100. Trust Me

Izzy came to the doorway of the office while I was on the phone arguing with St. Anne and I motioned him inside. Izzy always struck me as a steady hand and I felt he might as well know what was happening. When you live with ten other men, you get a sense of who is capable and whose judgment you can trust. I would need someone to bounce ideas off and Izzy was one person who would give an issue careful thought and yield up an honest opinion.  So would Bouncer, if he were in the mood, but lately our resident plumber was dealing with the crisis in his own way by not talking about it.  The denial was coming out in the smallest things as anger, which left him upset and doubting himself.

My telephone conversation with Brother Saint Anne ended without resolving my problem or his. We hung up without any agreement when I told him neither of us could afford the telephone charges.

“You want to turn the monastery into a boarding house?” said Izzy.

“Got a better idea?” I asked
                                  

“If there was a big employer in the town who provided good jobs, your idea might work,” he said, “but the only boarders we’ll get are gonna be itinerant woodchucks who won’t pay their rent after a couple of weeks.” “Woodchuck” is the local term for an unskilled young man who starts calling himself a carpenter when he’s out of work.

“We’ll just have to hope they can pay,” I said. “I really don’t have any other ideas.”

“And what about our cloister? The silence? Our way of life?” said Izzy.

“Our way life is going to change,” I said, “when all of us go out and look for work. We’re not going to be classic contemplatives working along side other store clerks and laborers.”

Izzy was silent for a moment. Then he got up from his seat and walked to the window and looked out. I turned in my chair to follow him.

“Do you think,” I asked him, “it’s worth trying to save the place and our religious life under these circumstances, Izzy? Maybe we should all just quit and head out.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If we open a boarding house we’ll at least be able to keep the monastery. We can find ways to separate from our boarders some of the time,” I said.

“How would that work?” Izzy asked.

I chuckled. “I don’t really know,” was all I could offer.

“Look, Jesse, I have an idea,” Izzy said, “but I don’t want to lay it out until I’ve checked on a few things. Can you drive me into the village to a pay phone?”

“Why not use this phone?” I asked, pointing to the one I’d just hung up.

“Trust me,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”