Saints for All Occasions Page 20

  Her last hesitation when she thought about taking final vows was Patrick. She had been picturing him as a baby all this time, even as she knew he was getting older. She lit a candle in the chapel each year on his birthday, watching the flame, thinking of him as he turned four, then five, then six, then seven. What did a seven-year-old boy look like?

  She would have to give him up once and for all if she stayed. She knew that she already had. He was only a memory now. A medal in her pocket. Still, she thought of him, and of Nora, all the time. She herself might have once imagined women running off to convents to hide from some unwanted truth. But her experience proved just the opposite. To sit alone with your thoughts in silence for so long, you had no choice but to confront them. The calm came not from slipping a habit over one’s head but from facing down all that plagued you and coming out on the other side.

  After much prayer, and with Sister Placid’s encouragement, she wrote to Nora at last. Nora wrote back with news of her children. They corresponded once every few months after that. Their notes at first were cordial, formal. Nothing like their relationship had been. But they grew warmer in time.

  In their sixth year at the abbey, Sister Placid took her final vows, becoming Mother Placid. Sister Cecilia still wasn’t sure she would stay. She thought of Patrick more and more. She had believed she was past it, but the yearning for him returned. She dreamt of him. Finally, she told Mother Lucy Joseph what she was wrestling with.

  She had always feared that were it ever made known, she’d be penalized or forced to leave for keeping such a secret. But there were nuns here, widows mostly, who had grown children. Mother Lucy Joseph, in her calm way, said that if the child was safe and happy, if she had asked God’s forgiveness for any wrongdoing on her own part, then she ought to feel forgiven.

  “I’ve always had this belief that I would go back for him one day,” she said. “Maybe it was a fantasy to begin with, but if I stay here, that possibility dies.”

  “Perhaps you need to see him once more to be certain,” Mother Lucy Joseph said.

  And so she wrote to Nora. If you ever want to visit the abbey, you could bring your children on our annual fair day next month. I wouldn’t be able to spend much time, but we could at least say hello.

  She put it that way, your children, so as not to scare her sister.

  Nora took two weeks to reply. She wrote that she had never told them that she had a sister. She was sorry, but that was the truth of it. Sister Cecilia wrote back right away. They don’t have to know who I am. I’d just love to lay eyes on them.

  On him.

  Finally, Nora said they would come.

  Sister Cecilia watched the gates all morning, waiting for them to drive in. On this one day a year, the abbey was open to the public, a fund-raiser where people could see how the farm worked. But the nuns were meant to observe their usual silence. She knew she would only have a minute.

  When she saw them emerge from the parking lot, she walked toward them, meeting them on the dirt path that ran alongside the sheepfold. Nora wore a smart skirt suit and heels, pink lipstick, like the kind she herself had once worn. She looked entirely like a woman now, all the girlishness gone from her.

  The children too were neatly dressed, the boys in jackets and pressed pants, the girl only two years old, wearing a yellow party dress and Mary Janes, a white straw hat, a pair of white socks trimmed with lace.

  “Good morning,” Sister Cecilia said, meeting Nora’s eye.

  Nora didn’t recognize her. “Good morning, Sister.”

  Slowly, she saw the fact of it sinking in on Nora’s face. She let out a laugh.

  “Theresa?”

  Nora looked like she might crumble for a moment, but then she stood erect.

  “This is my friend, Sister Cecilia,” she said. “Say hello, children.”

  “Hello,” they replied in unison.

  It surprised her that Nora and Charlie’s children spoke with American accents. It seemed impossible that the two of them could create something so entirely of this place.

  John and Bridget looked alike. They looked like Charlie. Patrick was tall and beautiful. He put her in mind of a man she had not even thought of in years. Theresa couldn’t take her eyes off the child. She wanted to ruffle his shiny black hair. To kiss him all over his face.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” Nora said. “I hope you’re happy here.”

  “I am,” she said. “How’s Charlie?”

  “He’s fine. He’s taking the boys on a camping trip next week.”

  They held each other’s gaze a moment longer, until a commotion pulled them apart. Patrick and John were wrestling in the dirt, laughing.

  “Brothers,” Nora said with a shake of her head, just as the little girl jumped on top of the pile.

  “Bridget!” Nora shouted, her voice stern. “Your dress!”

  She shook her head. “That one gives me no peace. She reminds me of you.”

  They both smiled.

  Then, “Up! All of you!” Nora commanded.

  This was not the shy and stammering older sister she had once known. Nora was a proper mother now. The children fell in line.

  She looked at her boy. Patrick had a family. A brother and a sister, a mother and father. Things she never could have given him. Right now, at this moment, she believed that they had both ended up where they belonged.

  “I’d better be off,” she said. “So much work to do. I hope you enjoy the day. There’ll be sack races and demonstrations with the cows and horses later. If you hurry to the dairy, you can learn how cheese is made.”

  “Let’s say good-bye now,” Nora instructed the children.

  They stood in a row, and Sister Cecilia hugged each of them. A small embrace for Bridget and for John, and a longer, tighter one for Patrick. She bent to smell his hair, allowed herself this one indulgence.

  She hugged Nora. She had intended to apologize, but instead she whispered, “Thank you.”

  One month later, she took her final vows.

  Part Five

  2009

  13

  NORA ALWAYS PLANNED THE WAKES. Made the phone calls and summoned the priest, arranged with the undertaker what the deceased would wear and whose lilies should sit closest to the casket. She decided who would be invited early, to pray over the body before the crowd came. She put someone in charge of the guest book and someone else in charge of placing framed photographs around the room, on mantelpieces and end tables, though later she would rearrange them when that person wasn’t looking.

  Nora had everyone back to the house after, nothing fancy, just cold cuts and lasagna, highballs and beer. They’d stay as late as they stayed. Somehow, by the time the funeral ended next morning, she would have managed to make a feast. Honey-glazed ham, au gratin potatoes, Parker House rolls, and green beans. Cookies and hermits and pies. In recent years, some had begun to suspect that the desserts were store-bought, though Nora denied it. A SWAT team with dogs couldn’t find a bakery box in her kitchen trash can, or in the barrels behind her garage.

  Her own funeral was planned and paid for. Matching coffins had been selected one sunny Saturday twenty years back, when she and Charlie were in their early fifties. They purchased a burial plot so prematurely that the man they bought it from ran off with the money and they had to pay a second time. Nora had made clear—not in writing, but by stating it on numerous occasions since her children were young—that the flowers should be all white, that her funeral Mass should begin with “Ave Maria” and end with a stirring rendition of “On Eagle’s Wings.”

  When Charlie died, she made the arrangements herself, though everyone offered assistance, told her to take it easy. The routine was a comfort. She did not know how to be a widow, but she knew how to make a dip for the potato chips out of sour cream and powdered onion soup mix. She knew exactly how many glasses they would dirty. She knew that if someone spilled red wine on the sofa, a robust sprinkling of salt would pull up the stain.

 
; Patrick’s death was something else entirely. And still, she did not take to her bed or beg for a pill that would make her fall asleep and forget. She just got on with it.

  —

  It was noon and the wake was at four o’clock. She had fifteen pounds of potatoes peeled, two lasagnas in the oven, and three dozen stuffed mushrooms prepared in the fridge. She had been up at five to scrub the floors, to wash the vegetables, to bake the hermits, to get the ice buckets from the cellar, to roll fifty plastic forks and knives into purple paper napkins, each of which she tied with a thin white ribbon.

  All morning, neighbors had come by, dropping off coffee cakes and casseroles. Eileen Delaney made a point of being first at the door, blue morning light in the window, a stack of baking dishes in her outstretched arms. A black puffy coat swallowed her from chin to ankle, like she was walking around inside a sleeping bag.

  When they first met, Nora thought Eileen was a busybody, a pest, not to be trusted. But thirty-five years had passed. Now Eileen was probably her closest friend. They had both lost their husbands, a circumstance that evoked either pity or fear. To say you were a widow was to remind everyone else that one day they too would be alone, and if not alone, then dead. Terrible to think this was the outcome of even a good marriage. It wasn’t a topic to bring up at book club, but Nora and Eileen talked about it some, and that helped.

  Eileen was doing online dating. She thought Nora ought to try it too, but Nora couldn’t imagine what she would say to a new man at this point in her life. Never mind what she would make of some stranger’s body, or he of hers. Eileen had always been a flirt, lingering longer than she should have when she took Charlie’s coat at a party, telling him how handsome he looked. Old age had distilled her down to her essence, as, Nora supposed, it had done to them all.

  Eileen wanted to come in, keep her company, but today, Nora didn’t want a soul in her kitchen. She told her to go.

  “My boys send their love. They’ll both be there this afternoon,” Eileen said, lingering on the stoop. “Tommy’s divorce was finalized yesterday, by the way. Just between us. Don’t tell him I said anything.”

  “Of course I won’t,” Nora said.

  She was appalled at herself for being capable of brightening, but she brightened, the tiniest bit.

  Tommy was the only boyfriend of Bridget’s she had ever known about, and only then because Eileen had come upon the two of them kissing in her basement rec room when she went down to put a load of clothes in the wash. Around the same time, Babs had discovered her daughter Peggy was taking the Pill. Nora was seized by the fear that Bridget might become pregnant. She searched her drawers while she was at school but found nothing. Even so, she forbade Bridget from bringing boys into the house. Later, Nora feared that she had driven the point home too hard. To this day, Bridget had never once brought a man home.

  The romance between Tommy and Bridget was ages ago. High school. But Nora held on to it. Tommy Delaney gave her solace when a certain unnameable fear buzzed at the back of her skull.

  —

  As she set the potatoes to boil, Nora imagined the undertaker down at O’Dell’s, getting Patrick ready.

  She was in and out of his apartment yesterday, feeling guilty, as if her presence were an intrusion. Which was absurd. The dead had no privacy. She would have to clean the whole place out in a week. Even so, she went straight for the closet, kept her head down. She found the good suit he wore to weddings and wakes, a shirt, clean underwear, shoes and socks, and then she left the bedroom at once.

  Her grandmother always said a dead man’s spirit didn’t leave his home until his body was in the ground. A silly country woman’s superstition. And yet Nora could swear the rooms were still warm with Patrick’s presence, as if at any second he might jump out from behind a door, that mischievous smile on his face—Surprise! I was only joking, Ma.

  On her way out, she took in the sight of his small, tidy living room, the remote controls lined up on the coffee table. In the kitchen, there wasn’t a dish in the sink. Nora had only been there when Patrick was expecting her. She felt proud, seeing how neat he kept the apartment for his own sake. It said something about a person.

  She wished she could ask him what had happened. Already, she understood that the not knowing would compound the pain for as long as she was alive. She wondered what Brian thought, but he hadn’t come home last night. He wasn’t answering his phone.

  When Nora got the call from the hospital, Brian was still at work. He had come home in the meantime, assuming her car was in the garage and she was asleep. He had gone to bed, unaware that anything had changed. What a thing to wake up to.

  She had last seen him yesterday morning. He sat at the table, a paper napkin tucked into his shirt, a sausage link between two fingers, raised to his lips. Had it been another day, Nora would have told him to use a fork. As it was, she said, “There’s something I have to tell you. I wish I didn’t have to, but I do.” Brian held the sausage midair while she spoke, expressionless, frozen in place. When she was finished, he dropped it on the plate and walked out. He hadn’t been back.

  She knew he didn’t always sleep at home, but until last night he had at least had the good manners to give the illusion of having done so. Sometime after dawn, Nora might be awakened by the reassuring sound of Brian opening the front door, creeping up the stairs. Last night, she was wide awake until morning, waiting for it. She wondered who he was with, how he was getting through.

  She had been greedy, keeping him home with her. She often voiced concerns about his job, his aimlessness. When his old high school baseball coach mentioned at church that Brian would make a good replacement for him, Nora called the man the next day and asked if he was serious. When he said that he was, come to think of it, she told him to try again, that sometimes Brian needed a little push.

  But Nora had never suggested that he move out. In her mind, his presence was the one thing stopping her from being old. She still had someone to look after. Brian was quiet. It was easy to dismiss him, as Bridget and John did. But he was very sensitive. An observer. Nora talked and talked to Brian. He never said much in response, but she knew he was listening, which was more than she could say for the others.

  John had come to see her yesterday, with Julia and Maeve. They brought sandwiches and talked about everything but Patrick—the cold snap and the school play and the food. Nora wanted them to acknowledge the loss. She wanted them to say his name.

  It made her sick to think of John and Patrick, estranged for no good reason. She had pleaded with John to put things right. He was the one who needed to do it, since he was the one who had initiated the silence. If only he would say hello to his brother. How hard was hello? She could barely look at John now.

  But Nora had been happy to see her granddaughter. They took Maeve out of school early, which she herself never would have done. Whether or not it was a good idea, she was grateful. Maeve was getting older. Nora wanted to hold tight to her childhood. Little ones made everything better—there was no point in Christmas presents without believers, no reason to take pictures of a bunch of slightly overweight, pasty adults. Brian was her last hope for more grandchildren, and Brian was in no rush.

  When Maeve went to the bathroom, Julia whispered, “I’m worried about how tomorrow will be for her.”

  Nora had told them a hundred times to take Maeve to a stranger’s wake for practice, but Julia thought it might be scarring. That was the word she used.

  Over the years, Nora and Eileen had made a sport of critiquing their daughters-in-law. She regretted now some of the things she had said. Early on, she didn’t know what to make of John’s wife. They didn’t get married in the church. Julia said she wasn’t sure she wanted children. Nora asked John, if they weren’t doing it for God or for children, then who was their marriage for? “It’s for us,” he said, as if it should be clear.

  Mostly, in the beginning, Julia and Nora communicated through Bridget’s dog at family gatherings. They passed en
tire holidays this way. Julia would say, “What are you looking at, Rocco?” And Nora might add, “Rocco, do you see a squirrel? Tell Grandma. Do you?”

  In time, after Maeve, it had gotten easier. But there were still reminders that John had married someone not quite like them. Of course, John himself wasn’t quite like them anymore.

  Julia had suggested that Nora hire a caterer. Let yourself off the hook. Give yourself a break. She didn’t understand that seeing off your dead wasn’t a responsibility that you foisted onto strangers.

  Years ago, Nora’s sisters-in-law would have helped her on a day like today. Babs would be bragging about her children, and Nora would be annoyed, jealous that Babs’s brood never seemed to give her a moment’s worry. Kitty would be pouring herself some gin as she trimmed the string beans, making Nora nervous. She missed their company now. Babs, five years gone. Kitty living out her days in a retirement community, doing watercolors, playing bingo, flirting with the few surviving men.

  When the phone rang, Nora felt a small burst of relief.

  “Brian?” she said, sure it was him.

  A young woman’s voice she didn’t recognize said, “Mrs. Rafferty?”

  Nora almost hung up. A telemarketer at a time like this.

  Then the woman said, “This is Sister Alma at the Abbey of the Immaculate Conception. We spoke yesterday.”

  “Oh,” Nora said. “Yes.”

  She had regretted making the call as soon as it was over. It hadn’t been kind of her. A strange impulse, to lash out at Theresa after all this time.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you must be busy. But Mother Cecilia asked me to call ahead and tell you that she’ll be arriving at three o’clock.”

  “Arriving?”

  “She’s coming down to Boston to be with your family for the wake and funeral.”