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Friday, May 13, 2005
Miracles
(From the Onteora Canon. Nothing so excites the derision of the materialist as a claim of a miracle. But miracles have their place in the world. For one thing, not all of them involve suspending the laws of nature. For another, not every skeptic survives contact with them unchanged.)
No one took any notice of Joseph Reinhold as he slunk into the city room of the Onteora Register. The eyes of the other reporters and editors remained glued to their typewriters, or their daily planners, or the scribbles on their desk blotters. He sauntered to his desk, slipped into his desk chair without removing his jacket, and laid his divorce decree on the almost-clean surface of his desk.
He flipped to the last page and stared at it. Mary had already signed it. Even on this document, seeing her rounded cursive made him remember high school, notes scribbled on pages from loose-leaf notebooks, and mini-flirtations snatched between classes.
He fumbled in his top drawer for a pen, gave up before finding one. There was no need to hurry this. It recalled too many fights, too many unapologetic admissions of infidelity, and too much regret. It made him feel tired.
The life of the newspaper swirled and hummed around him. Typewriters clicked, couriers trotted back and forth, muffled phone conversations blended into the characteristic city room din. The contrast with his own inertness amplified his sense of fatigue and his conviction of failure.
How long are they going to let me sit here?
The city editor had reminded him sharply that he hadn't filed copy in more than two weeks...and that was nearly a week ago. Granted that his wasn't the most demanding of positions, he was still expected to produce a story about something from time to time. He fought back the oppression of his weariness, pulled out his planner and leafed through it. He reviewed his list of popular themes and found nothing he wanted to pursue. His list of seasonal topics left him equally unmoved.
I should start looking for another job before they toss me out of this one.
He'd been sitting motionless for about twenty minutes when his phone rang. The sound startled him; it hadn't rung in more than a month.
"Reinhold."
"Have I reached the Religious and Cultural Affairs editor?" The voice was a smooth, mature alto.
"Well, they don't let me call myself an editor, but otherwise you're on target. How can I help you?"
"I think I might have a story for you." A note of tension had entered the voice.
Reinhold pulled a steno pad from a drawer. "And your name is?"
"Rachael Rosenthal. Look, this is sort of uncomfortable for me. Do you suppose we could talk face to face?"
Reinhold grinned to himself. "Humor me a moment more, please. This wouldn't be about a water stain of the Blessed Virgin on someone's basement wall, would it?"
There was a protracted silence on the line.
"Look, Mister, I'm the bookkeeper for Our Lady of the Pines Roman Catholic Church. I don't do stains, I do figures. And I'm a Jew, just so we have that out of the way. Now, do you have an hour or so to spare me, or not?"
A financial scandal in an Onteora church? This could get interesting really fast.
"Give me an address."
The Idle Hours Diner was diner-typical in shape and size, but was constructed and decorated entirely in chrome, glass and leather-like vinyl. Reinhold didn't care for it personally, but he supposed it was easier to keep clean than many other treatments would have been.
Rachael Rosenthal was a small, slender woman with dark coloration and an unassertive manner. She'd seated herself without removing her winter coat, and kept her hands jammed deep in its pockets. It made her look as if she were swaddled in several heavy blankets. Her air of diffidence reminded him of Mary.
Reinhold opened his steno pad on the table surface and wrote Rachael Rosenthal, December 12 at the top of a fresh page. "It's your dime, Ms. Rosenthal."
She nodded. "Have you ever looked into small-scale religious finance?"
"No, not as such. Why?"
"Because it's a struggle and a mess." She squirmed inside her envelope of wool. "I'm not in that area myself. I just count it as it comes and goes."
"Then why did you mention it?" He scrawled dances around on his steno pad.
She shrugged. "Bookkeepers talk, you know. I know all the other religious bookkeepers in the county. They all tell the same story: income down, expenses rising. The Episcopalian pastor is dipping into their capital reserve to meet monthly operating expenses. The Lutherans and the Russian Orthodox have decided to share space to save the rent on a building." A quick, mischievous grin. "That's going to be an interesting marriage, this time next year."
"How about the Catholics?"
She pressed her lips together, uncertainty showing in her eyes.
"That much worse?"
"No, the opposite. Father Schliemann says Mass attendance is steady or a little down, but parish revenues are up, like a spike, for the past three months."
He wrote Catholic revenues up sharply 4th qtr. "So what's Father Schliemann's secret? He hasn't started selling indulgences, has he?"
She shook her head but said nothing. Reinhold had the sense that she was sizing him up, trying to decide how much of a surprise he could weather.
"Are you telling me there's cash coming in through an anonymous channel?"
She laughed. "No, Mr. Reinhold, it's not cash. Each month for three months running, Father Schliemann has handed me a large check to deposit in the parish's operating funds account."
"Payable to?"
"The bearer. You know, cash."
He scribbled donations by untraceable check. "Drawn on whose account?"
She hesitated again.
"Miss Rosenthal?"
"The New York State Off-Track Betting Commission."
He straightened and sat back in the booth.
"I'll be damned."
Our Lady of the Pines' rectory was set slightly back from the church proper, and connected to it by a slender, screen-walled breezeway. It was a little after noon when Reinhold pulled up before it. He found a young man hard at work installing a snow fence along the path that led from the street to the rectory entrance.
The young man was short, pale, and slender, with brown eyes and a thick mop of dark brown hair. He wielded his mallet as if there were nothing in the world more important than making certain the fence would stay erect against the savage winter winds of central New York. He looked up as Reinhold approached, and their eyes met for a curiously uncomfortable interval.
The young man looked to be about thirty. His eyes were large and very dark. His perfectly neutral expression gave Reinhold a sense of being weighed in a balance, with his very life at stake on the reading of the scale. He held Reinhold's gaze locked to his so firmly that the reporter could not step past him.
"Good evening," Reinhold said. "Is Father Schliemann in the rectory?"
The young man's dead-neutral expression remained unchanged. "Yes, he is." His voice was a soft baritone. "Would you like me to fetch him for you?"
Reinhold held up a hand. "No need. I can introduce myself." He turned and started to make for the door, and found that the young man was already turning the knob. The door closed behind him with Reinhold still several strides away.
Well! But perhaps that's part of the service.
A minute later, the young man returned, accompanied by the tall, silver-haired figure of Father Heinrich Schliemann, Onteora's pastor for more than forty years. The young man gestured at Reinhold and went back to his yard work without a word.
Schliemann approached with a hand extended. "I'm Father Schliemann. And you are...?"
"Joseph Reinhold, Father." They shook hands. "Perhaps you've seen my byline in the Religious and Cultural Affairs section of the Sunday Register."
Schliemann's eyebrows went up. "I have, indeed. You've manned that post for, what is it, about eight years now? How is it we haven't met before?"
Reinhold smiled. "Partly chance, partly the good behavior of Onteora's Catholics and their priests. Newspapers have always thrived on the seedier side of life, Father. Even the life of the spirit."
Schliemann grinned ruefully. "Well, one who wears a Roman collar isn't supposed to want to be famous. Especially not these days. May I offer you some coffee?"
The pastor laid a gentle arm around Reinhold's shoulders and shepherded him into the rectory.
They'd lounged over coffee and cakes in the rectory's antique sitting room, passing an hour in a warm and animated conversation on diverse topics, when Reinhold realized that he was unable to frame the question he'd come to ask.
How do I ask this supremely courteous man of God why and when he started playing the ponies to pay the parish's bills?
Despite his trade, or perhaps because of it, Reinhold had held himself immune to the lure of religion. He'd felt it to be beneath the dignity of a mature adult. But in Heinrich Schliemann's presence, he had to concede that there were men of dignity who'd given faith a place of importance in their lives...that at least one man of a dignity well beyond his own had given it the whole of his life.
"Something private on your mind, Mr. Reinhold?"
The query arrested his spate of reverie. "Uh, well, no, Father, not exactly. I was just dithering a bit over, ah --"
"Over what sort of story you might wrap around your visit here?" Schliemann's eyes were warm.
Reinhold chuckled. "Bingo." He chuckled again. "Sorry, bad choice of exclamation. We've had a very nice chat. It's just, ah, difficult to put a journalistic angle on it. I can't just transcribe our exchanges about the Catholic faith. Those who don't already know all about it will hardly care. Is there any development of real significance going on in the Church, either here in Onteora or in the wider world, that I can use as a narrative hook for the other things we've discussed?"
Schliemann leaned forward in his armchair, hands clasped in his lap. "Real significance," he said. "You mean secular significance, don't you?"
Reinhold squinted in discomfort. "Well, yes and no. A secular hook is the easiest for a reporter to work with, of course. It also garners the most interest, even in the Religious and Cultural Affairs column. But any development that stands out from the steady state of parish practice -- I mean, that's out of the ordinary for you or your congregation -- would give me a good start."
Schliemann nodded. He sat silently for a long moment.
"There's a question in you that you can't quite disgorge," the pastor said. "You've been casting about for a way to ask it since you first shook my hand. Why not just let fly? I promise not to be offended, if that's what you're worried about."
Reinhold's mouth dropped open. He laughed as one will who's been caught in a dissimulation. Schliemann smiled.
"Go ahead, Mr. Reinhold." He spread his hands. "I'm unarmed."
Reinhold started to speak, halted himself, and thought furiously.
"Father," he faltered at last, "how do Catholics stay married?"
"More coffee?" Schliemann said.
Reinhold shook his head. "My back teeth are floating, and I've taken up far more of your time than I had any right to ask. But..." He looked away briefly. "Would you be amenable to another chat sometime? Sometime fairly soon?"
Schliemann's face crinkled. "Do you really expect any answer but yes?"
Reinhold bit his lip and nodded.
"Mr. Reinhold, giving counsel is my profession, but it's also my love. I could hardly have become a priest if I found it onerous or irritating to help others through their difficulties. Besides, I was flattered to be asked for help on such a sensitive matter by someone who isn't one of my communicants." The priest canted his head. "Would you happen to be considering that as well?"
Reinhold pondered.
"I wasn't when I came in here," he said. "And I wasn't when we started talking about my marriage, and I wasn't up to the moment you asked the question. But perhaps I am, now. I know the general teachings of the Church fairly well. The practical ones strike me as sober and sensible, if a bit straitlaced on certain subjects. But I've given no thought to the theological doctrines for many years." He leaned back in his chair and looked off into the corner of the room. "Religion was never a real presence in my life."
"Did you receive any religious instruction as a youth?" Schliemann said.
"I was baptized. That's about it."
"Which sect?"
"Episcopalian."
"Ah. That's not too far a throw from Roman Catholicism, you know."
"You think not?" Reinhold surged forward. "Episcopalian shenanigans -- Protestant shenanigans generally -- have kept me supplied with dirt for the last eight years. How can they be your close cousins when they're so mired in doctrinal wars and so prone to internal squabbling but you're...you're..."
"Not?"
"Yes!"
Schliemann rose and stepped over to the sitting room's bay window. The sun had set, but the gleam of the streetlights outlined the shapes of the trees that lined the front of the rectory yard and the silhouette of Reinhold's car.
The young man who'd been installing the snow fence when Reinhold arrived was still at work, digging a slit trench that would allow the flowerbeds around the large statue of the Blessed Virgin to drain into the semi-cylindrical gutters that ran along the edge of the walk. As before, he worked with the concentration characteristic of a serious craftsman rather than the surly effort of a typical day laborer.
"Who is that, Father?"
Schliemann looked back at him and smiled. "My enforcer."
"Hah!"
"Oh, I'm quite serious." Schliemann turned and crossed his arms over his chest. "He doesn't know it, though. His name is Louis Redmond, by the way. He's an engineer by trade. He spends his days making warplanes. Most of his free time he's here, maintaining the church and the grounds. He's been doing it for fifteen years, out of the goodness of his heart."
"You don't pay him?"
Schliemann shook his head. "He won't take a cent from me. The one time I raised the subject, he told me that Onteora Aviation already pays him more than he's worth, and anyway, it was his duty to support the parish. This is how he chooses to do that." He pursed his lips. "You've heard Christians use the motto 'What would Jesus do?' haven't you?"
Reinhold nodded.
"On most subjects that touch on modern life, it's an unanswerable question. At least, I can't think of anything Christ said that would help with questions about flex time, intellectual property or double-entry bookkeeping."
Reinhold immediately remembered the subject he'd originally come to broach. He did his best to suppress a wince and hoped the pastor hadn't noticed.
"But anyone who knows Louis," Schliemann said, "has a model that will serve for just about anything. He's a genius, a world-class athlete, and a moral paragon. He's no theologian. At least, he's never talked about abstractions of faith with me. He's just the best Catholic -- the best man -- it's ever been my privilege to know. I've never known him to succumb to malice, or envy, or cupidity, or sloth, or any of the other failings of men. So when some other parishioner falls short of the far looser standard to which most Catholics hold themselves, I cite Louis to him. And when I feel my own resolve beginning to slip, such that I might not be as open to those in need as my pastorate requires me to be, I cite him to myself."
Schliemann turned back toward the figure cutting the soil with a hoe. "And he's the loneliest, most tragic figure I've ever known, as well. He lost a beloved elder sister to epilepsy, and both his parents to a plane crash. He has no living relatives. He has no one to whom he's really close. Tell me, Mr. Reinhold, when you approached him, did he look you in the eyes?"
Reinhold felt the blood rush to his cheeks. He nodded slowly.
"I thought he might have," Schliemann said. "It has quite an effect, doesn't it?"
"You know it, Father," Reinhold said. "Is it a veneer he puts on to...protect you, or is it the real him?"
"It's quite real," Schliemann said. "He does it to everyone. Everyone who comes here, at any rate. You can almost feel him deciding whether you're fit to live. Between his gifts and his intensity, he terrifies nearly everyone. Fate has left him nothing except himself."
"And the Church," Reinhold murmured.
"And the Church. I've offered the consolations of faith to many a desolated or frightened parishioner, Mr. Reinhold. Every life knows loss at some point. Every man knows times of darkness and doubt. But I would never think to offer Louis the platitudes I bestow upon those others. I would be ashamed of myself for belittling his strength."
Reinhold rose and joined the pastor at the window. In the all but extinguished sunlight, he saw Louis scraping and firming the walls of his trench with a craftsman's precision.
"So," he said, "you have an Olympian genius of immaculate morals tending your church and grounds for no compensation, and he also assists you in your pastoral duties, by humbling anyone who complains about his lot in life just by his example. Does he leave you anything to do?"
Schliemann nodded. "I get to make us coffee."
Five days later, Reinhold returned to the rectory. He found Louis squatting before the stone half-wall that ran along the property's street border, touching up the mortar where it had begun to loosen and flake away.
"Excuse me," Reinhold said. "Mr. Redmond?"
The young engineer looked up. "Yes?"
"Might I have a minute of your time?"
Louis laid his trowel down and stood with a hint of reluctance. Reinhold noticed a tremor in his hands. His pallor, too, was more pronounced than it had been five days before.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Reinhold?"
Reinhold counted to three and put on his warmest, most reassuring expression.
"I could use some advice on picking winners at Aqueduct or Belmont Park."
Louis's eyes went wide. He drew a breath to expostulate, chopped it off and fixed Reinhold with a no-nonsense glare.
"Mr. Reinhold, if someone referred you to me for any such thing, I'd suggest that you put less stock in his next recommendation."
"On your authority," Reinhold said with all the assurance he could muster, "the Off-Track Betting Commission writes a check for ten thousand dollars once a month, payable to cash, and sends it to this address. Now, do you have an inside connection, or shall we talk about your system for handicapping horses?"
Louis gave him the most scorching glare he'd ever seen. After about fifteen seconds, the engineer realized it wasn't making the necessary impression, sighed, and shook his head.
"Shall we retire to my office, Mr. Reinhold?"
"Certainly. Lead the way."
Louis took two steps backward and sat on the stone half wall. He gestured to Reinhold to do the same. When Reinhold had achieved a stable perch, he brought forth his steno pad.
"Now, where would you like to begin?" the reporter said.
Louis grinned. "Right where I'd like to end: I don't gamble. Not in any way."
"Hm?"
"Was there something ambiguous about that, Mr. Reinhold? Should I have used shorter words?"
"Hey, all I want is --"
Louis held up a hand. "I know what you want. I also know what I want. The two are not compatible. Do you fancy yourself to be a capable investigator, Mr. Reinhold? Can you piece a puzzle together from fragments of evidence and the patterns they make? Or do you rely entirely upon your talent for goosing your victims into surrendering their privacy on their own?"
Reinhold was momentarily speechless.
"Because it would have occurred to a competent investigator, once he'd discovered the source of the funds and at whose direction they were being disbursed, to ask how they got into that account in the first place, instead of just assuming that they were track winnings. Did you do that?"
"...no..."
"Then your inside connection is getting off lightly. You haven't made him earn his keep. Go put him back to work." Louis hopped off the wall and bent to his trowel and mortar pan.
"Mr. Redmond?"
Louis stopped in mid-squat. "Yes? What now?"
"If I do find out, will you confirm it for me?"
Louis grinned crookedly. "You aren't going to find out. I assure you, there's no story in it. But beyond that, if you violate my privacy again, I'll hurt you. Not fatally, but badly enough that you'll never do it again. I don't care about what the gaming law allows you to learn, I don't care about your foolish notions about the public's right to know, and I don't care about your career or your journalist's sense of mission. I care about this church, this pastor, and this parish. Do you understand me?"
Reinhold gaped at him. Louis stood looking at him for a long moment more, then turned and resumed repointing the rectory wall.
Reinhold knocked on the door firmly, his misgivings stopped down as tightly as he could hold them.
Mary opened it, recognized him, and started in surprise. "Joe? What are you --"
"Looking for a miracle." He held up the divorce decree. "You signed this the day it reached you, didn't you?"
She hesitated, then nodded.
"No second thoughts, no might-have-beens, just like that?"
She studied his face, then moved aside and beckoned him in.
They sat in her kitchen, in the glare of an overhead light that had always been too bright for the little room. He'd meant to replace it with something more suitable for several years running, but there'd always been something more urgent to attend to.
"Mary," he said, "I want to give us one more try."
She winced.
"You don't, then?"
"I haven't allowed myself to think about it," she said.
"Why? After fourteen years of marriage, what could be more important?"
She looked away.
"Mary..." He paused to gather strength. "Is there someone else now?"
She shook her head without looking at him.
"But there was, wasn't there?"
Her mouth quirked. "Does it matter?"
He pondered.
"I guess not. Not if you'd like to try again. God knows, I haven't exactly been celibate since we separated."
Without looking at him, she said, "There's something else you're not."
"What?"
"Pregnant."
He fell back in his chair. "Ah."
She turned to face him again. "Does that matter?"
"Yes. It matters a lot. A baby should have a father." He drew a long, shaky breath. "Will I do?"
Her eyes went wide. "You're serious?"
He nodded. "I am."
"Why, Joe? Why now, after all the crap we've poured over one another this past year?"
"If I tried to tell you," he said slowly, "I'd almost certainly mess it up. So I'd like to propose an alternative: let me show you, instead."
They sat in silence for a long time. Finally, he said, "Do you know whether it's a boy or a girl?"
"No. It's too soon for the amniocentesis, and I'm not sure I want to know, anyway."
"Okay. How do you want to do the rest of this?"
She laughed, a duet for irony and tears. "You want to go fast, don't you? Are you afraid you'll lose your nerve?"
He grinned. "Maybe. But I've been changing a lot of things lately, and fast seems to work better than slow. Oh, one more thing."
"Hm?"
"I'm looking into becoming a Catholic. Don't start," he said when she opened her mouth to reply. "It's not about you, and it doesn't have to involve you. I just thought you ought to know."
"But..." She hesitated. "What about the baby?"
"Well," he said, scratching his head stagily, "I suppose we could use the Solomon method. I'd raise my half Catholic, and you could do whatever you want with yours."
"Joe!"
"Just kidding. We'll take it as it comes, okay?"
"Okay." She stretched a hand across the table and laid it on his. "I've missed you."
"I've missed you too, babe."
"But what's with the Catholic thing?"
"Oh, that." He sat back and steepled his fingers. "Well, it's about miracles. I saw one a few days ago, and I'd like to see a few more. Apparently they keep 'em in good supply, over at Our Lady of the Pines."
"Seriously?"
He nodded.
"Can you tell me anything else about it?"
"Sorry, babe. Clerical confidentiality and all that."
She frowned. "You're not a priest."
"Not yet."
"Joe!" But she was smiling.
"Just take my word for it, okay?"
"Okay."
Despite the garish lighting, the little kitchen felt warm and secure.
How do I tell her that miracles sometimes take human form? That a lonely young man with enormous powers, a forbidding demeanor, a tragic past, and terminal cancer has arranged to give his life's savings to a backwoods church, and has set it up so that no one will know? That he threatened me with bodily harm if I endangered his arrangement, and showed me something whole and unspoiled for the first time since our wedding day?
Maybe I don't.
"Joe?" she said. "This Catholic thing...?"
"Hm? What about it?"
"If you're serious about it, maybe I'll look into it too, but..."
"But what, babe?"
"We're not naming the baby Jesus!"
"Aw!" He pulled a face. "Not even if it's a girl?"
"Joe!"
"Okay, okay!"
Comments
Wow.
Thank you for the recent treat of your fiction. I don’t know why yet, but most of your stories have a powerful impact on me when I read.
Posted by on 05/14/2005 at 01:24 AMI think it’s your best yet. I also sincerely believe that your next will be even better...after all, it’s always been true before.
Posted by Matt on 05/14/2005 at 07:29 AM
