The Jew's Wife & Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

man
has offered to drive me to a bus depot,” he told her. “I can be in
Baltimore by mid-afternoon. Can I get a connection to your
place?”
        She
wasn’t sure. Only commuter buses ran between Baltimore and her part
of the state. Making a connection would depend on what time he
arrived there.
       “Is something wrong, Mother?”
       “No,” she replied without
conviction. “I just had some plans to go away for a couple days
with the girls. It’s alright.”
       “When are you supposed to
leave?”
       “It doesn’t matter. Hop a bus like
you said. Only, I don’t know what you’ll do if you can’t get a
connection in Baltimore.”
       “ That’s not a
problem. I can always take a cab. When are you scheduled to go away
with your friends?”
        She hesitated.
He sensed she was about to cry.
       “ Wednesday
morning.” He waited while she fished a tissue from the sleeve of
her housecoat. “I wouldn’t have made plans, only you said you would
be staying just these two days.”
        He took a deep
breath.
       “ It’s okay, Ma.
You go ahead with your trip. I’ll see you when you get
back.”
       “ It’s
just for a couple days. To the mountains. I thought it would be
nice to see the mountains again.”
       “ Of
course it would. You haven’t been away in years. I wouldn’t dream
of letting you cancel the trip.”
        “ But what
will you do? You
haven’t even got a car now.”
       “ I’ll manage,”
he said. “I’ll have a fine time, and so will you. We’ll compare
notes next week.”
        The
mechanic dropped him off at the bus stop outside a lonely grocery
store on a two-lane state highway. The bus would take him to
Philadelphia, where he could get a long-distance connection north.
He would be back in his parish by nightfall. He thanked the
mechanic for his hospitality, and the man started to climb back
into his dilapidated Plymouth. Then, on an impulse which in a more
demonstrative person might have amounted to just a formality, he
turned and offered the priest his hand.
        He
waited half an hour without any sign of a bus. There was very
little traffic of any kind, all co-opted, he supposed, by the
faster Interstates. He asked in the grocery—a general store,
actually—about a schedule, but the elderly proprietor was vague.
“There’ll be one by and by.”
        He sat
down on a weathered bench at the roadside and began reading his
office. He was wearing the same black serge pants he had set out in
two days ago, but had replaced his Hawaiian print with a blue
short-sleeve. His black vinyl suitcase, a Christmas gift from the
altar boys, squatted on the gravel beside him. In it were two sets
of clean under wear—and one dirty—another sport shirt, a bathing
suit, a pair of chinos, socks, handkerchiefs and toilet articles, a
mass kit, and a bottle of detergent for doing hand wash. It hadn’t
occurred to him to pack any books except his office and a missal.
When he was young he used to read lives of the saints. Later he
read Chesterton and what he considered to be other good Catholic
authors. But as his responsibilities in the parish grew, he found
he had less and less time for elective reading. In the last year he
had finished only two books, and both had been manuals on parish
management.
        He
peered through the shimmering heat, but still saw no sign of a bus.
He was beginning to regret the end of his detour. Despite all the
fatigue and frustration, he had enjoyed playing the role of
mysterious stranger. He had seen a side of life that a uniformed
clergyman was denied. As he sat in the hot sun recalling the
mechanic’s gruff generosity and his wife’s proud grief, he realized
that he was going to miss them.
        He
wasn’t ready yet to return to his clerical persona. It wasn’t
enough just to play Everyman to a few Howard Johnson waitresses.
What he needed was a real vacation, not merely from his life as a
cleric but