by Regina Doman
The Sacra Cor dormitory was where the riffraff collected, or so the saying went—the male students who didn’t fit into any particular mold. It was hard to predict just where they would stand on any one issue or practice. Among the Cor guys, the only two Rose knew of who supported Kateri’s protests were Paul and another student, James Kelly. The rest would rather argue endlessly about the nuances of civil disobedience, or play video games.
“All right,” Rose said, “Maybe I’ll ask one of the Cor guys.”
“Paul Fester seems friendly enough,” Kateri said carelessly, and Rose couldn’t help feeling a bit warm as she left the room.
On the way up to the theatre, she actually ran into Paul coming out of the library. They chatted for a few minutes, and she summoned up her courage. “Hey, Paul, I need a ride tomorrow.”
“Where to?”
“There’s an old barn in the country my family owns. My dad kept his old files there, and I need some of them for my bioethics paper. So I need a way to get out there.”
“Oh, no problem—I could drive you,” Paul said. “I have a car. And it sounds like fun. When do you want to go?”
“Just sometime tomorrow,” Rose said, feeling relieved. “After breakfast.”
“Sure thing. I’ll meet you at the caf and we can go,” Paul said, a grin creasing his face. He always looked like a little kid when he smiled.
“Thanks,” Rose said, “See you then!” She hurried on up to the theatre, relieved. And it would be fun to go with Paul. He seemed like the sort of person who would enjoy an outing of that sort.
At play practice, they were rehearsing the first scenes with the three princesses, Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan. It wasn’t a long scene, but it was still an important one. When Rose got there, she picked up her script and began to get into character. Some people had not yet arrived.
Finally, just as Dr. Morris started the rehearsal, the back door of the theater slammed open, and Donna and Tara, who were playing the wicked sisters, walked in. They glanced around, rather superciliously, at everyone staring in their direction, but didn’t apologize.
The director, Dr. Morris, was annoyed. “Three sisters, stage left, and wait for your cue,” he said.
“How are you?” Rose asked Donna, as the blond girl sat down next to her on a wooden bench backstage.
Donna said nothing in reply, but merely looked at her frostily, then turned away. She said something to Tara instead.
Rose dropped her eyes and turned back to her script. She was getting used to this sort of treatment from Donna, almost as though Donna were perpetually rehearsing her part as the evil older sister, even offstage. It certainly made it easier to act with Donna onstage, but offstage it was distinctly uncomfortable, as though the lines between illusion and reality were being deliberately blurred.
When rehearsal was over, she stayed behind to talk to Dr. Morris about becoming a theatrical assistant, which was the student work job she had applied for. By the time she left the theatre, all the other students had left.
Shrugging her shoulders, she walked out of the building and started down the hill to the dorm, whistling to herself.
It was much nicer walking here at night than in the City, and she felt safer. But as she rounded the curve of the building, an eerie sensation came over her as she passed through an arch of dark bushes. It was almost as though she could feel something—or someone—watching her.
Setting her jaw, she kept walking, her head up, outwardly careless, but inside, ready to break into a run if she needed to. She passed the clump of shrubbery and restrained herself from looking over her shoulder.
But she could feel it: someone is there. I’m not looking back, she told herself.
There was a sound behind her—of footsteps? A faint pattering sound.
Now she was passing down a row of trees. The sound continued. Against her will, her heart began to beat harder.
All right, go ahead and look, she told herself.
But when she did, she saw no one.
I’m being silly, she thought, but she turned quickly into the campus chapel to recollect herself.
It was deserted, but still she felt safer inside the church. She padded up the carpeted aisle to the Mary altar and knelt to pray. Being far from home had intensified her attachment to the Blessed Mother, and she prayed a loose string of Hail Marys and blessed herself with a deep breath. Time to walk the rest of the way home.
She exited the chapel fearlessly and hurried down the steps to the drive that led back up to the women’s dorms.
But no sooner had she reached the road than she felt the odd sensation coming over her again and heard the barest sounds of something behind her. Whatever it was that had lost sight of her in the chapel was coming after her again.
She was closer to the dorm, so now she broke into a run, hugging herself, pretending that the autumn cold was driving her indoors. Pounding the cement she rushed down the drive, hit the doors running and sped inside.
Safe, she slowed to a jog, but her heart was still racing. Hurrying down the hallway to her room, she hoped against hope that Kateri would be back from the library early tonight. But the dorm room was empty.
Shivering, she clicked on her homey bedside lamp and turned off the overheads so that the room looked more inviting. She sat down in the corner, in the chair Fish had brought her, and dropped her books.
What happened out there?
She tried to relax and put it out of her mind, but the attempt was useless, and she gave up. Shamelessly she pulled out her phone card and dialed Fish’s number.
5
...the first gave her the gift of virtue, and the second bestowed beauty upon her...
His
His headache keeping him awake, Fish sat in his armchair, staring over his scribbled diary page at the wall. Trying to force himself to do therapy wasn’t helping his throbbing head.
The phone ringing surprised him. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, not recognizing her voice at first. “What’s up?”
“Is it too late to call?”
Fish glanced at the clock. It was after eleven. “No, not at all. I’m still up. Everything all right?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I was just walking back from the play practice and got a little freaked out, that’s all.”
That didn’t sound like Rose’s usual character. “Were you alone?”
“Yes. I guess I shouldn’t have been. I suppose I thought that a tough ex-New Yorker like me should be able to handle a walk beneath the street lights across campus alone.”
“All the same, crimes happen in sleepy Pennsylvanian towns too,” Fish said. “I’d feel better, Miss Brier, if I knew you had an escort at times like this.”
“I know,” Rose sighed.
“So were you calling me just to tell me that you were all right?” he queried.
“No, I actually had a favor to ask you.”
“Ah.” He put his feet up on his desk and attempted to feel beneficent.
“I was wondering—if you have time—if you’d like to come up to the College two weeks from now. We’re having this big medieval festival and it’s sort of an open house day. People have their families visit, and since you’re sort of like family, and Mom and the others can’t come, I was wondering if you wanted to come up. That is, if you’re not busy.”
He half-smiled. She was obviously trying very hard not to make it look like she was asking him on a date. “When is it?”
“The fourth of October.”
“I suppose I can come for the afternoon. Is that a good time?”
“Oh, yes. I’m so glad. By the way, I suppose you figured this out, but I did get the part of Cordelia in the play.”
“Congratulations! So the director preferred the humorous Cordelia to the high and mighty one?”
“I guess so. I’m trusting his judgment.” She sighed.
“Quite a tragic role.”
“Yes. It’s a very sad play, isn’t it? It’s gruesome, too, especially the
part where the two evil sisters have poor Gloucester’s eyes gouged out. And Lear going mad, and Edgar pretending to go mad. And Cordelia getting hanged at the end. There’s just one terrible heartbreak after another.”
“Well, it’s one of the Bard’s more tragic tragedies. Could be why the modern sensibility finds it so appealing.”
She agreed. “I’m glad you can come. So I’ll see you in two weeks then?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Fish.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said lightly. “Good night.”
Hers
The next morning, Saturday, was cool. Rose felt a bit nervous, going outside once again, and shivered in her warm jacket. Fish is right, she thought, I really should get someone to walk with me next time I have a late rehearsal. Campus etiquette said she could call any of the men’s dorms and ask for an escort at any time, but she was, simultaneously, both too shy and too independent to resort to that. It seemed like asking for male attention.
Not that I had any inhibitions about calling Fish, she thought with an inward groan. She had to get over him.
But she forgot her problem when she got to the cafeteria and found Paul already downing his third bowl of cereal. He was wearing jeans, a gray Army sweater, and bright red high-topped sneakers.
“Ready for barn hunting?” he asked cheerfully.
“Most emphatically,” she said, putting down her backpack and her special “Monster Bioethics Paper” yellow notebook where she was meticulously setting out what she needed for the dreaded paper.
“As soon as you’ve eaten, we’re good to fly,” he said when she returned with her plate of pancakes. “Do you know where to go?”
“I got permission and directions from my cousin Jerry, who’s actually a third cousin,” she said. “He owns the barn and house, but doesn’t use them except to store farming equipment. He just plows the fields every other season. He said we can go through the barn and take anything we want—except the combine or the tractor.”
Paul snorted his milk and recovered. “Sorry. That was funny. Okay. And we’re looking for your dad’s stuff.”
“Mom said it was all in file boxes in the hayloft,” Rose said, giggling at him. “I’m hoping that if it’s not much, I can just bring it back with me and go through it here. Otherwise, it might take a while.”
Paul nodded, wiping his face with a napkin. “That’s no problem. I don’t have too much homework to do today anyhow. I just have to find a nurse I can interview for my Anatomy class.”
“My mom’s a nurse,” Rose said. “She works in the emergency room in our local hospital in New Jersey.”
“Really? Hey, do you think she’d mind if I did a short interview with her?”
“Not at all. I can give you her number.” Rose tore out a page from her research notebook and scribbled her home number on it and passed it to Paul. “She’d be happy to do an interview.”
“Awesome! This helps me out a lot.”
After finishing breakfast, they walked out to Paul’s little green Honda with tattered seats and a dent in the rear bumper. At least Paul kept his car fairly clean. Rose admired cars with character.
As they drove they talked about tons of different topics—everything from Paul’s youth group at home to his experiences in Army boot camp, from martial arts to juggling, from careers to the possibility of running away and joining the circus, from summer movies to good books—until they found the unmarked driveway that led to the Brier’s old homestead.
“Wow, this place is in the middle of nowhere,” Paul said as they approached the ramshackle house and barn. They were in fields bordered by forests.
“Mom said the property backs up on the State Forest,” Rose said. “It’s pretty deserted.”
As they came up to the house, Rose sighed. “It’s so sad to see old houses like this, all shut up and neglected. Someone should be living here.”
“Yeah,” Paul nodded, looking at the two buildings. The house had peeling paint and the windows were boarded up. The doors of the old barn were swinging in the autumn winds. Paul pushed them apart for her, and Rose stepped into the dim light.
Inside was a jumble of dusty machinery and decaying straw. Rose picked her way down a narrow aisle between stalls. The middle of the barn was cleared out. There was a coil of old rope hanging from a nail in a supporting beam along one side. An old wooden ladder leaned against the beam next to the rope.
“Mom said the boxes were in the hayloft,” Rose said, looking up. Above the stalls, she could see a platform where some bales of hay were stacked.
“Wonder if that ladder’s any good?” Paul mused, taking it up in both hands and testing it. “Seems pretty solid.” He leaned it against the platform. “Mind if I go up first?”
“Not at all,” Rose said. He scaled the ladder nimbly, and stepped easily onto the board floor of the loft.
“Whoa! Watch the edge! These boards don’t seem sturdy,” he said, testing them gingerly. He walked forward. “It’s a bit more solid here, but I’m staying on the beams, just to be sure.”
“Can I come up?” Rose asked, anxious to see what was up there.
“Sure. It’s a maze up here. I don’t see any boxes.”
Rose cautiously climbed the ladder and got onto the hayloft. As Paul had said, the boards near the edges were creaking and loose. But the rest of the floor seemed firmer, though there were sudden gaps and missing boards. She walked carefully.
The platform was haphazardly stacked with hay bales, and Rose sneezed when she touched them. She picked her way among them, following Paul. At last they found, beneath the eaves of the barn, some shallow closets, doorless, where there were stacks of brown file boxes. They were covered with thick dust, but seemed to be dry and otherwise in good shape.
“These must be it!” Rose exclaimed, but her heart was sinking. There were at least twenty boxes. There was no way she could take them all home to look through.
“Which ones do you need?”
“The ones that have his notes from work,” Rose said. “Bother. I guess we’ll have to start going through them.”
“Like hunting for treasure!” Paul exclaimed, his eyes lighting up.
Rose was grateful for his spirit. She pulled the closest box towards her, and lifted the dusty lid. Its contents were covered with more dust and she carefully blew off the mixture of straw, dirt, and dust that had accumulated over twenty years. Paul did the same, and began looking through another box.
They quickly found that some of the boxes had financial records—old bank statements, credit card bills, cancelled checks—from when her dad was in college and even before. Others held high school memorabilia, and college papers. After pawing through some of these, Rose decided that she didn’t want to try to take any of the full boxes home with her. There was simply too much dust and dirt on them, and she doubted Kateri would want them in their dorm room.
Sighing, she set the battered top back on the box she had been looking through, and reached for another one.
After an hour and a half of looking, Paul found a box that had materials from the newspaper her dad had worked at. He and Rose looked through the back issues of the paper, and Paul commented on the intensely liberal bias of the paper. He turned a page and said, “But here’s an article defending the town Nativity Scene. And it’s by Daniel Brier—that must be your dad.” He grinned and handed it over to Rose.
Rose read it, a smile on her face. It sounded like it had been written by Dad—actually, it sounded like it had been written by her. She read the whole thing twice just to savor it, and then realized Paul had been observing her.
“You must miss him,” he said quietly.
“Every minute,” she said, and put the paper aside in a separate pile. She would take it home with her.
They browsed through other copies of the paper, and then finally Rose said with a sigh, “I’m sorry, Paul. I just don’t think I can find anything here. I guess this was a wasted trip after a
ll. It would be easier to do research in the library.”
“Well, this was interesting, wasn’t it? Finding out more about your dad?”
“Yes,” Rose admitted. “I’m glad I came.”
“How much you want to bet that if you come back another time, you’ll actually find the notes?” Paul said.
“I’m not sure,” she said reflectively. “How much would you bet?”
“Two hamburgers,” Paul said. “Or more.”
She glanced at him. “You must be hungry.”
“Starving.”
“Okay. Let’s go then. Paul, thanks so much for driving me out here.”
“Hey, it’s been a real adventure. You’ll come out here again sometime, won’t you? Let me know if you need to borrow my car again. I think that people getting in touch with their past is important.”
“I really appreciate it.” She slipped a few of the papers into her notebook to keep for sentimental reasons. Paul was separating the boxes they had already looked through from the untouched ones. “So we know where we left off,” he said.
As they came down the ladder, Paul pointed. “There’s a ladder on the wall. We could have used that one.” Rose looked and saw rungs of a ladder hammered into the wall running up to the loft.
“It’s further away from where we needed to go, though,” she said. “We’d have to crawl through all that hay to get over here.”
“Hey, Rose, you know the fifties dance next month?” Paul asked.
“Yeah, I heard about it,” she said, swallowing slightly and turning back around.
“There’s a dance contest. I’d like to enter. Would you want to be my partner?”
Okay, so this was a real date, even by non-Mercy College standards. The world seemed to swirl slightly, then she recovered, blushing. “Sure. That sounds like fun, Paul.”
“Great!” he exclaimed, opening the barn door for her. “I’ll sign us up.”
As they got into the car, she wondered to herself at how easy it was to begin a relationship with someone, particularly in college. It was almost as easy as Fish had predicted it would be... The thought made her redden again, but for a different reason. Was Fish right, after all? Would she really forget him so soon?