The Prudence of the Flesh (5 page)

Tuttle turned off the radio, then turned it on again to see what station it was. Gregory Barrett. The name meant nothing to him—but it would. He wasn't going to begin looking into the life of Madeline Murphy until he knew exactly who he was working for. Whom? The program had the odd effect of making Tuttle wonder if he knew the English language.

Gloria Daley agreed with Ned Bunting about Monsignor Sledz, although on a different basis. She said that the pastor at St. Bavo's had laughed away her questions about obtaining an annulment.

“Marriage is permanent, my dear lady. That's the idea, and it should drive out every other idea.”

Gloria had tried to appeal to what she read in the papers—annulments were had almost for the asking, in the eyes of critics—but she never even got to ask.

“An annulment,” Ned repeated. You only needed an annulment if you were married, and he had not thought of Gloria as married. How had he thought of her? A youngish aunt, full of fun, one who didn't question his claim to be a writer.

“Fortunately, or I should say unfortunately, it all resolved itself.”

“How so?”

“He died. In a far-off land.” Her eyes drifted away as her voice lowered. Then she turned and smiled, and he knew the theatrics were a put-on. “Iraq.”

“Ah.”

“You didn't think I'd lead you on if I were a married woman, did you?”

Was she leading him on? Ned had little experience of women, and he doubted that experience would have helped with Gloria. How old was she, anyway? The way she poked him in the ribs when she spoke to him might have been just a joke, like the theatrics, but now she was running her hand along his arm, asking him to tell her what Monsignor Sledz had done to him.

“I told you I'm a writer.”

“But you haven't let me see any of your dirty books.”

It had been a mistake to let her believe that he wrote off-color stuff. That made it more difficult to speak of the treatment his proposal to write a column for the parish bulletin had received. When he did, Gloria's reaction was a tonic.

“Why should you demean yourself writing for that silly bulletin?”

“It
was
a stupid idea, but I had just finished a story, and the thought came, and I talked to the ineffable Sledz, and here we are.”

She had been following what he said with bright eyes, and when he said “ineffable” he felt her hand tighten on his arm. He had learned that unusual words triggered deep emotions in her. Now she lifted her face, eyes half closed, and it was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her. He put his lips to hers briefly, then withdrew.

“The kiss of peace,” she murmured.

“Don't be sacrilegious.”

“I meant that you could get away with that in church.” She lifted her face again. The second kiss would have been inappropriate in church, except perhaps at the conclusion of a wedding. The thought made him wary. Gloria's talk of an annulment, the lost husband, her undeniable warmth—it all suggested that she was shopping for a replacement.

“I'll never marry again,” she sighed, as if reading his fears.

“I never have.”

“Wise man. But then you have your writing.”

“What I need at the moment is a project, an idea, something big. Henry Drummond?” Drummond, a Former Archdiocesan employee, loudly accused the Cardinal and his minions of injustice.

If she registered this remark, she gave no indication of it. She wanted to talk about priests and the way some of them were making the news lately. Gloria said she found them less intimidating now that all that dirty linen was being aired in public. For all they knew, Monsignor Sledz . . . The thought ended in hysterical laughter. The laughter subsided, and Gloria sat back and looked at Ned with what he thought of as her significant look.

“Why not that?” she asked.

“Why not what?”

“For your new project. A book on this scandal. It just goes on and on. Don't forget that even Cardinal Bernardin had to answer a silly accusation. What do you think?”

There are moments, and this was one of them, when out of booming buzzing confusion an idea emerges that has the mark of destiny on it. Of course. This was his subject. After years at St. Bavo's, he knew a thing or two about the clergy. Nothing scandalous there, certainly, but he thought he understood the clerical mind.

“What there is of it,” Gloria said, wrinkling her nose.

“The question is how to approach the subject.”

They went to work on it, the two of them. It was the first brainstorming Ned Bunting had ever engaged in.

Suddenly Gloria was on her feet. She walked back and forth in her living room, striking her forehead and groaning. “My God, I've got it.” She rejoined him on the couch, taking his hands in hers. “I have a friend . . .” She stopped and inhaled. “A friend who is a victim. Isn't that where to begin, with the victims?”

Thus it was that Ned Bunting first heard of Madeline Murphy. Later he came to think that Gloria's sudden inspiration for his new writing project was not as spontaneous as it appeared, owing much to her theatrical ability for seeming so.

“What bothers me,” Amos Cadbury said to Roger Dowling, “is the way these scandals affect priests like yourself.”

“Little if at all, Amos.”

“But surely the way the priesthood is made fun of nowadays is something new.”

“Maybe overdue, in a way. Oh, these scandals pain me, Amos, but there is also the realization that there but for the grace of God go I. As for being made fun of, there are a lot worse things.”

“I am beginning to think that Gregory Barrett should have tried to conceal his case in the bundle of them Barfield is negotiating.”

“Oh?”

“The woman has been trying to see Barrett's wife.”

In this Barrett was unlike the other objects of such accusations: He had left the priesthood, married, and established a career. Perhaps as a former priest he thought he was less vulnerable, but having a family was its own kind of vulnerability. The celibate can suffer alone, whether deservedly or not, but
Gregory Barrett had a wife and son and could not ignore the effect on them of the charge brought against him.

“It may sound cynical to say so, Father, but I think the media prefer to bay after a man who still wears a Roman collar and is involved in priestly work. Someone like Barrett requires too much explanation.”

They were in Amos's office awaiting the arrival of Gregory Barrett to discuss the charges against him. When he was announced and came into the office, Roger Dowling thought his classmate looked a good deal less self-possessed than he had a week before at the St. Hilary rectory. He almost collapsed into the chair Amos pointed him to.

“She telephoned again last night. Mr. Cadbury, I think I should bring a suit against her.”

“I hope it never comes to that. Actually, these telephone calls may prove helpful.”

“You wouldn't say that if you knew what they're doing to us. Can you imagine what it's like for me to discuss such an accusation with my wife? Of course she believes me, but what a subject to test her trust on. It's our son she's afraid for.”

Roger said, “Does he know your past?”

“That is the problem. We decided long ago that we would make a complete break. The past would be as if it had never been. That worked in Cairo. It was coming back to the Chicago area that brought this on.”

“In what way?”

“That woman must have listened to my program.”

“Does she have a lawyer?” Amos asked.

“I haven't any idea.”

“If she calls again, urge her to acquire a lawyer, someone I can discuss this with.”

A cadre of lawyers dedicated to exposing clerical scandals moved across the country from diocese to diocese, coordinating their efforts and bringing media pressure on bishops as well as on the accused. Huge sums of money had been paid out, and there seemed no end to the cases that were turned up. One or two had been truly shocking, exhibiting a pattern of perversity extending over many years. It was a tragic thing to see a man in his eighties confronting accusations from decades ago, but in most cases indictment and punishment were long overdue.

What Roger could not fathom was how a man involved in such behavior could go on functioning as a priest. How could such a one give homilies, hear confessions, say Mass? The thought of a man in a state of mortal sin saying Mass brought back that terrible image from the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, a vision she had of devils swarming around the altar when Mass was being said by a sinful priest. Not that the acts of the priesthood depended on the personal virtue of the priest.
Ex opere operato
, in the phrase; the priest acted in the name of the Church, not in his own. It was actually a heresy to hold that only a good priest could do the deeds of the priest. For all that, the function called for more than ordinary virtue, for an exemplary life. The faithful had a right to expect priests to be better than themselves, or at least to be trying to be better.
We are symbols of more than ourselves
, he thought.
That is why our misdeeds have such a devastating impact
.

No need to dwell on the prurience of the media in reporting the stories. No need to point out that other professions were not targets of the effort to discredit and extort huge compensatory payments. The priesthood was a target unlike any other. That members of it had behaved like libertines was in its way a unique story. Still, Gregory Barrett's case was atypical, and Amos seemed to think it could be handled in a delicate way.

In the elevator, going down, Greg said, “I wonder if he is the type of lawyer one needs in a situation like that.”

“Amos is the best.”

“Has he ever been in a gutter fight? Wouldn't it make sense to find out what we can about this girl?”

“The accuser?”

“Yes. What kind of person claims to remember such things long afterward? Do they just pop into the mind? I don't understand all this suppressed memory stuff. It sounds to me like the result of suggestion.”

“Memory is an odd faculty.”

“When it comes down to it, I think we are going to have to fight fire with fire. Or mud with mud.”

They had arranged to meet Greg's wife for a drink at the Palmer House.

It was difficult to think that Nancy Barrett had ever been a nun. Her hair was silver gray, but her face was as youthful as Greg's. She put out her hand when her husband introduced Father Dowling, and as he took it he looked into her cool blue eyes. In the bar, the Barretts ordered martinis and Father Dowling
mineral water. Almost immediately they were discussing the great topic.

“I never before wanted to kill someone,” Nancy Barrett said. She paused. “I suppose I can want to now only because she is a stranger.”

William Arancia had turned out to be Gregory Barrett, adjunct member of the faculty at Loyola and a regular on NPR radio.

“Married, one son, one wife, and a home on a wooded lot.” Tuttle asked Hazel how she had found all this out. She tossed a brochure to him almost disdainfully. It was a promotional piece from NPR, and pictured there among other regulars was Tuttle's client.