Blood Rubies

by McDowell, Michael

  “Yes.”

  “What about the persons who lived on the first floor?”

  “There’s a separate entrance to their apartment, at least in the front,” said Katherine. “We can’t hear them going in and out that way. I didn’t hear anyone on the back stairs all afternoon,” she sighed.

  “Did you hear any shouts for help coming from the floor below, any sounds of a struggle?”

  “Objection!”

  “No,” said Katherine, “I didn’t.”

  “Objection overruled,” said the judge. “Question and answer may stand.”

  “All right, then, Sister Katherine. Now would you please tell the court what happened after you heard your mother enter the apartment on the second floor of the house.”

  Katherine looked up at her mother. Anne Dolan sat back in her chair. Her shoulders were slack and her hands rested limply below the table, in her lap. Her black hair, heavily streaked with silver, was pulled back and fastened by two cheap barrettes at the nape of her neck. She wore a plain white blouse and a dark brown skirt; no makeup other than lipstick. She stared back at Katherine, her eyes sad and vacant, her mouth slightly open.

  “I didn’t hear anything for about five minutes after the door closed,” she began, and described what she had done and seen on the afternoon of her father’s murder. Her narrative was straightforward and had been made logical and chronological by repetition, but the images that worked upon her brain were anything but controlled, and did not follow the words she spoke. At the very beginning she remembered being embarrassed by the stain on her father’s khaki pants; she thought of her automatic gesture of turning off the television on the back porch; she could recall hushing John Shea upstairs; and, above all, she saw Anne Dolan’s face as she held the knife raised above her husband’s corpse. Katherine’s hand made a fist about the knot of her rosary, while she folded the nails of her other hand info her palm. She broke off speaking for a moment, closed her eyes, and whispered a fervent prayer that she might not break down in tears before so many strangers.

  The defense attorney stood. “Your Honor,” Mr. Giovinco said, “I think a recess—”

  “No!” cried Katherine sharply. “I’ll be all right.” She breathed deeply; worse than the narration, worse than the visions that narration brought to her mind, was the thought that she would have to return to the stand; it would be better to suffer now than to have respite that would only be followed by another such humiliating public spectacle.

  “My mother ran into the bedroom,” she concluded. “She dropped the knife in the living room, the police found it there later. I didn’t want to touch him, but I went over and closed his eyes—they were still open. I locked the doors and called the police. When the police came, my mother was still in her bedroom.”

  The district attorney went to the clerk’s table and picked up a wooden-handled carving knife. He placed it on the rail of the witness stand. A small tag with the letter A scrawled on it had been tied about the wide base of the blade. Katherine drew back, brought her hands from beneath her robe, and grasped the arms of her chair.

  “This is the knife that was found, covered with blood, on the floor of the living room of the Dolan apartment. The blood was of your father’s type, and the blade would have inflicted just the type of wounds which killed him. Now, is this the knife you saw your mother holding?”

  Katherine nodded dumbly.

  “We need a verbal reply, Sister Katherine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you please take the knife, and show us exactly how your mother was holding the knife when you first looked through the screen door, from the back porch, into the kitchen.”

  Katherine blinked. “Why?” she whispered.

  “Please pick up the knife, Sister Katherine.”

  Katherine reluctantly took the knife in her right hand. Slowly she raised it above the level of her shoulder so that the blade pointed downward at the breast of the district attorney. The sleeve of Katherine’s habit slipped and exposed her arm.

  A middle-aged woman on the jury gasped audibly at the sight of the nun holding a great carving knife aloft, and it was apparent that the rest of the jury was impressed as well.

  Quickly Katherine lowered the knife, blushing with shame and modesty.

  “That was how your mother was holding the knife, while she stood over your father’s corpse.”

  “Yes,” Katherine replied, her eyes downcast. The district attorney turned to the jury. “I contend,” he said, “that this is hardly the position in which one would be holding a knife that had just been pulled from the chest of a man already dead. This position would be one for thrusting forward with the blade—not for withdrawing it.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.”

  Anne Dolan lifted her hands slowly from her lap, rested her bare elbows on the table, and lowered her forehead into her upturned palms. The jury—seven men and five women: eleven Catholics, Irish and Italian, and one black—turned from Katherine to look at her mother. Katherine dropped the knife onto the railing of the witness box, and it rattled there for a moment; she had to reach out quickly to keep it from falling to the floor. Suddenly she felt weak and faint. Sweat trickled down her cheeks beneath the wimple; the nape of her neck was damp, and the cloth of her habit clung uncomfortably there. She winced when the radiators began a loud knocking.

  “Did you love your father, Sister Katherine?”

  He wasn’t my real father.

  “Yes,” she said, “I loved my father very much.”

  “Do you love your mother?”

  “I was adopted, and she took care of me as though I were her real child,” replied Katherine impassively. My real mother was burned to death; she was a whore, and she burned to death on the day I was born.

  “And so you love your mother very much,” persisted the district attorney.

  “Yes,” replied Katherine without hesitation.

  Mr. Giovinco was whispering into Anne Dolan’s ear. She stared at Katherine and nodded dumbly.

  “Did your parents argue frequently, Sister Katherine?”

  “Objection!” cried Mr. Giovinco, interrupting his whisper to Anne Dolan.

  “Rephrase, please,” said the judge.

  “Did your parents ever argue, Sister Katherine?”

  “Sometimes,” she replied after a moment.

  “How often is ‘sometimes’? Once a month, once a week, more often than that?”

  As with reluctance, she said: “More often than that.”

  “And you heard them argue?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did they ever become physically violent during these fights?”

  “Object to the word fights—leading the witness,” said Mr. Giovinco, rising a little from his chair.

  “These arguments, then? Were they ever violent?”

  “I only heard them, I never saw them,” replied Katherine.

  “Mrs. Shea has said that between the time that you made your decision to join the convent and your father’s death, your parents argued a great deal. She said that the quarrels disturbed her upstairs, that sometimes they woke her child. These were, then, I take it, noisy arguments.”

  “Yes,” murmured Katherine.

  “Please speak up, Sister,” said the judge.

  “Yes,” replied Katherine, more loudly.

  “What were the arguments about?”

  “I tried not to listen,” replied Katherine.

  “But you couldn’t help but hear, could you, Sister Katherine?”

  “No. They fought about money, and Daddy’s . . . his spending so much time at the Paradise Cafe. Other things . . .”

  “What other things?”

  “They didn’t want me to join the co
nvent,” said Katherine quietly. “They were opposed to my becoming a nun.”

  “But if they both opposed it, why did they argue?”

  Katherine took a great gulp of air: “Because,” she said, “they both blamed each other for it.”

  “And one of the reasons you wanted to join the convent was to be away from a home in which there was continual bickering, constant friction between your father and mother, is that correct?”

  “I joined the convent in order to serve God,” said Katherine simply. “That’s the only reason. God called me, and I had no choice but to obey Him. I was sorry that my parents were against my decision, I was sorry that they fought about it, but nothing that they could have said or done would have changed my mind. I am very sorry that my father was murdered, because I loved him very much. I was adopted, but he always loved me like I was his own child, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

  “Thank you, Sister Katherine, no more questions.”

  When Mr. Giovinco cross-examined Katherine, he went over the same ground as the district attorney. His questions elicited from her the same answers, and those answers produced evidently the same effect upon the jury: though Katherine never said a word against her mother, they all appeared to take the impression that Anne Dolan was a monstrously difficult woman to get along with and that Katherine was an angel of patience, forbearance, and forgiveness.

  That day, Katherine had had to sit through the neighbors’ testimony—the woman who lived in the apartment below the Dolans’ providing the most comprehensive evidence that Anne Dolan was a shrewish, complaining wife who had never tried to hide the bitter discontent of her marriage, her resentment over her husband’s chronic insolvency, his alcoholism, and even his impotence. Another neighbor had much to add about Anne Dolan’s treatment of Katherine, which she contended was sharp and unjust. Jim Dolan was no prize, she said, but Anne Dolan’s conduct toward her daughter—the perfect child—was inexcusable.

  After Katherine’s testimony, the prosecution rested its case.

  Called in Anne Dolan’s defense were fellow Daughters of the Sacred Heart, who could say little more than that Anne Dolan had always been civil, that she won fairly frequently at bingo, that she paid her dues on time, and had never said a word that was critical of the church.

  The last testimony given was that of the parish priest, who told of Anne Dolan’s faithful attendance at mass and, incidentally, Katherine’s unselfish service within the Convent of St. Agnes. Anne Dolan did not take the stand. The lawyer and the district attorney harangued the jury, who appeared not to put much credence in either of them, and the judge made his address. At three o’clock on the second day of the trial, Anne Dolan’s twelve peers retired to their airless room on the fourth floor of the courthouse to determine the woman’s fate.

  Sister Henrica, who had spent most of the day at the MIT Library, was surprised when she returned at four o’clock to find Sister Katherine waiting outside in the convent’s Volkswagen van. “Oh, Sister Katherine,” she exclaimed, “it’s freezing out here! Why didn’t you stay inside the courthouse where it’s warm?” Sleet drove against the windshield.

  “The jury came back in,” said Katherine. “They were out for only forty-five minutes.”

  Sister Henrica was too astonished to speak.

  Katherine looked at her and said softly, “They said she was guilty.”

  “Oh!” cried Sister Henrica, “I’m so sorry, I—”

  Katherine turned away quickly. “Please don’t say anything, Sister. Please, just take me back to Hingham. I—I’ll talk to Reverend Mother Celestine later. Just now I—”

  “I understand,” whispered Sister Henrica, and bit her lip to hold back the expressions of sympathy she could hardly refrain from administering to the convicted woman’s unfortunate daughter.

  “Sister Katherine,” said Sister Henrica after they had left the parking lot. “I’m sorry, but—didn’t you want to stay for the sentencing?”

  “That won’t be until later—sometime next week, I think. Mr. Giovinco will call the convent.”

  They drove along the Charles River, and Katherine stared silently out at the choppy gray water. It was the beginning of the evening rush hour, when traffic was heavy, and some sort of accident up ahead had slowed things even more. At times they were stopped altogether.

  “I should have taken the other bridge,” sighed Sister Henrica.

  “It doesn’t matter,” replied Katherine. Their progress toward the next intersection was blocked by a black Lincoln Continental that had broken down in the right-hand lane. A middle-aged man stood before the car, looking perplexed and embarrassed as he waited for assistance from the police or a tow truck. He was wiping the melting sleet from his brow with a white pocket handkerchief.

  “Oh, poor man!” cried Sister Henrica. “I’m always so afraid that something just like that is going to happen to me.”

  Sister Katherine made no reply, but Sister Henrica was surprised when her companion quickly rolled down the window and stared out at the broken-down car.

  “Sister Katherine! What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Katherine made no reply, but thrust her head out the window into the sleet and gazed behind them until the Continental could be seen no more.

  “What was it?” demanded Sister Henrica, racing through a yellow light. “What was it you saw back there?”

  Sister Katherine made no reply. Sister Henrica’s voice was an unintelligible buzz. She placed both hands over the tightening in her breast and tried to still the roaring in her head.

  Just as they had passed the black Continental, a young woman of Katherine’s age had climbed out of the front seat and stood beside the embarrassed driver. She was precisely Katherine’s height. The light blond hair that spilled down over her shoulders from underneath a close-fitting knit hat was exactly the color of Katherine’s own. Blinking away the sleet, her eyes were as green and intense as Katherine’s. The young woman had caught the nun’s gaze, and she cocked her head as if in sudden wonder or puzzlement. In that moment, despite the turbulent wind and driving sleet, Katherine could see the girl full face. The set of her green eyes, the line of her nose, the shape of her mouth and jaw were a mirrored image of Katherine’s own visage. The nun was horror-struck. Here was the girl of Katherine’s dreams, the Katherine Dolan who might have been. She existed.

  PART II: Andrea

  13

  Andrea Loponti blinked away the snow in her eyes. “Daddy,” she said, “did you see the nun in that van? She nearly fell out of the window looking at us!”

  Cosmo LoPonti had been watching out for the tow truck and hadn’t noticed.

  “It was as if she had never seen a car broken down before,” said Andrea.

  Cosmo sighed and wondered how long it would be before they got home.

  It was another two hours. The automobile had to be towed to the garage through rush hour traffic. A car had to be rented, and the drive back to Weston through the early evening darkness and the snow was slow and tedious. Vittoria LoPonti held open the door for her husband and daughter, and exclaimed her worry.

  Andrea smiled. “We telephoned, but the line was busy.”

  “Come on in, come on in, I know you’re both cold and wet and hungry. I’ve laid fires in the living room and the dining room, and the veal is on its second reheating!”

  By the time they had finished dinner, Andrea LoPonti had entirely forgotten about the nun who had stared so at her as she stood at the side of the road in the snow.

  Weston, Massachusetts, is situated ten miles directly west of Boston, south of the Charles River, and its thirty thousand inhabitants enjoy the highest median income of any municipality in all of New England. Weston’s town center is quaintly Victorian, peaceful and well kept, its exclusive shops alternating with the commoner variety of businesse
s. There are two natural-food stores, a ski shop, two firms that make stained glass, a fruit-juice-and-yogurt bar, a gymnasium and weight-loss clinic, four antique stores, two realtors, three banks, a drugstore, and half a dozen dress shops that wouldn’t sell you a blouse for under fifty dollars. Outside this town center, with its broad, clean common and gleaming Civil War monument, the town is New England forest, with fine eighteenth century mansions hidden away at the end of winding drives, massive Victorian houses commanding the best views, and mid-twentieth century homes of redwood and glass set behind tall fences. Much of the land in Weston is given over to parks and recreational areas: several thousand acres of forest, meadows, and ponds are owned by the city, or by Harvard—places that are delightful four seasons out of the year. From merely driving through Weston, one senses its civilized affluence, grace, privacy, quiet, and spaciousness.

  Cosmo and Vittoria LoPonti were married in 1957, in St. Anthony’s Church in the North End of Boston, on St. Anthony’s feast day. When they returned from their honeymoon trip to Marblehead, Cosmo was given a loan of fifteen thousand dollars by his father-in-law. With this capital he started an independent contracting company for electrical work. He and Vittoria lived in a large, cheap, dark apartment above a noisy restaurant on Salem Street, not because they couldn’t already afford better, but because Vittoria’s father had stipulated, as part of the loan agreement, that Cosmo allow Vittoria to be near her chronically ill mother.

  Over the next two years Cosmo’s business prospered, and he and Vittoria were a happy couple; their only regret was that she had not yet been able to conceive. Early in 1959 Vittoria’s father died, and her mother’s health deteriorated seriously. In an effort to prolong the woman’s life, she was moved to her sister’s house in San Antonio, where the climate was amenable. On the first day of the New Year, 1960, Vittoria LoPonti—carrying the newborn child whom she had surreptitiously rescued from the burning building on Salem and Parmenter streets the night before—flew to Texas and remained there seven months. Her family in San Antonio much berated her for not having told them that she was pregnant, but for the precious infant she had brought with her, they forgave everything.