“Get out! Get out!” Frade ordered.
She scurried from the room.
“You take that from your mother,” Frade said to his son. “I know when to stop. Your mother…your mother had a will of iron.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“There is a time to bend. Nothing is black and white.”
“For example?”
“It was necessary for your mother to join my church in order to marry me. For a long time she absolutely refused. I tried to explain to her that I personally didn’t care if she lit candles to Satan himself, but that Argentina is by law a Catholic country. To be legally recognized, a marriage has to be performed in a Catholic church. Otherwise, there would be serious problems about our children. In the eyes of the law, they would be bastards, and there would be all sorts of difficulties about inheritance.
“So she said she would talk with a priest in New Orleans. An ordinary priest was not good enough for your grandfather. If his daughter talked to someone, she would deal with someone important, in this case, his golf-playing friend, the Archbishop. I met that sonofabitch when I was there. I blame a good deal of what happened on him.”
On the Archbishop? That’s stretching things a little, isn’t it?
Clete’s father made sudden angry stabbing motions with his leg. For a moment, Clete thought there was a rat or a mouse under the table. But when the maid reappeared, he understood that the call button was mounted on the floor under the table.
“Bring whiskey,” Frade ordered. “Scotch.”
“And for the young Señor?”
“Bring him whatever he wants, of course.”
“Nothing for me, thank you.”
“Then I received a letter from your mother. She wrote that she had been wrong, and that she now understood. She would now be confirmed in my Church and place her life in God’s hands and mine. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I have never pretended to understand women and God. But the immediate problem, marriage in church, was over.”
The whiskey was delivered. Frade watched impatiently for about thirty seconds as the maid fussed with a silver-handled shot glass, then he took the bottle from her and poured an inch and a half in his glass.
“And then get out,” he concluded to her. He waited until the maid fled again before going on.
“So we were married. We went to Europe. It was a splendid time. And then she became pregnant with you. And fell ill. Her doctor informed me that further pregnancies were ill-advised. That was fine with me. We were to have a baby. Two or three babies might increase the chances of having a son, but if the choice was between a second baby and your mother…”
He took a healthy swallow of his drink.
“I told her, before you were born, that there is some sort of an operation performed during—what is the word—delivery that prevents future pregnancies. She flatly refused. She said her life was in God’s hands; God would protect her. She had sworn a vow before God; she was honor bound.
“I thought I would talk her out of this nonsense at a later time. There are…certain measures…one can take to prevent pregnancy. After a while, after you were born, she told me she had discussed this question with her confessor, and the priest told her there was only one thing she could do to avoid children. You know what I mean.”
No, I don’t. Oh, yeah. Abstinence.
“What happened thereafter is clearly my responsibility,” Frade said. “I knew the risk, and out of selfishness, I took it. And you know what happened. But I loved her so much, with such passion…”
“Why did you leave me in the States?”
“Your grandfather hated me, with obvious good cause. Your uncle James hated me.”
“You could have told them.”
“They would not have believed it. And I could not, in any event, try to blame your mother’s religious fanaticism for what happened. God didn’t make her pregnant, I did.”
He looked at Clete.
“I asked you, why did you leave me in the States?” Clete said.
“I hoped not to get into this, Cletus.”