“You know what Sister Thomasina was saying the other day?” Catherine Grace called after her. “She was saying it was all a plot. Somebody’s rigged it so that Mother Mary Bellarmine and that detective from Philadelphia are here at the same time, and then they’re going to bump off Mary Bellarmine because she knows too much—”
“Knows too much about what?”
“About everything. I mean, she’s been around forever, hasn’t she? She’s not just a pill. She’s a pill with experience. Anyway, they’re going to bump her off and use that detective as a beard, because if he can’t solve it nobody can, and it will be the perfect murder.”
Sarabess pulled out the file drawer for “Camp Orgs A-Ar” and said, “I think somebody tried that on him already. I think the guy got caught.”
“Maybe the guy wasn’t a Catholic. What do you think? He is supposed to be an expert on murder.”
“I think you’re bored to tears in this job,” Sarabess said.
“Of course I am,” Catherine Grace said, “but it’s for the greater glory of God.”
Sarabess was about to answer that it was more likely for the greater glory of the bunch of old white men who ran the richest and most repressive religious organization on earth—but she stopped herself again, just as she had with the comment about the Sistine ceiling. She still had a stack of folders in her arms. She went back to filing them, listening all the while to Catherine Grace bustling around in the main office, probably setting up to paint another poster. Sarabess tried and failed to remember herself ever being that uncomplicatedly happy, even as a tiny child.
It’s just that I’m feeling very tired, she told herself, putting the folder for the Victorian Society between the ones for the Via Appia Eating Club and Vincent de Paul, Friends of in the drawer marked “Camp Orgs U-W.” It’s just that I’m feeling old and feeling old gets me a little confused.
Actually, what feeling old really seemed to be doing was giving her one of her periodic beef cravings, so that all she could really think about was a Quarter Pounder with cheese. Sarabess Coltrane was not doctrinaire. If she wanted a Quarter Pounder with cheese, she had one.
At the moment, she just wished that she could want a murder mystery instead.
5
FATHER STEPHEN MONAGHAN HAD always loved everything about being a priest, from the obligatory recitation of the Holy Office to the exaltation of celebrating Mass to the petty details of parish maintenance. He had loved it in the 1950s when he had entered the seminary and everybody seemed to be traveling in lockstep to a drummer pounding faintly against an ancient skin in Rome. He had loved it in the years since the Vatican Council seemed to have reduced everything to chaos and confusion. Father Stephen Monaghan had never been confused. Years ago, he had taken Holy Orders to serve God. He was still serving God. In the old days he had served God in a cassock. Lately he did it in Levi’s 501 jeans. In the old days, it was the better part of pastoral care to seem to be an autocrat—even if, like Father Stephen, you had no talent for it. He had pretended to be an autocrat and further pretended not to notice that his parishioners were pretending right along with him. In the new days it was the better part of pastoral care to pretend to be a democrat. Father Stephen did that a little better than he had played the autocrat, but not much, and his parishioners were still pretending right along with him. It helped that most of his parishioners these days were nuns. Father Stephen Monaghan liked nuns. He liked modern nuns and traditional nuns, tall nuns and short nuns, old nuns and young nuns. They liked him back. If there was one thing Father Stephen Monaghan came close to not liking, it was hearing confessions. Some priests didn’t like hearing confessions because they thought it was boring. Others didn’t like hearing confessions because it got them depressed. Father Stephen didn’t dislike it, exactly, because it was so central to the role of a Catholic priest and he loved being a Catholic priest. It just made him uncomfortable. Sometimes he told himself that this was humility. Too many priests fell victim to the superiority complex engendered by being put in a position where other people were obligated to reverence you, whether you deserved it or not. Father Stephen Monaghan was brought up short every time he had to listen to the earnest struggles of men and women far more dedicated to the search for perfection than he could ever be. This morning, he was listening to the struggles of Sister Domenica Anne, a tall, forceful woman in her late forties with a face like a Valkyrie and hands the size of china saucers. He had known Sister Domenica Anne for years, so he wasn’t afraid of her. He had known from the moment he met her that she was more intelligent than he was, so he was used to it. What he couldn’t get used to was all this pacing that went on now that most confessions took place outside the old confessional box. Father Stephen Monaghan hadn’t been particularly enamored of the old confessional box, but he had to admit now that it had had its advantages for the concentration. Sister Domenica Anne kept bopping back and forth, back and forth, with her arms wrapped across her chest and the veil of her habit whipping in the wind. It was enough to make a seasickness-susceptible man dizzy.