Chapter 7
(Herewith the latest sample chapter from my forthcoming novel. See below to catch up on earlier chapters!)
Look, before we get going, I have to say I’m sorry for last time. You know I’m uncomfortable with this whole thing, but I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I appreciated your phone call, but you’re not the one who needs to apologize. I realize you weren’t grilling me for information. I just got too tense; I let myself get all worked up. I’m not going to say anything about what I heard in the confessional, or in counseling for that matter. Yeah, I know; you understand that. I should have given you credit for that much. I’m sorry.
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So now you know that I have a temper; you can put that much on your evaluation. But if having a temper is enough to put you on the sidelines, you wouldn’t have enough priests left to run the archdiocese. Like I said before, I know I’m not perfectly adjusted, but there are a lot of priests out there crazier than me— you know it and I know it— and they’re running parishes, and everybody seems to be okay with the situation.
I’m not excusing myself, and I mean that apology— really, sincerely. But you know, I’m on edge— resentful, frankly— about this whole thing. I shouldn’t take it out on you; it’s not your fault, and you haven’t done anything to contribute to it. You’re just asking a few questions. But it’s a fact: the resentment, I mean. I have to deal with it, and I’m afraid when it comes out— which it will, when we’re talking about the whole mess— you’re going to have to deal with it too. I’m sorry about that. Maybe for you it comes with the territory. Not for me.
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You want me to talk about that? Sure. I’ll be happy to get it off my chest. But that means we won’t be getting to what I’m sure everybody wants to talk about: the big “miracle,” I mean. I feel like we’re already taking a long time to get to that.
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Great idea! So, let’s talk about what I want to talk about. Sounds good to me. Did you see the Sox game last night? That throw by Dewey Evans?
OK, OK, just kidding. Seriously, though, I love that idea. I don’t know. Maybe there are some people who think I’m unbalanced. That’s why they’ve sent me to you. Well, what if I think they’re unbalanced? I like the idea that you’ll let me get my shots in first.
Look, let me put this whole thing in a different perspective: my perspective, I mean. This whole fuss began when my brother got his job at the State Department. Up until then I was just plugging away, a new priest in a good parish, doing my job. Nobody was paying any special attention to me. I certainly wasn’t getting called in to the chancery; I wasn’t being told to see a shrink.
The only thing that stood out about me, among the newly ordained priests, is that I’m tall. A few people in the parish had seen me play ball; that’s it. My old coach is in the parish, but he almost doesn’t count; I mean, he knows me pretty well already.
I definitely wasn’t a celebrity. Sure, thanks to Betsy I already had a lot of people coming to me for confession. But even that wasn’t such a big deal at first. You know, there aren’t a whole lot of people paying attention to the lines outside the confessional— other than the people waiting in those lines, I mean. There weren’t reporters and photographers coming to the parish on Saturday afternoons asking about that.
Then Peter becomes Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, and suddenly I’m famous. Not for myself. People weren’t saying: “Oh look, there goes Father Miller; he hears lots of confessions.” They weren’t saying: “Oh, there goes Andy Miller; he played power forward for BC.” They were saying: “There’s the priest whose brother was on TV, at the hearings.” And more than that. They were saying: “Isn’t it strange that while half the priests and religious in the archdiocese are marching in protests against the government of El Salvador, that priest’s brother is defending the death squads?”
Nobody actually thought to ask me whether I agreed with Peter, by the way. I didn’t. I still don’t— although I understand his position a lot better now, after what’s happened. Maybe we’ll get to that eventually. But even then, I knew that the campaign against him was ridiculous. Peter wasn’t defending the death squads, for heaven’s sake. Give him a little credit. I mean, here are all these people who tell you they’re such good Christians, and they’re putting the worst possible interpretation on Peter’s actions and making him out to be some sort of moral monster. That’s calumny!
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Well actually I didn’t understand what he was doing. Not at the time. But I had at least enough confidence in him to think that he was trying to do good, not evil. I thought he was probably making some bad decisions, but not out of a love for evil, you know? People can disagree about moral issues, even good people. I hate it when people make it out to be so simplistic: the good guys and the bad guys.
Even at the time I knew Peter was trying to manage a bad situation, and he was catching flak for the White House. He was the point man; he was the one who had to go face the music when they had hearings on Capitol Hill. That didn’t mean that he could control everything that the government was doing in El Salvador; he couldn’t even control what our government was doing in Washington. You could argue that our policy was all wrong— I did make that argument, and I guess I still would, pretty much— but it was just dumb to make Peter the fall guy, as if he was single-handedly responsible. What’s more, I’m a normal guy— with a temper, as you’ve seen— and I don’t just like it when people trash my brother. You can tell: I’m getting worked up about it again now, just talking about it.
Anyway, up until when the senators began grilling Peter, nobody was talking about me. Then the hearings began, and suddenly I was the priest that people were talking about. You think that’s coincidence?
Of course not. Nobody ever said that they didn’t like my politics. Nobody. Never. Not a single solitary person. Like I said before, nobody even asked me what I thought about El Salvador. It wasn’t obvious like that. It’s just that now I stood out, and sometimes if you stick out you get hammered down.
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Yeah, I know: It’s easy to say that I stuck out because of what happened to Betsy. I’m not so sure. What’s the story there? An old lady got sick and then she got better. She says it’s a miracle, but she talks a lot about miracles. She talks about miracles constantly— all the time. You’ve got to understand that. Betsy talking about miracles is like… I don’t know, like a chef talking about food, or like a stockbroker talking about the market, or something like that. And I don’t mean that she just talks about miracles that other people have reported; she says that she has experienced miracles. Ask her; she’ll tell you about them: lots and lots of them. She doesn’t hold back. But usually that talk doesn’t go beyond her circle of friends. Yeah, I suppose you could say that’s a big circle. But it’s a closed circle— a bunch of people who talk to each other. What I’m saying is that what her circle of friends might think wouldn’t cause such a commotion. I mean, you know, her circle usually doesn’t include the folks in the chancery; they run away if they see her coming. It certainly doesn’t include newspaper reporters, and you know, they’re the people the chancery is so worried about. All those folks would avoid her, if they knew anything about her. But now they were on high alert.
I know I can’t prove this. You can’t prove much about what motivates people. I’m just saying that this might have been a very different story if my name had been Andy Smith instead of Andy Miller, and my brother hadn’t been in the headlines. It might not have been a story at all.
Anyway here we are talking about Betsy again, and that’s where we were headed all along, right? I think I’ve made my point: this wouldn’t have been a big deal if my brother had just been an ordinary lawyer. That’s all I wanted to say.
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The Monsignor told me about Betsy, right when I arrived. He said there’s a Betsy in every parish— sometimes more than one. But not like this one, so this was going to be a good test for a beginner.
I already went over that, didn’t I? Sorry; I’m getting distracted.
Can I just ask you— just so I stop wondering about it— what’s that thing in the frame on the wall over there? Not your diplomas, no; over there by the bookcase. It looks like maybe it’s an illustrated manuscript.
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It is? Mind if I take just take a quick look? I couldn’t read it from that distance. It’s hard enough from up close, with the Latin and the fancy lettering. From the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, right? Nice.
OK, one less thing to distract me.
Do you ever have people who respond to that, one way or another? I mean, patients who want to read it, or maybe even think you’re trying to send some sort of religious message? Maybe even resent it? Or love it, for that matter? Just curious.
I mean, it’s not just like a pretty picture: a still life or something. It’s words on paper. I have to figure that the words mean something to you, or you wouldn’t have put them up there. I’m comfortable with the Gospel, obviously. But not everyone is. And you’re dealing with people who might have some issues…
Never mind. I don’t mean to get into your other business. And I’m not going to question your decorating decisions.
Back to my case. I was talking about Betsy.
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She’s an odd sort of lady. She’s ubiquitous at St. Joe’s; you can’t be in the parish for a day without running into her.
Back in the old days, before Vatican II, a woman never got inside the sanctuary unless she joined the Altar Guild. Except for one time—at their weddings—women never came inside the altar rails. So if you were a “church lady”— the sort who just has to be involved, to feel like she’s a big part of the operation— then you probably joined the Altar Guild. Now today that there are all sorts of parish committees there are different ways for the busybodies to get involved: the “secular monsignors,” as David Burke calls them. Most of them are women; that’s just a fact. Look inside a parish church— any church— and apart from the priests, most of the people you see are women.
When I first got to St. Joe’s there was this one woman who would get up as soon as Sunday Mass was over, and walk right up to the altar, and follow the priest out into the sacristy. She didn’t go to the early Mass, so I didn’t see her often, but when I did it felt as if she was chasing me off the altar. I worked up the gumption to ask her why she did that, and she told me, “Oh, I just like to check with the priest.” Check with the priest about what? I mean, she just wanted to know what was going on, to feel like she was part of it— really, she just wanted to feel important. As if she wasn’t just another ordinary parishioner; as if she was part of the pastoral team. I told her that when I was celebrating Mass, I’d appreciate it if she’d wait a minute or two, and come around to the side door of the sacristy. She was miffed; I could tell. But she stopped chasing me, at least. In fact, she stopped showing up in the sacristy at all when I said Mass. I don’t know about the other priests. She probably looked at the schedule, and avoided the Masses that I was saying. I don’t know; just guessing.
Wait. I didn’t mean to go off on her. I’m probably being uncharitable. She’s a good woman, trying to be a good Catholic. She’s just got a messed-up idea of what it means to be an active parishioner. The thing is, she’s not that unusual— she’s just an extreme case. And it’s nearly always women.
I’m not talking about St. Joe’s in particular; it’s pretty much the same everywhere. The Monsignor tells some funny stories about some of them: how they start thinking of themselves as unpaid members of the parish staff—and the most important members, too. They have very strong opinions about how every little thing should be done, and very little patience with anyone who had a different idea, and they’re offended if anyone does anything without consulting them. You can’t go anywhere or do anything in the parish without running into them. They know everyone who comes to church regularly; they talk to everyone. If you’re a priest assigned to the parish for a few years, you realize that these women were there before you came, and they’ll still be there after you’re gone. That’s an important thing to keep in mind: to realize that you’re just passing through. It’s their turf.
You might call them the “church ladies,” except that I think that’s more of a Protestant term. For us Catholics it’s a different sort of phenomenon. You don’t find women like Betsy Howell in Protestant churches, I don’t think.
I mean, I’m painting a negative picture, but there’s a lot more to it than being busybodies. These are really good women, most of them: good solid Catholics. Prone to gossip, maybe— some more than others— but genuinely faithful and prayerful.
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Good call. You caught me going off on a bit of a pet peeve. Strike all that from the record. Not relevant, Your Honor.
But what I just said— about how some of these “church ladies” are really good faithful Catholics— with Betsy that’s true, and then some. This is a woman who practices every special devotion you could name. She’s always making novenas, handing out holy cards, invoking the saints, lighting candles, sprinkling holy water. Believe me, nobody would mistake her for a Protestant!
To be fair, there’s another reason why I shouldn’t call her a “church lady.” That description makes me think of the ones who are just busybodies. There are plenty of them, too, for sure. They set up their little empires—whether it’s the arranging the flowers or ironing the altar clothes or running the annual bazaar—and they can be really quite nasty to anyone who challenges them. I think they do it because they get something out of it. A bit of a power trip, I suspect.
Wait. Stop me before I go off on that again.
With Betsy it’s different. She can meddle in things—she does meddle in things, I should say—but she’s not mean about it. I never have the sense that she’s doing it to satisfy her own needs. She’ll step aside if you can convince her that someone else is doing the job. It isn’t easy to convince her; don’t get me wrong. But if you can, she doesn’t get huffy. Her ego isn’t invested in the thing. She’ll back off, too, if she sees that she’s making someone angry— although it takes her a long while to notice that.
The truth is that Betsy likes to help. I’ll tell you honestly, when I hear that somebody in the parish is friendly with Betsy, they go up in my estimation. There’s this young couple that moved into the parish recently, and the wife started showing up every morning for the early Mass, with a bunch of little kids. I liked her right away; she struck me as just a normal, friendly, warm-hearted young woman; and the kids were normal healthy fun kids. But when I heard that she’d asked Betsy over for dinner, I was really impressed. Most people prefer to take Betsy in small doses. When you ask her into your home, knowing that she’s going to talk your ears off: that’s real hospitality.
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Yes! Absolutely! You should be trying to understand Betsy, because like I’ve said, more than once, she’s the reason I’m here. And I don’t just mean because of the healing. You have your job to do, I know; you have an assignment. But if you really want to understand the whole fuss, you might do better to have Betsy in here and talk to her about it. That would be a workout, let me tell you. That would be a trip. Whatever your hourly fee is, believe me, you’d be earning it.
Anyway, give Betsy credit, too. She’s really incredibly active for her age. I hope I get around that well when I’m her age. There’s another thing. Betsy tells people her age at the drop of a hat. She doesn’t keep any secrets about herself. So, I’m not breaking any confidences here. She’s almost 88. Most people her age aren’t very good at taking care of themselves. But she’s been living on her own for 20-odd years, since whenever it was her husband died.
Now that’s funny: I can’t tell you exactly when he died. I’d never thought of that. She’s never told me the date, I don’t think. I’m not sure she’s even told me his name! At least I couldn’t tell you what it is. She doesn’t talk much about him. I don’t know what to make of that. It’s been a long time; I guess he’s just not in the picture much anymore.
Anyway, she lives alone. She has two daughters— I happen to know she wanted more children, but for some reason that didn’t happen. Sometimes I wonder if it was a happy marriage. But OK, I’m getting off track. I just meant to say that her children are grown and married and living out of state— I could tell you where, but you don’t need to know— and she only sees her grandchildren once every three or four years. That’s tough on her. She’s old enough to have great-grandchildren, and it’s funny but I don’t know whether she does or not. She doesn’t talk about her family— which is really odd. I don’t know what to make of that, either.
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Oh, yeah. She’s a funny lady, that’s for sure. She even looks funny. She always has a paper tissue wadded up in her hand, and a set of rosary beads. (After she cleans out the votive candles, and gets burnt wax and soot on her hands, she wipes them with that tissue. Of course, that doesn’t really do anything except smear her hands and make the tissue dirty at the same time, so for most of the morning she walks around with sooty hands, until eventually she transfers most of the dirt onto her dress. By 10 o’clock she’s a mess.) Then she’s always there for the 9’oclock Mass, too, and the whole routine begins again.
People laugh at Betsy. I can’t blame them; I do myself, sometimes. It’s hard not to, really. But once you get past the appearance—and that takes some work, I admit—you realize that she’s just a really good woman. You don’t have to spend much time at St. Bridget’s before you start hearing from people she’s helped, in a lot of different ways.
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OK, just for example. She talked to Ed Lewis—he’s an older guy who’s a regular in the parish—and convinced him to offer his summer home on Cape Cod to the Rafferty family, free of charge, for a week. That was sheer genius on her part. The Raffertys have 8 kids, living in a little 3-bedroom house, and the father has had trouble holding down a job, and it’s all they can do to keep up with the mortgage and groceries, never mind thinking about a summer vacation. You can bet they jumped at the offer. But I honestly think Ed Lewis was even happier about it. He’s feeling his age, and missing his wife, and he doesn’t get around to spending much time at his Cape place anymore. He was absolutely tickled that a young family would have the use of it. He told me that he’d left the refrigerator chock-full, so they wouldn’t even be able to buy their own food because there wouldn’t be anywhere to put it. He was chuckling about that— as if he’d put one over on them. So, everybody was happy. Chalk that one up for Betsy.
Everybody in the parish sees that side of her. At least they see it if they care enough to notice. That’s one reason I worry about Ed Mulvey. He just sees her as a pest; he doesn’t seem to notice.
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Yeah, there’s that other side, for sure. I think I told you, didn’t I, that practically the first time she met me, she told me that she’s experienced the third mystical death. Or maybe it was the fourth; I forget now. (I shouldn’t, because I’ve heard about it quite a few times now.) I’ll be honest; I don’t even know what that means. But she gets all stirred up when she describes it, and she kinda loses me. And again, this isn’t a secret that she just confides to her spiritual directors. She tells anyone who’ll listen.
I shouldn’t make fun of her for it, because she’s very serious, very sincere. I honestly don’t know what to make of her stories. She can tell you all sorts of stories about saints who’ve had these experiences, and somehow the stories are a lot more dramatic than what you’d expect from the life of a little old lady in suburban Boston. She talks about them so matter-of-factly: “Oh, yeah, I’ve gone through the third mystical death”— the way you might say you’ve had the flu.
But who knows? She’s trying her best; she really, really wants to be a saint. That’s a good thing; I’m not knocking her for it. It’s just—well, it can be pretty hilarious; you know what I mean? I don’t suppose you hear a lot about mystical deaths in your line of work, do you? It might make your life more interesting. It’s done that for me, I can tell you.
Betsy is convinced that she has a special calling to be a saint. I don’t doubt that for a minute. She’s so intense about it, she’s constantly looking for spiritual direction. If you’re a priest, she’s going to want to confess her sins, tell you about the distractions at prayer, ask for advice about a deeper interior life. She’s gone through a whole long series of spiritual directors, including a couple of bishops; sometimes more than one at a time— which is really a crazy way to do it. I think sometimes she wears them out. I should know; she’s been wearing me out!
By the way, I’m not telling you anything here that she wouldn’t tell you herself. Strike up a conversation with her, and she’ll be quite happy to give you a list of her spiritual directors over the years. In fact, you might get that list from her even if you start out the conversation talking about the weather. And then when you think you’ve got the whole list— it’ll be a long one— she’ll remember some old priest she left out and add a name.
Betsy knows that we chuckle about the things that she says: about all her supposed mystical experiences. And here’s what I find remarkable: She takes it all very seriously— very, very seriously— but when we laugh about it, that doesn’t seem to bother her one bit. She doesn’t mind being the butt of jokes; she tells jokes on herself all the time. There isn’t a whole lot of ego there: no false pride at all. She’s genuinely humble—just in a very odd sort of way. That’s one reason I find it easy to take her seriously in spite of everything. It’s also a reason why I don’t think she’s crazy, at least not in any important sense. You’re the expert, so you tell me, but I’ve always thought that the ability to laugh at yourself is a sign of sanity.
OK, so now I’ve been rattling on about Betsy for half an hour or so. Sorry; I know we’re supposed to be talking about my sanity. Don’t you ever tell somebody to shut up?
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Oh. I get it. I’m not going to tell you what she said in confession of spiritual direction, so you’ll take whatever you can get. Trying to get the background, right? Before we get to the drama? Very tricky. But fair enough.
Still, don’t you have enough background by now? Should we cut to the chase?
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Right, I think so too. You’ve got the general idea.
So within a couple of weeks after I got to St. Joe’s, I was Betsy’s project. She was telling everyone in the parish that I was a special, holy priest. I heard that second-hand from a bunch of people in the parish. And I knew it was true— I mean I knew it’s true that she was saying these things, not that I’m especially holy— because she’s told me about I-don’t-know-how-many other priests that she’d described as very holy. It’s not that much of a compliment, frankly, coming from her; the currency is pretty badly inflated.
Still, she did persuade a lot of her friends and followers to start coming to me for confession. That became obvious quickly, as the lines got longer. I don’t know what to tell you about that; there isn’t much that I’m able to say. I don’t think I do anything exceptional in the confessional: anything much different from what other priests do, I mean, I’m definitely not the Curé of Ars or Padre Pio or somebody like that. I can assure you that I don’t have the gift of discernment of souls; I can’t tell what people are going to say. Far from it; I’m embarrassed, quite a lot, because I can’t understand what someone is trying to tell me. I hate it when I have to ask questions, to make them explain what they’re telling me, when it’s obvious that it’s hard for them to choke it out. I should be making it easier for them to get things off their chests; sometimes— more often than I’d like to admit— I seem to make it harder.
So, if you’re worried that I have some sort of delusions about being a wonderful confessor, cross that one off your list. Far from it. Confession is a wonderful, amazing thing, and every priest does an amazing thing at every confession. I believe that, and I love doing it. The sacrament is extraordinary. I’m not. End of story.
Except that it isn’t the end of the story, because Betsy would also corral me to join in her special devotions. She asked me to join her weekly Rosary group, and I figured: Why not? Then she wanted a special Mass for the sick and dying and recently deceased, and I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. She wanted to organize a 40 Hours devotion, and I thought that would be good for the parish— and it was, by the way— so I helped with that. In January she brought in a couple of speakers for a pro-life conference, and we had a Mass for that, too. Again, why not?
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Why me? Because I was asked. Because she asked me. If you ask me to say a Mass for you, I’m not going to stop and wonder why you didn’t ask another priest. I’m not going to look at the parish calendar and check to see if everybody’s doing his fair share. (I already know what I’d find, anyway.) If I can do it I will.
But by this time the Monsignor was getting a little bit uneasy about it all. He started making little cracks about “Betsy’s little cult”— good-natured cracks, but there was something behind them. I think I told you that when I first checked in to the parish, he had said that he didn’t want to see a cult popping up at St. Joe’s, and he was talking specifically about Betsy. I did talk about that, right? He kept using that term— cult— but he never objected to any of the events, any of the things that I was helping her to organize. Some of them were things they’d been doing at St. Joe’s for years. Some of the new things that she proposed, the Monsignor supported (some more than others); he thought they were good for the parish. When I asked him about them, he always gave me the go-ahead. He’d just warn me, now and then, not to start thinking of myself as her private chaplain, and not to start a cult. I took that warning to heart, by the way; I knew he was right. She did have a tendency— a very strong tendency— to monopolize me.
It was starting to get to me, too. Not starting; it was really eating at me. I did enjoy working with Betsy, but— it’s kind of hard to explain— at the same time I was dreading it. She was already like an old friend, and yet there were times— lots of times— when I dreaded to see her. It was all just too much. I’ve heard a lot of guys say that their wives or girlfriends are too emotionally demanding. Well, Betsy was too spiritually demanding. It was exhausting.
To tell the truth, by late in the summer I was trying to avoid her— which was impossible, of course. Then I was feeling guilty about it, because the last thing you want to do, as a parish priest, is run away from the people who want your help.
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Before we get there, there’s one more thing that I should mention, because it helps explain what happened. Did I tell you that Betsy always seemed a bit out of breath? Sometime last summer I noticed that it was getting worse. She’d always been breathy when she talked, but I hadn’t paid much attention. That’s just how she was, and I guess I thought it was almost a part of her personality: that she was in such a rush to say everything that she didn’t take time for a proper breath. But over time it was getting worse. I couldn’t help but notice it. She’d be almost panting when she came into the church (she always walks from her house, which is just a couple of blocks), and completely winded when she came up from the basement. I asked her a couple of times if she’d seen a doctor recently, and she brushed me off. Finally I got serious about it, and told her that I needed an answer. She said that Tom England was her regular doctor— he’s a parishioner, too, a very active parishioner— but she admitted that she couldn’t remember the last time she saw him in his office. So, yeah, he was her “regular” doctor, but she wasn’t exactly regular about it.
She saw him all the time in church, though, and so did I. I pulled Tom aside one day and told him that I was worried about Betsy. He agreed completely. He’d noticed the same thing, and thought it could be serious. He told me that he’d told her three or four times to come in for a checkup, and she always said she would, but she didn’t follow through.
That was a funny conversation, by the way. Maybe he shouldn’t have been talking about one of his patients. But the whole point was that she really wasn’t one of his patients. I mean, he hadn’t seen her for years. He really was talking to me as her friend, trying to figure out how to get her in so he could check her out.
The next time I saw Betsy— which was probably within a couple of hours— I made her promise to call his office and make a date. From the way Dr. England reacted when I asked him about her—he didn’t say anything about her medical condition (probably because he didn’t know much), but the look on his face told me a lot— I was really pretty worried about her. So the next time I saw Betsy, I made her promise to make an appointment. She did promise, and I knew she wouldn’t break her promise. But I also knew that it wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of her to-do list; and I was pretty sure it should be. Add that to the list of reasons she was on my mind.
So, yeah, by the end of the summer I was feeling stressed out, and that was mostly because of Betsy. I mean, she was making a lot of demands on me, and, you know, trying not to let her dominate my life. I kept remembering what the Monsignor had said when I first got to St. Joe’s— and he kept saying it, now and then. I didn’t want to be acting like her private chaplain. Because that’s what she wanted, pretty much: a private chaplain. One more private chaplain, really, to add to her collection. So, I was trying to keep things in balance. And then whenever I talked with her, she’d be breathless, and I’d be worried about her health.
I think a lot of new priests, right after they’re ordained, feel the pressure— maybe after a few months, when they should be settling into a routine. I suppose maybe it’s the same for your profession, right? I mean, when you’re just starting, and people are coming to you all day with their troubles, do you feel stressed at first? Anyway, I did, and like I said, it was mostly because of Betsy.
By September, when I had some vacation time coming, I have to admit that I was really looking forward to a whole week without her. The parish bazaar was coming up, and of course she was right in the middle of all the planning. In some ways it was a bad time for me to leave, because the bazaar is our big annual bash, and usually it’s a matter of all-hands-on-deck. But the Monsignor knew that I needed a break; he’d said so himself. He’d promised to teach me how to run a bazaar— that was one of the things he’d said when I first came to St. Joe’s, and the bazaar was his special project, his pride and joy. But when I sent up a trial balloon about taking that time off, he was all for it. He told me not to worry— that I could even take off that week. In fact, I think he even recommended it. He made a crack about how someone like me would be useless at a bazaar (which I’m sure is probably true, unless they needed somebody for the heavy lifting). But I think he knew pretty much exactly why I was thinking about getting away. He’s pretty shrewd about that sort of thing.
So, I made a plan to get out of town completely, spend a few days in Washington with Peter and the kids, and take my time getting back.
I did what I could to help with the planning for the bazaar, and the Monsignor made a point of walking me through each step. Then when we were down to the last-minute details, I wished everybody luck and skipped out of town.
That’s when all hell broke loose.