~ by Eugene O’Brien
The trouble, as far as Rachel was aware of it, really got going when Harry met a Pentecostal evangelist named Juan Baptista. Somehow Harry put together the man’s remarkable name with the fact that his own mother’s name was Mary, Mary Shaunessy, and drew a wholly unwarranted conclusion. That he felt the Holy Spirit descending upon him after the full immersion baptism which followed this, his latest conversion, did not help matters any.
Rachel felt that Harry should have noticed that she was hardly Mary Magdalene. She was just an exasperated, middle-aged, middle-class woman. She hated clichés, and yet in marrying Harry, she had married into that stock dualism of genius and madness. Not that she herself wasn’t smart: her SATs were double 790s, by far the highest in her public high school. But Harry had pulled his double 800s while still in the eighth grade at a parochial school.
At first, he had merely seemed adventurous and flexible. This man whom the nuns had educated was married under the chuppah. In fact, in the pursuit of conversion, he had himself circumcised, and immersed in the mikveh. Soon, his Hebrew was far superior to Rachel’s. That they even took their honeymoon in Israel was more in consonance with Harry’s desires than Rachel’s.
But, by the time he met Juan, Harry had become a little bit sad, and frayed around the edges. Trouble seemed to break out wherever he was. He had gone from being tenure-track at an Ivy League university to being adjunct faculty at a community college. Now, he had resigned even that, and was working as a porter at a rest-stop on the interstate.
Rachel hoped that this was just what it was to be married to a poet. She hoped that, at some future and undisclosed date, a masterpiece would spring forth from Harry, a masterpiece which would justify and incorporate all the grief she was then feeling. Still, she was not surprised when she received a phone call from Senor Baptista. Unlike Harry, Rachel had only rudimentary Spanish, but they were able to exchange a simple,“Su esposo es muy loco, muy malo,” and an address at which that esposo could be found.
When she got there, Rachel did not find the wild man she expected. Harry docilely permitted himself to be driven home, and listened when Rachel said, “I want you to see a psychiatrist.”
The psychiatrist turned out to be an overweight Latvian whom Harry adored. The diagnosis, schizo-affective disorder, was, the psychiatrist assured Rachel, less horrifying than it sounded. Harry’s meds included Zyprexa, an atypical anti-psychotic, whatever that is. Rachel’s wild man calmed down, somewhat, tho’ the pills made him get fat, which irked his vanity. So Rachel lived for several years with a brilliant husband, functioning at a small fraction of his capacity.
It took administrative stupidity to disturb their less than happy home. The college where Rachel worked (yes, they were – had been – a dual family of academics) changed health plans, and Harry found himself in the care of an intense Greek who said that the old diagnosis was complete rubbish – Harry did not hear voices. Instead, the fact that he was haunted by multiple idẻes fixẻs was the result of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. The Greek put Harry on 300mg a day of Luvox to deal with the problem. Rachel had her doubts, but when she met with the psychiatrist, he had a trophy, a triangle Steuben glass basilisk, prominently displayed, which proclaimed him one of the nation’s best in his particular field. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how arbitrary such awards were – she was an academic, after all – but she was in territory that she didn’t know, and dearly wished that she didn’t have to know. The man seemed confident.
At first, Harry seemed better. He was at least writing, some obscure aspect of the history of the Roman Church. The religious aspect of it made Rachel slightly nervous, and good luck to Harry getting it published without the benediction of his former professorship, but it was so good to see him interested in doing something, anything, other than mopping poop out of toilet stalls.
But Harry began to have anxiety attacks, many of them, galloping over him in waves like multiple orgasms. He could no longer bear to be separated from Rachel, fearing the attacks that would come if they were apart. He followed her through the supermarket and the drugstore like a small child. The Greek prescribed lorazepam, and said that the Luvox needed time to work, but Rachel made the first appointment she could with the fat Latvian.
One morning, Harry awoke and he was no longer scared. He even had a surprise for Rachel, a mystery picnic. So, armed with their Mini-Mate, they set off for Providence. When she found that their destination was the graveyard in front of a bombastic-looking, old stone church, Rachel thought, “Dammit, dammit, dammit, here we go again. If this son-of-a-bitch is ever well, I’m divorcing him.”
Harry stopped at the cemetery office to get directions to their destination, which turned out to be the modest gravestone of Bishop Pavão and his parents, carved with the words “Fiat Voluntas Tua” – thy will be done. Even Rachel had heard of the bishop – the newspapers carried too many reports of too many paedophile priests he had simply shuffled from parish to parish for her not to have – but she still wasn’t willing to have a picnic over his corpse.
Harry, pointing, said, “Do you see that?”
Rachel, who was myopic, made out the shapes of children in the distance.
“It’s an abomination that they put this man’s grave in front of a playground. An abomination!”
“I doubt the children know that it’s here.”
“That’s precisely why it’s dangerous.”
“What are you going to do, take up a petition to move a bishop’s grave? Good luck.”
“I thought we might pray for his soul.”
Rachel saw that Harry had brought the Bible, bound in soft black leather, and embossed with his name in gold, that his family had presented him upon his confirmation. She realized that he wasn’t kidding.
“Harry, in case you haven’t forgotten, I’m Jewish.”
“Maybe we could say the Mourner’s Kaddish.”
“First, I am not saying kaddish for a Catholic priest. Second, I don’t even KNOW kaddish. You wanna say kaddish for this man, you do it.”
So Harry proceeded to, in Hebrew that sounded flawless to Rachel, admittedly not the most discerning judge of such things. Afterwards, they went to Roger Williams Park – named for a man whose multiple allegiances all felt like a great relief to Rachel after the Romans and the Pentecostals – and had a calm, pleasant, delightful picnic.
It had not, initially, been clear to Rachel that she and Mary Shaunessy were destined to detest one another. Upon learning from Harry that The Thorn Birds was his mother’s favorite book, Rachel had, through not inconsiderable exertions, succeeded in presenting her with a VHS of the TV movie, personally dedicated, with a Sharpie, by the actor Richard Chamberlain. But when Rachel walked through the swinging door of the kitchen in time to hear Mary remark to her maid that “It’s a damn shame that Chamberlain is a fag,” she began to have her suspicions. Mary’s was not just the frustrated cry of a straight woman, like Rachel’s friend who yearned for Rupert Everett: Mary disliked homosexuals, Jews, and blacks, and, as Rachel herself was ineluctably part of the second of those groups, she knew that she and Mary could never be friends or allies.
But she needed information, some of which only Mary could provide. Harry now seemed calm enough to be left alone for a few hours, so Rachel took her cell-phone onto the patio to call her mother-in-law.
“I was wondering if I could stop by, and visit, by myself, tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be seeing you in two days, anyway.”
Rachel remembered, unhappily, that she and Harry were due at the Shaunessy family home that Sunday, for an Easter supper. Rachel was sure that the fact that Mary always cooked the largest ham imaginable, instead of a turkey, was a dig intended especially for her, the Jewish daughter-in-law.
“I need to talk to you without Harry being present.”
“This all sounds very ominous. Anyway, it’s Good Friday.”
Rachel knew that her mother-in-law was devout. “Services begin at nine?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any way we can meet at seven.”
“This had better be important.”
“It is. If we meet then, I can be back home before Harry wakes up.”
“Is he that bad?”
“Most days, yes.”
“Seven it is.”
