Household Saints

by Francine Prose

  But the brightly lit lobby comforted them, as it was designed to do. The nursery-yellow walls were decorated with colorful Tuberculosis Society posters and Sister Corita prints. Joseph and Catherine were prepared for wild-eyed, stringy-haired cases in bathrobes and bedroom slippers. But none of the people they saw would have looked out of place in the tidy suburban homes they’d passed on the train. They were encouraged by the number of young people, and by how difficult it was to tell the inmates from their caretakers. On one side of the lobby, patients were entertaining visitors in an airy solarium; nearby, the ones with no company seemed just as content to read the Sunday papers and watch television in a wood-beamed baronial sitting room.

  “Look,” said Catherine. “Color TV.”

  “For what we’re paying,” said Joseph, “they can afford it.”

  The nun at the reception desk directed them through a door at the end of the lobby. The arched door—heavy oak, with a leaded glass window—swung shut behind them, closing out the twentieth century and admitting them to the medieval monastery which the architect who built Stella Maris had in mind. They followed the damp stone hall past a well-kept, deserted courtyard, then up a circular stone staircase and down another corridor. On both sides of the hall were the patients’ rooms—whitewashed cubicles, bare as monks’ cells, each furnished with a bed, a desk, a chair, a dresser, a washstand, and a crucifix. It was one of the rules of Stella Maris that residents were not allowed to bring reminders of home.

  “They’re just like Theresa’s room at the apartment.” Catherine’s voice shook. “I’m sure she feels right at home.”

  “Catherine,” said Joseph. “Relax.”

  They found Theresa at the end of the corridor, kneeling on the floor. Beside her was a bucket, and she was scrubbing the smooth paving stones with a brush.

  “Honey.” Catherine knelt to kiss her, then dipped her fingers in the bucket. “You must be freezing. That water’s like ice.”

  Theresa smiled up at them, her eyes so vacant that it was hard to tell if she recognized them.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Just let me finish this section, and we can go have a cup of tea.”

  “Tea?” said Catherine. Since when did her daughter like tea?

  Clenching the brush, Theresa’s hand swung over the floor like a pendulum, so close to Joseph and Catherine’s feet that they had to jump out of the way.

  “What’s going on here?” cried Joseph. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Occupational therapy,” answered Sister Cupertino, to whose office they were taken when Joseph demanded to see the doctor in charge.

  Sister Cupertino was a middle-aged woman, her face as flat and round as a pie, with wire-rimmed spectacles and bright dark eyes like two holes cut out of the crust to let the steam escape. When she stood to shake hands, the Santangelos noticed that she was wearing a mouse-brown ankle-length habit which made her look more like a Brownie leader than a nun.

  Nor was her office very nun-like. Framed diplomas hung on the paneled walls. Her wide mahogany desk was littered with documents, stacks of charts, balls of crumpled paper, envelopes. And Sister Cupertino was almost as sloppy as her desk. Catherine had never before seen a nun in a wrinkled veil.

  “It’s what we call occupational therapy,” she said. “In certain cases, it’s clearly indicated. When it works.” She smiled at them, a twitch of the lips. Catherine smiled back.

  “I’ll spare you the jargon. But briefly, Theresa’s case has been diagnosed as one of acute hallucinatory psychosis, brought on by a particularly difficult and prolonged adolescent psychosexual adjustment, no doubt aggravated by a somewhat obsessional religious nature. What that means in layman’s terms is—as I’m sure you know—Theresa has temporarily lost touch with what we call reality.”

  “Temporarily?” said Catherine. It was what she had always hoped. Overnight, Theresa would change, everything would be normal….

  “Often, these states are temporary, though sometimes of course … Especially among young people, it’s quite common….”

  “And all these young people wash the floors?” said Joseph.

  “Many of them undertake some form of occupational therapy.” Sister Cupertino seemed unfazed by Joseph’s nasty tone. “It helps bring them into closer touch with their surroundings. And also, you must understand, the hours do get long here at Stella Maris.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Joseph. “But I still don’t get it. I mean, what am I paying for? She could be washing floors at home.”

  “Like Evelyn said,” answered Catherine. “Home’s not always the best place.”

  “Since when are you quoting Evelyn?”

  Amazed that Joseph would speak to her like that in front of a stranger, Catherine looked down at the rug. There were several blackened matches near her feet.

  “Your wife is right, Mr. Santangelo. Here at Stella Maris, we can monitor her condition. She’s in intensive analysis, four mornings a week. As an adjunct to therapy, we have her on a low maintenance dose of lithium.”

  “Lithium?” said Joseph. “What’s that?”

  “Mr. Santangelo, one question: Does your daughter seem happy here?”

  “Happy isn’t the word for it.”

  “Well, then.” As far as Sister Cupertino was concerned, the case was closed.

  “I guess,” said Joseph. “Maybe we should have let her join the convent like she wanted. Anyhow it would have been cheaper.”

  “Why think about what we should have done?” said Catherine.

  “You quoting Evelyn again?” Joseph sank back into his chair. “At least she’s safe here from creeps like that Leonard. At least we know where she is at night, which is more than Evelyn can say about her Stacey.”

  “You see?” said Sister Cupertino.

  But Catherine was too tired to see. Her legs ached, as if it were she instead of Theresa who’d spent the day washing floors. She stared down at her hands, chapped and pitted and cracked no matter what detergent she’d used, and she felt the combined effort of all those days in the kitchen, the years which Mrs. Santangelo spent making sausage, the hours Theresa wasted ironing her boyfriend’s shirts. Again she had the eerie sensation of spinning back behind a movie camera. Only now she saw that the movie was not a romance, neither Rebecca nor Bogart and Bacall, but frame after frame of grimy dishes, balled-up socks. Her life had escaped from her in one continuous moment of chores which would never be done even after she was dead. Twenty years ago, she’d found joy in a line of freshly washed baby clothes. Twenty years later, her baby was washing floors in a nuthouse.

  Catherine looked up at Joseph, then over at Sister Cupertino.

  “What did I do it for?” she said.

  Theresa knew how things appeared from the outside: Her family had committed her to a nuthouse. But by then, the only outside that mattered to her was the physical surface of things—the polish of the stone, the clean window pane, the heavy ceramic dishes, so netted with hairline cracks that they’d turned the mottled gray-green of an Oriental brush painting. Pushing the scrub brush over the floor, she thought of how God had created that soap, that water. She saw the miracle in the granite, in the hard bright transparency of glass. The pattern in the netted china was as clear to her as a stenciled rose. She did not have to remind herself of these things, nor did she have to convince herself that Sister Cupertino was extraordinarily beautiful, as dear and familiar to her as her mother and father.

  When she walked into Sister Cupertino’s office, four mornings a week, the nun’s wide face shone at her like the full moon, a flat white disc of light. Sister Cupertino interrogated her with pointless questions—what difference did it make when she had first learned to use the toilet? But always Theresa thought, without trying, of a story she had read: A bishop visits an island on which he finds three hermits. While praying with them, he discovers that the hermits are saying the Lord’s Prayer incorrectly and, despite their considerable slowness, finally teaches them to say it rig
ht. He bids them good-bye, sails away, and that night sees a light approaching him over the water. As the light grows brighter, he sees that it is the three hermits, skimming toward him, flying hand in hand over the sea.

  “Father,” they beg him, “tell us the Lord’s Prayer again, we can’t seem to get it right.” And the bishop can only say, “Brothers, pray for us.”

  It was obvious to Theresa that, like the hermits, Sister Cupertino was praising God in her own way, and that all her silly questions comprised some private Lord’s Prayer. And so she repeated her own story (not out of any desire to help herself, she didn’t need help) but rather as a gift—for Sister Cupertino and, of course, for God. It was a simple story, as Theresa told it: The letter from Fatima. The Little Flower. The Carmelites. College. Leonard. An ironing board, a visit from Jesus, an infinity of red and white checked shirts. Invariably, Sister Cupertino would break in at this point, saying, “Theresa, the laundry is only the laundry.”

  In an effort to convince Theresa of this, her occupational therapy was shifted to the hospital laundry, where she was put to work folding sheets. When Theresa first touched the heavy institutional cotton (washed smoother than the finest percale), she nearly cried out with joy. She learned to fold each sheet with four swift motions, always the same four, stretching and snapping her arms with such precision and concentration that the sheets came out in identical rectangles—straight edges and perfect corners. Occasionally her rhythm was broken by a torn or stained sheet which had to be sorted out; the rips and spots were as precious to her as the blood on Jesus’ shroud.

  The laundry was hot and steamy, the smell of detergent intoxicating, and Jesus was there. Theresa felt His warmth in the sheets fresh from the dryer; the soft hospital cotton was the touch of His hand in hers. He was closer to her than the width of Leonard’s ironing board, and she was folding the sheets for Him.

  What made all this bearable for Joseph and Catherine was their faith that it was only temporary. Convinced that each musty train ride was bringing them closer to the last one they would ever have to take, they almost began to enjoy them. They ordered their weeks around these Sunday trips and prepared for them as if for important journeys. Joseph purchased an accordion grate to pull across the storefront on Saturday nights. Catherine bought him a pair of driving gloves with pigskin palms, and it pleased them both to see these elegant gloves hailing taxis in the rain. Catherine learned to recognize the regulars, other passengers with relatives at Stella Maris. Although they avoided each other’s eyes and never spoke, they formed a kind of family—no more distant and no less connected than the Falconettis.

  Their visits took place in the solarium, where Theresa served them tea in paper cups and seemed quite fascinated by news of Joseph’s business, Catherine’s neighborhood gossip. If this were the Carmelite convent, thought Joseph, there would be no gossip, no tea.

  Eventually, what they minded most about these trips was the weather. Every Sunday, it rained or sleeted or snowed. The train was always too hot or too cold, so damp and smelly that Catherine felt queasy. Yet even this discomfort came to seem reassuring; even the bad weather was dependable, and this dependability was what they liked about Stella Maris. They knew approximately where they would find Theresa, knew what she would be doing and how she would look. Each Sunday, Catherine took a deep breath and told herself that the other shoe had finally dropped: There were no more surprises.

  And so they were doubly surprised when they arrived on a rainy Sunday afternoon in early May and were told that Theresa was resting in her room.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Catherine. “I knew it the minute I got up this morning.”

  All that was wrong was a slight touch of the flu—nothing serious, according to the nuns who padded in and out on their gum-soled shoes, bringing aspirin and orange juice. Doctor Fontana had been in to check on her that morning and had prescribed an antibiotic. With God’s help, she would recover in three or four days.

  Theresa didn’t even look sick. She was wearing the sort of washed-out white flannel nightgown which can make healthy people look deathly ill; even so, her color was good, almost too good for a girl who’d spent the winter shuttling between an overheated laundry and a cold stone floor. Propped up on pillows, she lay between crisp sheets, her hands folded over the rough green blanket.

  “At least it got her out of the laundry,” whispered Joseph.

  “Shh.” Catherine hurried to give Theresa a hug and kiss. Joseph held back.

  “You contagious?” he said. “I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Papa.” Theresa patted the edge of the bed. “Come sit by me. I need your help.”

  “At your service.” Joseph took off his driving gloves and rubbed his hands together, blowing into his palms. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need some advice.”

  Joseph looked at Catherine. He couldn’t remember Theresa ever asking him for advice. Maybe Stella Maris was doing her good.

  “What about?”

  “Pinochle,” said Theresa.

  “Pinochle?” Joseph laughed so hard that he had to sit down. “Is that what you’re doing here with my money? Playing pinochle?”

  “We don’t play for money. Just points.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Joseph. “Who do you play with?”

  “God the Father and Jesus and St. Therese.”

  Joseph laughed again, less heartily than before.

  “You mean, there’s people here who think they’re God and Jesus and—”

  “I mean God and Jesus and St. Therese.”

  Joseph glanced at Catherine. She was patting the air: Easy, take it easy. Humor her.

  “You folks play often?” he asked.

  “Last night was the first time. God had to teach me the rules. Of course they let me have a few practice hands. But you would have been proud of me, Papa. I got the hang of it right away.”

  “It’s in the blood,” said Joseph.

  Catherine groaned.

  “Don’t worry, Mama. If God’s playing, it’s got to be all right.”

  “This is crazy,” said Joseph. “This is the craziest thing I ever heard.”

  Catherine shot him a warning look.

  “You play partners?” he said.

  “Girls against boys.”

  “I should have known,” said Joseph.

  “We got slaughtered, Papa. We never had a chance. Please don’t tell anyone I said so, but the Little Flower wasn’t much of a pinochle player. She mumbled so low, you couldn’t hear what she bid. God had to make her repeat herself twenty times. It seemed like she passed them every card they needed—it was like she didn’t want to win.”

  “That’s a saint for you,” said Catherine.

  “I guess.” Theresa sighed. “I guess I’ll never be a saint. I wanted to win, I played hard. But even if I’d been an expert … we still didn’t have a chance. Because God and Jesus drew nothing but high cards—straights, flushes, the jack of diamonds, the queen of spades. Between them, they controlled every hand. We quit when they had five hundred points and St. Therese and I had zero.”

  “Honey,” said Catherine, “it was God you were playing with. Wouldn’t you expect Him to win?”

  “You too?” Joseph stared at her.

  “I never expected to be playing pinochle with God,” said Theresa.

  “I know what you mean,” admitted Catherine.

  “And if I had,” continued Theresa, “I would have expected Him to play fair.”

  “He didn’t?”

  Theresa looked around the room and out into the hall, as if to make sure that no one was listening.

  “If it hadn’t been God, I would have sworn He was cheating.”

  “He probably was,” said Joseph.

  “He was.” Again Theresa checked for eavesdroppers. “After the game was over, God let the others leave before Him. On His way out, He stopped and whispered real low so the others couldn’t hear:

  “‘Th
eresa,’ He told me, ‘of all my great miracles, my favorites are tipping the scales and cheating at pinochle.’

  “That’s what He said. Can you believe it?”

  “I can believe it.” Joseph looked pale.

  No one spoke for a long time. Then Catherine said, “Joseph, what time have you got?”

  Joseph looked at his watch.

  “The four o’clock train left ten minutes ago. We’d better go, we’ll be stuck at the station all night.”

  “We’ll call tomorrow,” said Catherine. “You rest up, get better.”

  “I feel wonderful,” said Theresa. “Don’t worry.”

  Catherine touched her forehead.

  “You’re burning up. I’ll send the nurse in when we go.”

  Joseph and Catherine kissed their daughter’s flushed face and left. They were silent in the taxi, but in the train Joseph said, “It’s happening again. All that money we paid, and it’s happening again.”

  “Nothing’s happening,” said Catherine. “She’s had a fever. She was delirious.”

  “That’s nothing? Anyhow, I don’t believe that’s it. What about the last time, at Leonard’s? Ninety-eight-point-six.”

  “This is different. You heard the nurses. In three or four days, she’ll be fine.”

  They watched the landscape rush by, rain pecking holes in the melting snow.

  “This has got to be some kind of record,” said Joseph. “Snow in May.” Then he said, “Listen, how much did she know?”

  “About what?”

  “You know about what. The pinochle game. Before we got married.”

  “Maybe she knew, maybe not. I didn’t tell her. But people talk … What difference does it make?”

  “It seems like the end of the story,” said Joseph. “Twenty years ago, I won my wife in a card game. And now our crazy daughter is playing pinochle with God.”

  “Take it easy. It’s not your fault. No one ever went crazy because her father won her mother in a pinochle game.”

  “I’m not saying it’s my fault. Far from it. I’m saying there’s a pattern.”

  “Patterns. Next you’ll be counting potato eyes like your mother.”