Whisper Hollow (10 page)

“There,” she said, dropping the branches onto the kitchen table.

“I’ll tell you how to weave it,” her mother said, putting aside the gleaming wedding shoes. “Sit.”

Myrthen put the shears down on the table, hard. “I cut the branches. But I’m not going to weave it.”

“You have to, Myrthen. It will bring good luck to your marriage.”

“I don’t need luck,” she said. “I need to go. I need to speak to Father Timothy.”

“What have you done since yesterday, Myrthen, that you could possibly need to confess?”

She lifted her chin and raised an eyebrow. “That’s between God and me.”

Rachel sighed. “At least let me measure your head.” She reached out and pulled Myrthen into a chair. She selected one of the branches and held the thick end in one hand. The she made a loop around her daughter’s head and pinched it where it fit.

“Ouch!”

“I’m sorry, Myrthen.”

“You pulled my hair.”

“Of course I didn’t mean to,” Rachel said, then lifted the loop off Myrthen’s head and overlapped the large end, weaving it around the branch circle. Holding the wreath with one hand, she continued to weave the branch in and out and around the beginning circle. When she reached the end, she took the next branch and began to weave the next vine, starting at a different spot from the first, wrapping it in and out and around, in the opposite direction.

Rachel glanced up from her work. “You may go,” she said without stopping. “Give my regards to Father Timothy. Tell him we’ll be there sharp at nine-thirty in the morning.”

Myrthen dipped the middle finger of her right hand into the holy water basin and crossed herself.

“Good morning, child,” Father Timothy called out to her from the tiny sacristy closet. She was often the only parishioner there during the day, so even without turning around, he knew it was she who had entered.

“Good morning, Father.”

Father Timothy emerged, wiped his hands on a towel. “Myrthen, tomorrow is your big day. You don’t need to clean today.”

“I always clean on Fridays, Father.” But rather than move to gather her polishing cloth and lemon oil, the dustpan and broom, she stayed where she was with her chin nearly resting on her chest.

Father Timothy sighed. “It’s not necessary. You cleaned yesterday. And your mother-in-law has delivered the flowers already.” He pointed toward the altar. “Orange blossoms and hydrangea. Lovely, aren’t they? And tea roses from her garden.” He clasped his hands. “You are a fortunate young woman indeed, Myrthen.”

“She’s not my mother-in-law.”

“Mother-in-law-
elect
, then.” He smiled.

She pulled her mantilla lower over her face, then pressed her cheek against her shoulder. “Father, will you please hear my confession?”

“Now, child?”

“I’ve examined my conscience and told God of my sorrow as you suggested,” she said. “Please.”

“Yes,” he said, taking a breath. “Of course.”

She followed him to the rear of the small nave, and after he entered his compartment in the confessional, she went into the other. When she had knelt on the prie-dieu, Father Timothy slid open the screen between them.

Myrthen made the sign of the cross and said, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was two days ago.” She confessed regularly — all her minor sins, in order to make up for the very big ones that she could not bring herself to admit even to Father Timothy. That she had wanted John to touch her.

That she hadn’t wanted to share her birthday doll with Ruth.

“Yes, child.”

“Father, tomorrow is supposed to be my wedding day.” She paused.

“Yes.”

“I still don’t want to get married.”

“It’s natural for a bride to experience some uncertainty. Did you pray the novena, as I suggested?”

“I did, Father. And I know God wants me to heed my calling to a religious life. My parents …”

Privately, Rachel had told Father Timothy the truth behind the wedding, as well as about John’s earlier courtship. In the end, Father Timothy agreed with Rachel that the shame of Myrthen’s actions could be resolved only by marriage. Knowing her daughter, Rachel had told him that Myrthen would have cold feet, and would Father Timothy be so good as to counsel her on the correctness of fulfilling her duty?

Myrthen could hear a shifting of cloth from behind the mesh screen. An audible sigh. “Myrthen,” he said. “Your parents are good, God-fearing people.”

“Yes.”

“They want you to marry John Esposito.”

“Yes, but only because they need me to stay close by. They need me to take care of them when they’re old.”

“I understand their concerns,” he said. “And you, as their only daughter, have a duty to care for them if that is their need. Remember the fourth Commandment.”

“Yes, Father. Of course I do.”

“And you have given your heart to your fiancé.” He paused for effect, leaning back in his chair on his side of the screen, the side of authority, the side of God. “So you now also have a duty to him.”

She brushed the lace mantilla off her face, sticky with sweat, and moved closer to the hard edge of her small seat. “But, Father, you said you would help me find my place at one of the convents,” she said anxiously. “When I was the right age.”

“Myrthen, I’ve known you since you were a young girl, have I not?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And I know, though it pains me to admit it, that you are unable to hear God’s voice. His message. Though of course you have been diligent in trying.”

Myrthen hung her head lower. Even now, at what felt like a sentencing, she could not muster a defense. After spending so many hours each day for so many years in her company, Father Timothy knew her far too well. She answered in a tiny voice: “No.”

“I have prayed for you, Myrthen. I have asked the Holy Spirit for His divine intervention. I received the reply.”

She moved to the edge of her seat. “You did?”

“God rent the heavens and came down, Myrthen,” he said. Was he going to release her from her bondage? “He told me that you must comply faithfully with the duties of your state, carry your cross most patiently, and endeavor to accomplish His divine will with the utmost perfection.”

Yes!
she thought.
Thy will be done.
“What did the Lord tell you, Father?” she whispered close to the grill, then leaned forward, curling around the space that would soon be filled with his answer.

“That you will marry John Esposito tomorrow.”

“No!” She jerked up so quickly the wooden confessional quivered where she kicked it.

“Child. It was made clear to me even if it is not clear to you.”

“No,” she said again, but quieter; she was shrinking already.

“It is God’s will.”

She plunged her face into her hands. Had she not been faithful enough? Penitent enough? Had she not proved her heart, even in spite of falling prey to John Esposito’s seduction that one and only terrible time? After a moment of sobbing, she whispered, “I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past.”

“Say your act of contrition.”

She cried as she did so, sniffing and gasping between the words.

“Go home, now. Get ready for tomorrow. It will be a big day for you and your family. A blessed day.”

Myrthen left the church reluctantly, dipping her finger into the holy water and making again the sign of the cross; then she began the walk from the rugged heights of Whisper Hollow to her home, where her mother would be laying out sauerbraten and schnitzel. Her bridal wreath of myrtle branches would no doubt be completed and waiting.

Myrthen passed the cemetery without stopping. Into the mercilessly bright sky she whispered, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

On the morning of her wedding to Walter Pulaski, Alta carried an armload of foliage from her mother’s garden up Whisper Hollow to St. Michael’s Church. She hadn’t the benefit of a mother to plan the ceremony, nor the means for flowers. But she had her mother’s garden, which she’d tended alone for the four years since she died, and the ivy that grew along the fence.

Wedding ivy, it was called. It symbolized fidelity, faithfulness, and marriage. When her mother died, it symbolized something else, although she didn’t have the vocabulary for it then. That variegated green that grew wild surrounded her shattered and mended home and was like protection from the outside world. Something that meant she belonged within the space it enclosed. So, on the occasion of her wedding to the gentle, unromantic man who’d asked her father for her hand during their lunch break, she thought it appropriate to adorn the altar and the first two rows of pews with these treasured-up vines. These barriers might become a path to something more encompassing as she moved into this strange new union.

Her ceremony was to take place at high noon, immediately following that of another couple whose identity she didn’t know.
She expected few guests: her brothers, of course; her uncles and aunts. Punk and Maggie had sent a telegram with the promise of a visit and a gift later; they were in Paris on holiday. Her father would give her away — reluctantly, she hoped. She would still cook many of her father’s meals, although from this point forward they would be served from her own kitchen.

Would Walter, whose mother had been a wonderful cook, like the
kluski
? And the fried chicken, green beans, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and rolls? She’d been up since 3:00 a.m. to set the dough for the desserts and by 7:00 had already prepared most of the meal. On this warm Saturday, she was to be many things: daughter, sister, bride. And since she had no women to prepare her trousseau or lay her banquet or set forth the bread and salt and wine that would ensure her health and happiness as a married woman, she would also take the role of the cook and the hostess and the server. Her future, therefore, would have to hang on her own inexpert skills.

When
, she allowed herself to wonder for a tiny moment as she wound the wedding ivy around the kneeler at the pew, when would she ever be simply Alta?

From the far right of the sanctuary came a quiet sob.

She turned and looked. A girl, a bride wearing a fine ivory silk gown, knelt in front of the small side altar of the Virgin Mary, hands clutched in prayer. Her hair was done in two braids, a symbol, Alta knew, of a girl about to become a wife. But her voice, oh her voice, was not that of a young woman on the joyful path to wifedom. It was that of Charlotte Corday on her way to the guillotine, guilty of murder, or of Mary Easty at the gallows, condemned as a witch. In all Alta’s life and with all the books she’d read, it was as shrill a plea as she had ever heard:

“Oh holy Virgin! Mother Mary! You know more than anyone what it’s like to lose something. Your own son, sacrificed
and in agony. I beg you to look down on me with your compassionate heart.”

This girl, this bride, rocked forward on her knees, grinding her gloves into the silk across her thighs as she spoke, louder and louder:

“Oh Mother of Mercy, I have no one to turn to but you. Please please please hear my humble prayer. Take pity on me, I beg you. I cannot marry anyone other than your son, my Savior. I am devoted to Him and no one else. In His name I beg you.”

She stopped and took a breath; then she released the gloves from their vice and set them down neatly on her lap. She wiped her eyes and spoke again, more softly:

“If I am forced to take this man as my husband, so be it. I will accept it as God’s will. But my true heart will always be reserved for my Lord and only Him.”

Alta quietly placed the unwrapped end of ivy on the floor, wiped her hands across her cotton trousers, and moved to where the girl knelt in misery. She hesitated, then reached out and touched her on the shoulder.

Myrthen whipped her head around and glared at her. Alta took a startled step backward and brushed against the hard edge of the first pew. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean — ”

But Myrthen had already turned back to the altar and gotten back in position, bowing her head toward the Virgin Mary. She shot her right arm out behind her and made a flicking go-away movement with her fingers. Then she turned toward the cross in the center of the sanctuary and said in barely a whisper, “Heavenly Father, if it is Your will, please take this burden away from me before it’s too late.”

Alta retreated quietly, and knelt to complete her work. She wondered with pity about the man who would meet his grieving bride at this same altar only two hours before her own
husband-elect would meet her. Did the other groom know how unwelcome he was? Had he imagined broadly enough his future with this mournful soul?

As she completed what now seemed like the silly task of decorating the church for her own — and this other unwitting bride’s — wedding ceremony, she wondered:

What would become of them all?

By the time Myrthen was forced — by the clock, by her mother, by Father Timothy — to suspend her supplications to the Virgin and the Holy Father, she had run out of tears. Her face was streaked and splotched when Rachel snatched her by the arm and nearly dragged her down the length of the sanctuary, hissing, “
Was ist mit Dir los?
You’re being married in forty-five minutes.” She looked around. “I am glad your new in-laws aren’t yet here to see you behave so badly. Again.”

At the narthex, the girl who’d been decorating the pews, Alta, stood, open-mouthed and carrying her basket of tulle and twine. As Rachel, muttering in German, dabbed a spat-upon handkerchief across Myrthen’s face, she stared back at Alta with shiny, lifeless eyes. Myrthen’s gaze wasn’t searching or curious. It was as though she’d picked Alta at random, a blank spot on a wall, something to anchor herself as she swayed rigidly under her mother’s merciless swabbing.

“Perk up, Myrthen. What will your groom think of seeing you like this? It’s almost time. People will be arriving any minute. Where is your wreath?”

Myrthen, still looking through Alta, raised a finger and pointed to where it lay on the pew closest to the door.

“I’ll get it,” said Rachel.