To keep them safe. Even now I taste the irony.
I did not hurry as I descended the three flights. When I reached the second-floor landing, the chimes pealed once more, and again as I crossed the foyer, and I knew a small, mean satisfaction at keeping the priest waiting. Through the wavy glass of the sidelights, I viewed an ordinary man edging out of the north side of middle age. Although it was cool for May, he was bareheaded, and the wind lifted the short strands of his hair into spikes, like the gelled pink hair of the teenage clerk at the market where we now shopped. In my limited experience, I have always found priests to be fat or skeletal, as if they were either wasted or well fed by their faith. This one was thin, scholarly looking, with shoulders beginning to stoop. From the weight of his calling, I remember thinking. All those untold burdens. I felt no sympathy. Don’t talk to me of burdens.
If stripped of the clothing of his profession—the black suit, white band collar—the priest could be any professional. An accountant. Banker. Teacher. Salesman. Well, broadly speaking, I supposed he was all of those. Just not on my damned turf. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
“Yes?”
“I’m Father Paul Gervase.” Given his slight build, the priest’s voice was deeper, more resonant than I expected but still held the softness and lack of aggression I associated with the lower strata of the male Catholic hierarchy. I couldn’t imagine why Sophie would think I’d ever talk to this inconsequential functionary, this man apparently not bothered by the prospect of time squandered on a fool’s errand.
“From Holy Apostles,” the priest said. He hesitated. “I, ah, I don’t know if you recall me.”
I stared blankly, waited.
“I celebrated the Mass for your daughter. For Lucy.” He ran a palm over his head, smoothed his hair flat. His color was pale, tinged with gray, the look of a man with a disease not yet diagnosed. There was a saffron-colored smudge on his left lapel, a color I associated with the pollen of daylilies. A shade of marigold or cadmium.
It took a minute until I was sure my voice would be steady. In fact, I barely remembered the priest, but then I’d managed to block all details of Lucy’s funeral, a Catholic service I had agreed to only because it meant so much to Sophie. “Yes?” I said and steeled myself for the inevitable opening, the empty words, the unbearably condescending expression of pity or sympathy wrapped in infuriating platitudes. In the past months, I’d heard enough of them to last a lifetime. I don’t know what to say, people say. And then they would say it anyway. One woman had actually had the nerve to tell Sophie she was young enough to have another child, as if a dead child could be as easily replaced as a burned-out lightbulb. The woman had added that if we had a second child, we would again be a family, the loss might be diminished. Like that horrid phrase the Brits used for the royal family. An heir and a spare. What a fucking dumb-witted thing to say. The priest looked straight at me, blue eyes gazing out from behind wire-rimmed glasses, revealing nothing. I waited, then broke the silence. “You’re wasting your time, Father.”
Father Gervase smiled, an unexpectedly appealing smile but not false. “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that.”
I bet, I thought.
“May I come in?”
Our eyes caught for a long moment, reminding me of a schoolyard game of chicken. Ridiculous really. I stepped back and invited the priest in with a sweeping gesture, an Elizabethan mockery of a welcome. The priest coughed, a noise as dry and insubstantial as the riffling of the pages of a missal, and then stepped inside. He looked around, admiring the foyer, the crown moldings, the parquet floor with inlaid marble squares, the rococo sideboard. What had Sophie told him? What had he expected? Dirty floors? Empty booze bottles? Food-crusted dishes?
“Amazing,” the priest said. There was a note in his voice I couldn’t identify.
“What’s that, Father?”
The priest seemed not to have heard. “Amazing,” he murmured again. Finally he roused himself. “This house,” he said. “I grew up in a Victorian very much like this. In Milwaukee. Yes. Very like this one.”
Was this true? I wouldn’t take odds. I trusted nothing, no one, least of all priests, especially the small talk of this one.
“Is this the original flooring?”
I nodded.
“It’s beautifully restored.”
Once I would have taken pride in the compliment, but no longer. We should have sold the damned house. Damned was not too strong a word for all that had happened, but there really was no question of moving. In spite of everything, there remained too much of my father in me to just let the place go completely. Even today I can hear my father’s words—we are but caretakers of our belongings—and I can recall the Saturdays of my boyhood when, in a companionship that required little conversation, we undertook weekend chores. Scraping worn shutters. Re-grouting bathroom tiles. The first gift I remembered receiving from my parents was an undersized carpenter’s box with my name stenciled in navy blue on the side. It contained a nail set and hammer, screwdriver and miniature crosscut saw, socket wrench and pliers, a wooden hinged rule. I still have it somewhere in the basement. For future generations, my father would say as he instructed me in how to rewire an outlet, how to miter a perfect corner as if salvation could be found there, how to replace a washer. Of course that was back when faucets came with washers. When things were simpler to fix.
“Izzy bell tower,” the priest said.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Is that a Belter?” The priest pointed at the intricately carved sideboard.
“It is.” I was forced to a quick reassessment. Counting myself, I doubted there were more than five or six people in the entire state who would recognize the cabinetmaker’s work. “I inherited it from my grandparents.”
“My parents had a bench of his.”
I nodded, realizing how easy it was to forget that this priest had a history that predated his vocation, a prior life that even vows couldn’t erase. Once, he was only a man, before that a boy.