Saints for All Occasions

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Afterward, he petted her cheek.

  “Nora Flynn,” he said, addressing her by her old name, which she still thought of as her real name. “The only girl I ever loved.”

  “Oh, go on,” she said.

  “It’s the truth. I loved you from the first time I saw you.”

  Her sister would laugh at her. For all the times she had wondered why Charlie had married her, made the sacrifices he did, Nora had never once considered that this might be the reason. She wondered if it was true. He didn’t show love like a man in a movie might. Still, he had done something extraordinary for her.

  From then on, they kept to their separate beds, but every so often one of them or the other would creep across in the dark.

  Bloom where you’re planted, she told herself, every day. Bit by bit, it worked.

  —

  From the time Patrick was a month old, people asked when she was going to have another.

  For so long, it didn’t happen, and Nora assumed it never would. She had worried about becoming pregnant too fast, but in the end she felt silly for ever having been afraid.

  When Patrick was four and she found out she was going to have a baby, her first thought surprised her: she worried that she could never love another child as much as she loved him.

  When she saw John in the hospital, red faced and wrapped in a white blanket, the delight in Charlie’s eyes frightened her. She knew what he was thinking.

  “He’s the spitting image of me as a baby,” he said, beaming.

  She thought of Patrick—he didn’t look like her husband at all.

  As she was putting him to bed her first night home from the hospital, Nora said, “Do you know why I named you Patrick? Because that’s the middle name of my only brother, Martin. And when I first saw you, I thought of how much you looked like him. You could be twins! Of course, he’s a lot bigger than you are. He’s twenty-five years old!”

  “Twenty-five!” Patrick said, in awe at the thought of a number so vast.

  He asked her for a picture. She told him she would find one and hoped he would forget. So the seed was planted and every now and then she tended to it, reminding him of this fact that was not a fact but seemed like one the more she said it.

  At some point, Nora stopped worrying that her sister would never come back and instead began to fear that someday she would.

  11

  A WEEK BEFORE SHE LEFT BOSTON, Theresa rounded the corner after work and ran straight into Walter McClain, out walking with his wife and child.

  She had just noticed, pulling on her coat, that she had spilled something down the right side of her blouse. She wiped away the liquid, leaving a shadowy stain. When she looked up, there he was, laughing at something his wife had said. She was a tall and slender brunette, holding a baby with black hair, just like Patrick’s. Walter didn’t see Theresa, or anyway he didn’t acknowledge her. He just kept strolling along as if no one had passed.

  In that moment of recognition, such an unfolding of emotions—I know him. It’s him. Oh God, him. Will he? No.

  Relief that turned quickly to despair.

  She realized then that she hadn’t spilled anything. It was her milk, seeping through her shirt from inside.

  Already, she had felt that she was coming undone. She never slept anymore. She was up all night, waiting for Patrick’s cries to pierce the silence, her heart racing. There were visions that refused to leave her. Lying on the table, left for dead. The nurses pretending she wasn’t there as she screamed in pain. Everyone pretending.

  She found small tumbleweeds of hair on her pillow when she woke in the morning. When she looked in the mirror she could see the white shock of her scalp in places. After she gave birth, she bled for six weeks. She had no idea if this was normal, and there was no one she could ask. She wanted to tell Nora, but her sister was so angry that Theresa didn’t dare. She wondered if she might die. Part of her hoped she would. That they might come in one morning and find her pale and bloodless in her bed.

  That last morning at Saint Margaret’s was like a half-forgotten dream she could not piece together no matter how she tried. If she could only manage to do this, she thought, then maybe she could make sense of what happened.

  “I’ll leave now,” she had said, even after they’d gotten home from the hospital. “I’ll take Patrick and I’ll go.”

  But she felt weary, light-headed. Her plan seemed deranged. Where would she go? How would she manage?

  So she cared for the baby at night, at home, when no one could see. In the beginning, that was enough. She only wanted to keep him close. Again and again, she reminded herself of this fact. When she was strong enough, she would take him away. But when she saw Walter, Theresa doubted she would ever be strong again.

  Days later, Aunt Nellie died. Sitting in the church as she was eulogized, something broke in Theresa. Patrick cried and she felt her milk come. She wanted to snatch him from her sister’s arms. But everyone was watching. She stared straight ahead to keep from crying. The tears spilled out of her anyway, the tears and the milk, her body turned to liquid, washing away the last bit of herself she could remember.

  It was torture, listening to Charlie tell the story of Nora giving birth. Fifteen minutes! She knew Nora hated it too. Nora hated all of it. She hated Patrick.

  Her sister’s last words to her would stick in Theresa’s mind.

  Of course I don’t want him.

  It occurred to her then that she would have to leave without the baby. They would all be better off. If her sister was ever going to love Patrick, they couldn’t continue on this way. She knew where she would go. She took the envelope from a drawer, the return address scrawled in the upper left-hand corner. It was not a home, but a school. Saint Hugo of the Hills.

  Theresa gathered the clothing Babs had given her and all the money she had saved, which wasn’t much. She left a note for Nora. Then she crept into Patrick’s room, her bag weighing on her shoulder. For years to come, she would remember the sight of the baby sleeping in his crib, an angel. She longed to take him with her, though she knew she couldn’t manage it yet.

  She took his Miraculous Medal from the top dresser drawer instead, something to remember him by. She slipped it into her coat pocket.

  Theresa hoped he knew somehow that she would be back to get him. She debated whether or not to kiss his cheeks, knowing that she might wake him. She did it anyway, feeling his soft, soft skin against her lips, hearing his cries begin just as she shut the front door and ran.

  She rode the train to South Station and sat on the steps amidst the bums and the drunks, and the occasional crowd of late-night travelers coming off a bus. She didn’t much care what anyone did to her, but no one did a thing. Occasionally she saw a figure coming toward her and thought it must be Nora, come to take her home. But then the woman would come closer and she would see that it was a stranger.

  Theresa pulled the envelope from her pocket, read the letter. It was nearly a year old now. Please look me up if ever you find yourself in Queens.

  As morning broke, she went to the ticket counter and asked for a one-way fare to New York. She rode with her bag on the empty seat beside her to discourage company. They had made this journey in reverse two years ago, Nora and Charlie in the front seat and her in the back, looking out the window, taking it all in. Now she faced straight ahead, eyes squeezed shut.

  —

  Theresa stood waiting on the steps of Saint Hugo of the Hills when school let out. She watched the door for close to an hour, wondering if her friend even worked here anymore. Finally, Abigail came out, blond curls bobbing, tortoiseshell glasses on her nose, just as she had been on the ship when they met. Theresa recalled the hours they’d spent gossiping on the deck, the boys they mooned over in the ballroom.

  “Abigail!” she said loudly, grabbing her arm when she got close.

  Abigail seemed frightened, pulling away.

  She didn’t recognize her.

  Theresa had another mem
ory now, of the day the letter arrived. Her sister scolding her. She’s only being polite, she’s not inviting you.

  “It’s Theresa,” she said. “From the boat to New York.”

  Abigail cocked her head. Finally, she smiled.

  “What in the world?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  She hugged Theresa, invited her to come to her apartment for a cup of tea. As they walked along, past a row of shops, Theresa caught their reflection in a glass storefront. Abigail was more or less unchanged, but Theresa looked like a different person.

  “My sister died,” she said, concocting a story on the spot. “I’m on my own now. That’s why I’ve come to you. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  Abigail looked stricken. “That poor girl. I remember—she wasn’t well.”

  She said she was engaged at last and would be leaving the city soon. They had already bought a house in New Jersey, not far from her in-laws.

  “It isn’t fair how some people end up with so much,” she said. “While others— I want to help you. You’re a good girl, Theresa. You don’t deserve this.”

  The timing was the first stroke of good fortune she had had in ages. Abigail arranged it so that Theresa took over her job when she left, teaching ninth grade. She moved into Abigail’s studio apartment. The building was tall and beige and uninspiring. The cramped apartment was on the fourteenth floor. Her view was of a billboard advertising Swanson TV dinners. An illustration of a woman, twenty feet tall and yet somehow still dainty, wearing a pink dress, smiling at a box of frozen chicken and potatoes as if it were a puppy. Behind her, a dopey husband with his golf clubs signaled to a pal in the doorway that he could stay. Extra Guest for Dinner? You’re Ready for Him!

  Abigail left behind the bed and the dresser and the kettle, as well as a list of all the places Theresa could go to meet people from home. There were Irish pubs and clubs all over this part of New York, but she didn’t wish to visit them. She wanted nothing to do with the Irish now, or with anyone.

  Theresa rarely saw the people who lived in the apartments around her. But she could smell their strange cooking through the walls, could hear the booming voices, words spoken in languages she couldn’t comprehend. It gave her a start when a voice was raised or an object dropped on the floor up above her head. Everyone was a stranger to her now. The world seemed menacing in a way it hadn’t before.

  The school looked like a prison or a factory. She thought of the country schoolhouses back home, of the pupils a teacher might know not just for a year but from the time they were babies until the age of ten or eleven. There, a teacher had a hand in shaping them, but here they were so rambunctious, so old, already formed. They didn’t mind her, no matter how she tried.

  Some mornings she dreamed of finding a way to board a ship back to Ireland. She imagined tucking into a plate of her grandmother’s barmbrack, studded with raisins. She could almost taste it. Theresa missed the sound of her voice, how she muttered in Irish when she didn’t want the children to know what she was saying.

  But she didn’t write home to tell them where she’d gone. She wondered what Nora had told them. By now they must know she had run away. Theresa would speak to them all when she was ready, when the time came for her to take Patrick back. Then they would tell everyone the truth.

  She missed the bustle around Mrs. Quinlan’s dinner table. She missed Nora most of all. The safety of her, the one thing Theresa could be sure of in this world.

  Her entire life consisted of her pupils and her apartment. She didn’t think she deserved any more than that. In the teachers’ lounge, when girls talked about the men they were seeing and when they might propose, she sometimes wished to break into their conversations. But then she thought better of herself. What could she possibly say?

  Theresa ate lunch alone at school, and dinner alone at home, forcing the food in. She ate oatmeal for dinner. She hardly knew how to prepare anything. Someone else had always done the cooking for her—her sister or Mrs. Quinlan or her gran. Nothing tasted like anything. Sometimes she forgot to eat. She looked in the mirror and was surprised to see how gaunt she had become. Her breasts and stomach sagged like deflated balloons, but the rest of her was all sharp angles, bones pressing through skin.

  She went to church every few nights and prayed with a dozen old ladies. She said the Hail Mary until the words ceased to make any sense.

  Her sorrow was her one companion, ever present, making her arms and legs sore, as if she’d just climbed a mountain. Some mornings it was a struggle to stand and get dressed. She slept and slept and slept. On the weekends, she slept all day, and then was awake at night, her heart pounding in her chest as she remembered it all, as she wondered what Nora and Patrick were doing at that minute.

  On more than one occasion, she had visions of cutting her wrists, or going up to the roof and jumping off. But this was a sin so grave that she tried to banish the thought as soon as it came. She saw before her the image of her younger self on her confirmation day. The bishop asking what happens if you die in a state of mortal sin. And Theresa, cheerfully reciting the answer. You go to hell, she said then with a smile, fully believing that no circumstance could ever befall her to make her enter into such a state.

  She carried Patrick’s medal wherever she went, worrying it between her fingers, praying for him.

  Another Saint Hugo’s teacher lived in her building. For months, they rode the elevator together most mornings by chance and walked to school a few staggered feet apart. The woman might smile at her, and Theresa would look down at the floor.

  One morning, the woman said, “This is silly. I’m Cathy Tursi. I teach eleventh grade.”

  “Theresa Flynn,” she said softly. “Ninth.”

  They began to travel to and from work together on purpose after that. If the elevator doors didn’t open on fourteen, Cathy waited for Theresa in the lobby. Their short walks were a highlight of her day, though she let Cathy do most of the talking. She was a few years older than Theresa. Cathy asked where she was from, whether she was dating anyone. Theresa was naturally inclined to tell all her stories to a new friend, but now she evaded even the most basic questions.

  “You’re a mystery, aren’t you?” Cathy said, undeterred. “That’s all right. I’ll figure you out eventually.”

  Theresa wanted to be figured out, yet when, on a Tuesday night, Cathy invited her for dinner, she said no. For weeks, she declined Cathy’s invitations, even though the old part of her wished she could go, wanted a friend.

  Then Cathy came to her door and said, “This time it’s serious. I’ve been stood up by my boyfriend. I’ve got a pot roast for two in the oven and I’m not in the mood to argue. You’re coming over and that’s that.”

  It was the first meal Theresa had shared with another person in seven months.

  Cathy’s apartment had the same layout as her own. She had warmed it up. Hung pictures, dropped rugs, painted her walls a pale blue. The shelves were full of books. She had a sweet old cat that liked to curl up on the windowsill, basking in the sun. Theresa’s place was empty, a faded square and a nail where each of Abigail’s pictures once hung, the cold bare floor against her feet each morning a kind of penance. Now she wanted to lie down on Cathy’s carpet and never leave.

  Cathy reminded Theresa of a more grown-up version of the woman she herself had once been. Everyone liked her. And for some reason, she liked Theresa. Having one friend made all the difference. She could feel herself returning when Cathy was there. It was in her nature to laugh, to flirt, to gossip, to be curious. Theresa grew afraid to be alone with her thoughts.

  Cathy’s boyfriend, Arthur, was a truck driver who was gone five days a week, including weekends. Theresa and Cathy went to the ten o’clock Mass at Saint Hugo’s together every Sunday and afterward to the diner on Grand Street for coffee and eggs.

  After Theresa had been in New York a year and a half, Arthur introduced her to a friend of his, Roger, a handsome American who worked as a po
liceman in the city. The four of them went dancing or to a movie in the early evening. Theresa let Roger kiss her but not all the other things he wanted to do. Her took her for an innocent, a virgin.

  Theresa never mentioned Nora or Patrick, or even that she had once lived in Boston, to anyone. The memory didn’t leave her, but it faded some, enough so that she could breathe, so that her heart stopped racing at every moment of the day. She still prayed for them. She still thought she might go back and get Patrick, bring him to New York.

  One December morning as they walked to school, Cathy said, “Arthur says Roger just adores you. He’s had a lot of fun these past few months. Could you see a future with him?”

  “No,” Theresa said. “Not with him or anyone.”

  “Oh.” Cathy looked surprised. Theresa herself was surprised.

  “Are you all right?” Cathy said.

  A question so simple, she couldn’t help but answer. “No.”

  Theresa started to cry.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  Cathy put an arm around her. She looked so concerned.

  “I’m just in a funk lately,” Theresa said, trying to make it seem like less than it was.

  They were silent for a long while, and then Cathy said, “Do you remember I told you how my mother and I go on retreat to a convent in Vermont every couple of years?”

  “Sure.”

  “We were supposed to go for a weekend this winter, but with my sister having the new baby, my mother can’t get away. I was looking forward to it, and we booked the room and all. It’s just occurred to me. Maybe the two of us should go. A change of scenery might do you good. It’s a beautiful place.”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t,” Theresa said. “I’m busy then.”

  Cathy laughed. “I didn’t say which weekend it was.”

  Theresa swallowed. Her throat felt tight.