“They made a point of it.”
“I don’t know if it had anything to do with the goat,” he said. “We never got to the point where the goat came in. If it was meant to come in at all. Andy—died first.”
“They said that Cardinal was making a big fuss over that wine of theirs, saying terrible things about it being real blood. And not letting the police have it. I thought you said it wasn’t true, that Catholics use real blood in their Mass.”
“They don’t. They use wine that they put in the chal—into this big cup made of gold. Then they say prayers over the cup and the wine is supposed to be changed into the blood of Jesus Christ.”
“It sounds like blasphemy to me,” Moira said. “Or voodoo. Or cannibalism. Or something worse.”
“Does it?” Barry got off the couch. He was too restless to sit still. He was too confused and too agitated by his confusion to care about the effect he was having on Moira. She was looking at him very sharply now, very suspiciously. Her face had settled into a cautious mask, the way it would have if she were dealing with a lunatic. He supposed she thought he had been hypnotized by the Mass. She was afraid he was in danger of succumbing to the Roman error.
“Did you ever wonder,” he asked her, “why I never bothered to be ordained?”
“Bothered? I didn’t think it was something you ‘bothered’ about.”
“Oh, but it is. It is. You bother to go to the seminary. You bother to sit through a lot of boring classes in Bible history and preaching techniques and a lot of other things you don’t need. You bother to let a lot of old men who aren’t as smart as you are feed you a lot of nonsense you knew better than to believe when you were still an infant in diapers—”
“What seminary are you talking about? Theirs or ours?”
“I was thinking about going into theirs, you know. We were all going to do that. Andy Walsh and Tom Dolan and me.”
“Who’s Tom Dolan?”
“At the moment, he’s Father Tom Dolan. He’s the Cardinal’s chief aide.”
“You mean you were the only one who escaped?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“I don’t see any other way to put it,” Moira said. “Why were you the only one who escaped?”
It was a good question. So good, in fact, that he knew he ought to have an answer to it. God only knew, he had given the answer to it, hundreds of times, over the air and at camp meetings and from pulpits where he was guest preacher even without being ordained. Looking back on it, he thought he had lied so thoroughly and so well for so long, he’d forgotten that he’d ever known a truthful answer.
Suddenly, he didn’t want to be here any longer: in this office, with this woman, surrounded by the bits and pieces of the life he had built for himself out of the holocaust of Black Rock Park. Andy Walsh was dead, and Andy Walsh was the only man he had ever really been a friend to. The magazines were full of articles about the friendships that grew up between women. Men were supposed to be buddies and not much more. But Andy Walsh had been much more to him.
Barry went back to the coatrack, got his coat off of it, and put it on again. He wanted to get back down into the lobby and out the front door before he was sick.
“I’ll call the Reverend Candor in the morning,” he said.
Moira hesitated. Suspicion had been washed away, leaving only her concern. Barry thought, regretfully, that he was scaring her to death.
“The reverend did say it was urgent,” she told him.
“I’m sure he meant it. We can just pretend I never got back to the office today.”
“Maybe I ought to drive you home.” She bit her lip. “It can’t be comfortable for you, living alone the way you do. You could use someone to cook for you once in a while.”
“I’ll pick up some Chinese on my way.”
“But—”
“No buts. Good night, Moira.”
Moira hesitated again. Barry was standing with his back to her, the office door open, looking into the hall. He could just imagine the look on her face. She thought he was on his way to commit suicide.
“Maybe I’ll call you later and see how you’re getting along,” she said.
Barry walked out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
He was not, God knew, going out to commit suicide.
He couldn’t commit suicide. He was already dead.
[3]
By seven-fifteen, Peg Morrissey Monaghan had fed her family, washed her dishes, settled her children in front of a tape of Jesus of Nazareth, and seen her husband off to the Holy Thursday evening Mass at the Cathedral. For obvious reasons, there was going to be no evening Mass at St. Agnes’s. She had also made herself a cup of tea, which was sitting on the counter next to the sink with so much sugar in it, she would find a layer of sediment at the bottom when she drank it up. She always craved sugar when she was pregnant, just the way she always craved cigarettes when she was in labor. Actually, to be honest about it, she always craved cigarettes, period. Unlike Scholastica and Judy, who had only experimented with nicotine, she had gotten herself well and truly hooked. That summer after Black Rock Park, she had managed—on practically no allowance and even less privacy—to smoke her way through two packs a day. It was the grace of God that she wasn’t still smoking that way now.