A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. My mother's nine First Fridays.
Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. Too emotional.
Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil.
And much of the evil resulted from doubt; from an honest confusion among men of good will.
Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not reveal Himself? Not speak?"
"Lord, give us a sign...."
The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter.
Why not a sign?
At various times the priest would long to have lived with Christ: to have sin; to have touched; to have probed His eyes. Ah, my God, let me see You! Let me know! Come in dreams!
The yearning consumed him.
He sat at the desk now with pen above paper. Perhaps it wasn't time that had silenced the Provincial. Perhaps he understood that faith was finally a matter of love.
The Provincial had promised to consider the requests, but thus far nothing had bees done.
Karras wrote the letter and went to bed.
He sluggishly awakened at 5 A.M. and went to the chapel in Weigel Hall, secured a Host, then returned to his room and said Mass.
" 'Et clamor meus ad te veniat,' " he prayed with murmured anguish. " 'Let my cry come unto Thee...' "
He lifted the Host in consecration with an aching remembrance of the joy it once gave him; felt once again, as he did each morning, the pang of an unexpected glimpse from afar and unnoticed of a longlost love.
He broke the Host above the chalice.
" 'Peace I leave you. My peace I give you....' "
He tucked the Host inside his mouth and swallowed the papery taste of despair.
When the Mass was over, he polished the chalice and carefully placed it in his bag. He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.
CHAPTER THREE
Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.
"Oh? What's wrong?"
Chris explained. Beginning on the day after Regan's birthday--- and following Howard's failure to call--- she had noticed a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter's behavior and disposition. Insomnia. Quarrelsome. Fits of temper. Kicked things. Threw things. Screamed.
Wouldn't eat. In addition, her energy seemed abnormal. She was constantly moving, touching, turning; tapping; running and jumping about. Doing poorly with schoolwork. Fantasy playmate. Eccentric attention-getting tactics.
"Such as what?" the physician inquired.
She started with the rappings. Since the night she'd investigated the attic, she'd heard them again on two occasions. In both of these instances, she'd noticed, Regan was present in the room; and the rappings would tease at the moment Chris entered. Secondly, she told him,
Regan would "lose" things in the room: a dress; her toothbrush; books; her shoes. She complained about "somebody moving" her furniture. Finally, on the morning following the dinner at the White House, Chris saw Karl in Regan's bedroom pulling a bureau back into place from a spot that was halfway across the room. When Chris had inquired what he was doing, he repeated his former "Someone is funny," and refused to elaborate any further, but shortly thereafter Chris had found Regan in the kitchen complaining that someone had moved all her furniture during the night when she was sleeping.
This was the incident, Chris explained, that had finally crystallized her suspicions. It was clearly her daughter who was doing it all.
"You mean somnambulism? She's doing it in her sleep?"
"No, Marc, she's doing it when she's awake. To get attention."
Chris mentioned the matter of the shaking bed, Which had happened twice more and was always followed by Regan's insistence that she sleep with her mother.
"Well, that could be physical," the internist ventured.
"No, Marc, I didn't say the bed is shaking. I said that she says that it's shaking." "Do you know that it isn't shaking?"
"No"
"Well, it might be clonic spasms; he murmured.
"Who?"
"Any temperature?"
"No. Listen, what do you think?" she asked. "Should I take her to a shrink or what?"
"Chris, you mentioned her schoolwork. How is she doing with her math?"
'Why'd you ask?"
"How's she doing?" he persisted. "Just
rotten. I mean, suddenly rotten." He
grunted.
"Why'd you ask?" she repeated
"Well, it's part of the syndrome."
"Of what?"
'Nothing serious. I'd rather not guess about it oven the phone. Got a pencil?" He wanted to give her the name of a Washington internist.
"Marc, can't you come out here and check her yourself?" Jamie. A lingering infection. Chris's doctor at that time had prescribed a new, broad-spectrum antibiotic. Refilling a prescription at a local drugstore, the pharmacist was wary. "I don't want to alarm you, ma'am, but this... Well, it's quite new on the market, and they've found that in Georgia it's been causing aplastic anemia in..." Jamie. Jamie. Dead. And ever since, Chris had never trusted doctors. Only Marc. And that had taken years. "Marc, can't you?" Chris pleaded.
"No, I can't, but don't worry. This man is brilliant. The best. Now get a pencil."
