Spasms of rage fought to break from his lips, but he pressed them back and felt ashamed. He looked out the window: they were passing by the Home Relief Station where on Saturday mornings in the dead of winter she would pick up the milk and the sacks of potatoes while he lay in his bed; the Central Park Zoo, where she left him in summer while she begged by the fountain in front of the Plaza. Passing the hotel, Karras burst into sobs, and then choked back the memories, wiped at the wetness of stinging regrets. He wondered why love had waited for this distance, waited for the moment when he need not touch, when the limits of contact and human surrender had dwindled to the size of a printed Mass card tucked in his wallet: In Memoriam...
He knew. This grief was old.
He arrived at Georgetown in time for dinner, but had no appetite. He paced inside his cottage.
Jesuit friends came by with condolences. Stayed briefly. Promised prayers.
Shortly after ten, Joe Dyer appeared with a bottle of Scotch. He displayed it proudly: "Chivas Regal!"
"Where'd you get the money for it--- out of the poorbox?"
"Don't be an asshole, that would be breaking my vow of poverty."
"Where did you get it, then?"
"I stole it"
Karras smiled and shook his head as he fetched a glass and a pewter coffee mug. He rinsed them out in his tiny bathroom sink and said, "I believe you."
"Greater faith I have never seen."
Karras felt a stab of familiar pain. He shook it off and returned to Dyer, who was sitting on his cot breaking open the seal. He sat beside him.
"Would you like to absolve me now or later?"
"Just pour," said Karras, "and we'll absolve each other."
Dyer poured deep into glass and cup. "College presidents shouldn't drink," he murmured. "It sets a bad example. I figure I relieved him of a terrible temptation."
Karras swallowed Scotch, but not the story. He knew the president's ways too well. A man of tact and sensitivity, he always gave through indirection. Dyer had come, he knew, as a friend, but also as the president's personal emissary. So when Dyer made a passing comment about Karras possibly needing a rest," the Jesuit psychiatrist took it as hopeful omen of the future and felt a momentary flood of relief.
Dyer was good for him; made him laugh; talked about the party and Chris MacNeil; purveyed new anecdotes about the Jesuit Prefect of Discipline. He drank very little, but continually replenished Karras' glass, and when he thought he was numb enough for sleep, he got up from the cot and made Karras stretch out, while he sat at the desk and continued to talk until Karras'
eyes were closed and his comments were mumbled grunts.
Dyer stood up and undid the laces of Karras' shoes. He slipped them off.
"Gonna steal my shoes now?" Karras muttered thickly.
"No, I tell fortunes by reading the creases. Now shut up and go to sleep."
"You're a Jesuit cat burglar."
Dyer laughed lightly and covered him with a coat that he took from a closet. "Listen, someone's got to worry about the bills around this place. All you other guys do is rattle beads and pray for the hippies down on M Street."
Karras made no answer. His breathing was regular and deep. Dyer moved quietly to the door and flicked out the light.
"Stealing is a sin," muttered Karras in the darkness.
"Mea culpa," Dyer said softly.
For a time he waited, then at last decided that Karras was asleep. He left the cottage.
In the middle of the night, Karras awakened in tears. He had dreamed of his mother. Standing at a window high in Manhattan, he'd seen her emerging from a subway kiosk across the street.
She stood at the curb with a brown paper shopping bag, searching for him. He waved. She didn't see him. She wandered the street. Buses. Trucks. Unfriendly crowds. She was growing frightened. She returned to the subway and began to descend. Karras grew frantic; ran to the street and began to weep as he called her name; as he could not find her; as he pictured her helpless and bewildered in the maze of tunnels beneath the ground.
He waited for his sobbing to subside, and then fumbled for the Scotch. He sat on the cot and drank in darkness. Wet came the tears. They would not cease. This was like childhood, this grief.
He remembered a telephone call from his uncle:
"Dimmy, da edema's affected her brain. She won't let a doctor come anywhere near her. Jus'
keeps screamin' things. Even talks ta da goddam radio. I figure she's got ta go to Bellevue, Dimmy. A regular hospital won't put up wit' dat. I jus' figure a coupla months an' she's good as new; den we take her out again. Okay? Lissen, Dimmy, I tell you: we awready done it. Dey give her a shot an' den take her in da ambulance dis mornin'. We didn' wanna bodda you, excep'
dere is a hearin' and you gotta sign da papers. Now... What?... Private hospital?
Who's got da money, Dimmy? You?" He
didn't remember falling asleep.
He awakened in torpor, with memory of loss draining blood from his stomach. He reeled to the bathroom; showered; shaved; dressed in a cassock. It was five-thirty-five. He unlocked the door to Holy Trinity, put on his vestments, and offered up Mass at the left side altar.
"Memento etiam..." he prayed with bleak despair. "Remember thy servant, Mary Karras...."
In the tabernacle door he saw the face of the nurse at Bellevue Receiving; heard again the screams from the isolation room.
"You her son?"
