Grief Street

finery, squinting gladly in the bright Easter morning sun beginning to warm the chill air. He hardly had time to swipe a few puffs on his Pall Mall, what with so many congregants circled around him.
    pumping his hand in congratulations for a homily that had been above and beyond.
    “Nobody dozing on you today, hey, Father?” I heard someone say. And, “Bless you, it was real inspiring.” As well as, “Your masterpiece, I should say” and “The Lord surely blew his breath into your lungs this morning, Father.” We were squinting ourselves, Ruby and Sister Roberta and I, as we stepped out from the church. I heard Father Declan’s voice before I saw him motioning for me to join him.
    “Neil—a word, please... Neil!”
    “Go ahead, son,” Sister Roberta said. She hooked an arm over Ruby’s and the two of them started downstairs to the street, where parishioners mingled, chatting with one another before returning home for the holiday dinner or strolling across town to the parade on Fifth Avenue. “Father B’s a fine ham, and he’s got himself an admiring crowd this morning. We’ll just take a few minutes to get acquainted, your pretty wife and me.”
    I had to wait awhile for Father Declan’s fan club to break up before we could talk. A man said, “You look peaked, Father. Feeling all right?” Father Declan took a handkerchief from somewhere inside his cassock and wiped his perspiring forehead. “Oh yes, fine, fine,” he assured the man. It sounded like a lie to me. That, or else Father was having the shakes. I wondered about his drinking again.
    “Well, are you?” I asked when I finally reached him. “Am I what?”
    “Feeling well.”
    “I’ve all my fingers, if it’s what you mean.”
    “No, it’s not. Level with me.”
    “I’ve not had a drink.” Father Declan sighed. “The Friday horrors have taken over my mind, possessing me like. I’d no time for the sweet good-bye of whisky with the possession driving me so to conclusion.”
    “What conclusion?”
    “Remember when last we spoke?” The priest lighted another Pall Mall and gave a glance to the bar across the street. “Remember your saying this violent wickedness was beyond your depth?”
    I said I remembered.
    “But I don’t think it’s the case, you see. And that’s what I tried getting across in my homily.”
    “With all due respect, Father, I don’t—”
    “Don’t be a doubter, son. At least not before you spend some time upstate with Father Morrison—Creepy Morrison to you.”
    “You called him?”
    “It’s not so easy as that. I sent Father a fax message, in care of an old fellow named Charlie who runs the village store. Quicker than I’d thought came the reply, courtesy of Charlie. Anyway, Father Morrison’s expecting you anytime.”
    “Thanks. I’ll see about checking out a car from the department.”
    “Ah—it sounds so fine, a drive in the mountains. How I wish I could be going with you, Neil. But I’ve got Wednesday’s dead table to prepare.”
    “I could wait until—”
    “Please no, not on my account. Go soon. It’d do you worlds of good. As a cop and as a Catholic, too.”

    Which was it, Ruby wanted to know—the house to the east, or the one to the west?
    “And what makes you ask?” said Sister Roberta, her face as inscrutable as it was ageless.
    We were in a tiny parlor at the front of a gray brick house on West Fortieth Street, having walked there after the mass. Half the parlor, actually. The other side of the room was taken over by a neat row of three cots and nightstands. All the rooms in the house, downstairs and up, were similarly cut and divided into such impersonal spheres, with only this one half-space as a sitting room. The outside of the old house itself was unremarkable in appearance, although better maintained than others of the block.
    Sister had just finished explaining the reason for anonymity: vengeful husbands and boyfriends—fathers, even—were known to stalk the neighborhood of known shelters. This, she said, was among the saddest facts of modern violent life she knew. I certainly agreed.

    Sister and Ruby had struck an immediate affinity during my brief talk with Father Declan about traveling up to the Catskills. Such an affinity that Ruby had promptly accepted Sister’s invitation to Easter dinner at the shelter. Which seemed only appropriate, since there she was with all that bread on her hands. The two of them now sipped Bloody Marys as we sat in the parlor.