by Anbara Salam
I laughed, but I was waiting for her to keep talking about Isabella. So I said nothing until she returned to her thought.
“No, honestly. I mean it,” she said through her mouthful. “You must know—she’s lucky to have you out there with her. Izzy adores you. And for good reason.”
I pretended to take a sip of the hot chocolate. But it was still too hot to drink, so I let it glance against my top lip. “She does?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage.
Sophie frowned. “Of course she does—she worships you! You’re pretty much soul mates.”
“Did she say that?” I said, pretending to study my fingernails.
Sophie laughed. “You know Izzy—she doesn’t like people to know she’s a human. She didn’t need to say it. Anyone could see you two are peas in a pod.”
I took another pretend sip of the hot chocolate as the blood rushed to my cheeks. She adored me. Soul mates. I tried to write everything about that moment onto my memory. The way Sophie’s eyes widened, the inflection in her voice. I would take it home with me and withdraw it later, to savor. She worshiped me. She adored me.
We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking hot chocolate and chatting about the other girls from high school. Eleanor had gone to do mission work in Uganda. Flora was having a ball at Mount Holyoke. After two hours, the telephone in the back of the house began ringing and we both glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.
Sarah put her head round the door. “Mrs. Sophie, it’s Mr. Matthew for you.”
Sophie scrunched up her nose and pulled the arm of her sweater back to look at her slim gold watch. “Already?” she said. “Sarah, could you tell him I’ll reach him at the club in an hour or so?”
“No, it’s quite all right,” I said, hopping as I stood up. My buttocks and thighs were numb. “My grandmom will be coming to collect me soon anyway. Why don’t we say our good-byes now? I’ll walk around your drive until she’s ready to collect me.”
“Are you sure?” But even as she demurred, she held out her arms for a farewell hug. “Send my love to Izzy. And tell her to reply to my letters, the silly cow,” she called as she walked down the corridor.
I collected my coat and hat from Sarah and waved good-bye as I walked out onto the drive. The cold air was refreshing after the hot stupor of the front room. I was invigorated, more buoyant than I had been in weeks. Rhona was home. Isabella adored me. Anyone could see we were soul mates. Everything was going to be OK.
17.
November
It was Dad, in the end, who decided I should go back to the academy. I’d spent all afternoon making a pot roast, and when he came in from work he stood chatting in the kitchen while I pulled it out of the oven to check on it. But the dishcloth was too flimsy and the tray was too hot and I let it slip. The tin caught in a ridge in the oven door, and the roast was saved, but the juice poured out and dripped over the linoleum.
“Oh nuts!” I jumped out of the way of the pooling liquid.
“You didn’t get burned, did you?” he said, pushing me aside as I ran my thumb under the faucet.
“I’m fine, Dad.” I sighed. “I’m sorry.” I looked up at him.
“Whatever for?” he said, groaning as he knelt to mop up the spill with a dishcloth.
“It’ll be all dry now,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
He turned and wrung out the cloth in the sink. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, coming close and unexpectedly kissing the back of my head. I smiled.
“I wanted it to be nice for you.”
He was silent, staring vacantly out of the window.
“Daddy, can I get you something?” I said.
He turned to me. The expression was half shy. “Bridget, I’ve spoken to your grandmother. I think it would be good for you to go back to school soon.”
I didn’t say anything; the sentiment was too tantalizing. Like when you approach a squirrel in the park—I thought, If I move too quick, I might spook it.
“Would you like that?”
“Really?” I said.
He nodded.
I squealed and hugged him.
He chuckled, glanced over at the staircase and back at me. “I booked you a room on the United States for next week. I’ve spoken to your mom. And to Rhona.”
“Are you sure, Daddy?” I said, holding my breath.
“Quite sure.” He closed his eyes and a net of exhaustion settled over his face and obscured his features. He looked totally unlike himself. Then he opened his eyes and Dad was back. “I’ve got enough women cooped up in here.” He smiled, although I knew he was not entirely kidding. “Last thing I need is one more captive.”
“But who—” I was going to say, “Who will take care of you?” but I didn’t finish my thought. I couldn’t admit Mama wasn’t doing anything.
“Don’t worry about us,” he said. “You’ll be home in May anyway.” My spirits dropped. I knew it was true, but I didn’t want him to spoil my joy by acknowledging the end of it.
“We’ll get a girl to come in until your sister is better,” he said.
I nodded, knowing the “girl” could hardly be his idea. Granny must have fixed the whole thing up. She was probably paying for it, too. An improbable series of events flew through my brain, ways I could repay Granny for the plane ticket, the nurse—I would write an art history book and dedicate it to her. I would graduate top of my class and have the certificate framed. And on the wood, engrave: “All because of you.”
I went up to knock on Rhona’s door. She was lying on her bed with a blanket tucked between her knees, reading a novel with a picture of a sphinx on the cover.
“Any good?” I said.
“It’s OK.” She put the book down and placed her finger in between the pages instead of finding a bookmark. The temporariness of the placeholder was as far as Rhona would ever go to demonstrate she didn’t want to be disturbed.
“Actually,” she said, turning the book over, “it’s a bit saucy, this book. Christ knows where Granny found it.”
I laughed, sitting on the end of the bed. Rhona shuffled her legs over to make room for me.
“Did Dad talk to you about me going back?”
She nodded. A cloud outside the window shifted and a square pane of sunlight fell across the bedspread, illuminating specks of dust in the air.
“Will you be OK? If I go?”
Rhona leaned over and for a moment I thought she was going to hug me, but she only smacked me on the arm with the book. “Stop it,” she said. I smiled but my smile was stiff. “I already told Daddy it’s not fair to keep you here.”
I bristled. “I’m not a pet.”
“Well, I’m the one who’s stuck here,” she said, leaning back against the headboard. “No reason you have to live your life like a nun.”
I laughed. “We come pretty close at the academy.”
Rhona frowned. “Please tell me you’re not in chapel when you could be zooming around the countryside on a scooter.”
“I swear.”
“From your letters it sounds like you spend all your time gossiping with Isabella.”
I winced. I thought my letters had been sweet, considerate; that gossip was what she wanted, not descriptions of places she couldn’t go to, things she would never see. “There’s plenty to do,” I said tersely, to my knees.
When I looked up she was watching me. “You are making other friends, aren’t you? Not just hanging around like Miss Crowley’s handmaiden?”
I pressed my hands between my knees. “Don’t lecture,” I said.
“What else are older sisters for?” she said ironically.
The question hung. I chewed the inside of my cheek against the ugly urge to say something I wouldn’t be able to take back. That she wasn’t behaving like much of an older sister anyway. That as far as anyone at the academy knew, I di
dn’t even have a sister. That I had barely missed her snippy observations and sardonic commentary. Eventually I let out a breath. “And you’ll be OK when I’m gone?”
She rolled her eyes. “I wish everyone would stop asking me that. I feel miles better. Granny has promised all kinds of wild things. And she wants to pay for some special nurse to come and give me vitamin shots and exercises.”
It was unlikely any nurse would encourage her to exercise. But I let the comment go, since it seemed to have cheered her up.
“She even brought me a pamphlet with the different nurses, to choose from. Like a mail-order catalog.”
“What if the nurse is a witch?”
“You know how Granny positively loves firing the help,” she said. “I’ll tell her the nurse gave me a copy of The Watchtower, and she’ll be gone in a snap.” She grinned.
“As long as you’re having fun,” I said weakly.
“Oh,” she said, wriggling off the bed. She opened her closet door, parted the rack of clothes, and peered into the back. The walls were hung with ribbons and scarves, and plastic bead necklaces clattered against the wood. I grasped the opportunity to take stock of Rhona’s clothes, recognizing them as old friends. Her calfskin boots filled with tissue paper to keep the shape, her green peacoat with the satin lining. The familiar sight of all her beautiful clothes suddenly pierced me in an unguarded place. Rhona was wearing faded gray riding pants that drooped low over her butt, a jagged tear at the back of her left knee.
She tugged at a suitcase on the top shelf. “I looked up La Pentola in the atlas,” she said, her voice straining. “And—it’ll be cold, right?” The suitcase fell on the floor and she staggered back to keep her toes from being battered. “Right?” She turned her face to me and it was flushed.
I was still reeling from the odd emotion her clothes and purses had provoked. I nodded without saying anything.
“So—ah, here!” She unlocked the suitcase and snapped the lid off a brown hatbox. She pulled her fur coat from the box, shaking it so a cast of dust rose and thickened the pane of sunlight. “Take it,” she said, smiling.
I rubbed the oil-rich fur, relishing its musty smell. I loved that coat with a delirious jealousy. It had been Great-Aunt Mary’s, given to Rhona when she died because Granny said I was too young for fur.
“You’re always so cold,” I said. “You’ll need it when it gets brisk.” I folded it over my arm and tried to hand it back to her.
Rhona laughed, a sharp, almost cruel laugh. “I don’t go outside, Bridget. When would I need it?”
I kissed her papery cheek. “Thank you,” I said. “It’ll be perfect. I’ll take good care of it.”
Rhona clambered onto the bed and put one hand on her novel. I knew it was a sign I should leave, but I lingered.
“Don’t get sick again,” I said, all in one breath.
Rhona gave me a tight smile. “I’ll try.”
I rubbed my hand over the fur, watching the shine on its skein. “I don’t want to be an only child,” I said. I had meant it as a joke. But as I spoke them, the words felt truer than anything I’d said since I’d left for Italy. Rhona’s room, empty. Her magazines in boxes in the basement. Her clothes, her necklaces, left behind—just a horrible shadow of her life. My Rhony. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, crossing my fingers under the fur. What would Rhona think if she knew I’d practically disowned her? The tears rose in my eyes and I blinked to keep them away.
“You’d turn into an awful brat,” she said, covering for me. “Granny would have to buy you a pony.”
I laughed with the relieved, wet crack of someone who is half crying.
“You’d have to get a special lecture at school about sharing, like Helen Malone,” she continued as I wiped the corners of my eyes.
“My birthday parties would be fabulous, though,” I said.
“You could have lobster delivered from Maine.”
We continued like this for five more minutes, each pulling on the joke until it was thin like taffy. The more terrible the joke became, the more it stretched away from the truth at its core.
IV
Italy
18.
November
When I left the train at La Pentola, I dragged my case uphill so quickly it juddered over the gravel and shook the joint in my shoulder. And although the day was cool, I was sweating and red-faced by the time I arrived at the academy.
Donna Maria rushed out before I rang the bell and gripped me in a tight hug. She was babbling in Italian and I barely caught her words. She seized my case and with alarming strength hoisted it up the remaining steps and into the lobby. I could have cried, it was all so familiar, down to the ugly clock and the battered chairs.
I followed her upstairs, the weak light throwing late-afternoon shadows into the courtyard. As my suitcase clattered along the corridor, Sylvia stuck her head out of the bathroom.
“Bridget!” she yelled. “Hey, Bridget’s back!” Bunny and Barbie came out of their bedroom.
“What’s the yelling about?”
“Oh, Bridge!”
And a pile of girls fell upon me in the corridor, hugging and pinching and squealing as if we’d just won a football game. My eyes smarted and I was exhausted and deliriously happy all at the same time. I hugged each of the girls in turn, feeling perilously close to tears. Nancy approached from the common room with a pencil stuck behind her ear. When everyone else had picked themselves off me, she came forward and gave me a stiff, formal embrace, as if she’d been forced to greet the ambassador of a hostile foreign nation.
“Is everything OK?” said Nancy, pulling the pencil from behind her ear and chewing on it. “At home?”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
Nancy’s face relaxed. “Good. I was worried. Izzy said she didn’t know what was going on.”
“She didn’t tell you anything at all?” I crossed my fingers under my elbows.
Nancy shook her head. “She said she was totally in the dark. But then Sally insisted you had some fancy ball to go to.”
As I unlocked my room, the girls hung back and I opened the door to see paper streamers hung with BENTORNATA written on the bunting. Milk bottles filled with physalis stems decorated the bedside table and windowsill.
“Oh, girls,” I said, turning back to the small crowd. Their faces were identically pink and smiling. “I’m so touched,” I said. They had gone through all this trouble, just for me! As I entered the room I didn’t know how to demonstrate my gratitude. I went around putting my hands on the physalis and the bunting, nodding and grinning.
“Do you like it?” said Greta.
“You’re A-plus.” I hugged her and she nestled her head in the crook of my neck.
I sat on the mattress and it creaked in such a familiar way I couldn’t help but grin. I sighed and bounced and looked around my room. It smelled like vinegar and beeswax and I knew one of the sisters must have been in to mop the floor while I was gone. It seemed so odd, not that I was back, but that I had ever been away in the first place.
“And you’re OK?” Greta said, watching my face.
I nodded. “Yes, a bit of fuss over nothing.”
She glanced nervously at Patricia. “We figured it must have been serious if they sent you an airplane ticket.”
I looked away from her. “Oh, my grandmom had a turn, but she’s fine now.”
Sylvia tucked her hair behind her ears. “Tell us about the plane! What were the air hostesses like? Did you see the pilot?”
I laughed. “Yes, they’re terribly glamorous. I got to shake the pilot’s hand.”
Sylvia sighed. “How dreamy. I’ve been begging Mom to let me take a plane trip, but she says maybe for my twenty-first birthday.”
Everyone crowded onto the other bed. They squeezed in, arms over each other’s shoulders, knees crossed over
legs, eyes expectant. There was a fierce clench of joy in my stomach and I felt myself drifting backward, up, until the moment was granted the soft, oval framing of a greeting card. The girls were laughing, gum chewing, hair twirling, brimming with gossip and compliments. It was like being lowered into a warm bubble bath. This was what real people must feel like all the time. Talking over each other, they filled me in. Betty got homesick and returned to Texas a week after I left. Bunny’s grandfather had died, but her family didn’t want her to go all the way for the funeral, so the girls sat and cried with her and Father Gavanto said a special Mass. Katherine and Mary Leonard had fallen out and everyone had been forced to take sides until they called a truce. Two boys from La Pentola had followed Sylvia up the hill and Donna Maria had gone out with a broom to chase them away.
I nodded along to the rabble of good-natured interruptions and bickering, although the journey was catching up with me and I began to feel unkempt and woozy, my eyes detached from the rest of my face. To give myself something to focus on, I unpacked the bags of Hershey’s and candy corn from my luggage.
“I brought these for everyone,” I said, scoring the Saran Wrap with my room key, now embarrassed by the gesture. Should I have brought fancier treats? Perhaps it was transparently desperate to return with gifts of candy, as if I were trying to bribe an underpaid babysitter. But I needn’t have worried; the girls fell on the softened chocolate bars, giggling.
Greta cheered. “Oh, Bridge, I knew you wouldn’t forget us.”
I laughed, delighted. Was that my reputation? Someone who didn’t forget. Someone thoughtful, generous.
“How I wish we’d had a proper Halloween,” Greta said. “I tried to carve a squash but just ended up with a mess.”
“She cried,” Sylvia said.
“And why did you come back now?” Patricia said. Mary Babbage elbowed her in the ribs. “No, no.” Patricia blushed. “I didn’t mean like that. I mean, why not wait until after Thanksgiving?”
“That’s ages away,” Mary gasped.
