The Greatest Evil fk-20 Read online

  As for the principals, after all this they decided to take their time getting married. They had achieved their state of sin; marriage would only be its canonical imprint.

  It didn’t take Mary Lou long to find a teaching job in a middle school. Her salary alone made it possible for them to live in a nice apartment and even enjoy a few extras-comfortable furniture, a color TV, and the luxury of eating out occasionally.

  Greg got a job with the local newspaper-dividing his time between janitorial services and the switchboard. The managing editor could find nothing in Greg’s resume that would qualify him for anything higher.

  Mary Lou was happy. She did miss her religious habit, and the reverence the kids gave “’ster.” But not all that much. It was an unwonted thrill to receive a paycheck with her name on it. She could try different teaching methods in her classes without the admonition “This is the way we’ve always done it.” She even found it fun to flirt. The school’s male staff knew she was single. They gave her no trouble. All in all, she had never felt more feminine.

  Greg’s situation was another case entirely. No one called him “Father.” No one did things for him. In effect, no one any longer did any part of his job for him. Not a single person would cover for him or excuse a failing.

  He had gone from being “another Christ” to the guy who sweeps the floor and answers the phone. On top of it all, Mary Lou was making more money than he. Unbridled sex hardly made up for all that.

  Meanwhile, back home, Jake and Mildred Helpern, Mary Lou’s parents, were getting used to the idea. Their daughter had been a nun. Now she wasn’t.

  At first, Jake was angry. He thought he had closed the file on his only daughter. Safely locked in behind inescapable doors. The only practical consequence of her religious life, as far as he was concerned, was that she’d have no kids. He would not have any grandchildren from her. He could live with that. Besides, his only son might produce some legitimate progeny someday. If ever he stopped sowing his wild oats. Like father, like son.

  Jake chuckled.

  Mrs. Helpern drew a blank. She had tried to make it clear to her daughter that marriage was no bargain. All the silly girl had to do was consider her parents. Jake was one of those walking arguments for the theory of evolution. So much so that Mildred was uneasy about visiting the zoo. There simply was too much resemblance between her husband and the males in the orangutan exhibit.

  Years ago, they had packed Mary Lou into the motherhouse on a bright and promising day. Their son hadn’t bothered to see his sister off. A heavy date.

  Jake wore his blue serge suit. A bit warm for that season. But it was Jake’s sole evidence of civility.

  Mildred had been so happy. Her daughter had climbed upon a pedestal much like the statuette of the Blessed Mother in their living room.

  Where Mary Lou had ever gotten the idea to become a nun Mildred was at a loss to know. But there she was: pristine under yards and yards of religious habit.

  And now she’d thrown it all away! To run off with a priest, of all things! What could a priest do to earn a living? In no time, Mildred just knew it, Mary Lou would be back on the Helpern doorstep. Probably bring the priest with her. Two more mouths to feed-or even more, if they had kids. Jake would be furious.

  Mildred prayed for her daughter. Mildred prayed that her daughter would find happiness-countless miles from the Helpern family.

  On the other hand, there were the Thompsons: mother, father, and sister of the once and-what they determined would be-future Father Thompson.

  No sooner did the Thompsons receive Greg’s announcement than they made an appointment with a chancery priest. That was the first of many meetings with secretaries, information officers, priests, monsignors, and, at long last, the bishop.

  As a result of their perseverance, they reached a tentative agreement with the diocese that (a) If Gregory Thompson had not attempted a civil marriage (b) If it was judged, after careful investigation, that his enterprise had not made him notorious in the diocese (c) If he were ready to blindly, totally, and completely follow the directives of his diocesan authorities, he might be permitted to once again function as a priest.

  But, the bishop warned, those “ifs” were very iffy.

  Thus armed with a tentative agreement, Harold, Joan, and Rose headed for Greg’s and Mary Lou’s apartment.

  The Thompsons spent the better part of that evening arguing and pleading with Greg and Mary Lou. In the end, considering the small wave he had made in the worldly economy, Greg leaned toward returning to a life he really hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place.

  It would, of course, be difficult to part from Mary Lou. But … she was the only woman with whom he had ever been sexually active. And who knew? With all the good intentions in the world, it might happen again. Except that if there were a next time, he would be much more cautious in his selection.

  Mary Lou fought off the Thompsons far more forcefully than Greg did. How dare they meddle in the lives of two consenting adults!

  However, as the hours passed that fateful evening, Mary Lou felt her hold on Greg slipping. He was wavering; she knew it. At first she was furious. Then she began to think of all those interesting men at school, as well as in the service station, the supermarket … well, just about everywhere.

  The only man she knew in a complex, complete manner was Greg Thompson. And he clearly wanted out. More and more she thought she could get on very well without him.

  There were so many others cut there to meet and experience.

  Covering her true feelings carefully, at long last she agreed to the decision that had been reached by everyone but her.

  There would be no fuss, no trouble, especially no litigation. Greg was free to leave. Tonight. This very moment, for all she cared.

  And so, in the family car-they would arrange for the return of his car later-they headed for home.

  At first, Greg took the wheel. But as his father feared, the young man had gone through so much emotional turmoil, his driving was rather erratic. So, just outside the city on the way homeward, Mr. Thompson insisted that he himself drive the rest of the way.

  Greg was too exhausted to argue strenuously. With a few pro forma objections, he traded places with his father, leaving his mother and his sister in the backseat.

  The passengers quickly drifted off to sleep. For mother and sister there was satisfaction in what they’d accomplished. Much more so than they had anticipated: They had gone after the lost sheep and he had been found. He would be restored to the fold.

  Greg, alternating between dreams and wakefulness, slept fitfully. Mary Lou drifted in and out of his dreams.

  Mr. Thompson was tired. But he was very much aware of his responsibility to his family. After an exhausting day and most of a night, it was all he could do to stay alert, all the while offering prayers of thanksgiving for his son and for the faith and perseverance that had sustained them and won the battle.

  In no way was it Mr. Thompson’s fault that the driver of a pickup truck, drowsy and drunk, driving at a recklessly high speed, crossed the median.

  Thompson hit the brakes so hard the pedal almost went through the floorboard. The car skidded, fishtailed, and presented its left rear corner to the truck.

  The crash was horrendous.

  Thompson’s car folded like an accordion. Mother and daughter, crushed beyond recognition, died instantly. Father died within minutes.

  The driver of the truck lived long enough to be taken to a hospital, where, after lengthy but futile surgery, he was pronounced dead.

  Greg had not been wearing a seat belt. Atypically, that proved providential; had he not been thrown clear of the car, he would have been crushed by the large branch that crashed through the front passenger side. Despite multiple internal injuries and broken bones, Greg would live. Perhaps, with faithful physical therapy, he might regain some, if not all of his motion.

  A passing motorist encountered the accident and summoned help. Greg knew non
e of this; all he knew was that he could hear metal groaning as it settled against the pavement, and the drip, drip, drip of liquids.

  He could not move. He thought of his life. He thought of Mary Lou. He had sinned. What sudden and overwhelming punishment God could visit on His children when they betrayed His love!

  He called out to his father, his mother, his sister. No reply. Did they need help? Were they pinned in the wreckage? Why didn’t they answer?

  Maybe they were unconscious. Please God, let them be unconscious. Not dead. Not dead!

  He would do anything, be chaste the rest of his days, if only his family could be spared.

  Bargaining with God. It had come to that!

  There was a distant noise. It sounded like … it was a siren. Help was. coming.

  Thank God. Now he would get some answers.

  20

  “Some story!” Father Tully had virtually forgotten the pool game. “But isn’t it kind of racy to tell in church-or even to church people?”

  Koesler smiled. “You got the unexpurgated version. I heard Vince tell the story to a small gathering of priests at a Forty Hours devotion. That was pretty close to what I just told you. And it was the only time I ever heard him tell it. But I have it on good authority that he used it periodically. Lately, with the mass exodus of priests and nuns, he’s had to modify some of the details. It’s no longer such a cataclysmic event. But the essence of the story remains.”

  Tully tipped his head to one side. “I’m afraid I don’t get the point. If Greg is the focus of that story, then … what? He seems to have come out of it smelling like a rose. Here’s a fatal car crash. Four people lose their lives. One comes out alive. What’s the moral? God spares the sinner and lets, at least three innocent people die? Where’s the moral lesson in that?”

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “Oh … sorry.”

  “No problem. This is the way the story ends. Four people die. Two are killed instantly. Two survive for a short period, then they too die.

  “Greg survives. But just think how he felt when he came out of surgery and was told he was the sole survivor. It would be perfectly natural to take on a lot of the guilt for all this carnage. If he hadn’t run off with Mary Lou, his. parents wouldn’t have gotten involved in trying to get him back. They never would have made that trip … the trip that took their lives.

  “Or, given they came to convince him to return, they won. But on the trip home, if he had been more alert, he would have continued driving the car. His dad took over to spell his distraught son.

  “If Greg had continued in the driver’s seat, he would have died and his father would have lived. It wouldn’t have been the fault of anyone in his parents’ car. The fault was with the driver of the other vehicle-the pickup truck. It was because Greg was driving erratically that his father had relieved him.

  “Imagine carrying that package of guilt around!”

  Tully stood and stretched. “I hope I would’ve had the good sense to get some counseling. It was an accident, pure and simple; it was an accident whoever was driving. It could have been any one of the four of them. Fate. Kismet.

  “I can see the temptation for Greg to accept much or even all of the responsibility. It was an open-and-shut case. There were a lot of factors working here. But in the final analysis it just happened to be Greg. But, okay, Greg drove the car and was the only survivor. I still don’t get the point.”

  Koesler laughed. “You still haven’t let me finish.”

  Tully walked away. “Oops, sorry. A problem I have.”

  “Well, talk about your good news-bad news stories, this one has only one silver lining. And I’ll give it to you now.

  “When Greg Thompson gave notice to the chancery that he was leaving, his bishop was livid. He stormed through the chancery blowing off steam. The chancery priests had never seen him so angry. He wanted, by damn, his pound of flesh!

  “Toward that end, he ordered that, among other sanctions, Greg’s medical coverage insurance be cut off.

  “The degree of anger and animosity the bishop felt for his priest speaks loudly for the perseverance and persuasion exercised by Thompson’s family. That they got the bishop to agree to even consider forgiveness and reinstatement is a minor-or maybe even a major-miracle.

  “Anyway-and this is about the only good news-the priest who was supposed to terminate Thompson’s medical insurance took his sweet time about it.

  “So when Greg was admitted to the hospital, his insurance was in effect; it covered his operations, as well as his subsequent rehabilitation therapy. If that lackadaisical chancery official had been on the ball, Greg would have had no medical coverage at all.”

  Tully whistled. “The national debt!”

  “Indeed. But, as I said, that was the end of the good news.”

  “Not very much, is it?”

  “A drop of water in an ocean. Mary Lou heard about the accident. She tried every which way to get in touch with him. She really-desperately-wanted to help. She thought maybe-against her better judgment-that they might possibly get together again, and somehow make it work. In a macabre moment, she even considered it a blessing of sorts that his family would not be around to interfere in their lives.

  “But Greg was having none of it. He would neither see nor talk to her.

  “With all the operations he had, it was not difficult to brush aside Mary Lou and, in fact, just about everyone else. His doctors said it would have been easier to identify the parts of his body that hadn’t been injured than to catalog his injuries. On top of all that, he was suffering from acute depression. That, of course, was to be expected. What the doctors did not recognize was how threatening this was.

  “But eventually, the time came when Greg was able to function on his own-to a degree.

  “The car that he’d left with Mary Lou had been returned. He got on the freeway as quickly as he could. It was late morning, and the drivetime traffic had mostly let up. As soon as he saw his way clear, he floored the accelerator.

  “He attracted four police cars. It was quite a chase. He was clocked at something in excess of ninety miles an hour when he left the highway.”

  “Left the …?”

  “The expressway veered to the left. Greg kept going straight. He was airborne. This time when he hit a tree, he didn’t live to say what he was thinking.”

  There was silence for several moments.

  “I guess,” Tully said, “it’s pretty clear: He was thinking of suicide.”

  “That’s the point,” Koesler said. “Priests, especially today, stress the forgiveness, compassion, and love God has for us. A long time ago, when I was growing up, the emphasis was on sin and punishment. Back then, eschatology, the study of the last things, embraced death, judgment, heaven, hell, and purgatory. And the only positive part of the study was heaven.

  “It’s almost as if Greg were back in a preceding era.

  “But it’s not just the story itself; it’s Delvecchio’s preoccupation with it-”

  “Wait a minute: Is this supposed to be a true story?”

  Koesler shrugged. “I don’t really know. Vince creates the impression that it’s true … but he’s never flat-out claimed that it actually happened. I don’t know,” he repeated. “It’s such a bizarre tale you’d think more people would know about it-I mean, if it actually took place … wouldn’t you?”

  “I think so,” Tully said thoughtfully. “I can’t recall having heard about anything like that. It would have to have been in the papers somewhere-wherever it happened-and in any case, a story like that would’ve made it around the clerical grapevine …”

  “I think that whether the story actually happened doesn’t matter; it’s the effect the story has had on Vince that’s important. I’ve tried to go over it lots of times to test its moral. Because, clearly, that’s what bugs Vincent.

  “And I think it has to do with that old saw: Mortal sin is the greatest evil in the world.”

 
; “How could you argue with a premise like that?” Tully said. “Mortal sin is such a big umbrella. It’s murder and embezzlement and scandal and on and on. If you figure that hell awaits the serious sinner, and that a serious sinner makes a hell on earth for the victim of serious sin, then you’d have to agree that mortal sin is the greatest evil in the world … wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, there are a lot of distinctions that have to be made. But, yes: Properly defined, it is the great evil. But see what Vincent’s story does: Greg, in the story, makes serious sin contagious!

  “Contagious?”

  “No,” Koesler corrected himself, “not contagious; I think more likely Vince sees mortal sin as a contaminating agent. This story is a favorite of his. It means something very important and special to him. So I’m taking a flier that I can analyze Vinnie through analyzing his story.

  “The story begins with Greg and Mary Lou having an affair. Mary Lou is ready and willing to call it off if Greg doesn’t do the ‘honorable’ thing and marry her. Greg simply cannot let her go, so he takes her away with him.

  “Then his parents and sister come to bring him home-away from ‘a life of sin.’ He changes his mind and leaves Mary Lou. She’s no longer living with anyone. Her life has opened up. She may marry and live a virtuous life.

  “But sin still dogs Greg. Even as he drives home with his family, he is open to the possibility of another affair. It is, in Vince’s mind, this state of mortal sin that contaminates everything around Greg. And it’s that contamination that takes three innocent lives.

  “Nor does it spare Greg. Driven by the wretched life he’s been living, he commits suicide …”

  “… the ‘unforgivable sin,’ the ‘sin against the holy spirit’ … the ‘greatest evil,’” Tully summed up.

  “Exactly,” Koesler affirmed. “And don’t you see: It goes back to Vince’s uncle and his suicide.”

  “The way Delvecchio sees it, his uncle is responsible for his aunt’s living in the state of mortal sin,” Tully mused. “They are not canonically married. And it’s his uncle’s fault. He’s the one who was previously married. So it’s ’his fault.’ And when he ‘contaminates’ the condition by not getting an annulment …”