The Blue Bottle Club (39 page)

"That woman was a nun?"

"You obviously watch too much television. Times have changed; the church has changed. Most nuns these days don't wear habits any longer. In my day, we all wore them, and some of us older ones have retained the traditional garb." She grinned broadly "Force of habit, I suppose you'd say"

Brendan chuckled at the joke.

Sister Mary Love shifted in her chair. "Now, just why is it you've come all this way?"

Brendan reached into her bag, drew out the blue glass bottle, and set it on the table.

"Lord, have mercy." The old sister shut her eyes and crossed herself.

"You recognize this bottle?"

Mary Love opened her eyes. "I could never forget, not in a thousand years."

"That's why I've come." Briefly, Brendan sketched out the story of finding the bottle during the demolition of Cameron House, and how the idea had gotten into her blood, leading her to track down the four young women who had committed their dreams to the bottle.

"Good heavens—that was sixty years ago."

"Sixty-five."

"Sixty-five years. I remember it as if it were yesterday."

"Do you remember this?" Brendan laid a page in front of her, a photocopy of the pen-and-ink drawing that had been left in the bottle. "You said, years ago, that your dream was to be an artist. You showed a lot of promise, even as a young girl."

"Yes, promise," Mary Love murmured, half to herself. "But promise has a way of getting diverted.' Dreams change, you know. They carry us for a while, they die, and then—if we're fortunate enough to have eyes to see— they're reborn. The path we choose for ourselves isn't necessarily the path God chooses for us. . . . "

MARY LOVE

37

AND IT WAS GOOD

December 25, 1929

Y
esterday had been mild—milder by far than the usual Christmas Eve in the mountains—but this afternoon winter had reasserted its hold. Mary Love Buchanan walked home in the gathering gloom of dusk, clutching her portfolio to her chest to block the wind.

It wasn't a
real
portfolio, of course—not the kind that actual artists carried. She had made it herself from two big sheets of cream-colored cardboard salvaged from a dress box from her father's store. With an awl she had painstakingly punched holes and sewn it together with an old leather bootlace, then decorated it with colorful prints from magazine covers and cut slits in the top for a handle.

Someday she'd have a real one, burnished brown leather with a brass clasp and pockets inside. But for now the makeshift folder served its purpose—protecting her cherished drawings from getting folded and dogeared.

Despite the chill December wind, Mary Love walked slowly, dragging her scuffed shoes along the sidewalk and pausing now and then to gaze at her surroundings. She committed to memory the black outline of a bare elm tree stark against the setting winter sun, the contours of the mountains in the distance behind the tall silhouette of the Flat Iron Building. Rich images, she thought, for paintings in oil or watercolor—paintings that would make her famous someday.

This very afternoon, she had declared herself an artist. The idea both excited and terrified her.

She had actually sat there, in Letitia Cameron's attic, surrounded by her three best friends, and revealed the secret dream she had savored since she was a little girl. From the time she was four or five and got her first set of paints and pencils as a Christmas gift, Mary Love had determined that she would be an artist. And yet it wasn't so much a decision as a discovery—the deep awareness of a gift, a calling that could not be denied or suppressed.

The nuns at school, especially Sister Francis, talked a lot about a person's calling. True to her name, Sister Francis held a firm belief in the holiness of all God's creation and urged her charges to open the eyes of their souls to God's presence in the world around them. Most of the kids rolled their eyes and yawned with boredom when Sister launched into one of her sermons on vocation, but Mary Love hung on every word. It made her feel special, this realization that the creative Lord of the universe had endowed her with a portion of that same holy creativity.

And Mary Love didn't often feel special, not in a household of eleven children. As the eldest, it fell to her to care for the young ones, to cook and clean and help with homework, to bring peace and order amid the chaos. Heaven knows Mama didn't do it. She was too busy going to church, praying all hours of the day and night, attending every single Mass and lighting every candle in sight.

Except for the fact that Mama was so efficient at producing babies, Mary Love often wondered if the woman hadn't missed her calling. Perhaps she should have become a nun, a vocation in which devotion to prayer and meditation didn't interfere with everybody else's life and make other people miserable.

Mary Love sat down on a low stone wall bordering the sidewalk and watched as a late-migrating flock of geese flew overhead, honking madly and steering their V toward points farther south. Even through her wool coat, the cold seeped from the stones into her behind and up her back. But still she sat, unable to force her feet to walk the last few blocks home.

It was always this way, every time she left the house. She dreaded going back to the noisy, crowded conditions in which her family lived. There was always something to
do,
some child to tend, some chore that awaited her, when all she really wanted was to be left alone to think and daydream and draw. She could never be alone in that house. Even her own room was no refuge, since she shared it with Beatrice and Felicity, the two sisters closest to her in age. The two of them were constantly bickering, and when they weren't at each other's throats they were prying into Mary Love's private things, conspiring to embarrass her by reading her diary or drawing mustaches on the pen-and-ink portraits she had sketched of her classmates.

Her friends didn't know how good they had it. The three of them, especially Ellie, who should have known better, talked a lot about how awful it was to be an only child and how wonderful it would be to have brothers and sisters to share with and confide in. But they didn't have to live with it on a daily basis.

Mary Love would have traded places with any of them in a heartbeat. And it wasn't because their families had money, while hers struggled to pay the bills every month. To her, just the idea of solitude seemed like heaven itself. She could only imagine what it would be like to have a room of her own, a place to spread out, a real desk at which she could draw to her heart's content. A little privacy.

Lights were beginning to come on in the houses up and down the street, and with a sigh she struggled to her feet and walked the last few blocks home. When she reached the front stoop, she took a deep breath, braced herself, and opened the door.

"Mary Teresa Love Priscilla Buchanan!" her mother yelled as the door closed behind her. "Where have you been?"

Mama always used her children's full names when she was angry or annoyed, a habit Mary Love found insufferable. Still, given the fact that the woman had eleven children with four names each, the simple achievement of remembering them all was little short of miraculous.

"I told you, Mama, that I was spending the afternoon at Letitia's."

"Hmph. What you find to talk about with those highfalutin society girls, I'll never understand. Are you sure they invited you, or did you just tag along on your own?"

Mary Love suppressed a sigh. "Of course they invited me, Mama. They're my
friends."

This was one of Mama's pet subjects, the class distinction between Mary Love and her friends. Hardly a day went by that Mama didn't rail on them, accusing them of every sort of snobbery. Occasionally Papa even got in on the act, questioning why his eldest daughter seemed so intent upon remaining in school when so many of the other girls her age had long ago gone to work or gotten married. Middle-class young ladies, he insisted, didn't need the luxury of education; it just made them want what they could never have.

But on this one issue Mama had come to her defense. Mama thought that if Mary Love stayed in school, under the daily influence of the nuns, some of that spirituality might rub off. And Mary Love didn't tell her any different. Let Mama think what she wanted, as long as she could stay in school—the one place that provided a welcome respite from duties at home and the opportunity to explore her calling. Mama removed baby Vincent from her hip and handed him over. "The baby needs feeding, and the twins need a bath. I'll be late for Mass if I don't hurry along."

"Where's Papa?"

"At the store. He said he had some bookkeeping to catch up on."

"On Christmas Day?" Mary Love felt unwelcome tears spring to her eyes. She knew, of course, that times had been getting increasingly difficult since the stock market crash, and she ought to be more understanding. But it wasn't fair. Papa's response to the tightening economic situation was to work harder, to keep the store open longer hours and do the accounts himself. Mama's approach was to pray more, to entreat every saint in the book to look with favor upon their most faithful intercessor. That left Mary Love to run the house, feed the children, and do her best to keep order.

"I'm gone. Be good, and don't forget to do the dishes." With a parting wave, Mama rushed out the door and slammed it behind her.

Fighting back a surge of despair that threatened to overwhelm her, Mary Love took the baby into the living room, sat down with him, and slid her portfolio under the sofa, where it would be protected from prying eyes and grasping hands. Vincent shifted restlessly in her arms; he needed changing and was obviously hungry. "In a minute," she crooned, rocking him gently against her shoulder.

What would it be like, she wondered, to be able to fulfill the dream she had revealed this afternoon in Tish Cameron's attic? To live alone, to have only herself to be responsible for, to have uninterrupted time to paint?

Was this truly her calling—her vocation, as Sister Francis would say? Or only an idle fantasy? Could she make a living at it? Or even make a name for herself?

If she had been Mama, she would have prayed about it, would have moved heaven and earth, would have lit a thousand candles and stormed the gates of glory asking for a sign from above. But Mary Love wasn't her mother. She had quit praying long ago—except when she had to during Mass, and that didn't count because she didn't mean any of it. None of the trappings of her mother's religion held any significance for her. She didn't sense God's nearness in the candlelight and the incense and the liturgy. She didn't feel the Spirit when she knelt for Communion or chanted the
Kyrie.

And yet there was one situation—only one—where she
did
experience God's presence. When she poised a pencil over a sheet of art paper and began to draw. In those moments, creativity flowed out of her hands, and she felt as if she understood, just a little, how the Almighty must have felt when the clay took shape, inhaled its first breath, and stood up a living soul.

That was faith. That was divine intervention.

And it was good.

An acidic odor assailed her nostrils from baby Vincent's soiled diaper, and she grimaced. Art would have to wait. There were dishes to do and children to bathe and a dozen other chores that demanded her attention.

But someday, she swore to herself, things would be different.

Someday.

38

THE CALLING

May
8,
1931

M
ary Love sat in the back of Sister Francis's classroom with her head on her desk. It was almost over. Two more weeks, and she would stand in the commencement line, receive her diploma, and . . . and then what?

What did it mean to graduate—even to graduate with honors—if her future only held more of the same? Papa already had it planned that she would work for him, another Buchanan at the store that bore their family name. Mama wanted her to stay home and be a full-time house slave. Mary Love was quite certain that if she had to choose either option, she would undoubtedly go mad.

The only other alternative was marriage, and there wasn't much chance of that looming on her horizon. Mary Love knew the truth about herself. She was chubby, average-looking, and probably too smart for her own good. She refused to play the coy games other girls engaged in to get the attention of the opposite sex, and even if she had been interested, she rarely had much time to do anything about it. The long and short of it was, boys didn't pay much attention to girls like Mary Love Buchanan.

Faced with those unacceptable options, Mary Love had secretly applied to an art academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota—just about as far away from North Carolina as you could get. Even as she filled out the application, she had known that her parents would be furious, and everyone would say that she was abandoning her family. But that couldn't be helped. She had to follow her dream.

Now, she held in her hands the answer to her application, and when she had opened the envelope and read the response, her heart had sunk like a stone. Yes, they were certain she had promise and potential as an artist and would welcome her as a student in the academy But times were difficult and scholarship money was scarce. If she could manage her expenses, they would waive half her tuition.

Even half the tuition, however, was an enormous, insurmountable barrier. There would be no art school for Mary Love Buchanan. Not now. Maybe not ever.

She could almost hear her dream of being an artist shattering into a thousand shards, like a piece of crystal stemware toppling to the floor. The only saving grace of this moment was that she had told no one. No other human being, not even her best friend, Ellie James, would witness her humiliation and despair. She would simply go home, keep her grief locked up, and get on with the business of fulfilling everyone else's expectations.

It wasn't that she didn't love her family She loved them deeply and would have missed them if she had gone away to school. But her love had long ago been overshadowed by the grim inevitability of duty, by the constant demands on her time and attention. Was it so horrible, so utterly selfish, to want just a little corner of her life for herself?