In the Still of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

their marriage. Martin was a convert to Catholicism and, as Kate’s mother said crankily at the wedding, it made him more Catholic than the pope. Indeed the Knowles, on their wedding trip to Italy, had knelt before Paul VI and kissed his ring. Kate wished at the time that it was John XXIII whose hand she touched. She could imagine that great hulk of a man with a heart to match, reaching down, taking her by both hands, and saying, “Come, you have as much right to the throne of Peter as I do.” Not that she wanted to be pope any more than Betty Friedan did, but she had grown up in the early days of ecumenism and of Women’s Liberation and was fiercely partisan. Martin took a dim view of both, and looked in recent years to John Paul II to put both church and women back on course.
    Kate knew that the fabric of her faith was thinning before Daniel Morrissey crashed into her life. Martin’s was of tougher stuff. Their son and daughter, in college, attended mass with some regularity, but made no secret of their differences with the church in matters they felt should be arbitrated directly between themselves and the Almighty. It was not something, however, they discussed with their father. Kate sometimes would have preferred not to be their confidante herself. She had been somewhat shaken on a recent Sunday when her daughter, visiting home, had gone to mass with her and, meeting Father Morrissey on the church steps afterwards, had declared of the dark-eyed, handsome priest, “What a waste!” On their way home, Kate silent, Sheila had teased her, “Did I shock you, Mother?”
    “I agree!” Kate had said.
    And Sheila: “Now I’m shocked.”
    On the day Kate and Morrissey met in the museum, they met again later that afternoon, but not by their own design. Twice a week Kate conducted what she loosely—very loosely—called an art class for youngsters attending St. Ambrose parochial school who, at the end of the school day, might otherwise have been unsupervised until a parent got home from work. St. Ambrose, once a wealthy Upper East Side parish, had become, like the neighborhood, a mix of the moderately rich and the borderline poor, the latter mostly Hispanic. The church had been undergoing extensive renovation at the time; the grime of sixty years was being removed from four large murals that depicted Christ’s trial, death, resurrection and ascension. Much of the original paint came away with the dirt, however, and the restoration became more complicated and costly than the commissioned funds could cover. Martin Knowles made a substantial contribution to allow the work to go forward. Thus it was, Kate felt sure, that Monsignor Carey consulted with her on the work as it progressed. As soon as the restoration crew had closed up shop that day, the monsignor sent Morrissey to ask Mrs. Knowles, in the adjoining building, if she’d mind stepping over to the church for a few minutes. “You won’t mind staying a while with the children, will you, Father?”
    Morrissey did not mind. Seeing Kate, however briefly, eased the pain of separation that inevitably followed their hasty and furtive lovemaking. The way her eyes lit up when she saw him told of the same quick joy. They touched hands when she put the large scissors in his and told him he was journeyman to her apprentices. The color flared in her cheeks and she avoided looking at him. But very much on the alert was a youngster of eight or nine sitting across the table. His eyes, with the speed of arrows, darted from one adult’s face to the other’s.
    Father Morrissey winked at him. He was a great winker, something that eased him out of many a confrontation. It was a mistake in this case. A little gleam of cunning shone in the boy’s eyes. He had intuited something. “What’s your name, young fellow?” the priest said.
    “Rafael.”
    “Rafael,” Morrissey repeated admiringly.
    A pigtailed girl sitting next to the wily youngster said, “His name is José, father.