The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Predictably, Jen’s rogue squirrel story yesterday was rewarded with—well, not a smile, exactly. But at least there was a fleeting spark of interest in her daughter’s big brown eyes.

  Bent on seeing an actual grin today, or maybe even getting a laugh, Jen was hoping to find a new anecdote to share. But woodland creatures were nowhere to be found in the backyard, thanks to the monsoonlike weather so typical of early springtime in western New York.

  As the uneventful day wore on without yielding a shred of amusing material—nature-related, or otherwise—Jen resorted to scouring the Web for a good joke or a comedic video clip suitable for her fifteen-year-old.

  She’s never spent much time on the Internet. Not compared to the rest of the world, anyway. Maybe she’d be more tech-savvy if she were still in the workforce, or a teenager, but she prefers to do most of her communicating and shopping and reading the old-fashioned way.

  Aghast at what popped up via the search engine today, she’s more worried than ever about what her girls are being exposed to online.

  “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned clean comedy?” she asked Thad during his regular lunchtime phone call, after she’d explained Mission: Cheer Up Carley.

  “You mean like Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Not that old-fashioned.”

  “The Three Stooges? Abbott and Costello?”

  “You know what I mean. Everything is so raunchy, and I—I don’t know. I just want her to laugh again.”

  “She will, eventually. But it’s going to take a lot more than a laugh to get her past this thing. You can’t just fix everything.”

  Sure I can, Jen thought. I’m her mom. That’s what moms do. We fix things for our kids and we worry about them and we ask about their day when they walk in the door . . .

  Dammit. Why, just when Jen felt like she was starting to get the hang of this motherhood thing, sisterly squabbles and all, did the rules have to go and change?

  To make matters worse, the local bus Carley takes to and from school, so often running late, had to go and show up five minutes early today, catching her off guard. And so, rather than greeting Carley with an amusing anecdote or even a raunchy YouTube clip to take her mind off her troubles, Jen simply blurted the first thing that came to mind.

  How was your day?

  Carley was never forthcoming with details about her life even before the whole school nightmare started.

  But Jen wouldn’t hesitate to ask Emma that same question on any given afternoon. She’s not necessarily less prickly than her older sister—if anything, she’s far pricklier—but she’s not nearly as private.

  Never in a million years would Emma merely tell Jen that school was “fine.” She’d pronounce it “horrifying” or “amazing,” then launch into a superlative-heavy account of something that had happened during recess or lunch. The spectacular incident typically would feature at least half a dozen of the gaggle of girls Emma refers to as her BFFs—a term that used to amuse, but now only aggravates, her big sister.

  “You can’t have twenty people you call best friends forever,” she often tells Emma. “If there are twenty of them, then they aren’t BFFs. They’re just friends. A person can only have one BFF.”

  “Maybe you only have one,” Emma shoots back, “but I have twenty. Actually, twenty-three.”

  Yes, and poor Carley no longer has even one. Not since Nicki Olivera switched to public school after their eighth-grade graduation from Saint Paul’s Parochial.

  Inseparable from Nicki since preschool, Carley had asked if she, too, could go to Woodsbridge High, rather than commute to Sacred Sisters, the all-girls Catholic high school in the working-class Buffalo neighborhood where Jen had grown up.

  “Try Sisters first,” Jen told her. “If you don’t like it, you can change to Woodsbridge sophomore year.”

  Once Carley got to Sisters, she wouldn’t want to leave, Jen was certain. After all, she herself had gone there, along with all four of her siblings, and her mother and aunts a generation before them.

  So had Debbie Quattrone Olivera, Nicki’s mother and one of Jen’s closest friends back at Sisters. They drifted apart when they went off to college, but rekindled the friendship about a decade ago as married young moms living in adjacent developments here in Buffalo’s South Towns suburbs.

  “If I ever have a daughter,” Debbie used to say back when they were teenagers, “I’ll never send her to Sisters.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want her to have freedom to choose where she goes, not be forced into it like we were just because our moms went here.”

  Yes, Sacred Sisters was a tradition among Catholic families in the old neighborhood, but Jen didn’t consider herself forced into attending. On the contrary, having wistfully watched her older sisters enroll one by one, she couldn’t wait to go.

  The Bonafacio girls thrived there, academically and socially. Firstborn Maddie was class president all four years. Brainy Jessie graduated a year later as valedictorian. Bennie and Frankie were standouts—and eventually captains—on almost every athletic team.

  Night after night, year after year, they sat at the supper table brimming with tales of high school life.

  When at last it was Jen’s turn to walk into that three-story yellow brick building as a student, she found her niche on the yearbook and newspaper staffs. She loved every minute of those four fleeting years, with the exception of her on-again, off-again high romance with Mike Morino.

  Genuinely taken aback when the ever-irreverent teenage Debbie declared that she’d sell her future daughter into slavery before she’d send her to their alma mater, Jen had asked, “But what if she wants to come here?”

  “Why would she?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  Famous last words.

  Last spring, when Carley started asking about public high school, Thad wasn’t opposed to the idea of forgoing high school tuition payments for the next four years. He’s always worried about money, thanks to the dismal economy, bills piling up, taxes and college costs on the rise, and regular rounds of layoffs at the accounting firm where he’s a principal CPA.

  “Just think—we could save more in the girls’ college accounts if we send them to public high school, Jen, and they’d still get a great education.”

  “You and I both went to private high schools, though . . . so how would we know?”

  “I don’t know . . . but I’m guessing my experience wasn’t as warm and fuzzy as yours.”

  Having grown up in a wealthy suburb of Rochester, Thad had gone to a four-year prep school. He isn’t Catholic—or religious, for that matter. While his parents had been Presbyterian, they weren’t practicing, and the first time he set foot in any church was when he married Jen. He never considered converting, but he occasionally attends Sunday Mass at Saint Paul’s with her and the girls. He likes to refer to himself as a lapsed agnostic.

  “Look, I know Sacred Sisters is a tradition in your family, Jen,” he said. “But if Carley feels that strongly about it—”

  “She doesn’t,” Jen cut in. “She’s always planned on going there. She’s just worried about being separated from Nicki after all these years. I told her they can still be friends.”

  “You and I both know it won’t be the same.”

  “Well, it’s not really good for the two of them to be joined at the hip anymore. Nicki’s the type who might be tempted to walk on the wild side when she gets a little older.” Lord knew her mother certainly had. “Carley’s not like that. She’s a good girl, and anyway, it’s time for her to branch out and make new friends, don’t you think?”

  “Sure, but you’ve said yourself that Sisters is too small—”

  “I never said too. I just said small.”

  “Okay, you’ve said that it’s small, and insular—”

  “Insulated. That’s
not a negative quality. Crazy, terrible things are going on out there in the world, Thad.”

  “Crazy, terrible things can happen anywhere. Isn’t high school a time for Carley to broaden horizons instead of narrow them?”

  “That’s what I just said. I want her to branch out and—”

  “And you want her to be insulated. I feel like you’re talking in circles, Jen.”

  To be honest, so did she—and it wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation. But whenever she feels passionately about something, she fights for it.

  Not about to let her daughter miss out on a wonderful high school experience, she told Thad firmly, “I have a feeling she’ll love Sisters if she just gives it a chance.”

  So.

  Thanks to Jen, Carley gave it a chance.

  And thanks to me, she’s absolutely miserable. Look at her.

  There are dark circles under Carley’s bespectacled eyes. Her skin is broken out thanks to stress and hormones—also the culprits behind a noticeable recent weight gain. She’s never been a thin, wiry kid like Emma, but she wasn’t necessarily plump, either. Lately, however, sedentary habits, an insatiable sweet tooth, and a tendency to turn to food for comfort have caught up with her. She’s getting a double chin, and the buttons on her white blouse strain as she leans to drape her windbreaker over the coat tree by the door.

  She sees Jen staring at her and scowls suspiciously. “What?”

  About to remark that it’s much too chilly on this raw day for just a thin jacket like that, Jen thinks better of it. No need for criticism right now.

  “Nothing.” She lifts her gaze away from the gaping buttons, away from the round, pimply face, and notices that Carley’s brown ponytail is damp.

  Resisting the urge to pat her head or—God forbid—pull her into a big hug, Jen weighs her words carefully before asking the most innocuous question she can think of: “Is it sleeting out there again?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a little bit.”

  “I was thinking the sun might peek out this afternoon, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to, does it?” Jen glances up at the gray, misty world beyond the glass pane in the door.

  Carley mutely stares at her sneakers as she backward-skates the rubber soles over the mat, leaving thick streaks of March mud.

  “It was snowing out this morning, did you see?”

  Still no response.

  “I’m glad it didn’t stick,” Jen goes on. “I was planning to put those pansies I bought yesterday into the window boxes, but it was too wet out there, you know?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  Following her daughter’s gaze to her once-white Nikes, Jen finds herself wondering if things would be different, maybe, if Carley didn’t wear them, along with opaque navy stockings, to school.

  While uniforms are still required at Sacred Sisters—although the plaid skirts are shorter and the navy blazers less boxy than they were in Jen’s day—they no longer have to be paired with low-heeled brown loafers.

  Jen can’t imagine stiletto heels being tolerated, but she’s seen girls wear cute sandals and boots that almost border on sexy when paired with above-the-knee-hemlines. That particular style might not do pudgy Carley any favors, but there must be a look that would be more flattering than those clunky old—

  No. Stop thinking that way. It’s not Carley’s fault. It’s not about what she wears, or doesn’t wear, and it’s not about her face being broken out or the weight she’s gained. Other girls at the school are in the same boat, or worse off; girls who are tremendously obese, or physically disabled, or utterly impoverished charity cases, or brazenly nonconformist with shorn hair and hidden tattoos . . .

  Why Carley? Why did the bullies have to set their sights on her, of all people? Why a sweet girl who’d never hurt a fly?

  Carley isn’t talking, except to insist that she doesn’t want to leave Sacred Sisters.

  Jen’s first instinct had been to pull her out—and she still might have done it, despite Carley’s determination to stay put, if both Thad and the school’s social worker hadn’t urged her not to react so drastically.

  “If she’s willing to give it another chance,” Thad said, “then I think we should back her up. Situations like this can build character.”

  He had a point, but . . .

  “You should be proud of her for wanting to stick it out,” Sister Linda told her over the phone. “Your daughter isn’t a quitter. That’s something we admire here.”

  She had a point, too, but . . .

  Jen couldn’t stand—still can’t stand—the idea of her little girl facing down cruel bullies day after day.

  Sister Linda repeatedly assured her that she would be meeting regularly with Carley and her team of teachers to make sure the situation had been nipped in the bud.

  “I’d like to come in and meet with them, too,” Jen said, “and my husband could probably—”

  “Mrs. Archer, I know you’re concerned, but let’s not blow this situation out of proportion.”

  Jen bristled at that, but when she repeated later the comment to Thad, he shrugged. “I can see her point.”

  “What?”

  “You do have a tendency to get a little—”

  “Don’t you dare say melodramatic!”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Or even just dramatic.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that, either.”

  “What were you going to say, then?”

  “Just that you can get a little worked up sometimes when—”

  “I do not get worked up!”

  “When it comes to the kids? Really?”

  All right, maybe she does. But this is serious, not something to be brushed off like an overdue library book.

  To be fair, the social worker has touched base by e-mail several times since the initial phone call. Still, she’s made it abundantly clear that Carley is in high school now, and parents are encouraged to foster independence in their daughters.

  You don’t have to cut the apron strings, Mrs. Archer, Sister Linda wrote, but it’s not a bad idea to loosen them a bit. We aren’t doing our young women any favors if we fight their battles for them, are we?

  In that moment, Jen hated her with all her heart. Almost as much as she hated the bullies who chose Carley as their target.

  She’s since conceded that Sister Linda wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t previously drilled into the parents of incoming freshmen. At Sacred Sisters orientation last spring and again at Back to School night in September, the message came with different phrasing, depending on who was delivering it: the principal, the guidance counselors, various teachers and coaches, even the school nurse.

  But the basic theme was this: It’s time to let go, Mama Bear.

  In other words, the school dress code and the staff aren’t the only things that have changed in the twenty-five years since Jen graduated.

  Back then, no one was encouraging the girls of Sacred Sisters to think for themselves or solve their own problems. They weren’t exactly coddled, but it wasn’t sink or swim, either. The prevailing message, when you had a problem, was “Give it up to God.”

  Nearly all the teachers in the old days were nuns with a few priests thrown in, and unlike at many local Catholic schools, that hasn’t changed at Sisters.

  Still, in some ways, the credo was somehow less conservative back then than it is now. Most of the staff when Jen was here had started teaching in the wake of Vatican II, and the nuns wore street clothes.

  The pendulum has since swung back. Weekly Latin Mass has made a comeback. The current crop of teachers includes many nuns who belong to a conservative order and still wear traditional habits.

  The only one who remains from Jen’s day is Sister Margaret, the elderly home economics teacher. Back then, her job—ironic in many ways—was to teac
h the girls to be competent housewives. She still conducts cooking and sewing classes, according to Carley, but her title is now home and career instructor, and computer courses have been added to her curriculum.

  “Sister Margaret uses a computer?” Jen was incredulous. “She was half blind when I knew her.”

  “She’s pretty much all blind now,” Carley said. “But that’s why she likes the computer. She has voice recognition software.”

  That conversation took place early in the school year when Carley seemed tentatively optimistic about her future at Sisters. At that point, Jen was a lot more comfortable with the idea of letting go.

  It’s not so easy to do now, when she feels like her daughter is dangling by a fraying thread—or, all right, by an apron string—high above a pit filled with rabid cats. Her maternal instinct is to yank Carley back to safety and hang on tight.

  Jen looks at her, again noticing the weight gain and problem skin—and again hating her own critical eye.

  She herself wasn’t a perfect teenager. She didn’t have acne and she wasn’t overweight or nearsighted, and she was considered pretty and popular, but there were other things . . .

  She remembers her long dark hair being far too straight and flat at a time when curly, frizzy big hair was in style.

  And she remembers thinking that her nose was gigantic, even begging her parents to let her have surgery on it.

  “Are you crazy?” her mother shouted—shouted, because the Bonafacios weren’t exactly a soft-spoken bunch. “People would kill for that nose! That’s a good, strong Roman nose!”

  “It’s my nose!” her father put in.

  “That’s the problem!” Jen wailed. “It’s a gigantic man nose on my face!”

  But her parents assured her that she’d grow into it, and they were right. Either that, or she eventually stopped caring so much, learning to be comfortable in her own skin . . . which was much easier to do once she was away from her high school boyfriend, who always made her feel as though she didn’t measure up.

  Now that she’s in her early forties, she’s noticing tiny wrinkles around the big brown eyes she always thought were her best asset. There’s a faint network of wrinkles, too, at the corners of her wide mouth.