CHAPTER 9
Thomas spent a half hour on the phone to the State Department and another ten minutes trying, without success, to reach the American ambassador in Manila. He learned nothing from either call. His brother had died in the Philippines, but how he had died or what he had been doing there in the first place, no one was saying. Whether they knew or not, he couldn’t begin to guess, and though it might be normal when dealing with bereaved relatives, he sensed their wariness. He felt his irritation mounting as he was shuttled from one uninformative receptionist to another, but he also knew instinctively that his customary bluster would get him nowhere. He was being stonewalled by people who wouldn’t be intimidated by anything he had to say. In the end, he thanked them wearily and slid the receiver back into the cradle.
“Nothing?” said Jim.
Thomas shook his head.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I’m being dodged.”
“I don’t suppose you know any powerful politicians, ambassadors, officials in the State Department, things like that?”
Thomas turned so quickly and with a stare so level and baleful that Jim’s face fell.
“What?” said the priest. “I just meant . . .”
“I know,” said Thomas, regrouping fast. “Forget it. I thought you were . . .”
He shrugged and, registering the look of startled alarm on the priest’s face, smiled.
“My wife, or rather my ex-wife, works for the State Department,” he said, a little embarrassed. “She’s not high up or anything and we don’t talk so . . .”
Jim relaxed visibly.
“You don’t want to call her over this?”
“No,” said Thomas. He wasn’t smiling now, and Jim knew better than to push the point.
“What about Devlin?” said Jim.
“Who?
“Devlin,” said Jim as if it should be obvious. “Senator Zacharias Devlin; your brother knew him.”
“Senator Devlin?” said Thomas, incredulous. “The family-values, school-prayer Republican? Ed knew him?”
“Met with him at least a few times.”
“You don’t sound impressed.”
“You think I should be?”
“You’re a priest,” said Thomas, the smile returning.
“So?”
“Nothing,” he said, “I just figured you religious types would have more in common with a guy like that.”
Jim gave him a steady look. “You seem to have me confused with Pat Robertson,” he said.
“My mistake,” said Thomas, shrugging.
“You don’t much like priests, do you?” said Jim.
“Not as a rule,” said Thomas, bristling.
“Present company excepted, of course,” said Jim.
“Of course.”
The two men looked hard at each other, and for a moment the situation could have turned unpleasant.
“Tough day,” said Jim. “For both of us.”
He wasn’t talking about the aftermath of Ed’s death so much as the fact of it, and Thomas, who didn’t want to appear hostile on this, just nodded and sighed and wondered why he couldn’t simply grieve for his brother as a regular person would.
“I’m ready for a drink,” said Jim. “You?”
“Sure, what the hell,” said Thomas.
The priest pulled a bottle of Bushmills out of a kitchen cupboard and poured two generous measures into the bottoms of a pair of chipped mugs.
“We’re low on crystal,” he said, proffering one of the cups. “I’d like to blame the Jesuits’ vow of poverty, but we diocesans will take whatever we’re given. We’re just not given much these days.”
“Oh, for the good old days of the Holy Roman Empire,” said Thomas, “when charity meant . . .”
“Giving us your money,” Jim completed for him, grinning. “Now look at us. I’ve known Carmelites with better gear.”
Thomas smirked and sipped the Irish. It was warm and smoky: familiar as childhood and as conflicting.
“It’s good,” he said, as if he’d never tasted it before.
“Let’s see how badly the Illini are doing,” said Jim, jabbing the remote toward the boxy TV.
“So how did Ed know Devlin?” Thomas said, deflecting his own thoughts.
“Not sure,” said Jim, scowling at the game. “Met with him right after he got back from Italy. But that wasn’t the first time.”
“When did he come back?”
“Two months or so ago. The Js use a retreat house in Naples and he went out for a couple of weeks after he’d been helping out here. He was working on a book on early Christian symbology. No idea what interest Devlin might have had in him.”
“Did you know Ed before he came to work here?”
“Not well. We’d met a couple of times at conferences and diocesan functions, but it’s amazing how separate priests can be, especially when one is of the lowly diocesan clergy like yours truly, and one is of the exalted ranks of the papal stormtroopers.”
Papal stormtroopers. It was an old joke, one that Thomas remembered Ed using in the days when they still talked. It wasn’t that funny and hadn’t been accurate for decades. The Jesuits didn’t just take a vow of poverty. They also took a vow of obedience to the pope. Thomas supposed that had once meant something, but times change, and lately the Jesuits’ famously leftist intellectualism and social activism had stirred the impatience of the Vatican.
“You sure we’ve never met?” said Jim. “There’s something about your face . . .”
“Don’t think so,” said Thomas.
“Maybe you’ve been on the telly,” said Jim, grinning.
Thomas waited for the memory to catch, saw it in the priest’s face, and opted to head it off.
“Actually, yes,” he said. “I’m a high school teacher. Was. I made the grave error of telling a parent what I really thought about how he had raised his lying, cheating, plagiarizing, bullying thug of a son, something of which the school board took a dim view, doubly so since said parent worked for the local Fox affiliate. Not my finest hour.”
Jim smiled, shrugged, and raised his glass.
“Here’s to going out in style,” he said. Thomas drank.
The third quarter ended, and as the bright-orange-shirted Illinois players trooped off the court looking beaten, the TV kicked into commercials.
“So this is how you spend your time?” said Thomas.
He hadn’t meant it to sound so snide. He sounded like that a lot lately, hearing it after it was too late to take it back. Jim just raised his eyebrows.
“When I’m not doing the masses,” he said, “the sick visits, the pastoral meetings, the young-adult discussions, the hospital calls, the endless parish meetings, coordinating . . .” he ticked them off on his fingers, “the drug and alcohol counseling sessions, the community food bank, the baptism classes, the single-mom dinners, a dozen different support groups, deaconate training, funerals, community outreach. Then there are the real problems, like people who can’t pay their rent and get tossed out into a Chicago winter . . .” he said, the anger in his voice building, though Thomas felt sure it wasn’t directed at him. “It’s not all sitting around saying the rosary.”
“Or watching basketball,” said Thomas, apologetic.
“A game I find tedious and baffling,” Jim added. “In fact, it’s a penance to watch it.”
“And a kindness,” said Thomas, raising his glass to him. “Which is appreciated.”
Jim shrugged to show there were no hard feelings.
“You liked Ed,” said Thomas.
“Kindred spirit,” said Jim. “And not just because he was a priest. He was more of a reader than me, but he didn’t mind spending the afternoon washing pans at the soup kitchen. It’s always nice to meet a priest whose liberation theology doesn’t stay in the bookcase.”
Thomas nodded and smiled.
“You think I should speak to the senator?” he said.
“Wouldn’t hurt to try, I guess,” said Jim.
Another silence.
“So,” said Jim, eyes on the TV, “what happened? Between you and Ed, I mean. You didn’t just drift apart. You looked happy enough together in those wedding pictures.”
There were so many ways he could answer that, many of them things he had said before to others, many of them dodges or feints intended to wrong-foot the defense. But Thomas was tired and he probably would never see this lonely priest again after today.
“He ended my marriage,” he said.