Most of the tables were empty; the quartet was seated almost immediately. It took several moments for their eyes to become accustomed to the soft lighting and the smoke. When they were able to see more clearly, McNiff immediately observed, “You guys look like you saw a ghost!”
“Damn right!” Marvin answered. “The ‘ghosts’ almost were us!”
There followed a graphic, detailed, and somewhat embellished narration of their memorable if brief stroll down Woodward. As he told the story, Marvin grew progressively more animated as well as more resentful of Koesler’s penny-pinching style that almost got both of them murdered.
Following this, there was general agreement-Koesler dissenting-on the danger of Detroit streets, especially after dark.
Responding to one of Koesler’s attempts to diffuse so sweeping an indictment of the city, McNiff countered, “What about that News reporter, Salden? What does that say about your safe streets? Here’s a guy just trying to do his job. And the job is covering religion, for God’s sake! And he gets killed!”
“Not too good an example, Pat.” Mulroney, it was generally acknowledged, was well read and well informed on current affairs. “According to reports I’ve read, whoever shot Salden wasn’t firing at random.”
“No?” When challenged, McNiff tended to react defensively.
“No,” Mulroney responded calmly. “It seems that all the shots-or all the shots that can be accounted for-hit Salden. The other people who were wounded were hit by bullets that went right through Salden.”
Marvin shuddered. “Do you mind? Koesler and I just went through an experience where we might have been used for target practice. I’d just as soon not talk about how bullets go through bodies.”
Koesler seconded the motion. He was no more eager than Marvin to converse about murder. “There’s tonight’s play.”
“Yeah … doesn’t it make you feel good to know that one of the brethren wrote it?” McNiff said.
With that, their waitress arrived, looking the worse for wear. She appeared quite elderly. Her white stockings hung loosely from swollen legs and ankles. Her wispy white hair was frazzled. One could be forgiven for wondering why she continued working this late at night, if indeed at all. One could only assume she really needed the money.
“Get you something to drink?” Putting her weight on her left leg, she listed to port.
McNiff ordered a manhattan, the others beer. The waitress shuffled off.
“Yeah,” Marvin picked up McNiff’s observation, “imagine a Detroit priest getting a play he wrote staged at the Fox!”
“He deserved the break,” Koesler said. “A Consequence of Heritage is a good play. Humor, conflict, a gentle touch, even a bit of tragedy. And did you notice in the program notes that Cliff mentioned how even though his play is about a Polish family, it could be understood as being indicative of any ethnic group?”
“I’d agree,” Mulroney said. “The tendency is to think of it as a slice of Polish life, because that’s the way it’s presented. But, with minor changes, it could portray almost any ethnic group. And even at that I wonder if it has to be ethnic.”
The waitress returned with their drinks. “Ready to order?” She shifted her weight to her right foot and listed to starboard.
“How’s the soup?” Mulroney asked.
“Like water. It was better earlier. Don’t order it now.”
The four were surprised at her candor. They all grinned.
“Okay,” Mulroney said, “I’ll have the deluxe hamburger, well done.”
“You don’t want it well done,” she replied. “It’ll be like shoe leather. Get it medium.”
“Uh …” Mulroney was not sure how to respond.”… but I … well, okay, if you say so.”
“And,” she added, “don’t get it deluxe. By this time the French fries are greasy. Get cottage fries. And don’t get them on individual orders; get an order for the whole table.”
By now, the priests were laughing heartily.
Their laughter did not seem to affect their waitress one way or the other. But she pretty well managed to order dinner for all of them, one by one,
After she left, Koesler returned to the topic at hand. “Getting back to Mo’s question about whether the play had to be ethnic; I think it not only had to be ethnic, but also a slice of the past. I mean, the kind of home life Ruskowski is portraying seems to me to be typical of what we had in the thirties and early forties, but certainly not sustained after World War II.”
“No, no.” McNiff stirred the ice in his drink with his index finger. “I’ve seen lots of families like that.”
“Lately? Come on!” Koesler said. “There were only two sets in the entire play. The principal set was the home. A living room took up almost the whole stage with one upstairs bedroom where Grandma just lay in bed with her back to the audience waiting to die. Her granddaughter comes home and has to put on a nun’s veil to visit Grandma who hasn’t been told that the girl left the convent years ago. And the other set was the grandson’s room in a rectory. How many families do you know of today with two kids, one a nun, at least previously, the other a priest?”
“Okay,” McNiff conceded, “maybe not a priest and a nun, not anymore. But that wasn’t the point. The fact that the kids had religious vocations was incidental to the point of the play, It was this close-knit family that depended on each other. And that’s not uncommon any time.”
“I didn’t think they depended on each other so much as they devoured each other,” Marvin said.
“Now, pay attention,” Koesler admonished McNiff. “Frank used to review plays for the Detroit Catholic.”
McNiff, grinning, drew a large imaginary circle, then mimed someone dealing playing cards.
Marvin laughed. “Okay, I get it: big deal!” He nodded. “Maybe so. But remember Grandma up on the shelf: Everyone and everything eventually had to revolve around that still, silent figure. That signified the unhealthy relationship that bound that family together. There wasn’t much free choice going on there.”
“Yeah,” Koesler agreed, “Grandma was the central character of that play. She was the patron saint of that family. That is, she was the saint until she spoke her last words-which were also her first words in the play.”
“There goes the ethnic thing again,” Marvin said. “She cried out much the same as Christ did on the cross. But her last words were in Polish. Which the mother first translated as ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’ But to her priest son, she admitted that Grandma’s last words were, ‘Shit! I don’t want to die!’ And there went her sanctity.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Koesler said through his laughter, “like the priest grandson said in the play-minus the vulgarity-that’s about what Christ said through his torment and death: ‘I don’t want to die.’”
“Even including the vulgarity,” Marvin said, “there’s no reason why that should argue against her cause for sanctity. It doesn’t seem to be hurting Clem Kern.”
Koesler choked on his beer.
No one reacted immediately, but as the choking continued, McNiff began to pound Koesler on the back, perhaps more vigorously than necessary.
Koesler waved him away as the breathing passage cleared.
It wasn’t news to Koesler that Monsignor Clem Kern had been nominated for sainthood. When his cause had been initiated years earlier, it had been big news, and played as such by the media. But that was a long while ago. And at the time, Koesler had subconsciously packed the item away in the recesses of his awareness. After all, wasn’t the aphorism something to the effect that one should be slow with unqualified praise after the manner of the Church, which didn’t canonize people until some three hundred years after their death? Since Monsignor Kern had been dead not even twenty years, Koesler had given the cause little thought. Even when Guido Vespa confessed the bizarre entombment of Father Keating with Clem Kern, Koesler hadn’t adverted to the ongoing cause for sainthood.