The Staircase (22 page)

"Abeyta?" Bishop Lamy said.

"Yes, Uncle. He will do it if I ask."

"I have no doubt. Have you seen him lately?"

"No, Uncle."

"The truth, Elinora."

"I haven't, Uncle. I swear. Ask Lizzy. She's seen me in my room every night."

He looked at me.

"She hasn't," I said. Of course, I did not say she intended to elope with Abeyta. For one reason, I decided it was one more of Elinora's dramatic announcements, like being a bride of Christ.

"I will write the letters," the Bishop said, "and send them with Abeyta's father's messenger. And if Mr. King and your
father write back and agree, and guarantee me a good home for this child, I will consider it.
If
you both behave. Now you are dismissed."

I had to hand it to Bishop Lamy. He had practically guaranteed Elinora's behavior for months. And she thought
she
was using
him!

But then he hadn't united the whole of his Southwest flock, started schools where there were none before, and once been in the forefront of defending his wagon train with blazing six-guns from attacking Comanches, for nothing. Certainly it had given him some training to handle his fourteen-year-old grandniece.

Then, as we left the room, I heard him murmur to himself. "Imagine those two coming to me together. I'm beginning to think we did have a miracle here this week after all."

IN THE NEXT WEEK
everyone seemed to settle down. All the students were chastened, to say the least, that Saint Joseph had not come. I myself suspected they also felt a little foolish.

"We have not been worthy of him," Mother Magdalena told the girls almost every morning at breakfast. "Now Christmas is coming. It is the season of Advent. We must make ourselves worthy of the coming of Jesus."

Thank heavens they didn't really expect Jesus. Even I, a Methodist, knew that.

From inside the chapel came constant hammering, as José the carpenter worked on the staircase. He worked long hours, beginning at six in the morning, stopping for mass, and then going on until late at night. We were told by Mother Magdalena not to bother him, that he was in a dreadful race against time to have the staircase completed for Christmas.

I wanted to peek in and say hello, but Mother Magdalena's order was firm, and things were so tenuous because Saint Joseph hadn't come and the carpenter was back that I decided to keep my distance.

The choir practiced for Christmas in the dining room.

Decorations started to appear in the schoolrooms and the convent. Bright wild holly berries, possum haw berries, and evergreens. At the Bishop's farm the boys from the academy were allowed to help with the hog killing.

"Wait until the bonfire on Christmas Eve," one of the day girls told us. "The boys will blow up old hog bladders from last year and throw them on the fire. They explode like cannons."

Ramona was already planning the Christmas Day feast. In the marketplace it seemed as if the trinkets of the world were on sale. I thought of last Christmas at Uncle William's house, with Mama and Daddy. We'd had a houseful of company. And gifts and a tree.

I was in another world now. A different time and place. I might as well be on another planet, I told myself. And then I wondered where I'd be next year.

BISHOP LAMY HAD WRITTEN
the letter to my father, and Abeyta had been allowed to come and fetch it so that his father's courier could take it to Texas. Abeyta's appearance in the convent was much whispered about. He came early in the morning, and Elinora was allowed to see him in the Bishop's office, under his watchful eyes.

Some of the girls crept onto the stairway and came back upstairs, saying they'd actually seen him. It was almost as good as seeing Saint Joseph, for them. Or Jesse James. Afterward, of course, Elinora wouldn't speak of the encounter, though pressed by the other girls. She would say only that the Bishop had agreed to host a dance Christmas week, for the older boys and girls in the two schools.

Mail service in Santa Fe was always a haphazard business,
at best. The only thing that could really be counted on, people said, was the arrival of the army payroll, under escort from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There were government contracts to carry civilian mail between Santa Fe and the other territories and states. Before the war, mail came but twice a month. Now, at least, it came once a week—when the post wagon wasn't attacked by outriders.

That week before Christmas a letter came to me from Uncle William.

He was closing up his house in Independence for a while, to go to Kansas. "With my friend Jim Bridger," he wrote. "You are certainly welcome to come to Kansas when I become established, if you do not wish to live with your father. But I need at least six months to make a proper home for myself—let alone you—there."

Oh, Uncle William.
I could see him already in Kansas with Bridger. I knew Bridger, bewhiskered and half blind by now. He'd had three Indian wives and six half-Indian children, all educated in missionary schools in Missouri.
What if I'd had my heart set on being with you, Uncle William? But the very thing I love about you—your independence—is what makes you not there for me now.

Still, I knew he meant it when he said I could come in six months. He sent me books, writing paper, a silver frame with a photograph of my parents that had been taken in Independence, and an Indian blanket, for Christmas.

I was still waiting for a letter from Cassie. None came. (Later I was to find out that her letter was on a post wagon that had been attacked by Utes and Apaches in eastern New Mexico, and it ended up scattered with other mail across the Plains.)

All that week I hunkered down, like everybody else—studying, doing my chores, and missing Elena. We all missed her. A temporary home for her had been found with a good family outside Santa Fe. The Bishop was determined she should be safe and his school not endangered. He himself had visited Ramon Baca in jail, to tell him the child was elsewhere, without disclosing her whereabouts.

On Friday of that week, we had our first snow. It came quietly at the onset, then steadily, then quickly. An undercurrent of excitement ran through the school. And by the end of the day, the girls were running around squealing in delight. Within two hours there seemed to be three or four inches. I acted disinterested, even bored, as I considered it my duty to do. After all, I was from Missouri and we had our snows, didn't we? The day girls were dismissed early. By supper time there seemed to be seven or eight inches. It clung to everything, tree branches, walls, grillwork, lampposts. The robins flew into the cedar trees. The bluejays screeched and objected.

It was after supper hour. The choir was practicing in the dining room, where the tables had been pushed aside. There was about the place a general air of enclosed peace, yet an air of anticipation. As if something wonderful was about to happen.

It was the snow, I decided. These girls so seldom saw it, and from all Sister Roberta said, the sun would make quick work of it, and in a day or so it would be gone.

I was seated in the parlor next to the crackling fire, knitting a sweater for Elena. Cleo lay in a ball at my feet. I'd been to the barn and fed and seen to Ben. From down the hall came the muted strains of "Silent Night."

I looked up at the snow falling against the windows, and I felt a sense of peace such as I hadn't felt in months. More than
peace, it was a flooding of contentment in my bones. As if I knew everything was going to turn out all right. For a moment I felt almost as if there was a presence in the room with me.

And then Cleo lifted her head, sniffed, stood up to arch her back, and hissed.

I am not a spiritual being. For all I had been through in Santa Fe, I still had no faith in uncommon powers of any kind. But at that moment I knew someone was in the room with me, some unseen presence, standing close, giving me assurances. Was it Mama? Mrs. Lacey? It was somebody. Or something. I was sure of it, and I didn't fight the sureness. I didn't scoff. And I didn't doubt. The knowing in itself was enough.

At that moment the door of the parlor burst open. Elinora stood there. "The staircase! It's finished!"

I jumped from my reverie and turned to look at her. "What?"

"It's finished! Ramona went just now to take the carpenter his supper. And found it completed. And he's gone."

I dropped my knitting from my lap and ran from the room.

THE OTHER GIRLS WERE
already there. So were the nuns. They stood in the back of the church, gazing up at the staircase.

My mouth fell open. It was finished.

It rose in a graceful, swirling, polished circular arch, from the ground to the choir loft. The wood fair glowed in the candlelight, rich and burnished and solid. There were thirty-three steps. The girls were counting them. And each one was trimmed to perfection.

But it had no railing.

It had no supports. It seemed as if nothing was holding it up.

Sister Roberta was examining it. "Two complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree swirls," she said. "It is spliced in seven places on the inside and nine on the outside. It is an incredible and impossible piece of work. No one man could have finished this in so short a space of time."

"But will it hold us?" Mother Magdalena asked in a near whisper.

"Well, there is one way to find out. And being the heaviest one here, I shall experiment," Sister Roberta said.

We all watched then, while she tentatively put one foot on the bottom step, smiled at us, then put a foot on the next step.

Sister Catherine crossed herself. I saw Sister Hilaria mumbling silent prayers. Sister Roberta mounted the thirty-three steps, one by one, keeping her balance perfect for such a large body, and arrived at the top.

"Not one creak," she said as she stood up there above us at the entrance to the choir loft, "not one bit of swaying."

"Praise be," Mother Magdalena said. "We have ourselves a staircase."

"And from the looks of it," Sister Roberta said, leaning over to examine a step, "he didn't use nails, either. He used wooden pegs."

"Sister, don't fall," begged Mother Magdalena.

Sister Roberta straightened up. "Now, how do I get back down?"

I heard Mother Magdalena gasp, and the others murmur.

"Why didn't he make a banister?" Winona asked.

"Faith," said Sister Roberta. "He wanted to show us that we need faith. For now, I will come back down the only way I consider feasible. And afterward we will practice, so we can come down gracefully, showing our faith."

And with that she turned around and crept down, backward, step-by-step, on her hands and knees. There was even more praying now, then happy sighs when she reached the bottom. She stood up and turned to face us.

"The wood is beautiful," she said. "It is the most beautiful wood I have ever seen."

"It is so graceful," Mother Magdalena said, sighing. "It is like a prayer, lifting itself to heaven."

The nuns crossed themselves again. "What does this mean?" Sister Catherine asked.

"Yes, what does it mean?" asked Sister Hilaria.

Mother Magdalena turned to encompass us all with her gaze. "It can mean only one thing," she said. "Saint Joseph did come, after aU. The carpenter man was Saint Joseph."

With that they all got down on their knees and started praying. I just stared at them all as if they'd taken leave of their senses. Then I ran from the chapel.

OF COURSE, I DID NOT
believe it was Saint Joseph.

The man had spoken to me. He had listened to my woes. He had held my kitten and advised me about my father. He had even told me how sad he was at having to leave his own family. He had been hurt because the girls hadn't wanted him around here.

Would a saint act like that?

Everyone had assumed that he had finished his work and gone to the barn without supper because he was so tired. The next morning I was up earlier than anybody, tracking through the snow to the barn.

To feed Ben,
I told myself. To walk him around the yard. Later on I would beg Mother Magdalena to allow me to take him for a ride on the road to the Bishop's farm, if not through town. Even though I would have wanted to go to visit Mrs. Lacey and Robert.

I fed Ben.

The carpenter was not in the barn. Neither was his mule. I asked Gregorio about him. He scratched his head and considered the matter for a moment.

"I came here to see the animals just after supper," he said, "to make sure they were all right. His mule was here then."

"And this morning?" I asked.

"It was gone. I am thinking he took his leave of us."

THE BISHOP CAME,
summoned by the nuns. He examined the staircase, shook his head, pronounced it beautiful, looked properly puzzled, and told the excited girls he would have no hysteria, no fasting. "And I will accept no new callings," he said. He looked, significantly, at Elinora.

"And, please, don't let this get about just yet," he begged everyone. "Or we will have a tramping of people through here all day. Let us just keep our counsel. When people come to mass in the morning, they will see the staircase."

"And what will we say then?" Elinora asked.

"That we have a new staircase," he said.

"We should have a supper for the man," Mother Magdalena suggested, "to thank him properly. Is that all right with you, Bishop?"

"By all means."

"But he's gone," Winona wailed.

"He'll be back for his pay," the Bishop said.

"His mule is gone from the barn," I offered.

The Bishop looked at me. "You've come to know some of the merchants in town from your travels with Mrs. Lacey, haven't you, Lizzy?" he asked.

"Yes, Eminence."

"Then ask about today if anyone has seen him. Take someone with you. Don't go alone."

"The lumberyard would be a good place to start," Sister Roberta suggested.

"Yes, start at the lumberyard. He was to use my account there," the Bishop said. "Sister Roberta will go with you, Lizzy. Take a horse, Sister."