Conceived Without Sin (46 page)

"The Mass is ended, go in peace," Father McBride intoned.

"Thanks be to God," Sam said, noting the irony of the response.

They walked out of the chapel. Ellie noticed a poorly designed flyer on a table in the exit hallway.

Maybe I could help them produce better-looking, more effective product literature?
she thought, not realizing that she was responding to grace; grace speaking to her
in her own language.

3

"I've been wondering what to do with my bonus after the year ends," Sam told his wife as they drove north on Rocky River Drive toward Hilliard.

He looked over at her; she was letting her ponytail down, and the willowy blond hairs were scattering in the cold wind. She liked to ride with her window half down, even on cold December days.

"The way I see it, we have two options.
Invest the bonus or buy something with it," he continued, his eyes back on the road. "I was talking with Bill White, and he's investing in tax-free municipal bonds. Or we could splurge and buy a BMW or something. I just got a thing in the mail last week from them. It's uncanny how these marketing guys figure out who to send their stuff to. We could splurge.

"Or, we could go for remodeling the
new place. You know, add a deck, new floors, new furniture: the whole nine yards. That's sort of like the best of both worlds because it raises the value of the house. Seventy grand sounds like a lot, but it isn't, because after taxes–"

He stopped talking. Something was wrong. She hadn't made a sound when he mentioned remodeling.

"Ellie darling, are you listening to me?"

He glanced over and saw
that she was reading the flyer she picked up at the chapel.

"Sam. We have a third option. When was the last time you gave anything to charity?"

"Charity? Me? Well, you know, there's the annual shakedown from the United Way at work, but that's like taxes, really. Those guys never let up. Then there's our membership in the Szell Society for the Cleveland Orchestra."

He didn't mention the couple
hundred bucks he slipped to Buzz every so often to help with child support.

"How much did you give out of–let's see, what did you make this year, bonus included–two-hundred and forty thousand dollars?"

"I don't know. Couple thou," he said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. "But after taxes, with the wedding costs, the new house, that's not as much as it seems. I know where this is headed. What's
on the flyer?"

"I'll get to the flyer in a sec. Spare me the poor-mouth lecture, Sam. I have a degree in finance. I know what the taxes are. I hate it when you talk about money and sound like Bucky and his friends at the Garden Club. You know what I gave out of my salary of thirty-four thousand?" she asked, a hint of smile on her lips.

"I have no idea." The comparison to the Garden Clubbers hurt.
I bet she gave more to charity than I did.

"Nothing," she said. "Not a red cent."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," she confirmed. "And I feel like a cheapskate."

He felt the same way. He hadn't really paid much attention to charitable giving, despite his large income. Mostly, he thought about how to invest his money or hide it from the tax man. Even his gift to the United Way had been partially a way to
beat Uncle Sam out of a few bucks; the government was insatiable. Giving to charity was for the future–sometime, but not now.

He thought now of Buzz on the beach in New Jersey, saying, "Sometime never came."

"Me too," he said softly.

She heard the smallness in his voice, and allowed him to digest it.

A few minutes later, they pulled into the long driveway of their new home, and drove around back
to the garage. They got out and walked to the edge of the backyard. A cyclone fence shielded them from the danger of a fifty-foot cliff, filled with wild shrubs, trees, and even a few pieces of garbage.

They looked at the lake, which stretched as blue as an ocean as far as the eye could see. Unlike an ocean, there were no whitecaps or waves. Despite the cold temperature, it was not windy today.
The cityscape of Cleveland was clearly viewable to their right, ten miles away. The view was spectacular.

He stood behind her, folding her in his arms, looking over her shoulder at the lovely scene. Without turning, she reached up with a leather-gloved hand and cradled his cheek.

"God has been good to us, Sam."

He didn't respond.

"Sorry," she said. "Sometimes I forget."

"Don't worry about it.
What's on your mind? What was on that flyer? Does Donna's convent need a few thousand bucks for something?"

"More like a hundred grand," she said without breaking stride. "Their chapel is too small. They have more postulants than they can fit into it. Five more came in with Donna. They've raised almost two hundred thousand by cashing in a few bequests, but they're tapped out. They didn't even
make up the flyer I was reading. One of the people who goes to Mass there every day did. It's signed Dan Peplin."

"I thought there was a problem with dwindling vocations?" he asked, remembering something Buzz had mentioned one time.
Or was it Mark Johnson?

"Not for contemplative orders like Donna's. Many are growing according to the flyer. I want to help them, Sam. I want to help Donna."

"That
chapel is kinda like their office, isn't it? They get their business done in there," he observed. "Fine. How much should we give, five, ten thousand?"

"Why not all seventy-seven?" Ellie asked.

It was her first "close," as she was taught in business school. Well trained, she waited in silence for his reply. She waited thirty seconds.

"How serious are you about this, El?"

"I won't take no for an
answer."

"And you're willing to give up remodeling the house or a BMW?" he asked.

"Isn't that the whole idea? Donna gave up her whole life."

"I don't know, Ellie. That's a lot of money."

"Not for you," she said.
He doesn't want to do it.
"Besides, you can write it off."

"Things could go south at Edwards. Johnny could listen to those headhunters who call him every other day and jump ship–"

"Oh
cut the crap, Sam. Are you going to give her the money or not?" Ellie was not feigning impatience.

"I'm not even a Catholic!"

"What does that have to do with it? Those nuns need more office space! They can't go out and earn the money themselves!"

Her exasperation was complete. She turned around to face him.

He smiled broadly.

She had won.

"Fabulous," she said with perfect blue-haired grace. Then
she arched an eyebrow. "Now, I want you to call Bill White and shake him down for the other twenty-three thousand. He's loaded."

He laughed with admiration. "You're in the wrong business, sweetie. You should be a professional fund raiser."

She frowned when he said that. The expression didn't look natural on her face.

"We're not doing this for charity, Sam. We're doing this for a friend."

4

"I
thought you would be jumping for joy about the Poor Clares getting a bigger chapel," Sam told Buzz the next day over the phone.

"I am," Buzz replied. "But I'm having a hard day at work. They put me on probation today."

"What for?"

"Being tardy. They're pretty strict at UPS about being on time."

"Buy a second alarm clock or something. The last thing you need is to lose your job," Sam tried to say
with a tone of encouragement.

"It's not that. I wake up fine. Sometimes it's hard dragging myself out of bed. Or I start daydreaming in the shower, or lose myself fiddling with the spoon in my cereal bowl, and then I end up leaving five minutes late. I got a ticket on the way to work because I ran a red light today. That's why I was late."

"Oh Buzz."

"Yeah. Oh Buzz. Stupid, stupid, stupid. One
more tardy, and I'm suspended. My union representative told me his hands are tied. They've got me in a corner. I'm scared I'll blow everything."

"You could always work for me…" Sam said.

"I could never do that. I'm no good at computers–"

"But you know how to sell, you could catch on," Sam offered. "Make some good money. I'm hiring now, too."

"I'd burn out. I don't think I could take the pressure
of selling right now, and I don't think it would be right to work for a friend," Buzz said firmly.

Sam heard the note of desperation in his friend's voice.

"Buzz, what's really going on? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Buzz lied. "Look, I've got a bunch of pickups to make. I can't be late. I've been making mistakes on my routes, too. If my manager–look, I can't go into it. I'm okay. So long."

Buzz
hung up the phone before Sam could say good-bye.

Something's wrong,
Sam thought.
I'll invite him over for dinner.

Sam hadn't seen Buzz in over two weeks. With outdoor pick-up basketball long over, the craziness of selling and buying the houses, the new big contracts at work–well, it seemed like Buzz had gotten lost between the cracks.

I'll call him,
Sam promised himself, then turned to the stack
of resumes on his desk.
How am I going to find six good technicians in less than a month?

5

Buzz completed his appointed rounds the day of the phone call, and managed to go into work on time for the next several days.

It was two days before Sam got a chance to track Buzz down for dinner. He came to their house on the lakefront. They watched a video–
It Happened One Night
with Clark Gable and Claudette
Colbert–and Buzz seemed perfectly normal, joking and pontificating as usual about all things under the sun.

Only Ellie noticed that he was pressing, and mentioned it to Sam at bedtime.

"We'll have to keep an eye on him," Sam said. "Did you notice how he didn't bring up Donna?"

"Yes. I noticed. He was silent when I told him Bill White is helping with the chapel. He's putting on weight, too."

She
slipped on her nightgown, and crawled into bed next to him.

"Do you think he's started drinking again?" she asked.

"Buzz? No way. I've seen him around booze a hundred times, and he doesn't even pay attention to it. He's just going through a rough time. Basketball is done with until spring–I just don't have time to play at the Y in the mornings with him. Neither does he with his night owl habits.
Donna is gone. Mark has his family. We've been preoccupied with a hundred things. He's lonely, that's all."

Buzz kept from mentioning Donna because the thought of her, as happy as he was that she was in the Poor Clares, made him feel blue. Her leaving opened a gaping hole in his daily routine. Buzz couldn't bring himself to resent her, but the temptation to do just that made him feel guilty.

He didn't mention that his ex-wife's parents had suddenly moved to Florida to be near their daughter and grandchild, and that Sandi was engaged to be married. He also didn't mention that he had cancelled his trip to Fatima altogether to pay off credit card debt and the moving violation fine. His tournament prize money was gone.

With just one more speeding ticket, UPS would have the grounds to fire
him–even if he did manage to get to work on time during the probation period of one year.

Buzz also didn't mention that he had stopped going to his AA meetings at the Unitarian church hall in Rocky River, and had taken to watching an average of two videos a night most days of the week. When he didn't watch videos, he spent time in the Rini-Regos supermarket looking for pulp fiction to distract
himself. He discovered Dean Koontz, and began to read everything by Stephen King he could get his hands on.

He read novels, watched videos, ate fast food (even though he couldn't afford it), and drank too much Pepsi at night, making it hard to fall asleep.

His daughter, Jennifer, was coming Christmas week, and he was out of vacation time. Her arrival was one week away. He didn't know what he was
going to do with her while he was at work. Sandi's parents had always taken care of that. The last week before Christmas at UPS was sheer madness: every truck was overstuffed with holiday gifts, and no driver was allowed to return to the center without delivering every single one. Buzz didn't mind the taxing labor once he dragged himself to work. It kept his mind occupied. But he had already started
to come home after eight and it was only going to get worse.

His bank account was empty, and he had come close to missing his last rent payment. His Festiva needed a new battery and a tune-up he simply couldn't afford. Thank God the trusty little thing started in the morning. If it failed him, he would lose his job.

6

Two days before Jennifer Woodward was scheduled to arrive to visit her father,
Bill White opened his eyes and pressed the button on his alarm clock. It was five o'clock. Even the birds were still asleep. He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes, and began praying his morning offering.

He took a shower, got dressed, and ate a simple breakfast. An hour and a half before he was due at the offices of his own advertising agency, he sat at the modest desk in his modest apartment not
far from Buzz's apartment. He read from the Gospel of Luke for thirty minutes. He carefully read the enlightening commentaries supplied for each passage, underlining particular passages that struck him. He then copied a few notes in a handsome, leather-bound notebook.

There were seventeen full notebooks of the same type in the case next to the desk. Next to the notebooks were several dozen spiritual
classics that he had read over the years, each one with pages underlined and notated in Bill's methodical hand.

Then he read for fifteen minutes from a well-worn copy of
In Conversation with God,
one volume of a set that contained spiritual commentaries for every day of the year. This particular series was all the rage in one of Bill's social circles.

Rising early, reading spiritual commentary,
followed by mental prayer, followed by Mass: these were his norms. He never mentioned these norms to anyone besides his spiritual director, who was a priest in Opus Dei, a low-key religious association. Bill had become involved with Opus Dei during college. Within the Catholic Church, Opus Dei was technically known as a personal Prelature, which meant that its full members were primarily subject
to a bishop appointed to Opus Dei.