The Staircase

by Ann Rinaldi

  "I loved that child, oh, so much. He was my pride and joy. I thought staying was the right thing to do. For him. If I ran, I'd have to leave him, and I couldn't bring myself to do that. Now I know I should have."

  "Like my father left me?" I asked.

  "Sometimes it takes courage to leave," she said. "To make a new life for those you love. But I didn't have that courage. I stayed, and one day when Robert was near sixteen, my husband started beating me rather badly. And Robert came to my defense." She fell silent.

  "Was that so bad?" I asked. I wasn't even sixteen, and I knew I'd do that for my mother.

  "In this instance it was. Robert killed him," she said.

  I came alert. I looked at her sharply. "What?"

  "He killed him. My husband had drawn a gun to hold Robert off. They fought over the gun. I don't know if it went off accidentally or if Robert shot him on purpose. Does it matter? Robert killed him."

  "And then what happened?"

  "I sent a trusted servant for Lieutenant Colonel Lacey—I had met him at a social in Richmond and he was a widower and so kind. We—Oh, how shall I say it? It sounds so trite. We fell in love. As much as I could trust the word. But it wasn't on this count that my husband beat me. He had never learned of my alliance with Lieutenant Colonel Lacey."

  "And Colonel Lacey told the authorities?" I asked.

  "No. He helped Robert out of town on the first train that went north. Then he arranged things so it looked as if my husband had been shot in a brawl in one of the gambling establishments in Richmond. There were many of them. They called them Hells, and my first husband was known for frequenting them. And then I came west with Colonel Lacey."

  "And what of Robert?"

  "The western posts were anything but comfortable. We lived, for a while, at Fort Filmore in the New Mexico Territory. Always we feared an invasion of the Confederates from Texas, fearing they would not only capture New Mexico but seize the Colorado mines and even take southern California."

  "Your husband was a Union man?" My eyes widened.

  She laughed. "He wasn't yet my husband, remember? Oh, he was in spirit, but my husband was dead. Shot by my son. John Lacey took care of me. Back East, in peacetime, it would have been unforgivable. But this was the West, where everyone had a past life, a secret to hide. And wartime broke down so many of the old social rules. I was accepted as his wife. I became Mrs. Colonel John Lacey within six months."

  "And what of Robert?"

  "He joined the army. I didn't even know it at first. It took us awhile to find out where he was, and that came about only because of Colonel Lacey's efforts and connections. Robert didn't want us to find out, because he was too young to be in the army and he feared Colonel Lacey would effect a dismissal. By the time we located him, he'd been killed. It happened at Ball's Bluff in Virginia in the fall of sixty-one. And when word finally got to us out here, my John used all the power he had as an army officer to have Robert's body dug up and shipped here. It took months. We were at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande then. It was under Colonel Canby. John rode out with Canby and his men to engage Sibley's brigade at Valverde in February of sixty-two. The Confederates won and were marching to take Santa Fe when my boy's body arrived by wagon on the Santa Fe Trail. We buried him here and were ready to flee when we heard that the Confederates were beaten at Glorieta Pass here in New Mexico. John was assigned to stay, so we stayed."

  "When did John die?" I asked.

  "About eight years ago. We were very happy, but I never forgave myself, Lizzy, never, for what Robert was led to do. I know if I'd left my first husband, he and Robert would never have come to blows."

  "Robert may have run off to war anyway, if you'd left," I told her.

  I let her cry for a bit. I took the cup from her hands and set it down. "It wasn't your fault," I said.

  "It's why I give money to the church," she said tearfully. "It came to me that it was a way to redeem Robert's soul. It's why I want the staircase completed. I know that once it is, my Robert will rest and be forgiven for killing his father and be allowed into heaven."

  I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. She believed in her quest, and if it made her feel better, what harm in it?

  "Promise me you won't leave this place until the staircase is completed," she said.

  I promised.

  "Even after I die."

  I said yes.

  "The Union may have won the war, Lizzy, but nobody ever wins a war. Do you know who wins?"

  I said no, I didn't.

  "Memory," she said. "And that means both sides lose. Because both sides are forever held hostage by memory."

  IT WAS LATE IN the afternoon, but I went to visit Robert's grave because Mrs. Lacey had asked me to. I'm glad I went that day. It got me out of the convent and away from the girls who were set on making my life miserable. I'd discovered since Mama died that Sunday afternoons and evenings worked their own mischief on my soul. In my mind, they were connected somehow with family. And as late afternoon turned into evening, an anguish descended upon me each Sunday to which I could put no name.

  I missed everyone. Home seemed like something I could never find again. A hollowness seemed carved out of my soul, an empty place that could never be filled. So I'm glad I went, for myself as well as for Mrs. Lacey. Even though I found myself looking over my shoulder, lest Delvina's husband again try to kill me.

  I missed the supper hour. But I wasn't scolded. The Bishop had come, and Mother Magdalena was holed up in his study with him. Ramona said the girls had refused to eat anything.

  "My hare jardiniere!" She was angry, speaking half in English, half in Spanish. But I got the message. Her supper was gone to waste.

  "I'll have some," I said.

  "What?"

  I held out a bowl. "Please. I'm starved."

  "You no like them?" she asked. "You don't fast?"

  I said no. I wanted to eat. And so I did. I sat at the kitchen table and spooned every delicious morsel into my mouth, while Ramona continued to bang around and take on in Spanish while the wet nurse held Elena to her breast in a corner by the stove.

  It was only after I'd finished and said I wanted to take a bowl to Mrs. Lacey that Ramona dropped the pan in her hand. It went to the floor with a clatter that sounded through my bones. Her hand went to her mouth.

  "I forget to say" she told me. "Mrs. La-cee, she sick. Is why the Bishop is here in first place. He say she may die. He make her baptize."

  And that was how I found out that my dear friend Mrs. Lacey was out of her head, into some place where I could not reach her. And her worst fear had come true. She had been baptized Catholic. And by the Bishop himself.

  18

  "LIZZY, COME IN, SIT DOWN."

  The Bishop had summoned me to his study early the next morning. He was wearing his most solemn black mantle, which went with his solemn face, yet he was unerringly polite, even gallant, as he pulled up a chair for me.

  I sat.

  "How are you faring, Lizzy?"

  "Fine, Eminence."

  "I know your attachment to Mrs. Lacey. And since she has entrusted herself to your care, I feel it only right that I should tell you I baptized her into the Catholic faith yesterday."

  I felt myself blushing. His eyes burned into me. This was a challenge, nothing less. He was a man of honesty, and honesty always hurt. Now he wanted mine in return. Well, I could give him no less, could I?

  "She didn't want to be baptized into the Catholic religion. She's Methodist," I said.

  "We don't know that she was ever baptized anything. So we want to make sure."

  "Make sure of what?"

  "Come now, Lizzy. Surely you've been here long enough to know. We want to make sure she goes to heaven."

  "Catholic heaven?"

  "Is there a difference from a Methodist heaven?"

  I felt foolish. "I don't know. I only know she didn't want your baptism. She told me that. She trusted me."

  "Lizzy," he said,
leaning forward across his desk, "don't you think I should be entrusted with such decisions around here?"

  "Yes, Eminence."

  "Such a decision is too great a responsibility for a girl your age. And she should not have put it on you. You did your best. You gave to her your friendship, which lightened her final days. It seems to me, Lizzy, that you have more than enough to burden you these days without wondering which heaven Mrs. Lacey will be permitted into. Don't you?"

  I looked up, startled, to see the eyes not only burning into me now but sucking the secrets out of me.

  "Don't you?" he repeated.

  "Yes, Eminence."

  "Well, then? Don't you have something to tell me?"

  "The kitten you gave me, Eminence. She's been blinded."

  "So I have seen. And how did this kitten, that I entrusted to your care, that I told you must be respected as one of God's creatures, become blind? Do you wish to tell me?"'

  I wrung my hands together in my lap. "I would tell you, Eminence, but it would get someone else in trouble."

  "I would think the one in trouble here is the kitten, Lizzy. She, first, is in trouble. And then you are, because you were responsible for her. Am I to take it that there is a third party in trouble?"

  "Yes, Eminence."

  "And how is that third party involved?"

  "She stuck Cleo in the eyes with her embroidery needle. Because she was angry with me."

  He put his elbows on his desk and made a peak with his slender hands. "I would have a name, please, Lizzy." He did not seem surprised. His voice was level and kind. I suppose, I thought, this man has seen and heard just about everything by now.

  "Will she be punished?"

  "I would have a name, please, Lizzy."

  "Elinora, Your Eminence." Why was it so difficult to give him the name when I hated her so for what she'd done to the kitten?

  He nodded and sighed. He took his elbows off the desk and leaned back in his chair. "Thank you," he said. "You may go now, Lizzy." He picked up some papers and shuffled them on his desk.

  I got up to flee. As I reached the door, his voice stopped me.

  "Lizzy, I hear the girls are shunning you. May I ask why?"

  My legs were shaking. "Because I told on Elinora about the note from Abeyta."

  His face never changed. "Ah, yes. Well, as I said before, you have enough to burden you. Go have your breakfast, and leave Mrs. Lacey to God."

  "Yes, Eminence." I made a quick curtsy and ran from the room. I fled to the dining room, although that was like fleeing to the devil's frying pan.

  ***

  I SAW IMMEDIATELY that the five girls who boarded were eating nothing. They were drinking tea. But they stubbornly refused the fresh fish, eggs, and pan de man.

  When I walked in, Mother Magdalena was standing over them. "I insist that you eat. This cannot go on."

  But it was going on. All sat with their hands in their laps, their spines rigid against the chair backs, and their eyes downcast. Elinora was wearing a black lace mantilla on her head. Her lips moved in prayer. Winona couldn't keep her eyes off the platters of food. Rosalyn looked about to cry, and Lucy and Consuello focused their eyes on Elinora from time to time, as if to draw strength from her.

  Elinora spoke. "With all due respect, Mother, copies of our petition are even now being circulated among the other girls as they gather in classrooms. By noontime nobody will be eating. Unless my uncle-the-Bishop heeds our request."

  "You dare to threaten the Bishop?" Mother Magdalena asked.

  Elinora raised her eyes. "No, we do not threaten. We ask. That he stop the carpenter from all work this week and let Saint Joseph come and aid us."

  "And you know that Saint Joseph won't come if the carpenter works, I suppose." Mother Magdalena's voice was rich with sarcasm.

  "Yes, Mother, I know," Elinora replied placidly. "I have a calling, remember. And being that God called me just this week, I don't think it is beyond imagining to believe that Saint Joseph spoke to me. Do you?"

  "The only calling you had," Mother Magdalena said sternly, "was the note from Abeyta, summoning you to meet him under the Comanche moon. Now I want you all to stop this ridiculous behavior and eat some food."

  "We will not eat," Elinora said. "Even as I speak now, that carpenter is hammering away in the kitchen. How do you think Saint Joseph feels?"

  "I don't know how Saint Joseph feels," Mother Magdalena replied, "but I know how you are going to feel shortly if you don't stop this nonsense." She looked at me then, standing at the other end of the table. Her eyes went over me, then the table setting.

  "Do you consider yourself too good to sit at this end of the table with the other boarders? Who spoke to you? The Virgin Mary?"

  "No, ma'am. Nobody spoke to me. I don't hold with such. I sit here because I'm not wanted up there."

  "And why is that, pray?"

  "Because she is a snitch and a turncoat," Elinora said. "Because she gave you the note. We have chosen to shun her."

  "I see." Mother Magdalena rattled her rosary beads, which hung at her side. "Am I to take it, then, that you are not part of this action not to eat?"

  "Yes, ma'am," I said. "I'm about starved. And I intend to sit here and eat all I can. Especially the pan de maiz. I adore the way Ramona makes it."

  "We adore only God, Elizabeth." Again she rattled her beads, gave the other girls one last look, and strode from the room.

  SOMEHOW I GOT through that day. I attended class because, of course, no excuse was accepted for not doing so.

  Somehow, word had already got around to the day boarders about me. And it was the worst kind of word that could spread through a school. I was not to be trusted. I was a snitch. Don't pass any notes in front of me, don't say anything untoward about any of the nuns. Don't speak of assignations with boys from the boys academy. Especially don't speak of meeting anyone outside by the grotto to smoke a cigarillo. Lizzy Enders will tell.

  Wait until they found out I'd also told about Elinora blinding my cat. I felt the silence, the turned-away heads, the snooty looks of all of my classmates as a slap. So I concentrated on my work and my problem with Mrs. Lacey.

  Somehow, in spite of what the Bishop had said, I must keep my promise to her and get the baptism voided. A promise was a promise, after all. That's what I'd been taught.

  At the noon meal, nobody but me ate anything. Plates of food sat untouched, although I saw two girls sneak some bread and wrap it in handkerchiefs when Elinora and her cohorts weren't looking. They drank tea, instead. And water.

  "Drink lots of water," Elinora directed in a loud voice from her table. "It will fill you up."

  Toward the end of the classroom day, Elinora came up to me and smiled viciously. "All the girls in school have signed the petition," she said. "I have engaged the services of a courier to take it to the Bishop at his farm. He will receive it this night. By tomorrow your carpenter will be gone, I promise you."

  "He isn't my carpenter," I said.

  "You brought him here."

  "Only because he was hungry, and needed food and lodging."

  "Yes, and he was commissioned to do a staircase. One that only Saint Joseph was supposed to do. And his presence has ruined everything for me, all hope of a miracle."

  "It isn't your miracle," I told her. "Everyone prayed for it. Why is it suddenly yours?"

  "Because it has become mine. Saint Joseph has spoken to me as part of my calling. It has become all tied in together. Saint Joseph told me he will not come and build our staircase as long as that carpenter is here. Don't you see? My uncle must believe me!"

  "I see only that you are starting to believe your own lies," I told her. "I see only that you wish to pull the strings and make your uncle do your bidding, to get back at him for your mother's unpleasant stay here. I see only that you must be the center of attention at all times, Elinora, whether it is through Abeyta or through God. And I feel sorry for you."

  As I walked away, I wished I felt as br
ave as I sounded.

  BY THE END of the school day, two girls in my French class swooned and had to be taken to Sister Roberta's sickroom on the first floor. When I passed it on my way to the infirmary, I saw them sitting up on cots, spooning soup into their mouths. Sister Roberta stood over them.

  A good time to sneak into the infirmary.

  I knew where many of the remedies were—the smelling salts, the cloves for aching teeth, the dry baking soda for burns, the pennyroyal tea for stomach troubles. I pushed past them on the shelf, as well as the puffballs to stop bleeding; the ten-penny nails in bottles of strong vinegar, which made a blood tonic; and the powdered chicken gizzard mixed with clean river sand for ulcers. There, at the end of the shelf, were the small asafetida bags. I lifted one out of the box, but before I could turn I heard Sister Roberta's voice.

  "You could have asked me for it. I would have given it to you." Sister Roberta stood in the doorway.

  I held the small bag of asafetida, guiltily. "Mrs. Lacey is coughing," I said.

  "I didn't notice that earlier. But take it anyway. Do." She went about checking on her plants on the windowsills.

  "I hear they are shunning you. How is that working out?"

  "I'm all right," I allowed.

  Then, as I stepped over the threshold, her voice followed me. "Asafetida doesn't void baptism, you know."

  I turned to see her smiling at me. Tears of embarrassment came to my eyes. "How did you know?"

  "She made me promise the same thing, that if they baptized her I should hang a bag of asafetida around her neck. I don't know where she ever got such a notion."

  "How do you know she isn't right?"

  She only shook her head. "Go ahead, do what you have to do."

  Still, I stood there, wanting her approval, needing it. "If she believes in something, isn't that enough? Isn't that what they teach around here?"

  "And you need to believe in this, I suppose," she said sadly. "That a bag of asafetida will void her baptism."