The Missing Madonna

by Carol Anne O'Marie

  Mary Helen had laughed. Although she had heard Lucy say that at least two dozen times, she still enjoyed it. “What’s up with you two eternal coeds?” she had asked.

  Lucy had demurred in favor of her friend.

  “Well, we’ve been talking among ourselves . . .” Erma’s brown eyes had sparkled with the excitement of finally being able to tell a secret. “And the four of us—Noelle, Caroline, Lucy, and me”—she had counted the names off on her chubby fingers—“are going to New York for the OWL convention. We would all be delighted if you and Sister Eileen would come along with us. Actually,” she had said with a quick smile, “it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  Surprised by the invitation, Mary Helen had hesitated.

  “Now, Sister, if it’s the expense, don’t you worry for a moment.” She cocked her curly head toward Lucy. “We talked about that, too, and the trip will be our treat.”

  Mary Helen had gulped. She had a hunch that Erma had done most of the talking, and her good friend Lucy would do most of the treating. Not that Lucy would mind. And not that Erma wouldn’t do what she could—perhaps even more than she could.

  In Mary Helen’s opinion, Erma Duran was sometimes generous to a fault. For example, since they had become reacquainted she had discovered that after graduation Erma McSweeney had forgone her own plans in order to take care of her aging parents. She was more than thirty by the time she felt free to marry Tommy Duran.

  According to Eileen, who had been at Mount St. Francis for so many years that she was considered the walking Who’s Who, Tommy had been a handsome devil. According to some others, he had been one of those dashing fellows who meant well but never seemed able to do as well as he meant. It was believed by all that, to his dying day, Erma had supported him as well as their three children. In fact, she was still working.

  At first Mary Helen had felt a little sad for her old friend. Yet as far as she could tell, despite or maybe because of what life had dealt her, Erma had aged into one of those salt-of-the-earth women.

  “To look at her, you’d think she had the world by the proverbial tail,” Mary Helen had remarked to Eileen after one OWL meeting.

  “Erma’s made of sturdy stock.” Eileen had nodded her head knowingly. “She’s full of faith, a real survivor.

  “Besides’—she winked at Mary Helen—“she has a touch of the lace-curtain Irish in her, so she would never let on otherwise.”

  * * *

  Eileen nudged her. Mary Helen opened her eyes with a start. She must have been dozing.

  “We are about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel.” Mrs. Taylor-Smith sounded like a high-class tour guide. “But before we do, ladies, over there.” She tilted her head.

  “Look, Mary Helen.” Eileen pointed across the darkness to the magnificent skyline. Mary Helen drew in her breath.

  On the horizon New York looked like a clear, well-taken photograph. Thousands of lights blinked. A phrase from a Hopkins sonnet popped into her mind—“O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air.” She wanted to pinch herself. It didn’t seem possible that she and Eileen were actually here. It had been so unexpected.

  After meeting Erma at the college—yes, that was exactly what she had been thinking about when she dozed off—after Erma’s invitation, they’d barely had time, what with Holy Week services and Easter Sunday, to make the necessary arrangements at the college, pack a small bag each, and purchase a few traveler’s checks.

  “Disneyland for adults.” That’s what Sister Cecilia, the college president, had called New York when the two Sisters told her they’d be there for a few days.

  Cecilia had looked pleased. Too pleased, if you asked Mary Helen.

  “I’m so glad you two have the opportunity,” Cecilia had said. “It’s a perfect time for you to go before graduation and the start of summer school.”

  “We’ll be gone only three days,” Eileen reminded her.

  “Oh, don’t hurry back,” Cecilia added quickly. “Stay as long as you like. We’ll manage without you.”

  “That was nice of Cecilia, don’t you think?” Eileen had remarked when they left the president’s office. “She seemed genuinely thrilled we could go.”

  Not only thrilled, downright eager, Mary Helen thought. If I didn’t know better, I might even think she was happy to be rid of us.

  Mrs. Taylor-Smith pulled to an abrupt stop at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street. A doorman dressed like a deserter from the French Foreign Legion held the car door open. In a matter of seconds, he had summoned the porter for their luggage, opened the front door of the Sheraton Centre, and escorted them into the plush forest-green and red lobby of the hotel.

  While Eileen spoke to the desk clerk, Mary Helen gazed sleepily around. On one wall, by the curved stairway leading to a small cocktail lounge, she spotted a waterfall, the basin of which was full of coins. CONTRIBUTIONS FORST. MALACHY’S stated a printed sign nearby. Mary Helen was wondering how she could persuade the Fairmont or the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco to install a waterfall to benefit the scholarship fund of Mount St. Francis, when Eileen pulled her sleeve.

  Still drowsy, she followed her friend into the elevator, then out and down the narrow fourth-floor hall to their double room.

  “I was a bit surprised when you agreed so quickly to pronounce it,” Eileen called from the small closet where she was hanging up her clothes.

  Mary Helen sat on the edge of the bed, removing her shoes. She was too tired to unpack.

  “I agreed to . . .? What are you saying, Eileen?” She yawned and unbuttoned her blouse.

  “Agreed to pronounce it. I thought you didn’t like to speak in public.” Eileen stood with her hands on her chubby hips.

  “What in the name of all that is good and holy are you talking about?” Mary Helen adjusted her glasses and blinked at her friend. “When did I agree to . . .?” Suddenly she remembered: In the airport, when she had let her mind wander. She cleared her throat. “What did I agree to?” she asked, feeling a little foolish, not to mention apprehensive.

  Eileen sat on the adjoining bed. “Just as I suspected. You haven’t the foggiest clue what they were asking you.”

  “Good night, nurse! Eileen! Get on with it. What did I agree to do?”

  “To pronounce the benediction at tomorrow’s opening breakfast meeting, Mary Helen. From what I gathered, it is rather like a solemn high grace before meals.”

  Groaning, Mary Helen climbed into bed. From the street below she heard taxis honking and car tires squealing. Streaks of light angled in between the slits where the heavy draperies failed to meet the window-frame. They moved along the ceiling of the darkened room, making grotesque shadows slide down the wall.

  “Can’t you sleep?” Eileen whispered from the next bed.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m thinking about what I’m going to say at the breakfast tomorrow, of course.”

  “Have you any ideas?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ll think of something, old dear. You always do.” Eileen grunted consolingly and turned over.

  Mary Helen stared at the shadow-etched ceiling. She didn’t have the heart to tell Eileen that, at the moment, the only grace she could think of was one she had learned from a mischievous third-grader.

  “Rub-a-dub-dub. Thanks for the grub. Yeah, God” was the way it went. Somehow, she didn’t think that it would do.

  Wednesday, May 2

  Feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop

  The luncheon speaker, a stately-looking woman, paused to entertain questions. How in the name of all that’s good and holy do you entertain a question, Mary Helen wondered, glancing down at the convention program. Answer, maybe; ignore, possibly. But entertain?

  Running her finger down the program schedule, she checked her watch. The session should be over in about ten minutes, unless some long-winded participant commandeered one of the four floor microphones. From the restless stirrings of the
five hundred conventioneers seated at round tables, it didn’t seem likely. The OWLs had sat long enough. She could feel a stretch in the air.

  Right after lunch there was to be a minisession for new members. The rest of them were free to sightsee, shop, or nap. All around her Mary Helen could hear the pop of lipstick tubes and the click of powder compacts. Obviously, most of the OWLs were not going to rest.

  Before they had left their bedroom this morning, Eileen and she had agreed to meet after lunch in front of the waterfall in the hotel lobby. It was a good thing, too, because they hadn’t seen each other since.

  As soon as the group was dismissed, Mary Helen followed the arrows marked LOBBY, planted herself firmly in front of the waterfall, and searched the milling crowd for her friend. Quickly, she spotted Eileen elbowing her way across the crowded lobby, with Lucy Lyons and Erma Duran trailing in her wake.

  Erma hung behind the other two, and even from this distance, Mary Helen thought the woman looked distressed. What’s wrong, she wondered, watching Erma stop at the main desk. She couldn’t remember ever having seen her upset before. Erma said something to the man in a morning coat behind the desk.

  The gentleman smiled brightly, checked the slots behind him, then shook his head. The thick mane of gray hair bounced from side to side, making him look, Mary Helen thought, for all the world like a friendly lion. He picked up the phone receiver, spoke briefly, then shook his head again.

  Erma clutched her cloth purse to her chest. For a moment her shoulders drooped, but only for a moment. Running her hand over her gray-streaked hair, she pushed a stray curl behind her ear. She straightened up, smiled at the gentleman, then bent forward to pat his hand. She wouldn’t want him to feel bad. As he gaped, she turned and bustled across the crowded foyer.

  “Congratulations on the remarkably erudite blessing you gave this morning,” Eileen said before Mary Helen could wonder what that was all about.

  Eileen’s gray eyes twinkled. “You do amaze me!” she said. “We’ve been friends for more than fifty years and I’ve never heard you say the Prayer of St. Cyril of Jerusalem used in the Coptic Orthodox Church.” She moved closer. A group of women going to the Cafe Fonda squeezed around her. “To tell the God’s honest truth, I hadn’t the ghost of an idea you even knew any Coptic Orthodox prayers. Where did you manage to dig up such a thing?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Mary Helen said.

  “That was a lovely grace, Sister.” A stout woman touched Mary Helen on the shoulder. “Very inspirational.”

  Mary Helen smiled and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. The woman paused to exchange pleasantries with Erma and Lucy.

  “Come clean, Mary Helen.” Eileen was not to be put off.

  “It was printed on the back of the plastic bookmark I stuck in my murder mystery,” she whispered. Mary Helen was happy that Erma and Lucy were busy chatting.

  “And there are those among us who dare to doubt the luck of the Irish!” Eileen rolled her eyes heavenward. Mary Helen not only doubted that the Irish had an edge on luck, she had her doubts about the rest of Eileen’s superstitions as well. She was just about to say so when Lucy turned back to the group.

  “Did I hear Irish?” she said. “Which brings to mind St. Patrick’s and Fifth Avenue. What kind of devilment can we get into this afternoon?” Her eyes twinkled behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” Mary Helen asked.

  “I can’t hear myself think in here, which probably is no great loss.” Lucy leaned in toward the group. “But I can’t hear you either. Can we talk outside?”

  “Where are the other two?” Eileen shouted over the crowd.

  “Noelle is introducing the speaker in one of the minisessions,” Erma explained, “and Caroline has a childhood friend living in an apartment on East Fifty-sixth Street whom she promised to visit.”

  Outside the hotel, New York City was having a sparkling spring day. The sky above the tall buildings was a clear, picture-postcard blue and the air had a snap to it.

  The noontime crowd bustled along in all directions. Taxis honked at trucks, cars, and pedestrians alike. A tight group of young men with yarmulkes and earlocks dashed across Seventh Avenue against the light Businesswomen in smartly tailored wool suits and tennis shoes rushed past one another on the crowded sidewalks.

  Although Mary Helen had visited New York City several times in her seventy-plus years, she never seemed to get over the sense of excitement she felt whenever she was there. There was a certain verve in the air that could not be denied.

  “Shall we head for St. Patrick’s Cathedral first?” Erma’s brown eyes snapped with eagerness. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  They all nodded. Who would have the heart to say no, Mary Helen wondered. Lucy led the way and the others followed her, zigzagging single file across West Fifty-third Street to Fifth Avenue. Sister Mary Helen brought up the rear.

  “We must look like a string of gray-haired ducklings,” she shouted to Eileen, who was just ahead of her. She was not sure her friend had heard her. She wished Eileen would wait. She wanted to tell her about Erma looking worried and stopping by the front desk of the hotel. She also wanted to ask Eileen if she had any idea why, but they had reached St. Patrick’s before she caught up.

  The four women stood for several minutes, looking up at its Gothic splendor. Then they threaded their way through groups of people seated on the entrance steps, having lunch, chatting, or just leaning back to enjoy the sunshine.

  Skirting the bronze doors, they entered the vestibule. Once inside the cathedral, Mary Helen paused while her eyes adjusted to the cool dimness of the immense structure. Behind her on the west wall, the rose window, framed by the thousands of shining pipes of the great organ, shed muted light on the nave.

  The group moved reverently down the side aisle past the altars of St. Anthony, St. Anne, and St. Monica. They stopped for a moment at the shrine of Elizabeth. Ann Seton, the first American-born saint.

  Mouth open, Erma pointed to the cardinals’ hats hanging from the ceiling hundreds of feet above them. Craning their necks, the women stared up at the four round, flat red dots, with their clusters of dangling tassels.

  “These cardinals!” Lucy whispered after a few moments. “They really have their heads in the clouds.”

  Mary Helen had wondered how long it would take her to say it.

  “But they do keep on top of things,” Eileen whispered back. Egad! Lucy Lyons was rubbing off!

  The group decided to split up. Mary Helen and Eileen would attend the one o’clock Mass in Our Lady’s Chapel, drop by the elegant old Scribner bookstore, and then simply windowshop. Lucy and Erma intended to shop in earnest: Saks, Gucci, Tiffany, F.A.O. Schwarz. The four agreed to rendezvous at quarter past three at the Lexington Avenue entrance of Bloomingdale’s.

  * * *

  Mary Helen didn’t realize how sore her feet were until three-ten, when Eileen and she were seated on two hard chairs next to the fine-jewelry department in Bloomingdale’s. From where they sat they had a perfect view of the store’s glass doors and the three or four steps leading to the old revolving door that opened onto Lexington Avenue. No one could get in or out without their noticing.

  She and Eileen had bought a Big Apple T-shirt to take back to Sister Anne. The shirts were so cute. But in Mary Helen’s opinion, Anne was the only nun at Mount St. Francis College young enough and thin enough to wear one. They had picked out a large box of Fanny Farmer chocolates to bring home to the others. Which calories they didn’t need, they both had agreed.

  Right on time, Lucy and Erma arrived, smiling and laden with brightly colored shopping bags. They had just greeted one another when a piercing cry echoed from the entryway. The milling shoppers stopped, momentarily stunned. Mary Helen could feel the hair rise along the back of her neck.

  She strained to see. A thin redheaded woman grabbed at her throat, paled, then burst into tears. In front of her a sinewy teen
ager in jeans and a maroon velour shirt turned and bolted down the steps. Hitting hard against the revolving door, he whirled out onto the crowded street. He was fast, but not so fast that Mary Helen didn’t see a piece of thin gold chain dangling from his clenched fist.

  The weeping woman, pale and shaken, slumped onto the steps. Before Mary Helen fully realized what had happened, a broad-shouldered black man, who looked like a college fullback, burst from the jewelry department. He spoke into a walkie-talkie. Seconds later, three men came running from different parts of the department store, and streaked past them. Taking the steps in one leap, they shot out onto Lexington.

  “Glory be to God!” Eileen was the first to get her voice back. “Glory be to God!” she repeated, her brogue unusually thick. “We’ve seen a mugging!”

  Stunned, Mary Helen nodded her head. Beside her, Erma’s pudgy hand shielded the gold medallion hanging around her own neck. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to this,” she whispered. Clearing her throat, she stared sympathetically at the shaking woman now being comforted by the fullback. “I tell you, girls, I would be absolutely inconsolable.”

  Shoving her bifocals up the bridge of her nose, Mary Helen studied the filigree-edged medal hanging around Erma’s neck. It was Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The Byzantine image of Mother and Child dangled from a gold chain.

  “My husband, Tommy, gave it to me a year or so before he died,” Erma said quietly, her brown eyes suddenly filling. Embarrassed, she looked away.

  Pretending not to notice her tears, Mary Helen took the medal in the palm of her hand. “It’s lovely, Erma,” she said. And it was. Even though the medal was small, in the raised image the Mother looked sad; the Child, terrified. It was no wonder, Mary Helen thought, that this was the most famous of what were called the Passion Madonnas.

  She turned the medal over, noting with surprise the 24K stamped on the back.

  “It’s valuable.” Erma, now fully recovered, nodded. It was as if she could read the old nun’s mind. “But its real value to me is sentimental. Tommy knew I had special devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”