Nobody's Fool

shouldn’t—indeed, no one seemed to notice—they followed their father upstairs. The upper story of the rectory contained five rooms so lavishly furnished that Sully and his brother were stunned, having never seen anything like it.
    They found their father in the priest’s study, just standing in the middle of the book-lined room, taking it all in—the plush leather sofa, the silver-framed pictures hanging from pristine white walls, the huge oak rolltop desk with its brass lamp, the gigantic free-standing globe, the leather-bound books from floor to ceiling, and pervading the room the smells of tobacco and what Sully would later identify as cologne andliqueurs. On the desk’s blotter there lay a gold pen and pencil set, along with a sleek gold letter opener.
    Their father seemed neither surprised nor angry to see them, despite the fact that on other occasions he’d been known to strap them for not obeying his orders to stay put. “Not a bad racket, huh?” he said with a sweeping gesture that included not just the priest’s study but the surrounding rooms upstairs and down. “Those nickels and dimes in the collection plate add up, don’t they? All those collections, seven days a week, three on Sundays. You can do all right. See all this? This is what they call a vow of poverty. I bet the bastard was as chaste as he was poor too, what do you think?”
    Sully didn’t know what the word chaste meant, but he knew he had to go to the bathroom. “In there,” his father pointed. “It don’t look like one, but that’s what it is just the same.”
    Truly, had it not been for the commode, Sully would not have recognized it for a bathroom. It was bigger than his and his brother’s bedroom. There was a sofa along one wall, velvet drapes concealing the tub and shower. The atmosphere was foul though, thanks to Big Jim’s visit. Sully himself finished his own business quickly and guiltily, washing his hands and drying them on his pants to avoid soiling the priest’s thick purple towels. “Some shitter, huh?” his father said when Sully emerged, and then they waited for Sully’s brother to go too, though the boy said he didn’t have to. “Try,” Sully’s father insisted. “You’ll be able to squeeze something out.”
    They stopped at a bar on the way home so Sully’s father could describe the rectory for the bartender. He remembered all the details Sully’d missed, and the more beer his father drank, the more vivid and angry his memory became. “You should see the shitter,” he told the man behind the bar, who, Sully could tell, was already tired of hearing about the rectory. “It’s bigger than your goddamn house.”
    â€œYou never even seen my house, Sully,” the man said.
    â€œYeah?” Sully’s father said. “Well, you never saw that shitter either, because you wouldn’t believe it. Not only that. You shoulda seen the getup the bishop was wearing. Cost more than all your clothes put together, just that one robe. All your clothes and your wife’s put together, I bet, and we’re just talking about what he had on.”
    â€œI ain’t even married, Sully,” the man said.
    â€œLucky you,” his father said. “This religion is some goddamn racket.We should all drop what we’re doing and start wearing gold crosses and passing collection plates.”
    The bartender had gone pale. “How about a little respect? It’s a dead priest you’re talking about. The guy just died. God’s priest he was, Sully.”
    â€œYou oughta see the casket he’s gonna be buried in,” Sully’s father went on, undeterred. “I bet it cost more than this whole bar.”
    â€œWhy don’t you go home, Sully,” the bartender said.
    â€œWhy don’t you go fuck a rock, George, you dumb Pollack ass-kisser,” Sully’s father replied.
    They’d walked the rest of the way home then, Sully’s father getting angrier every step of the way, the beer churning in him, souring his vision. “You see the way that asshole bishop looked at me?” he nudged Sully’s brother, Patrick.
    â€œI don’t think he liked you, Pop,” Patrick admitted.
    â€œYou figure out why?”
    Patrick wanted to know why.
    â€œÂ â€™Cause I wouldn’t kiss his ring, is why,” their father explained