The Four Seasons (20 page)

It was the most horrid e-mail she'd ever written. She couldn't believe she was actually writing that about herself. Her hand hovered over the delete button as she read and reread the letter. Beside her, Birdie shifted again in her sleep, muttering fitfully. Birdie had confided about her fight with Dennis. Rose had never known Birdie to be so confused or scared, but when she'd spoken of Dennis, she had wrung her hands, something totally out of character for her. Rose cast a worried look at her and knew she should turn off the light soon.

She shifted her hand, then pushed Send. As soon as she sent it, her stomach fell and she wished she could take it back.

He must have been waiting for her letter, though, for he wrote back almost instantly.

She took a deep sigh of relief that he'd written back. A short laugh escaped her as she wrote her reply.

Uh-uh, DannyBoy. You have to describe yourself first.

Rosebud

Before she could receive his reply, she turned off the computer, and a moment later, the overhead light as well.

J
ILLY WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING
morning to what sounded like a tornado roaring through her room. She sat bolt upright, clutching her blanket close to her chest.

Hannah scrambled from the bed and pulled open the dusty paisley curtains to the sight of a rumbling, clanking, grinding freight train just on the far side of the parking lot. The water in the glasses shook from the vibrations that Jilly felt clear to her marrow. On the grassy hill alongside the tracks, a scruffy white dog with a patch of black over its eye was barking ferociously at the train, his whole body lifting from the ground with the effort. Jilly let out a hearty laugh, lifting her knees and hugging them close.

Hannah slumped against the window, rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Good morning.” She had to shout to be heard over the rattle.

“I haven't seen a good ol' American freight train like this in more than twenty-five years,” Jilly called back, staring out the window with a child's excitement. “We used to count the cars.”

Hannah turned to look at her face. Her aunt Jilly looked older, less luminous in the morning sun. Without any makeup her skin revealed faint vertical lines at the tips of her full lips, crow's-feet at the eyes and deeply etched, interconnecting lines evident even when her face was passive. Still, she had the look of a model, Hannah thought, with that elegance of line that she saw in magazines. She wished she could look like that rather than big and stocky, like her mother. She wished her aunt Jilly were her mother. She looked out again at the rumbling train. “Here comes the caboose. And it's red!”

Sure enough, an old, rather dilapidated red caboose chugged past their window. From the room next door they heard Birdie's and Rose's voices sing out, “Woooo-woooo!”

Hannah and Jilly shared a look, then in unison called back, “Wooo-wooo!”

This, and an arm motion imitating an old train whistle being pulled, was de rigueur for the sisters growing up. Jilly was glad to see that Birdie had passed on the tradition to her daughter.

A moment later, their phone rang.

“How did you like the wake-up call?” It was Birdie and she was in high spirits.

“Innovative,” Jilly replied. “Nothing but first class all the way for the Seasons.”

“I'm hungry. Mr. Patel said there was a nice restaurant in town that we could walk to.”

“Talking to Mr. Patel already, are we?”

She heard Birdie tsk. “Want to go eat in about twenty minutes?”

Jilly looked at her watch. It was already eight-fifteen. She wanted to get an early start for Marian House. “Be there or be square,” she replied.

“God, Jilly, I haven't heard that in ages.”

“I haven't said that in ages. I think we're regressing.”

“You think? Nah…Well, see you later, alligator.”

“After a while, crocodile.” Jilly hung up, chuckling at how they were all beginning to dip into the well of their expressions and behaviors. After all these years, it felt good.

It was a cool, sunny morning that promised to warm up by noon. They left the motel together in good spirits, walking in pairs across the parking lot and the train tracks to Main Street. Jilly was chic as usual, all in black, from her tailored slacks to her soft, knee-length Italian leather coat. She looked too European for this tiny town in remote northern Wisconsin and drew the attention of the locals. They turned their heads as she passed but Jilly was oblivious. Hannah walked beside her, showing her youth in flared jeans and a white puffy parka. Birdie wore a long khaki skirt and her navy pea coat. She kept her arm linked with Rose, who was again wearing her calf-length denim skirt and a camel-hair jacket that had once been their mother's and was a bit frayed at the cuffs.

People were already moving about the sleepy town of Hodges. An old man swept the pavement before his barbershop with metronomic strokes. The florist was setting out buckets filled with daffodils, daisies and long branches of pussy willow that Rose claimed she must have.

The Country Diner was a cheery, airy place with blue-and-white gingham at the windows, round oak tables and rabbit-eared chairs, and little framed plaques with homespun sayings like Home Is Where The Heart Is scattered on the wall. The front of the restaurant had an old-fashioned soda fountain complete with Hamilton blenders and stainless steel milk-shake mixers. Behind the counter were shelves filled with gleaming glasses and dishes for sundaes, and best of all, a glorious old cash register that was a collector's item. The wood and chrome-
trimmed counter was a thing of beauty, lined with twirly stools topped with red leather seats, most of them torn in places and carefully taped.

“This place hasn't changed a whit in all these years,” Jilly muttered.

“You've been here before?” Rose asked.

She didn't want to start dredging up memories before a cup of coffee. She only nodded, her lips pressed tightly together.

Even the waitress looked like an original from way back when. She was a jovial woman in her seventies, as tall as Jilly but broader in the chest and hips and without any of Jilly's reserve. She greeted them with a robust voice and led them toward a table near the window.

As Jilly passed the fountain, empty now, in her mind's eye she saw five teenage girls sitting on the stools, twisting left to right, their ankles hooked around the stool, sipping on straws like teenage girls all across the country. Except that each of these girls was dressed in baggy clothes to disguise the bulge of her belly. Not that they fooled anyone. Whenever the girls were allowed to town for their once-a-month outing, they traveled in a pack, closing ranks as a defense against the pointed fingers and behind-the-palm whispers.

“I'm Maude,” the waitress said, pulling out her pad. “You girls aren't from around here, are you?”

They shook their heads, smiling cautiously.

“Where you from?”

Rose, Birdie and Hannah looked at Jilly, unsure.

Did they think this was a secret spy mission, for heaven's sake, Jilly wondered? “Chicago,” she replied with her reserved smile.

Maude smiled broadly. “Chicago, huh? We don't get too many Chicago visitors this time of year. In the summer they
like to pass through on their way to Door County. Nice antique shops in town. That's a draw.”

In a casual voice, Jilly said, “We're looking for the convent that's not too far from here. Do you know the one I mean?”

“That'll be Holy Hill.”

The name rang a bell in Jilly's mind.
Holy Hell
. “So, it's still there?”

“Oh, sure. But it's pretty lonely up there now. Not too many nuns anymore. Just the old ones who go there to retire and die. It was different years ago. Lots of folks used to stop here on their way to and from Holy Hill. The girls from up there still come for a visit from time to time, too, just to see it again. You one of them?”

Jillian startled. She closed her menu and folded her hands. Her smile was brittle. “The girls?”

“Well, women really,” Maude corrected, misunderstanding Jilly's response. She twiddled the pencil between two fingers. “You know, the gals who were in the novitiate.” Seeing their empty stares, she added, “The young ones in training to be nuns. As the years went by most of them dropped out, then they just stopped entering. Young folks want different things these days, I guess. A couple of exnuns come by, too, from time to time. I just thought you might be one of them. But—” she laughed and shook her head “—mercy, no. You don't look the type.” She turned to Birdie and Rose with her brows raised in question, but her eyes were on Birdie.

Birdie bristled and reached up to tug at her short haircut. “I'm afraid not.”

“Oh, well, I'm gabbing here.” She pushed back her black-framed eyeglasses and put her pencil to her pad. “And you all want your breakfast.”

“I'm not very hungry,” Jilly said. The burning pain in her
stomach was starting up again at the prospect of returning to Marian House. “Just coffee and orange juice for me.”

“Me, too,” said Birdie.

“Oh, no you don't,” Rose admonished. “We all need a little sustenance for the day's work. Are those bakery goods on the shelf homemade?”

“We bake them ourselves every morning,” Maude replied with pride.

“Perfect. We'll have a basket of blueberry and corn muffins, jams, and orange juice and coffee for everyone.” She pursed her lips. “Better add a double order of bacon, too.”

Her sisters stared at her.

“I'm hungry,” she said, closing the menu and handing it back to Maude with a smile.

When the order was delivered, Jilly ignored the pain in her stomach and asked as casually as she could, “Maude, can you tell us how to get to the convent?”

 

As they approached the black iron gates of Holy Hill, she felt she was again a seventeen-year-old pregnant girl, unsure and scared. Like then, she wanted nothing more than to turn around and go home. She shrank into the corner of the car and looked over at Birdie, who was driving. Her sister looked so much like their father, with the same angled nose, the same broad build and the same serious set of the mouth. She was about to tell her to stop, that she'd changed her mind and couldn't go through with it. To say what she wished she had cried out the first trip through these gates.

But Birdie turned at that moment to look at Jilly, and seeing the terror in her eyes, her own blazed with the fervent message:
Buck up, sis! You're not alone
.

So Jilly persevered, but she felt very small as they wound up
and around the wooded hills of the impressive estate. They passed the lake, quiet and still, surrounded by cypress, then the grotto where the Blessed Virgin still reigned in splendor. The engine hummed as they rounded the highest hill—and there it was.

Marian House. The plain-front, three-story redbrick building that she had lived in for four life-changing months in 1973 loomed before her. She sucked in her breath. When they pulled into the parking lot, she shrank back in her seat, her hand hard against the dashboard as though to ward off a blow.

“Jilly, are you okay?” Rose's hand was on her shoulder. She'd leaned forward from the back seat to press her face close.

“I don't want to be here,” she said in a tight voice. “I don't want to come back here.”

Rose looked at Birdie, alarmed.

“Just stay in the car,” Birdie said with decision. “I'll go knock on the door. The place looks pretty deserted, anyway.”

Birdie opened the car door and stepped out, breathing deeply. She had looked a little green around the gills earlier, but the crisp spring air seemed to revive her. Jilly watched from hooded eyes as Birdie approached the front door. It was crazy, she knew, but she expected Sister Celestine to open the door with her razor-sharp smile. Birdie rang the bell, waited a moment, then knocked loudly.

Jilly rolled down her window and breathed in the morning air. Above, the birds cried and circled in the treetops. Jilly closed her eyes and heard again the calls of the girls as they cut across the lawn of the convent on their way from chapel to Marian House.
Jilly, wait up!
Everything was so quiet now. Ghostly.

“No one seems to be here,” Birdie said, leaning in the car window, startling Jilly from her reverie. “Is there another building we can go to for information?”

They drove over a small rise past the tall, shaggy border of
pines and trees. Suddenly the mansion appeared in the distance, eliciting the same sighs of surprise from Jilly's sisters as it had from her the first time she saw it.

“You lived
there?
” Hannah asked.

“Fat chance,” Jilly replied, halting any ideas they might be forming in their minds of a sweet life she had led here at Holy Hill. “That house was only for the young brides of Christ. Strictly off-limits to the Mary Magdalenes. We were pretty much confined to Marian House. Not that we could waddle that far, anyway.” She smirked, disguising the burn of shame she still felt. “You could say we lived on the other side of the tracks.”

She saw Rose frown before she looked out the window.

“Who's Mary Magdalene?” Hannah wanted to know.

Another time, another place, Jilly would have enjoyed niggling Birdie over that one, but now her mind was overflowing with voices and faces from her past. As they drove away from Marian House, she looked out toward the bedroom windows and thought of Simone, Sarah, Julie and the others. What were they doing now, she wondered? Had they searched for their babies? She longed to see them again and talk to them. They'd understand what she was feeling now, as only they could.

They drove on past the apple orchard and vineyards, overgrown now from years of neglect. Seeing the lovely green open spaces Jilly felt a vague sadness, knowing it was only a matter of time till they were gone. It was clear the old nuns were dying off and young women were not entering the convent. The estate was prime land, likely to be soon sold and parceled into development plots.

The road ended at a long, yellow-brick building, more modern and updated than the others on the compound but
equally bland. This was the conference center where the main offices of the motherhouse were located; the likely place any files would be stored. Jilly stared at the municipal-looking entrance and wondered if she'd run into Sister Celestine here, or Sister Benedict, or any of the nuns she once knew.