“The furnace is working now and, actually, at our age we should be giving a better example. What does it say to the others, if we don’t do what we are supposed to do?”
“I’ll bet no one missed us, no one except Cecilia.”
From the look on her friend’s face, Mary Helen could tell that Eileen was about to argue the point. She was relieved when Sister Anne joined them.
“Where have you two been?” the young nun asked, her hazel eyes wide behind her purple-rimmed glasses. “I haven’t seen you in days.” Anne began to eat her salad. “We sure could have used your input about graduation at this afternoon’s meeting.”
Talk about saying the wrong thing at the right time! Although she would never admit it, Mary Helen knew Eileen was right And whatever “input” was, they probably should have been there to give it To tell the truth, Mary Helen had been so preoccupied with Erma, that finals week and graduation, with all the ceremonies surrounding it, had almost slipped her mind. And summer school? She hadn’t given the opening of summer school even a passing thought Yes, Eileen was right! Her first responsibility was to Mount St. Francis College.
Much as she hated to, she decided to put Erma in the hands of God and the SFPD. After the final blessing at Compline, she told Eileen so.
Yet those sad Madonna eyes had haunted her all night. She had even dreamed about them.
Right after the six-thirty Mass on Wednesday morning, Sister Mary Helen waited for Sister Eileen. “Let’s step outside for a minute,” she said, watching the nuns file out of the chapel, then start down the hall toward the dining room. She didn’t want to be overheard.
Obediently, Eileen followed her. Outside, dawn was just beginning to show over the Oakland hills. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.” Mary Helen drew in a deep breath. “Look at that sky.” She pointed toward downtown, where an aura of peach was beginning to cut through the fog and frame the buildings.
“You didn’t pull me out here to discuss the weather,” Eileen said. “Furthermore, if you look the other way, old dear, you will see the fog has all but obliterated the Golden Gate as well as the entire Richmond District.” Clearly, Eileen’s tone of voice was wary. In fact, everything about her was wary.
“Tomorrow is the regular monthly meeting of the OWLs,” Mary Helen reminded her.
“And you didn’t pull me out here to discuss our appointment schedule either.” She narrowed her eyes.
As usual, the direct approach was going to work best with Eileen. “I can’t get Erma or the picture of the Madonna and those haunting eyes out of my mind. Just what did Erma mean when she told her daughter, ‘If anything happens to me, look there? The whole thing is such a mystery.”
“What kind of shenanigans are you contemplating, Mary Helen? I had the feeling you were being entirely too agreeable and too pious last night.”
Mary Helen tried to look a little hurt. She must have succeeded. Eileen’s face puckered and she patted Mary Helen’s hand.
“Erma and the picture have been on my mind, too, old friend,” she said, “and it’s high time we did something to take the mystery out of them.”
Without much further discussion, the two nuns agreed to meet at ten o’clock in the convent garage. The most logical person for them to see, they decided, was Ree Duran, the most mysterious of Erma’s children.
* * *
After several attempts, Mary Helen parallel parked in the narrow alley off 17th Street where Ree lived.
“That’s the one.” Eileen pointed to a pink house, midblock, with the same Italianate front as its neighbors. “And, remember, that one is her apartment.” She indicated the door cut in the basement, with vivid blue hydrangeas on either side of it.
Mary Helen pressed the doorbell of the basement apartment. No one answered. No one seemed to move inside. She stepped back to study the main house. That, too, appeared empty. “Maybe nobody’s home.” She couldn’t help feeling disappointed. “I guess we should have called first”
“I’m sure I hear the television.”
Thank God for Eileen’s hearing. Mary Helen put her ear to the front door, then rapped. “Maybe the bell is broken.”
After several knocks, the door opened a crack. The eyes peering out had trouble focusing at first. A thick brass security chain stretched where a nose should be. Ree grunted and shut the door. Mary Helen could hear her fumbling with the night chain.
Finally, she opened the door just wide enough to let them in. All the blinds in the one-room apartment were drawn. A table lamp and the television set provided the only light. Ree motioned them to sit down on a lumpy couch against one wall. A game-show contestant laughed shrilly.
Turning down the volume on the set, Ree went back to a worn recliner and wrapped herself in an equally worn granny-square afghan. The floor around the chair looked as if Ree had been sitting there for some time.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said, sniffling.
It’s no wonder, Mary Helen thought She counted two open boxes of Cheez-Its, a plastic bowl with the melted remnants of chocolate ice cream in the bottom, five wadded candy-bar wrappers, and a plastic liter bottle of diet cola. A cracked bowl with several kernels of unpopped corn was perched next to her on a hassock.
“What is it?” Eileen’s eyes were full of concern. “Not that new flu, I hope.”
“A cold, I think. Or maybe I’m just depressed.” She sniffled again.
“What are you doing for it?” Eileen asked at the same moment that Mary Helen said, “Do you get depressed often?” Their questions intermingled and Ree ignored them both.
Instead, she continued to talk. It was as if she were repeating a familiar story yet another time. Mary Helen had the uncanny feeling that Ree hardly knew they were there.
“I didn’t used to get depressed, you know, before it happened. But afterward, I did. It used to worry Mommy. Lots. She didn’t say so, but I could tell.” Suddenly, Ree reverted to a little girl’s voice. “Mommy got me medicine from the doctor. See my medicine?” She thrust the brown plastic pill container toward Mary Helen. “It keeps me happy,” she said, pulling the container back before Mary Helen could read exactly what kind of tranquilizers the doctor had prescribed. Ree tucked the brown cylinder beside her in the chair.
“Have you taken some today?” Mary Helen asked, knowing full well what a foolish, question it was. One look at the woman’s eyes told her she had taken more than one, and probably quite a few.
Ree nodded almost in slow motion. She focused her eyes first on one nun, then on the other, frowning as if she wondered who they were.
“What you really need is something nourishing to eat!” Eileen headed toward the small refrigerator in the portion of the room that served as a kitchen. While she located a pan and set about scrambling eggs and making hot buttered toast, Mary Helen removed the popcorn bowl from the hassock and sat down close to Ree.
“Before what happened?” she asked the young woman.
Closing her eyes, Ree rubbed her forehead. Obviously, it was taking a great effort to think. Her dilated eyes opened and she stared. Suddenly, as though frightened, she clutched the afghan around her body and rocked back and forth.
“Mommy told me not to tell our business to strangers.”
“I am hardly a stranger,” Mary Helen said soothingly. “And if what you were going to say will help us contact your mother, I’m sure she would want you to tell me.”
Ree studied Mary Helen’s face, seemingly weighing the words. She continued in her little-girl voice. “Daddy took me and the boys with him to see the horses run. Mr. Finn went too.” She shuddered. “They had some beer, Daddy and Mr. Finn. We had soda pop. Daddy went somewhere. He left us with Mr. Finn.”
Mary Helen felt as though she were listening to a sleeper recounting a recurring dream. Maybe it was a dream.
“When did all this happen?” she asked.
Tears hung for a moment on the corners of Ree’s eyes, then ran down her chubby cheeks. Frowning, she focused o
n Mary Helen’s face. “I don’t remember, really. I was just a kid.” Although she sniffled, she sounded more like her adult self. “I get mixed up, you know. I remember Mr. Finn was there and my brothers too. I was scared. I remember that. And that it hurt me.”
“Who hurt you? Mr. Finn?”
“I can’t really remember. But he was there. I remember he was there and he saw. I’m sure he saw. Sometimes when I see his eyes, I think I remember him looking. Sometimes it still scares me. . . .”
“Did you ever talk to your mother about it?”
Fishing under the afghan for a Kleenex, Ree stopped to wipe her eyes. “Yes. Mommy said I was just upset That maybe it was just a bad dream or my imagination playing tricks.” The child’s voice began to slip in once more. “Mommy said Mr. Finn was a nice man and a friend of Daddy’s. She said she was sure he wouldn’t hurt me. And she said my brothers loved me and they wouldn’t hurt me either.”
Ree blew her nose. “It seemed so real. Mommy said it was just that I was lost and scared. Mr. Finn was the one who found me. Daddy came and he was mad. He brought me and my brothers home.”
“Did you ever talk to your father about what happened?”
Again, tears filled Ree’s doelike eyes. “Right after it happened I tried a couple of times, but Daddy would get real mad. Once when I tried to tell him it was Mr. Finn’s fault, not mine, he grabbed me and started to spank me, but Mommy made him stop. She told him maybe I just had a big imagination or watched too much TV or maybe I’d had a bad dream. When Daddy got mad at her for making up excuses, she hollered back at him and said I was high-strung, just like him.
“Later, when Daddy wasn’t there, she told me that he was mad because Mr. Finn was his good friend and he didn’t like me to say bad things about him. Or about the boys either.”
“You said your brothers were there, in this dream?”
Ree shook her head like an animal trying to rid itself of a buzzing fly. “I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“Did anyone hurt them?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Finn got ahold of Junior, I think. I get all mixed up,” she repeated. “I was just a kid. You know?”
Mary Helen was quiet, waiting.
“Mommy said the best thing to do was to forget about it, not talk about it.” Ree went on, her little-girl voice returning. “Then it would go away. Daddy wouldn’t get mad at me. Mommy said everything would work out. But it didn’t. I still get scared sometimes and I feel sad. Sometimes Mommy felt scared and sad too. Like just before she went away. I could tell. She told me to look at the picture if anything ever happened to her.”
Eileen came across the room with a plate of steaming eggs, buttered toast, and a mug of tea on a makeshift tray. “Eat up, dear.” She set the tray on Ree’s lap. “You’ll feel much better with something in your stomach.”
Ree ate hungrily, without even looking up. Eileen started to tidy up around the chair, then worked her way over to the kitchen area. At least Eileen’s uneasiness was useful. She cleaned.
Mary Helen just sat there staring into space, not knowing what to make of it all. Had Ree been dreaming or had something actually happened long ago at the racetrack? The track part, at least, could be true. It had the ring of authenticity. Maybe the child had been lost She remembered, right after Erma’s disappearance, Ree’s angry flare-up about her father and Finn’s propensity for the races. On the other hand, all one had to do was talk to Ree for a little while to tell the woman was not completely stable.
Poor Erma. Knowing her, Mary Helen could well imagine how badly she must have wanted everything to work out. How important it must have been to her to keep both her husband and her daughter happy. And how hard she must have tried to do it. Mary Helen fished through her pocketbook, searching for another tissue to hand the sniffling Ree, but the package was empty. Perhaps she had stuck an extra one into the zipped side pocket.
The crumpled pages of Erma’s journal caught in the zipper. Struggling to loosen the zipper, Mary Helen was annoyed. Drat! Erma was an intelligent woman. What had she been thinking about? Why hadn’t she taken intelligent steps to solve her family’s problems? Why hadn’t Erma used her head?
“The heart runs away with the head.” She remembered that some eighteenth-century Romantic had said that about love. And Erma had loved Tommy Duran. With all his shortcomings, she’d loved him. And her children. Difficult as they appeared to be, she loved them too. She wanted them all to be happy. She wanted everyone to be happy. Erma McSweeney Duran just couldn’t help herself.
* * *
That night Kate soaked longer than usual in the bathtub, thinking about, of all things, Ron Honore and the missing OWL. You’d mink I didn’t have enough cases of my own, she fussed, adding still more hot water to the tub.
“Are you ever coming to bed?” Jack called from their bedroom. “It’s dark and lonely in here by myself.”
Kate checked the clock on the old-fashioned vanity table. She couldn’t believe she’d been in the tub for almost thirty minutes. No wonder the water was cold.
Pulling the plug, she stepped out of the old-fashioned tub and began to dry herself with a soft towel. Her body tingled and soon she felt warm and relaxed all over. With a large feathery puff, she put generous pats of Giorgio dusting powder everywhere. The puff left round, soft white patches on her pink skin.
Self-consciously, Kate opened one of the vanity drawers and took out the small bottle of honey-colored liquid Mama Bassetti had given her. St. Gerard oil, her mother-in-law had called it For all Kate knew, it could be olive oil from Lucca, straight off the shelf of Petrini’s Market She’d have to ask Sister Mary Helen about St. Gerard and his miraculous powers.
Feeling a little embarrassed even though she was alone, Kate rubbed the oil across the middle of her stomach. What she ought to have been doing, she thought, was taking her temperature as the doctor’s brochure suggested.
She studied the friar on the small bottle. His hands were folded and he was looking piously heavenward. St Gerard, do your stuff, she prayed, hoping she wasn’t indulging in pure superstition.
“Hurry up, hon.” Jack’s voice startled her. Quickly she shoved the bottle back into the drawer.
The moment she crawled into bed, Jack reached for her. “You smell delicious,” he said, pulling her close. His hands moved smoothly over her thighs, caressing her hips, his touch exciting her.
“Mmm, silky.” His hands glided up, seeking her breasts.
“New bath oil,” Kate mumbled. As he pressed his body close to hers and eagerly found her lips, she knew bath oil was the last thing on his mind.
May 17
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
“Red sky at morning—sailors take warning.” Shivering, Eileen walked down Parker Street toward the Carmelite monastery for the six-thirty Mass.
“I don’t care what you say”—Mary Helen could see her own breath—“the moment I read the announcement last night, I knew today was going to be a good day. It was like an omen.”
She studied the sky. In fact, red or not, this morning’s dawn reminded her of an old-fashioned holy card, the kind you received at Easter, with fluffy white clouds all streaked with gold and rose behind the floating figure of the risen Lord.
“Yes, a very good omen,” she declared.
“And s-since when have you b-begun to b-believe in omens?” Eileen was still so cold that Mary Helen could hear her teeth chattering.
“Since I read the announcement about today’s Mass. I knew we couldn’t go at noon. Because of the OWL meeting, we’d just have to go to the Carmelite monastery. It was as if God were sending us a sign.” She smiled at her friend. Sister Eileen had the good grace to simply smile back.
* * *
At nine, when the two nuns arrived at Erma’s apartment, Mr. Finn, Lucy, and Caroline were already there.
Caroline, impeccably groomed as usual and obviously impatient, sat twisting her long string of pearls. “I’m glad you’re here.” S
he narrowed her eyes at Finn, who was staring out the apartment window. “He says he has something to tell us, but he insists on waiting until everyone arrives.”
Apparently deaf to her remark, Finn rocked back and forth on his heels and said nothing.
“Come in, Sisters. Sit down.” Lucy, always the hostess, patted the cushion next to her on the sofa. “How have you bean, lima?” she asked brightly. Stifling a groan, Sister Mary Helen sat down where Lucy had patted.
“Here comes the other one. The one with the blue hair,” Finn announced.
All that’s missing is “Hail to the Chief,” Mary Helen thought, watching Noelle sweep into the room. With her usual air of efficiency, she peered over her half glasses, cleared her throat, and prepared to take over the meeting. “Are we all here?” Her bright blue eyes surveyed them.
“But not all there!” Lucy couldn’t resist.
Ignoring the remark, Noelle lit her cigarette.
Finn spoke up from his post “The daughter’s not here.”
“Oh, she’s not coming.” Lucy scooted forward. “I talked to her this morning just before Caroline picked me up. The poor child is not feeling well.”
“For God’s sake, Lucy, the child, as you call her, is at least thirty-five years old.” Caroline glared. “What is wrong with her now?”
“She has a very bad cold.” Lucy sounded defensive.
“That’s correct. She was quite a bit under the weather when we saw her yesterday.” Sister Eileen jumped in on Lucy’s side.
“As I’ve said a million times, if it isn’t her . . .” Caroline pointed a finger.
“Girls, girls. That’s neither here nor there.”
The room crackled with tension. Mary Helen was glad Noelle spoke up. The discussion had not yet disintegrated into an argument, but it was well on its way. Caroline frowned as if she had something more to say, but refrained.
Erma’s disappearance is getting to all our nerves, Mary Helen thought. She watched the women, looking for all the world like three ruffled ducks, settle back in their chairs.
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