Embracing Darkness (21 page)

Sister Ignatius scowled. She snatched the suitcase from Georgiana’s hand and said briskly, “Here, let me help you with this, dear. It must be heavy.”

“Thank you,” Georgiana said blandly.

“Not at all, my dear,” Sister Ignatius replied quickly. “You have enough to handle with the child. I’ll meet you at the car.” Then she marched ahead at double the pace of the two adults and one child she had left behind.

The group was brought to the foot of the hill by Patrick Flynn, a Sunday regular at St. Andrew’s and a good friend of Father Poole. The priest had asked around his congregation for a ride to the train station to pick up the Benson widow. Patty Flynn was happy to oblige.

“As sure as shamrocks are green, Father Poole, I’ll be glad to help ya whenever the need should arise.”

In his late thirties, Patrick Flynn was around the same age as Father Poole. A hard worker who’d come over from Ireland eleven years back, he was still single and lived with his sister. As he shook Patty’s hand in thanks for the ride, Father Poole thought it too bad that Sister Ignatius had taken her vow of chastity. He would have liked to marry the two of them in his church just to get her out of his hair.

“Will you and the ladies be needin’ help up the mountain then?” asked Patrick Flynn.

Father Poole laid a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, squeezed it gently, and thought,
how
could
I
ever
wish
hell
on
this
good
soul?

“Thank you just the same, Patrick,” said Father Poole, sounding grateful. “We’ll be fine. You’ve done enough. Now you be sure to come by some night this week for some of Mrs. Keats’s blueberry cobbler.”

Climbing Holly Hill was still a task. Nothing had been done to facilitate the way to the top until Father Poole had come upon supplemental funds to use at his own discretion. During the first year of Father Poole’s tenure at St. Andrew’s, he and the church received a monetary award from the town for his work on the town library’s book drive. Along with the Bible given to him by his mother, Father Carroll had left behind a closet full of old books including countless classics such as
Moby
Dick
,
Robinson
Crusoe
,
The
Arabian
Nights
,
Treasure
Island
,
Hard
Times
, and
Pride
and
Prejudice
. So Father Poole donated them all to the struggling library, whose doors had almost closed through lack of patronage.

When later asked how he came upon all those books so quickly, Father Poole replied, “God works in mysterious ways. You see, Mrs. Keats was making her special rutabaga pie that Argyle Hobbs and I love. She had motioned for me to bring her some more rutabagas from the closet under the staircase. Really, it’s our Mrs. Keats whom everyone should thank.”

The arduous task of scaling the hill was made a bit easier when Father Poole used that money he’d received from the town to build a path from the foot of the hill near where the closest of the town’s roads ended. Though only a dirt path with white stones on either side to separate it from the grass, Argyle Hobbs’s work made people more willing to come up the hill, even though it was still a steep climb. Father Poole attributed the small increase in attendance for Sunday Mass to the path, which he named “The Path to Salvation.”

Neither Georgiana nor Jessica seemed to mind the climb. Although they began breathing more heavily about a quarter of the way up, it was still entirely manageable for the widow and her daughter. A little more than halfway up, Jessica began to show signs of tiring, as her breathing was becoming labored, and so had to keep stopping. This in turn slowed down Georgiana, who was holding the child’s hand. At length Georgiana decided it would be easier on both of them if she carried Jessica.

Sister Ignatius saw to installing Georgiana and her daughter in Ben Benson’s house. Knowing that Mrs. Keats would never leave the church and rectory, and since there was no extra money for splurging on domestic help, the nun consented to cleaning the old man’s house herself. In fact, it was Sister Ignatius who had volunteered for the task after eavesdropping on a telephone conversation between Father Poole and the local undertaker, Mortimer Parsons.

“We’ve only a short time, Mortimer,” she heard Father Poole say. “The daughter’s agreed to the double burial, and she’s already made the necessary arrangements for the body, as my assistant has informed me.”

Sister Ignatius winced at the word “assistant.” “Heh!
Assistant
, indeed!” she hissed. Sister Ignatius hated it when Father Poole referred to her as his “assistant” because, in her own words, “It made me feel like his subservient whore.”

Sister Ignatius’s vocabulary had grown progressively more profane since her years in the convent. She had started with “heck” and “shucks” and “darn,” which quickly changed to “hell” and “shit” and “damn.” It had started in the most innocent way. One of the nuns in the Braintree convent, Sister Mary Joseph, had fallen ill with smallpox. As it was a snowy February, there were often days during the nun’s illness when the convent’s cook, Agatha Quimby, was unable to make it in to work. The Mother Superior had asked whether any of the nuns would mind making Sister Joseph a little soup.

Sister Ignatius, having snuck a quick whiff of her clandestine glue, felt elated enough to raise her hand and shout, “I’ll do it! I
do
so love Sister Joseph! I’ll make her some nice hot chicken soup to help with those feverish chills that accompany smallpox. Oh, she’ll feel so much better!”

After her ecstasy had worn off and after her third attempt at making chicken stock, Sister Ignatius went from “Why the heck did I volunteer?” and “Shucks! I dropped the chicken on the floor. Darn it! Now I’ll have to start all over again!” to “Shit! I put in too much damn parsley!” and “That Mary Joseph can go to hell!”

The hell with which she was now confronted, Ben Benson’s messy house, was caused by the same thing that made her volunteer for the Sister Joseph soup fiasco. After hearing Father Poole use the word “assistant,” the nun desperately needed to calm her nerves. So she took out her silver flask, feverishly opened it, stuck the nozzle up her left nostril, closed her right one, and breathed in a dose of liquid escape. Within seconds she was ready to accommodate even Satan himself.

“Why Father Poole! OF COURSE the Benson house will be JUST FINE for Mrs. Benson and her baby girl,” said Sister Ignatius triumphantly as she barged into the priest’s office.

Father Poole, startled by Sister Ignatius’s impromptu entrance during a private call, said skeptically, “Sister, have you
seen
the inside of that house? It’s downright filthy. Frankly I don’t know how the old man tolerated it for so long. Had I not known his life story, being the dear friend that he was, I would have thought he stayed on that porch to escape the grime.”

Giggling at the Father’s assessment of Ben Benson’s house, Sister Ignatius exploded in a loud chortle. She immediately covered her mouth in spite of herself, as if to acknowledge her inappropriate reaction.

“Yes,” she said. “Well, I can’t say I’ve actually ever been
in
his house. After all, I’m always so busy here, but I can’t imagine its being
that
bad.”

Father Poole put the receiver of the phone back up to his ear. “Look, Mortimer,” he said. “I’ll call you back. Just prepare for two burials at the Benson plot behind the house for Saturday. I fear we’ve already put poor Ben’s funeral off long enough.”

He hung up the phone and looked at Sister Ignatius, well aware that she had been sniffing her glue. He had always turned a blind eye to her vice, since she seemed so much more pleasant when high than when sober.

“You know, Sister,” said Father Poole, “that we can’t afford to hire any domestic help.”

She waved her hand playfully and replied, “We don’t need any domestic help, Father. Why,
I
will be in complete charge of cleaning the house! Me, myself, and I!”

Clearing his throat, the priest said, “I should remind you, Sister, that I will be quite busy writing Ben’s eulogy and that Argyle Hobbs has his duties around the church and rectory. And, of course, Mrs. Keats will not leave the premises. None of us thus can help you. I still think we should put mother and daughter up in one of the hotels in town.”

Sister Ignatius grinned broadly at the priest and said, “Leave the housecleaning to me!”

Hours later Sister Ignatius reflected on this conversation with Father Poole as she cussed her way up and down the stairs of the Benson house while carrying dirty mops and rags. She cussed after she stubbed her toe on the door jamb as she came back in from dumping the fourth bucket of murky water over the porch railing. She cussed after she tripped over the mop and bucket at the foot of the stairs, spilling the filthy water all over the floor. She cussed all day long.

Saturday morning had come. Everyone was getting ready for the funerals of Benjamin Benson and his grandson, Jonathan Benson, Jr., whose double service would take place in St. Andrew’s. Only a few people would be in attendance, mostly those around town who’d known Ben. Those who did come were mildly curious about why Ben and his grandson were being eulogized at a Roman Catholic church when they weren’t even Catholic.

While Father Poole practiced his speech at the altar, Mrs. Keats was preparing all the food that would be served to mourners in the rectory’s common room after the funeral service, and Argyle Hobbs was sweeping a week’s worth of accumulated dust from the church floor and a day’s worth of autumn leaves from its front steps. Sister Ignatius found herself completely idle.

She went into the kitchen and saw Mrs. Keats hard at work. “DO YOU NEED ANY HELP, MRS. KEATS?” she shouted.

Mrs. Keats shook her head vehemently, and went back to what she was doing. Sister Ignatius then went through the side door of the kitchen, which led into the sanctuary, and noticed Father Poole at the podium in front of the altar. She was going to ask him whether he needed any help but decided that she’d rather not help him do anything. She also refrained from asking Argyle Hobbs the same thing, thinking she’d done more than her share of cleaning for one week.

As she walked outside into the crisp November air, Sister Ignatius’s eyes caught sight of the Benson house to her left. She chose to go over there to see whether the lady folk needed any help in getting ready.

She walked up the steps of the porch and knocked once on the door before it opened by itself. This surprised Sister Ignatius since Georgiana had a two-year-old running around the house. The last thing she’d want would be for the child to make her way outside, fall down the stairs, and break something, or, worse yet, fall down the hill and break her neck. As she walked into the house, Sister Ignatius was reminded of the fifteen or so steps that led up to the second floor. She realized that they presented three times more of a danger for the little girl than the porch stairs, but perhaps not as much danger as Holly Hill itself.

“Georgiana!” Sister Ignatius called, her voice echoing off the freshly cleaned walls.

The house still smelled of ammonia and bleach. The former nearly made her sick, for reasons well known to her, as she walked toward the kitchen. The bleach, however, had afforded her a few moments of bliss. Ammonia was not so bad so long as it was followed up by some bleach, but when she mixed the two agents they had begun to smoke, and the fumes choked her so badly that she ran through the kitchen to the back door. In her frenzy she crashed through the mesh door and fell down the stairs into the grass. As she lifted her head, still choking on the fumes, she spit out a mouthful of grass and dirt.

“Georgiana? Jessica?” she called. “It’s Sister Ignatius. Anyone home?”

There was not a sound. She assumed that the two were upstairs, still getting ready. Making her way to the top of the creaky stairs, she went straight to Jessica’s room, which had been Johnny’s and his parents’ before that.

“YOO-HOO! JESSICA! Are you here, sweetheart?”

Sister Ignatius peered into the room. Not only was Jessica’s bed made, but the room gave the impression of having been abandoned.

Perhaps
she
slept
in
her
mother’s
bed
, Sister Ignatius thought. She walked to the next room and knocked. “Georgiana? Jessica?” she called.

She tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Then she heard a little girl’s voice coming from somewhere in the distance. She went back into Jessica’s room and went to the window. There in the backyard near the maple tree was Jessica, playing with her doll in the grass.

“What in the world?” Sister Ignatius said, confused.

She went back to Georgiana’s bedroom door and banged on it loudly. “NOW, GEORGIANA! COME OUT OF THERE AT ONCE!” Nothing. “GEORGIANA, I’M NOT KIDDING! OPEN THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY, OR I’LL BREAK IT DOWN.”

Sister Ignatius was confident in her ability to break into Georgiana’s room. After some more banging and shouting, she was just short of panic. For the child’s sake she wanted Georgiana to be alright. She then backed up, stood up straight, and slammed her foot in the center of the door, just to the right of the keyhole. The door didn’t budge, and Sister Ignatius’s leg absorbed all her forward momentum.

“OH, JESUS IN HEAVEN!” she exclaimed.

She bent down to rub her right knee and then decided to use her left foot. This time she was successful.

As Sister Ignatius entered the room, the stale smell of alcohol hit her forcefully. Georgiana was lying on the bed, motionless and not breathing. In one hand was an empty glass. Her other hand rested atop a photo album turned upside down on her stomach. Her mouth, nostrils, and chin showed the stains of dried puke. On the bed were two bottles of bourbon, all empty. She’d drowned in her own vomit.