Extract from Ordinary Form

Kate Malczewski

It was the winter of 1970, and Father Maximilian Kowalski was dead. Scraping ice from the windshield of a Mercury Commuter one moment, clutching his chest in a snowbank the next. No final words. No last rites. Just like that.

The morning after the funeral, the bishop invited me to lunch. 

In all honesty I did not want to go. Max had passed six days earlier, and the rectory was still filled with his belongings. Gray marl-knit sweater draped over the recliner in the living room. Thousand-piece jigsaw of Monet’s water lilies on the coffee table. Shoeboxes of photographs and laminated prayer cards and notes for sermons stacked in the closet. All these little trappings of a man, and the responsibility of sifting through them had fallen to me. I wanted the task finished as soon as possible. I knew what it was like to live among the relics of the departed, how that could haunt a person. 

But I have never been one for negotiating with authority. It’s why Max and I got along: I swam with the current of his decisions. 

So I cleared the ice from the windshield of the parish station wagon, that rusted red witness to the old priest’s death, and began the half-hour drive from Beckford into the city. Despite the cold, my palms were sweaty against the steering wheel. The bishop hadn’t given a reason for our meeting, and there were two possibilities: I was getting a new boss, or I was getting a promotion. I said a silent prayer to accept either outcome with humility, then switched on the radio. It was broken, humming low and fuzzy on every frequency, and the constancy of the static soothed my nerves as I headed north through town in the lunchtime traffic. There was static past the tiny tidy houses still strung with Christmas lights. Static by the A&P, the diner with the silver-dollar pancakes Max had liked, the hardware store. Static at the stoplight by the Beck plate glass factory, and static on the concrete bridge that reached across the frozen river to Toledo. 

The bishop lived near the diocesan offices on an oak-lined avenue in the city’s Old West End, in a mutt of a mansion: half-timbered in the Tudor style, French mansard roof, Byzantine dome, Gothic dormers, porch flanked by Corinthian columns. Perhaps the snow falling from the sky was the Lord’s way of saving me from the affliction of looking at the house too directly.

A slouching old woman in full habit answered the door. She squinted at me, her expression icy. ‘The bishop is very busy today, I’m afraid.’ She didn’t sound afraid at all. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

For a moment I panicked, wondering if I had somehow misunderstood the invitation, gotten the date wrong. But I gave her my name, and she waved me inside. 

 I left my coat and boots in the foyer and followed her through the hall, past an ornately carved staircase and into a grotto of a study, all dark wood and antique leather, brightened only by a green banker’s lamp and the white of the snowfall through the bay window. An oil painting of the bishop hung above the fireplace, and I stood there, studying the likeness. It flattered him, shrinking his belly, broadening his shoulders, tilting his face upward at an exaggerated angle to disguise his weak chin. His meaty hands were tented in prayer. 

Then Bishop Duvall himself was in the doorway, clapping those hands together. ‘Really is coming down out there, eh? What a day for a drive.’ Each word was enunciated and projected, each gesture Shakespearean in scale. He crushed my fingers in a handshake. ‘Great to see you, son. Thanks for making it.’

I’d met the bishop at least ten times in my seven years as St. Hedwig’s assistant priest. He visited the parish each spring when the kids made their Confirmation. He’d attended Max’s sixty-fifth birthday party a few years back – I’d spent most of the evening squeezed next to him on our ratty couch in the rectory, watching his cheeks grow progressively ruddier as the hours and drinks accumulated – and he’d made an appearance at Max’s funeral.

Still, I was convinced that he did not know my name.

‘Have a seat, son.’ Duvall inclined his head towards a pair of plum-coloured armchairs by the window. The cushion squeaked when I sat. 

‘Thought we’d make it a liquid lunch. Cognac?’

I didn’t care much for liquor, but I didn’t want to offend him. ‘Please.’

He placed two tumblers on a side table, pulled the stopper from a crystal decanter, and poured from a worrying height. 

‘First let me say how deeply sorry I was to hear of Max’s passing. He was a great man. A man of principles. A dedicated servant of our Lord.’

I nodded, eyeing the droplets of spilled spirit on the mahogany. He thrust a tumbler into my hands and settled into the chair next to mine.

‘We didn’t get much of a chance to speak yesterday. I would have liked to stay for the whole thing, of course. You gave him a worthy send-off. Solemn. Somber. No nonsense.’

‘He’d already picked out the readings and the music. I just tried to do the rest like he would’ve wanted.’ 

‘No small feat. Max always was particular about things, wasn’t he?’ The bishop took a loud, long sip from his glass. ‘Pity about the turnout, though.’ 

At the requiem, the church had been half empty, and there’d been even fewer people at the committal. Duvall himself had left after the Mass, citing a call with Rome. By the time we’d relocated to the church basement for the luncheon, the funeral party was just me, the Sisters, two of Max’s old military buddies, and a handful of our most faithful parishioners. Afterwards, Sister Celine had packed up the potluck leftovers and helped me carry them home to the rectory; I’d be eating kielbasa and Jell-O salad for days. 

The crowd had indeed been thin, but I didn’t see why Duvall felt the need to acknowledge it.

‘It must have been the weather,’ I said, keeping my tone agreeable.

‘Oh, I’m sure.’ He arranged his forehead in a furrow of condolence. ‘And how are the good people of St. Hedwig holding up? Twenty-some years at the head of a parish is no small stretch of time.’

‘Twenty-three.’

‘Twenty-three. Exactly. Those folks grew up with him, grew old with him. No doubt they’re feeling his loss. And they’ll have to be shepherded through that grief, won’t they, son? They’ll need a consistent presence to lead them. Someone familiar. Someone they trust. I know just the man for the job.’

He winked at me, raised his tumbler in a toast, and drained it. I brought the glass to my nose but didn’t drink. I wasn’t surprised, exactly. It made sense that I would fill the position. I’d spent years as Max’s assistant. I knew his ways. And yet I didn’t consider myself a leader. I observed, took instructions, studied. I’d never imagined myself as head priest. 

No, that wasn’t entirely true. I had imagined it, then quickly pushed the thought away, conscious of the sinful feeling it stirred within me. Better to accept the job out of duty than pride.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best to follow Max’s example.’ 

Outside, a brief but strong wind pelted a mix of ice and snow at the window. 

‘Ah, well, yes. Max’s example. That brings us to the heart of the matter.’ Duvall leaned back in his chair with the air of a diplomat. His stomach bulged against the fabric of his black suit, and he used the protrusion as a convenient shelf for his folded hands. ‘The Lord had a purpose for Max, and Max fulfilled it. He was part of a greater plan. A champion of tradition, he certainly was. That’s important. We need tradition. Tradition is the backbone of our faith. 

‘However’ – he breathed a sigh weighted with the burden of his knowledge – ‘times are changing. And we must change with them. Do you understand what I mean?’ 

‘I think so.’ Every parish in the diocese had adopted the new Mass except for St. Hedwig. When the new missals had arrived, Max hadn’t even unpacked the boxes. He’d just pushed them into a storage closet in the sacristy, where they had since gathered a few years’ worth of dust.

‘Well, Max, sadly, did not. He was so dedicated to his idea of tradition that he rebelled against the greater tradition of obedience.’ Duvall cleared his throat and lifted his chin and gaze, echoing the beatific pose of his portrait. ‘“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry,”’ he recited. ‘That’s Deuteronomy.’

It wasn’t, and it seemed a severe verse to lay upon a man freshly buried. I hated myself for nodding along. 

‘I was too tolerant of his stubbornness. I see that now. And St. Hedwig has suffered for it. Attendance down, tithes down. It’s a terrible shame. But when the Lord took Max from us, He gave us the chance to do things differently.’ Duvall looked into my eyes and raised a single woollen brow. ‘You are going to do things differently, son.’

A new tightness gripped my chest. I knew the arguments Max would’ve made in this situation: that the Church should be a steady, unyielding force in a shifting world. That the Latin Mass tethered us to a glorious past. That St. Hedwig could, at the very least, be a bastion for those who preferred the old ways, even as the rest of the parishes in the diocese continued to change with the times. I shared Max’s devotion to tradition, didn’t I? These were my arguments too. But the words caught in my throat. 

I swam with the current – I could not be the current. 

The bishop beamed at me, mistaking my silent panic for speechless excitement, and I watched us as if from above. We were standing, we were shaking hands, he was guiding me down the hall, he was giving my back a final hearty slap, he was opening the door and waving goodbye. Only as I stepped into the darkening day did I think to ask.

‘Who’s going to be the assistant?’ 

I turned to face him, but the door was already closed. 

All the lights were off in the rectory when I got home – Sister Celine had left for the evening. I had no appointments, nowhere to be. Another Friday night unfurled before me. 

Lights on, coat and boots off. In the kitchen, I fixed myself a plate of funeral luncheon leftovers – potato salad and a congealed square of macaroni and cheese – and poured myself a root beer. A&W had become Max’s drink of choice after he’d given up alcohol a few decades earlier, and he’d loaded our fridge with the stuff. I normally avoided it. Too much sugar. But I was craving comfort, and one can of pop seemed a reasonable allowance. 

I decided to get some work done as I ate. My office was a simple room at the front of the house: yellow paint, crucifix tacked on the wall, rusted filing cabinet in the corner that had to be jimmied open with a butter knife. Though it was even smaller than Max’s office across the hall, I shared the space with Sister Celine, who carried out her secretarial tasks from a perch by the window. I reached across her desk to close the curtains, then sat down to review my sermon for the following day.

 Usually I didn’t mind writing sermons. The topics came easily enough. The Commandments, the importance of the rosary, the necessity of confession. Max had preferred sermons focused on the broad strokes of living a moral life and the consequences of straying from one. The Church, he’d said, was not the place for politics. I’d plan a week at a time and give him my notes to read, and his nod of approval would encourage me to start on the next round. But in the days since his passing, all the words I wrote seemed hollow. Without his guidance, how was I supposed to know if I was on the right path? So I’d begun conjuring what he might have said, his stern voice rising in my mind as I went about my day. When the coffeemaker taunted me before Mass: The Eucharistic fast energises the faithful. When I was late to a meeting at the convent: Tardiness is a sin against a man’s holy reputation. And sitting there in the office, surrounded by my lackluster notes: A sermon that doesn’t inspire the fear of God isn’t worth preaching. 

I downed the root beer and abandoned my desk.  

In the living room, I traded the overhead light for a lamp and flicked through my records. Placed the disc, dropped the needle: Billie Holiday’s Solitude filled the air. I realise this sounds like a wallowing choice, but I swear I picked it more for the curving trills of the trumpet on the title track than for its lonely lyrics. Being alone didn’t bother me. I often spent Friday evenings by myself, since Max usually went to the VFW for dinner. On those nights, I would listen to jazz. I would read – St. Augustine, Merton, Newman; if I was in a certain mood, Whitman. I would try to relax. 

I sank into the worn velour of the couch and let Billie’s sliding warble wash over me. On the coffee table, Max’s jigsaw was still incomplete, a half-built bridge stretching over a fraction of a lily pond. I considered going through his things, sorting his books and photo albums and clothes into piles to keep, donate, and throw away, but found myself unable to move. I just stared at the puzzle, a Christmas present I’d given him a few weeks earlier. When he’d unwrapped the holly-print paper, a rare hint of a smile had crossed his face, and I knew I’d done well. There had been more to Max than his serious exterior. Over the years, I’d glimpsed the little things that softened his sharp edges. His sigh of relief at the hiss-crack of a can of root beer after forty days of Lenten abstinence. The way he chuckled and shook his head at The Family Circus in the Sunday funny papers. The grief-stricken sag of his face as we listened to the broadcast about Jack Kennedy, though Max had been a Nixon man through and through. I saw, in those moments, a vulnerability that made me like him. At the same time, I admired his ability to zip himself up in an instant and lead his flock with a firm hand. Max could feel while keeping his feelings in check. He was disciplined. He had claimed his place in the world. I had the sense that he possessed some key to living, and I’d hoped he might one day pass it on to me.

The twinkle of the piano, the lazing of the sax. The living room was warm, too warm, and Max’s puzzle stared back at me. I didn’t have the heart to put it away, couldn’t even bring myself to finish solving it. There was something reassuring in its undoneness – as if he could walk through the door at any minute and slide another of its pieces into place, or at least tell me which one to choose. If I only sat there long enough, he would. 

And wouldn’t it be easy to just stay that way, sitting there, letting the couch absorb me? Isn’t that what my mother had done, all those years ago? I’d never understood her maddening stasis after Vince shipped out, but I was beginning to now. I just needed to keep everything as it had been, and wait, and it would be like I’d never found Max in the snowbank that day. I wouldn’t have to lead. I wouldn’t have to choose between the old ways and the new. Not moving: that’s all it would take. What would happen to St. Hedwig then? There would be no more Masses or confessions, no more weddings or baptisms, no more blessing the paper-skinned sick as they passed from this life to the next. Would our faithful slip into sin without me? Would their spiritual lives crumble? No, I was probably giving myself too much credit. Maybe our parishioners wouldn’t miss me at all. Maybe my influence had no bearing on their saving or damnation anyway. 

My teeth felt furry from the root beer, and suddenly the house seemed very big. When Billie’s voice faded out and the needle lifted, I forced myself from the couch and went upstairs to bed. I’d put the puzzle away tomorrow. Tomorrow would be another day. 

It would be the day of Elias’s arrival. 

I didn’t know it then, of course. I didn’t know anything about Elias then. But that Friday night, as I ate my leftovers and agonised over my sermon and stared at the unsolved jigsaw, he was on his way. Somewhere along the vast expanse of road between southern California and northwest Ohio, he was sharing a candy bar with a thick-bearded teamster or chatting with a bored waitress at a rest stop diner. He was leaning on his guitar case as he joked with a gas station attendant; he was dropping his last quarter into an old man’s paper cup on the sidewalk. He was looking at everyone he met with those heavy-lidded eyes that said I know you, waiting patiently for ride after ride, each one carrying him further towards Beckford, to St. Hedwig and the run-down rectory where I didn’t mind being alone.

The next morning I woke in the bruised hour before dawn and dressed in the half-dark. Out of habit I crept as quietly as I could past the closed door of Max’s room, avoiding the creaking floorboard in the hall that used to disturb his sleep. I shaved under the harsh light of the bathroom and made myself presentable, though there was nothing I could do about the new lines of exhaustion etched into my face or the few strands of silver threatening to convert the rest of my brown hair.

It was a Saturday, which meant early low Mass, confession, and office work. I sat at the rickety kitchen table and reread my draft of the day’s sermon, hoping it had miraculously gained some deeper shade of meaning overnight. Sadly, it had not. From across the yard, the bells began to ring – it was later than I’d thought. I grabbed my coat, stuffed the notes in my pocket, and left through the back door. 

The sun stretched its first pale beams over the steeple of St. Hedwig as I walked the salted path between the rectory and the church. By the side entrance, Sister Celine was waiting for me, her tiny frame bundled in a heavy coat. A scarf was wrapped around the bottom half of her face, and her veil was pulled low on her forehead, leaving only her playful eyes visible. 

‘About time,’ she said through the wool of her scarf, stomping her feet for warmth. ‘I’ve been out here ten minutes.’ She watched me unlock the door. ‘Did you miss your alarm? Get a little extra beauty sleep?’

‘Good morning to you too, Sister,’ I said, holding it open for her. She pulled down her scarf and grinned at me before shuffling into the sacristy. 

This was our ritual: we would meet each morning and take care of our quiet tasks before Mass. Sister Celine would make sure my vestments were clean and ironed; prepare the altar and the Sacrament; keep a steady supply of wafers, wine, candles, and incense in stock; check that everything was in its place. I would dress and pray silently for a while to ready myself.

Also, we would talk. 

‘Don’t sweat it, Father. Happens to the best of us. I mean, it’s never happened to me – can you imagine what Mother Superior would say if I overslept? But I’m sure you have a perfectly good reason.’ She shimmied out of her coat and smiled in that amused way of hers, smooth cheeks dimpling. ‘In fact, I know you do.’

In the mirror by the vestment closet I was examining the circles under my eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I heard someone had a chat with the bishop yesterday. Maybe someone got some good news? Stayed up a little too late? Did a little too much celebrating?’

 I hadn’t told her about my visit with Duvall. I was hoping I could pretend it had never happened, at least for now. 

‘How’d you know about the meeting?’ It sounded like an accusation, and I was relieved when she didn’t seem to notice.

‘I have my sources,’ she said, holding her skirts and swaying coquettishly. Then, leaning in: ‘Sister Alphonsa is the bishop’s housekeeper. She’s a tough cookie, but she loves to gossip.’ 

I saw the face of the slouching old woman in my mind. Sister Celine was capable of thawing even the most glacial personalities.

‘Well, I did receive some news,’ I said, then added, evenly, ‘but I wasn’t celebrating.’

Her excited expression shifted to one of understanding. She came to stand beside me. ‘Oh, of course not. I didn’t mean it like that, promise. Losing Father Kowalski – it hasn’t been easy for any of us. You must miss him.’ Her eyes met mine in the mirror as she adjusted her veil. ‘But I do think it’ll be good to make some changes around here. Congratulations, Father. Really. You’re going to be great.’

My reflection attempted a smile.