The Year We Sailed the Sun

by Theresa Nelson

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Swear it, Julia! Say the words: ‘I’ll look before I leap, Miss Downey. I give you my solemn word.’ ”

  “I’ll—I’ll look before I leap, Miss—”

  Just then the barn door opened.

  “Excuse me, ladies. . . .” It was Sister Gabriel, putting her head in.

  And all of a sudden I didn’t want to hear any more. I’d rather die not knowing. I covered my ears with my hands because it hurt too much; it all hurt too much. . . .

  But my eyes were still open, and Sister was smiling.

  Betty was sleeping again when they let me see her. She didn’t look all that different from how she had looked when I’d left her that morning—just a shade or two less pale, maybe—was it only that morning? It felt like weeks ago, years ago. . . . But she was better, the doctor promised. The worst was over. They all promised. She’d woken up, said Sister Gabriel, not an hour ago. Sat up, and knew us all, said Sister Maclovius. Had herself a bit of soup, said Sister Bridget. Chicken soup, Sister Genevieve had added. “With gizzards. You know how she loves me gizzards.”

  And then she’d gone back to sleep.

  But I wouldn’t believe a word of it till I’d seen her with my own two eyes. I wouldn’t leave her till I’d tucked Harriet in beside her. (They’d tried to pry her out of my hands before, but I wouldn’t let go.) And once she was lying there safe on the pillow by Betty, my legs had gone all rubbery without any warning, and my head had turned thick again, and the doctor had taken a good look at me and checked me from top to toe, then turned me over to Sister Gabriel, who hustled me out and up to my own bed in the slant-walled room. And Miss Downey came with her, but I didn’t mind, really. I was too tired to mind. I sat there like a lump—like Hyacinth under the brush—shivering a little while the two of them pulled off my stiff, wet clothes, and tut-tutted over the bruises on my arms and the gash on my shin, and brought a basin of warm water to wash away all the dried-up blood and half-froze sweat, and the tears that started falling now, steady as rain, when there wasn’t a reason in the world for ’em.

  “Hush, now. Hush,” said the lady, holding me fast. “You’re all right now, love. I’ve got you.”

  And then I heard it through my hiccups—or didn’t hear it, that was more like it—the roaring that had been in my ears all day.

  It had stopped.

  The wind had stopped.

  I lifted my eyes to the window.

  The snow had stopped falling.

  And away up high, past a thousand chimneys poking out of a thousand rooftops, the evening star was winking at me.

  March

  Chapter 30

  Saturday the 2nd

  Dear Julia,

  What the devil???

  I just got your letter from last week yesterday but before I could answer it Henry the Hired Boy who’s from the Patch too told me that he’d been to town for his cousin Ed’s funeral, only there wasn’t a body to bury because he’d been drowned under the ice in the Mississippi River and washed away to kingdom come in the middle of the blizzard while himself and Thomas Egan were trying to save some little kid from the nuns house with the same last name as me and God help us, Julia, I know it was you, who else could it be? No one, that’s who, and what in the world were you doing out there, for pity’s sake? Henry says it’s all anybody’s talking about all over town, only one says one thing and another says the opposite and all he knew for sure was that this kid didn’t drown too, so that was a relief anyway. But now you listen to me, Julia, there’s things I never told you because you were too young and it was none of your business but if you’re going to be cavorting on the ice with Thomas Egan and that crowd of hooligans you should know we Delaneys want no part of them, do you hear me? Not Egan or any of his mugs neither, though I guess there’s one less now that Eddie’s under the ice. And I suppose it’s Egan himself spreading the big hero story, which I don’t believe for a second, though God knows I’m glad you’re alive, even if you don’t deserve it.

  Yours truly from your sister,

  Mary P. Delaney

  The letter got to me first thing Tuesday morning, three days after the Saturday she wrote it, and by dinner that noon I’d read it maybe fifty times. And I knew I should answer it right away, but there was too much to tell and no way to tell it all, and my blood boiled up so red-hot every time I even thought about Thomas Egan making himself into some sort of hero that I couldn’t think of even the first word to say about it.

  Still, it sounded as if Mary knew it was all lies anyhow, smart girl that she was. And a good thing, too, with the whole world blabbing about it from morning to night, and no way of guessing what manner of eyewash she’d be hearing next.

  So I put it all out of my mind for the time being, and watched Betty getting better and better, just like the doctor had promised. She was sitting up every day these days, when they let me visit, and hanging on tight to Harriet, and smiling like her old self for longer and longer stretches. Sister Genevieve was still claiming it was her gizzard soup that had turned the tide—she wouldn’t stop making it now—we all but drowned in the awful stuff, gallon after gizzardy gallon. But I didn’t mind much. I’d have clucked from here to Christmas if it was that doing the trick, though I didn’t really think it was the gizzards—or Harriet, neither, or Sister Gabriel’s mustard and boiled onion poultices, or even Dr. McGill and all his medicine. Maybe they helped, and maybe they didn’t; I guess they couldn’t have hurt. But I knew a miracle when I saw one.

  And then there were cats.

  It was Winnie who found ’em, out in the barn. Nothing wrong with her ears, catching their scrawny little mewing even from outside, early one morning. The mother cat had ’em hidden away, up in the loft. She’d come in from the cold and had ’em there, and then disappeared somehow or other—died in the storm, or was gobbled up by something bigger, or got herself killed in a cat fight, maybe. What was that old limerick Gran used to recite when Mary and I started fussin’?

  There wanst was two cats of Kilkenny—

  Each thought there was one cat too many—

  So they fought and they fit

  And they scratched and they bit

  Till instead of two cats, there weren’t any.

  But instead of none, this poor old cat had left six more like her to take up where she’d left off—six tiny bits of fluff, tussling with one another and crying for their mama in a hay-nest, scarcely big enough to sneeze at. Just a handful of fur apiece—five hungry little stripers with the teensiest claws I ever saw (sharp as knives, even so), and one small black lump with his eyes hardly open. “Little Bear,” we all called him—L.B. for short—when Winnie brought the lot in a basket to the infirmary, and begged Sister Gabriel to let her show ’em to Betty, who fell in love straightaway, of course.

  “Glory be to gracious—cats, is it?” said Sister. “Cats in the sickroom! What next? We’ll be covered in fleas! Ah, no, Betty, don’t let it—look there, now, oh dear—not on my clean sheets!” But it was too late; Betty was already in cat heaven. She was awash in cats. She had taken every one out of the basket and now there were kittens in her lap and under her chin and climbing up her braids and sitting on Harriet’s hat, and you have never in all your life seen anyone look so happy as Mary Elizabeth Brickey. It would have taken a harder heart than Sister Gabriel’s to take those raggedy cats away, and dim that shining face. So that was that; they were Betty’s cats now, for good and all. Though she shared, of course, being Betty. We all took turns feeding ’em—milk with eyedroppers at first, till they learned to lap it—and cuddling and chasing after ’em and taking out their everlasting cat box, morning after morning. And trouble though they were, I swear they were better than any tonic, finer than an ocean voyage to the South Seas themselves, for putting the pink back in Betty’s cheeks and the sparkle in her brown eyes. And I could have kissed Winnie—well, almost—and every cat ever born, from first to last, for making her laugh again. Making us all laugh
till it hurt, with their solemn little pipsqueak faces and sweet, silly tricks.

  “Good work,” I told Winnie. She’d been keeping her distance ever since I got back from the blizzard, glancing at me sideways with jittery eyes and skittering away if she saw me coming, and I knew she was afraid I was mad at her for tattling that day, when she caught me climbing the fence, and telling Miss Downey and the Sisters where I’d gone. It had to be Winnie; who else would have known? Still, I might be dead now if she hadn’t, and I knew I should tell her so, when I got the chance. But I never could find the right moment, till now. “Good work”—that was all I could think of—and “Thank you, Winnie.” But I think she understood me. “It’s all right,” she said, blushing clear up to the roots of her wispy brown hair.

  Sister Maclovius, in the meantime, had caught a cold in her head that day in the storm, that got stuck in her chest somehow, and now it wouldn’t turn loose, no matter what the doctor tried. She’d lost her voice altogether just before Saint Patrick’s Day—now there was a miracle for you—we hadn’t heard a peep out of her since. But it didn’t stop her from waving her cane at all and sundry, of course, or showing up at the coroner’s inquest the next morning, which he’d agreed to hold in the parlor—our parlor, piano and all—since Sister wasn’t well yet.

  “The coroner?” I said to Sister Bridget, when she told me my presence was requested. “You mean the feller from the morgue? He doesn’t think I murdered Eddie, does he?”

  “Oh, no, no, no, Julia, don’t worry yourself. It’s only a formality, you see, when a thing like this happens. An informal formality, you might call it, just for the record. It’s some sort of law, I believe. He wants to talk to you, that’s all—you and the other witnesses—just to make sure he understands what happened that day, so they can put it on the death certificate. To be certain it was only an accident, you see—which it was, of course—don’t look like that, Julia; no one’s blaming you for Eddie! It was no one’s fault—well, not your fault—not on purpose, anyway. And you won’t be alone, of course; we’ll be right there with you.”

  I didn’t care much for that not on purpose. . . .

  “But there’s no body!” I reminded her. “They never found him, did they? He’s halfway to the Gulf of Mexico now, if the fish didn’t eat him first. How can there be a death certificate without a body?”

  But Sister Bridget didn’t know, and neither did anybody else—not even Marcella, who knew everything. “I’d have my bags packed, just to be safe,” she advised me. “In case they ship you off to Sing Sing right after.”

  I knew she was only teasing. But that night I dreamed I was on the ice again, and Eddie was rising up out of the river, reaching for me, and I was shaking like a leaf the next morning, when the inquest started—or didn’t start, actually—which it didn’t, for a full half hour, because Miss Downey was late.

  Miss Downey, who was never late.

  “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute now, Doctor Bracy,” said Sister Bridget, smiling a nervous smile at the white-haired gentleman with the coal-black eyebrows, who was sitting in the same large armchair that Santa Claus had favored, three months earlier. Betty had checked his pockets for jelly beans, just in case (though he didn’t look a thing like Officer Doyle, really), and he did seem a bit . . . surprised. Still, he patted her head, which made me like him, and she patted his right back, and fortunately Pop the Cop arrived just five minutes later anyhow and let her clean him out, first thing, so she started the day smiling.

  I could have told ’em they were pushing their luck, having Betty at a coroner’s inquest.

  But it couldn’t be helped. “We’ll have to explain about the doll, you see. It’s part of the evidence,” Sister Bridget told me. “And where the doll goes, Betty goes. She won’t let loose of her now.” The poor half-a-nun was so flushed under her freckles I was afraid she was feverish. I’d never seen her so fidgety about anything in all the time I’d been here. Sister Maclovius was right beside her, looking like her old self again—her regular old self—having mostly recovered. But her speechifying voice hadn’t recovered with the rest of her, so it had been decided that Sister Bridget would do whatever talking was needed, seeing as how she had the knack for it, and knew the whole story, besides. “It’ll be fine,” she went on explaining now, to anyone who might happen to be listening. “You’ve promised to behave, haven’t you, Betty? You understand me, don’t you? Well, of course you do. . . .”

  I wasn’t so sure. Not so much about whether she understood—I was fairly sure Betty understood everything she chose to. But at the moment she seemed mostly interested in the left pocket of her pinafore, which had a suspicious-looking lump in it. Only one, thank heaven, as far as I could tell—most likely L.B., since it was still as a stump, this lump, and more than likely fast asleep. But the little bear was getting bigger every day, and was apt to wake up and yowl when he was hungry. Should I warn Sister Bridget? I wondered. She’d have spotted him in a second any other time, if she hadn’t been so busy worrying about everything else. But I didn’t want Betty to start yowling, neither, if we tried to take him away from her. So I kept my mouth closed and hoped for the best.

  And the room was filling up now, anyway: Father Dunne was here, of course—Sister had told me he was coming—“just as a friend,” she’d said, in case we needed him. He’d gone right over and started talking and smiling with Dr. Bracy, as if they’d known each other forever. And then there was a tall boy with his cap in his hands—near as tall as Bill, but more bashful-looking—red right clear to the tips of his ears, which were at least two sizes too big for his head, though that seemed smaller than it really was, I suppose, due to his hair being cropped so short. He looked relieved when he spotted the priest. “Henry!” said Father Dunne, waving him over, and I heard him introduce the kid to the others as “an old friend of mine—Henry Tyborowski. One of our boys, till he grew up and left us. Just last fall, wasn’t it, Henry? Eddie’s cousin,” Father went on. “We thought the family should be represented.” And Sister Maclovius bowed to him, and Sister Bridget said he was welcome, and the gentleman-doctor-coroner (who had got up already to greet the priest) kept standing and shook Henry’s hand. “I’m sorry for your loss, son,” I heard him say, in a lovely deep roll of a voice, like a king should have, or a lion maybe, if only a lion could talk. Henry? I wondered. Not Henry the Hired Boy, was it? Why, sure—Eddie’s cousin—Mary’s friend from the farm. And he looked like an okay sort of feller (I liked those fiery ears, though I worried they might hurt him), so I made up my mind to talk to him first chance I got, and ask him about Mary, and tell him what to tell her for me when he got back to Jefferson County. But it would have to wait for later, because the door was opening again now—

  And my stomach went crashing to my boots, heavy as lead, because there was Tom Egan himself coming through it, taking off his coat and hat and handing ’em to the skinny little weasel of a man next to him—scarcely bigger than Jimmy Brannigan, that one; Fat Eddie could have fit him in a pocket—and smiling at the room in general, as if there was no question in his mind whatsoever that we’d all be thrilled to see him.

  “Good morning, Sisters,” Egan boomed, putting out a hand (which they both ignored), “and thank you for your kind hospitality. I do hope it’s not too much of an imposition, busy as you are. And look here, now—why, here’s the little girl again, isn’t it? Well, well, no hard feelings, young lady. No one’s blaming you for that unfortunate day. Not atall, not atall . . . just an accident . . . These things happen. . . . Rotten weather, that was what it was. Had us all in a state, now didn’t it? Such a sad day, a terrible day . . . But that’s all behind us, isn’t it? Good to have a bit of sunshine for a change, hey? Spring at last, do you think? Glad to see you all up and about, while we clear up any little misunderstanding among us. Our friend Eddie wouldn’t have wanted that, now, would he? No, indeed. Ah, me. ’Twas a brave man, Eddie was. And who’s this with you here, Father Dunne? Part of the family, is it? W
ell now, of course it is, of course it is; I remember you from the funeral, don’t I, lad? And such a touching tribute it was, too. . . . Are you getting all this, O’Hara?” he said to the weasel, who was following him around like a puppy now, hanging on every word, scribbling on a notepad with a stub of pencil he’d taken from behind his ear. “And what’s the holdup, Doctor Bracy? Weren’t we supposed to be starting at nine sharp? Not that I’m hurrying you, of course, but the Knights of Columbus are waitin’, you see; I do have a meeting in half an hour. So if we could get started in the next few minutes—?”

  Dear God, wouldn’t he ever shut up? The bile was rising in my throat again. I was going to be sick, if he kept on. I’d known he was coming; I guess a part of me had known it all along, but I hadn’t let myself think about it. I couldn’t let myself think about it. Oh Lord in heaven how I hated him—

  But then Miss Downey was rushing in, pink with embarrassment, and Mr. Hanratty-Maguire was right behind her, looking as if he’d just swallowed a prune, pit and all, and meanwhile the both of ’em were trying to explain at the same time, their words tumbling over one another:

  “Oh dear, so sorry to . . .”

  “. . . keep you all . . .”

  “. . . motorcar . . .”

  “. . . never seen such a stubborn . . .”

  “. . . traffic . . .”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Daniel, it wasn’t just the traffic! If you’d only just turn left for once in your—”

  “Remember yourself, Cora!”

  Miss Downey closed her lips tight then, and looked as if she was trying to remember herself, and having no luck, and I wanted to tell the handsome man he was wasting his time here. The Cora he was looking for was long gone, since the blizzard. And this one didn’t care to be bossed. She flashed him a look that would have withered his moustache, if he’d been paying better attention. But he was already busy bowing and shaking hands all ’round (though he skipped Thomas Egan, who hadn’t offered his anyhow), and Sister Bridget was ushering the whole crowd into their seats, and now Dr. Bracy the Kingly Coroner was clearing his throat and looking around the room and thanking us all for our time: