J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

“Thanks,” said Father Fabre, but he’d not be having any of that.

“One of the bears died at Como,” the pastor said. “One of the babies.”

“That’s too bad,” said Father Fabre. He pushed in the door for the pastor, then stood aside. “Some women to see you in the converts’ parlor,” he said, as the pastor passed in front of him.

The pastor nodded. Women in the converts’ parlor; he would see them.

“I don’t know,” Father Fabre said. “It may concern me — indirectly.” Then, staring down at the kitchen linoleum, he began an account of his afternoon at Mrs Mathers’. At the worst part — his chagrin on learning of the setup there — the pastor interrupted. He filled an unwashed cup from the sink with the fluid from the thermos bottle, gave it to Father Fabre to drink, and watched to see that he did. Father Fabre drank Miss Burke’s foul coffee to the dregs and chewed up a few grounds. When he started up his account again, the pastor interrupted.

“That’s enough,” he said.

Father Fabre, for a moment, thought he was in for it. But when he looked into the pastor’s eyes, there was nothing in them for him to fear, nor was there fear, nor even fear of fear, bravado. The pastor’s eyes were blue, blank and blue.

Father Fabre followed the pastor at a little distance, out of the kitchen, down the hallway. “Will you need me?” he said.

With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, the pastor walked into the converts’ parlor, leaving the door ajar as always when dealing with women.

Father Fabre stayed to listen, out of sight of those inside. He soon realized that it had been a mistake to omit all mention of Velma in his account, as he had, thinking her presence at Mrs Mathers’ incidental, her youth likely to sidetrack the pastor, to arouse memories of so-called study clubs and suppressed sodalists. Why, if the pastor was to hear the details, didn’t they tell him that Grace had been invited to dinner? Then there would have been five of them. The pastor was sure to get the wrong impression. To hear the ladies tell it, Mr Pint and Father Fabre were as bad as sailors on leave, kindred evil spirits double-dating a couple of dazzled working girls. The ladies weren’t being fair to Father Fabre or, he felt, even to Mr Pint. He wondered at the pastor’s silence. When all was said and done, there was little solidarity among priests — a nest of tables scratching each other.

In the next room, it was the old, old story, right from Scripture, the multitude crying, “Father, this woman was taken in adultery. The law commandeth us to stone such a one. What sayest thou?” The old story with the difference that the pastor had nothing to say. Why didn’t he say, She that is without sin among you, let her first cast a stone at her! But there was one close by who could and would speak, who knew what it was to have the mob against him, and who was not afraid. With chapter and verse he’d atomize ’em. This day thou shouldst be pastor . Yes, it did look that way, but he’d wait a bit, to give the pastor a chance to redeem himself. He imagined how it would be if he hit them with that text. They, hearing him, would go out one by one, even the pastor, from that day forward his disciple. And he alone would remain, and the woman. And he, lifting up himself, would say, Woman, where are they that accused thee? Hath no one condemned thee? Who would say, No one, master. Neither will I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.

“Think he can handle it?”

Whirling, Father Fabre beheld his tempter. “Be gone, John,” he said, and watched the janitor slink away.

Father Fabre, after that, endeavored to think well of the pastor, to discover the meaning in his silence. Was this forbearance? It seemed more like paralysis. The bomb was there to be used, but the pastor couldn’t or wouldn’t use it. He’d have to do something, though. The ladies, calmed at first by his silence, sounded restless. Soon they might regard his silence not as response to a grave problem but as refusal to hold council with them.

“We don’t feel it’s any of our business to know what you intend to do, Father, but we would like some assurance that something will be done. It that asking too much?”

The pastor said nothing.

“We thought you’d know what to do, Father,” said another. “What would be best for all concerned, Father. Gosh, I don’t know what to think!”

The pastor cleared his throat, touched, possibly, by the last speaker’s humility, but he said nothing.

“I wonder if we’ve made ourselves clear,” said the one who had spoken before the last one. She wasn’t speaking to the pastor but to the multitude. “Maybe that’s what comes from trying to describe everything in the best possible light.” (Father Fabre remembered the raw deal they’d given him.) “Not all of us, I’m afraid, believe that man’s there against Mildred’s will.”

“’ S not so .”

Father Fabre gasped. Oh, no! Not that! But yes, the pastor had spoken.

“Father, do you mean to say we’re lying?”

“ No .”

Father Fabre shook his head. In all arguments with the pastor there was a place like the Sargasso Sea, and the ladies had reached it. It was authority that counted then, as Father Fabre knew, who had always lacked it. The ladies hadn’t taken a vow of obedience, though, and they might not take “’S not so” for an answer. They might very well go to the chancery. At the prospect of that, of the fine slandering he’d get there, and realizing only then that he and the pastor were in the same boat, Father Fabre began to consider the position as defined by “’S not so” and “No.” The pastor was saying (a) that the situation, as reported by the ladies, was not so, and (b) that the ladies were not lying. He seemed to be contradicting himself, as was frequently the case in disputations with his curate. This was no intramural spat, however. The pastor would have to make sense for a change, to come out on top. Could the dormouse be right? And the ladies wrong in what they thought? What if what they thought was just not so? Honi soit qui mal y pense?

One said, “I just can’t understand Mildred,” but Father Fabre thought he could, now. At no time had Mrs Mathers sounded guilty, and that — her seeming innocence — was what had thrown everything out of kilter. When she said Mr Pint lived with her, when she said she was thinking of giving up her apartment, she had sounded not guilty but regretful, regretful and flustered, as though she knew that her friends and even her clergy were about to desert her. Mrs Mathers was a veteran nurse, the human body was her work bench, sex probably a matter of technical concern, as with elderly plumbers who distinguish between the male and female connections. It was quite possible that Mrs Mathers had thought nothing of letting a room to a member of the opposite sex. She could not have known that what was only an economy measure for her would appear to others as something very different — and so, in fact, it had become for her, in time. Mrs Mathers and Mr Pint were best described as victims of their love for each other. It was true love, of that Father Fabre was now certain. He had only to recollect it. If it were the other kind, Mrs Mathers never would have invited him over — and Grace — to meet Mr Pint. Mr Pint, non-Catholic and priest-shy, had never really believed that Mrs Mathers’ friends would understand, and when Grace defaulted, he had become sullen, ready to take on anybody, even a priest, which showed the quality of his regard for Mrs Mathers, that he meant to marry her willy-nilly, in or out of the Church. There must be no delay. All Mrs Mathers needed now, all she’d ever needed, was a little time — and help. If she could get Mr Pint to take instructions, they could have a church wedding. Velma, already Catholic in spirit, could be bridesmaid. That was it. The ladies had done their worst — Father Fabre’s part in the affair was criminally exaggerated — but the pastor, the angelic dormouse, had not failed to sniff out the benign object of Mrs Mathers’ grand plan. Or what would have been its object. The ladies could easily spoil everything.