Failing that, they appeal to the love that Frank holds for Martha. They urge Frank to commit suicide. It’s the only way Martha can be truly happy. Sure she would miss him almost beyond words; but underneath it all, she would be at peace-and so would he.
Finally, he agrees. He writes the note. Confident that he will go through with it, they leave.
Frank gets his gun and kills himself.
This procedure would take a lot of time. How much time did they have? That’s just it: Nobody knew. Nobody knows how long Martha slept before the gunshot.
The conclusion: Either scenario could resolve some questions-while raising others.
The burning question: So what? The incident is long settled in just about everyone’s mind; nothing can be proved one way or the other.
And yet … there is the possibility of the question rising to the surface again. What happens to kids as young as Tony and Lucy if they enter into a conspiracy to, in effect, browbeat someone into taking his own life? Does it scar them forever? And what could a scar such as this cause them to do in the future?
All this because it seemed so foreign to Frank’s nature to freely decide on suicide. And because there was no way of telling how long Martha had been asleep that fateful night.
Walsh’s doubts found fertile ground in Koesler’s imagination.
It was something that would not only haunt Father Koesler but, willy-nilly, would color his relationship with Tony and Lucy for some time. Nothing would be said. But he would look at them in a different light and with some residual doubt.
He swung his car into the familiar circular drive. It was the recreational break between lunch and the afternoon’s first class. Cassocked students stood in groups or walked with companions. Some enjoyed the premature springlike weather. Many more smoked cigarettes, cigars, or pipes, any form of combustible tobacco.
Koesler was greeted with a mixture of familiarity and reverence. He was not old enough to be more than one of the boys, yet he had achieved what they all desired.
He headed directly to the rector’s suite. Father Finn was in his office with a student. Koesler took a seat in the vestibule.
He had time to reflect on the speculation he’d entertained en route to the seminary. It brought to mind a homily he had recently delivered. He had said that he could make as good a case for atheism as he could for a belief in God. But if he were an atheist, he would have to confront all those questions: Where did all this come from? Who made the laws that nature follows? What was the purpose of all these galaxies? Where is it all going? And on and on.
So, in a much smaller dimension, there were questions on either side of Frank Morris’s death. The simple declarative approach: Frank, having left a note for Martha and in order to clear a path for her return to the Catholic sacraments she so missed, had shot himself dead.
Questions: Was it out of character for Frank to take such a fatal action of his own accord? Having endured the sacrifice of a lengthy brother-and-sister relationship, would he not have felt that he had taken every step possible toward the desired goal, and that being the case weren’t he and Martha now entitled to resume what for them was a faithful, loving marriage?
Or had Frank thought it all out long before? Had he decided that in the event of a negative judgment from the Church he would take the only other possible step? Had he made the decision out of misguided love to commit suicide so that his beloved Martha could finally receive the sacraments she so desired?
Or: Frank’s choice was assisted by outside urging. Question: Isn’t this a bit Byzantine? Granted the apparently precipitate decision and immediate terminal act was out of character; still, couldn’t Frank have felt his back was to the wall with nowhere to go but from this life?
An argument could be made for either case. And the argument arose out of the unknown time Martha had been asleep before the deed was done.
If Father Walsh’s intuition was correct, one had to consider the possibility that two young people had conspired to cause an innocent person to take his own life. No mean charge. Their own lives undoubtedly would have been marked by their action. At the very least, they would bear watching.
At this point, a student exited Father Finn’s office. The young man appeared chastened. Father Finn could effect this with little effort. Koesler knew from first-person experience.
The student, obviously embarrassed beyond words, beyond even a glance, walked past Koesler without eye contact.
Koesler wondered idly about the offense. It could have been almost anything. What the young man probably did not comprehend was that if Finn had given him hell, at least the rector was trying to save the lad’s vocation. If he were considered dispensable, Finn wouldn’t have expended so much emotional firepower on him. Still, as Koesler knew full well, the drill was painful.
Like an abruptly diminishing storm, Finn’s demeanor changed.
For the offender, Finn’s countenance promised thunder and lightning. But as the door closed behind the student, the rector’s face cleared to welcome Koesler.
Father Finn had perhaps two interests in life: one, the priesthood; the other, those who wanted to enter it.
A few years ago, Koesler easily could have been that chastised student. Now he shared a priesthood with Finn; the rector would greet Koesler like a long-lost relative.
And so he did, ushering the young priest into his office.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the rector’s office. Two walls were lined with bookcases filled with works in his fields: moral theology and Canon Law. The oak desk was uncluttered. The wall behind the chair Koesler selected was opaque glass on either side of the entry door. Behind Finn was a picture window overlooking a well-kept courtyard and one of the transverse cloistered walkways.
The rector smiled. “Well, Bob, how are things going with you?”
“Pretty good,” Koesler replied. “Really, very good.”
“Much difference between St. Norbert’s and that east side urban parish?”
“Quite a bit. Most of the people in St. Norbert’s are my age, roughly, and starting their families. Couple of years ago we built our grade school. Staffed it with Dominican nuns. It really seems to have pulled the parish together. Quite phenomenal.”
“Really.” Finn seemed to be taking mental notes.
Koesler had come to believe that if Father Finn were vulnerable anywhere, it was in his experience-or rather, lack of it-of life in a parish.
In his day in the seminary in San Francisco, Finn had been invited by the Sulpician faculty to join their society. Finn had accepted the invitation. So, after ordination, off he went to prepare for a life of teaching seminarians.
All Sulpicians were, in reality, diocesan priests, on loan as it were to the Society of St. Sulpice. Finn, for example, belonged to the archdiocese of San Francisco. Should he at any time leave the Sulps, as they were sometimes familiarized, he would revert to his San Francisco diocese.
The point being that he never had: He’d never left the Society. Thus his parochial experience was zilch.
Koesler reasoned that the fact that Finn was preparing young men for a life he had never experienced must be frustrating, embarrassing, and even intimidating.
Koesler could almost see the file drawer in Finn’s head slide open for the insertion of “Parochial school: presence tends to pull parish together.”
“And how are things here?” Koesler knew he was going to have to introduce the subject very soon. Finn was not one to shoot the breeze interminably. He really worked at his job and even now was spending time that had been allocated for something else.
“Everything appears to be on schedule,” Finn replied. “The academic year is ending and we’re getting ready for the ordinations.”
Every word of that statement could have been previously supplied by Koesler. It was March. Easter was just around the corner. And in a couple of more months, June would see sophomores ordained to the minor orders of porter and lector; juniors would receive the first major order of subdeacon; and of course the seniors would become
