If You Want Something Done

Mission Church in Old Roxbury

Last week Teresa asked a friend to do a little job for her. But the job was not done to her standards and she had to redo it. She maintained her temper and I did not repeat the story of John Fairbain’s sister to her. She had heard the story long ago and didn’t need to hear it for a fourth or fifth time.

John Fairbain was a high school classmate of mine at my inner city high school. Mission High was in a white enclave in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. I’m told Roxbury is gentrifying these days. You can get a decent place there for not much over a half million, if you hurry. Mission High was associated with Mission Church a few blocks away. Our school was in an undistinguished brick building, but the church was a glorious pile combining Gothic and Romanesque styles. The most striking thing about the interior was the many dozens of crutches hung from the columns near the main altar. These crutches had been left behind by people who had been cured through the intercession of the Church’s patron, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

I was attending Mission High back in the early sixties at my mother’s behest. She had gone to mass at Mission Church as a girl and thought I would benefit from the firm hand of the Xavierian Brothers who ran the school. To get to school I took a bus, a train, and another bus. An alternate route took a bus and a slow trolley, then a half-mile hike. I often took this route home to avoid the hubbub of the train.

The last day of school before Easter break was a half day. John Fairbain’s sister was picking him up and he asked if I wanted a ride. We lived in the same neighborhood. John’s sister said she needed to pick up something at the religious goods store. Boston, being a good Catholic city, had almost as many religious goods stores as taverns.

John's sister was picking up a missal she had ordered as a gift for a friend. A missal is a book Catholics used to use to follow the  Latin mass. The Latin was on one page with the English on the facing page. The missal had the mass readings for the year plus a wealth of litanies of the saints and other devotional texts. It was a hefty tome, and a handy one.

John's sister emerged from the store with smoke billowing from her ears. “If you want something done right, do it yourself!” she snarled. A different friend who had gone to the store and placed the order had mistakenly specified a garish ivory cover for the missal instead of the more tasteful burgundy. It couldn’t be exchanged because it had been personalized with the recipient’s name on the cover. John said, “What’s so bad about that? Your boyfriend won't care.” He only escaped a box to the ear because I was there. I wished I was on the trolley. She was some mad. There's nothing like seeing a cliché put into action to make it stick in your mind.

I used to have one of those missals. Black cover, no name. It’s disappeared. After my grandfather died, we went through his stuff and I grabbed his missal. A souvenir from a bygone age. One more note about Mission Church. When Ted Kennedy’s daughter was receiving treatment for cancer at the renowned Peter Bent Brigham Hospital just down the hill, Kennedy would stop into the church to pray. His daughter got better and when Kennedy himself was dying, he requested that his funeral be held at Mission Church. The old church looked good in the national spotlight.

Curing, yes. Boxing of ears, no.