by Anbara Salam
Greta began spontaneously to clap, and when none of us joined in, she buried her face in Sally’s shoulder, a blush spreading over her collarbone. We tittered at her affectionately.
“I will shortly read your class assignments. But first, some administrative matters. Should you have had any difficulty with your checks, I will be in the library between one and two this afternoon. If you have not signed your slips, please return those to me before the end of the day.”
“Now.” She took a breath. “A reminder of our rules. The Innocent Sisters of Pentila are our hosts, and we are grateful for their hospitality. Please remember to conduct yourselves with decorum at all times. In particular, you are expressly prohibited from trying to engage the sisters in conversation. The liaison for this year is—” She looked around and Signora Moretti filled in.
“Sister Teresa.”
Mrs. Fortescue nodded. “You may talk with Sister Teresa only when necessary, ladies. Any housekeeping matters should be referred to Donna Maria.”
We nodded solemnly.
“Breakfast is at seven a.m., and lunch is served at noon. Vespers is at four p.m. sharp. Supper is at six. You have permission to leave the premises to visit La Pentola, but make sure to be back by the ten p.m. curfew or you will incur a demerit. Three and you will be expelled from the academy.
“I remind you of the honor code you have all signed. We expect exemplary behavior from our scholars.” She raised an icy eyebrow. “No overnight visitors. The telephone is available for one hour a day. No smoking in the refectory. And absolutely no smoking in the chapel.” Katherine giggled at the back, and Mrs. Fortescue searched out her face in the crowd. “You laugh, my dear, but it has happened. Attendance at classes is mandatory unless you are taken ill. We insist upon good conduct—no cursing, modest dress, and no bikini suits in the courtyard.”
Apparently recent alumni of the academy had been rather wayward. I looked at Ruth and saw the line of her mouth setting in determination to shame the bikini-wearing, cursing, chapel-smoking girls of years past.
“I wish you luck.” Mrs. Fortescue smiled, and her face powder broke into fissures around her mouth. “If you do not need to attend my administration hours, I look forward to awarding you your certificates in May at graduation.”
She unfolded a piece of paper from her handbag and began to read our names. We were divided apparently at random, and we split off and filed in the direction of the classrooms. I scurried at once, not wanting Isabella to see me linger for her. I was assigned to the room Masaccio, which I knew to be on the left-hand side of the building.
The classroom was small and musty with the scent of stale pencil shavings. It was equipped with eight desks with inbuilt inkwells, and a set of glass doors at the far end opened onto the courtyard. A shelf along the left wall held the usual classroom detritus—glass jars filled with pencils, a pile of hardback Bibles, a busted plastic globe dangling from its hinge. On the wall was a framed painting of St. Teresa addressing a crowded marketplace following a “quickening.” She was raised on a dais overlooking a rabble of sailors and bearded Turks, so I supposed it to be somewhere in Sicily. A ray of light from a parted cloud outlined her garb with an aura, and a seam of gold ran from her lips. Over the course of the nine months, I came to know that painting so well I could have drawn it myself with my eyes closed.
Greta and Sally were already sitting at desks in the front row. Greta looked around expectantly as I entered. “Bridget, phew! I’m so glad!”
“Come, grab this one.” Sally slapped her palm on the desk next to her.
I hesitated, wanting to leave room for Isabella. “I’m too nervous to sit up front,” I said, taking a bench in the middle.
Greta gestured to a chalkboard propped against the window. “Do you think when—”
The door opened and Signora Moretti entered. “Buongiorno.”
She began to speak rapidly in Italian. Greta turned around and glanced at me in panic. I feared for a moment I’d gone into the wrong room.
Signora Moretti sighed theatrically and put her finger to her lips. “We will not speak English here. Only Italian. For today only, I make an exception. And then—” She mimed a throat being cut. “Let us begin.” She pointed to herself. “Mi chiamo Elena Moretti, e—”
At that moment, the door opened and Isabella pinched my arm before sliding behind the desk next to Sally. I smelled a bitter gust of cigarette smoke on her clothes as she passed.
I stared at the back of her head, stunned. Why would she sit there and not next to me? My stomach swiveled. Did she do it deliberately? Was I being punished? Or worse—perhaps she had taken the seat without even thinking of me at all. I surveyed Sally. Was there something especially appealing about her I had underestimated? She was terribly blond. I chewed the end of my pen. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair if it was because she was a blonde. Blondness was something I had no hope of achieving.
“Mi chiamo . . . ,” Elena prompted again, looking pointedly at Isabella.
Isabella crossed her legs. “Mi chiamo Bella,” she said.
Elena cheered.
Sally and Greta turned to look at Isabella and grinned.
I felt a queasy premonition. Isabella had such a certain kind of boldness, it was hard to tell how the other girls would take to her. How much she would be hated, or loved.
8.
August
And so our year at the academy began. In the mornings Isabella and I sat side by side in the refectory, drinking milky coffees from heavy bowls, dipping soft rolls into the froth. Then Italian lessons, according to our three levels. Only Nancy and Ruth were in the top set. They spent their mornings reading the Inferno under the tutelage of Signor Patrizi, a retired lecturer from the University of Milan. He traveled to the academy every day on a battered scooter, and we could predict his arrival by the desperate coughing of its exhaust as it battled up the hill. Katherine, Sylvia, Bunny, Barbie, Joan, and the two Marys were composing letters of complaint with Signor Moretti, Elena’s husband. Greta, myself, Patricia, Sally, Joy, Betty, and Isabella, meanwhile, were still struggling to conjugate basic verbs and spent our mornings loudly declaring the meal to be delicious, or the operator to be unavailable.
Italian lessons were followed by a light midmorning lunch of miniature ham sandwiches left for us in the refectory. We served ourselves, leaving our plates on a tray for an unseen sister to clean up later. Then we had a two-hour break. Usually, Isabella and I retreated to our rooms for clammy, restless siestas. Or else we stripped down to our slips and sprawled out on the twin beds in my room, smoking and reading novels. Some of the girls climbed down to the lake and snuck in a quick dip, turning up to our afternoon lectures with damp hair and sunburned noses.
The afternoon lectures were delivered by Signor Patrizi and took place in the lecture room off the lobby. Although thankfully they were conducted in English, he spoke with a pronounced accent that made his words so rounded you could slip off the end of them. Combined with the dim light and the whir of the projector, the lectures were deliciously soporific. The far window faced out onto the lake and I let his words roll over me, stupefied into a half doze on Isabella’s shoulder as sparrows wheeled over the water.
Lectures finished just before four p.m., at which point we joined Vespers in the chapel. We were all supposed to attend, even Nancy, who was Episcopalian. Then we had an hour free to rest or to wash and change before supper. Supper was two courses and fruit, with the obligatory pitchers of hard cider. The meals were simple and glittering with salt. After supper, we were free to do whatever we wanted until curfew, at ten p.m.—which meant hanging around our bedrooms or the common room, which was tucked into the southeast corner of the upstairs corridor.
Isabella wanted to be thorough about exploring the academy, so I helped her chart our new home. We startled a brood of gray-feathered chickens in a coop at the end of the orchard. We di
scovered that the back left alcove of the chapel was a gruesome ossuary cabinet with twelve shelves of bones arranged in order of size, as slender and brittle as ivory combs. My favorite place by far was the kitchen. The room was cavernous and cool, stocked with a paint box of treasures: lemons in straw, scarlet-speckled borlotti beans. The first time Isabella and I dared to peek past the heavy kitchen doors, there was a diminutive, elderly nun standing on a stool to chop onions at the counter. The nun looked up and gestured for us to enter. Her cheeks were slack, and one of her eyes was white with a cataract. I followed in after Isabella, desperate to open the doors to the larder and investigate the alchemical substances within. The nun motioned for Isabella to approach, then clamped her hand over Isabella’s and forced the handle of her knife into Isabella’s palm.
“No fair,” she gasped, as the nun gestured for her to take over slicing.
As the nun climbed down from the stool, I stared around. Hanging from nails on the right-hand wall were puckered red chili peppers and bulbs of hirsute garlic. At the back on the left was a dark cubby containing waxed rounds of provolone, gleaming behind a net screen. At home, Mama bought cheese that came in slices, and somehow I’d thought the blocks would be square. The sister pointed at a deep iron saucepan on top of a silverware cabinet. I used the stool to climb up and retrieve it for her. It was sticky up there, the top of the cabinet lined with yellowing newspaper academy girls must have left behind, since the section underneath the pan boldly advertised the figure-trimming benefits of Caspar’s girdles. As a reward for our labors, the nun pressed upon us a handful of striped green tomatoes. They smelled gloriously of dirt and geraniums and tasted so sweet my eyes watered. Isabella was eyeing mine greedily, so I gave the rest of my handful to her.
Although we were permitted to go to La Pentola, our options for entertainment were slim. It was a tiny village, with a post office that opened only on Thursdays, attached to a kiosk selling dusty bottles of Cinzano and Coke. There was a drab harbor with several chipped rowboats, a whitewashed church, a defunct drinking fountain, and two taverns. The academy girls favored the enoteca, run by Signora Bassi, a middle-aged woman with curly black hair. It was supposedly a wine bar, although I rarely saw people making a fuss over the choice of vintage. Instead, Isabella and I went there to drink her cheapest, wateriest red wine. Katherine and Sylvia were regulars, and we sat all together outside at a table near the harbor, listening to the glug of water against the dock, swatting away mosquitoes. The locals stuck to the other taverna after term had begun. I suppose after many years they had tired of schoolgirls using them as test subjects for their verb endings.
By the time we walked back up to the academy, the first stars had come out, dimpling silver studs in the lake. The stone path pulsed heat underfoot, and owls fluttered in the chestnut trees along the hill. Isabella and I strolled arm in arm through the shadows, taking deep breaths of warm air dusky with herbs. Sometimes as we walked, Isabella whistled, or else we dreamed up histories for the silent sisters. They had been tragically widowed, disgraced movie stars. They were lost princesses, heirs to castles in Monaco. They had once been academy girls, just like us.
9.
September
The second Saturday of term, Greta and I rose early and passed the time before breakfast playing cards in the common room. When one of the sisters came in to shake the rugs out of the window, we put down our hands and assumed a polite silence. It seemed rude to carry on chatting while one of the sisters was there, as if we were deliberately excluding her. Greta and I had taken armchairs on either side of the fireplace, and over her shoulder I watched the lake turning a champagne color as the morning grew hotter and hazier. When Isabella woke up maybe I could convince her to go down to the water—I had a new bikini and I was anxious for its Italian debut. After graduation, Granny had insisted on fitting me out with a new wardrobe for “touring,” as she called it. My academy closet was decked out in gloriously bland linen dresses and cotton T-shirts. The bikini itself had been Granny’s suggestion, “for sailing parties.” I didn’t know what kind of cruises she expected me to attend in a convent, but I was grateful anyway.
Greta dealt me a hand. “I refuse to be ‘old maid’ again,” she said seriously. I snapped out of my daydream and stared at her for a second, misunderstanding.
Nancy knocked on the door. “Good morning,” she said. “So. Donna Maria was just saying there are trails all around where we can go hiking.” She put one hand on the doorknob. “Would you two like to come with me?”
“Um . . . now?” Greta looked at me, startled.
“Just us two?” I said.
Nancy shrugged. “You want to ask Bella?”
“Yes,” I said, beaming. It was glorious to be so carelessly acknowledged as a pair, inseparable.
Greta was gnawing on the corner of a playing card. “Is it a long hike?”
“Not so long. Two hours, maybe three. I’ll meet you downstairs after lunch,” Nancy said.
Greta sat up in the armchair. “But won’t it be terribly hot?”
Nancy wrinkled her nose. “It won’t be so bad. Doesn’t it get hot in Delaware?”
Greta pursed her lips into a little bow, as if she were trying not to cry. “Yes, but then we go sailing.”
“Let’s do it at four,” I said, to break Nancy’s gaze from Greta. “It’ll be cooler then.”
“OK,” Nancy said. “Sounds swell.”
After lunch, Greta came to my room and lit a cigarette by the window. She’d changed into linen pants and a white cotton T-shirt and tied her hair back in a ponytail with a white ribbon. She looked as dainty as a novelty candy.
“Do you do lots of hiking in Connecticut?” she said.
I shook my head. “Isabella doesn’t enjoy hiking.”
Greta tapped me playfully on my arm. “I mean your family, silly.”
“Oh.” I pressed my fingernails into my palms and tried to suppress a blush. “Not really. We only go hiking to find a good picnic spot.” I conjured a false memory, of Mama, Dad, and Rhona, sitting on a tartan picnic blanket peeling oranges and tossing pith into the grass.
Greta laughed. “Your mom sounds way too glamorous to be fighting off midges. Unless—are you sporty types?” She ran her finger over the filter of her cigarette. “As soon as my brothers stop talking about regattas, they start talking about skiing.” She smiled, but I could see the thought of home had wounded her. She cleared her throat. “Where does your family go skiing?”
“We don’t. Not exactly.” I swallowed. I watched the sunlight striking the faint, downy hair on her brow. My stomach filled with static as I deliberated how to begin. Mama was afraid to learn because she didn’t even see snow until she was married? Rhona was prone to breaking bones because of poor health? My eyes burned. It had been nice, for a while, to be anonymous, unremarkable.
“Oh, Bridge,” she said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you homesick.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t deserve her sympathy. I could feel it swelling before us: sly questions, subtle inferences, pointed looks during dinner-table discussions about desegregation.
“Do you want to call them now?” She looked at her wristwatch. “It’s breakfast time on the East Coast. I’ll wait with you if you like. You’ll feel much better once you hear your mom’s voice, and if you’re feeling tearful, Donna Maria will let—”
“My mom won’t be there,” I said.
Greta’s head twitched. “Is she”—she blinked at me doubtfully—“at work?”
A thick, sticky trepidation coated my insides. Now was the moment to explain Rhona’s appointments. And how she needed special attention but it was OK because of Mama’s nursing career. And, no, Mama wasn’t a nurse in Connecticut but she had been in England, but no, she wasn’t English, and their two weddings and Granny’s tolerance and no, I know I don’t look it and yes, of course we go to Mass, and my
slight but undeniable irregularity. I grasped for a neutral place, a safe space, where my family could dwell until I could bear to retrieve them.
“She’s at the summerhouse,” I heard myself saying.
“Oh.” Greta’s face relaxed.
I saw Mama standing by the window of a whitewashed cottage. Sandy footprints on a nautical-striped rug. A bundle of sunshine yellow sweet corn abandoned on a marble countertop.
“They don’t have a phone there or—”
I shook my head.
Greta brushed the curls out of my face. “Oh, Bridge, let’s not talk about home anymore,” she said, reaching to hug me. “It’ll only make us blue, and we’re supposed to be here for an adventure.”
* * *
We waited for Nancy by the side door of the academy. The tread in the center of the step was worn down to a stub, and I realized the front door with the bell must only be used for visitors. Isabella was flicking her lighter on and off, experimentally holding it to a dry leaf and blowing away the charred embers. Nancy appeared from round the front of the building, wearing a gray men’s shirt, jeans, and sturdy-looking boots.
Isabella nudged me. “Does she expect us to climb the mountains into Switzerland? It’s like Pippi Longstocking goes camping.”
I hushed her but rubbed my tennis shoes together self-consciously. Would there be much sport at the academy? Part of the social purpose of art history was its decidedly indoors quality, ruling out moments of jollity that inspired casual games of tennis.
“Hello,” Nancy said. “Let’s go, shall we? Sister Teresa will show us the way.”
We all nodded. Nancy walked down the stone steps with brisk purpose. We crossed the hill and turned left, away from the lake and toward the convent. We followed a well-worn path past the orchard and around the front of the chapel, where white pigeons were roosting in the mesh of the bell tower. Nancy began to climb the slope and we trailed behind, dodging stinging nettles. The grass was coarse and golden and smelled rich as buttered popcorn. Crickets sang in the weeds, and my ankles itched, tickled by bristly wildflowers. I wished I’d worn proper pants and not my capris.