Barbara slapped down the knife. “Memorial videos? A mortuary?”
The old man’s chin dropped into his robe, and he crossed his legs the other way. He offered a mumbling apology and a scrap of justification: only thinking of the boys. Didn’t want the boys to waste time reinventing the wheel.
“Father, Cesare. So what if they are? So what if Chris and John Junior are out there doing the same thing as everyone else?” Barb got her hands back on the garlic. “It’s still new to them, isn’t it? Everyone they run into, everyone who’s just like them, they’ve still got something to teach the boys.
“Listen,” she went on, “Chris and JJ showed us rushes last night. They actually used that word, ‘rushes.’”
At a noise outside the apartment, on the stairway landing, the priest put his back to her. The walk from the church, Barbara saw, had soaked him through the robe.
“Not that they showed us anything,” Barb went on. “They were out all day and all they showed us was five minutes. Another lecture, Chris at the Sibyl’s Cave. Now, what do you think, Cesare? You think, it’s time Jay and me asked a direct question?”
The noise in the hall had disappeared. Cesare swung round again, slumping, eyes on the floor. If he was so unhappy here, Barb thought, she could easily have made the trip to the church. These days she could climb the Vomero stairs without risk, taking along the guard assigned to her. And Barbara’s man was the least impressive on the crew. He was the youngest, with curls that hung in his eyes. He liked to read a comic books, her bodyguard, and he liked to pile on the gelato. But why not let the boy eat? Anyone could see that Mama Santa was no longer at risk. So what if some underfed clandestino trailed her a while, seeking a long-distance blessing? So what if some white churchgoer held up a crucifix? Barbara took care of them with a nod and a word. Even Maddalena had backed off, lately. The morning before last, Barbara had allowed the girl ten minutes with the family, a Q-&-A down on the stoop. The priest had shown up that day too, and the pretty young media climber had also caught Barb and Cesare bent together over the rosary. Good TV, that prayer — Barb and Cesare were getting wider play than Barb and the interviewer. Latest word on Maddalena was that she’d been offered a position on a national digest.
All around her, people were going through changes. But here in Barbara’s kitchen, this afternoon, she was getting nowhere even with her priest. Likewise the old man looked as if nothing short of another earthquake could move him.
Once more the mother banged on the table. “She isn’t here,” she said.
That brought his eyes up.
“Aurora. She thought today she’d help JJ and Chris.”
Apparently the Jesuits hadn’t taught him how to handle getting caught. The priest blushed with such heat that for a moment he might’ve been a stranger, a blistered stranger, here at her table. But then Barb had never known him, had she? She’d been clueless, hadn’t she, when it came to his cranky old heart? She’d completely misread the stillness that had fallen over the man during his first meetings with Aurora.
She didn’t understand his first words either, some bitter dialect. Then: “Oh, my.” The priest appeared to test his joints, his legs toggling around beneath the robe. “There’s, there’s a cliché, don’t you know,” he stammered. ‘“No fool like an old fool.’”
She went to the fridge, yanking the handle and the drawer, pulling out a bell pepper. “Father — Mother of God! Of all the women in the world.”
“I, I realize how you feel about her, signora. What am I to say?”
A good big bell pepper, she could use the chopping.
“What would you like, Mrs. Lulucita? Shall we put an end to our talks?”
“Oh sure.” She couldn’t sit yet. “That’s just what I need, more sneaking around.”
The man’s wrinkles multiplied around an uncertain squint.
“If I say you can’t visit”—Barb pointed at him with the pepper—“then I’ll have two pairs of lovebirds sneaking around.”
Cesare didn’t quite nod.
“Do you know what that’s like, Cesare? Do you know what it’s like, living with doubletalk? If I say you can’t visit, I’ll never be able to think straight again. If it’s not JJ and Romy sending signals, it’ll be you and Aurora.”
The old man plucked at his sweat-stuck shirt, and the gesture unexpectedly softened her. With that Barbara could see how he lonely he’d gotten, caught between a comfortable parish and radical dreaming. For years and years, his own heavy-knuckled hand must’ve been the only touch he’d known.
“Plus,” she said more evenly, “I won’t even have a priest to tell about it.”
“Perhaps then we should do as the Romans do.” He too was regaining control. “We should say Dio boia, ‘hangman God,’ don’t you know. An apt blasphemy.”
She sat and attacked the garlic again.
“Apt,” he went on, “when everyone’s got their neck in a—”
“Cesare, don’t. Don’t give me that Irish wit, pseudo Irish, can you imagine how it sounds? Your lying pretend Irish? I mean, I am trying to understand. I’m trying to tell myself, a priest is as human as the rest of us. That’s sort of the point, isn’t it?”
“The point, oh my. The point.”
“Please.” Her wrist was burning; she set down the knife. “Cesare.”
“Signora Lulucita, it’s high time we stopped this charade. You call me your chosen priest, as if I were some boy at a dance.”
“Can I help you here, Father? Can I try? Aurora, you know, she didn’t—”
“Fa-ther, oh my. Really, signora, this has to stop. You’re more than bright enough to have realized, long since, just what a miserable excuse for a proper Catholic father I’ve become.”
Barbara’s turn to pluck at her clothes. Whatever she hoped to accomplish by staying in town, she’d counted on her priest to help. When the guard downstairs had announced the man’s arrival, she’d taken a moment with her hair and exchanged her frayed slippers for her best flats. Jesuit, Dominican, whatever, he still carried a communion kit. He still conducted the Mass. The old man even held a weekly service for the head cases, down at DiPio’s clinic.
“Cesare,” she tried, “you said yourself, it’s Christ who calls you.”
“But what if I no longer hear him, signora? What if my faith has become, as you say, mere lying and wit? I daresay you could see the truth the moment we met.”
The garlic had been reduced to crumbs, and the onion and pepper looked overwhelming, far too much to start on.
“Signora, my faith — it’s dwindled to nothing. A heap of offal.”
Barbara shook her head. “Cesare, please. Can you understand, Aurora’s not worth it? You know how many men have fallen for the merry widow?”
The man flushed again. This time the red-and-white contrast, cheeks and hair, suggested one of the local cameos.
“Sorry,” she said. “You understand, I’m angry? I’m still angry.”
She could’ve avoided this, she thought. Five minutes ago she could’ve made believe that she hadn’t guessed who it was that Cesare had been hoping to find, on this visit. She could’ve avoided any mention of the grandmother.
“Signora,” the old man was saying, “I’ve come to think I’m eavesdropping on a life in Christ. I’ve been at it for years really. One long evening after another, I’ve stood up at the front of the sanctuary and I’ve eavesdropped on the liturgy. It’s my own liturgy, yet it’s chatter from another room, don’t you know. It’s nothing but bits and pieces. Whoever designed that awful business above the altar, it’s awful indeed, oh my yes. But he knew what he was doing, with his broken bits and pieces.”