Precious Blood(10)
“Kath,” Peg said.
“Sister Mary Scholastica,” Joe said.
“Andy Walsh took the ten o’clock Mass this morning,” Peg said.
“Ah.” Joe put down the jar of mayonnaise he was holding and turned full around to look at her. “Now I see. I take it he’s also taking prayer meeting tonight.”
“Yes, he is.”
“You know, Peg, not everybody keeps all the friends they had in high school. I don’t think it would be such a terrible thing if you stopped speaking to the man.”
“The man is our parish priest.”
“The man shouldn’t be any kind of priest. I don’t know why the Cardinal puts up with him, but maybe he has to. You don’t have to.”
Peg shrugged. “It’s not that I put up with him so much. I mean, I hardly ever see him. He’s such a—such a creature of habit. This has to be the first time he’s taken a ten o’clock since he was assigned here. Father Boyd must be deathly ill.”
“He takes at least one prayer meeting a month.”
“I know. Usually he doesn’t bother me. Today he was just—I don’t know.”
“Insulting?”
“Andy never insults anybody directly. He just makes your whole life sound ridiculous.”
Joe took the bowl of tuna fish and the plate of toast off the counter and came to the table. “You’ve got a right not to be made to feel ridiculous,” he said. “You’re a good woman and a good Catholic. You’re a better Catholic than a lot of them, if you ask me. And I don’t think the Pope would be pleased to hear Father Walsh talking about how the rosary was old-fashioned.”
“Or how we should all be more like the Protestants?” Peg laughed.
Joe was frowning. “It’s not funny, Peg, really. We are good Catholics. We do follow the teaching of the Church magisterium. We’re not the ones who ought to be feeling uncomfortable in this parish.”
“Mmm,” Peg said.
“What’s ‘mmm’ supposed to mean? Or are you just being pregnant again?”
“Not everything I do is because I’m pregnant,” Peg said. Then she thought: liar. “You’ve got to remember, I’ve known Andy all my life. Back around, oh, sophomore year in high school, we were practically engaged to be engaged.”
“That excuses him for altar girls?” Joe was incredulous.
Peg sighed. “It doesn’t excuse him for anything. I understand Andy, that’s all. He’s not Father Charles Curran. He’s not trying to subvert the Church—”
“Good. I’d hate to see what he could do if he did try.”
“—he’s just making his own excitement. He was always like that. One year at the DeMolay banquet, he brought his own dinner in a bag. He said the hotel served the worst food in Colchester and he wasn’t going to eat it.”
“Wonderful,” Joe said.
“Andy means well. It’s just that, right now, he’s on this kick about the Spirit of Vatican Two or whatever, and he practically comes out and accuses me of single-handedly overpopulating the earth. And then he fawns around Judy so much and blithers on and on about how wonderful she is for making a success of her own business. I end up feeling like a college dropout, and I’m the one who graduated.”
Joe passed her a tuna fish sandwich. “How long did you go out with him?” he asked, curious. “I thought priests knew they were going to be priests practically from the day they were born.”
“If Andy knew, he wasn’t telling. We went out all sophomore year, and then a little into the summer. Then he went out with Judy junior year while I was going out with Tom, and we doubled.” Black Rock Park, she thought. “I guess it was the year after he decided to go into the seminary.”
“Maybe he did it out of disappointment. You know, because you dumped him.”
“I didn’t dump him. We dumped each other. And I don’t think he cared one way or another. Even when he was going out with Judy, he was running around school nights with a girl named Cheryl Cass.”
“I’ve never heard you mention Cheryl Cass.”
“Of course you haven’t. She was the school tramp. She dropped out of school at the end of junior year and sort of disappeared.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “That kind usually do. I don’t care what the feminists say. A guy can screw around all he wants and he always has a chance to come back. With a girl, one bad move and it’s downhill all the way.”
“Mmm,” Peg said again. She looked around the table and was happy to see that all the children had sandwiches, although not so happy that they were staring at her wide-eyed, taking in everything she said and a few of the things she didn’t. She always forgot how careful you had to be about children—and that meant she would never remember, because anything she didn’t know about children now she was just not capable of learning. She took a bite of her sandwich and willed herself not to be sick.