A Gathering Of Angels - Hardcover

It seemed the town green had been filled with the sound of hammers, diesel trucks, rock music and hordes of construction workers in various modes of undress for months. In fact, it had been eighteen months since both the Sister Regina Francis Retirement Home and St. Cecilia’s renovations had begun. Although the retirement home had been completed right on schedule, due exclusively to Mother Superior’s vigilance, the repairs on the church and the rectory had barely begun, due to Father James’s constant indecision and unwillingness to hold anyone accountable to a timetable.

“Sometimes things take longer than we think they should,” he had told Mrs. Norris, the housekeeper, whose expression showed she wasn’t buying it.

The rectory kitchen and most of the rooms downstairs had remained in a type of renovation limbo since the project had begun, suspended somewhere between being ripped apart and being put back together. The refrigerator stood on the back porch, where it had been moved last fall so the tile man could examine the kitchen’s subflooring. Since that time only the plywood flooring had been replaced but new linoleum had yet to be laid. Father James couldn’t decide between a brown brick pattern, which didn’t come in no-wax finish but was a heavier grade, versus the gray slate pattern that was no-wax but was much thinner. Mrs. Norris had watched Father James, slumped over the tile samples for weeks, looking as though the decision might be eternal and therefore never subject to recall.

“If we get the no-wax, that will certainly cut down on your workload,” he told her. “But the other will last longer and be more beneficial to the church’s long-range budget. I don’t know, Mrs. Norris, what do you think?”

She had told him repeatedly it didn’t matter to her in the least what he chose. Pick whatever one you want, she said. She wouldn’t be around long enough to care one way or the other. Mrs. Norris had decided that she was dying ever since embarking on a family genealogy the previous fall that uncovered the gruesome fact that none of the women on her father’s side of the family had ever lived past the age of sixty. Mrs. Norris was sixty-two, which could only mean that her death was already two years overdue. Although Doc Hammon had been unable to diagnose what she was in peril of dying from, Mrs. Norris held firm to her belief.

“Genes don’t lie,” she said, tight-lipped.

And it was a good thing she was dying, she told Father James, because if she wasn’t she would have quit as soon as the first construction worker laid siege in her kitchen. But, since she was dying, she had decided to conserve her energy for things that really mattered—like finding the four-quart bowl of ambrosia that she had made yesterday afternoon before going home and which was now missing. It was meant for the luncheon this afternoon after the retirement home’s dedication ceremony. The entire town had been invited. Even the bishop was to attend.

“Well, it just didn’t get up and walk out of here.” Mrs. Norris was bent at the waist, her head deep inside the refrigerator, as she moved items back and forth as if a four-quart bowl could be hidden easily. “No, it’s just not in here.”

Father James could hear the refrigerator door slam shut, then Mrs. Norris’s heavy footsteps march back into the kitchen. He also noticed that Father Dennis, seated beside him at the kitchen table, seemed inordinately engrossed in the Lifestyle section of the morning’s paper.

Hands on hips, right foot slightly extended, tapping out a malevolent code on the plywood flooring, Mrs. Norris asked in her most testy voice, “Which one of you took it? Fess up.”

She looked straight at Father James, who, through habit, involuntarily slid guiltily down in his chair.

“I doubt that it was you, Father James.”

He sat up higher.

“Not that you wouldn’t be above taking a taste here and there. You didn’t get that pouch by eating just celery. But since the doctors put you on that restricted diet, you’ve been pretty good about staying away from the things that might tie your intestines up in a knot again.”

Father James wondered how long his intimate bodily functions would be up for discussion. Since the discovery of his severe case of diverticulitis, coupled with a cholesterol reading of 280, Father James’s diet had been greatly curtailed. Even his beloved coffee had been denied him. Worse yet, everyone in Dorsetville seemed to know about it, which gave him precious little opportunity to cheat.

“No, Mrs. Norris, I didn’t take your dessert,” he said mournfully.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, turning to stare at Father Dennis, who appeared oblivious, completely engrossed with the newspaper. She tapped his sleeve.

“Did you say something to me?” asked Father Dennis, as though surfacing from the depths of some great tranquil ocean. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening. This is such an interesting article.”

The housekeeper leaned over Father Dennis’s shoulder and read, “‘How to Create Crochet Antimacassars of the Depression Era.’ You really expect me to believe that you’ve taken an interest in chair coverings?”

In response, Father Dennis meekly lowered his head and awaited further blows.

“So it was you! How could you? You knew it was for this afternoon’s luncheon.”

Father Dennis bowed his head even farther toward the table. “Forgive me, Mrs. Norris, for I have sinned.”

Father James repressed a smile while asking, “Who did you feed this time?”

“The construction workers next door,” he said meekly.

Father James looked at Mrs. Norris. She appeared as though she were about to explode. Father Dennis was in for it now. If only the young prelate had listened to his warning. “Take anything you want from the rectory but never invade Mrs. Norris’s kitchen,” he had said. Apparently his words had landed on deaf ears.

Last week the young priest had snatched a chocolate sheet cake to surprise his fifth grade catechism class. He was under the mistaken assumption that Mrs. Norris had baked the cake for the two priests. Unfortunately, it had been promised to the seniors’ Wednesday night Bingo game. Mrs. Norris had rained down fire and brimstone over that one. The seniors hadn’t been too happy either.

Father James commended Father Dennis for his big heart and his acts of charity, but Mrs. Norris’s kitchen was a place that he feared even the Lord Himself wouldn’t tread without permission.

Father Dennis hastened to explain. “They worked so hard putting in that last piece of marble behind the altar. I thought a little celebration was called for.” He quickly added: “You might as well know that I used up all the ice tea, too.”

Mrs. Norris pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down with a plunk. “Father Dennis, you are hastening my demise. I don’t know how much longer I can hang on with this type of constant aggravation.”

Neither man argued or tried to convince her otherwise nor stated what they knew to be fact— Mrs. Norris was healthier than the Platt family’s stable of Morgan horses. Both men had watched her clean the rectory from top to bottom in less than three hours without getting winded. Was that the profile of someone near death’s door?

They had tried reasoning with her in the beginning of June when she had first concluded her fate. Their arguments hadn’t made the slightest impression. Nothing could convince Mrs. Norris that she was not soon for the grave. By July they had given up trying and learned to simply ignore her histrionics.

“I might not even make it to the dedication ceremony this afternoon.” She began to fan herself with the ends of her apron. “I certainly don’t have the strength to go to the market, buy more ingredients and make a new batch of ambrosia. And what will I tell Mother Superior and the sisters, who are counting on my dessert?”

The mention of Mother Superior gave Father Dennis cause for deeper remorse. The woman scared him half to death. Reminded him of his mother’s sister, his Aunt Ethel, to whose farm he was sent each summer to take in the fresh country air and lose some of his “baby fat.” The only thing he had taken in, however, was his Aunt Ethel’s continual displeasure, and all he had lost was his self-respect.

Nothing that he did could please her, although he had tried his hardest. He’d gotten up at four o’clock in the morning with Uncle Artie to milk the cows, but somehow he’d always manage to fall asleep and fall off the milking stool just as his aunt walked into the barn to tell them that breakfast was ready. He had even nailed rusted wire fencing back on fence posts until his hands bled, but his aunt never saw this. Instead, she always seemed to appear on the rare occasions that he would slip into the pond to float on his back, stare longingly into the heavens and wish that summer was over so he could go back home.

He was “listless and lazy,” according to his Aunt Ethel, and his mother was much too soft on him.

“If you don’t practice more self-discipline, you’re going to grow up to be as fat as one of my prize heifers,” his aunt had concluded, a prophecy that seemed to be closer to coming true with each passing year. Last time he had stepped on a scale it had registered three hundred and fifty pounds. Father Dennis was barely five feet five inches tall.

Beads of sweat now formed around Father Dennis’s upper lip. “I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Norris. I am.”

“Um! Fat good you’re being sorry is going to do. What am I going to tell the bishop? He loves my ambrosia. Looks forward to it each time he visits. And not just any ambrosia, may I remind you. It won a blue ribbon at the Goshen fair three years in a row. Well, you’re going to have to go right next door and tell Mother Superior the dessert that she was counting on for the luncheon has disappeared.”

Father Dennis looked pleadingly over toward Father James, who hunched his shoulders as though to say, You’re on your own.

The thought of confessing to Mother Superior brought on an immediate case of hiccups, a nervous tic he had developed in childhood.

Dealing with Mother Superior often gave him the hiccups, which was why last October Father Dennis offered to conduct the Blessings of the Animals on Saint Francis of Assisi’s feast day if Father James would take his place, working with Mother Superior on the Pumpkin Harvest, even though Father Dennis was allergic to every animal known to man. He also knew that blessings would have to be bestowed on the Galligan twins’ boa constrictor and little Jennifer Crawford’s two ferrets—savage little beasts that literally bit the hand that fed them—and a plethora of dogs and cats.

Father Dennis had stoically performed the ceremony, willingly enduring days of red welts, itchy eyes and nasal congestion. In fact, he would have walked on nails...anything rather than have to work side by side with Mother Superior.

“What if I run to the store and buy some more ingredients...hiccup?” Father Dennis asked hopefully. “Couldn’t you make a new batch without letting on what had happened to the...er...hiccup...last bowl?”

“If I live that long,” Mrs. Norris said listlessly.

“You can’t leave,” Father James reminded him. “You’re saying Mass this morning. Besides that, you offered to pick up Bishop Ruskin at the train station. I’m without a car, remember?”

Father James’s Jeep had blown a tire rod yesterday morning as he traveled the back roads from Woodstock returning from visiting patients at Mercy Hospital. Triple A had towed it to the Fergusons’ garage, Tri Town Auto. He had meant to call there this morning and find out how long he would be without wheels.

“Can you go to the store and pick up what Mrs. Norris needs?” asked Father Dennis with somewhat of a desperate twinge to his voice.

“No problem,” Father James assured him. He hated to see his young assistant squirm. “I planned to walk down to Main Street and pay a visit to Lori Peterson at the Country Kettle. I could easily swing by the Grand Union on the way back.” He turned to Mrs. Norris. “I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or so. Will that give you enough time to make another bowl of ambrosia?”

“I suppose. That is, if the good Lord hasn’t called me home by the time you get back.”

Father James stood up, pushed his chair in under the table and began to brush crumbs off his black shirt. “Well, in case that should happen, why don’t you leave out the recipe card so Father Dennis and I can whip up a new batch while we wait for the undertaker.”

Shades of the old Mrs. Norris rushed to the surface. “Go ahead. Make all the fun you want. A person knows when their time is up. I don’t care what those doctors say. I’ll be going home to my glory any day now. You’ll see.” She looked over to Father Dennis. “And if you don’t keep out of my refrigerator and cupboards, you’ll be coming right alone with me!”

«

The humidity had dropped and a slight cool breeze blew in off the river. Puffs of cumulus clouds floated on a perfect blue sky that the mountains surrounding the valley seemed to hold aloft with tall, pointed spears of the pine trees to the north and the spindly oaks to the south.

Father James stepped out of the rectory’s side door and felt his spirits lighten, a combination of the fine summer day and the excitement of that afternoon’s ceremonies. Even the rectory and church swathed in scaffolding—a stark reminder of his inadequacies as a building supervisor— couldn’t depress him. In fact, it seemed to heighten his mood when he remembered that only two years ago the church was in such disrepair that it had been scheduled to be closed. But God had miraculously intervened by way of Mother Superior, Sister Mary Veronica, and her order, the Daughters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who had decided to open a retirement home across the street and insisted that St. Cecilia’s former pastor, Father Keene, become the home’s first official resident. This forceful woman had also convinced the archdiocese that both the nuns and the home’s residents would be in need of a church and a priest, ensuring St. Cecilia’s survival. She had even managed to finagle the archdiocese into renovating St. Cecilia’s from top to bottom, which meant that, for the first time in nearly thirty years, the buildings finally met with town codes.

Yes, it was a fine day for celebrating, Father James thought, as he heard the inner words of the Apostle Paul: Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ. He bound down the rectory’s four wooden steps and did a slight jog along the stone pathway that lead to the sidewalk, being certain to rein in his stride before rounding the church’s façade. Lord help him should anyone think he’d taken up jogging! Lately it seemed that no matter where he went someone was giving him unsolicited advice about adopting a healthier lifestyle, most of which had to do with exercise.

“Kickboxing,” Jeff Hayden, his recently married best friend and one of Dorsetville’s newest residents, had suggested. “It’s perfect for your busy schedule. It’s an aerobic exercise and cardiovascular workout all in one. Make you feel lean and mean.”

Retiree Timothy McGree, who was St. Cecilia’s head u...