House of Gold (4 page)

So when Mel and Kathy and Marie talked about children, Ellie played the role of excited friend to the hilt. After all, she had Chris and Edwards and her prolife charities, and the True Faith and the nice house in Bay
Village and a Dodge Durango with leather seats.

They all just assumed, as she wanted them to, that she was comfortable with, and resigned to, not being able to have another baby.

Not another child. Another baby.

A house of gold.

That was exactly what her womb was not.

Her soul cried out:
Give me love. Give me hope. Give me strength. Immaculate Mary! Jesus!

Her passionate prayer ran out of words.

Sam. Her gangly saint. He was the reason she kept up the front for the other moms. For years, she had successfully avoided the trap of her empty womb becoming the subject of conversation in her devout social circles. She had seen just that happen with other barren women–whose infertility soon came to subtly dominate the phone calls, the Rosary groups, the private little promises that "we're all
praying for you."

That
was not for Ellie. It was not her way.

As much as infertility defined her marriage, she could not bear the thought that it might define how she was viewed by those she loved most besides Sam and Chris–her friends.

She felt in her gut that she had a right to be known as Just-Ellie. Not as Ellie-Who-Can't-Have-A-Child.

In the early years, when they took her aside and asked
if she had ever considered adoption, she had brushed them off with false casualness. They never had an inkling that Christopher had been an "accident," an unplanned surprise from the honeymoon. To think that at the time she had regretted becoming pregnant because she had been so wrapped up in running her own fledgling consulting company.

"We don't feel that is where God is leading us," was what
she told them when they suggested she look into adoption. It wasn't a lie. She most certainly did not want to adopt, and did not believe God wanted that for her. Sam broached the subject just once, soon after the operation. She told him the truth and he never brought it up again. That had been so
Sam.

Instead, she and Sam gave hundreds of thousands to Catholic adoption agencies which served couples
who did have that calling. She couldn't force herself to want something she didn't want.

But there's really more to it, isn't there?

There was someone who should never, would never, could never, know about her deepest desire.

For if she told her friends how much she wanted to have another baby, it might get back to Sam. And she could never let that happen.

She loved him too much to allow him to
think she was disappointed about being barren. Not that it would lessen her value in his eyes. That was not Sam's way. She just wanted him to believe she was happy. That she was satisfied with the cards they had been dealt.

Is that too much to ask? And I am satisfied.

I am.

Her spiritual director knew, and he had agreed with her decision to...carry this cross in her own way.

Which brings you back
to the computer problem,
she thought now.

Chris and Sam. Her world: Chris and Sam.

In the nuts and bolts of it as a technical issue, she had no problem accepting the idea that Sam was right about the bug. But she did have an enormous problem facing the possibility of losing Sam and Chris.

Unlike Sam, she had gone to the next level beyond the immediate repercussions of the computer problem. She
had already deduced that no matter where they moved–to Montana or Alaska
or wherever
–the world was going to become a hard, cruel place.

Nasty, brutish, and short,
she had read somewhere once in another context, and the phrase came back to her now. She was an intelligent, practical girl.

And that a simple flu could kill her husband and son in a fortnight without modern antibiotics. Or a gang of
thieves enraged by their wealth. Or good old-fashioned warfare. Or any number of things. Surely Buzz could draw florid, bloody pictures for the group to ponder.

She was too objective to kid herself about them apples, and all them apples was rotten.

Maybe I just don't have enough faith? Maybe God will protect us. Angels will strike down our foes!

And maybe not.

She was spiritually mature enough
to realize that God never promised happiness in this world. The Blessed Mother had told Saint Bernadette exactly that at Lourdes.

She knew full well that God might so choose to take Christopher and Sam away from her, and that she would have to accept that reality–in order to keep her hand on the plow.

Faith? Now that's faith, Ellie dear.

Hadn't Buzz taught them all about the cross? His suicide
attempt had somehow allowed Pure Grace to bring Sam from atheism to faith in an instant on that dark, horrible, and mystically glorious afternoon so many years ago.

Is that why you told Melanie on the deck? To force yourself to carry the cross?

Last night, Melanie had been the perfect friend when Ellie took down the facade and told her about her ardent desire to have a baby and her deepest fears
about losing Sam and Chris–that and more. Mel had listened, and later, hugged, shared tears, and held her in that way only women understand.

Now Mel knew, and had sworn to never breathe a word to Buzz or Sam.

If only I had more faith.

But faith was a gift from God. You couldn't just add more of it to satisfy your taste–like adding sugar to coffee. Who was she to question how much faith God gave
to her?

What was that scripture Buzz always quoted?

"No man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is worthy of the Kingdom of God."

I have a plow. Yes, that's enough. Not a house of gold, but I have two priceless diamonds.

She was at peace with her life, her decision, despite the yearnings.

Indeed, she had thrown her
whole
self into supporting Sam's rise to greatness, giving money away
to the Catholic charities and apostolates ignored by the traditional philanthropists (even in charity, they were entrepreneurs), and enjoying an uncomplicated life with Christopher, her precious gem. Her Chris–like having a miniature version of Sam. How could she complain?

So don't complain, Ellie. I won't complain.
She steeled herself.
I will not complain.

She counted her blessings. She had Chris.
She had Sam. She had Buzz and Mel. She had the Johnsons, the Pennys, the Lawrences. She had her beloved Catholic faith; she was consecrated to Immaculate Mary.

She had lake views and comfortable shoes.

Don't be silly.

Looking at herself again in the mirror, she realized that she still had her looks–plenty enough to turn a man's head. Excellent skin. A few gray hairs, but nothing noticeable.

One
time, just last summer, Ellie had been walking across the street on her way to Huntington Beach when a gawking driver actually rammed into another car at the red light. She had seen the whole embarrassing episode with her own eyes.

Men could be such cads.

She rushed away, of course, and never told a soul.

Ellie had always been coldly objective about her looks–and like many virtuous women with
this gift, she avoided trading on it. From the first moment, she had been thrilled to offer this part of herself to Sam.

Everything for Sam.

Even bearing this cross in this way was for Sam.

It was always worse at night. She chastised herself for allowing herself to wallow in it.

She walked deliberately to the bed, hesitated for a second, then slipped under the covers, snuggling her back up to
Sam's. She closed her eyes, and imagined a golden house on a golden hill. She opened her eyes to rid herself of the image.

Enough already! Go to sleep.

This computer problem was bringing out the best and worst in all of them. She had a vague intuition that this was a foreshadowing of things to come for the multitudes, but the insight escaped before her mind could grasp it.

Ellie Fisk had worldly
riches, status, intelligence, beauty–everything an American girl could want.

And she would trade it all for a baby.

+  +  +

The sun was setting on Lakewood.

Markie ran ahead of Buzz and Melanie around to the back of the Pennys' two-story house and was soon mixed into the teeming throngs of Penny, Lawrence, and Johnson children. The Pennys had seven children, and the Lawrences eight–all under the
age of fourteen.

Two of Mark and Maggie Johnson's three girls were teenagers who played the role of overseers. Their oldest daughter was going to marry a Thomas Aquinas College man and lived in California. Their only son, Seamus, was eight, and like his father, already towered above other boys his age. His best friend was Christopher Fisk, who was almost as tall. Unlike the Woodwards, Pennys,
Fisks, and Lawrences, Mark and Maggie were beyond forty, yet still a few years away from
pushing fifty.

The adults crammed themselves onto the front porch.

Cigars and bottled beers abounded. The houses were all close together on this typical Lakewood street, but the Pennys' house was a world of its own. After dumping his RC Colas into a cooler in the kitchen, Buzz came to the porch. Mel rose from
her sturdy plastic chair, and after Buzz sat down in it, she sat on his lap. Packy was in the living room, toddling with the other smallest children, in view and earshot through a window on the porch wall of the house.

+  +  +

A Penny Party. Kids. Cigars. Beer. And for Buzz, cola and chewing gum. Wolfe Tones wafted in from a cheap-stereo somewhere in the house.

The rules were simple: bring the
kids if you had 'em. Bring your own beverage. Share your cigars. Use Buzz's Zippo, which, since Buzz had quit smoking years earlier, was a ceremonial heirloom kept between parties on the Pennys' mantlepiece. Discussion of Chesterton was required. Belloc encouraged. C.S. Lewis optional. Anything Catholic a must. Unabashed bashing of Democrats, Clinton, liberals within and without the Church was never
frowned upon. Thumbing of noses at the New World Order considered a bonus.

Perfect.

The reasons and ways and where-hows to make them all such a tight circle of friends were now long forgotten. Jimmy Lawrence and Tim Penny had grown up together. They shared the same classrooms and after-school memories from kinder-garten through Ignatius High and John Carroll. Each had married his sharp, pretty,
devout high school sweetheart.

Buzz entered the group originally as a friend of Mark Johnson, who shared with him a mutual friendship with Bill White. (Everyone called him Opus Dei Bill, except when he was in their presence.)

Opus Dei, literally the
Work of God,
was a Catholic organization which emphasized the need to seek sanctity in daily work.

Mark Johnson was an FBI agent, a Naval Academy
graduate, and a former All-American football player who had moved to Cleveland almost a decade earlier. He played basketball with Sam and Buzz.

Tim Penny worked in middle management for an insurance company, and Jimmy Lawrence was one of Cleveland's finest, though now he rode a desk at police headquarters rather than a cruiser in the mean streets. Mark met Jimmy during a court case years ago.
Jimmy had introduced him to his best friend, Tim, and so the circle expanded. Mark's friends became Tim and Jimmy's friends, and vice versa.

Three more regulars to the Penny Parties would show up shortly–Tim's brother Bill (the Not Opus Dei Bill), the Man (a black Notre Dame grad whose real name was rarely used, and who was originally from Buzz's basketball circle), and the perpetual bachelor,
Brian Thredda, who seemed to spend half his life accompanying the group's favorite priest, the noble Father Dial, pastor at Saint Philomena's, on trips to Rome and Europe.

Father Dial was a magnet for them all. In poor health for decades, this powerful homilist had been exiled to a poor parish on the outskirts of one of Cleveland's worst westside neighborhoods. Though many in the circle were registered
as members of different parishes, they all belonged to Saint Philomena's in their hearts, often investing hundreds of extra hours per year in order to drive their children to his orthodox grammar school. Always financially strapped, he somehow managed to keep his simple, Romanesque church cleanly-painted, flowers blooming in its gardens, and the nuns who taught at his school well-fed. It
was rumored he had friends in the Roman Curia at the highest levels–another reason for his-frequent excursions to the Holy City.

Poor health, age, and a certain rock-ribbed inability to avoid calling a spade a spade in public had kept the bishop's ring off his finger. The hierarchy's loss had been this little circle of Catholics' gain.

Five years earlier, when Buzz had been one of the perpetual
bachelors along with Brian Thredda, the Man, and Opus Dei Bill, he had walked into a Penny Party and lowered his gaze upon the elfin Melanie O'Meara. It was not love at first sight for either.

Marie Penny had been hoping to match Mel up with Brian or Bill (the Opus Dei Bill) that summer night...

+  +  +

Buzz had not been as heavy then–and was in splendid shape from playing pick-up basketball all
summer long. His crewcut was thicker, and less peppered with gray. Only a few years earlier, he and Mark, Opus Dei Bill, the Man, and Sam had teamed up for a Cinderella win of the city-wide charity basketball tournament. His slopey shoulders-matched his eyelids, and his penchant for giant, baggy black shorts, plain blue T-shirts, and black socks made him an unenticing, almost fearful-looking man.

Buzz Woodward exuded:
Yeah, I'm strange, and screw you if you don't like it,
which is exactly what his friends liked about him. Marie and Kathy had given up trying to find a woman willing to overlook his rank sociopathy. Not that Buzz was rude or discourteous. It was just that he was...

...strange. And he knew it. And he didn't care.

So when Mel first saw him out of the corner of her eye as she
stood in the dining room picking at one of Kathy's half-dollar-sized pizzas, her reaction was typical.