Tim arrived back at the apartment a little after eight P.M. and knew instantly that something terrible had happened.
There was only a single plate set at the table, where gray-haired Sister Eleanor was sitting statuelike, her gaunt face a mask of worry.
“What’s the matter, Nell? Where’s Father Joe—has he been taken ill?”
“No, no,” she replied. “But he’s had to leave quite suddenly to give Last Rites—I know they call it something else now.”
“Yes, ‘Anointing of the Sick,’ ” Timothy replied impatiently. “Who’s dying?”
The nun suddenly went pale. “I don’t know. It’s someone with pneumonia,” she answered nervously. “I didn’t catch the name.”
Tim persisted, sensing that she was hiding something. “Tell me who it is,” he demanded.
Browbeaten and frightened, the Sister blurted out, “Your mother, Father Tim. He’s gone to see your mother. The hospital says she asked for him.”
His mother?
If, as Tuck and Cassie had forced him to believe, his mother was incapable of rational discourse—or even recognizing her own son—how could she be lucid enough on her deathbed to remember Father Hanrahan and send for him?
Tim sprinted to the parish office and frantically searched the desk drawers for the key to their minibus while interrogating Father Díaz about the fastest route to Mount St. Mary’s Nursing Home. He then dashed off into the street, climbed behind the wheel, fumbled for a moment trying to ignite the motor, and drove off with a jolt.
Tim pressed the pedal to the floor, driving recklessly. It was an almost suicidal act, as if he were afraid that what he would learn this night would so profoundly change his life that it might be just as well to lose it on the way.
Ninety minutes later as he stopped for gas, he suddenly noticed Hanrahan’s old Pinto in the parking lot of the adjacent Howard Johnson’s. While the attendant filled his tank, he dashed madly toward the diner, where he found the old priest sipping tea to calm his nerves.
For Tim this was no time to stand on ceremony.
“All right, Joe,” he said abruptly, “don’t lie to me anymore. Why did they never let me see my mother? I’ll drive the rest of the way with you so you can tell me everything.”
He had barely self-control enough to keep himself from grabbing the old priest and shaking him.
Five minutes later they were on the road again, Tim doing the driving—and Joe Hanrahan nervously trying to explain.
“You see, Tim, she was hallucinating. Saying things that could lacerate a person’s heart.”
“You mean you’ve heard her?”
“Yes,” the priest admitted meekly. “It was my duty as a pastor.”
“And what about my duty as a son?”
“It was to live your life, my boy.”
“And all these years you’ve been lying to me,” Tim raged.
Hanrahan was tight-lipped as they turned off the thruway and started to ascend a narrow winding road. In barely half a dozen minutes they would reach the hospital.
There, Tim would find the answers for himself.
Stone pillars and an iron gate. A painted sign on which two meager lines were traced: Mount St. Mary’s Nursing Home.
Tim was too agitated to comment on the pallid euphemism for “asylum.” All he could think of was that after so much pain he at last had reached the destination of his childhood longing.
A trio of nuns, one of them apparently Mother Superior, was waiting at the door.
“Father Joseph,” they greeted him, anxiety and love commingled.
“Good evening, Sisters. Sorry this is such a sad occasion. Oh, this is my new Assistant Pastor, Father Timothy.”
Two of them saw no special significance in Tim’s presence. The third, a novice in her twenties, had not yet acquired the skill of looking at priests’ faces without seeing them as men.
Flanking Hanrahan, the two other sisters escorted him along a darkened corridor.
Walking several paces behind, the young woman turned to Timothy and whispered, “Father, please don’t be offended. But I’m struck by how your eyes resemble hers.”
“Yes,” he remarked softly, “I’m her son.”
“I thought so,” she whispered. “Margaret’s talked about you often.”
She has? he shouted inwardly.
“What did she say?” he asked aloud.
“Well,” the young nurse replied, “she’s delusional, as I’m sure you know. With due respect, it’s clear you’re not the Messiah.”
“No,” Timothy said, barely audibly. “What has she said that was rational?”
The Sister blushed. “That you were ‘beautiful.’ She spoke about your eyes.”
She only saw me for a week or so, and still she recalls my face, Tim thought. “Sister, what exactly is the diagnosis of her case?”
“Don’t you know any of this?” the puzzled novice inquired. “Well, if you read her charts—and there’s more than twenty-five years of them—the word that seems to recur is ‘schizophrenia.’ ”
“What else do these reports say?” Tim asked her quickly, as he watched Father Joe and the other nurses disappear around a corner to the right.
“Well, lately her condition’s been exacerbated by senile dementia. And of course this terrible pneumonia’s raised her fever. I’m afraid you’re going to find it quite upsetting to see her, Father.”
“I’m prepared,” Tim answered, staring into space. Not saying that he had been preparing for this moment all his life.
At the end of the long, silent corridor a ray of light shone on the dark linoleum. It was an open door. Father Hanrahan and the two older nuns had already entered.
Timothy was frightened to the marrow of his bones. The young Sister sensed it, and put her hand gently on his sleeve as they entered the room.
What Timothy saw was not a person. It was an emaciated wraith. Tufts of tangled white hair framed her wrinkled, hollow-cheeked face. The only thing that seemed remotely human were her eyes.
His eyes.
Despite the tubes in her arms, the woman was pulling at the bars that framed the bed. She was coughing horribly, her lungs full of fluid.
Then, their glances met.
Margaret Hogan merely stared. And mad and dying as she was, knew instantly who had walked into her life just at the end of it.
“You’re … Timothy,” she said hoarsely. “You’re my son.”
His heart was about to break.
Then once again a wave of madness washed across her consciousness. “No, you’re the angel Gabriel, or Michael, or Elijah, come to take me off to Heaven.…”
Tim tried to catch Father Hanrahan’s attention. To force him to acknowledge that even now, when she was all but covered by the shroud of death, Margaret Hogan still recognized her son.
How much more so would she have sixteen years earlier, when Tuck Delaney cruelly beat out of him all hope of seeing her?
They had all conspired to keep him from her.
“I’d like everyone to leave,” Tim murmured with icy calm.
Not comprehending, the Mother Superior replied, “But Father Hanrahan’s the—”
“I’m her son,” Tim stated quietly.
The old man signaled the Sisters to depart. Suddenly, Timothy was alone with the woman who had given him life.
“Margaret,” he said, fighting to keep control, “could we have a chat?”
She looked blankly at him.
“I’ve come to anoint you,” he added.
“You mean Extreme Unction,” she said.
“Yes.” Timothy nodded.
Father Hanrahan had left his bag on the small table, and Tim withdrew the stole and placed it on his shoulders. He held the small bottle of oil in his hand as he sat beside his mother’s bed, wondering how long she would remain lucid. Her racking cough increased his fears.
He tried to act the pastor. It was too late for him to act the son.
“Margaret Hogan, I’m prepared to hear your confession,” he said softly.
His mother acted reflexively. She crossed herself and mumbled, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three hundred years since my last confession.…”
Oh, God, thought Tim.
She began to babble about angels, witches, demons. That she was the mother of a Saviour.
Tim shielded his eyes with his hand, pretending to listen as he tried not to cry.
Then, like bright sun piercing through a hurricane, she had an instant of clarity. “You’re not a real priest. You’re my little boy dressed up like one. You are my little Timmy, aren’t you?”
Paradoxically, he was more shaken by her sanity than her madness. He tried to answer calmly, “Yes, Mother, I’m Timothy. But I’m grown up now.”
“And become a priest?” A look of confusion crossed her face. “No one told me that my baby was a man of God.” She merely stared at him.
This was the moment. His only chance to ask.
“Mother, who was my father?”
“Your father?”
Tim nodded and urged, “Please try to concentrate. Tell me who he was.”
She looked at him and smiled. “Why of course it was Jesus.”
“Jesus?” His voice strained to prod her into thinking rationally. “It couldn’t have been Jesus. He sits at God’s right hand. Try to think. I know it was long ago.”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “Very long ago, and I’ve forgotten so much. Can’t remember. No, no, I’m sure now it was Moses.”
“Moses?”
“Of course,” she answered with a manic look upon her face. “Yes, I remember now. Moses came to see me in the night. He told me I would have a son.”
“A son?” Tim prompted her. “And am I that son?”
She looked at him again. “No, you’re a priest. You’ve come to give me my Last Rites so I can be in Moses’s arms again and see my baby Jesus.”
Tim felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. Why can’t I reach her? Why can’t I make her tell me?
Then out of nowhere she blurted, “Oh, Father, bless me, I have sinned. I’ve sinned with—”
She could not complete her sentence. She had fallen back onto her pillow, and now lacked the breath of life.
In a daze, Tim acted to fulfill his priestly functions. He anointed her, and gave her absolution.
“In the name of the Father. And of the Son. And of the Holy Spirit.”
Tim stood up and looked down at her. Then he leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and at long last turned away.