by Anbara Salam
Isabella shrugged. “I guess.”
Suddenly I was desperate. “In that case—” I stopped.
“What?” She pulled her sweater over her head, and the static trailed her hair in spikes.
“Nothing.”
Isabella began to unbutton her blouse. “Oh, come on, Briddie, don’t tease me.”
I opened my mouth again and shut it, running my hand along the door.
“You are a queer color,” Isabella said. “Maybe you oughta go back to bed.”
I shook my head. “It’s just—I heard Katherine and Sylvia.”
Isabella draped her blouse over the bed frame and pulled a woolen dress from a hanger she had slung over an icon of St. Teresa.
“I heard them—and—well, I probably shouldn’t say.”
That made Isabella snap back toward me. “What? Did they say something about me?”
I shook my head. “Not about you.” I folded my arms under my chest. “I really shouldn’t’ve said anything.”
Isabella sat down on the bed, laying the dress over her knees. “Well, about who, then? You?”
“It’s more—” I licked my lips, which were dry and scabby. “They were being cruel, about Sister Teresa.”
Isabella’s head jolted. “What?”
“I don’t think they knew I was there,” I said hastily. “They didn’t know I was listening.”
“What did they say?” Isabella’s voice was different, deeper. I could see the fluttering of her pulse at the top of her collarbone.
I cast about for something suitably appalling to report. “I can’t repeat it,” I said primly, in an ominous tone.
Isabella looked at the floor. “I can’t believe it. Even Katherine?”
“Well, no, it was mostly Sylvia.”
Isabella chewed on her fingernail.
“But also Katherine,” I added.
Isabella stood up and pulled the dress over her head. Her jaw was set. “Those bitches. How could anyone have anything—”
“I know,” I said, sagely.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Was it really bad? What they said?”
I nodded. “But—but they didn’t know I was there. They’d only deny it, if you asked them.” My head grew light. “They wouldn’t admit to what they said about her.”
She shook her head. “God, Briddie. People make me sick.” She turned, and I helped draw the zipper up along the top of her dress, my hands shaking. She swept her hair away from her neck. “Not you, of course.”
I laughed weakly.
She turned and faced me. “You really are an odd color. Give tonight a miss, eh? I can scoop some penne into my pocketbook.”
I nodded glumly, the sore spot still throbbing in my throat.
Isabella regarded me and sighed. “Well, at least we’ve got each other.” She was smiling, but there was a flat sort of resignation in her voice, as if she had been assigned a task.
“You always have me,” I said, the blood running to my cheeks.
“Great,” Isabella said, patting my cold hand. “You’re a doll, Briddie.”
30.
February
When we arrived back at the academy, I felt the same dislocation as when I’d returned from Connecticut. I stretched out on my own bed blissfully, scratching my scalp, rolling my ankles. A delayed Christmas card had arrived from Mama, along with a photograph of her, Dad, Rhona, and Granny by the fireplace at Granny’s house. Underneath she had written Ryan Family Greetings in a looping hand. I held the photo up to the light. Rhona was wearing a velvet dress that draped in a forgiving way, and I scrutinized her figure. Was it a trick of the costume or was she truly healthier? She had certainly lost the glassy look in her eyes. The photo had caught her off guard and her mouth was poised on the brink of opening. Mama, on the other hand, had silver running through her hair I hadn’t noticed before. Her expression was one of terrified relief, as if she had just swerved to miss a deer. The photo made me edgy. It wasn’t fair for Mama to look so happy when I wasn’t there. I slid the picture into the drawer of my nightstand.
When I went to find Isabella, she wasn’t in her bedroom or in the common room. I knocked on Greta’s door with the pretense of asking if she’d seen my gray gloves. Really, I wanted to be able to see out her window toward the convent, to make sure Isabella hadn’t gone straight to visit Sister Teresa. I kept one eye on the window, distracted, as Greta showed me the photos of her horse Bobby had sent while we were away. When she caught me glancing toward the view, I told her I had seen a bird, an injured bird flying, and couldn’t stop wondering about it.
“Oh,” she cried, getting up at once and crossing to the window. She pressed her nose against the glass. “Poor thing. I don’t see it. Do you?”
I joined her and pretended to look in earnest, although I was peering down into the remains of the slushy snow to see if I could trace footprints leading to the back gate. Might they have gone down to the apple store?
“What kind of bird was it?” Greta said, her breath clouding the windowpane.
“A robin, I think,” I said, suddenly depressed. If only my best friend was a girl like Greta. Her face was tight with anxiety as she searched the tree line for an injured bird. And not even a real bird. How easy it was to hold her attention. How carelessly she offered her energy to me.
“If I see it, I’ll tell Donna Maria,” she said, the pinch in her brow deepening. I suppose she saw the strange expression on my face and thought me terribly disturbed by the little broken robin.
At once, I decided to tell her about Isabella and Sister Teresa. “Greta,” I began, and my heart raced. But what would I even say? I was put out because Isabella was friends with Sister Teresa? That was ridiculous.
She was watching me. “Everything OK, Bridget?” she said in a soft voice.
“It’s, well—” I recalled the image of them together, embracing. And even as I thought of it, the uneasy, squeamish, butter-churn feeling pounded in my stomach and groin. But then, what had I seen, really? Two friends lying together? Greta and Sally were always sharing beds and tickling each other. They doodled love hearts on each other’s bedroom mirrors and soaped each other’s hair in the bathroom. Sister Teresa and Isabella sitting on a mattress together would hardly sound worth getting worked up about.
Greta was struggling to compose her face. I recognized the deliberate settling of her expression as one of someone who is frightened and doesn’t want you to know it. “Bridget,” she said seriously. “What’s wrong?” She took a step toward me.
I opened my mouth and shut it again. It suddenly seemed absurd to tell her what a goose I was being, and I laughed, so abruptly that Greta flinched. “Nothing at all. I was going to ask if you have any napkins, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Greta smiled, a narrow keyhole smile that was part relief and part annoyance. “Of course.” She went over to her closet and pulled out a box. “Have as many as you like,” she said. I took three and hid them under my sweater.
“You’re a doll,” I said.
* * *
It was March, and we had two more months of lessons and lectures. With weeks ahead of us with no vacations or feast days, our final term at the academy was deliciously boring. The weather dissolved into spring, with sweet-smelling white narcissus and pale yellow primroses blooming in the meadow at the front of the academy.
Girls switched to Italian during mealtimes, calling performatively to each other across the table, thrilled with their own cleverness. We sat outside at the enoteca, our eyes watering from brisk wind still bitten with snow from the mountains. I lay awake at night, trying different phrases out loud, imagining scenarios where Rhona would be home from college for the weekend and she’d call me in from the next room. “I can’t make sense of it,” she would say, pointing to a line of Dante, her shell earrings bobbing against her
black turtleneck. “Don’t worry.” I would laugh. “It’s complicated at first.” And she would frown. “Thank goodness you’re around to help me.”
As the weather grew warmer, the fruit trees in the orchard began to sprout tight little buds. Then the plum trees sprang into blossom. The hills around the lake were a mantle of pink and white, a flurry of pastels and silk that flew in the air and settled on the water. I had not quite realized the number of plum trees around the lake, which was silly, considering how much plum wine we drank. Only now they were illuminated was it possible to see how many fruit trees there were, tucked behind the church in La Pentola, growing from the bottom of an old well near the shrine, shrouding the hills behind Brancorsi. The petals fluttered on the breeze and collected in downy mounds in gutters, sticking to the glass of the common room windows, piling in the academy courtyard, and flitting in between the cracks in our bedroom window frames like ash from some gauzy volcano. Bees buzzed in drowsy diadems through the orchard, and buttercups blazed in the clover. I took to walking underneath a parade of plum trees at the bottom of the orchard and lying wrapped in my coverlet on the grass so I could look up at a cloud of coral and apricot and lose myself in the great cathedral of whirling sugary loveliness.
* * *
One Sunday afternoon, two weeks before Easter, I walked down to the orchard and sat under the trees, catching the odd petal in my hand. Sugar-deprived from Lent and not able to resist, I kept putting the petals to my mouth, where they were inevitably wet and plantlike between my teeth, not at all like the confectionary they promised. On the way back, I walked by the path to the spa and decided at the last moment to climb down and see if Sister Teresa was there. I’d been going there regularly, just to check. Sometimes I met Sister Luisa smoking in the graveyard, and then I would wave to her and leave again through the railings.
But Sister Luisa was nowhere in sight, so I let myself in quietly through the back door. I crept along the corridor to John Henry’s old room, but even as I approached, I could hear quiet murmuring. My heart pounded against my ribs. I bent down, tucking the blanket between my knees, and put my eye to the keyhole.
There they were.
Rosaria was lying on the bed, facedown, and Isabella was sitting on her buttocks. Isabella had a jar of lotion in her hands and she scooped out a coin of cream and rubbed it into Rosaria’s naked back. The lotion melted into her skin until it glowed. Although I couldn’t see much of her body, she looked so terribly naked. Isabella leaned forward, her hair falling over Rosaria’s back and onto the greasy trails of cream. She made some kind of joke, and then bit her playfully on the shoulder. She paused and, wiping a gleam of spit from her mouth, leaned further and kissed Rosaria gently on the mouth.
I waited for the wave of grief to hit me, the surf to drag me under. But as I paused, willing it to come, it didn’t gather. Rather, I was angry. Acid boiled at the top of my gut.
How could they be so stupid? To return to the same place where they’d already been caught? How could they be so reckless? I watched as Isabella kneaded underneath Rosaria’s shoulder blade. But then I remembered—they didn’t know they had been caught. They were completely ignorant. I turned away in disgust at their stupidity. I walked back down the corridor and into the ballroom. The petals flew in a scatter of sprinkles through the open door, but all the magic had gone.
They had returned to that room again, without worrying who might see them. Without even thinking about who they might hurt. Only thinking of themselves. They were laughing. As if this was a joke. Some kind of silly caper. They were careless. Beyond careless—reckless even. I had hardly even been trying and I had caught them. A sly bitterness coiled in my throat.
* * *
I waited until later in the day, when Isabella came to her room. I heard her steps on the stairs and stood deliberately in the doorway while she stretched out on her bed. I couldn’t stop looking at her hands, wondering if they were still slippery from the lotion.
“How was your walk?” I said.
“Nice. It’s lovely outside. You should go before it gets dark.”
Of course, I thought, she assumes I’m so meek and homely that I would’ve been indoors all day. As if I needed her permission to go out and enjoy the sunshine. “And Sister Teresa? How is she?”
Isabella yawned. “Fine.”
“Is she making the best of her last months of freedom?” I said bitterly. “Getting all her words out while she still can?”
But she didn’t notice my tone, or else she didn’t care to comment on it. She started massaging her temples. “Damn, I forgot about the reading. Who’s got the book?”
“Patricia,” I said. “Maybe you should go find her.”
“I will,” Isabella said quizzically. She brushed past me and walked down to the common room.
I put on my peacoat and went down into the courtyard and through the gate. I figured they were so stupid they probably didn’t even wait to come back separately, caring so little for who noticed them together.
I didn’t see her at first, so I walked up the hill toward the shrine. The day was growing colder and my nose began to run. I didn’t notice the flowers or the clover or the buds on the trees, just counted my steps, to fifty and back. Until I thought enough time had passed and I could check again. I was prepared to pace and wait all afternoon if I needed to. But I didn’t need to, since Sister Teresa was standing in her usual place, smoking.
“Hello,” I called, walking toward her, warming my thumbs between my palms.
“Good afternoon, Bridget.” She smiled. Smiled as if she was pleased to see me. As if there was no reason for her to be ashamed. The churning, coiling feeling grew thicker.
“Would you mind terribly if I had one of your smokes?” I said.
“Please.” She handed me her pack and I took one, then lit it from a matchbook she’d slipped inside the packet.
“Thanks, you’re a doll.” I gave it back to her and sat on the step, not even looking to see where the muddy boot prints were. “Gosh, it’s such a nice day.”
“It is,” she said.
“I went down to the orchard today, to enjoy the blossoms.”
“It’s very beautiful this time of year.”
“Yes, quite lovely.” I breathed out a lungful of smoke. “How long does the season last?”
“It depends. But not more than a few weeks.”
“What a shame.”
“It’s more beautiful, though, because it’s so temporary.”
I wasn’t in the mood for any of her nunnish contemplation. Her innocent platitudes about time and silence and the death of the self. I shook my head, hating myself for ever believing her, being taken in by her gentle voice and storytelling rhythm. Now I could see it for what it was. A sham. She was a fraud. An arrogant fraud who thought me so naive I would still gobble up her lies like little sugared pills.
“Mmm, how true. I was thinking, I might cut some branches and press them for Isabella’s wedding. Do you suppose it would work?” I leaned back against the stone buttress and it nestled hard and cold between my shoulder blades.
“Sorry?” she said.
I glanced up at her. She was poised to laugh, ready to humor whatever silly joke I was about to make.
“Well, I thought it would be a nice gift. I could press them and frame them. Or would daylight bleach out the color?”
“The color of the blossom?” I watched the clockwork of her expression changing as she mulled over my words.
“Well, from the sun. If I frame it and give it to Isabella. I mean, as a wedding gift—wouldn’t the colors have faded by November?”
She was silent. Her eyes grew watchful, but they were absently scanning the scene in front of us. I looked at it too. The muddy, threadbare grass, the thin stream of smoke from the common room chimney.
“This November?”
“Yes,” I s
aid. “I’d simply hate for it to be all ruined by the time of her wedding. What do you think?” I turned now to face her, pulling my eyebrows up in an exaggerated question.
She finally laughed, a relieved little tinkle like that of a Christmas tree ornament. “Sorry—my Isabella?”
I took a deep drag on the cigarette, feeling my teeth catch on my bottom lip.
“Yes,” I said sweetly. “Isabella Crowley. Who else?”
She blinked, again and again, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She squeezed her arms hard enough that the outline of her breasts pressed through her tunic.
“She’s so difficult to buy for. And Ralph does spoil her. I mean, you’ve probably seen the size of that ring. You know—the one she keeps in her nightstand? I’ll get her a real gift, too, but it might be nice for her to have something from the academy. Something to remember this year by, once she’s gone. As a memento. For her new home, with Ralph.” I knew I was overacting. I thought, Surely she’ll realize what I’m doing. But I couldn’t stop myself.
“Ralph,” she said, and drew from her cigarette. But her voice was loose, as if she was trying out his name.
“Ralphy’s a sweetheart,” I said brightly. “And thank goodness he’s finally let Isabella get her way with the wedding. She’s been going on and on about that blasted clubhouse.” I tried for a bright, chirpy laugh.
She was still staring ahead.
“But I expect you’re sick of it too?” I watched her.
She turned to me. Her expression was dreadful, her lips pale. She made a noise, a mumble.
“I honestly can’t take any more of it,” I said. “All this silly nonsense about the wedding. But one can’t exactly blame her for being excited. I mean, childhood sweethearts—it’s quite romantic, really.”
While I spoke, her eyelids dropped and fluttered, and she squeezed her arms harder.
“Are you all right?” I said, as if I had just noticed her distress.