I sit up very straight. “Take me to the orphanage. Just take me up there, and I promise I’ll go see the psychologist tomorrow.”
Fairfax sticks her jaw out. “What can anybody at Our Lady of the Harbor possibly do that a psychologist can’t do better?”
“They can tell me about my past.”
Fairfax swallows, and is silent.
Roddy and Lavinia watch from the porch as we slide into the front seat of Tony’s car. “Won’t you reconsider? It’s a terrible night for driving,” says Lavinia.
Roddy rubs her gently on the back and waves to us. “Be very careful,” he says.
Tony calls out across the misty yard, “Don’t worry. We’ll be home before you know it.” Then he turns the key in the ignition.
“Sorry,” he says, as the engine rumbles to life. “The top has been stuck in the down position ever since I bought it. I haven’t had time to fix it yet.” He flicks the heater switch to high.
It’s not far to San Francisco. On a clear day, it takes only thirty or forty minutes to get there. But tonight is different. The fog is so thick it even diffuses the dashboard lights. For all I can tell, we are sitting in a parked car with a fan blowing on our faces. Tony assures me we are moving at a steady twenty miles per hour. I don’t know whether to curse the fog for slowing us down or to pray that it won’t disappear. It is an omen. A signal. As long as it surrounds us, I know the wind is far away.
It is almost ten-thirty when we reach Our Lady of the Harbor. Adobe walls loom out of the night, full of dark windows. The hour of the compline is long past, but the Little Sisters of Saint Camillus never turn away visitors in need. There is always someone on duty. Tony, Fairfax, and I huddle before the massive door and ring the night bell.
We wait a moment, listening for footsteps, hearing only the creak of moorings on the nearby wharf. I wonder how many nights, as a child, I lay in my bed and listened to this very sound.
It seems hours before a voice comes from behind the tiny, barred door-window. “Who rings our bell?”
“Electra Thorpe, Mary Fairfax, and a friend,” I say.
“Electra? Mary Fairfax?” Bolts are shot back, the door thrown open, and there stands Sister Michael. A smile creeps across her pale, abstracted face. We have probably pulled her from some private prayer. She hugs us and draws us through the vestibule toward the library. “You look so cold, poor dears. But how wonderful to see you! Come, come. I have a fire lit. I was just reading Saint Augustine. Are you familiar with him?”
Tony laughs softly. “Philosophy 101. He tried to prove that good is more powerful than evil.”
“Yes. And he succeeded. At least as far as the Church was concerned,” says Sister Michael. She smiles at him with increased warmth and a curious tilt of her head.
Fairfax flounces into a patched and worn chair near the fire. She’s so cold her lips are blue, and it takes her a moment to work her face into a sarcastic grin. “See, Electra? You have nothing to worry about. Good will eventually triumph.”
“What do you mean, my child?” says Sister Michael.
Fairfax crosses her arms and slouches deeper into the chair. “Ask them.”
Sister Michael raises inquiring eyes toward me, face half shadowed by her brown wimple.
I meet the gaze steadily, as I have done few times in my life. “I’m sorry, Sister. There’s no time to explain. I’ve come to see Sister Jude. It’s urgent.”
She looks at me quizzically. “What an odd coincidence. She’s been trying to find you.”
I attempt to swallow the dryness in my throat. “I didn’t realize.”
She nods. “Sister Jude is ill. She had a mild stroke last month, you know. Unless it’s extremely important, I’d rather not wake her. I could take your address and phone number …”
Panic spurts through me. “A stroke? Will she be all right? It’s not serious, is it?”
“There’s no real need to worry. She was only in the hospital for a few days, but it has slowed her down. You know how these things go.”
“I understand, but … please, I … please. It is important.”
She contemplates me for a moment, touching the tips of her fingers together, moving them apart, touching them together again. I wonder what she sees in my face. I wonder if the fear moves under the skin of my cheeks in visible waves. She nods once more. But this time she rises and walks toward the door. “Wait here,” she says.
She is gone a long time. We sit in silence, listening to the clock on the mantel. It’s an expensive one—an antique, probably a gift from some successful parishioner. Its intricate workings click away in plain view beneath a glass bell. I remember the stream of gifts that used to come through the orphanage door every Christmas. Half a dozen lovely trees. Cases of wine and olive oil and wheels of cheese. Boxes of nuts and dried fruit, crates of brilliant oranges.
The clock strikes eleven, and we hear the shuffle of slippers on the stone floor. “Here we are,” says Sister Michael as she guides Sister Jude into the room.
Sister Jude has always been old, but now she looks truly ancient. Her spine is bent. She watches her feet with great concentration as she hobbles along, leaning on a knobby black cane. She is wearing a frayed brown bathrobe. Silver hair peeks out from under her wimple.
When she is settled in one of the chairs by the fire, she tilts her head up with an effort. A smile whispers across her face. “Greetings, Electra. Have you come to join us after all?”
I look down at the floor. My cheeks burn.
“How did you know I’ve been thinking of you?” Her left eyelid droops, dead and unmoving, but her right eye shines in the glow of the fire.
“I had a dream,” I say. “In the dream, you wanted to give me something.”
Sister Michael makes a small sound—almost a whimper—and presses her fist to her mouth. She sways slightly, and Tony reaches out to steady her.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Are you all right?”
The good half of Sister Jude’s face tightens into a look of vague and lopsided pain. “Perhaps we have witnessed a miracle,” she says. “I tried to contact you, but the university has no record of your current address. I prayed that God would send you here.” A soft, dry laugh whispers from her throat. “I have spent my life believing that the age of miracles was past.”
She reaches into the pocket of her robe and pulls out a white envelope, torn open along the top. She hands it to me. “Forgive me for opening it. It was marked urgent, and when I couldn’t reach you …”
I turn it over and over, struggling against a rush of déjà vu. I read the front. Electra, c/o Little Sisters of Saint Camillus, Home for Children, San Francisco, California. It’s the kind of envelope you can buy in any drugstore, ten for a dollar. The return address says Jimmy’s Tavern, Mission Street, San Francisco. The word urgent runs in capital letters along the bottom edge. The writing is shaky but clear.
Inside the envelope is a sheet of binder paper, buckled as if it has gotten wet somehow.
“Dear Electra,” it says. “Time is getting short by now. Nearly your twenty-first birthday, and that was the bargain. I’ve got no right to ask you favors. But it chews at my soul, what I did, and I can’t go to my grave without telling you. If God has any mercy, you’ll find me at Jimmy’s in the Mission. Any night this week. Ask for Captain Fletcher.”
The paper flutters out of my hand.
“What does it say?” Fairfax springs from her chair and snatches the letter from the floor. Tony reads over her shoulder.
“What’s the postmark?” he says. “When was it mailed?”
I am still holding the envelope, forgotten, between the fingers of my left hand. Tony takes it from me, glances at the stamp, then at his watch. “This is dated Monday, October thirteenth. Today’s the fifteenth—almost the sixteenth. He’ll still be there.” He looks up at me. There are lines in his face I have never seen before. “Who is this guy, anyway?”
I try to make some answer, but I can’t th
ink of any. My chin is quivering, and the only communication I can manage is a shrug.
“I’ll bet he’s her father, the son of a bitch!” says Fairfax. “How could he be so cruel?”
“Why is it cruel, Mary?” says Sister Jude. “If he is her father, it is not cruelty that makes him write this letter. It is only human nature, and one of the better parts at that.”
I kneel down beside Sister Jude’s chair. “Please,” I say. “What do you know about me? About him? Tell me about that night, the night they found me here.”
She smiles. I remember that smile, surprisingly small for all the love it contains. She strokes my hair. Her hand is rough and bony. “I’m sorry, Elecrra. There is little to tell about you—about any of our children.”
“There must be something. Something.”
She lifts her chin just slightly, and the creases in her forehead deepen. In my mind an image of her appears, a small brown figure gazing up at mountains of dust, each speck of dust a memory. I have never felt as minuscule as I do at this moment.
“I remember the way we named you,” she says. “You were wrapped in a seaman’s coat, and in it we found a scrap of sailcloth. ‘Electra,’ it said. We believe you were named after a ship. A ship that sank. Did you know that?”
I shake my head. I wonder how fast the hearts of mice beat, or hummingbirds. No faster than mine.
“Well. It seemed so fitting. The Electra sank just before you came, and a child aboard her was killed. We thought of you as a living memorial to that child’s soul.”
I rest my throbbing forehead against the arm of the chair. The wood feels cool and good.
“You arrived in November. During the storm in which the ship was lost.”
“My birthday is November seventeenth. It must have been after that.”
“No … no, we celebrate a foundling’s birthday on the anniversary of his arrival. So although you came to us in the middle of November, your real birthday must have been well before that. As much as a month, I’m sure.” She smiles distantly. “I have never seen a baby before or since whose eyes were so bright. The world fascinated you.”
I barely hear the last part. I’m busy developing several meticulous proofs. They all conclude the same way. If Sister Jude is right, I’m a month older than I thought. My twenty-first birthday might be today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, instead of next month.
“Sister Jude, do you have any idea who wrote this letter?” says Tony.
She shakes her head. “None. As Fairfax says, her father, perhaps.”
Slowly a thought has been percolating its way through my subconscious. Now it flows into place among all the other thoughts. “He’s the man in the fog,” I say. “The sailor outside the playground fence. I’m certain of it. I’ve got to find him. The sooner the better.”
“What man in the fog?” says Fairfax.
“A man I saw when I was a little girl. I dreamed about him the night of the eclipse. And now I remember seeing him more than once. Watching. Just watching.”
Tony turns toward me, his face oddly soft in the firelight. “Electra, you know there are some pretty crazy people hanging around the Mission district. Why don’t you let me find him for you, talk to him, make sure he’s not planning to … to hurt you somehow.”
I lay my hand on his shoulder, touching him for the first time, thinking about it only after I have done it. Even through his shirt and his tattered sweater, he feels warm. Maybe it’s just that my hands are so cold. “Thank you. But I don’t think there’s time.” I almost whisper it.
Fairfax takes two steps toward me, stops, clenches her fists. “Don’t go, Electra. I’m afraid. This feels all wrong.”
I smile at her. I can feel it on the inside of my face, like the heat of a tiny flame against a wall. “You know how it is, Fairfax. I know you do. He can tell me who I am.”
She never cries. Not even now. But her eyes are very bright as she nods slowly.
I take Sister Jude’s hands between my own. I have known her all my life and now I am leaving. What can I say that will not be inadequate?
But she speaks before I can. “I think you’ll be back,” she says.
My throat is so tight I can barely answer. “I will if I can. I promise.”
She gazes at me with her one piercing eye. “Take my crucifix,” she says, leaning forward so I can unfasten the chain around her neck. Her voice is full of hard, icy authority, the kind no one denies.
“Yes, Sister,” I say automatically, as I have countless times before, when the lessons and commands were not as important as now. I reach out and release the catch. The crucifix is small, made of dark wood, hand-carved with intricate designs. I fasten the chain around my own neck.
“There is a line in the poem of the Wanderer,” she says. “‘Til bith he-the his treowe ye-healdeth.’ It means, ‘Good is he who keeps his pledges.”’
I nod, scrubbing my eyes on the sleeve of my coat, and Tony and Fairfax and I walk away toward the heavy door and the fog beyond it. The clock strikes twelve.
“I will if I can,” I murmur.
I count the street lamps as we start down Mission Street. Three, five, seven. In the fog, which seems thinner now, they begin as nebulous clouds of light and grow to bright spheres with halos. I see fewer and fewer of them as we get further east, closer to the piers where the big ships tie up. Twenty-one. I turn the number over in my mind, wondering what makes it so special. Not a prime. Not a square. Three sevens. Three for the trinity, seven because it is magic and has been magic since time began.
Jimmy’s is a single-story dive on a deserted corner. Above the grimy front window, a neon sign blinks on and off, first a naked pink woman, then a green palm tree. We don’t even have to look for a parking spot.
Tony presses his palm lightly against the cracked plastic doorplate, then looks at me worriedly.
Fairfax clutches my sleeve and says, “Are you sure about this?”
The faintest whisper of a breeze tickles my cheeks. The fog is lifting. “Hurry,” I say.
Tony pushes through the doorway into the darkness of the tavern. At first I can’t see anything. The smell of stale beer and rum is so powerful that it makes my stomach squirm. There’s a jukebox playing softly, something nondescript, a female vocalist singing about how she can’t get along without love. I hear Tony trip over something—probably a wooden stool—as he makes his way up to the bar.
There are candles in round red glasses on each table. By their meager light, I can just make out the bartender, a huge man, wiping a mug on his apron. “Whadya want?” he says.
“We’re looking for someone named Captain Fletcher,” says Tony. “He said we could find him here.”
The bartender snorts and inclines his head toward the back of the room.
We make our way among the rickety tables where scattered patrons drink alone or in pairs. In an isolated corner, far from the door, a wild-haired figure sits hunched over a shot glass and a pint bottle of whiskey.
“Captain Fletcher?” says Tony.
“Who the hell are you?” says the man, wrapping his arms around his bottle as if to protect it.
“I’ve brought Electra.”
There’s a sound of indrawn breath, then a sigh, almost a sob. “Figured she’d be gone by now,” he says.
I push a chair out of the way and sit down opposite him. I stare at his face, trying to match it with the face outside the playground fence. There are too many wrinkles and not enough light. All I get is an eerie sense of the familiar, without being able to pinpoint it.
I take a deep breath. There’s a simple test that will settle the matter. “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” I say, “and are spent without hope.”
In the glow of the red candle, tears spill over his cheeks, and he hides his face with his arms. He moans softly. “O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall no more see good.”
“What does it mean?” I whisper. “I’ve been dreaming it for months.”
“Forgive you for what?” says Fairfax, leaning toward him, teeth bared as if she would like to grab him by the collar and shake him till his neck breaks. “You’ve done something to Electra, haven’t you! Is that what needs forgiving?”
Tony pulls her away. She jerks herself from his grip and stands trembling beside me, glaring at the old seaman.
Captain Fletcher throws back his head and laughs. “I’ve done something to Electra? That’s a good one. Which Electra? There are far too many in this piss hole of a world.”
Suddenly I notice a small sound, barely audible except to one who is listening for it—a breeze gently scrabbling at the window of Jimmy’s Tavern. My mouth goes dry.
“Are you my father?”
He’s still laughing, almost helplessly, at some joke nobody else can see. “Your father?” he says. “If I were your father, this would all have been much simpler, wouldn’t it now?”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I let it out now, embarrassed at the relief I feel. My father is a better man than Fletcher. I can still dream of that.
“You said if God had any mercy, I’d find you. Well, I have,” I say. “And I want to know what you meant about bargains, and time getting short.”
His laughter stops as abruptly as it started, and his eyes cloud up. He’s full of booze, I tell myself. A soppy, pitiful drunk. I try not to despise him for his weakness. Whatever he’s done, he hates himself for it. That should be enough.
“Twenty-one years ago, I was the captain of a ship,” he says. “A ship named Electra. A fine, stinking ship that went to the bottom in a storm. Nobody died. Not a soul! You want to know why? Because I made a bargain with the wind.”
I sit at the table, frozen, as the story of my beginnings comes out at last.
Cat in Glass Page 11
