Her mother took her briefly in her arms, she smelled of her familiar lotion, warmed by sleep. “I know,” she said. “It startled us all. But the army doesn’t call. They send a telegram. Or they come to the door. And not in the middle of the night, I should hope.” Then she backed away, brushed her daughter’s hair. “It’ll be over soon,” she said. “Things are winding down over there. He’ll be home before we know it.”
Annie followed her downstairs. She watched her get into her coat in the small vestibule. “You’ll be all right?” her mother said. “We won’t be long.”
Annie could hear the idling engine of her father’s car. “Poor Dad has to go to work tomorrow,” she said, but her mother missed the accusation.
“And you have to go to school,” she said. “Go back to bed.” Then she asked again, “You’ll be all right?” and Annie said, impatiently, “Yes.”
The front door stuck a little before her mother got it open. Annie could see the headlights of her father’s car, the wet glimmer of frost on the black windshield. “Lock up,” her mother said, over her shoulder, and with a small smile, “and don’t let anybody in,” because there were other things to fear, out there in the darkness, even if the army didn’t come in the middle of the night.
It was full daylight by the time her parents returned. Annie had gotten Clare up and dressed and they were eating cereal with Susan Persichetti, who was giving Annie a ride to school, when they came in to say that Pauline was all right-a lie by the looks on their faces. Annie saw them glance at Clare. A broken wrist and a broken nose and some bad bruises. Upset, though, their mother added. “The fall,” their mother said, “kind of threw her for a loop.” And then, again to Clare, “She’ll be fine, really. Although,” she added-and now she glanced at Annie-”she might have to come stay with us, for a while. When she gets out. We thought she could have the boys’ room, for a while.”
Annie glanced at Susan and then said, complaining, “What about when Michael comes home for the weekend?” After only the briefest pause, “What about when Jacob gets back?”
Her mother held up her hand. Her lips were pale. Her hair was littered with gray. “I’m not saying all year. I’m saying till her wrist is healed. Till she’s herself again.”
Annie said, “Who wants her to be herself again? I’d rather she be someone else.” And Clare cried, “That’s mean.”
But her father, who was watching the coffee percolate on the stove with something of Jacob’s own distracted absorption, looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. He’d liked the joke.
“I think it’s mean to make the boys sleep in the basement,” Annie said.
Susan laughed. “Hey, I sleep in the attic,” she said.
“Well, the attic would make sense,” Annie said. She turned to her mother. “Let’s put Pauline in the attic. Like Grace Poole.”
But her mother, buttering toast, was thinking of something else. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said shortly. She was about to lose her temper. “It will just be for a few weeks.”
“Your mother has enough on her mind,” their father said.
There was only the smell of coffee, the sound of the pot over the blue flame. The heater in the basement ticking on. “It’ll be fine,” Clare said into the quiet, as if she were the one to settle things. “The boys won’t mind. It will be fine.”
There was more silence and into it Annie whispered, “Bet she never leaves.”
As the girls were going out the door, Mr. Keane asked Susan, his voice low, if her father would be around this afternoon. He’d like to call him. Susan said he was usually up by noon.
Standing in the small vestibule, Annie asked him, impatiently, in a way that conveyed her disinterest in both the question and the answer, “Why?” The lack of sleep had turned her father’s skin to gray parchment. It had hollowed out the skin around his eyes. Just last evening he and Pauline had sat in the living room together with their cocktails, discussing retirement and pensions, the high cost of living on Long Island, the bargain that was Florida.
“They’re talking about sending her over to Creedmoor,” he said, quietly, shielding Clare. “For some treatment.” And to Susan: “I’d like to ask your father about that.”
The girls left the house, walking down the front steps into the icy morning cold. It occurred to them both that a year ago, they would have put their heads together and laughed wickedly at the news. They would have said, the loony bin. Perfect. Annie would have said, I knew it all along. She had already said, Grace Poole. But it was a cold morning, the dry air seemed scoured by the cold, and in their shortened uniform skirts and thin jackets they were both shivering by the time they reached Susan’s car at the curb. It would not be worth the effort it took to make a joke out of it all. The cold was bitter enough. Between the sidewalk and the curb the grass was frozen, each small blade frosted white. Annie heard it crunch beneath her feet as she reached for the passenger door. Tramp, tramp, tramp.
There was a car approaching from the opposite end of the street, the white of its exhaust no doubt exaggerated by the cold. Susan leaned over and opened the lock for Annie. Annie got in. Susan already had the heat blasting and the radio turned up and an unlit cigarette between her lips. They were late, but they were seniors, they were obliged to be late. The car passed them, moving slowly in what might have been an illusionist’s elaborate billowing of exhaust. Last night, when she’d gone back to her bed, she’d picked up the diary and written, underneath, “Here it is,” “Well, maybe not. Silly me. Only Pauline.” She and Susan stopped at White Castle for doughnuts and coffee and then spent five minutes in the school parking lot brushing powdered sugar and cinnamon from their plaid skirts. The old nun at the front desk, Sister Maureen Crosby, although the girls called her Chuckles, waved them away as they began to fill out their late slips, saying, with exaggerated patience, “Just get to class, ladies.” And they had only just turned away, heading toward their lockers, when the nun said, “Hold on, Miss Keane.” Annie looked back; the nun was squinting at a small strip of paper, as if it were a bit of late- breaking news, just in. She was soft and shapeless, slump shouldered in the black suit she now wore instead of a habit, a mouth breather, as solid as gray granite, as dependable, as immobile. The challenge was to get her to laugh just once during your four years at Mary Immaculate. “Call home,” she said.
There had been the car, of course, in its cloud of smoke, dreamlike, slow-moving, reading house numbers, perhaps. Chuckles lifted the phone from her desk and placed it on the counter just above her. “Don’t dawdle,” she said. The lights in the office were bright. They were bright against the linoleum in the hallway behind them. “Miss Persichetti, you can get to class,” Chuckles said, but Susan, standing close to her, murmured, “I’ll wait.”
“I am quite sure,” Chuckles said, as nuns did, “that Miss Keane is capable of calling home without your assistance.”
But Susan shook her head, lied easily. “I’ve got my stuff in Annie’s locker. I have to wait for her.” She touched Annie’s arm and said, “Go ahead, I’ll wait.” And then walked with her anyway, the few steps back to the desk. She knew, of course, what it was like to dread every message, every phone call, every change in the day’s routine. She knew what it was like. She watched Annie dial home (“Don’t each of you girls have your own locker?” Chuckles was saying) their eyes meeting briefly as she waited. Her mother said only, “Daddy’s coming to get you.” And then she was in Susan’s arms.
IV
Mr. persichetti was good enough to come along. Mary Keane was in the backseat and she touched his shoulder with her gloved hand to say, “This is good of you.” He shook his head, “No trouble,” he said. It was a wet, gray morning, cold yet somewhat humid: the terrible winter being edged out, once again, by spring. There were green spears of crocus, mere buds against the dirt, under front windows and along the edges of lawns. There would be daffodils soon, too, she knew. Then forsythia, azalea, rose, and rhododendron.
She leaned back against the seat, folding her hands in her lap. Up front, her husband said, “Do you take the Cross Island or go side streets?” and Mr. Persichetti said, “At this hour, the Cross Island’s fine.” At this hour, the neighborhood was quiet, and somewhat sodden from last night’s rain. John Keane drove cautiously, as was his habit. He wore his topcoat and his fedora-he would head for work as soon as they brought Pauline home-and beside him, hatless, wearing only a thin Windbreaker, Mr. Persichetti looked like a youngster. “I cut over to Northern Boulevard,” Mr. Persichetti said, “when it doesn’t look good.”
