The Jew's Wife & Other Stories by Thomas J. Hubschman

pastor and co-curate.
“Your mother called! She left a message. Wait. I wrote it down
someplace.”
        He
listened to her rifle through the memos on the telephone table in
the rectory’s parlor. Even a hundred miles away, he could smell the
room’s musty odor. He wished she would hurry up and find what she
was looking for.
       “ Here it is.
‘I’ll be staying on a few more days in the mountains. I hope his
car is better.’”
        He was
too shocked to reply. His annual visit was something they both
cherished. How could she just decide to “stay on a few more
days”?
       “ Did you have
trouble with the Ford again?”
       “ You could say
that.”
       “ Don’t you think
it’s time you got a new car? A nice blue one? I saw a car the other
day that would suit you just fine. They’re on sale now, you know,
to get ready for the new models in the fall.”
       “ You
have a point there, Margaret. Were there no other
messages?”
       “ No, I
don’t think ...Wait. Here’s one. Father George must have taken it.
I’d recognize his chicken scrawl anywhere.”
        He could
see her adjusting her bifocals to make out the second curate’s
minuscule hand.
       “ It’s from
someone named Weeks.”
       “ Charlie
Weeks?”
       “ There’s no
first name. Just Weeks.”
        He hadn’t seen
Charlie Weeks, a high school classmate since the night eight years
ago they spent together when Charlie had been passing through.
Charlie had promised to keep in touch, but didn’t.
       “ What’s the
message?”
       “ No message.
Just a telephone number. You’d better call him, don’t you think,
Father?”
       “ Yes, Margaret.
I will.”
       “ Charge it to
the rectory. What the heck.”
       “ I’ll take care
of it.”
       “ Shall I tell
the man you’re interested?”
       “ What
man?”
       “ The one who
wants to sell you that lovely blue car.”
       “ Sure, Margaret.
Why don’t you do that.”

   
       
     
        CHAPTER FIVE
       
        The area code
was for the southern part of the state.
        Charlie
had a horror of big cities, New York in particular. He grew up near
Paterson but attended the same high school with Richard Walther in
Jersey City. Sometimes Charlie and some other St. Francis students
took the PATH train into Greenwich Village. Young Richard joined
them a couple times—a contingent of obvious out-of-towners come to
ogle the big-city girls (mostly suburbanites like themselves) and
snicker at the homosexuals on Christopher Street. He could not
recall any of them—Charlie Weeks, Frank Willet and a few
others—ever saying a word to any female; and they certainly didn’t
badger the homosexuals. They merely wandered the narrow streets,
frequently getting lost, and argued about which of them should ask
a stranger how to get back to the train station.
        Charlie’s own interest in New York was limited to the legal
beer he could order when he turned eighteen. His heart never left
New Jersey. Even Paterson was too citified to suit him. He came
into his own when his family moved to a big house on a lake near
Morristown. Father Walther had spent a couple weekends there,
fishing for carp and shooting at tin cans with Charlie’s .22. After
graduation when, to no one’s surprise, Richard entered the diocesan
seminary, Charlie headed for an engineering school in upstate New
York. For a while they corresponded. He was invited to Charlie’s
wedding but was unable to attend because he was receiving minor
orders the same day. Later he sent Charlie an invitation to his
final ordination. Other graduates of St. Francis showed up, but not
Charlie. It was almost a year before Charlie brought his bride to
meet him at his first parish assignment in Ridgefield Park. It was
two more years before he turned up again, this time alone at Holy
Name, to reminisce about old times. Both visits were
unannounced.
        He decided