immediately was reminded of one of the Addams Family characters. Baker, a stocky man in his mid-thirties, with a boyish face, dark brown hair and shrewd china-blue eyes, was wearing a black suit with a black tie. Beside him, his wife, Linda, also dressed in black, was holding a handkerchief to her face.
Trying to squeeze out a tear no doubt, Alvirah thought dryly. She had met Vic and Linda for the first time on Thanksgiving. Aware of her sister’s failing health, Kate had invited Alvirah and Willy, Sister Cordelia, Sister Maeve Marie and Monsignor Thomas Ferris, the pastor of St. Clement’s who resided in the rectory a few doors from Bessie’s townhouse on West 103rd Street, to share the holiday dinner with them.
Vic and Linda had stopped in as they were having coffee, and it seemed to Alvirah that Kate had pointedly not invited them to stay for dessert. So what were they doing acting like the chief mourners? Alvirah asked herself as she dismissed Linda’s apparent sadness, assuming it to be phony.
A lot of people would think she’s good-looking, Alvirah conceded as she took in Linda’s even features, but I’d hate to get on the wrong side of her. There’s a coldness to her eyes that I don’t trust, and that spiky hairdo with all those brassy gold highlights is the pits.
“…as though she were my own mother,” Linda was saying, a quiver in her voice.
Willy, of course, had heard the remark and couldn’t help adding his own. “You rented that apartment less than a year ago, didn’t you?” he asked.
Without waiting for an answer, he took Alvirah’s arm and propelled her toward the kneeling bench.
In death as in life, Bessie Durkin looked to be in charge of the situation. Attired in her best print dress, wearing the narrow strand of faux pearls the judge had given her on their wedding day, her hair styled and combed, Bessie had the satisfied expression of someone who had successfully made a lifelong habit of getting other people to do things her way.
Later, when Alvirah and Willy were leaving, they said good-bye to Kate, promising to be at the funeral Mass at St. Clement’s and ride in the car with her to the cemetery.
“Sister Cordelia is coming too,” Kate told them. “Willy, I’ve been worried about her this week that you’ve been away. She’s been under so much strain. The city inspectors are giving her a terrible time about Home Base.”
“We expected as much,” Willy said. “I called today, but she was out and didn’t get back to me. I had expected to see her here tonight.”
Glancing across the room, Kate saw Linda Baker bearing down on them. She dropped her voice. “I asked Sister back to the house after the funeral,” she whispered. “I want you to come too, and Monsignor will be there.”
They said their good-nights, and because Willy said he had to get some fresh air just to get the overwhelming smell of flowers off him, they agreed to walk a ways before hailing a taxi.
“Did you notice how Linda Baker came running when she saw us talking to Kate?” Alvirah asked Willy as they strolled arm in arm toward Columbus Avenue.
“I sure did. I have to say there was something about that woman that bothered me. And now I’m worried about Cordelia too. She’s no spring chicken, and I think she’s bitten off more than she can chew by trying to mind those kids after school.”
“Willy, they’re just being kept warm and safe until their mothers can pick them up from work. How can anyone find fault with that?”
“The city can. Like it or not, there are rules and regulations about minding kids. Hold on, I’ve had enough of this cold air. Here comes a cab.”
3
“Like it or not, there are rules and regulations,”
Sister Cordelia said with a sigh, as she unconsciously repeated Willy’s exact words the next day. “They’ve given me a deadline-January 1st-and Inspector Pablo Torres told me he was already breaking every rule in the book to stretch it that far.”
It was one o’clock, and after a Mass of Resurrection, Bessie Durkin had been lowered into her final resting place, alongside three generations of Durkins in Calvary Cemetery.
Willy and Alvirah, Sister Cordelia and her assistant, Sister Maeve Marie, who was a twenty-nine-year-old former NYPD policewoman, and Monsignor Thomas Ferris were at the table in Bessie’s townhouse, enjoying the Virginia ham, homemade potato salad and sourdough biscuits prepared by Kate.
“Is there anything else I can get anyone?” Kate asked meekly before she took her place at the table.
“Kate, sit down,” Alvirah ordered. She turned to Cordelia. “What are the specific problems that are so terrible, Cordelia?” she asked.
For a moment the troubled frown on the face of the seventy-year-old nun disappeared. Cordelia’s eyes softened as she looked at her sister-in-law and smiled. “It’s nothing even you can fix, Alvirah. We have thirty-six kids, ages six to eleven, who come to us after school. I asked Pablo if he’d rather have them on the streets. I asked him what we’re doing wrong. We give them a snack. We’ve rounded up some trustworthy high school kids who help them with their homework and play games with them. There are always adult volunteers in the thrift shop, so there’s plenty of supervision at all times. The kids’ mothers or fathers pick them up by six-thirty. We don’t charge anything, of course. The nurses at the schools have checked any kids we take in. They’ve never complained about anything.”
Cordelia sighed and shook her head.
“We know the property is in the process of being sold,” Sister Maeve explained, “but it’s at least a year before we have to get out. We’ve freshly spackled and painted the whole second floor where the kids stay when they’re there, so there isn’t a peeling chip anywhere. Apparently it’s still a problem though, because they say that lead paint was used years ago. Sister Superior asked Pablo if he’d taken a look at some of the places where these kids live and compared the conditions there to those at Home Base. He said he doesn’t make the rules. He said there have to be two exits, and they can’t include the fire escape.”
“The staircase is wide enough for five kids to come down together, but they don’t count that. Maeve, we could go on and on,” Sister Cordelia interrupted. “The bottom line is that in under four weeks we have to close the doors on the Home Base program, and if any of those kids show up, we have no choice but to send them home to an empty apartment with no security and no supervision.”
Monsignor Ferris reached for his empty cup as Kate held up the teapot. “Thank you, yes, Kate. And I think it’s time to share our good news with the others.”
Kate looked shy. “Why don’t you, please, Monsignor?”
“Gladly. Bessie, God rest her, realized the end was near, and the day after Thanksgiving she asked me to stop in.”
Let this news be what I think it is, Alvirah prayed silently.
The quiet composure that was a habitual expression on Monsignor Ferris’s kindly face was brightened by the obviously happy tidings he was about to impart. He smoothed his silver hair, which still was somewhat disheveled from the wind at the graveside service, then he smiled. “Bessie told me that, of course, in her will she left this house to her sister, as well as an income that would ensure Kate’s comfort, but Kate had indicated to her that she would like to turn the house over to Sister Cordelia for the Home Base program.”
“Saints preserve us!” Cordelia said fervently. “Oh, Kate.”
“Kate would want to stay on, living in the fourth floor apartment the Bakers are now occupying. Bessie quite frankly wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but felt it was Kate’s decision to make, and she asked me to make sure nothing went wrong with all the arrangements.”
“You know Bessie always treated me as if I couldn’t find my own way to the store,” Kate said fondly.
“I told Bessie that with the rectory just three doors down, there’d be no problem keeping an eye on everything, although I also told her that Kate is very much able to handle her own affairs,” the monsignor explained.
“I’ll love having Home Base here,” Kate said. “I’ve wanted to volunteer to help ever since you opened it, Cordelia, but Bessie needed me.”
