A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [22]
Siobhan roused herself more than once. Father Sean filled and lit his pipe again.
“What do you know about this child?” Dan asked tentatively.
Sean shrugged. “The church has a massive bureaucracy for handling orphans, welfare, and foster homes. I am sad to report that most of our infants up for adoption are from unwed and often underage mothers. Fathers gone. The trick is,” he went on, “if you don’t take a newly born, you should know as much as possible about the child’s first year.”
“How so?” Dan asked, puzzled.
“In the first year human-to-human touch is paramount. It is nearly always the key to future behavior. I do know that this was a wanted child and the object of great affection. He trusts the nuns, who do a great deal of fawning over him.”
“Sounds to me like the monsignor might have known this child from the beginning,” Dan said. “Is he the father, Sean?”
“I don’t know. I am barred from asking. However, when Gallico brought this child to see me, there was no further reason to wonder why he is so special. He’s handsome, he’s smart, he’s cuddly. The child is wonderful with the infants at the orphanage, a little gentleman. There is a glow about him I can’t put into words.”
Sean dug into his worn wallet, torn and with green spots from African fungus. Siobhan reminded herself to get him a new one tomorrow. Sean held the billfold up to the light and drew out a photograph.
“Oh, God, he’s beautiful!” Siobhan cried. Dan knew, from her reaction, it was a done deal, beyond his input or personal reaction. He took the photograph and he, too, melted.
“I’m going to have to ask you, Father Sean, are we to know nothing about his parents?”
“Nothing.”
“How was Monsignor Gallico mixed up in this?” Dan wondered aloud. “I love my church. The ranch is filled with shrines. But I don’t fancy getting mixed up in secrets and deceit. Are they covering the child so because it was conceived by a priest or a nun?”
“Dan!” Siobhan snapped. “You know the rules.”
“It will be pretty much the same with any child you adopt,” Father Sean said.
Dan took the photograph again. He never again wanted to see the anguish on Siobhan’s face when she had learned her husband was sterile.
“It may sound cruel, but the more you and a child know of its past, the more you open your doors for strangers to come and live in the house. I’ve been there when children meet a birth parent, and it can shatter a life. It wrecks dreams that should be left as dreams.”
“And who makes that judgment?”
“Centuries of a priesthood charged with men’s and women’s most sacred and secret problems.”
“Secrets to the grave. Lies to the grave.”
“If you don’t know and tell your son you don’t know, you’ll be telling him the truth.”
“God damned, Gallico’s Jesuit double-talk.”
“Dan,” Siobhan said, “what is tomorrow night and the nights thereafter going to be like if we turn this down?”
“I can’t tell you how many times I passed the fishing hole and saw myself with my son. How many times we were at the ball games together. How many times…these things are always complicated, aren’t they, Father?”
“Life is complicated.”
“All right, Siobhan, we have a son,” Dan said.
“I’m glad, and let his life begin the moment he steps foot on the ranch. I caution you that sometimes a child’s drive to find his birth parents is insatiable. The only thing you can do is raise him with wisdom and love. His life can be made so full, his need to know may simply fade. Make it so he won’t want any parents but you.”
Dan leaned against the fireplace. The mantel, the picture gallery of all Irish homes, was empty.
“God has given us everything,” Dan said. “We can’t take our failings out on the child. What is his name?”
“The sisters call him Patrick.”
“That’s Irish enough.”
“Patrick O’Connell,” Siobhan said three times over.
“You know,” Dan said, “in the Corps we almost entirely knew each other by our last name. Do you suppose we might call our son Quinn Patrick O’Connell?”
“That was in my line of thinking as well,” his wife said.
Chapter 7
WASHINGTON, D.C.,