I laughed, a short laugh. “Yes. Here I am. Painting saints.”
By late afternoon, the oppressive heat of the day abated a bit, and I left the studio and headed home, detouring first along the sea walk, observing a handful of swimmers and sunbathers enjoying the final moments of the day. A line of children queued up by the ice-cream truck, a vintage vehicle restored and operated by two college students. I replayed my conversation with the priest. I am not by nature an impulsive man, but in accepting the commission, I had acted on an impulse I couldn’t explain. I knew that on some level—the archbishop wasn’t the only one harboring hidden agendas—I hoped that it would bring Sophie back from Maine, would serve as a way of reconnecting us and bringing us together. Well, if that had been my expectation, it wasn’t working. While she seemed pleased with my decision and had called several times expressing interest about which saints I was painting and asking how the work was progressing, Sophie remained in Maine. With Joan Laurant.
I left the beachfront. As I passed the playground, I heard a group of youngsters playing a game of tag, their laughter braiding the air. Off to one side, I caught sight of a lone teenager and recognized him as one I had seen there in the past. The boy was sitting on a bench and looking very much alone. I studied him from a distance, took in the narrow shoulders, now hunched, the bowed head, and saw a vulnerability so naked I nearly flinched from it. An image from the book Father Gervase had left at our home so many weeks before came to mind. Saint Sebastian. Pierced with arrows.
Sebastian was not on the list I had drafted and submitted to the archbishop, but that easily could be altered. I approached the boy. “Hello there,” I called out as I grew closer.
The boy looked up, his expression wary.
“I don’t want to bother you, but I wonder if I could ask you something.”
The boy drew inward, and as he looked at me, his face was stricken and his eyes widened in fear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Heat-stricken by the weather—Father Gervase remembered a time when such high temperatures would not have bothered him—he walked slowly back to the rectory.
Although he knew boyhood memory was not to be relied on, summers seemed much hotter now than in the long-ago past. Or was it a factor of aging? Daily, he was aware of his aging. Why, just that morning he’d asked the man who mowed the lawns in front of the rectory if he would add more mulch to the perennial beds to conserve what little moisture the soil held, a job he once would have done himself. Easily. The yardman had then reminded him that he had already asked him to do the mulching. So memory waned along with energy.
His hip was bothering him more today, and he limped along, shoulders slumped not only from the heat and aging, but from his visit to Will Light’s new studio. Again, as he so often did after encounters with the artist, Father Gervase allowed his thoughts to land on his own inadequacies. Even now, after having agreed to take on the commission, the artist was clearly still mired in grief, and all he had to offer were empty words about the comfort of faith, something Light wanted no part of. Of larger concern to Father Gervase was the matter of Will’s anger. Although it seemed to have abated, the priest knew it was there, beneath the surface perhaps but alive nonetheless. And so he continued to reach out to the artist, knowing it was the smallest things that could help. A hand on his shoulder. A cup of coffee. A bit of casual conversation. He still had misgivings about his own ability to help the artist and found himself making excuses that would relieve him of the mission. More than once he had spoken to his Lord about this. I think you’ve called the wrong number. Then he would remember that doubt made one cautious, made one stumble, and so he would return to the artist’s studio, a willing if inadequate instrument of God’s plan.
He rounded the corner and began to climb the hill toward the rectory. It was his turn on the rotation for the weekly pastoral visit to Rose Hall Manor, and he wondered if this once he might ask Father Burns to step in for him. What he needed was a cool shower followed by a tall gin and tonic and then to sit down and watch the Sox finish the last game in the series with Cleveland. The thought of this quickened his pace slightly, but then, before he could alter direction and avoid her, he saw the figure waiting on the rectory porch. The sight of her took the last of the stuffing out of him and with it all hopes of the shower and a drink and finding Father Burns. No help for it now. The priest braced himself as Lena MacDougall shot up from the porch rocker to greet him, her face full of righteous purpose. “Good afternoon, Lena,” he said, noting her dress looked freshly ironed, her hair without a strand out of place. “Have you been able to keep cool amid the sweltering heat?”
She didn’t waste a minute on small talk. “Have you heard the latest, Father?”
There was little doubt he was about to. He forced a welcoming smile, allowing himself the small sin of hypocrisy.
Without giving him a moment to reply, she began. “That man who is painting the saints,” she said. Lena seldom honored people with their names. That man. Her. That boy. Him. As if Father Gervase should intuit who was the latest to head her complaint list.
“Are you speaking of Will Light?”
The color rose in her face. “It’s a scandal,” she said. “An absolute scandal.”
“What’s that?” Lord grant him patience.
“An absolute scandal. Someone has to do something about it.”
Father Gervase was quite sure that by someone she meant him. The prospect of the shower and drink disappeared completely. He’d be lucky if he had enough time to change his shirt before he was due at the nursing home.
“It was bad enough when that Ramos girl was asked to pose. Well, you know how I feel about that. Not that my objections did the least bit of good.”
Not something he could easily forget. Half the parish had heard her belief that it was completely inappropriate for an unwed mother to pose as a saint. An unwed mother and a teenager whose boyfriend declined to marry her, a position backed up by the boy’s parents. He wondered what her latest objection would be. He resigned himself to hearing her out.
“Now he’s chosen that woman.”
“Which woman is that?”
“You don’t know?” Her eyes glittered with a gossip’s satisfaction that she would be the one to deliver the news. “I heard it from Lucia Crowley, who heard about it over at Amelia’s Shear Pleasure. She said the woman herself was telling everyone, pleased as punch she was.”
“What woman?” he asked again.
“Miriam Endelheim.” The name was a sourness on her tongue.
“Ah.”
“A Jew,” she said. “That man has chosen a Jew to be one of the saints.”
“I see,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could manage.