William Kienzle - Deadline for a Critic

Constant vigilance took its toll. Groendal began to suffer from high blood pressure. It would get worse. He comforted himself with the thought that Jesus probably had high blood pressure too, what with all the enemies he had.

Eventually, all this skullduggery won him the highest status of all, a place as one of the New York Herald’s fine arts critics. Ostensibly, his responsibility was to review the stage and serious music. But he was also a book reviewer. And though he was not in charge of the book section, due largely to his burgeoning reputation in the other arts, he quickly became the most influential of all critics—theater, music, or literature.

Along the way, he also learned that he was homosexual.

Until he left Detroit for the University of Minnesota, he’d had but two overt sexual experiences, one hetero-, the other homosexual. At that time, he’d been confused as to his own sexual preference.

At the university, it did not take long for him to establish that preference. At first, he had begun to date girls. He had the tentative attitude of sitting back to see what might develop. Some coeds found his gentlemanly passive behavior oddly stimulating. Some sought to fill the sexual void by initiating physical foreplay. He found that repulsive. They found his disgust contagious.

Briefly, Groendal considered the possibility that he might be asexual. That was what the seminary system of his day was programmed to produce. Was it possible his peculiar Catholic upbringing had accomplished in him what it aimed for in its priests—the assembly of a macho asexual?

No. He was gay. He had to conclude that his single episode with Jane Condon was a fluke. He had been passionately overcome by accident exacerbated by some mind-numbing alcohol. Once he gave the homosexual style a chance, it did not take long to know he belonged there.

But it was depressing. Oh, not the sexual expression. No, the impermanence, the ephemeral, little more than one-night stands. Something in him demanded permanence, indissolubility—a quality that was most elusive in the gay community.

When he finally made it to New York, he was determined things were going to change. Either he was going to find a stable relationship, or be continent.

Thanks to his superlative Herald salary, he was able to afford a sumptuous apartment in the heart of Manhattan. He was not far from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Although proximity was not a factor to choosing the Cathedral to be his parish. For Catholics, St. Patrick’s was the prestigious church of New York City. A lot of time could be passed just in counting the deceased Cardinals’ red hats hanging from the high ceiling. (One could count on it: Whoever was Archbishop of New York was pretty sure to be a Cardinal.)

The length of the nave of St. Pat’s was one of those famous-but-smaller churches measured against St. Peter’s in Rome. At one spectacular funeral Francis Cardinal Spellman was celebrant, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen preached, and Jim Farley and Fred Allen were two of the ushers . . . leading a Jewish gentleman present to whisper, “What a cast!”

St. Pat’s always had lots of visitors. As far as tourists were concerned, there was only one Catholic church in all of Manhattan. Anyone could find it right across Fifth Avenue from Rockefeller Center.

One could go on and on . . . but St. Patrick’s Cathedral was the one and only parish for the infinitely upwardly mobile Ridley C. Groendal.

He favored the early Sunday morning Mass—less crowded. Of course he never got the Cardinal at that time, usually just a monsignor or a bishop, but it was sufficient. The routine was early Mass, then one of the attractive, pricey brunches.

Attending the same Mass week after week, one gradually becomes at least casually familiar with the other regulars. There were many couples, a great number of young, middle-aged and elderly unaccompanied women, but not that many single men. Not as regulars.

Something about one solitary regular attracted Groendal’s interest. Not only could he not help studying the man from time to time, occasionally he caught the stranger studying him.

Without words, with no conscious sense of purpose, the two began taking pews closer to each other. Thus, just before Communion, eventually they were able to shake hands during the greeting of peace. Groendal did not know what it was, maybe something in the man’s eyes, that communicated tenderness and interest.

It began one Sunday, months after they had first noticed each other in church. They were leaving after Mass when the stranger dipped his hand in the holy water font and offered some to Groendal.

“I don’t mean to be forward,” Groendal said, “but would you care to join me for brunch?”

A look of extreme relief passed over the other’s face. “I thought you would never ask.”

They brunched at a nearby hotel. It was Groendal’s choice. He sensed the conversation would be more important than the food. It was.

As they settled in and the waiter brought coffee, Groendal began. “I’m—”

“Ridley C. Groendal, fine arts critic of the New York Herald. ”

“How—?”

“Your picture is with your column, and I read you faithfully.”

Groendal was pleased. “I regret I can’t return the courtesy. You are . . .?”

“Peter Harison. No reason you should know me. I too used to be a critic—for a chain of papers on the West Coast.”

“And now?”

“Now, I’m vice-president of the Art Guild Book Club.”

“Of course. Peter Harison. I’ve heard of you. I hope none of my reviews have compromised any of your selections.”

“Oh, no, dear boy. We generally select books before they’re published and reviewed. Although there have been times when we’ve taken a book and have gotten burned by your review later. Fortunately we can always find somebody’s favorable review to add to our hype.”

Groendal laughed. “I suppose that’s so true.”

“I think,” Harison continued, “what I like most about your opinions is that they’re so original. Ridley—may I call you Ridley . . .?”

“Rid. And please do.”

“Rid, a case in point is your review last month of the Brigadoon revival.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I can’t remember any other critic that took the musical itself apart. The only thing one ever gets from a presentation of a war horse like Brigadoon or Oklahoma! or Carousel or any of that ilk is that the voices were good or bad, the staging was inventive or inadequate, the sets were imaginative or pedestrian, and so forth. Nobody, but nobody looks at the vehicle itself. That’s what I find exciting about your reviews.”

Groendal beamed. “Well, it’s true. The music is second-rate, sometimes third-rate . . . and has been vastly overrated through the years. Simplistic melodic lines and no development at all. One of those things where if Freddie Loewe hadn’t had his name on it, no one would ever have heard of it. And the story line . . . incredibly unbelievable!

“I suppose it is possible to want us to imagine, in an excess of fictional credulity, that there could be a little village in Scotland that sleeps away a hundred years between each working day. But to think a modern-day New Yorker would choose to enter that never-never land is just preposterous!

“And it’s not even a matter of being swept up in the emotion of the moment. The hero makes his mature decision to come back to the real world and let Brigadoon sleep away the next century. Then Lerner asks us to believe that after returning to civilization for a while, he would, after plenty of time for mature deliberation, return to Scotland and voluntarily lose himself in the village forever—never to see civilization again! Well, really! Every time I’m subjected to that drivel I feel like yelling out, ‘Don’t do it Tommy Albright! Think it over! It’s not worth it!’”