Sandcastles

by Luanne Rice

  “I didn’t,” Bernie said.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Cece asked. “Dad must have put it there himself!”

  “Thank you, God,” Agnes whispered.

  “He’s already here!” Regis said, and Honor felt a shiver go down her spine, because she was thinking the same thing.

  Three

  The weather turned rainy that evening, and it poured straight through till dawn. Sister Bernadette had been up since vigils, and now, as she stood in the passage between the chapel and house, she gazed through leaded glass as gray light from the east washed over the Academy’s grass and trees, its stone walls and buildings. Two sisters walked by, and she exchanged silent nods with them.

  Life behind the enclosure had a rhythm all to itself. Her order was unusual, in that it had both contemplatives and teaching sisters. As a young novice, she had been a contemplative. She had lived in the cloister at the back of the house. Her days had been spent in meditation and prayer, not speaking, communing only with God. That had been a very intense time; Bernadette had had much guilt and sorrow to expiate.

  After two years behind the enclosure, Bernadette felt forgiven. She also felt the calling to teach.

  It shouldn’t have surprised her. She was a classic older sister; her younger brother John had been her first student. Back when they were young, growing up in New Britain, and then coming down here to Black Hall, she had taught him everything she learned. Not so much school things as life things. Their joke was, Bernie would learn how to drive, and she’d drive home and give John the wheel.

  She had taught him how to climb trees, ice-skate, ski down the tall hills at the WASP country club up the street from their house in New Britain. Their father had had a motto: “Buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood, even if it’s all you can afford.” Bernie and John had watched their father shop at fancy stores, spend his life smiling and selling insurance to the rich people at the country club that wouldn’t have him as a member. Bernie had taught her brother to listen to his own deep, inner voice, the one that told him not to become an insurance salesman.

  “There’s more,” Bernie told him as they rode the bus downtown one cold December day to go Christmas shopping.

  “More what?” he asked.

  “You’ll know,” she said, gazing out the window at the three-family houses on the west end of Center Street.

  “Dad says I’d be good,” John said. “He said I could sell someone their own car.”

  “That’s not a compliment,” Bernie said, turning to her brother. “And it’s not true, either. He’s talking about himself. You couldn’t sell someone blankets if they were freezing.”

  John gave her a sharp look. He was thirteen, and Bernie fifteen. She had the Sullivans’ “Red Irish” coloring, with fair skin, strawberry blonde hair, and gray-blue eyes. He was Dargan all the way—“Black Irish” with striking dark hair and clear blue eyes. She smiled at her handsome brother.

  Bernie wanted to touch his cheek, but he was just at that age where it would bother him. If only he knew what she saw. Bernie had always adored her brother; she felt that she could see straight into his heart. She wanted to tell him that he had a beautiful soul, but she held back, for all the best older-sisterly reasons.

  Instead, she pointed out the bus window. This end of Center Street was mostly tenements—small apartment blocks and three-family houses. In a city of Polish factory workers, the Irish had dominated this neighborhood at one time. Now it was other nationalities. The buildings needed painting. Some of the porches were sagging. Bernie knew that one of their neighbors owned several of these buildings. His family had been landlords to shifting waves of immigrants.

  “Dad would sell them insurance if he could,” Bernie said.

  “So would I,” John said.

  “He would sell them insurance,” Bernie said. “But he wouldn’t see them. Look at them, John.”

  “There’s no one outside to see,” he said, peering out the bus window. The streets were lined with high, dirty snowbanks, and everyone was inside.

  Then look inside, she had wanted to tell him, but she held back. He would have to discover the ability to see for himself. She gave him his first camera for Christmas that year: the Swinger, a Polaroid camera. It was the only one she could afford, a white plastic camera with a black wrist strap. John had torn open the package, looked up grinning as Bernie began singing the TV ad:

  “Meet the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger…”

  “Wow, Bern,” he said, beaming. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It’s the film that they get you on,” their father said. “The camera’s plastic, made cheap in China. How else would they sell it for under twenty bucks? But it’s the film that costs an arm and a leg. That’s where the company makes their money. That and the film developing.”

  “No developing, Dad,” John said, reading the instructions, starting to load the camera. “It does it itself, right here. Hey, Bernie, smile!”

  He’d snapped the picture. Bernie could remember it still; the family gathered around, waiting for the murky image to clarify. The harsh, acrid chemicals mingled with the smells of their white spruce tree, bacon and coffee from Christmas breakfast, their parents’ cigarette smoke, and the last-night stale whiskey smell coming off their father.

  And then, when the picture came to life, it was as if John did, too. He put on his boots and parka, went out into the snow with his new camera. He took shots of white powder sifted on glossy green rhododendron leaves, stones and tar bound up in clumps of snow thrown back by passing snowplows, branches broken under the snow’s heavy weight.

  Standing at the convent window now, Bernie knew that her brother had had the gift inside him the entire time: the ability to see and photograph nature. He had it for people, too. She remembered that first Polaroid picture he’d taken of her—her coppery red hair sleep-tousled, flannel nightgown buttoned to the throat, crooked grin and happy Christmas-morning eyes.

  Staring across the grounds, Bernie wondered where he was now. Before the trouble, his life had been about traveling, making do, going to ground, in order to get the best shots—taking Honor and the girls with him when school wasn’t in session, going alone when it was. He would follow the light in Manitoba as he completed some project having to do with snowy owls, the boreal forest, and the transit of Venus. He had chased the spirit to Ireland, looking for his version of the Holy Grail—and it had landed him in the deepest trouble there was.

  Nuns passed by, coming and going. Sister Bernadette nodded, and they nodded back. Simple greetings, a friendly spirit, were part of monastic life, dating back to the rule of Saint Benedict. If only it were so easy in the outside world. After vespers last night, just before the rain began to fall, Bernie had gone for her evening walk to the Blue Grotto. She had spotted Honor hurrying along, on the path between her cottage and the art building, and when she’d raised her hand in greeting, hoping for the chance to talk things over out of earshot of the children, Honor hadn’t seen—lost in her own thoughts.

  A buzzer sounded, indicating that someone was at the front door. Bernadette turned her head, listening for voices. Moments later, Sister Ursula poked her head into the passage and said, “Tom Kelly.”

  “Ah,” Bernadette said.

  Sister stood there. Their eyes met, but Bernadette didn’t react or look away. She held her place.

  “He needs to see you about something on the grounds.”

  “Thank you. Tell him I’ll be right there.”

  Sister Ursula stood there another instant, looking almost curious, but then nodded and walked away. She had been a nun nearly as long as Bernadette had. She had grown up here in Black Hall, part of a well-known Episcopal family. Back then, her name had been Charlotte Rose Whitney. She had gone to Miss Porter’s with Tom’s sister Anne. Her brother, Henry Tobias, had gone to Hotchkiss, dated girls here at the Academy. After their parents died, Charlotte converted to Catholicism and became a nun, named for t
he martyr Ursula, patron saint of girls’ education.

  How life changed, Bernadette thought. She sometimes wondered how much Sister Ursula knew, what her brother Henry had told her about those old days at the Academy. They never talked about it, but occasionally when Tom was around, she caught Sister Ursula giving her a certain look—more compassionate than judgmental, or so Bernadette told herself.

  The hallway was long. It was really a passageway, built after the fact, to connect the building where the nuns slept with the chapel and the rest of the school. Rain-washed light slanted through the diamond-paned leaded glass windows, spilling on the terracotta floor. Bernadette’s heels clicked as she walked.

  When she got to the administration building, she spied Tom’s green pickup outside. A load of squared-off stones glistened in the truck bed. She entered her office and saw him standing by the window with his back to her. She stared at the back of his head. It was soaking wet, his wavy dark hair dripping onto the shoulders of his faded green oilcloth.

  “Good morning, Tom,” she said.

  “Sister Bernadette Ignatius,” he said, half turning around, blue eyes glinting, a half smile tugging his sulky mouth. He bore a striking resemblance to John.

  “It’s raining out,” she said. “You don’t have to work today.”

  “Any wall builder who’d let the rain stop him had better find another job,” Tom said. He had turned his back on his family wealth and power so completely, she sometimes forgot he had it at all.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “It’s only a drizzle, really.”

  “And besides—I got your message.”

  “I left it in haste.”

  “I could tell. You were babbling.”

  “I don’t babble.”

  “Let’s just say you weren’t your usual rapier-sharp self on my voice mail.”

  “Well, I’ve had a lot on my mind. Things are tumbling down around here. Literally. There are chinks in the mortar.”

  He gave her a really wicked smile. It was basically three-cornered, wider on the right side of his face. His eyes narrowed and sparkled, and he said, “Good.”

  “Good? What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Get your umbrella, Sister Bernadette. Let’s take a walk, so you can show me where you want the repairs done.”

  She glanced at her desk. It was piled high with last spring’s report cards. She had planned to go through them all, get an idea of where the senior girls should be heading for college next year. Regis was at Boston College; if only the Jesuits could take hold of her before October, get her more excited about her own intellectual capacities and help her connect with Ignatian spirituality, maybe she would think twice and not get married.

  “C’mon now, Bernie,” he said. “Spend the morning away from your desk. Come take a walk with me now.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she said, smiling and starting to shake her head.

  She gazed across the room at her old friend. They were both forty-seven. His skin was ruddy and lined, from a life spent all day, every day outdoors—except for that year in Ireland. She and Tom had been the first to go—long before John and Honor’s disastrous journey. He had wanted to search out his and Bernie’s family roots—because even though the Kellys had employed the Sullivans here in the States, back in Ireland they had all been equal: fighters and farmers.

  They had flown over to Shannon, made their way to Dublin. Just north of the city, no more than four miles, the Kellys had played their part in Irish history—in A.D. 1014, at the Battle of Clontarf, Tadhg Mor O’Kelly had died defending Ireland in a bloody battle against the Danes. A great sea monster rose from the waves during the fight, protecting Tadhg’s fallen body and those of his O’Kelly kinsmen; the sea monster could be seen on the Kelly crest today, proudly featured on Francis X.’s signet ring—the one that Tom now wore, his only trapping of family power.

  Bernie thought back. At the time of the trip, she already knew she was going to enter the convent. She had very persuasive reasons for doing so. But she and Tom had known each other so long, and their fascination with Ireland was tender, deep, ineffable. She had needed to make the trip before making her vows.

  On the plane, holding her hand, he had promised her everything. “I’ll introduce you to the Kellys’ Dublin, and then we’ll go to Cork for the Sullivans and Dargans, trace your brother’s pirate blood….” John’sBlack Irish coloring was long assumed to have come from some ancestor’s romance with the Spanish or Algerian pirates that had buried gold on Dargan family land. “We’ll figure out why stone walls mean so much to us and our families.”

  “Who can resist that?” Bernie had joked. But deep down, she was serious. Entering the order, Sisters of Notre Dame des Victoires, would mean trips like this would cease. It was her last hurrah, and who better to take it with than Tom Kelly?

  The memories flooded in; she slipped her hands inside her sleeves for warmth now, and shivered. His eyes were sparkling, teasing her, just like when they were children, and just like during that life-changing trip to Ireland.

  “Take a walk with me,” he said, holding the door open.

  She nodded, taking a long black umbrella from the brass holder. He took it from her without a word, opened it and held it over her head as they left the building and walked across the campus.

  The rain tapped the silk overhead. Their arms touched as they walked. Bernadette’s shoulder came to the middle of Tom’s biceps; he was tall, and she remembered the year he had shot up over six feet. He had been just thirteen years old.

  As children, they had played together right here, on these grounds. His great-grandfather was Francis X. Kelly—the land’s original owner. And her great-grandfather, Cormac Sullivan, just off the boat from County Cork, had been hired to form a crew and build all the walls. Tom’s great-grandfather eventually donated these rolling hills and grand buildings to the Sisters of Notre Dame des Victoires, to open an academy for young girls. The family property, called Stella Maris, became Star of the Sea Academy.

  It had twenty acres of rolling hills and stone walls on the seaside; big stone buildings that were warm in the winter and ocean-breeze cool in the spring and fall; a convent vineyard that produced a fine chardonnay; a faculty of first-rate teachers; a fine library, containing all of Francis X.’s rare books on Ireland and the church and medieval France and Rome, including an illuminated manuscript collection that rivaled Yale’s; and a warren of secret tunnels that seniors revealed to juniors on the first day of fall term.

  And beautiful walls, all of which told of longing for Ireland and families left behind; of starvation and suffering; of Bernie and John’s family history; and all of which were useful in keeping the nuns, and later the students, inside.

  Once a year, on the Fourth of July, the nuns would let the Kellys hold a big celebration here. In gratitude to America, for all it had done for the Irish, the family would invite all the descendants of all the workers who had made Stella Maris such a showplace back for a day.

  Thus, Bernadette and John Sullivan, great-grandchildren of a poor stonemason, had become friends with Tom Kelly, great-grandson of the lord of the manor. John would dare Tom to climb the tallest trees, balance on the sharpest rock pinnacle. Honor, from a family down the coast at Hubbard’s Point, had become a scholarship student here.

  Tom had rebelled against his family’s life of privilege, and here he was building walls. Bernie was running the place, and John and Honor were separated—whether they called it that or not. How things had changed, she thought for the second time that morning. Yet, looking up at Tom Kelly, how very much they had stayed the same….

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “About the repairs you’re about to tell me we need and how much they’re going to cost,” she said.

  “That’s bull, and we both know it. Come on, tell me. What are you thinking?”

  “Just remembering the Fourth of July parties,” she said as they walked along.

 
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Where we were all supposed to kiss the soil of the country that made us so prosperous.”

  “It was generous of your family,” she said. “John and I used to love coming down to the sea for the day. All the kids did. We felt so special, coming to such a grand place.”

  He chuckled. “We were nothing if not ‘grand.’ My family out-WASPed the WASPs,” he said. “They wouldn’t let us into the country club, so we built a better one. Star of the Sea was prettier than Miss Porter’s, and my father never stopped saying so—even though Miss Porter’s is where he sent Anne. The famine drove us out of Ireland in 1847, and we never looked back.”

  Bernie heard the bitterness in his voice. “You did,” she said. “You and John looked at what was hidden in the stone wall, and then you both looked back.”

  “Yeah, Bernie. We did, didn’t we?”

  She remembered how excited they had all been by the discovery of the small stone box—Honor had called it a time capsule. It had set everything into motion, sent the four of them to Ireland in two different waves.

  “I saw Charlotte Rose Whitney giving me a look today,” he said.

  “Sister Ursula,” Bernie corrected.

  “She used to hang around with Annie, come to our house for weekends. I’d go to Farmington, to pick them up on Friday nights. Never thought she’d turn out to be a nun….”

  Bernie’s stomach tightened. She knew what was coming next.

  “Never thought you would, either.”

  “Enough of that, okay?” Bernie said as they walked across the wide green lawn, under a canopy of tall maples lining the path. The rain dripped down, and her black shoes felt soggy.

  “Anne probably told Charlotte Rose a few things about us.”

  “Nothing important,” Bernie said, her heart beating fast. “Because she didn’t know. Did she?” She watched as Tom shook his head slowly. “Then why do you say such things?”

  “Because I think about them,” he said, walking in furious silence for a minute. Then, “Do you believe in destiny, Sister Bernadette Ignatius? Fate?”