Missing Sisters -SA (13 page)

She gazed at a poor woman in a tattered housecoat plowing slowly through the first fall of leaves and wondered briefly about the ragged woman’s childhood.

When Father Laverty came bustling in a moment later, Sister John Bosco was at her desk with a file in her hand. “You’re late, Father,” she said tartly.

“Traffic, I overslept, moral inferiority—pick your excuse,” he said. “Are you going to eat the rest of that roll, or is it going begging?”

They settled down to work. Finances out of the way first, then a few legal questions about the diocesan opinion on various kinds of group health insurance. Sister John Bosco ticked off the items they’d handled on a small, white pad. They came to Alice.

“You will know that the annoying newspaper attention has given rise to all sorts of difficulties,” said Sister John Bosco. “I’ve had no fewer than five women contact me claiming they gave birth to twin daughters at Brady Memorial in nineteen fifty-six, and threatening legal action to reclaim Alice.”

“So what’s the problem?” said Father Laverty. “Maybe one of them is telling the truth.

Or maybe one of them would make a good mother for Alice anyway.”

“
Five
of them aren’t telling the truth,” said Sister John Bosco, “or we’d have a miracle on our hands. Besides, the records at Brady Memorial show that
no
twins were born to unwed mothers in nineteen fifty-six. So clearly all five women are lying, or deluded. This isn’t a sound basis on which to begin considering their fitness to adopt one of our girls, as you well know.” What was it about him, Father Laverty wondered, that caused Sister John Bosco to speak like a state legislator? Perhaps he should come to these meetings in his day-off garb and leave the collar at home.

“
No
twins at Brady that year?” he queried. “So what sort of miracle are we really talking about here? Where’d Alice and Miami come from then?”

“The records show that they were found abandoned in the hospital lobby on June twentieth. They were a week or ten days old. There is no evidence anywhere that names either parent, and none has ever come forward to Brady Memorial to claim responsibility. Nor, might I add, has any of these five women made the slightest suggestion she had the twins elsewhere and delivered, or arranged for the delivery of, the babies to the maternity hospital.”

“So the nuts have come out of the woodwork,” he observed.

“Where the press is concerned, they usually do,” she said.

“What is the long-range hope for Alice Colossus?” said Father Laverty after a while. “I rather like her, you know.”

“Well, of course you do. She’s quite a thrilling child in her own way. Her early disadvantages aside, she’s pushing forward out of herself with commendable spirit. It appears she may be bright enough after all, though that’s been hard to determine so far.”

“The hearing? The speech?”

“The hearing seems to come and go. Dr. Bradford suspects it isn’t as bad as Alice makes out, that perhaps it’s a trick of the mind. The hearing gets worse in times of stress. But the speech is improving all the time. It’s a small problem, really, compounded in part by the hearing and in part by an overgrown integument at the back of the tongue. We are advised that minor surgery when she’s fully grown may help correct the pronunciation of the broad vowels, the fricatives, the labials…the works.”

“And is she ready to leave us? If the right set of parents came along?”

“Well, who can say?” Sister John Bosco allowed herself to look uncertain. “We make the best decisions we can. But what hangs in the balance!” She went on to explain. “I have just heard from the Harrigans, that couple who wanted Alice last winter, only Alice wouldn’t go. They took Naomi Matthews instead. They’re having a terrible time with her and want to send her back here.”

“What sort of terrible time?”

“Naomi is thirteen. What sort do you think?”

“What do you propose? Do you want to send Alice there now?”

“We’re not a hotel, nor are we a lending library of children,” said Sister John Bosco. “We don’t circulate our wards at the whim of cardholders in good standing. Should Naomi herself make a request of us to come back, I would not turn her away, naturally. But the Harrigans need to spend some time learning to be good parents. Six months is not enough.”

“You’d make a good mother,” said Father Laverty daringly.

“I
am
a good mother,” she retorted. “Now next on the agenda is Ruth Peters.” Alice, Miami, and Garth were sitting on the porch rail. Alice and Miami were waiting for their worst misbehavior ever to start. Three times while spending Saturday together they’d already gone through the litany of comparisons and sized each other up and marveled at their similarities and differences. Miami couldn’t sing to save her life. They were both great at basketball. They both had allergies to tomatoes. They both had gone to the memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What if they’d seen each other there! But they hadn’t; there was such a crowd. They couldn’t figure out which one of them was smarter, which made them both feel relieved.

Miami said to Garth, “We’re not doing anything exciting today, so you’re not invited.”

“She’s my sister too,” said Garth. “You can’t disinvite me.”

“We can go in the ladies’ room, and you can’t follow us there,” said Miami.

“What ladies’ room?”

“We’ll find one someplace.”

Alice sat holding the wallet she’d made for Sister Vincent de Paul during the summer.

Usually she was nice to Garth. Today she was too preoccupied to pay attention to him. Miami hoped Alice knew what she was doing. Whatever trouble they got into today, Miami knew
she’d
be forgiven. The Shaws bent over backward to forgive. It was dumb, really, but there was no point in letting their wishy-washy goodness go to waste. With nuns, however, could forgiveness ever be relied upon? No matter what Alice said, Miami’s experience in school seemed to suggest otherwise.

“Garth,” said Miami, “if you’re really good to us and leave us alone today, I’ll let you go up in the tower room.”

He scowled. “When?”

“Whenever you want.”

“Hah!” he said. He knew an outright lie when he heard one. Miami amended her offer to give it more credibility. “Well, whenever you want if I’m not there or if I am and I don’t care.”

“Like right now?”

“Well, yeah,” said Miami. Garth scratched his behind. “Only don’t fall out the window.

It’s awfully high.”

“I’m very good at balancing,” said Garth, and darted away to take full advantage of the permission.

“Come on, let’s go,” said Miami, looking at her watch. “They’ll be back from Westgate Shopping Center in a little while. I’ve left the note to say we went to Patty’s.”

“Should we leave Garth alone?” said Alice.

“We shouldn’t,” said Miami, “but we’re going to. Don’t worry. I’ll ask Mrs. Jenkins to keep an eye on him. The old bat, she’s always snooping and prying anyway, she’ll love it.” Mrs. Jenkins seemed so amazed at the sight of the similar girls that she agreed without so much as a snort. “Get that Garth to play on the porch,” she said. “I’ll watch him while I’m putting in my tulip bed.”

Father Laverty had stayed for a bowl of minestrone and then tootled off to the alcohol rehabilitation ward at Saint Peter’s to say an early vigil mass for the patients. The girls came back from apple picking, boisterous, cheeks as red as the bushels of fruit they hauled in from the station wagons. Ruth Peters stopped crying and began to behave. Sister John Bosco was called in by Sister John Vianney from the basketball hoop in the backyard, where she was playing a little one-on-one with the older girls. She adjusted her veil and went to the phone in the lobby.

It was Mr. Shaw on the phone. Miami and Alice were missing, but not to worry.

“You left them alone in the house?” cried Sister John Bosco, incredulous.

“We thought we had to show them we trusted them,” said Mr. Shaw.

Sister John Bosco released a force of air from between her lips that, had it been interpreted into English, would have required her to confess to profanity. “Where might they be?”

“Well, we called Miami’s friend Patty, where they said they were going. But Patty’s mother said Patty was away for the weekend, and she hadn’t seen them at all. And we called some other friends, and the library, and no one has seen them. They’re probably just walking around the neighborhood. I’m sure of it, in fact. But I wanted to let you know.”

“You let Miami walk around the neighborhood alone?”

“This isn’t Fifth Avenue in Troy, Sister,” said Mr. Shaw, a little sharply, “and Miami
has
lived here for seven years. I wouldn’t be inclined to worry except they left Garth here alone instead of taking him with them, which is what they were instructed to do. I only bothered to call in case you had any ideas.”

Sister John Bosco’s mind began to race. What if one of the women who’d come to claim Alice had been making inquiries, had figured out from the phone book where the Shaws lived?

What if she’d been stalking around waiting to cause trouble? It was farfetched; it was even faintly hysterical. But she’d rather be accused of hysteria than allow harm to come within an inch of the twins. “You’d better call the Albany police,” she said evenly, “and maybe the state police as well. This could be trouble.”

Mr. Shaw said to his wife, “I’m
not
going to call the cops. It’s Saturday afternoon. Alice has been here three times already, and the girls have giggled and horsed around like ordinary kids. That they disobey right now is just part of the game. They have to test us, to see whether two of them are stronger than we are. Sister John Bosco is being excitable.”

“But Alice
is
her responsibility, ultimately,” said Mrs. Shaw. “And we should be seen to be cooperative, for Miami’s sake, in the long run. For all our sakes. I suppose it won’t hurt to call.”

So Mr. Shaw phoned, apology for bothering the police reeking from him like cigar smoke. Garth sat on the blanket with the little girls. He was afraid he’d misbehaved, that it was his fault. He didn’t want Miami to get in trouble.

He watched his mother. She fussed with making hamburger patties for freezing, rounding each one perfectly, with the daunting confidence grown-ups had at everything they did. She smacked the finished burgers flat on squares of waxed paper she’d cut with pinking shears. She looked completely calm. When Mr. Shaw came back from the phone, she said in an even voice,

“Did you tell them what Miami was wearing?”

“How do I know what Miami was wearing?” he snapped.

“She went with you over to Troy when you picked up Alice,” she snapped back. “It could be important. Call them back. Levi’s and a pink corduroy jacket. And Alice in a plaid skirt and a big, blue, oversize sweater, a nun’s cardigan.”

“They’re identical twins, for heaven’s sake,” said Mr. Shaw. “You could hardly get a better identifying feature than that.”

“Call them back,” she said, banging an aluminum mixing bowl on the edge of the counter.

Well, Garth thought, it was time for him to leave. He went up the stairs in bewildered grief, resting both feet on each tread before continuing. He didn’t know why they had to
fight
about it. They never fought. If he hadn’t agreed to stay home this would never, never, never have happened. Somehow it was all his fault. He couldn’t tell exactly how, but he felt as if he were wearing iron clothes, as if his feelings were crushed by them.

Maybe he could see them from the tower window.

He brightened up a bit and the iron feeling left his clothes. He made it up the ladder to the dusty chamber, sunny under the inverted cone of the ceiling. He looked out this way and that. He could see Saint Peter’s from here! And all the way down into Mrs. Jenkins’s yard. Maybe if he sat on the edge of the window he could lean just a small way over and see farther up and down South Allen Street. They’d be awfully glad downstairs if he found Miami and Alice.

The window was unlocked. It swung inside on hinges that squeaked.

He didn’t much like being
too
high, he decided.

But it was awfully important to find Miami and Alice, wasn’t it?

Sister Francis de Sales sat with Sister John Bosco in the office. The other nuns had taken the girls off on their Saturday afternoon walk to the Troy Public Library. The place was quiet again. Sister Francis de Sales had given up trying to be comforting, as Sister John Bosco seemed to find comfort irritating just now. They simply sat, waiting for news.

“You don’t
know
what a trial it is,” said Sister John Bosco, as if Sister Francis de Sales had just claimed such knowledge with insulting possessiveness. “These children are loaned to us for a time, loaned by God. They’re like our own talents, like the talents in the parable, Sister. We are required to preserve them and allow them to grow and develop. Yet there are wolves disguised as saints out there, not even knowing themselves what they are, waiting to snatch up our precious talents and diminish them. Do you know what I’m saying, Sister? Do you understand what I mean?”

Sister Francis de Sales wasn’t at all sure what Sister John Bosco meant. But she nodded piously. “Yes, Sister.” She was grateful that the phone rang just then.

“
What
,” bellowed Sister John Bosco into the phone.

Her eyebrows lifted, her hand trembled a bit. Sister Francis de Sales continued the rosary under her breath. She’d been working on it silently since Sister John Bosco had begun to ramble.

Sister John Bosco picked up a pencil and said, in an unctuous tone, a
pretty
voice that Sister Francis de Sales had never heard before, “Well, I’d very much like to meet you, Mrs.—is it Mrs.

Coyne? Mrs. Patrick Coyne. May I call you by your first name? Mary. And a number?”

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” intoned Sister Francis de Sales, “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace…”

“You have reason to believe you may have information relating to our little Alice.

Perhaps we should set up a meeting, shall we? Have you a street address, then, Mary?”