The Patron Saint of Liars (32 page)

Sister Bernadette went to the window and raised up on her toes to look over the top of the half sheers. "Poor thing," she said. "She's been there two hours now. I wish she'd come inside."

I shrugged. "At least the weather's good."

Sister nodded, and with that the door opened a little bit and the girl crept inside. It was like she'd heard us talking about her. I dropped down on the couch and slid my finger underneath the flap of the envelope. I was trying not to listen and trying to listen while the girl whispered to Sister Bernadette. She was really thin. It was hard to imagine being that thin and pregnant too. She had a ton of red curly hair that was caught up in a ponytail holder. It looked more like bundled kindling than hair. I started to read Sylvia's letter. It was all about her father acquiring more goats. She used the queerest words. Acquiring goats.

"Wait here, dear," Sister Bernadette said. "I'll see if I can't get Mother Corinne."

The girl came over and sat down on the couch next to me. I shouldn't say next to me. She sat on the same couch as me but as far away as possible. She looked like she was going to be sick, and let me tell you, it's happened before. I've seen girls throw up in their purses waiting to be interviewed. The first three months and then again in the last month. That's when everybody throws up. She looked up and saw me there for the first time.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi there." I smiled again. She looked like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her eyes darted from side to side, but so fast you could barely tell it was happening. We were the only two people in the lobby. It was the standard nap hour at the baby farm.

"I'm Lorraine," she said, and stuck out her hand like she was trying to get my vote.

"Cecilia." I leaned over the couch, not exactly getting up, and shook it. I always feel so stupid shaking people's hands.

"I just got here," she said. She was checking out the carpet and the horse paintings. This was not a girl who'd been in a big hotel before. Not even a shabby one.

"I know. I saw you outside."

"Oh," she said, and nodded, thinking it all over.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "It's fine. Everybody here is nice enough." I wasn't so good at the Welcome Wagon stuff. There was a time I got into it, but after a while you figure it out: everybody comes and everybody goes.

"Oh, it looks nice. That nun"—Lorraine pulled at a few of her curls and I was impressed by the way they sprang right back into place when she let them go—"she seemed nice."

"Very nice," I said. She smiled and I smiled, and then the whole thing got a little awkward. I didn't want to just stare at her, and I didn't want to get up and leave. "I'm going to read my letter," I said, and held up the light blue airmail paper like it was proof of something. Not that Sylvia's father's latest goat acquisition was really burning a hole in my curiosity. Sylvia didn't get out too much. She had never been to a bullfight. I don't mean to stereotype or anything, but what's the point of living in Spain if you never go to a bullfight?

"Don't let me keep you," Lorraine said, and made a sudden jerking motion with her hand, like she was trying to catch a glass of water she'd just knocked over in the air. It made both of us jump a little. "Nervous," she said, and then looked like she was going to cry. I've seen that too.

I put the letter back in its envelope. "Don't be nervous," I said. "Look, I'll tell you." I checked over my shoulder to see if Sister Bernadette had come back. Not that she wouldn't agree with what I was going to say, but she wouldn't like to hear me say it. "Mother Corinne is a little bit of a hard ass. Not awful, but it's best to get off on the right foot. Are you Catholic?"

"No," Lorraine said, her eyes getting absolutely round with terror. "They told me at state social services—"

"Ah," I said, cutting her off. "That's not the point. You don't have to be, but it makes things easier. Just tell her you are."

"But I'm not."

"There isn't a test. She won't ask you to say the stations of the cross or anything. It's just"—I turned my eyes to the large portrait of Saint Elizabeth over the front desk, the crucifix over every door—"polite or something. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. They won't kick you out."

"Anything else?"

My mother probably didn't even know I knew this, even though I'd seen her take a hundred girls aside and tell them. "The guy who got you pregnant. Don't say he's dead. Everybody does that. It makes Mother Corinne crazy."

Lorraine put her hands under her thighs and sat on them like they were cold. She was quiet for a minute. "I was going to say that," she said finally.

"See?"

"So what do I tell her?"

"I don't know. Tell her the truth. Or tell her you don't remember."

"What did you tell her?" Lorraine said.

All of a sudden I was the one who was wide-eyed. I started to explain, I opened my mouth, but then Sister Bernadette was there to take her back to the office. "Wish me luck," she said, and picked up her bag.

I sat there, absolutely frozen. I felt like I had just been mistaken for some escaped mass murderer. I felt like I was going to be sick, but that would only have proved her assumption. No one had ever, ever, mistaken me for one of them, not even as a joke. The lobby felt small and airless. I thought I was going to pass out.

I got up and went outside. It was May, four days from summer vacation. I wanted to go home, to my home, where I lived with my father. I cut through a hole in the hedge and started out across the back pasture. Halfway to the house I dropped my books and Sylvia's letter and the sweater I hadn't needed all day and fell down in the grass. There's maybe a week in every year you can do this. It comes after the mud has dried up and before all the bees are out.

I had never had sex, and not because I was so righteous and good. No one had asked me.

If someone had asked me, though, I'd like to think I would have said no. Let me tell you, I've seen it. From day one I've heard the stories of girls who said yes. He was going to marry me, he promised. People tell me things you wouldn't believe. It's like there's a sign over my head:
CONFIDE HERE
. But who else are they going to tell? Going to tell a nun how it makes you feel to have him look at you and say your name? Going to tell another pregnant girl? Big chance of sympathy there. Better to tell some kid who's around and probably won't remember. But I do remember. There's a recorder turned on somewhere inside me. Everything stays. Mary Claire, who couldn't sleep alone during thunderstorms and so checked me out from my mother like I was a library book, told me she'd done it at thirteen. Cheryl told me that she always believed it couldn't happen your first time, but she'd only done it once and there she was. She also said it hurt.

There had always been a huge gap between me and the girls who came through Saint Elizabeth's. They were older and away from their families and stuck in the middle of a big adventure they hadn't planned on having. I was never one of them. That was because of sex. It showed on me. I looked into the mirror and saw Virgin and they saw it, too.

So there I was, lying in the back pasture with my head on a geometry book, thinking this: things are changing. Now they're going to start thinking I'm one of them. It was like seeing an eclipse when it never occurred to you in your wildest dreams that the moon could block out the sun. Not that I'm saying I'm the sun or anything. I'm the caretaker's daughter. I'm the cook's daughter. I'm not one of them.

"Sissy!"

I about jumped out of my skin. I sat up like a shot and saw my father running across the field. My father has a bad knee, so it's not often you see him running anywhere. "What!" I called out.

"Jesus, girl, you scared me half to death." He stopped about ten feet away from me and put his hands on his bent legs and started to pant. He went red then white then red again.

"I scared you!" I stood up and went to him, put my hand on his back. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He shook his head and took a couple of deep breaths. "I just saw you lying there," he said. He stopped and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then he sat down. "Don't ever do that."

"Do what? Think? Be alone? Lie down?" I sat down next to him. He didn't look good, really. "Dad. Hey, Dad. Look, I'm fine."

He nodded, closing his eyes. "You're fine," he said.

I waited for him to say something else, but he seemed too busy breathing. I scratched the knee of his overalls. "You're scaring me," I said quietly. "Here, lie down a second. It's nice out here. See? That's all I was doing. The bugs aren't out yet. Just lie down."

My father did what I told him and stretched out in the moss and bluegrass. He took one huge, long breath, held it and then let it go. "This is better," he said. "I'm okay now."

"Were you looking for me?"

"No, I was just going home. I wanted to find my ball peen hammer. I thought it might be at home."

"It's in the junk drawer," I told him. I put my hand just above his face to keep the sun out of his eyes. "Next to the fridge. I saw it there yesterday."

"Good girl," he said.

"You feeling okay?"

He opened his eyes and smiled at me. "I guess I shouldn't run. Or I should start running. One or the other."

There was something about the fact that my father was so big that made it scary to see him lying down. It was like, moving around in the world, you didn't notice how much space he took up. But when he was still like this he looked like a tree that had fallen over and wouldn't ever be able to set itself right again. He'd turned sixty last year. The sisters threw him a big party. Most of the kids I went to school with had grandparents who were sixty, not parents.

"What were you doing out here?" my father said. "Getting some sun?"

"Just thinking."

"Anything interesting?"

What was I going to tell him? That I was thinking about sex? That I had just realized I could be an unwed mother? "I was thinking maybe we could have dinner at home tonight. I'll cook for a change. How about that?"

My father looked up at me. It unnerved me, the looks he could give. "What's your mother going to say if we don't go to dinner?"

"Gee, I think she'd have to notice we were gone before she could say anything."

"Sissy," he said, his voice suddenly going stern.

"Okay, okay. I'm not trying to start anything. I'd just like a night away from the baby farm is all. A little time at home."

He nodded and I saw some relief in his eyes, but maybe just because I wanted to. He must get tired of it. He's over there all the time. "That's fair," he said. He took another deep breath and then stood up. "Come on and walk me home. Show me where the hammer is."

I got up and tied my sweater around my waist and got my books together. "I got another letter from Sylvia," I said.

"Another one? That girl must have an awful lot of time on her hands." He reached over and took my books. I didn't want him to carry them, but I knew it would only make him feel worse to treat him like he was feeble or something. "What's new in Spain?" he asked me.

"Nothing," I said. "I've about decided that Spain is the most boring place in the world."

When Dad and I got to the house to look for the hammer, I knew right away my mother had been there. There was a skirt folded up on the kitchen table and a new bar of clear yellow hand soap next to the sink. She still came by every now and then, almost always when she knew we'd be gone. She would leave some small offering: apples, a dishtowel, magazines. Dad noticed right away. He took everything as a sign of something good.

"Look at this," he said, and held up the skirt. It was short and violet with kick pleats. She had made it herself. "This is pretty."

I took the skirt from him and put it back down on the table. "I'd never wear that color."

"That color is fine for you," he said. He looked down at the skirt and ran his hand over the cloth like it was a sleeping cat. "She must have made it."

"So she made it," I said, and opened the refrigerator, not looking for anything.

"Be nice," my father said. He wasn't telling me, he was asking me. Please, be nice about your mother. It was important to Dad's complex system of denial that Mom and I got along. That way he could believe that we were just a normal, happy family who were temporarily living in separate houses.

"I am nice," I said, shutting the refrigerator door. "We don't have any food. Can you take me to the store?"

He wagged the ball peen hammer in the air. "Got to get back to work," he said. "You and I can have dinner any night, Maybe we just ought to eat at the hotel."

I could feel a bad mood coming on. I'd made up my mind. "No," I said. "I'll go over and borrow some stuff. I want to cook."

He sighed and slipped the hammer into the bib pocket of his overalls. "Suit yourself," he said. He smiled and patted my head. My father was so much bigger than me, than everyone, that it didn't seem condescending when he patted my head. It was like that was the part of everyone he mostly saw. It made sense that it was the part he'd feel the most affection for. "You're okay?"

"You bet."

"I'll be home by six, then." And with that he went out the kitchen door and across the field. His gray hair looked coarse and bristly in the sunlight. I'd cut it way too short again.

I went up to my room and tried on the skirt. The truth was, I liked it. She at least had good sense about how long things ought to be. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself, trying to see what Lorraine had seen. I turned to the side and pulled the skirt tight over my stomach. I stared inside my eyes so hard it scared me and I had to look away. Kicking off my shoes, I climbed on top of my bed to see my whole body in the mirror over my dresser. I was looking for my mother, looking for cheekbones and long legs and a wide mouth. I could have looked all day and not found a shred of evidence. Once when I was twelve I accused my parents of adopting me. I had it all worked out in my mind: they hadn't been able to have children of their own. They had grown close to one of the girls there. The girl died, but just before she did she begged my parents to take me and raise me as their own. The girl who was my real mother died in the arms of the mother who raised me. Or didn't raise me, as the case may be. I thought about my dead mother, how she was skinny like me and not quite tall enough. She had my dirty blond hair and pale skin, a very slight overbite. She was a good dancer, even though she was shy. I thought about how heartsick she would have been to know the many ways this woman she gave me to, entrusted me to, had let me down.