7

A few weeks later, on Mardi Gras, Kingsley dropped Molly and the girls at the martyr’s shrine. He handed out bags of leftover Halloween candy.

Promise kept!

Molly tried to say—but father and son were already driving away.

Prin didn’t complain as much as he might have. Just as everyone was getting out of Kingsley’s already moving car, he had seen Fr. Pat, the president of his university, step down from a luxury motor coach and lead a group of white-haired women and men with canes and walkers into the same shrine. Seeing Prin out here, like this, upright and moving about with only mild discomfort, Fr. Pat might have asked him if he wanted to return to work earlier than planned.

Prin didn’t want to go back just yet. He was very much enjoying his time at home. He made breakfast, he walked the kids to and from the bus, and otherwise puttered around, reading, napping, praying, doing some simple stretching exercises, sorting the mail and salting the sidewalks, deleting, unread, every message from work, and in all this he gloried in thinking and thinking about what he was going to do with this new life, and in feeling pretty much like he was already doing exactly what God desired that he do. Because now and then, Jesus must have puttered. And meanwhile, of her own silent accord, thanks be to God, Molly had changed her sleeping position.

Feeling so contentedly Christ-like, Prin had been looking forward to offering a prayer of thanksgiving at the martyr’s shrine where centuries before, missionaries had founded a church upon the spot where, by pious tradition, a little Indian girl had seen a vision of the Virgin that turned her brown eyes blue. But his father had other plans. As Prin and Kingsley pulled into the parking lot of a giant metal barn, Prin pictured Molly and the girls there in the church, kneeling before the image of a blue-green Mother Mary floating among the cedar trees and, above them, with them, dangling from the rafters, dozens of cobwebbed crutches slowly turning in the small breezes that came every time a pilgrim opened the great doors. 

“So, just to check, when he says ‘No more bets, gentlemen,’ what do you do?” Kingsley asked.

“Sorry, what was that, Dad?” Prin said.

“Did you get hearing cancer, too? This whole time, I’ve been telling you how we’re going to bet at the roulette tables. When he says ‘No more bets, gentlemen,’ you throw down ten chips!” Kingsley said.

“I like that we’re spending time together like this, Dad, but—”

“We’re not spending time together. Whether you have your prostate or not, don’t talk like a woman, Prin. We’re here because you survived and we’re going to celebrate by winning enough money to pay for our flights to Sri Lanka,” Kingsley said.

“Dad, about that. Were you really serious, in the hospital, about planning to remarry?” Prin asked.

“You must have been confused by the medications,” Kingsley said.

“So that means—” Prin said.

“Why is that priest looking funny at you?” Kingsley asked.

Prin looked over. It was Fr. Pat again, standing in the middle of that same sea of white-haired people, only now they were all struggling to pull on plastic green poker visors and bright, beaded necklaces. Before Prin could duck and tie his shoe, the two men made eye contact. But then Fr. Pat knelt down to tie his own shoe.

Why would his boss be avoiding a conversation with him? Did he know some terrible news, like Prin’s committee assignments for when he returned?

Prin told Kingsley he’d meet him at the roulette tables (“TABLE FOUR! THE ONE WITH THE DEALER WHO SMILES LIKE HE DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH. LOOK FOR THE SHORT, FAT ARMS.”) and made his way across the dim, dinging, crowded space. Fr. Pat got up just as he reached him. He was well into his seventies, like many of Prin’s colleagues at the university.

“Oh Prin, how good to see you upright and among the living and the gambling!” Fr. Pat said.

“You too, Father Pat. And thank you for that note you sent when I was in the hospital,” Prin said.

“But tell me, was it better than Sister Contra Melanchthon’s famous shortbread? I hear you got a tin!” Fr. Pat said.

The priest tittered, waiting for Prin either to join him or leave. This was also his basic approach to governing the university. Prin smiled but stayed put. He needed to know why Fr. Pat had tried to duck him. Was he going to be assigned to the Inter-Departmental Curriculum Review Committee, again?

“So how’s campus these days?” Prin asked.

“Never mind that! How are you feeling? How goes the recovery? Good enough to gamble, I see!” Fr. Pat said.

“My Dad brought me with him. Actually, we were at the shrine earlier,” Prin said.

“I thought I saw your beautiful family there!” Fr. Pat said.

But then the priest’s toothy smile vanished. He dropped down to tie his other shoe. He was down there a long time. Prin finally dropped down to one knee as well.

Fr. Pat was wearing Velcro!

“Father Pat, is there something happening on campus? Can I help?” Prin asked.

“I’m afraid we all need to help, Prin. We all need some help,” he said.

Now, instead of tittering, he squinted his eyes and nodded slowly.

“Sorry, Father Pat, but could you be a little more specific?” Prin asked.

“I see. So you haven’t been reading my Metaphysical Therapist blog,” said Fr. Pat.

Prin checked his own shoes.

“Attention, Class of ’68!” one of the endless old ladies around them said. “Father Pat is waiting for us to join him in the rosary before we hit the tables.”

At that, dozens of titanium knees sprang and hinged into action. Groaning and supplications to Mary followed.

“Prin, can you hear me?” Fr. Pat asked.

“Yes, Father,” Prin said.

“Did you ever hear the one about the fat man who went to confession?” Fr. Pat asked.

“No,” Prin said.

“He says ‘Bless me Father, I have sinned.’ But he’s so fat, it comes out as ‘Bless me Father, I have thinned.’ And the priest peeks through the grate and says, ‘Not enough!’”

Prin waited. Fr. Pat stopped tittering and sighed.

“Okay, so jokes aside, our school is in a bit of trouble,” Fr. Pat said.

“Unless I join the Inter-Departmental Review Committee, again, right?” Prin said.

“No, not like that. But thank you for volunteering. I will let the dean know you are happy to serve—”

“Actually I’m not, Father Pat,” Prin said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Fr. Pat said.

“Of course it does! Academic freedom!” Prin said.

The priest said something under his breath. Prin couldn’t hear it for all the Hail Marys around them.

“I didn’t catch that, Father,” Prin said.

“Listen, son. For years and years I’ve been warning all of you about this, and now it’s true. We are facing a grave problem with our budget,” Fr. Pat said.

“What is it? Are you going to try to cut the interlibrary-loan service again?” Prin asked.

This was often the source of the Armageddon that took place at the annual spring all-faculty meeting.

“We’re almost out of money,” Fr. Pat said.

“So why don’t you just fundraise more?” Prin said.

“You have small children, right Prin?” Fr. Pat asked.

“Yes. Why?” Prin asked.

“Never mind. The university will close down at the end of this year unless we find a new source of funding. And no, son, the answer is not just more fundraising. There’s going to be a special all-faculty meeting in a couple of weeks. You should be there,” Fr. Pat said.

“Okay…” Prin said.

“And in the mean time, win big!” Fr. Pat said, standing back up, his big bright Irish grin nearly back in place as he roused his rosary circle to make for the slots.

Prin joined his father at the roulette table and mechanically followed his commands. They were up, they were down, they were really up, and then they were really, really, really up, and then they were banned from the table for ignoring the “Last Bets” rule one too many times. His plan working perfectly, Kingsley scooped up their winnings and made his way to another table staffed by another tubby, goateed dealer and they did it all again. This time a manager was called to warn Kingsley that one more infraction and he’d be banned from the casino for a month. Again.

“So, are we splitting the winnings?” Prin asked.

“Of course! Minus my staking you, and the cost of the flights, we split the winnings,” Kingsley said.

“Dad, I might need more than that,” Prin said.

“Why? What’s wrong? You’re cured. What’s wrong?” said Kingsley.

He couldn’t do it. Just then his father’s sharp brow and hard eyes went soft and slack and he was a worried old man standing in the middle of a big, dark barn, his hands fretting. The only thing—the only thing—Prin’s father understood about his becoming a professor was that it was a lifetime job. Molly understood more than that, if not why Prin was so passionately convinced that descriptions of marine creatures were fundamental to the meaning of modern Canadian literature. But she too, finally, abided all of the small, dramatic outrages that Prin brought home from work because, unlike her own, late father, who only ever came home from work grimy and looking for a cold beer, Prin would never be transferred, or laid off, or informed by a smiling twenty-five-year-old girl in funeral black that he’d been made redundant.

And yet Prin had just been informed that his entire university, a school that had existed for more than a century, might soon be redundant. His life was spared so he could lose his job? Their house? What kind of God did that to a man? What kind of work could he get? He was forty years old and trained to identify the little sea creatures swimming around in Canadian prairie poetry. What kind of work did God expect him to get?

But nothing was certain, yet. In addition to the all-faculty meeting that had been called to discuss the situation, Fr. Pat told him a consultant had been hired. He had said Prin shouldn’t worry yet, or worry his family yet, either.

“PRIN! I asked you, what’s wrong?” Kingsley said.

“I was just thinking it’d be nice to bring Molly along if we go to Sri Lanka,” Prin said.

Kingsley’s hands became fists. He punched his son on both shoulders. Chips fell out of his bulging pockets. “That’s my boy! If the cure works, why waste time?” Kingsley said. “Now pick up those chips and let’s go win your wife the trip of her lifetime!”

They lost everything at the next table.