Missing Sisters -SA (12 page)

“God is our Father,” said Sister John Bosco automatically.

“I know,” said Alice, “but the other kind. The real kind.”

Sister John Bosco resisted the temptation to plunge into a discussion on the nature of reality. “I don’t know,” she said, which was the truth. “Your mother could not feed and raise you herself, so with great love and forethought she gave you to us. She knew you’d be safe and well here. She was very smart and loving to do such a kind thing for you. What’re you reading?”

“
Horton Hatches the Egg
,” said Alice. “I like it.”

“That’s a book you could read three years ago,” said the nun. “I thought you were up to Nancy Drew.”

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant,” said Alice.

“An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent,” said Sister John Bosco. Call and response.

Well, there was something faintly psalmlike about Dr. Seuss. She kissed Alice good night. “Oh, by the way, that little boy, that Garth, was put to the telephone and spoke with me today. I tried to tell him we weren’t in the habit of calling our children to the phone, but I don’t believe he understood.”

“Funny little kid,” said Alice. “I like boys.”

“So do I,” said Sister John Bosco. “Sweet dreams.”

During the pancake breakfast next morning, a Sunday after-mass tradition, Alice scooted out to the front hall and used the phone again. Mrs. Shaw answered but put Miami on anyway.

Alice said to Miami, “It don’t look like anything’s going to work.”

“I have an idea,” said Miami. “Wait, I’ll go upstairs where I can shout louder. Mom, put this phone down when you hear me upstairs, okay?”

Mom, thought Alice.

Miami’s voice reappeared a minute later. She launched into a breakneck explanation of what they could do. It took Alice, straining to hear, some time to get it straight. It involved calling up local TV stations and radios and having a press conference. They could do it on the steps to the Shaws’ house at South Allen Street. “Twins Reunited,” they could say. Some neighbor of Miami’s had given her the idea. Miami was obviously gaga over the scheme. She had worked out what they could wear. Could Alice get her ears pierced by next Saturday?

“You are out of your mind,” said Alice. “Nobody has their ears pierced here. We get a little cologne at Easter. It smells like Ivory liquid. That’s it.” Miami was even less happy to learn that Alice wouldn’t do it. “What’s the point?” Alice asked.

“Shame the filthy grown-ups into letting us live together.”

“I can’t shame the nuns,” said Alice. “I don’t want to.”

“I can shame anyone,” said Miami, “including myself.”

“I’m impressed,” said Alice, which made Miami laugh, which made Alice laugh, and they were really sisters.

Alice knew the breakfast would be over soon, and some nun would come out and find her. She thought fast and suggested they write a letter to the newspapers instead. “Let’s not shame anybody,” said Alice. “Let’s just explain what happened and we can thank the Shaws and the nuns for taking care of us.”

“What good’s that going to do?” said Miami.

“It won’t be a secret anymore,” said Alice. “Nobody can go back to pretending we aren’t sisters. No matter what happens.”

Miami grunted and tried to persuade Alice about the press conference again, but Alice balked. She could be stubborn. Miami finally caved in. She would write the letter and sign both their names to it, and send it to the
Times Union
and the
Troy Record
and maybe the
Evangelist
.

Alice said “Okay, bye,” and hung up fast. Sister Ike gave her a dirty look as she barreled along, but didn’t utter a word.

The letter appeared in the paper the following Saturday. Alice found it with pride and dread, read it, and ripped out the whole page before anyone else could see it. She folded the letters column to the size and thickness of a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum and carried it around in her shoe. Only in the lavatory did she let herself open it and read it again.

Dear Mr. Editor,

We are two girls named Miami Shaw and Alice Klossos, aged 12,
exactly
the same age.

We both went to camp this summer and found out we were twins and we never knew it. We look
alike except I have pierced ears and Alice has longer hair. I am adopted and Alice isn’t, she lives
in Troy with some nuns. We are happy to the nuns and the Shaws for taking care of us but
we don’t ever want to be separated.
This is a matter of some interest to the people of Albany I do
think.

MIAMI SHAW and ALICE KLOSSOS.

PS: I like Beetle Bailey but why do you waste space on Steve Canyon, he isn’t funny and
nobody reads it.

Alice thought Miami was a very good writer. She didn’t even mind so much that her name was spelled wrong; maybe then nobody at the convent would ever hear about it.

The newspaper was set on the side of Sister John Bosco’s desk, atop two weeks’ worth of newspapers. When the phone rang and the caller identified himself as a reporter referring to an item in the letters column, Sister John Bosco flipped the paper open. (Alice didn’t know the principal received her own private subscription.) Under a heading “PARENT TRAP” COMES

TRUE? OR LITTLE WHITE LIES? she found the letter. “I am astounded,” said Sister John Bosco, who rarely was.

“Is it true?” said the reporter. “Or is there another orphanage run by nuns in Troy? The chancery wouldn’t release that information.”

“No comment,” said Sister John Bosco smartly, and hung up.

So the trouble Alice and Miami had concocted got thicker and stickier. The following day the newspaper showed a photo of Miami Shaw on her front steps, and underneath ran a caption:

“Letter Writer Claims She’s Discovered an Unknown Twin; Diocese Refuses to Comment.” A short article nearby hinted delicately at the powers of twelve-year-old girls to invent fabulous tales. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Shaw would only say, “Miami is our true and legally adopted daughter and that’s all there is to say about it.” Sister John Bosco’s curt, “No comment,” looked suspicious and incriminating in print.

And a day later a guy jumped out from behind a phone booth when Alice and the others were walking two by two to get some new school shoes for the fall. He stuck a camera in Alice’s face and blinded her momentarily, and by the following morning the story had moved up to the front page. They reprinted the photo of Miami, and next to it showed Alice looking wide-eyed and bleached out. The caption read:

SEPARATED AT BIRTH—SEPARATED STILL

Alice rather expected a crackdown of security at the home, and she was right to expect it.

Small metal digits, like stacks of nickels, were inserted in the telephones to prevent anyone without a key from dialing out. The daily newspaper no longer appeared in the wreck room.

Sister Paul the Hermit began locking the door into the kitchen with a key, so that no one could get in or out unless she was there. There seemed to be a nun on the horizon from morning to night, wherever Alice was inclined to walk.

For all that, there was no lecture, no accusation, no request for an apology, no penance.

Sister John Bosco told Alice minimally what was going on. “Such shenanigans do no one any good,” she claimed, “least of all you. You aren’t to blame for anything, Alice, and you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“So when do I get to be trusted again,” said Alice.

“What is
not
to be trusted, and this is significant,” said Sister John Bosco, “is how people might twist and use what you might say innocently to harm you. Even without your knowing it.

They have no right. And I’m afraid your sister did a dangerous and stupid thing to write to the newspapers. However, it will all blow over soon. Some train wreck or drug raid will come up to distract everyone. It can’t be easy for you.”

Sister John Bosco never asked Alice if she had sanctioned the letter, or even written it herself. Apparently the misspelled last name was enough to persuade the nun that Alice’s name was used without her knowledge or consent. Alice did not enlighten her.

And the nuns did not censor the mail. “I don’t believe in opening other people’s correspondence,” said Sister John Bosco, handing Alice several letters each day. Since, however, Alice had no stamps and no way to get to any, there wasn’t much danger of an extended correspondence. Alice showed everything to the nun.

The letters were mostly from older women, some of whom had lost children in the Vietnam War or in accidents. They filled their peach and lavender notepaper with Catholic pep talks. But one lady had grown up at Sacred Heart herself, and she told Alice it had been a living hell. “Poor soul,” murmured Sister John Bosco, reading over her shoulder. The nuns were Nazi commandants, wrote the woman. Get out while you can.

“How sad to be so bitter.” Sister John Bosco sighed. “Before my time, alas, or I’d go and wring her wretched little neck.” Alice stared in horror, but Sister John Bosco was grinning a wry ribbon of a smile. It was a joke.

Then one day there were two pieces of mail, either one of which had the power to jump start Alice’s life had it been in danger of running down.

The first was from Sister Vincent de Paul.

Dear Alice,

I hear from my spies that you are in the middle of a pickle of some sort. Be a good girl
and pray for guidance. Always remember Jesus loves you and so does Sister Vincent de Paul,
though I have lots less influence. Sometimes a storm comes and the thing to do is wait it out. A
sudden calm can be as surprising as turmoil, shocking even, if you’re used to commotion. Are
you still doing speech therapy? Keep it up. I’m doing a set of painful leg exercises, but there’s
not much point. I would like to see you someday before I die. I am mostly better and miss my
girls in Troy and my kitchen. The food here is not food at all, like the macaroni and cheese they
served at lunch, well let me tell you the macaroni was all dried out and the cheese had gone
home. Ah, well, I’m waiting it out, too.

Yours in Christ,

Sister V. d. Paul

“If you’d like to drop Sister Vincent de Paul a note I’ll be happy to post it for you,” said Sister John Bosco.

“Mmmm,” said Alice noncommittally, awash in relief and terror.

The second piece of mail, in the same magic batch, was a postcard. It read:
Dear Alice Colossus:

All the stories in the newspapers and that one photo they keep running: I can’t get it out
of my mind. Are you the same girl I sang on the bus with, that day last winter? Seems like a
miracle. My name is Larry Deeprose. I’m a student at SUNY, phone 555-6713. Give me a call.

Your friend,

Larry

“This one can’t be for you,” said Sister John Bosco, evidently forgetting Alice’s misbehavior last February. “I’ll toss it.”

“No, I like the picture,” said Alice cleverly, flipping it over to show (thank you, Jesus, that there
was
a picture) a photograph of a statue of Moses in some park. “I like Moses.”

“Very well,” said Sister John Bosco, and went on to supervise someone else’s life for a while.

Alice was in the chapel again. In her lap were the letter from Sister Vincent de Paul and the postcard from Larry Deeprose. She didn’t know if she was there to pray, or just to be alone. It was late afternoon, and she could hear the girls in the yard outside playing volleyball. The sounds of girls shrieking at volleyball did not seem out of place in a chapel, to Alice’s surprise.

It was as if her life had woken up again. Well, she didn’t have parents, she didn’t have Mr. and Mrs. Shaw and those cunning baby girls, and adorable Garth, and feisty Miami as a companion and cohort. She didn’t even have the Harrigans. What did she have? She had the nuns, same as ever, not so bad, better than a lot. And now she had Sister Vincent de Paul again.

But she was dying! There wasn’t much hope! She wanted to see Alice again!

O clement o loving o sweet, began Alice. Mary smiled privately, as usual; Jesus showed His heart, as if to say but hearts still can be broken, you know. I am always here. The light filtered in through the waxy colored windows. A bus belched out on Fifth Avenue, and the diesel fumes made it into the chapel. I want to be a nun, thought Alice. Keep your ears open, Jesus advised again; there’s plenty of time for all that.

And about the boy with the guitar—Larry Deeprose. Deeprose! If there was a more romantic name for a student to have, Alice didn’t know it.

She began to add things up.

A few days later Sister John Bosco handed Alice a stamped envelope on which she’d written Sister Vincent de Paul’s address, a place in Glens Falls fitted out for old or recuperating sisters. “You
have
written your best old friend a note?” asked Sister John Bosco. Alice nodded.

“And I’ll mail it on my way to the store,” said Alice. “Sister Paul the Hermit Crab wants me to go to help her carry stuff back.”

“Sister Paul the Hermit Crab?” Sister John Bosco raised her eyebrows almost up to her wimple.

“You must’ve heard me wrong,” said Alice, blushing. “You know how bad I talk.” She fled with the envelope. Inside it she slipped a piece of paper with lots of tiny writing on it. First she copied over Sister Vincent de Paul’s address on a separate scrap of paper, so she’d know it; then she crossed out the address on the envelope and wrote Miami’s address beside it. That afternoon she slipped the envelope in the mailbox.

THE S NOW P EOPLE

Sister John Bosco threw open the window of her office. Fall had swept in overnight, and a tide of cool, forgiving air spread through the city streets. Moisture in the atmosphere, rising damp from sidewalks and tiny front yards. The tang of an alley skunk. She inhaled with gusto and noted with pleasure that Father Laverty was late. Two minutes of grace, two minutes to do nothing but receive the fall like a guest into her office. It was Saturday, the girls were off picking apples, all but Ruth Peters, who’d begun misbehaving lately, and Alice Colossus, who was having her once-a-month outing with the Shaw family of Albany. Sister John Bosco broke a crust off her morning roll and sprinkled the brown bits on the windowsill, admiring the birds.