ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part One, Chapter 12: Four Love-Starved Creatures
My last day in the newsroom, I stop by Father Z.’s first-floor office. I stand just inside the door, ready to make a quick get-away. “I’ve come to say good-by.”
“You’ve avoided me,” he says. He stubs out a cigarette. His face is the color of dried tobacco.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for what happened.”
“I’m getting married,” I say. I don’t know that this is true. I just say it.
He looks surprised. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“It’s Ernie.”
“I had no idea . . . you and Ernie. . . . Of course, I knew you’d be leaving us at the end of the summer, and I have something for you.” He reaches into the top drawer of his desk for a white envelope with my name on it. I move toward his desk as he hands it to me.
“Ernie’s a lucky man. He can write, and now he has you, too.”
“Maybe I’m the lucky one.”
He pushes his chair slightly back from his desk. “I’m not a bad person, am I?”
“You can always take off your collar, quit this job, do what you want to do. Fall in love, if that’s what you want.”
“You think it’s that easy to fall in love? To find someone to love who loves me? You’re young. You don’t know.”
“Thank you for giving me this job. If not for this job, Ernie and I would never have met.”
“That’s true. Maybe I’ve done you both a good deed. I hope so.”
That night at the stucco cottage, I show Ernie the envelope with the cash in it.
“Hush money,” he says. “He doesn’t want you spreading the news about the summer camp and his double life.”
“Should we?”
“I’m not telling the archbishop, if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t feel comfortable working for him anymore. When I resign, I’ll tell him why. What he does from now on is between him and his own conscience.”
Merlin comes into the living room from his hiding place — under Ernie’s antique walnut bed. He growls at me.
“Merlin doesn’t like me, Ernie.”
“He’s jealous. He’ll get used to you. We’ll take him to the creek later. He likes to swim in the creek.”
“You’re a good man, Ernie.”
“I’m a restless man, honey. Peace of mind is hard for me to come by. I always want something I don’t have.”
“You have me. You have Merlin. You have this stucco cottage. You have your writing.”
“Yes. I’m a rich man, am I not?”
He draws me even closer and kisses me. His kisses are wet and urgent and needy. His kisses scare me. They make me feel . . . how do they make me feel? They make me feel . . . invisible.
