The Patron Saint of Liars (31 page)

"We could go there, I guess," Rose said. "I've been thinking, I don't want to tell Cecilia about this."

"About what?"

"The inheritance, the land. I don't think it's a good idea." I sat down next to her at the little table. She kept looking off out the window. "She's too young. She's better off thinking that we don't have anything," Rose said. "She'll work harder, then. I don't want her to spend her life planning on staying here. She shouldn't think there's any reason for her to stay. There isn't. But if she knew that this was all going to wind up being hers, she might not ever look any farther than the end of the driveway."

I wanted to tell Sissy. I wanted to pick her up in the air and swing her around and give her the land as a gift. "I don't want to lie to her about it, though," I said. "I don't think that would be right."

"Why not?" Rose said. "We lie to her about everything else."

"Jesus, what a thing to say."

Rose put up her hand. "No," she said. "Forget that. I'm sorry. Tell her we're going to move to June's because it's bigger. Tell her Saint Elizabeth's owns it. I don't think she'll ask any questions anyway."

Rose got up and peered through the swinging door to see if everyone was about finished eating. I just sat there, staring at my hands on the green-topped table. "I am her father," I said quietly.

Rose stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder. "I didn't mean it that way," she said.

"I know what you meant," I said. "I'm always here. Every day for ten years. Don't tell me I'm not her father."

"Yes," she said, like suddenly she understood what I was saying. "Of course you are."

When Sissy came home from school the next day I walked her over to June's and told her which bedroom would be hers. She was in fourth grade then and smart as a whip. She acted just like me, going through a house she'd been in all her life like she'd never seen it before.

"What if it's haunted?" she called out from the bathroom, where she was turning the shower off and on.

"June wasn't the haunting type," I said. "Even if she was, she'd haunt the creek bed, not the house."

"I can't imagine living in somebody else's house is all." She opened the hall closet and looked inside. "This is full of coats."

"We'll have to box everything up." I looked inside. It looked like there were coats from her whole family, like everyone who had ever been there had left a coat behind.

"Mom wants to do this?" Sissy said.

"I don't think your mother much cares where she sleeps, as long as she doesn't have to walk too far to work." I took a gray felt hat off of the top shelf and put it on Sissy's head. She folded back the brim in the front.

"How do I look?" she said.

"Good," I said, and nodded. "Very good." I couldn't help but think she'd never be pretty like Rose. Sometimes I would stare at her so hard while she was sleeping, trying to see the smallest bit of her mother, in the eyes or around the mouth, but Sissy just looked like Sissy, no one else.

Everything happened so slowly at Saint Elizabeth's that to see a change you had to wait and watch for years. But that's what I'd done and so I knew things. The girls were getting younger. Every year had one girl who set a new record. We'd had them seventeen and then sixteen. Over time a few more started to keep their babies. The state said we had to have a psychologist and a social worker come down with the doctor once a week. The sisters held regular classes for the girls so they could keep up with their studies. They came from farther away. Not as far as California, but you could tell, these places were shutting down. There were fewer and fewer places a girl could go.

Other things had changed, too. Sissy got so big that most of the girls stopped trying to baby her. Sister Evangeline passed out the futures of unborn children without a thought to getting in trouble, and Mother Corinne got used to Rose, but she never liked her. She always acted like Rose was some kind of hanger-on who'd give up one day and go home. She never thanked Rose for the work she did or how she took care of Sister Evangeline.

So when Mother Corinne found occasion to come into the kitchen every now and then to fuss at Rose about something, buying expensive olives or a new blender, Rose let it go. I'd been there before and seen it happen, Mother Corinne would be ranting and raving and half the time Rose wouldn't even look up from what she was doing.

But once we got June's house cleaned out and started to carry our things across the back pasture, Mother Corinne decided to take offense at everything Rose was doing. You couldn't blame her in a way. All those years she'd been acting like the land was hers and then all of the sudden it wasn't. She didn't hold it against me or Sissy, but the thought of Rose having it drove her half mad. Except that Mother Corinne didn't really get mad, she just got firm and found ways of talking to you that made you feel small and smaller. One day just before we moved in, right after lunch, she came into the kitchen looking like her eyes were on fire.

"All through that meal I had to sit there and watch the waste," she said to Rose, the soft veins on her temples coming up. "There was twice as much food on every plate as the girls could eat. That's food that will be thrown away." Her hands moved like quick knives in the air. Sister Evangeline and I sat at the table and watched. We hadn't seen her like this in a long time, but Rose hardly noticed.

"I didn't see plates coming back with food on them. No more or less than usual," Rose said.

"I don't know where you come from," Mother Corinne said. "Who taught you to lie the way you do."

Rose started to turn away from her, then all of the sudden she cocked her head a little to one side, like she was trying to hear a song playing on the radio in the other room. She had a heavy wooden spoon in her hand and she turned back to Mother Corinne. "No more," she said. Her voice was low and steady and she moved the spoon slowly back and forth like she was blessing her.

"I won't have this," Mother Corinne said, not hearing her, not knowing that anything had changed. But I knew it and Sister Evangeline knew it. Rose had changed her mind about what she was going to take.

"Leave," Rose said.

"You won't tell me where to go," Mother Corinne said. "You're here through my good graces, you and your daughter both."

Rose raised up her spoon and Sister Evangeline said, "Rose, you come here!" and Rose turned around. Mother Corinne looked at the three of us in horror, like she didn't know who was worse. She was too angry to speak. I had never seen her so mad. But when she got to the door Rose called out to her.

"My good graces," Rose said. "Not yours."

After that, I don't remember Mother Corinne coming into the kitchen again. It was a big hotel. You could avoid someone forever if you wanted to.

The first night in the new house I went to tuck Sissy in. "Here we go," she said.

"You brush your teeth?" She nodded. "Say your prayers?"

"Twice."

"That's the way you're supposed to do it." I sat down on the edge of her bed and pulled the sheets up under her chin. I looked at her there on her white pillow, her hair all spread out like a fan, and I thought about June's father. He had died before I ever came to Habit, but June loved to tell stories about him, how he had saved her life. He would have watched his daughter bent with fever in this house, maybe in this room, and thought about how he'd do anything for her.

"Show me where I am," Sissy said. She hadn't asked me that in more than a year. When she was little she used to say it all the time. It meant she wanted to see my tattoo and read her name on my arm.

I took off my shirt and pulled up the sleeve of my undershirt. "Right there," I said.

"So you'll never forget my birthday."

"Not unless I don't take a bath that day," I said.

"Cecilia and Rose," Sissy said.

"Both of you right there." I tapped my arm.

"But the rose isn't right because the tattoo girl's mother came home before it was finished and she got scared and dropped the needle," she said.

She used to make me tell the story over and over again. "When I was born you went to Mamie's house and had her put my name on your arm and the day I was born and a rose for Mom."

"You've got a good memory," I said.

"You've told me about a million times," she said, sounding sleepy.

"Good night."

"And if you and Mom had had a bunch of kids, you would have put all their names on your arm, all the dates. And if you'd had even more kids you would have gone to the other arm and then your legs, and then your back."

"Good night."

"Until they'd be putting the names on the soles of your feet and the back of your neck. Charlie, Thomas, Mary, Douglas, Lee Ann, Susan, Octavia."

"Octavia?"

"I go to school with a girl named Octavia."

"Good night," I said, and closed the door but not all the way.

"Good night," she said.

I went across the hall and got in bed with Rose. She reached up and turned off the lights. I kissed her good night on the forehead, but she didn't say anything.

That night I dreamed about Cecilia. It was a dream I hadn't had in a long time, the one where she comes and sits down on the edge of the bed.

"How you doing, Son?"

"Okay, I guess. Good, really. This is our house now. We moved. You look good." She was wearing a dark green dress, one I'd never seen before.

"I look just the same," she said, and ran her fingers through her hair. Her hair was just the way she used to wear it. It was a real forties style, neat and waved. I liked hair that way.

"Have you been doing all right?"

She nodded, she seemed a little more tired than usual, but like I said, it had been years since I'd had this dream. "Not a lot happens, you know? I think that's the point of the whole thing." She leaned over and touched Rose's cheek gently with the back of her hand. "She has such nice skin," Cecilia whispered. "She's just so pretty. I wish she wasn't so pretty."

I looked at my wife asleep beside me. Her steady breathing was a comfort. "She's no prettier than you," I said.

"We're different," Cecilia said. "I always thought you'd marry someone like me."

"Who's like you?" I asked, and took her hand.

Cecilia bent her head down a little and smiled. She always needed to know she was special. "I'm going to go and look at your daughter," she said. "Is that all right? I won't wake her up."

"Sure," I said. Dying had made Cecilia humble. She was easier to get along with, but I kind of missed the way she used to be.

She gave my hand a squeeze. "You take care of yourself, now," she said. "Get some sleep."

"You too," I said. She got up slowly, like she didn't really want to go, but she did. She waved to me from the door.

When I woke up it was pitch-dark and I felt scared to death. I never got used to those dreams and I thought it was bad luck to have one the first night in the new house. I sat up in bed and tried to adjust my eyes to the light. There was a woman standing at the foot of the bed wearing a dress. I could hardly breathe. "Cecilia?" I said.

"She's asleep," Rose said. "It's just me. Go back to sleep."

I reached up and turned on a lamp at the bedside table. It took me a minute to find the switch because I wasn't used to it. "Why are you dressed?"

"I'm going to go home," she said.

I honestly had no idea what she meant. "California?"

She smiled and shook her head. "I'm going back to the old house. I can't sleep."

"Don't be silly, Rose. Come back to bed."

"No," she said softly. "I need to get going."

I got up and pulled my bathrobe on. She had her little suitcase in her hands and she saw me staring at it.

"I just needed a few things," she said.

I followed her downstairs, through our new living room and out onto the front porch. "If you don't like it here, we'll go back," I said. "We don't have to stay here. The other house is fine."

"Go back to bed, Son," she said, walking down the stairs. "Don't worry about anything. Everything's fine."

I took hold of her hand and she gave me a funny little smile that I knew meant I was supposed to let go. She didn't say anything else or look back over her shoulder and there was nothing I could do but watch her walking away, getting smaller and smaller in the dark field. There were so many stars out and somehow it just made me crazy, the night being so pretty like that and her leaving. It was happening all over again. She was going and I was letting her go. I stood on the porch and waited until from far away I saw a little light go on in the front room of the house I had lived in thirty-five years. I sat down on the steps and kept my eyes on that light, thinking, that's where my wife is.

CECILIA

1

I
SAW HER
when I came home from school. She was standing in front of Saint Elizabeth's reading the sign, so I knew what that meant. When I was a kid I used to run out as soon as I saw somebody at the sign but my mother told me to leave them alone, let them come in on their own time. When I passed this girl she sort of looked up a little and I nodded at her and smiled and she went right back to reading. It wasn't like she was snubbing me or anything, that's just the way they are.

I went in and was talking to Sister Bernadette at the front desk. She had a letter for me from my pen pal in Spain, who, thank God, had been writing to me in English. My Spanish is rotten. We were matched up through our schools because we were both fifteen, girls, and studying each other's language, though clearly one of us was more successful at it than the other. Sister Bernadette was telling me that when she was in convent school she had a pen pal who was taking holy orders in Italy. "Her name was Maria Theresa," Sister Bernadette said. "We lost touch after the war."

I tapped the letter on the desk. I liked getting mail here better than at the house. Not that I got any mail except from Sylvia, who, according to her letters, had a life even more boring than mine. Sister Bernadette put everybody's name on a key box behind the front desk and sorted the mail out like she was the postmaster. She wrote the names on masking tape so they could be peeled off easily and replaced with new ones. There were some things about the old hotel that were cool, like the attic and all the boxes behind the desk. "Got a new customer outside," I said. I checked out the stamps, which were infinitely better than American stamps, plus it took like five of them to mail a letter.