“Posie’s back,” said Sym over the intercom late that afternoon. “She already sneaked in the back there, but you ought to go see her.”
Marlene found the young woman in the nursery with the twins, who were bubbling with glee to have their nurse back and, apparently, delighted with the new colors in her face. Tranh had vanished into his kitchen. Zak was on her lap, trying to tug off the fresh bandage that covered her left eye and ear. Zik was tapping like an osteopath on the cast on her right wrist, using a rubber Zimby.
“Christ in Heaven!” Marlene cried. “What happened to you?”
“I’m sorry, Marlene,” said Posie in a whispery voice. “I should’ve called. I had to go to the emergency room and-”
“Oh, don’t be silly! You’re hurt. What happened?”
“I was, like, in a car wreck,” said Posie, looking at Marlene and then quickly away.
“Oh, yeah? Whose car? When was this?”
“Um, last night. Some guy, I didn’t know his name.”
“Uh-huh. You went to St. Vee’s?”
She had. Not wanting to waste time listening to more lies, Marlene went back to her office and called St. Vincent’s emergency room. Identifying herself (illegally) as a police officer, she found, after a number of calls, the duty nurse who had treated Posie. The duty nurse, a woman for whom blunt trauma was as an open book, did not think Posie had been injured in a car accident. She thought Posie had been beaten, and had so reported it to the police, as required by law.
Marlene said nothing after she got off the phone, but went back to work. Harry came back, cursing equally the Germans and ladies’ professional tennis. They shared news, and then Marlene took Posie and the boys and Lucy back to the loft. While Posie was giving the boys their bath and Lucy was settled with her homework, Marlene rifled the patched denim bag that served Posie as a purse, locating a ragged address book, from which she recorded one address. She changed into her black leather pants and engineer boots and put on her motorcycle jacket and a Yankees cap, into which she thrust her hair. Then she went to her tool closet, took an eighteen-inch pipe wrench from her plumber’s chest, wrapped this object in several sheets of the Times, and walked out.
Twenty minutes later, Marlene was pounding on the door of a tenement apartment at Sixth Street off C. The door was painted the color of old dried blood, and little flakes of it bounced into the air as she struck it. The hallway stank of hot lard, it being largely a Latino building now, but the smell seemed to be mixed with the scorched chicken feather stink of the former Jews layered over the cabbage of the yet more former Irish.
After three minutes of banging a voice answered from the other side: a curse and an inquiry. Posie’s Luke was a late, heavy sleeper.
“It’s me, Luke. Open up, honey!” Marlene called out sweetly.
Heavy steps. The door rattled and swung open. Luke Last-name-unimportant stood blinking in the doorway, dressed in a pair of ragged blue jeans and nothing else, a thin man in his late twenties, with a stupid-handsome face and shoulder-length dirty dirty-blond hair.
“Yeah, what?” he asked and then, looking her over, “Who’re you?” Marlene had her baseball cap pulled low over her forehead.
“Do you always come to the door with your fly wide open?” she inquired. Of course, he looked down, and when he did, Marlene whacked him over the head with the pipe wrench.
He staggered back into the apartment, his knees sagging. Marlene followed him in, slamming the door behind her, and hit him across the face with the wrench, a two-handed tennis serve swing. He went down, sprawling on his back, blood exploding from his nose. Marlene stood above him, adopted a wood-chopper’s stance, and brought the head of the tool down on his groin as hard as she could. He shrieked high and loud, and curled up on his side in a fetal position, breathing hoarse, bubbly cries. Marlene knelt beside him with her knee pressed into his neck.
“This is for Posie,” she hissed into his ear. “You are not to see her again. You are not to talk to her on the phone. If you see her coming on the street, you are to run away. In fact, the best thing for you to do is to get out of town permanently. If I hear that you have seen her or talked to her, I will come back, with help, and then I will take you apart. You will not be able to walk or talk or move for years after that. Nod your head if you understand.”
He nodded so hard he sprayed blood all around his head, like a flower.
Down in the street, Marlene had to lean against her car with her head down before the nausea passed. She stripped the bloody, shredded newspaper from the wrench and tossed it into a waste-basket. She used a tissue to wipe up blood drops. They came off easily from the oily leather.
Marlene drove slowly to Grand Street to buy her family dinner. She ordered two large pizzas at Lombardi’s on Spring Street and, to kill time while they were baking, she walked down Mott to Grand and Ferrara’s. There, at one of the tables in the back, she saw Father Dugan, dressed in a canvas jacket and a flannel shirt, sitting with a youth of about eighteen wearing a maroon parochial school blazer. The boy had the kind of Irish beauty that drew the eye, especially Marlene’s eye: shiny red curls, that milky skin, eyes from heaven. She sat one table away from them. They were deep in conversation, speaking in low, confidential voices, and if the priest noticed her, he made no sign. The waitress came, and she ordered a double-shot americano and a napoleon pastry. After violence, sugar was Marlene’s rule.
The two had stopped talking while the waitress was at Marlene’s table. When she left, Father Dugan met Marlene’s eye and nodded, smiling. “Join us?” he said.
Marlene moved her coffee and napoleon and sat in a chair at the other table. The boy stared at her, confused. He blushed, the red moving up his pale cheeks like spilled wine on a tablecloth.
“This is Kevin Mulcahey, Marlene. Marlene Ciampi, one of our parishioners,” said the priest. The boy mumbled a greeting but did not offer to shake hands. He said, “Well, hum, thanks, Father. I’ll see you later.” He got up so abruptly he knocked his chair over, made an embarrassed noise, righted the chair, snatched up an ugly plastic, bulging briefcase and almost ran from the restaurant.
“Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Marlene. “I didn’t mean to scare your friend away.”
“Oh, Kevin’s all right. He’s a little nervous. We were discussing his vocation.”
“You’re recruiting him?”
“Rather the reverse. I’m advising him to take some time.”
“You don’t think he’d make a good priest?”
Father Dugan sipped his cappuccino contemplatively. “I have no opinion either way, but the fact is, he lusts after women and it frightens him to death, and so he imagines that becoming a priest will solve the problem. I was trying to suggest to him, gently, that this is not necessarily the case.”
“You’re speaking from personal experience?” Marlene ventured lightly. He looked at her, his face calm but his eyes radiating the sort of soul-shriveling loving disappointment she recalled so well from Sacred Heart. They must have a special school that teaches them how to do that, Marlene thought as adolescent sweat broke out on her face.
He broke the gaze and said musingly, “Yes, sex. It’s so difficult for secular people to comprehend that there are a certain number of men and women in the world who don’t care for it, for whom it’s rather an irritation. Like psoriasis, for example. Or they just don’t like it, like some people just can’t stand olives or peanut butter. Some of these people are naturally attracted to celibate institutions and are content in them. Others of them persist in sexual activity because the society seems to demand it and they don’t wish to appear odd or unhealthy, and so they are unhappy and make their partners unhappy. Conversely, there are highly sexed people who have been taught that those feelings are shameful and to seek refuge in celibacy. They often get into trouble. As they say, when priests fail it’s either Punch or Judy. But there are worse things too, sad to say. Choirboys, et cetera.” He paused and looked at her closely before resuming. “A few of these, however, are able to convert their passion into spirituality, and these become the great saints in the world-Augustine, of course, Francis, Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius Loyola-”