who had studied him as thoroughly as Jane said she had, it was not a bad gamble. It was his first flirtation, which she undoubtedly knew. Once he had slipped into her trap and returned to the theater, the rest was child’s play.
An innocent invitation to a New Year’s Eve party. Arrange to have her parents out for the evening. Get him to play the piano until he was fatigued. And then the liquor. In this case the coup de grace. Overheat the house. Set the whole thing up so it all comes together at exactly midnight. What more natural than to share a kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve? And then, intoxicated or nearly so, let one thing follow another. Get pregnant then—or later with somebody else; it doesn’t matter so long as you trap the man you’re after. And that’s it.
On reflection, never had he been more passive. The whole thing had just happened to him. He was in control of nothing.
Finally, Charlie Hogan.
With the shock of Ridley’s first act of intercourse and subsequent retreat from his first sex partner, Charlie Hogan had played the object of that syndrome called the rebound.
And don’t ever try to tell Ridley C. Groendal that Charlie Hogan was unaware of what was going on! Not after Ridley’s prayerful meditation in the chapel told him otherwise. Of course Charlie knew. He would have to have been stupid not to know that he and Ridley were more than just friends. There were young men in the seminary who were friends with one another—lots of them. But how many shared all the confidences, the mutual joy of learning from one another, the nearly exclusive companionship, as Ridley and Charlie?
Groendal could think of no one who had shared as much as he and Charlie.
Hogan would have had to be stupid not to see that. And Hogan was by no means stupid. Being the younger of the two, Charlie probably knew where their relationship was heading better than Ridley did. So why then the violent reaction when the climax was reached? Why the beating? Why the betrayal?
Once again, Groendal had been used. And most shamefully so. At least Jane Condon had wanted no less than Ridley himself. She wanted to force Ridley to marry her.
As obnoxious as that was, it wasn’t as contemptible as Charlie’s motive. He did not want Groendal. He just wanted to destroy Groendal. And he had. He had demolished Ridley’s vocation to the priesthood.
Ridley had been passive. All this had happened to him. He had been in control of nothing.
It took Groendal several days to reach all these conclusions. All of them arrived at by prayerful meditation.
As he reached each solution he felt an increasingly greater inner peace. It was as if he were able to lay to rest one ghost of his past after another. This tranquil attitude was communicated in his sessions with Dr. Bartlett, who grew ever more satisfied with Groendal’s progress. No longer was there any immediate threat of shock therapy. Regression, of course, was always possible, but unlikely as long as this promising progress continued.
Obviously, Dr. Bartlett and Ridley Groendal were operating on different wavelengths. Bartlett continued to explore Ridley’s motivations in the various choices he had made. Meanwhile, Groendal was putting his life into subjective order by examining those—four, it turned out—who had shabbily and shamefully manipulated him.
Once he had his house of cards in final order, the question was what he was going to do about it all. What was he to do about his passivity? What could he do about his apparent lack of control over his life? Particularly, what could he do about all this in a Christian context? This is what puzzled Groendal more than anything else. Because, above all, he was a Christian. His entire life bespoke that. My God, he’d almost become a priest! In fact, it was, his prayerful meditation had clearly indicated, certainly not his fault that he had not gone on to the priesthood.
At this point, enter Bob Koesler for the third time, again masquerading as a priest. This time he made a hurried vow never to try it again. Henceforth, he would dress as a priest only if he really were one or if the seminary rule called for that garb.
The first two times had been so easy. Today, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what had gone wrong. Now, instead of deferential if not reverential greetings, he got skeptically raised eyebrows. One nurse actually challenged him, asking with which parish he was affiliated. Why had he not given any thought to the possibility of that logical question?
On the spur of the moment, he had blurted out that he was on special assignment. She accepted with obvious reservations. Unlike the FBI or CIA, the Archdiocese of Detroit gave out no unspecified “special assignments.” Fortunately, the nurse was not au courant.
So it was with a good bit more perspiration than was called for even by the warm weather that Koesler greeted Ridley Groendal.
“Bob Koesler—just the man I was looking for!” Groendal welcomed him effusively and offered him a tissue. “Here, wipe off. Is that getup that warm?”
Koesler dabbed at neck and face. “No, I was almost found out. This is the last time I try this masquerade.”
“That’s okay. It’s providential that you came just now.”
“You mean you remember my coming to see you before?”
“What? Oh, I see: You mean the shock treatments. When I couldn’t remember things. Well, I haven’t had a treatment since then . . . thanks to you.”
Koesler would never guess what it might be that he had contributed to ending the treatments. “Well, I’m overwhelmed. I just came to visit and find out how you’re doing. I didn’t expect to be greeted like the Prodigal Son.”
“Speaking of the Prodigal Son, I’ve been trying to puzzle something out and you may be able to help. Put it this way: I need to plumb these ideas and you’re the best sounding board I can think of.”
“Not your doctor?”
“The last one! No, not the doctor. He and I are off exploring motives and distant relationships. Mostly I’m trying to keep him away from the electricity so he won’t give me any more treatments. No, this is something Biblical I’ve got to figure out.”
“Biblical, eh? Well, what the hell, shoot.”
“Okay. Do you think Jesus was aggressive?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think Jesus was assertive? Do you think he was in control of things?”
Koesler thought a while. “Sure.”
“Then you don’t think Christ was passive . . . that he let things happen to him?”
Koesler thought again. “Well, if you put it that way, I guess he was.”
Ridley sighed. “Make up your mind.”
“I don’t know, Rid. Is anybody one way all the time? Isn’t everybody passive sometimes and aggressive others?”
“I suppose so. But what am I looking for?” Groendal appeared to be genuinely searching. “I’m looking for the dominant feature in life. You know: Granted, in some situations, common sense tells you to be submissive, sort of flexible; other times you have to be aggressive. Still, a person is dominantly one or the other . . . know what I mean?”
“I think so. Okay then, let’s see: I guess you’d have to say that Jesus Christ basically was in control, wouldn’t you?”
“I think I would. But how do you figure it? At the end of His life, He certainly didn’t seem in control. He was captured and tortured and executed. That certainly doesn’t seem like He was in charge. It’s almost the ultimate in submissiveness. And that was the most important part of His life—the end.”
“Yeah, but there was something else going on.” Koesler rummaged for the right Scripture. “Sure—didn’t He say something like, ‘No one takes my life. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again’?”
“That’s it! That’s it!”
“Rid, mind telling me what all this is about?” Koesler had the impression this was less a search for truth than a quiz to which there was only one correct answer. And he had just guessed that answer.
“Oh, nothing.” Then Groendal added softly, “And everything.” He paused. “You know, I tended to think of Christ as a very passive character. The meek will inherit the earth, and all that. Turn the other cheek. Put away your sword. All those things.
