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Services

Mrs. Louise rushes into the parish hall indignantly and attempts to throw away the poinsettias carefully arranged in the vestibule. "It's Easter time; you mustn't have any poinsettias around. Only lilies."

Miss Marblehead, the parish secretary, is shocked that Mrs. Louise, the most generous matriarch in the parish has the gall to throw away the Christmas poinsettias given by Mr. Grumble and family in memory of their great aunt Miss Marvelous Station (the former Miss Virginia) who dedicated the parish hall where they were sitting.

"I can't for the life of me dispose of flowers."

"Did you prepare the church bulletin, Miss Marblehead?:

"I must confess I'm late. With all the duties I have in tidying the church vestibule and all..."

"Save that excuse for Father Queensberry. I'm off on my Audubon Walk. I'm determined to catch a glimpse of a cardinal."

"I do everything alone and I mean everything. I can't trust anyone with anything, especially since I lost my son in the antique store."

"Whatever happened to Delaware?"

"I suspected the proprietor of sweeping the boy off to Fuji. I've never been the same. He lived with me until he was eighteen. We even knit together. I schooled him, gave him Reginald, his private tutor, whom I imported from Oxford, who told him everything he had to know."

"I remember Reginald at daily mass, always meticulously scruffed and dressed."

"We adored him, with his Byronic look, but one day he had a platonic vision of the stones of the Parthenon and went off to Greece with a group of sailors. What a loss to the parish, I might add."

"I remember him teaching the altar boys how to sing in falsetto."

"Reginald sometimes sends me postcards from Mykonos. He was an authentic aesthete, an original."

"I think, Mrs. Louise, you had a crush on him."

"Really! I'm off to the birds. What would I do without my feathered companions?"

"I can't imagine, dear."

Mrs. Louise puts on her large had. She wears a new one each Sunday and then keeps it for a week when she gives it away to the Salvation Army so no one in the parish can copy hers. The hat is a violent orange resembling a black and tan.

She closes the door with a flourish.

A homeless man, a recurrent visitor, Mr. Grapes the Fourth, once a prosperous oil prospector who chose to give away his wealth in the biblical sense until he realized he was without a soul, comes to the church for shelter.

"Oh, Mr. Grapes, do have some tea."

"I can't remember if my stocks are up or down or where I am going. So I chose to come in and have a word with you and God, not in that order."

"Make yourself at home."

"This is my home now, Miss Marblehead. If it weren't for your kindness…"

"Oh, it's you who are most kind. You were the one who bought me my summer cottage up in Maine."

"That's when I was filthy rich."

"Oh, you are rich in faith."

"Yes, and without the filthy lucre. I wanted to be lucky without lucre."

"Do you regret parting with your millions?"

"Not if it has made others happy, but it is cold out. I do love the scarf you made me. It does help on these icy New England days."

"The wind chill is below eighteen. We put some bread out for the birds. If I forgot, Miss Louise would crucify me. She attempted to dump my poinsettias."

"May I have a muffin?"

"Yes, have an iced carrot bran."

"Thank you. May I go into the church and pray?"

"Yes."

"And may I have the key to the bathroom?"

"Of course."

"I love to sit in my own pew."

"It's always yours, named for your dear late mother."

"God be praised. How I miss her. I miss my wife, too, even though she left me for the animal trainer."

"How could she have done that to you?"

"She said he had animal magnetism. Thanks for the key."

"If you go into the church you may see Mr. March. He told me he's looking for the keys to the Kingdom. Here's the key to the bathroom."

"What happened to him? Wasn't he a professor of Latin at the college?"

"Yes, alas, he was jilted by one of his graduate students."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"So is he, and to think the student is featured in Playmates, February issue. Poor Mr. March. One knows what comes after Valentine's Day. Then he was engaged and with the ring and he on his knees and then she goes to New York with the wedding money. I never liked her, I must confess."

"Wasn't she blonde?"

"Dirty blonde."

"What was her name?"

"I can't recall. She calls herself Miss Chick now. Mr. March comes in every day and prays for her return. He is ready for the prodigal bride to return, but it says in Variety that she has had it with men."

"I can relate. All my business partners cheated me and my wife cheated on me and my relatives. But I don't want any sort of 'root of bitterness' as Father Queensberry preached so eloquently on Shrove Tuesday."

"Well, have the whole plate of these muffins. It will help to keep up your strength, Mr. Grapes, and here's a stress Vitamin B."

"Thank you, Miss Marblehead. I wish I could give you a kiss."

"Oh, you must wait till Sunday when we have the kiss of peace."

"I wait for that kiss all week."

Miss Marblehead hears a gun go off in the church. Father Queensberry enters, carrying a relic, the molar tooth of St. Veronica.

"Oh, my goodness."

"Don't worry. It's only Mr. March. You know he uses blanks."

"Thank goodness. I'd hate to have my quiet time interrupted with his shenanigans. I found copies of Playmates piles on the altar when the altar boys came in on Thursday to rehearse for Sunday. That's the time of the week that I most look forward to."

"We all do."

"I love youth and its enthusiasm for worship. I adore innocence."

"You're a saint, Father Queensberry."

"Not yet, Miss Marblehead. Give me time. Remember Saint Innocence became Pope."

"Is that your wish?"

"I'm a humble parish priest. But today life is so much more complicated and ecumenical. Last week, for instance, I met with the Los Angeles Buddhist monk, the Muslim Iman, the Reform Rabbi, and the Hindu student guru from Dartmouth who set up our computer network."

"I know your schedule by heart."

"Miss Marblehead, I appreciate you, but how you endure some of the congregation remains a mystery of faith to me."

"I must confess that we almost lost our Christmas poinsettias, but I managed to save them from the arms of Miss Louise. I sometimes think she is so full of herself, but now I realize, Father, it's a change of life. Have a muffin. I saved you bran-cherry cranberry-nut."

"I had a talk with the young acolyte Danny Noose. He was deciding whether to go to the Marines, to become an archaeologist in the Holy Land, or to become a priest. I must confess not for the first time in my life, mind you, I discouraged him from the latter."

"Is it because of your experience here at St. Peter and Paul's, Father?"

"Well, we have the liberals who want women as priests and don't care about the consecration of the host and the conservatives who demand I put a Right to Life sign on my new car and endorse only their candidates for high office. It's become all politics here."

"It's everywhere. If you are politically correct, they make more demands, and if you are politically incorrect they... oh, my, it's Mr. March... all bloodied..."

"It worked... the gun, that is... I'm sorry about the new church carpets but I don't want my intended bride of Christ in a Playmates centerfold. I prayed to God, begging Him that if I killed off my old self surely he would restore her to my own grace."

Mr. March collapses. The police are called. Father Queensberry retreats to his study and only returns when the body is removed.

Rushing in from the church sacristy, Miss Marblehead weeps out: "Oh, Father, you should see the condition of the carpet paid for by Mr. Grapes when he was rich. But he is trying to clean it up."

"Couldn't you call up the President to return a favor?"

"You mean the former Arkansas governor who came here to seek respectability? He was at the lawn party but before we could entertain he ate all the cookies the Sodality Committee had bakes."

"Well, we've got to get a new rug somehow before Sunday mass."

"Perhaps you could call the Orthodox priest. Isn't his brother in the rug business?"

"You have a point."

"And perhaps you could call in our town's ecumenical family and they could lay it at an ecumenical service."

"A brilliant move, Miss Marblehead."

Mr. Grapes comes out of the sanctuary.

"I've done my best to clean the rug. But it's impossible to get all the red out. It's like my sins."

"Would you like to see the Father for confession?"

"I'm not so sure... I shot Mr. March to take him out of his misery. He begged me. He felt his intended bride wouldn't ever come back."

"I'm sworn to secrecy."

"On my way up to the chancellery I saw a Negro epileptic preacher speaking in some strange tongue and holding a sign that said Jesus was coming back. I told him maybe he doesn't want to, maybe we don't deserve him. He told me it was up to God. Then I put the plastic spoon in my pocked into his mouth and he shut up. I carried the man on my back. Then I went with him to a pawn shop where it said on a plaque in the window, 'Everything is Redeemable.' I offered my services to the preacher by selling the pawnbroker my gold watch, but he refused to talk to me nor to aid the black epileptic who had turned white. I could no longer carry him so I left him on the steps. Then I came here. It's been quite a morning, Miss Marblehead. I think I'll be on my way."

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