Missing Sisters

by Gregory Maguire

  Sister Francis de Sales wasn’t at all sure what Sister John Bosco meant. But she nodded piously. “Yes, Sister.” She was grateful that the phone rang just then.

  “What,” bellowed Sister John Bosco into the phone.

  Her eyebrows lifted, her hand trembled a bit. Sister Francis de Sales continued the rosary under her breath. She’d been working on it silently since Sister John Bosco had begun to ramble. Sister John Bosco picked up a pencil and said, in an unctuous tone, a pretty voice that Sister Francis de Sales had never heard before, “Well, I’d very much like to meet you, Mrs.—is it Mrs. Coyne? Mrs. Patrick Coyne. May I call you by your first name? Mary. And a number?”

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” intoned Sister Francis de Sales, “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace…”

  “You have reason to believe you may have information relating to our little Alice. Perhaps we should set up a meeting, shall we? Have you a street address, then, Mary?”

  “…the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” prayed Sister Francis de Sales, noting that Sister John Bosco was affecting an Irish accent. She rounded the outer limit of the rosary beads and began on the fourth decade.

  “A lead,” breathed Sister John Bosco, hanging up the phone and closing her eyes. “Maybe it’s nothing. But this lady calls and says mysteriously she might be related to Alice. I’ll put the state police on this right away.”

  “Sister, haven’t a number of people called with that suggestion?” asked Sister Francis de Sales.

  “It’s the timing, Sister. This one sounded serious, and we have to follow every clue.” Sister John Bosco sniffed. “She might have Alice and Miami with her right now. We’ll treat this with kid gloves until we know more. Now say your prayers!” She dialed the police for the fourth time in an hour.

  Sister Francis de Sales obeyed, observing mildly to herself that she could well understand why the girls called this woman Sister John Boss behind her back. “…now and at the hour of our death,” she prayed, Alice surfacing as the focus of her intentions. Alice Colossus, be careful. Be careful!

  Garth was holding on very, very tight. South Allen Street went on and on. He was such a little boy, really; even he knew that. He was just beginning to figure out that he was going to grow up. One day he’d be like Mr. Shaw, only he’d be a fireman and a rock star and a king like the black king who died last spring. Being halfway out on the roof made him feel small, made him smell the distance not just between himself and the sidewalk a million miles away down there, but also between himself and being grown up.

  If he fell he’d be smashed to smithereens, into pieces as tiny as the ants he liked killing.

  “Mi-A-mi,” he called. His voice flew, high and melodic, over tar roofing and through yellowing leaves. “Mi-A-mi! Where ARE you?”

  A movement! He craned to see. He reached, he stretched, his butt shifted on the windowsill, his sneaker heels dug into the rain gutters.

  It was only Mrs. Jenkins. As Charlie Brown said all the time: Rats! She had heard him. She came poking her nosy head over her fence, where she’d been fussing around with her old stupid flowers. She belted out like Carol Burnett doing Tarzan, “GARTH SHAW! YOU GET RIGHT BACK IN THAT WINDOW BEFORE I COME UP THERE AND SMACK YOU!”

  Old busybody witch, thought Garth, and reached to obey.

  The car slowed down. It was a street of broad lawns and grand old houses, anchored by huge, overweight stone porches. This much farther north, the trees were flushed with red, scarlet, crimson, gold, orange, salmon, and pear yellow. The lawns were flawlessly raked, empty of fallen leaves, AstroTurf green. A black cat sprang along on legs stiff as Popsicle sticks.

  “Number two-forty-two. There it is,” said Miami. “Boy, are nuns rich or what?”

  “Corpus Christi Home for the Retired,” read the boy, the traitor, that Larry Deeprose. “This what you want?”

  “This what you want, Alice?” asked Miami, running her hands through her hair for the ten-millionth time in an hour. Alice, in the backseat, didn’t speak.

  “I said,” said Miami louder, turning around, “here we are, Alice.”

  “She’s expecting you. Should we wait outside?” said Larry. “Or go get an ice cream and come back in an hour? You want to be home by five, we’ll have to get back on the Northway by four, I think.” He turned to look at Alice again. “Hey, you’re worried. You want us to go in with you? She is expecting you, isn’t she?” In his treachery he was more beautiful than ever, eyes glinting like the mica in the glass cases of the State Education Building. “Say the word.”

  “No,” said Alice. “I’ll go in myself. Go away.”

  “Go away,” hissed Miami, pretending it was a joke, falling with fake laughter against Larry, who shifted apart from her a little. “That’s a good one.”

  “Go away,” said Alice, and got out of the car. She held her wallet in her mouth, smoothed down the front of her skirt, reclipped her barrettes.

  “Let’s go find the waterfall they named Glens Falls for,” said Miami. “C’mon, Larry.”

  “Alice,” said Larry, leaning his face on the triangular bracket made of the crook of his arm resting on the open window. “Alice, you sure you don’t want us with you? You look terrible. We’re doing this for you, you know.”

  She turned. Miami was almost in Larry’s lap, her face poking out the window like a violently colored balloon. “Oh, well,” said Alice, “wouldn’t it be loverly?”

  She went up the slate sidewalk alone, Larry’s “Well, Miami and I will be back at four then, sharp,” ringing rather precisely in her ears, each syllable making its own little click, like a billiard ball slotting into its pocket with neat efficiency. The black cat, which had taken up a pose of elegance, released itself after a bug, hurtling into the air with an ungainly, splayed look. It made Alice think, hard-heartedly, that cats had fur, too, so why weren’t there cat pelts, like rabbit skins, on sale?

  A girl hardly older than she opened the door. “Sister Vincent de Paul,” said Alice. “Please.”

  “It’s their nap time,” said the girl, who was obviously an after-school helper. “Come back later.”

  “I can’t. There isn’t any later,” said Alice.

  “But you have to,” said the girl, looking as if she cried a lot and had gotten used to it. “You interrupt their schedules, and they’re a crazed lot. Takes days to calm everybody down.”

  “But it’s me,” said Alice. “Alice. It’s Alice. Her Alice.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, convinced of something by the tone in Alice’s voice. “Well, wait here, and I’ll see if I can wake the dead.” She disappeared down a bright corridor with huge windows making up one wall, and on windowsills below, rangy geraniums, whose alarming blossoms were clots of fire-engine red all the way along. Alice waited. Miami and Larry Deeprose had canceled each other out in her mind, Miami falling for Larry’s tender good looks and Larry for Miami’s chattery brashness. So Alice was back where she started nine months ago. Today only high winds passed over the Victorian houses in Glens Falls, but she remembered the simultaneous snow and rain of last February. To live in the world, it seemed, was to be always caught in a grip. A stranglehold of opposing forces. Loving and needing. Staying and going. Doing right and committing wrong. What had she learned from bribing God to save Sister Vincent de Paul? Only that one could still feel betrayed by a miraculous new twin and a flattering boy-man. Alice was still paralyzed, with only herself to rely on.

  Ah, said Jesus, a surprise mystery guest in the front hall of the Corpus Christi Home for the Retired. Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am.

  With Miami Shaw and Larry Deeprose and me? thought Alice. You could hardly be more insulted than to find Yourself among the likes of us! Me sulking in the backseat! So cross and so disappointed! Larry blithe and friendly, as kind to Miami as he’d been to me, as if there is no difference between us! And Miami so
ugly, so coy, so flirtatious. A tramp! Hogging the front seat just because she’d followed the instructions I’d sent her in that letter and called Larry to set up this whole elaborate plan!

  Still, said Jesus, I didn’t lay down any conditions. You three came together to do something good, to see Sister Vincent de Paul before she died.

  Oh, said Alice to herself, not a prayer, almost a curse: Faith is so maddening!

  “You’re in luck,” said the girl. “I peeked in. She’s awake and seems to be whittling or something. Come along, but quietly.”

  Down the geranium hall. Up a couple of steps. Through a swinging door.

  A room, number eight, with a big, broad door wide enough to fit a rolling bed through. The girl put all her weight against it, and enough of a crack appeared for Alice to go through. “Go on in,” said the girl, “she’s still alone this week. Mrs. Lambrusco croaked in August.” She tittered nervously and fled.

  Alice squeezed through.

  Bereft of veil, an ancient figure was spread with white sheets instead of black sleeves and skirts. Her hair was cropped like an old man’s, gray and thinning, though a froth of curls hazed up the front of the scalp. She was pushing little numbered squares in a black plastic frame, trying to organize something.

  “Sister,” said Alice.

  She looked up. She threw the toy on the floor. Her mind wasn’t dead. “Alice Colossus,” she exploded, “what for the love of mike are you doing here?” She threw the sheet aside, and Alice was in her arms. Who rocked whom would not ever be clear to Alice, as long as she lived; but they rocked back and forth, Alice half kneeling on the hospital bed, getting a cramp in her left calf, crying and weeping and sobbing and sniffling and laughing and hiccuping and laughing some more.

  After a while Sister Vincent de Paul said, “Get me my housecoat from the hook, there, and we’ll go down to the sun room at least. It’s still nap time, so all the old ninnies will be snoring away. We can sneak in some talking time before the boob tube starts blaring away again.”

  “This one? The one with the roses?” said Alice. “It don’t look like anything I thought nuns could ever wear.”

  “Alice, what’s happened to your speech,” said the nun. “You’ve been practicing just to delight me.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Alice, delighted.

  “Well, I don’t believe you. Yes, that’s the one. Silly froufrou ruffles. Alice, whatever else nuns get wrong, we have the right idea when it comes to a life without ruffles. Now let me take your arm, sweetheart.”

  “Sister Vincent de Paul,” said a nurse in the hall, a stringy woman buttoned into an antiseptic uniform the color of Listerine, “it’s resting time.”

  “I’m making a prison break; my girl has brought me a file in a cupcake,” said the nun. “Get out the German shepherds. Alice, meet Nurse Khan. Nurse Genghis Khan.”

  “I’ll get you yet, Attila the Nun,” said the nurse, moving on with a tray of thermometers. “Beware, beware.”

  “Revenge is sweet, saith the Lord,” said Sister Vincent de Paul.

  She and Alice reached the sun room without further roadblocks and settled in a wicker settee upholstered in material printed with loony psychedelic flowers. “Now, Alice, tell me everything in the world. On your mark—get set—go.”

  “No,” said Alice. “You first. Are you dying?”

  “Eventually. I’ve let my language rip too often to be able to ascend bodily to heaven. I’ve got to take the conventional ground transport: grave first. I never minded second class. You meet more interesting people there.”

  “You don’t look like you’re dying.”

  “I’m only old, Alice; I’m not antique. Did someone tell you I was on my last legs?” She lifted her twisted foot an inch or two. “This has been my last leg since I was one day old.”

  “But you wrote me,” said Alice, flushing, with relief and embarrassment. “You said you wanted to see me again before you died.”

  “Well, and so I have,” said the nun, “and if God sees fit to give me an all-expenses-paid trip to Rio during the carnival season I’d also be grateful.” She peered at the girl. “Oh, Alice, ‘Before I die’—that’s an expression the old use! It’s sentimental claptrap! I didn’t mean I was dying!”

  Feebly, anticlimactically, Alice whispered, “Oh. Good. Okay.”

  “The young are so literal,” said the nun. “That’s not their fault, but it’s a pain in the neck sometimes. No sense of irony. Well, live and learn. I should’ve known. You’ve been thinking I was a done thing. My word, I am sorry. Stupid me. Now you, Alice. What’s what. Tell me all about this twin thing. Is it true?”

  “I’m not sure I want a twin anymore,” said Alice, and haltingly explained. Halfway through, Sister Vincent de Paul held up a hand. She turned and yelled down the hall, “Nurse Nero! Put down your fiddle and come be useful!”

  The nurse arrived, scowling. Sister Vincent de Paul said sweetly, “Would you please make a few phone calls for me? My little friend has made an error in judgment and come forty-five miles unchaperoned with a strange man in a car.”

  “He’s not a strange man!” cried Alice.

  “Trust me, that’s how they’ll see it, and well they should,” said the nun. “He’s an idiot to have believed you and Miami. He should’ve talked to the Shaws before agreeing to drive you anywhere. Give the young the vote and wheels, they forget what responsibility means. It’s this new permissiveness; I don’t think much of it. Nurse, call and tell the Shaws that the girls are here and listen to what they suggest.”

  The nurse said to Alice, “Could you please get her mother superior to come and pick her up? She has no business being retired. She thinks she’s a captain of industry and I’m her private staff. Call yourself,” she said to the nun. “You know where the phone is.”

  “I can’t stand that long and you refuse to put in an armchair,” said the nun. “And Alice can’t hear over the phone.”

  “I can now, sort of,” said Alice.

  “Well, start being grown-up then and call them yourself,” said Sister Vincent de Paul. “It won’t be fun, I guarantee it, but you’d better do it.”

  After a nightmare conversation with Mr. Shaw, full of surprise, rage, worry, and relief, Alice came back to the sun room. Sister Vincent de Paul was napping in the sun. Alice didn’t have enough time left to be courteous. She woke her up.

  The nun blinked twice. “I had a lovely nothing of a dream,” she mumbled, and then shook her head. “Now what were you doing?”

  “I called Mr. Shaw,” Alice reminded her.

  “Ah yes. The father. And?”

  “He’s driving up here,” said Alice. “He wasn’t very pleased with us.”

  “Good. Then he’s a good father for Miami,” said the nun. “Now, Alice, what about you?”

  “What about what about me?”

  “Well, those people who wanted to try you out. The Hoosies. The Harrigans. You said no.”

  “I said not yet,” said Alice, but didn’t explain her bargain with God.

  “And now they have our model girl Naomi.”

  “She’s turned into a big pain,” said Alice.

  “Excellent. Good,” said Sister Vincent de Paul. “It was about time. But Alice, that means they chose Naomi instead of you. Do you mind?”

  “Yes,” said Alice, surprising herself. “Yes. They should’ve waited. Why do I get all the bad luck? Look at Miami! There we were, twins, and someone came along and adopted her—not once, but twice! She had a family till she was six, and now the Shaws! She’s got good ears, and she don’t have a fat tongue. She’s got two sisters and the cutest little brother you ever saw. And her mom is pregnant. She’s got pierced ears and a room in a tower and a boyfriend named Billy. And she’s busy taking over Larry too. We started out the same, and look: She got the lucky life and I got zilch.”

  “Now Alice,” said the nun. “You don’t have zilch. Tell me what you have. Come on. Count your blessings.”

&nb
sp; “I got Miami as a sister,” said Alice sullenly. “I got no parents, no family. I got cheated.”

  “Hah!” said the nun. “You have a lovely voice, a brave character, a steady faith. You have the gift of being loyal to your old friends. You have food daily, and clothes, and a roof over your head. And the sisters to love you and take care of you. What more do you want, you greedy thing?”

  “I want a miracle,” said Alice. “I thought finding Miami and the Shaws was a miracle. But it isn’t.”

  “Honey child. Now you listen to me. The whole thing is a miracle, Alice. The whole shebang! The strange twists of fate, the heartache, the snap crackle pop of everyday life. Come on! The sun out there on the metal trash cans! The yeasty behavior of that Nazi nurse. You have to appreciate it, though, Alice. Don’t go pushing it off because you have some picture of somebody else’s life in your mind. You’ve got to grab it, whatever it is comes down the pike, you grab it. With both hands.”

  “But look at you,” said Alice. “How would you know? You’re a nun.”

  “That’s right, that’s what I grabbed,” said Sister Vincent de Paul, “and I never looked back. And I’m a nun like no one else, for which my superiors offer novenas of gratitude. Alice: The miracle is that you can grab. It’s not what.”

  “You mean it don’t matter whether anyone wants me or not.”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. Of course it matters. But while it’s mattering, your life seems to be to live at the home. So grab that. It’s a real life—an unusual one, but a real one. If some other choice comes up—and it will, believe me, sooner or later—and you choose it, choose it with gusto. But mind the details! Miracles are everyday stuff, Alice. No shortage of them.”

  “Miracles are magic,” said Alice. “God’s magic.”

  “Baloney,” said the nun. “I don’t believe in magic.”