Missing Sisters, Page 2

  “So kind,” the nuns agreed. “These poor things, a terrible shock.” They tended to bleat when confronted with men who did things like drive trucks. Sister John Bosco, however, looked out over the fields and didn’t say anything. She held Sister Vincent de Paul’s hands between hers, very tightly, and her lips moved with words Alice couldn’t hear.

  The road shone like cellophane. Once the milk truck skidded, and they all screamed as if they were on the fourteen-foot roller coaster at the Sacred Heart June fair. Alice sat as near Sister Vincent de Paul as she could, though it was Sister John Boss’s job to carry the worry.

  In such dilemmas as this it was important, the nuns knew, to get onto the regular schedule as soon as possible. So the next morning, back home in their usual redbrick convent school on Fifth Avenue in Troy, New York, Sister John Bosco called Alice Colossus for an interview before morning classes. Things such as fires and ice storms never occurred here at home, and Alice, like her companions, was sorry to be home.

  “Have you thought anymore about the Harrigans?” said Sister John Bosco. “I have promised them an answer by the end of the week.”

  “How is Sister Vincent de Paul?” said Alice.

  “You must roll your tongue if you are to be understood, Alice. We’re all very tired of reminding you.” Sister John Bosco did not mean to be cruel, and Alice understood this. It had been a trying weekend. The girls had been on their best behavior, but the retreat center had burned down anyway. It must be hard for Sister John Bosco to keep going.

  “How is burned Sister?” Alice tried again, with a great exercising of muscles and a sarcastic lacing of spittle to show her effort. “Don’t she get to come home, too?”

  “She is at rest in the hospital,” said Sister John Boss, warily. The blank look, to protect the young from sadness, rose in her face. “Sister Vincent de Paul is well provided for. Classes begin shortly, Alice. You were to be deciding this weekend. The Harrigans are very kind to be considering adopting you. They are good people and won’t be put off by your defects. Have you given it much thought?”

  Alice Colossus munched her inner lip. The snow, glorious and dangerous and white up north, had fallen gray and smudgy here, or so you’d think peering out through Sister John Boss’s double casement window. What had Sister Vincent de Paul been saying when the fire broke out? She had pointed up to the roof with her spoon. She had said that a cold front and a warm front had met right overhead. Perhaps God and the devil had stood just over the house, in heaven, their toes touching while they stood seething at each other. Perhaps they were waiting to see what decision Alice would make about the Harrigans. They were hissing mad. It was rain on one side and snow on the other. But which was which? And how could you make the right choice? And while you were deciding, fire down below, the ordinary worldly kind, could engulf you.

  “Alice,” rapped Sister John Bosco. “You’re drifting again. Don’t freeze me out, Alice; I’ve no time this morning.”

  Alice dug her fingers into the waistband of her uniform skirt. She flexed her tongue. She breathed very shallowly and was conscious of the rise and fall of her breastbone against the top fluttery edge of the garment Sister Jake called a camisole and the girls called a tit-bit. From the corridors came the clamor of the first bell. A laden silence, then shrieking: girls being let loose from the dormitory wing to flood forward into the day school. The chatter drowned out whatever clarity of thought Alice had. It was with a certain relief that she answered Sister John Bosco.

  “When Sister Vincent de Paul comes back,” she said, “I’ll decide then.” By the opening of Sister John Bosco’s exhausted mouth, to protest or forbid, Alice saw that she had been heard very clearly, and understood.

  MY FAIR LADY

  Alice had made a secret bargain with God. A holy contract. Make Sister Vincent de Paul not die, and then I will think about the Harrigans. I can’t care about everybody in the world at once; I’m not like You: I have a smallish heart. And I’m stubborn, Alice reminded God. The nuns all say so, and You should know it by now.

  But in return God was testing Alice’s nerve. On the one hand, Sister Vincent de Paul, who didn’t return to the Sacred Heart Home for Girls. On the other, the Harrigans. For fifteen years they had waited; neither God’s grace nor the luck of the Irish had allowed Mrs. Harrigan to get pregnant. They’d swallowed their pride at last and gone to the orphanage, but they weren’t in a mood to hang around now.

  Sister John Bosco refused their request to see Alice. They wanted to explain why they couldn’t stand the suspense and were moving ahead with Plan B. “Cut it clean, it’s kindest, I won’t have it otherwise,” the nun declared. But Alice happened to be on her way to singing practice—hah! that she could sing and also hah! that her route took her through the front hall—and she just happened to pass the parlor as the Harrigans were leaving.

  “Look, it’s little Alice,” said Mr. Harrigan, not meanly. He was hardly taller than Alice, and she flinched to be reminded of her gangly limbs. Mrs. Harrigan smiled. She was a nut case, Alice decided. Her hair was an ad for Breck; her whole head looked sprayed and polished like a chestnut bowling ball. Her breasts really filled out that Maidenform bra, Alice thought a little coolly, a little jealously. “I knew I’d see you again,” Mrs. Harrigan gushed at Alice. She wore gloves and a pleated skirt, and in a furry circlet around her neck a fox bit its own tail. To keep from laughing out loud at its owner? wondered Alice. “Alice,” moaned Mrs. Harrigan, “Alice, we’d have you if you’d have us. Oh, Moss, I feel so awful. But we can’t wait. Oh, Moss, whoever knew motherhood would be so hard?”

  “Steady on, Eileen, it hasn’t begun yet,” said Mr. Moss Harrigan. “It’s the girl’s choice, and we come second. Fair enough.” But he grinned at Alice as if he knew his wife was really loopy.

  “Alice, move along to where you’re expected,” said Sister John Boss in a voice like tarnish.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Harrigan,” said Alice. She tried to think about the weight of God and Satan in the heavens, and Sister Vincent de Paul getting hurt while the sky hung on hinges above, but could only mutter, “Sorry, I mean very very,” and scurry along.

  “We could’ve come to understand her. I was good at languages in high school,” said Mrs. Harrigan to Sister John Boss. “Maybe we just never got through to her.”

  “Alice is working on her own agenda, at her own pace,” said the nun soothingly, then more things Alice couldn’t hear. Her last sight of the Harrigans was in the tall, black-flecked mirror as they clucked and bowed to Sister John Bosco. What’s one way of life next to another? thought Alice. I could have gone away with them and loved it, or hated it. At least here I know what I’m up against.

  Still, she felt cheated. It was certainly within almighty God’s almighty godliness to have restored Sister Vincent de Paul in time. Sure, Alice might still have chosen against the Harrigans, but at least it’d have been her real choice. God knew she was sacrificing for Sister Vincent de Paul, bribing Him so that the burned nun would get better. Alice didn’t care. If a bribe worked, it worked.

  Only it wasn’t working yet. She had to suffer some more for God to relent and be merciful as everyone insisted He was. Sister Vincent de Paul, for all she knew, was no more than a lumpy corpse in a glass coffin at some side altar somewhere. Waxy cheeks and folded fingers. A new veil to cover the bubbled scalp, the huge shoe done up with a fine flourish of its laces. Maybe even studded in the heel and toe with taps, as the girls had always promised themselves they’d do for her. And outside the walls of the coffin, where the world still wriggled on, beeswax candles making that stiff, hot smell in the cold, stone-squeezed air. A few wildflowers in a jelly jar. But who was there to mourn Sister Vincent de Paul?

  The good sisters of Mind Your Own Sweet Business wouldn’t answer Alice’s questions directly. “She’s safely at rest,” they’d say. “She’s resting comfortably.” What a crock! For one thing Sister Vincent de Paul never, but never rested, comfortably or otherwise
. Grimace though she might at the strain to her joints brought on by her bad foot, she was an up-and-at-’em creature. If she was really resting, she wouldn’t be resting; she’d be twisting in the bed, clanging a spoon against the metal don’t-fall-out rails, knitting with her IV tubes out of boredom, boredom, boredom. “I have no mind,” she used to say in the kitchen. “God said I could either live on the street like a tramp, or cook in a convent. Not for me the classroom or the hospital! Wrong kind of bedside manner for a nurse, and no brain to back it up! No brain to deal with the kids! So I chose. Do I mind? Do I mind my choice? Alice?”

  “Do you mind your choice?” asked Alice.

  “Not mo-yound. Mind. Do I mind giving up the hot-cha-cha?”

  “Do you miiiiind giving up the hotchy-chotchy?”

  “No I do not!” A thump of fist into a tired pillow of bread dough. “Not in the least! Don’t mind the choices, Alice; mind the details! The smell of this bread! Here! Stick your nose in it! Right into it!” She’d demonstrated, coming up gluey and smelling raw as ripped, wet brown paper. “Mind the moments, Alice, and the choices don’t make a whit of difference.”

  But you like to cook, Alice wanted to point out. With her face plunged into dough, however, the time to make that remark came and went.

  And what choice might Sister Vincent de Paul have had in resting comfortably? Or was that term just nuns’ hand-lotion niceness, like the Final Slumber, the Bus Ride Home to Jesus, the Great Convent in the Sky, the Eternal Sleep of the Just? Sister Vincent de Paul’s room hadn’t been cleared out; that was some consolation. While delivering linen to the wardrobe outside the sisters’ wing, Alice had stolen for a moment into forbidden territory. Sister Vincent de Paul had a Snoopy cutout on the inside of her door that Alice had made her last Christmas. And there was the door, open, Snoopy taped on it still. Inside: a veil on a hook, a tidily made bed, a bottle of Geritol on the windowsill. Not so much as a tendril of dust. They hadn’t taken down the Snoopy; that was all the proof Alice needed that, platitudes aside, Sister Vincent de Paul was still somewhere in the land of the living.

  Staring for a minute at the brown linoleum floor, waxed so thick as to look an inch deep in water, Alice stood on her upside downness. If Sister Vincent de Paul was out there languishing, she would by Christ (a prayer, not a swear) bring her home through her own good works and elevation of spirit.

  “Alice, you’re dawdling,” observed Sister John Boss from across the brown lake of the front hall. Alice leaped over to the stairs, stepping adroitly on her reflection’s soles.

  This was Saturday, when the daily rules were somewhat loosened. Things were meant to be fun. And often they were. Today, for instance, some of the girls were going to practice their parts for a student production of the musical comedy My Fair Lady.

  The story was a delicious one. (The whole school had gone to see the movie, which they loved because for once it wasn’t a Bible movie.) It was about a poor, young flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who couldn’t speak well to save her life. She sang pretty well, though, and a man who taught speaking lessons met her. He sort of fell in love with her, although the student production wasn’t emphasizing that part very much. He taught her to speak like a queen, however, and then she got to wear fancy clothes and go to parties. She was beautiful, like the Ugly Duckling all grown up. The girls of Sacred Heart were doing the female roles, and the boys of Saint Mary’s across the river in Albany were learning the male roles.

  Alice, to everyone’s surprise, including her own, had been chosen to play Eliza Doolittle. Alice’s speech problems gave her a convincing advantage in the part. But because it was such a long show, Alice only played Eliza up till Eliza learned to speak clearly. Then Naomi Matthews played perfect-tongued Eliza through the end of the play.

  Sister Isaac Jogues was waiting in the rec room. The wreck room. The other girls were annoyed and showing it when Alice arrived, late. She hadn’t known they’d all be there. She had hoped this would be a strictly solo rehearsal. “Sorry,” she panted.

  “Not sow-oww-wee, Alice,” said Sister Ike.

  “Not celery, Alice,” said Rebecca Luke.

  “Can it, Rebecca, or I’ll can you,” said Sister Ike. Rebecca made a face and popped her gum defiantly. Gum was allowed in the wreck room, but it still seemed disobedient and fun to flaunt it, especially when a nun was there.

  Rebecca Luke, Sarah Corinth, and Naomi the-queen-of-the-hive Matthews. Alice had looked forward to being alone with Sister Ike and maybe pumping her about Sister Vincent de Paul. But the wreck room was now a zoo for prima donnas. They made Alice sick. Only after a minute did she notice little Ruth Peters, thumb jammed in her gooey mouth as usual, lying on the battered sofa and kicking at the pillows. Alice’s self-pity lightened up. Tough it out, she told herself. Kick out like Ruth. You can learn something from a four-year-old.

  “All right, this’ll be noisy but I don’t know how else to manage it.” Sister Ike took over. “Naomi, put the record on low. Practice that ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ section, where the chorus parts come in. It’s notes you’re after, not volume. Can you do that?”

  “Alice can’t hear; she won’t be bothered,” said Naomi. “We can be loud.”

  “I can too hear,” said Alice.

  “Oh, sow-oww-wee, forgive me.” Naomi flounced away. Her star role was definitely going to her head. “Come on, Sarah and Rebecca. Let’s do this right.” The three intergalactic comets flowed away to the other side of the room. Alice noticed she and Sister Ike were suddenly in the empty half of the room.

  “Now Alice, your part is just as important. I hope you understand this,” said Sister Ike. She thumped out a C major chord to bring Alice in. “The show won’t work unless your character works. We’re all very pleased you are taking part. It shows real team spirit. And this is such a nice show.”

  Across the room the record revolved steadily, thirty-three revolutions per minute. Julie Andrews from the turntable and Naomi Matthews in the flesh pealed in a duet. Julie Andrews sang with notes coated in ice, like the trees two weeks ago when the snow and rain joined up. You could see and hear through her words clear to the other side. Transparencies. Even Alice could. Naomi Matthews, in Alice’s humble opinion, sounded like slush. When the violins and flutes arabesqued up to a jittery pinnacle, Naomi’s voice declared Eliza-the-character’s love of dancing by going shrill and high, all out of pitch, loud as a police siren.

  Ruth Peters reared herself up on the sofa and said loudly, “She can too hear.” So they piped down a bit and adjusted the volume, though Naomi continued to make broad gestures of how she would dance in her white nightgown and sing with perfect diction, throwing her arms out like this, like this, like this. If that’s what I’m going to be like when I improve my speaking, thought Alice, forget it. I’d rather mumble.

  “Alice.” Sister Ike knocked her fist against Alice’s surprised forehead. “Hello in there. I’m playing the intro, and you’re supposed to be listening.”

  Sister Ike cascaded her fingers again in a little Highland fling across the keys. Alice attended. She opened her mouth and sang when the time seemed right. The song was a listing of everything that would make Eliza happy. Alice wasn’t very strong on remembering words. “What I’d like blah blah blah some-time. Can’t re-mem-ber the rest some-time, blah blah blah—”

  “Words, Alice,” sang Sister Ike, mouthing them exaggeratedly so Alice could read her lips.

  “And life would be so heavenly!” She always remembered that line. The real song said it a different way, but the nuns didn’t approve of the word loverly around the home. It was Alice’s favorite line and she gave it gusto. Ruth Peters applauded. Naomi had turned her back, and her shoulders were shaking. There were twisted, bitten little smiles on Rebecca’s and Sarah’s faces.

  “I can’t do this!” cried Alice.

  Sister Ike went plowing on with the next verse.

  “And life would be so heavenly!” sang Alice grimly. “Heavenly! Heavenly!
Heavenly! Heavenly!”

  It wasn’t very heavenly, but that apparently was why they were practicing. They went over it six, eight, ten times, till even Ruth Peters was mouthing the words Alice couldn’t remember. Naomi meanwhile Rained in Spain. She practiced being Eliza Doolittle at the ball, flouncing out her imaginary gown as if dogs were nosing naughtily up at her and she had to shoo them away with little backhanded motions. Finally Sister John Bosco called for her over the PA and she left, her bodyguards bobbing along behind her. Little Ruth Peters quietly wet the sofa rather than get up and leave Sister Isaac Jogues and Alice. Ruth was sort of in love with Alice.

  Sister Ike kept gamely on for some time. Finally she sighed, though, and closed the lid of the piano. “Look at the time. Alice, I guess you’d better go downstairs and give this sheet music to Father Laverty. He’s driving over to Saint Mary’s in Albany to say Mass for the boys this afternoon. He can deliver the music to Brother Antoine. Give him this envelope with cash in it, too. It’s the money we owe him for the record album.” Brother Antoine over there was the director of the boys’ roles. He’d be training Professor Higgins and Eliza’s father and the boyfriend, Freddy. Sacred Heart and Saint Mary’s would never be ready to put on this joint production in a month, of course. It was doomed to failure. Alice didn’t even know why she was wasting her time.

  “Yes, Sister,” she said, and went downstairs.

  The hall was empty. Most of the girls had gone for a Saturday matinee of some boring Walt Disney comedy with dogs and kids in it. Sister Francis de Sales was the only one around on the first floor. She was transcribing notes from a taped lecture and removed her headphones only when Alice made signs of please. If everyone could lip-read as well as she could, Alice thought smugly, the world would run very smoothly.