Sitting under an electric blanket in front of the TV, Vinnie had to laugh out loud at the amazing shit people came up with. Like hell, he’d said to his empty apartment. Who’d ever heard of stigmata down there?
“Someone hurt you,” he tells Cee-Cee now.
In the grandmother’s kitchen, Vinnie always feels like she half-knows what he’s thinking.
“I can’t tell you what happened,” Cee-Cee says. “Because I don’t remember.”
“No?” Vinnie says. “Nothing?”
She stares at him.
“Does what happened to you that day have anything to do with the disappearance of the Iaccamo girl?” It’s a stupid question, but Vinnie is running out of ideas.
For a minute it surprises them both to have a new conversation on the table.
Cee-Cee’s eyes sparkle. “She’s been missing since Christmas.”
“That’s right.” Desperate enough, he risks another question. “Can you help me find her?”
“She’s alive.”
“I think so too.”
Cee-Cee looks through him for a moment. “Ask her brother at the high school.”
Most of the school-aged Iaccamo kids go to Catholic school now, so it doesn’t make sense. The older ones all dropped out of public school after tenth grade anyway. Not a single graduate among them. In fact, the last Iaccamo through the public school system was the missing girl. Vinnie knows because he’s done his homework.
“Is that all?” Vinnie’s voice is almost a whisper.
“Yes.” Cee-Cee looks back at her page and starts to write, then stops. “Also: pray.”
Later, sitting in his patrol car in the grandmother’s driveway, Vinnie imagines the girl is still with him. Her presence is part of what can help him figure a connection if there’s one to be figured. Problem is people are unreliable when it comes to reporting crimes. Memories are fleeting; details melt away. Eileena Iaccamo is—what? Gone, dead, a runaway, a kidnap victim, a corpse in a snow bank? And the perpetrator in the blue ski jacket? What about him? Is he a pillar of the community? A fiend? A ghost? A convict on the run? There’s nothing more frustrating than a mystery in the middle of an investigation, Vinnie knows, unless of course it’s two mysteries in the middle of two investigations.
It’s another grey afternoon with drizzles and drips of icy rain, indicating that February has arrived.
Sometimes Cee-Cee peers through a second story window, parting the curtains to watch him sitting there in the driveway mulling things over. Occasionally, she offers a flicker of inky fingers, the smallest possible acknowledgment that they have somehow joined forces. Vinnie returns the exact greeting, barely lifting his fingers off the steering wheel.
He switches on the radio and scans the channels for something interesting. NASA gives him hope, proving that all it really takes to right the course is a little elbow grease and determination, a little creativity. A mission can start in total disaster, something completely unexpected goes wrong, prompting predictions of pieces of equipment hurtling to earth at nightmare velocity.
All it takes is a bunch of guys to make a few minor adjustments in zero gravity conditions—teamwork and ingenuity—and before you know it, a failed operation is corrected, the dream restored.
Vinnie scours the radio, checks his watch: twenty-five minutes until his shift. Then—at last—his brain kicks in.
No lightening bolt, no dramatic shift in temperature or energy, just Vinnie realizing what Cee-Cee meant about the brother at the high school. Just like that: clarity. This is the kind of clear thinking that will save everything: his reputation, his sanity, his career. The guys at the precinct will stop making jokes about his losing perpetrators, about how they need to put an APB out on his ass and his elbow. This may even be the exact epiphany that puts an end to all these little girls who keep going missing.
His nascent plan seeds and takes root.
All he has to do is approach at the right time, ask the right questions; it couldn’t be simpler.
Then, suddenly, another seed drops and plants—this one about Cee-Cee Bianco and the stranger who raped her. It is simpler still, a mere three words: Follow the coat.
He snaps his fingers, takes out his notepads, scribbles each idea down in its proper page: one for Iaccamo, one for Bianco.
Getting out of the car and ringing the grandmother’s bell, Vinnie waits for Cee-Cee to answer the door.
“I wonder if you could come with me,” he says. “It’s about the missing girl.”
Standing behind her, the grandmother looks stern and shakes her head.
“Both of you,” he pleads. “It’ll only take a minute. I think we have a lead.”
The school is abandoned, except for a few cars in the corner by the concession stand where parents sell hot dogs during football games. Painted in bright red letters is the team’s name: Romeville Saints.
Nonna and Cee-Cee sit in the back seat, a cage separating them from their driver.
“She isn’t here,” Cee-Cee says confidently. “The missing girl.”
“But the brother is,” Vinnie spots his guy peddling marijuana to a hippie in a banged-up Volkswagen bus. “Just like you said. Remember?”
He is suddenly unsure about the plan. Wasn’t this Cee-Cee’s idea in the first place?
“Wait here,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
Circling around behind the bleachers on foot, he manages to sneak up on the drug deal, so only the hippie can see Vinnie in his uniform. The hippie changes his mind and peels away.
The kid has freckles and a sad, ruddy face with those telltale cow-eyes. You can spot a Iaccamo from miles away; no one else in town looks quite so dumb. This particular Iaccamo has been selling marijuana at the high school for at least a year.
Vinnie holds him by the scruff of his coat in the direction of the squad car, but Cee-Cee makes no sign. She doesn’t nod or shake her head. She only stares at him. For a minute Vinnie is stumped, but he keeps his stride.
“Where’s your sister?” he says to the guy.
“Gone, man.”
“Awfully young to go traveling,” Vinnie says.
“She’s visiting relatives.”
“Which relatives?”
“Aw, come on.”
Vinnie shakes the kid; then looks back at his squad car and sees the girl peering though the window at him. Again, her face is blank.
Vinnie eases off. “I don’t think I heard what you said.”
“I don’t know!” The kid surrenders in Vinnie’s grip. “She’s thirteen. And crazy. Ask anyone.”
Vinnie relaxes a little. “What’s your first name, Iaccamo?”
“Liam.”
“Help me find your sister, Liam, so I don’t have to arrest you.”
For the first time since Vinnie flashed his badge, the kid looks scared. “No one knows where she went.”
“I am going to find her, Liam—dead or alive—and you’re going to help me. Tell me about the day she disappeared.”
“What about it?” Liam says.
“Did your folks notice she was gone?”
“Seven kids is a lot to keep track of; one of my older sisters figured it out.”
“Did she have a fight with anybody?”
“We fight all the time at my house.”
“Not one thing out of the ordinary happened the day she disappeared?”
Liam shrugs. “I don’t pay that much attention to girls.”
Vinnie’s shift starts soon; he has to get Cee-Cee and her grandmother home before picking up his partner, Al, at the station. “I don’t want to see you up here again, do you hear me?”
Liam flashes a grin when he realizes he’s being released.
“Don’t go far, Liam, because we’re watching you.”
Somehow he means himself and Cee-Cee, but it’s the first time he’s said so out loud. Before Vinnie can finish the sentence, Liam is wading through the yellow stalks of tall grass behind the school, already out of earsho
t. They catch a glimpse of his red hunting jacket.
Then with a flash through the wheat, he is gone.
At Our Lady, Cee-Cee trudges to her afternoon tutoring session.
The Sisters take turns catching her up on lessons from fourth and fifth grade, so she can join her new classmates at their level. All the Sisters pride themselves on their different specialties. Sister Alouicious diagrams sentences like a pro. Sister Lawrence carries a cartful of maps to augment every geography lesson. Sister Sebastian is a whiz at world history, putting on paper crowns and shouting, “Off with their heads!” Sister Eugene teachers the basics of Home Economics: sewing, cooking, stocking a pantry. Sister Robert-Claude demands that Cee-Cee read a book every week and write a report to prove it. Sister John of the Cross grades each report, quiz, and test with colored markers and stickers shaped like stars and angels.
Crossing from the school to the Sisters’ living quarters, Cee-Cee reads signs on the doors telling all who enter not to let Sister James’s cats out. If she sees Mr. Jingles, Calliope, or Whiskers, Cee-Cee stops to say hello. Sometimes she brings one of them to the refectory for company, where a Sister is always waiting at the end of a very long wooden table.
The room smells of lemons and damp dishcloths.
Today it is sixth-grade math, long division, which means several hours with Sister Edward.
“Let that dirty thing go!” Edward says when Cee-Cee appears with ink-black Calliope in her arms. “Out, I said!”
Cee-Cee puts the pretty cat down and herds it back into the hallway.
“Sit,” Sister Edward demands.
The others are more fun and always first ask how she’s feeling and if she’s learned any new card tricks she’d like to show. They braid her hair and fix her snacks: peanut butter in celery sticks or cheese with apples. Before even cracking a book, they say a prayer for wisdom and enlightenment.
Cee-Cee takes her seat across from Sister Edward, depositing a wad of gum discreetly beneath the seat of her chair. She knows that gum gets under Sister Edward’s skin, though not quite as much as the new dishwasher that’s been installed under the linoleum counter near the cross-shaped clock does. The dishwasher really crosses a line with its shiny knobs and extra rinse cycle.
“When I was a novice,” she tells Cee-Cee. “All anybody ever needed was water, potatoes, and prayer.”
Cee-Cee is not sure whether she’s expected to answer.
“It’s even worse than Sister Eugene’s cooking classes,” Sister Edward says. “I want to shout Alka Selzer! after every meal.”
Sister Edward says mean things about Cee-Cee too.
Hypergraphia! She likes to tell the other teachers. That’s what’s wrong with our little Miracle Girl.
None of the others seem to take Sister Edward seriously. Mostly they turn and walk away shaking their heads, which doesn’t stop her mouth.
The child is mentally ill!
Once during a physical fitness test in the gym, Cee-Cee overheard Brother Ignacio blow his whistle to cut her off.
Well, I don’t know about that, Sister, he said, but she sure does excel at jumping jacks.
When the Monsignor had visited from Albany to recommend that Father Giuseppe take Cee-Cee on as a spiritual project, everyone agreed immediately that she should be placed in Sister Edward’s Gifted and Talented sixth grade class.
A gift for you! the Mother General had told Sister Edward, presenting Cee-Cee one day after school.
Cee-Cee smiled up at her.
The girl has obvious promise, Father Giuseppe added. We thought you’d be pleased.
Sister Edward spoke openly: You don’t honestly believe in that voodoo, do you? What happened that night was a total fluke!
All girls are miracles, the Mother General had said, placing an arm around Cee-Cee’s shoulder. That’s Our Lady’s philosophy.
Best of all, Cee-Cee loves Sister Amanda, who everyone at the school calls Mother General, but she is never Cee-Cee’s tutor. Instead, she spends long hours in Nonna’s kitchen sipping tea and describing her plans for changing Our Lady. Sometimes she asks Nonna to host young women, who sleep on mats on the floor in the living room, and say “yes, ma’am,” to everything Nonna utters.
“They are graduates of the program,” Sister Amanda announces proudly, but no one knows what program she means. “They only need to stay a few nights.”
The young women always come in pairs, and call themselves Miranda, no matter what.
“You’re both named Miranda?” Cee-Cee says.
Invariably, they nod in unison.
Mostly they are teenagers, though they seem wiser and never smoke cigarettes, as far as Cee-Cee can tell. During the day, they disappear across the street, running errands for the Sisters. At night, they return exhausted, but still as polite as ever. They flop down on their mats, say a long, involved prayer aloud in perfect unison, and fall asleep without blankets or pillows.
To Cee-Cee, they are mysterious and exciting.
“We’re Mother Stephen’s Orphans,” one of them usually ends up confiding when Cee-Cee asks who they are and where they’ve come from.
“You mean Sister Amanda?” Cee-Cee asks.
“We call her Mother. We’re on a mission for peace.”
Nonna feeds them breakfast and never asks questions. She doesn’t wonder who their mothers are, or if they go to church, or whether they are going to take vows to join the order of Precious Wounds. From their long hair and loose clothing, Cee-Cee figures they are hippies or protestors.
“We’re from Canada,” they usually say.
Now in the refectory alone, Sister Edward leans in a little closer to Cee-Cee.
“You have a sluggish mind, smudged skin, and the appearance of someone who is severely malnourished. Your braids never stay plaited and your hair ends up hanging down like a dark cloak.”
Personally Cee-Cee doesn’t think she looks that bad. Lately she’s even starting to feel a little better.
“Perhaps you are slightly more promising than the other dullards,” Sister Edward adds, but only because Cee-Cee has so far mastered all her math quizzes—“and a very studious note-taker it appears—but God-given, Miss Bianco, you are not!”
“Of course not.” Cee-Cee shrugs. “No more or less than anyone.”
Sister Edward doesn’t like her response.
“What do you know about Chinese checkers, Sister?” Cee-Cee asks. “I mean, how is it different from regular checkers?”
“I know nothing of children’s games.”
“Guess not.”
“Are you always so grumpy, Miss Bianco?” Sister Edward stares into the girl’s eyes. “Don’t you ever smile?”
“Not much, Sister.” Cee-Cee flashes her teeth. “You?”
Sister Edward does not like Cee-Cee’s tone. “I thought perhaps the Son of God might arrive personally and advise you to lighten up.”
“Nope,” Cee-Cee says. “No one comes around for me anymore.”
Sister Edward thinks about sending her straight to detention, but something about the serious look in the girl’s strange eyes stops her.
“Why?” Cee-Cee says. “Does Jesus visit you?”
“Every day!” Sister Edward says. “And I don’t need a fancy visitation with angels and saints and secret messages to know what I know!”
In truth Sister Edward’s prayers have gone unanswered for years.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Cee-Cee says. “Take it from me, it’s not fun.”
The conversation strikes Sister Edward as absurd, audacious—rude even. But she lets her mind simmer until she can think of a response.
“You are merely lost and ill-mothered, young lady. You are nothing special, and I would venture to say, hardly chosen.”
In Sister Edward’s experience, when you pick away at even the ugliest scab, you find something ordinary underneath, pus and dirt. Cee-Cee, she decides, is nothing more than a pompous child in need of structure and focus.
It’s
no wonder.
An insidious shift away from spiritual devotion has been the trend for the past several years since young Amanda was installed as Mother General. The act itself was an insult to all the devout older Sisters of Christ's Most Precious Wounds, waiting their turn to be in charge, including Sister Edward herself, who is soon to be forty.
If it weren’t sacrilege, Sister Edward would blame the Second Vatican Council for taking away what she loved most about her vocation: daily Masses in Latin, a cloistered world without distractions, a sacred time for study and prayer. It was the only place a woman could really get a break from the world and study God’s mysteries in peace and quiet, but now all that’s gone.
Now Catholic Sisters are sent out into a filthy world to work like dogs, provide charity, feed the poor, drive vans of loud, underprivileged children here and there. Now, service is valued above silence and discretion is obsolete. Even Sisters who choose to indulge in particular friendships refuse to hide their special bonds. Just last week in the chapel, Sister Edward happened upon Sister Robert-Claude kissing Sister Eugene full on the mouth. Of course they shot apart like rabbits when Edward stood up from dusting under the pews.
Do we no longer save our passion for Christ, Sisters?
Sister Eugene scurried off, ashamed, startled, or both.
But Sister Robert-Claude merely smirked at Edward: You waited quite a long time before announcing yourself, Sister. Hope you enjoyed it.
Mannish and swaggering, Sister Robert-Claude has always had a fresh mouth. Nonetheless, Sister Edward was not intimidated.
Chastity, Sister, she told the old diesel. Lest you forget your vows.
If this were all, Sister Edward would suffer without complaint and go about her business. But she knows for a fact that the young Mother General is a danger to the church, with associations to the Utica Seven, arrested last year for underground bomb-making and God knows what else.
“The Mother General,” she tells Cee-Cee, “is a supporter of priests and sisters gallivanting in so-called service to the peace movement.”
“Am I excused?” Cee-Cee asks, hopeful. “Are we done yet, Sister?”
“One more thing,” Sister Edward says. “What do you think of her? I mean, personally. What’s your opinion?”
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