Christine Falls: A Novele (9 page)

A YOUNG NUN WITH PROMINENT TEETH OPENED THE DOOR AND STOOD
aside and motioned her to enter. At the sight of the long, gaunt room something inside her shrank back, and for a moment she was a child again, quaking on the threshold of Mother Superior’s office. Massive mahogany table, six high-backed chairs that no one had ever sat on, glass-fronted bookcases, a coatless coat rack; in a wall niche a three-quarters-life-sized statue of the Virgin stood disconsolate in pale blue and white, holding between two fingertips and a thumb, in an attitude of dainty misgiving, a large white lily, sign of her purity. At the other end, under a muddy picture of some sainted martyr, there was an antique desk with lamp and leather-bound blotter and two telephones—why two? Somehow, without her noticing, the young nun had left, shutting the door behind her without a sound. She stood in the midst of silence, the child in her arms asleep in its blanket. The trees outside the windows were unfamiliar, or did they only seem so? Everything here seemed strange to her, still.

Another door, one that she had not noticed, flew open as if a wind were behind it. What entered was a tall nun, high-shouldered as a man, with a narrow, stark, pale face. She came forward quickly, both hands held out, her heavy black habit audibly displacing air, her face smiling and seeming at the same time surprised at itself, as if smiles were strangers to it. This was Sister Stephanus.

“Miss Ruttledge,” she said, taking Brenda’s free hand in both of hers, “welcome to Boston, and St. Mary’s.”

She had the usual nun’s musty smell. Brenda could not stop herself recalling the stories that were told at the convent when she was a girl about the sisters being forbidden ever to be naked and having to wear a special sort of swimming costume in the bath.

“I’m very glad to be here, Sister,” she said, in a voice that annoyed her by its seeming meekness. She was no longer a child, she told herself, and this nun had no authority over her. She drew up her shoulders and stared back stoutly into the woman’s coldly beaming face. “Boston is very nice,” she added. That, too, sounded weak and silly. The baby kicked her in the side through its blanket, as if demanding to be introduced; quite the little miss already. The nun’s brittle smile slid downwards.

“And this must be the baby,” she said.

“Yes,” Brenda said, and held aside the rim of the blanket with her finger to show the tiny, livid face with its rosebud mouth and permanently startled blue eyes. “This is little Christine.”

CLAIRE STAFFORD WAS WONDERING IF THE DRESS SHE HAD CHOSEN
was suitable for the occasion. You never knew, with nuns. It was green, with white trimming on the hem, and a scalloped neckline—not low, but maybe showing too much of her throat and the freckled slope under her collarbone. She would keep the green scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, and even keep her coat on, if she was allowed. She had not wanted to ask Andy for an opinion; you never knew with Andy, either. Mostly he did not notice what she was wearing, then suddenly, when she least expected it, he would turn on her and say something, some mean remark, mostly. Once he had told her she looked like a whore. She would never forget it. They were living at the time in the rooming house on Scranton Street. She was wearing jeans and white mules and a scarlet blouse knotted at the waist. He had come in after a long drive down from Albany, looking hot and tired and mad, and walked right past her into the galley kitchen and grabbed a beer from the icebox and said it to her over his shoulder. “Honey, you look like a ten-dollar whore.” He pronounced it
hoor,
just like her daddy did. She would not let herself cry; that would have made him even madder. Even in her hurt she saw yet again how beautiful he was, leaning against the icebox in his boots and work pants and stained white sweatshirt, his rodeo rider’s forearms gleaming and that lock of hair black as a crow’s wing falling across his forehead. The most beautiful boy she had ever known.

Today he was wearing a pair of pressed dark pants over his cowboy boots, a white shirt with a woollen knit tie, and a sport jacket in tan checks with broad lapels. She had told him he looked nice but he had scowled and said he felt like Bozo the Clown. Now as they walked up the driveway to St. Mary’s he kept running a finger around the inside of his shirt collar and jerking up his chin and sighing. He was nervous, she could see that. He had talked nonstop in the cab, complaining about the pay he was losing by having to come here with her, but now he was silent, squinting up through the fall sunlight at the high, flat front of the orphanage that seemed to grow steadily higher the nearer they got to it. She, too, was a little scared, but not of the place. For she knew St. Mary’s, knew it like a home.

The door was opened by a young nun she did not recognize. Her name was Sister Anne. She would have been pretty but for her buckteeth. She led them across the wide entrance hall and down the corridor toward Sister Stephanus’s office. The familiar smells—floor polish, carbolic soap, institutional cooking, babies—stirred in Claire an excited mixture of emotions. She had been happy here, or not unhappy. Somewhere high above, a choir of children was signing a hymn in ragged unison.

“You used to work here, didn’t you?” Sister Anne asked. She had a South Boston accent. She had avoided looking at Andy, made shy, Claire guessed, by his cowboy’s good looks. “How do you like being a lady of leisure?” It was said good-naturedly.

Claire laughed. “Oh, I really miss the place,” she said.

Sister Stephanus looked up as they entered. She was seated at her desk, with a stack of papers before her. Claire suspected the pose was deliberate, but then chided herself for the bad thought.

“Ah, Claire, here you are. And Andy, too.”

“Good morning, Sister.”

Andy said nothing, only nodded. He had put on a sulky look that was supposed to cover up his anxiousness. Despite herself, Claire experienced a brief surge of exultation: this was her place, not his; her moment.

Sister Stephanus invited them to sit, and Andy brought up a second chair from the six around the table.

“You must be very excited, both of you,” the nun said, leaning forward with her clasped hands resting on the papers on the desk. She smiled brightly from one of them to the other. “It’s not every day you become a parent!”

Claire smiled and nodded, her lips pressed tight. Beside her Andy shifted his legs, making the chair creak. She was not sure how she was expected to take the nun’s words. Such a strange thing to say, straight out like that. In all the years she had spent here—first as an orphan after Ma died and her daddy had run off, then working in the kitchens and later in the nursery—she could never figure out Sister Stephanus, or the other nuns, either, for that matter, never could quite get onto their way of thinking. They had been good to her, though, and she owed them everything—everything except Andy, that is: him she had got by herself, this dark-eyed, drawling, dangerous, lean-limbed young husband of hers. Trying not to, she pictured him as she had glimpsed him in the mirror while he was getting dressed that morning, the neat, unblemished, honey-colored back and the taut line of his stomach where it ran down into darkness. Her man.

Sister Stephanus opened flat before her on the desk a brown cardboard file and put on a pair of wire-framed spectacles, pushing the earpieces in at the stiff sides of the wimple almost as if, Claire thought, she were giving her face a double injection. Claire blushed a little; the strange things that came into her head! The nun riffled through the papers in the file, now and then stopping to read a line or two, frowning. Then she looked up, and this time fixed on Andy.

“You do understand the position, Andy, don’t you?” she said, speaking slowly and separating the words carefully, as if she were talking to a child. “This is not an adoption, not in the official sense. St. Mary’s, as Claire can tell you, has its own…arrangements. The Lord, I always say, is our legislator.” She glanced between them with eyebrows lifted, awaiting acknowledgment of the quip. Claire smiled dutifully, and Andy shifted his legs again, crossing them first one way and then the other. He had not said a word since they had come into the room. “And you understand too, both of you,” the nun continued, “that when the time comes it will be Mr. Crawford and his people who will decide on what education is suitable for the child, and so forth? You’ll be consulted, of course, but all those decisions will be theirs, in the end.”

“We understand, Sister,” Claire said.

“It’s important that you do,” the nun said, in the same grave, unrelenting voice that sounded like a voice on the radio, or something that had been recorded. Although she was from South Boston she had an Englishwoman’s accent, or what Claire thought an Englishwoman’s accent would be, refined and crisp. “All too often we find that young people forget where their child came from, and who it is that has the final say in his or her upbringing.”

There was silence then in the room for a long, solemn moment. Faintly from outside came the children’s voices, singing.
Sweet heart of Jesus, fount of love and mercy!
Claire felt her mind begin to fidget in that way it did sometimes, when her thoughts seemed to be flying asunder like the parts of a machine breaking up under pressure.
Please, God,
she prayed,
don’t let me have one of my headaches
. She forced herself to concentrate. She had already heard all these things that Sister Stephanus was saying. She supposed they had to make sure that everything was clear so no one could come back later and say the conditions that they laid down had not been properly explained. The nun was reading in the file again and now she turned once more to Andy.

“There was something else I wanted to mention,” she said. “Your work, Andy. It must take you away from home for long periods?”

Andy looked at her warily. He began to speak but had to clear his throat and start again. “It can be a few days,” he said, “on a run up to the border, a week or more if I go across to the Lakes.”

The nun was impressed. “That far?” she said, sounding almost wistful.

“But I make sure to call home every day,” Andy said. “Don’t I, sweetheart?” While he was saying it he turned his face full toward Claire, boring his eyes into hers, as if he thought she might deny it. She would not think of denying it, of course, even though it was not strictly true. She loved the way that Andy spoke—
Doanah, sweet-hawt?
—like she imagined the winds out on the western plains would sound.

Sister Stephanus too seemed to have caught that lovely, lonesome note in his voice, and now it was she who had to clear her throat.

“All the same,” she said, not so much turning to Claire as turning away from Andy, “it must be hard for you, sometimes?”

“Oh, but it won’t be, anymore,” Claire said in a rush, and then bit her lip; she knew she should have denied ever having found life with Andy anything less than sweet and easy; she hoped he would not pick up on it, later. “I mean,” she finished lamely, “with the baby for company.”

“And when we get the new place she’ll have a whole passel of new friends,” Andy said. He had found his confidence now, and was playing up the cowboy act and the crooked, John Wayne smile—after all, the nun was a woman, Claire found herself thinking, with a faint sourness, and there was nothing Andy could not do with a woman, when he put his mind to it.

“Yet I wonder,” the nun said thoughtfully, as though speaking to herself, “if there might not be a possibility of some other kind of work, some other kind of driving. A taxicab, for instance?”

That put a stop to Andy’s smiling, and he sat up as if he had been stung.

“I wouldn’t want to stop working for Crawford Transport,” he said. “With Claire giving up her job here, and then the baby…well, we’ll need all the cash we can get. There’s the overtime, and bonuses for them long draws up to Canada and the Lakes.”

Sister Stephanus leaned back in her chair and made a steeple of her fingertips and studied him, trying to judge, it seemed, if his tone was one of genuine concern or guarded threat. “Yes, well,” she said, with a faint shrug. Her eyes drifted to the file again. “Perhaps I might speak to Mr. Crawford about it…”

“That’d be real good,” Andy said, too eagerly, he knew, and she gave him a quick, sharp glance that made him blink and sit back in his chair. He forced himself to relax then and resumed his cowpoke’s easy grin. “I mean, it’d be good if I had a job nearer home and the baby, and all.”

Sister Stephanus went on studying him. The silence in the room seemed to creak. Claire realized that all this time she had been clutching a handkerchief, and when she opened her fist now it was stuck there, a damp lump in her palm. Then Sister Stephanus shut the file with a snap and stood up.

“All right,” she said. “Come along.”

She led them briskly to the door and out.

“You haven’t been down here before, have you?” she said to Andy over her shoulder, stopping at the end of a corridor and throwing a door wide to reveal a long, low room, painted a dazzling white, with rows of identical cribs facing each other along two walls. Nuns in white habits moved about, some bearing swaddled babies in the crooks of their arms with a sort of cheery, practiced negligence. Something fierce and zealous came into Sister Stephanus’s smile. “The nursery,” she announced. “The heart of St. Mary’s, and our pride and joy.”

Andy stared, impressed, and barely stopped himself producing a whistle. It was like something out of a science fiction movie, all the little aliens in their pods. Sister Stephanus was looking at him expectantly, her head thrown back.

“Lot of babies” was all he could say, in a faint voice.

Sister Stephanus gave a ringing laugh that was supposed to be rueful but sounded a little crazed instead. “Oh,” she said, “this is only a fraction of the poor mites in the world in need of our care and protection!”

Andy nodded doubtfully. It was something he did not like to think of, all those lost and abandoned kids screaming for attention and shaking their fists and kicking their legs in the air. The nun had led them into the room, and Claire was looking about eagerly in that jerky, rabbity way he hated; it even seemed to him sometimes when she was excited that the edges of her pink and nearly transparent nostrils twitched.

“Is…?” she said, and did not know how to finish. Sister Stephanus nodded and said: “She’s having a last checkup before she starts out on her new life.”

“I wanted to ask,” Claire began tentatively, “if the mother—” but Sister Stephanus held up a long, white hand to silence her and said: “I know you’d want to know something about the baby’s background, Claire. However—”

“No, no, I was only going to ask—”

But the nun was unstoppable.
“However,”
she continued, in a voice edged like a saw, “there are certain rules we must abide by.”

The wadded handkerchief in Claire’s fist was hot and hard as a boiled egg. She had to persist. “It’s only that,” she said, and took a gulping breath, “it’s only that when she’s growing up I won’t know what to tell her.”

“Oh, well,” the nun said, closing her eyes briefly and giving her head a dismissive little shake, “you must decide, of course, when the time comes, whether she should know you’re not her natural parents. As for the details…” She opened her eyes and this time for some reason it was Andy she addressed. “Believe me, in certain matters not knowing is best.—But ah, here’s Sister Anselm now!”

A short, square-shaped nun was approaching. There was something wrong with her right side, and she walked with a wrenching movement, dragging her hip after her like a mother dragging a stubborn child. Her face was broad, her expression stern but not unkind. A stethoscope hung about her neck. She had a baby in her arms, wrapped like a larva in a white cotton blanket. Claire greeted her in a rush of relief—Sister Anselm was the one who had looked after her from her earliest days here at St. Mary’s.

“Well now,” Sister Stephanus said with forced brightness, “here we are, at last!”

Everything seemed to pause then, as in the Mass when the priest lifts the Communion host, and from a distance somehow Claire saw herself reach out, it might have been across a chasm, and take the baby in her arms. How solid a weight it was, and yet no weight at all, no earthly weight. Sister Stephanus was saying something. The baby’s eyes were the most delicate shade of blue, they seemed to be looking into another world. Claire turned to Andy. She tried to speak but could not. She felt fragile and in some wonderful way injured, almost as if she were really a mother, and had really given birth.