The City Below (19 page)

"What?"

"The Secret of Fatima, what Our Lady revealed, that the Infant of Prague wears no underwear. See?"

Terry burst out laughing. His mentor had just reminded him that the only possible response to this shit must be ridicule. Religion gone wrong is not tragedy but comedy.

Father Collins took Terry's arm, as if now they would move together to the door, but instead they remained where they were, surrounded by odd paraphernalia and books, a stilted pair. "I was hoping you'd have lunch with me, old pal."

"I don't know, Father. I have to —"

"I won't take no for an answer." The priest spoke a bit sharply, time to cut the crap. "I'm going to Dini's, and it's a principle of mine not to eat alone in public if I'm dressed in clericals. Some drunk always wants to hear my confession."

"Your confess —?"

"Right, hear
his
confession. See what I mean? I need you. What do you say?"

"Look, Father, I know what you're up to here. You think I went off half cocked with Monsignor Loughlin."

"No, I don't. You reacted the way I would have. I didn't see that thing coming either. Don't you think I'd have warned you, prepared you?"

"I think you did prepare us. That may be the problem. But —" Terry pulled away, bumping against the golden silk dress of one of the larger statues. What a strange religion, he thought And he realized that this priest, his friend, his spiritual father, was strange too. "I don't think I'm ready to talk about what Monsignor Loughlin said, if that's what you —"

"Me either. We'll talk the Red Sox. We'll talk Yaz and Lonborg. We'll talk BC basketball. Did you get permission from the rector to help the coach?"

"Yes."

"Good. I told you they'd never turn you down, now that you're almost a deacon. They love a jock We'll do jock talk, Terry, nice and superficial. My treat. Let's get out of here before that creep comes back with
Mysterium Salutis.
"

They left the store. The narrow sidewalk was crowded with office workers in the fold of their day, running to the lunchtime sales. They seemed so full of energy and life, of
bumanae vitae,
that Terry wished that his mood would lift. He glanced at Father Collins, whose face had fallen into its habitual benign expression. A passing stranger tipped his hat at him, a woman smiled, and Collins nodded generously at each. He led the way through the crowd, more than ready to shower them all with his affection. Terry, by comparison, felt stingy, and he rebuked himself. The day glittered around him. Sunlight streamed onto the pavement Here is the main thing, he told himself: human life is good.

The restaurant, a popular fish place on Tremont Street, was crowded. None of those waiting in line objected as the hostess, with her armful of menus, waved the priest and his friend ahead. When they reached the hostess at her podium, she offered her cheek to the priest A lamp turned on inside her when he kissed her. "Hello, Dolly," he said with a hint of the song, and then he did a little quick-step.

They went to a Naugahyde booth below a splayed fishnet onto which lacquered lobsters, crabs, and starfish were clamped. Terry had barely spread his napkin when a waiter showed up with a martini for Father Collins. He took a quick, ample sip, said "Aaah," and then addressed the waiter with mock sternness. "But what about my young friend?"

The waiter hooked his fingers together and eyed Terry.

"He'll have the same thing," Father Collins said. "Silver bullet"

"No, no."

"Don't be a kid, Terry. Next week you're a deacon. New status, new rules. It'll be legal. We'll just jump the gun a bit."

The chalk-faced waiter leaned down. "It's legal now, sir. If you're eighteen."

"I'll have a beer."

"Bud? Miller?"

"Fine. Bud. Thanks."

How long had it been since he'd uttered those simple words? During his years in the seminary, even
those
years when so much else had changed, he had rarely eaten in a restaurant, driven a car, or spoken to a girl. He had not once left the seminary grounds —that rolling estate across from his own BC —without permission. With his dark windbreaker and button-down shirt, he did not appear all that set aside, but he sensed the waiter sizing him up for a perfect fool. It was a point of view Terry understood. No outsiders were fiercer critics of the defensive, isolating mediocrity of the seminary system than the seminarians themselves. But also they were the only ones with a lively sense of the system's two great virtues: the rare camaraderie it encouraged, and the powerful dependence on God which alone justified the anachronism of the way they lived.

When Terry looked at Father Collins, his eyes had taken on a new luster. Dependence on God? Doyle knew enough to take dependence on booze as a signal too. He knew that his own expression, compared to the priest's freshly lubricated one, would be opaque. They stared at each other for a moment, then Father Collins, letting it go at that, opened his menu.

"I recommend the artichoke."

"Not a feature in Brighton."

"Get it Take my word."

A few minutes passed before Terry's beer came, and before the waiter took up his position with pencil and pad. Terry asked for scrod and the artichoke. Father Collins ordered only the famous chowder and another drink, but when Terry glanced at him, he ordered the artichoke too. The waiter disappeared again. The priest lifted his martini glass, studied the olive, and said quietly, "The cardinal thinks the great weakness of the modern Catholic Church is the worldliness of the clergy." He sipped his drink. Then he looked at Terry. "But do you know what I think?"

"What?"

"It's the old women."

"The what?"

"Not the literal old women, not them. They make the thing go. No, I mean the old women in cassocks and collars. Like Loughlin. That wannabe grand inquisitor."

Terry had to smile. "Which is he? An old woman or Torquemada?"

"Both. The most dangerous combination."

"Funny thing, Father. I thought
Humanae Vitae
meant that
young
women were the great weakness of the Church. If we could just get rid of them —"

"Now
there's
an idea. You've got a future in this outfit"

"You know what the young women say. It's not the infallibility of the pope they worry about, it's the infallibility of the Pill."

The abruptness with which Father Collins leaned forward banished their frivolity. "It's not an infallible statement," he said gravely. "There is no pretense to infallibility. Nobody claims that for the damn thing."

"Then how can they make it binding in conscience, in confession?"

Collins dropped his eyes. The fresh martini arrived in the nick of time. He stopped the waiter from removing the drained one, to pop its olive into his mouth. Then he snapped the toothpick in half with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. "They can't," he said. "Cush said to me, 'What am I supposed to do, be a cop under people's beds?'"

"Conjugal police."

Collins nodded. "It's impossible. Just impossible. The cardinal knows that better than anyone."

"But that's what he expects
us
to be. Did you see that oath?"

"The one we're not talking about?"

"How does he expect us to sign that?"

"So we
are
talking about it," Collins said.

"Well, how does he?"

The priest looked across the rim of his martini glass and said, "The way professors of a pontifical theologate sign the 'Rejection of the Syllabus of Errors,' which is a summary of everything we teach. The way three generations of priests before you signed the 'Oath Against Modernism,' which is all that the Vatican Council eventually affirmed. By holding your nose, Terry. That's how." He took a careful sip, then lowered his glass. "Which is what I wanted to tell you, what I want you to tell the others. This is just a new dose of the old fish oil. The trick is to swallow it quick It does nothing except let the dispensing quack pretend he's fixing something. In this case Cicognani, the apostolic delegate whose job is to keep the lid on over here. He's using Loughlin to force Cushing's hand. Loughlin wants the purple shirt, and this is the way to get it, and the Cush can't stop him. Cushing's the one liberal who could do them some damage on this, and that's why Rome has fired this shot across his bow. Cushing's conformity —the best way to show that the American Church has heard the pope speak and will come about Unfortunately, you guys are the midshipmen on deck doing the saluting. Just a wave of the hand, Terry, that's all. Cushing doesn't buy what's in that declaration, and he doesn't expect you to."

"He expects us to sign it."

"We all sign things, Terry. Hell, it's in Latin. Nobody will notice except those guineas in the Curia, the only ones who can read it."

"I can read it, close enough."

"I warned you about learning Latin too well. Dead language, dead, dead, dead. Now you won't even need it to say Mass."

"What are you telling me, Father? Swear on the Word of God something I don't believe?"

"You don't believe the world was created in seven days either. You don't believe the Red Sea parted for Moses, and you're not sure about the Virgin Birth. But do you debunk any of it? Symbolic language, Terry. We're talking about the truth beyond the literal meaning of the words."

"Which is what?"

"In this case, the order of the Church."

"The order of the Church, Father? It depends on a class of new deacons taking a phony oath?"

"Maybe it does."

"Then things are worse than I thought."

Father Collins dropped his eyes to his hands on the table. In his fidgeting, he had arranged the two sticks of the broken toothpick into a cross, stark against the white tablecloth. "They
are
worse than you thought, Terry. That's my point What are we supposed to do, jump ship?"

"I appreciate the analogy, Father, but Peter's bark notwithstanding, you and I and my classmates aren't in the same boat, not yet."

"We will be when you make the vow to obey the cardinal. What did you think that commitment means, anyway?"

Terry's fingers itched to hold a cigarette, another out-of-the-question indulgence all these years. He clasped his hands around his beer glass, let its moisture overwhelm his perspiration. "The vow? But the vow, Father, that's an oath, isn't it? How can you point to the gravity of one oath to mala the point that another is no big deal? I'm confused, Father. Do we mean what we say or not? Isn't that the question?"

"Come on, Terry. Keep your eye on the ball. The vow is part of a sacrament This thing Loughlin wants is hazing. One way to think of it is, he has no right, given the moral uncertainty surrounding the question, to ask for absolute fealty. Therefore you have a right to a mental reservation."

"Hey, Father, come on. I'm not a college kid looking to beat the draft."

"What are you, Terry?"

"
You're
asking me that? After hearing my confession twice a month for years?"

"And hearing an oversupply of ambivalence in your voice about your vocation. If you grab this oath business as a last-ditch excuse to bail out, you should at least be aware that that's what you're doing."

"Who's talking about bailing out? As if this is
my
problem. We're talking about
Humanae Vitae.
A problem for the whole Church, you called it You were the first one to call it a disaster, that first week."

"Before I came to terms with it."

"Well, I haven't done that yet I'm working on it I just don't know how I swear on the Bible that I already have."

"Because your word is so precious to you. Because you cannot tell a lie. Who the hell are you, George Washington? It's your only flaw, Mr. Doyle, that perfect virtue of yours."

"Jesus, Father." Terry looked away, horrified to feel a burning behind his eyes. The figures across the restaurant were blurred suddenly. He tried to think of something else, and what popped into his mind was Nick, how his brother would skewer him. "Make like a tree and leave, Charlie," he would say, and when Terry winced, Nick would poke him. "The tree of life, kid. Let's climb it." Terry would answer, "That's what I thought I was doing, so why do I feel like I'm sinking?"

"Now here's my confession," Father Collins said abruptly. "I'm having lunch with you because Loughlin told me to." The priest drained his martini in a gulp and held the glass up until a passing waiter took it "Loughlin sensed how the boys take their cues from you. He sensed the trouble coming, and he can't have it And I promise you, the Cush can't have it either. The archdiocese does not need rebellion in the ranks."

"You know better than anyone how far I am from being a rebel."

"Yeah, so were Lucifer's angels. They just thought they were a little better than the others, a little purer. Their word of honor, you know, was a tad more sacred."

"I'm not better than anybody. That's not what I'm saying."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm trying to be on board here, Father."

"Good. That's good."

The waiter brought him his drink. Terry watched the priest's hand shake as he brought it to his mouth, and, to his horror, he found himself thinking, I'm better than you.

"Good," Father Collins said again. He leaned back. "Monsignor Loughlin also told me to tell you not to call any meetings about the oath."

"What?"

"No assemblies, no group discussions. Just distribute copies and leave each man alone to come to terms with his own conscience, in counsel with his confessor, if needs be."

"Like this, you mean."

Father Collins shrugged.

"I don't control whether my classmates have meetings, Father."

"You're just not to call it, that's all. Understand?"

"Yes," he said, then added to himself, Mental reservation: what if I already did?

"Good."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. You've a bright future ahead of yourself, Terry. This thing is temporary. We've been through it before. Hunker down. The wind blows, knocks the Church around. But you know what? It's the wind of the Holy Spirit Our faith in his guidance means that eventually the truth will out, and
then
you and I will laugh about this little setback. You'll see."