The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (16 page)

   “
Is that
right?”

   
They had reached
the main road. Putkowski came to a full stop to let some
pedestrians cross, then inched out from the big black iron
gate.

   “
You’re from
Cliffside Park, if I remember correctly.”

   “
That’s right,”
Putkowski replied, palming the steering wheel. “You have a good
memory, Father. My own is like a sieve.”

   “
I guess I
remembered because of the amusement park.”

   “
Palisades.”

   “
You must have
spent a lot of time there as a kid.”

   “
Not as much as
you’d think. Familiarity breeds contempt,” he observed cheerfully.
“Although I spent more than my share after I was assigned to a
parish.”

   
Father Walther
smiled sympathetically. Until the amusement park closed down,
several parishes—his own included—had used it for fund-raisers as
well as for annual school outings. He had gone on those outings
himself as a boy.

   “
Back to the
salt mines,” Putkowski said.

   
Father Walther
mentioned that he still had a week’s vacation left.

   “
Lucky dog. I
took my vacation in June.”

   “
How did you
spend it?”

   
Putkowski
frowned and took a firmer grip on the steering wheel.

   “
Drying out.” He
turned toward his fellow cleric, his thick brow deeply furrowed.
“I’m an alcoholic,” he declared as if he were voicing a challenge
instead of a confidence. “It usually takes longer than two weeks to
dry out, but my pastor couldn’t spare me any longer than that. As
it was, I wasn’t exactly performing at full capacity.”

   “
You seem
alright now.”

   
Putkowski
scowled at the road ahead.

   “
People like us
have to take it one day at a time.”

   “
That’s not bad
advice for anyone.”

   
Putkowski
nodded, but said, “We have no choice. As soon as we stop living in
the present, we’re lost. That’s where half our troubles come
from—trying to escape what we have to face in the here and
now.”

   
Father Walther
failed to see how this was different from anyone else’s situation,
but said, “It’s too bad you won’t have any real
vacation.”

   “
That’s the
price we pay.”

   
The man’s pat
responses suggested that he belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Father Walther had never actually attended a meeting of Alcoholics
Anonymous, but he had heard representatives speak at communion
breakfasts and Knights of Columbus meetings.

   “
You get some
kind of...help?”

   “
Of course.”
Putkowski darted a sharp glance at his passenger. “I’d be a fool
not to. “Actually, I shouldn’t be so quick to say that. For a long
time I was fool enough to think I could handle it on my own. That
was a mistake—a big mistake.” He took a long look at the onrushing
concrete. “I’m in AA, and I also go to a therapist. Father Bowa
turned me on to therapy, as a matter of fact.”

   
Father Walther
didn’t question the appropriateness of a referral in Tom
Putkowski’s case, but he couldn’t help wondering if the Dominican
shunted all his charges to a therapist as a matter of
course.

   “
The best thing
about AA is that when I attend a meeting I’m just like everyone
else. I get no special treatment because I’m a priest. To them I’m
just another drunk.”

   “
You attend
anonymously?”

   “
Sure. Well, as
anonymously as possible. I wear my Roman collar, but no one knows
who I am—unless they happen to know me already. After all, some of
us are top-flight executives, doctors, lawyers. We even have a
politician. He’s been dry for some time, of course.”

   “
And you go to a
therapist as well.”

   “
Twice a week.
The diocese has some kind of deal—something like a group health
plan. There’s no out-of-pocket expense to my parish.”

   “
Is it
helpful?”

   “
I’d be lost
without it. I should say, without it and the AA.”

   
Of course,
Putkowski was a self-admitted alcoholic, but it was his enthusiasm
for AA and psychotherapy that disconcerted. It was the sort of
ardor, it seemed to Father Walther, that used to be generated only
for religion, the kind of faith that made a Lourdes or a Fatima
possible, packed Sunday Masses and kept the seminaries operating at
full capacity. Had that spirit left the church only to take up
residence in the psychiatrist’s office and the halls of self-help
groups? What, then, was the function of faith supposed to be? A set
of rituals? Backdrops to the more substantial justification one
received on the analyst’s couch? If so, he decided as Tom Putkowski
headed onto the Goethals Bridge, he was not sure he could make that
compromise. If religion could no longer be the meat and drink of
his life, he did not see how he could accept it as something less,
make peace with the secular order, and become a...well,
Unitarian.

    CHAPTER NINE

   “
Isn’t this a
wonderful surprise!” Margaret clapped her hands and looked as if
she might embrace him. “Let me take your valise.” He didn’t. “Do
you know, I was saying to myself not ten minutes ago, ‘I wouldn’t
be surprised if Father Walther turned up today.’ Isn’t that
remarkable? Is that what you would call ESP?”

   
He stepped into
the parlor where, summer and winter, the blinds were drawn against
the afternoon sun. “Everything okay?”

   “
Well,” she
replied sotto voce as he leafed through the mail, “you know what
the Old Fellow is.”

   “
Just the facts,
ma’am,” he said, opening a plumber’s bill. He whistled at the
amount and shoved it back into the envelope. It wasn’t until he
dropped the mail back down on the table beside the telephone that
he saw the disappointment on his housekeeper’s face. But he was
tired of her game that they were in league against Father George
and the Monsignor. “No messages? Nothing more from my
mother?”

   “
No, nothing,”
she said. Then, “Wait.” She plunged her hand deep into the pocket
of her housecoat and withdrew a couple wrinkled pieces of paper
folded carefully into quarters. “Let me see. Let me
see.”

   
As he watched
her unfold the notes he was conscious of the parlor’s dank smell.
The same dusty curtains hung on the window. All of this was
familiar, but seemed a place he had lived in a long time ago rather
than the home he had been absent from for just a few
days.

   “
Here’s
something,”—as if an anonymous hand had dropped the note into her
pocket when she wasn’t looking. “Father George must have taken it.
Let me see if I can make out his scrawl.” She pushed her eyeglasses
higher on the bridge of her thin prominent nose. “I should be
getting a pair of bifocals. I’m alright at a distance, but up close
I can’t make out a thing.”

   “
Can I
help?”

But she took a quick step backward, holding the note
at arm’s length and then drawing it slowing toward her. “’Call...
Call R-O-something? I’m afraid that’s all I can make of it, Father.
Except for the number.” She offered the slip of paper, watching him
carefully over the tops of her baby-blue frames.

   
The name Rosalie
was plainly written for anyone to see. He was furious with her for
dissembling, but he was also aware that his face was flushed with
embarrassment. It seemed impossible that Rosalie Sykes should call
him at his rectory, as improbable as if a character from a dream
were to walk up to him on the street and identify herself. But
there was no denying what was written in Father George’s miniscule
hand.

   “
She’s a
relation of Charlie Weeks,” he said finally, unable to confront her
blue stare. “His mother took ill. Was there nothing
else?”

   “
No,” she
replied, looking as if she didn’t believe a word he had said,
“nothing.” He refolded the note and put it into his pants pocket.
“You’d better call, don’t you think?” she said.

   
He wanted to
denounce her as a meddling old fool. But when she took a step
toward the telephone, he was suddenly terrified she was going to
put it into his hand. But she only straightened a homemade doily
their and said, “I’ll say a rosary for Mrs. Weeks.”

   “
Is Father
George around?”

   “
Gone for the
afternoon,” she replied as if the curate had finally made off with
the silver.

   “
And the
Monsignor?”

   “
Taking a nap.
You know he has to have his afternoon snooze. But I’ve got some
good news for you, Father,” she added with a schoolgirl grin.
Annoyed, he walked over to one of the room’s massive windows,
pushed back the heavy blue drapes and tried to force it open. The
window wouldn’t budge. She waited until he had brushed the dust off
his hands, unconcerned by his failure to get the window open or
even by dirt that had accumulated on it. “I spoke to Mr. Lowry,
down at the Dodge-Plymouth dealer’s. He has the loveliest blue car
for you. Second-hand, of course. But a steal, Father. Plus,” she
said, coming closer and almost laying a hand on his arm, “he’ll
throw in a six-month guarantee.”

   “
Then, all I’ve
got to do is get the Monsignor to part with a couple mass
collections.”

   “
To tell you the
truth,” she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, “I’ve
already mentioned it to him. I knew you wouldn’t mind, seeing as
how Mr. Lowry wasn’t sure how long he could hold the car for
you.”

   
He was amazed at
her audacity, although a week ago he would have taken her
interference for granted.

   “
What did
himself say?”

   “
Well, you know
how he is. Perfectly alright one minute and then gibbering away
about something that happened forty years ago the next. I had a
time of it just getting him to understand what happened to your old
Ford. He seemed to think the car was still brand new.”

   
Father Walther
laughed despite himself. This was all the encouragement she
needed.

   “
I finally
managed to convince him you really do need a new
car—new-secondhand, I mean.”

   “
He didn’t
happen to hand you a blank check?”

   “
Well, no,
Father, he didn’t. But I’d say he’s pretty much agreeable to the
idea. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble getting it out of
him.”

   
He thanked her
for her trouble.

   “
No trouble,
Father. No trouble at all. What are we put on this earth for if not
to help one another?”

   
He unpacked his
suitcase and lay down for a rest before dinner. He had asked
Margaret to call him when Father George returned. With any luck, he
could borrow the second-curate’s car (the Monsignor could damn well
do without his own for a few days) and be away again by
evening.

   
He couldn’t
imagine why Rosalie had telephoned, but whatever the reason,
apology or just friendly chat, he did not intend to return the
call. It had taken him all weekend to recover from their last
encounter. If she continued to leave messages with Margaret, he
would eventually have to respond. But for the present he intended
to put as much distance as possible between himself and Holy
Name.

   
He was just
dozing off when a gentle knock woke him. He sat up, unsure at first
where he was.

   “
Come in,” he
called, his heart beating palpably.

   
It was Father
George. His real name was Hempflinger. He was a foreigner, or at
least foreign-born, though Father Walther couldn’t recall whether
he had come from Yugoslavia, Hungary, or some other Middle
European country following the collapse of the
Soviet Union. He had only the faintest of accents, probably because
he had come to this country when he was still young. He avoided the
Monsignor as much as possible, not just because the old man kept to
himself, using Father Walther as his proxy, but because the pastor
treated his second curate with unvarnished contempt. Such
intolerance was understandable, or at least predictable, in a man
equally grouchy, if not downright senile, about so many other
things. What seemed so appalling today, as the stocky, slightly
stooped immigrant stood fidgeting in the doorway, was the way the
man accepted his diminished identity, as if there really were
something about him that warranted the Monsignor’s atrocious
behavior. Even the housekeeper felt free to treat him as if he were
a certifiable fool who had somehow been assigned to an otherwise
respectable parish of the Archdiocese of Newark. And everyone’s use
of his first name, George, rather than his surname, which was a
challenge but not impossible, seemed a deliberate
insult.

   “
Margaret said
you wanted to see me,” he offered as if he were a student reporting
to the principal’s office. His dark curly hair had receded to the
middle of his scalp, making him look older than his years, which
were about equal with his fellow curate’s.