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Then he winced at his own show of candor about the people whom he loyally served.
But I didn't care about the problems Doogie Dugas might be experiencing. I could not get out of my mind the type of raincoat worn by both visitors to Val Chalons's guesthouse, nor the wilted flop hat the second figure had worn. They were exactly of the kind stuffed behind the front seat of my truck.
I went to an AA meeting at noon and another after work. But by sunset I was back into my problems regarding Molly Boyle. For the first time in my life I felt the abiding sense of shame and hypocrisy that I suspect accompanies the ethos of the occasional adulterer. But desire and need, coupled with genuine love of another, are not easily argued out of the room by morality.
If I genuinely loved Molly Boyle, why had I taken her to an off-road motel that almost advertised itself as the perfect situation for a sweaty tryst? If you loved a woman, you didn't make her a partner in what others would inevitably deem a
seedy and scandalous affair, I told myself. Most women have a level of trust in the men whom they love that men seldom earn or deserve. As a rule, we do not appreciate that level of trust until it's destroyed. In my case, the fact that I had put Molly's career and reputation at risk indicated that desire and need had not only trumped morality but also concern for the woman I said I loved.
I kept those lofty thoughts in my mind for about fifteen minutes, then picked up the phone and called her. I talked about the meetings I had attended that day, about the fine weather we were having, about the fact my system seemed to be free of booze. But it was quickly apparent that neither of us was entirely focused on what I was saying. "Do you want me to come over?" she said.
"Yes," I said, my voice weak.
"If you don't feel comfortable with that, we can go to the motel in Morgan City," she said.
"No," I said.
"Are you sure?"
What I was doing was no good. It was foolish to try and convince myself that it was. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said.
"I'm leaving the Order, Dave. I've already talked with the bishop. My leaving doesn't have anything to do with us. It's been coming a long time. Stay there. I'll be over shortly."
She hung up before I could reply. But I was out front, in the yard, when she arrived a half hour later, happy in a way that perhaps I shouldn't have been. She looked beautiful stepping out of her car, too, in straw sandals and pleated khakis and a blouse stitched with cacti and flowers, a big hand-tooled leather purse slung over her shoulder.
"Hi, big stuff," she said.
"Hi, yourself," I replied.
I fixed coffee and hot milk and slices of pound cake for us, and served it on a tray in the living room. We sat on the couch and watched part of a movie on television, while the streetlights came on outside and kids sailed by on bicycles. I touched the back of her neck and clasped her hand, and we sat there like married people do, with no sense of urgency about the passage of time.
She told me about her missionary years in Nicaragua and Guatemala. But without being told I already knew the nature of her experience there, in the same way you intuitively know when people have seen organized murder on a large scale, or have stood with hundreds of others inside a barbed-wire compound or languished in a cell run by individuals who are probably not made from the same glue as the rest of us. Their eyes contain memories they seldom share; they seem to exemplify Herodotus' depiction of man's greatest burden, namely, that foreknowledge of human folly never saves us from its consequences.
But why brood upon the bloody work of neocolonial empires on a summer night on a leaf-blown street that belongs back in the year 1945? Why not fall in love with the world all over again and not contend so vigorously with it? Outside, the night was unseasonably cool, scented with shade-blooming flowers, the giant live oaks along the sidewalks lit by streetlamps, Spanish moss lifting in the breeze. Molly Boyle and I made love in the bedroom, in the slow and unhurried fashion of people who are secure in the knowledge the two of them, together, have legitimate claim on the next day, and that mortality and the demands of the world are no longer of great importance. What better moment could human beings create for themselves? Let the world, at least for tonight, find its own answers for a change, I told myself.
I never asked Molly about other men or other lives she might have led. But her attitudes and manner reminded me of other nuns I had known over the years, particularly those who had gone to jail for their political beliefs or been exposed to the risk of martyrdom in Central America. They seem to have no fear, or least none that I could see. As a consequence, they didn't argue or defend, and the church to which they belonged was one they carried silently inside themselves.
Molly Boyle might have been educated, but she was a blue-collar girl at heart, her body thick from work, her breasts full, her nipples as big as half dollars, the honesty and love in her face as she looked down at me untouched by any mark of vanity or self-interest. When she came, her face softened and her eyes seemed to look inward, as though she were experiencing a tender thought that was almost unbearable; then her body grew tense, her mouth opening, and she came a second time, her arms propped stiffly on each side of me, her skin moist and ruddy, her womb scalding.
I put her nipples in my mouth and kissed the two red moles on her stomach, just below her navel. Her head lay on the pillow, the points of her hair damp with perspiration, her breath loud in the silence. She ran her hand through my hair and cupped it on the back of my neck.
"Was it Ernest Hemingway who wrote about feeling the earth move?" she said.
"That was the guy," I replied.
"Boy, he had it right," she said.
Our faces were turned one to the other on the pillow. I could hear the wind in the trees, Tripod running on his chain, a boat blowing its horn as it approached the drawbridge on Burke Street. Then I heard other sounds — car doors slamming, feet running through the yard, someone shouting unintelligibly behind the house.
Molly raised up on one elbow, her eyes fastened on mine. "What's that?" she said.
A shadow went past the window, then another one. "Cops," I replied.
I got up from the bed and put on my khakis. A fist hammered on the front door. When I jerked it open, I looked into the slightly distended oval face of Doogie Dugas, who stood on the gallery, with two uniformed Jeanerette cops behind him. The yard was full of television cameras and lights.
"I got a search warrant for the premises," Doogie said.
"You don't have any jurisdiction here. Get off my property," I said.
