burke said, and relieved her of the platters.

She helped Enrico carry his bags into the kitchen, and left him to organize his purchases, then came over to me and whispered: “What’s the story on this guy?”

Brennan joined us and answered: “There’s a streak of, let us say, decadence that runs in his family. He’s descended from a long line of Roman aristocrats. That’s one side of the family. The other is Sicilian. He’s an expert in ecclesiology. History of the church.”

“Sounds dull,” Maura said.

“That shows you haven’t been paying attention, MacNeil. Church history is blood-curdling. War and scandal and schism, popes kidnapped, popes fathering large broods of children. Magnificent art and mendicant friars and warrior monks. Picture the Roman emperor Theodosius at the end of the fourth century, begging Saint Ambrose for absolution for his sins. The most powerful man in the world, stripped of all the accoutrements of royal power, bowing before an unarmed priest in his church. There’s nothing insipid about any of it. The history of the Catholic Church is the history of Western civilization. Rumour has it Enrico’s mother is descended from one of the Renaissance popes, but nobody knows for certain. Ask him; he just shrugs.”

The object of our interest came by then, and I spoke up: “Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre, tell me. How on earth did you end up in Mississippi?”

“Eh, well, I had always felt that my family had been given so much. And others had so little. As a boy, I burned with the desire to become a missionary. But instead, I became a careerist. I did my studies, I received my doctoral degree, I was a teacher at the Lateran University and a bureaucrat in the Vatican. There was an incident — best forgotten — and it was decided that I should spend some time away from Rome. I seized upon this as an opportunity. This was God working in me, to bring me to the mission lands where I had always
yearned to go. Alas, I did not have —
come si dice?
— the tolerance, the constitution for the equatorial rainforest. I was ill the whole time I was there. The local cuisine — No, I would rather not remember.

“But the African experience was valuable to me. And to my vocation. Because I met there a man and his family who were missionaries from the U.S., from the state of Mississippi. They belonged to one of the breakaway sects, and I found them so well-intentioned but also so

… so deficient in their learning and in the message they sought so manfully to articulate to the African people.” He shook his head. “Just a man and his Bible. You would think that would be sufficient, but no. Without tradition, without the church Fathers, without the centuries of philosophy and scholarship and interpretation, what do you have? Before I was airlifted out, too weak to raise my head, this man and his wife were kind enough to visit me in the infirmary. I asked him about their home and about the Catholic presence in Mississippi. The expression on his face was all the answer I required. The state of Mississippi was itself a mission land!”

“And how has it turned out?” Maura inquired.

“My work is far from accomplished.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s it like running a Catholic parish down there in — what’s the name of the place?”

“It is called Mule Run.”

“Oh, God,” she muttered.

“Our church is at the end of Main Street, well, quite far out of the village really. But I see the local people frequently. I buy my provisions in the general store. They regard me with suspicious eyes there; they peer at me from the gun shop across the street. I am always made to feel like a stranger in the town. I did some work restoring the church, a small white wooden chapel. Charming in its own way. I brought over from Italy a little frieze of naked cherubs and I placed it over the door. One of my cherubs — a boy — soon came to grief. Someone must have attacked him with a chisel or perhaps the butt of a gun. There have been other desecrations. But —” a shrug “— hasn’t it always been so?”

“How’s the food?” Maura asked. “Do your parishioners have you over for Sunday dinner?”

He closed his eyes and a delicate shudder ran through his elegantly clad body. “One is always conscious that one is far, far from Rome.
Di
più
, this place is what they call a ‘dry town.’ I had never heard of this custom but apparently some years ago they held a plebiscite, and decided there would be no spirits, no beer, no
wine
sold in the town! Wine, the drink of Jesus Christ himself! This is beyond my understanding. But of course the markets are overflowing with vegetables and meats so, when I have the time, I make a good Italian dinner for myself and my guests. Kind friends in Rome have kept me supplied with
vino rosso
.”

“You’re settling in then. You have people to talk to.”

“Oh yes, there are wonderful people in the town, certainly. The language barrier can be daunting at times.”

“But your English is perfect,” Maura assured him.

“My English, yes, thank you. I studied English for many years. But the English spoken by the nativ — the local people, I find it difficult to interpret. They have a strong regional accent, you see. I wonder if you have ever been exposed to it. I hoped to find a few children who might wish to learn Italian, but I had no students. In fact, I have rarely even heard my name pronounced correctly there.”

“Is that right?”

“Difficult for you to believe, Maura, I agree. Do you know what they call me? And I find I must accept it with graciousness.”

“What do they call you?”

“My name is Enrico. The equivalent in English is Henry. I now know that the diminutive for Henry is Hank. So I am not Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre, but Father Hank.”

Maura did her best to hide a smile, and patted him on the arm. “I’m sure you bear up better than most of us would.”

A couple of Maura’s friends came in, and more people arrived from the schola; some I recognized, some I didn’t. The sleeping infant was a matter of interest to the guests, as I heard when I entered the dining room and caught part of a conversation among Sferrazza-Melchiorre, Burke, and a man I had seen but could not identify.

“Lei ha due maschi ed una femina,”
Burke said. I took that to mean he was telling Enrico how many kids we — no, Maura — had.

The third man looked at the baby and then pointedly at Burke. “If that little black-haired kid grows up with a great voice, you’d better get outta town.”

Burke laughed. Uncomfortably, I thought.

Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre excused himself to start the party treats. I chatted with him for a few minutes, then went into the living room.

At the far end of the room, several people were gathered around a petite, skinny woman with big hair in a shade of ashy blonde; her face was tanned and creased. I heard her introduce herself as Babs Logan. Then she asked a question: “How many people in this room could use an extra fifteen hundred dollars a month?” People looked at each other uncertainly. “Could we have a show of hands? Don’t be shy!”

When there was no response, she sought out a familiar face. “Brennan!”

His delayed reaction suggested his mind was far, far away. “Mmm?”

“Where’s your clicker?”

“My what?”

“Your remote.”

“My remote what?”

I stepped in with some crucial information. “Brennan doesn’t have a television, Babs, let alone a VCR or anything else that involves the use of a remote control.”

Babs stared at him in astonished disbelief. “No television? How do you talk to folks around the water cooler? What do you do with your time?”

He turned to me and muttered: “We’ll never get
this
time back again, Collins.”

“You may want to try somebody else, Babs,” I suggested.

“Yes, well, okay. How about this young lady?” A woman nodded. “Where is
your
clicker?”

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Bingo! We never know where our remotes are because when we’re through with them we toss them on the couch, on the coffee table, on the floor. Or we put them on top of the TV. Where’s that darn remote? Right?” Nods from a few of the guests. “So. Perfect example of where an accessory can save the day. I have a line of zany but practical remote holders that can be attached to a reclining chair. Others sit on the floor. The floor models, William?”

I could now put a name to the man who had advised Brennan to leave town. William Logan was short and wiry, with bristly reddish hair brushed back from his forehead. His posture, his jawline, everything about him suggested he didn’t take any crap from anybody. I remembered seeing him at vespers. Now the ends of his mouth jerked up in the form of a smile, and he drew a number of items out of a carton.

“Vesuvius?” he asked.

“Yes! Let’s start with Vesuvius! This is one of our most fun products. A remote holder that looks like the volcano at Mount Vesuvius outside of Rome!”

“Naples,” Burke mumbled. Then he caught sight of the garish plastic object, blinked, looked again, and dropped his head into his left hand. He massaged his temples and contemplated, I suspected, the advantages of a well-timed volcanic eruption.

“We also have one — and this will be really popular with you folks — shaped like a monk’s robe. Lift up his hood; out comes the remote. We’ve got one shaped like a cigarette pack —”

“Next time one of us gets up for a refill, we’ll bring the bottle in,” Burke said to me with quiet urgency.

Why wait? I got up, went to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle of Jameson’s Burke and I were sharing, poured myself a shot, and downed it. I returned to the living room and filled his glass, then my own.