Last Things by Ralph McInerny Read Free Book Online Page A

class.”
    â€œHow much more is that?”
    She smiled. She was doing it as a favor. Only there were no seats in first class. She was more disappointed than he was. Rhonda.
    â€œYou’ve been wonderful,” he said when he handed over his credit card.
    â€œHow long will you be gone?”
    There was a definite note of invitation in her voice. “Do you live in L.A.?”
    â€œI’m in the book.” She slid her card across the counter, and he put it in his hankie pocket and patted it. Another professional smile. He was both flattered and shocked. Were lovely girls like Rhonda so readily available? But it was Julia he thought of.
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    Rhonda had put him in a window seat in the row with the emergency exit, lots of leg room. He was buckled in before he remembered that he hated to fly. It was as if he were daring God to take his life. Fulton Sheen had scoffed at those who feared to fly. Did they think God was only on the ground? But it was the fact that he seemed to have a freer hand in the air that disturbed. For a mad moment he wished he was going by car, reversing the flight he and Phyllis had made years ago. He sat back and closed his eyes and almost immediately fell asleep. Phyllis had given him a Dramamine before they left the house. When he awoke they were aloft, going counterclockwise to Chicago, into the past, to his father’s deathbed. He hoped that he would not arrive in time, dreading to face the old man invested with all the authority of the dying. He had not so much as talked with his father on the phone since his desertion. Desertion. Away from Phyllis he could call a spade a spade. He closed his eyes, and their conversation about Julia played in his mental ear.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Ray?”
    Out of the blue. “In what sense?”
    â€œJulia.”
    â€œShe is a perfect pagan.”
    â€œShe wants you.”
    â€œOh, come on.”
    â€œAnd it’s mutual.”
    â€œPhyl.”
    Their quarreling consisted of falling into a routine where the lines they spoke were not their own but ones borrowed from patients and their own responses to them. Phyllis was obviously annoyed but could not show it.
    â€œGet mad,” he advised her.
    â€œThere’s no point to that.”
    â€œSo what do you propose?”

    â€œGet it out of your system.”
    It angered him that she thought she could issue such a pass to him, a furlough from fidelity. And he had been true to her, in his fashion. Over the years they had devised a common personality that was built around their practice, the present, the avoidance of the past.
    â€œJust use her?”
    â€œDo you really want to do anything more?”
    Using shared professional tricks on one another, they seemed to have lost the capacity to communicate. What else was their practice but the issuance of passes? Therapy consisted of permitting people to do what they wanted without the pang of guilt. Usually it took several sessions to find out what the supposed problem was. His response to Julia, twenty years younger than himself, made him a type he had often dealt with. As Phyllis was dealing with him. The patient was finally asked if he disapproved of what he was doing or wanted to do. A negative answer seemed called for.
    â€œThen why are you here?”
    Therapy was aimed at discovering whose opinion the patient feared if not his own: that of a spouse, a child, a parent. His father. The flight attendant arrived with her trolley, and he asked for tomato juice, then changed it to a Bloody Mary. Phyllis was trying to manipulate him as they both manipulated patients. He would be indebted to her for allowing him to indulge himself with impunity.
    On the phone Jessica had told him that Aunt Eleanor was at the hospital. She had given him a chalice when he was ordained, a beautiful full cup with scarcely any stem and a wide octagonal base. He had rented a safety deposit box in Chicago and put it there before