She has also enrolled Tommy and Margaret in the Feliciana Christian Academy, which teaches that the world is six thousand years old and won’t have Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye in the library.
At least it’s better than Belle Ame, and the kids seem happy and healthy.
But I worry about them growing up as Louisiana dumbbells.
I might have held out for the parochial school, which was good, but it folded. The nuns vanished. The few priests are too overworked to bother. Catholics have become a remnant of a remnant. Louisiana, however, is more Christian than ever, not Catholic Christian, but Texas Christian. Even most Cajuns have been converted, first by Texas oil bucks, then by Texas evangelists. The shrimp fleet, mostly born again, that is, for the third time, is no longer blessed and sprinkled by a priest.
Why don’t I like these new Christians better? They’re sober, dependable, industrious, helpful. They praise God frequently, call you brother, and punctuate ordinary conversation with exclamations like Glory! Praise God! Hallelujah! I’ve nothing against them, but they give me the creeps.
Ellen often invites me to a meeting of her Pentecostals, who hug and weep and exclaim and speak in tongues. She wants to share her newfound Lord with me, especially the Holy Spirit.
“No thanks,” I say, after one visit.
“Why not?”
“I’m afraid Marva will hug me.” Marva, her mother, has converted too.
“I’m serious. Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why don’t you want to?”
“I can’t really say.”
“I know why.”
“Why?”
“You’re still a Roman.” There’s nothing new in this. While she was an Episcopalian, she began calling Catholics “Romans.”
“I don’t think so.”
“At heart you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“That that priest still has his hooks in you.”
“Father Smith? Rinaldo? He doesn’t have his hooks in me.”
“He got you to do Mass with him.”
Do Mass? “That was back in June. It was my namesake’s feast day. I could hardly refuse.”
“Namesake’s feast day. What does that mean?”
“The feast of Sir Thomas More. June twenty-second.”
“And he got you again last month.”
“He didn’t get me. It was the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination. I was the only one he asked. You wouldn’t want me not to go.”
“Do you know what he does now?”
“Who, Rinaldo? What?”
“When he calls you and I answer the phone, he won’t tell me what he really wants. He’ll make up another excuse like being sick and needing a doctor.”
“He’s a sly one.”
“And how about you taking the children to Mass last week?”
“It was Christmas.”
“We don’t think much of Christmas. The word means Christ’s Mass.”
“Well, after all Meg and Tom are Catholics.”
“I don’t care what you call them as long as you admit that neither you or Tom or Meg will be saved until you are born again of the Holy Spirit and into the Lord.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I thought I was born again when I was baptized.”
“How can a little baby be born again right after it has been born?”
“That’s a good question, Nicodemus.”
“What did you call me?”
“Nothing bad. Come over here by me.”
But she keeps standing, hands on her hips.
“Why don’t you go to the fellowship meeting with me tonight? The children are going.”
“I think I’ll stay home. But right now—”
“I know exactly what you’re going to do.”
“What?”
“Have five big drinks and watch another stupid rerun of Barnaby Jones.”
“That’s so. But for now, why not come over here by me? You’re a very good-looking piece.”
She sighs, but takes her hands off her hips, holds them palms up, looks up to heaven: what to do? Actually she’s quite content to have it so, as am I.
“Come by me.”
“All right.” She sighs again, comes by me — a wife’s duty— then smiles.
We get along well. It is my practice which is shot.
11. HUDEEN KEEPS WELL, still reigns, seated on her high stool, in her tiny kingdom bounded by sink, stove, fridge, counter, and stereo-V.
She still keeps an eye on the soaps, mumbles amiably in a semblance of conversation, making sounds of assent and demurrer. But once she made herself clear.
It was Thanksgiving. Ellen had quit her bridge tour and was home for good. The children had quit Belle Ame Academy. Chandra had landed her new job as weatherperson, and even as we watched, there she was! On TV! Slapping the black Caribbean with her stick, she as black as the Caribbean.
“Bless God!” cried Hudeen, who can’t believe it, a person, someone she knows, Chandra herself, up there on the magic screen. “Bless Jesus!”
“It’s a good Thanksgiving, Hudeen,” I said.
“And you better thank the good Lord!” cried Hudeen, clear as a bell.
“We will,” said Ellen, who says a blessing indistinctly, speaking in tongues, I think.
Hudeen is not speaking in tongues. “I say bless God!” said Hudeen, looking straight at me. “Bless his holy name!”
“All right.”
“You be all right too, Doctor,” said Hudeen straight to me.
“I will?”
“Sho now.”
“How do you know, Hudeen?”
“The good Lord will take care of you.”
“Good.”
12. THE LITTLE CEREMONY which was supposed to celebrate the reopening of the hospice turned out to be a fiasco.
Father Smith, who I had understood from Max to have come down from the fire tower in his right mind ready to take over St. Margaret’s, behaved so strangely that even I, who knew him best, could not make head or tail of what he was saying. To the others he appeared a complete loony, or, as Leroy Ledbetter put it, crazy as a betsy bug. To make matters worse, he also managed to offend everyone, even those most disposed to help him and the hospice.
It was doubtful at first that the hospice was going to succeed, after all.
Local notables gathered to welcome the staff, a civic and ecumenical occasion, not only other priests, ministers, and a rabbi, but many of my fellow physicians both federal and local — good fellows who were ready to donate their time and services — the mayor, a representative from United Way and the Lions Club. Even our Republican congressman showed up and promised his support of legislation to divert at least some of the federal funding of the Qualitarian program to the hospice movement.
Chandra had even arranged for a NewsTeam-7 remote unit to tape the highlights for the “People and Places” segment of the six o’clock newscast. It was one of those occasions, Chandra assured me, which has “viewer appeal,” like helping old folks, flying in kidneys and hearts for dying babies. Americans are very generous, especially when they can see the need in their living rooms. And NewsTeam-7 had 65 percent of the market in the viewing area.
It, the hospice, couldn’t miss.
There was to be a Mass in the little chapel at St. Margaret’s, a few words from Father Smith, followed by a televised tour of the facility, with perhaps short interviews with a malformed but attractive child, a spunky addled oldster, and a cheerful dying person.
It couldn’t miss.
But one look at Father Smith as he comes up the aisle of the crowded chapel and I know we’re in trouble.
He’s carrying the chalice, but he’s forgotten to put on his vestments! He’s still wearing the rumpled chinos and sneakers he wore in the fire tower for months, plus a new sweatshirt. It is a cold January day.