THE CONVENT IS STUCCO with ivy climbing on it. Inside, arched doorways, high ceilings, the smells of candles and bleach. No sounds, except a distant door shutting, perhaps soft voices.
Josephine sits up straight, her purse in her lap. Elisabetta slumps beside her, asleep or passed out, Josephine does not know which, her head gently bobbing. So pretty, this daughter was. So smart. But now she looks smudged, like God took his thumb and tried to erase her. Footsteps approach, heavy and rushed. The door opens and there is Chiara, in her black habit and thick stockings and black shoes. This one, unattractive as a girl, looks almost pretty as a nun, her hair hidden beneath the wimple so that all you see is her face, round and smooth, her brown eyes framed in long lashes.
Behind her is an older nun, stern-faced and bespectacled. Neither of them moves toward Josephine, so she gets to her feet and approaches them.
“No physical contact,” the older nun says.
Josephine struggles to understand.
The nun puts a possessive hand on Chiara’s shoulder. “She belongs to God now,” she says.
Chiara smiles. “Isn’t it wonderful, Mama?” she says. “Sister Gregory is my mentor. She stays by my side almost all day and night.”
The older nun is frowning. “A long trip?” she says.
Josephine follows her gaze to where Elisabetta slouches on the bench.
“Very long,” she says.
The three women stare at Elisabetta in an uncomfortable silence.
“Elisabetta,” Josephine says finally, her voice sharper than she intends.
Slowly, Elisabetta opens her eyes and looks around, confused.
“Chiara is here to greet us,” Josephine says, unable to take the edge out of her voice.
Elisabetta licks her lips, shifts her heavy-lidded eyes from face to face as if she is trying to place everyone.
Sister Gregory makes a clucking noise. Like a hen, Josephine thinks, and as she thinks it she decides that the nun even looks like a hen with her big, round bottom and narrow chest, the soft folds of her neck above her habit trembling slightly.
“We’ll go to our motel,” Josephine says firmly, taking charge now. “And we will see you tomorrow morning at the chapel.”
“You can take this with you,” Sister Gregory says, holding out a large sack. “It has all of her worldly goods in it,” she explains as Josephine takes it from her. “She won’t be needing any of it any longer.”
Chiara beams at this.
Josephine resists the urge to open the sack and see what her daughter has given up. She doesn’t need to look really; she knows Chiara has given up everything. For God, she reminds herself. But that thought doesn’t comfort her.
THEY EAT DINNER in a small café on the main street in Montpelier. Elisabetta has ordered something called an open-faced sandwich—turkey smothered in gravy on top of two pieces of toast. It looks nothing like an open face.
“Elisabetta,” Josephine begins.
“Betsy,” she says in a tired voice.
“Why are you so . . .” Josephine struggles for the right word. Unhappy? Angry?
“How should I be?” she says before Josephine finishes. “I am trying to finish my degree, but we have to keep moving because Kip can’t keep his pants on.”
Josephine frowns. Can’t keep his pants on?
“Oh,” Elisabetta moans, “I’m such an idiot.”
Josephine chews the stringy pot roast, considering what to say. But her mind stays blank.
“I should have married John Leone,” Elisabetta says unbelievably.
“Father Leone? How could you have married a priest?”
“I could have,” Elisabetta says in her drunken sleepy voice. “I had my chance.”
“Blasphemy,” Josephine mutters, and she makes a rapid sign of the cross.
Outside the window, beneath a streetlamp, a family walks past. The father is tall and lean and wears a red knit hat with a pom-pom on top. The mother has a long, blond braid down her back, and giant fuzzy earmuffs, and she holds the hand of a girl in a powder-blue coat. A light snow begins to fall, and Josephine feels like she is watching a movie of a family walking down a street in the snow in Vermont.
The girl stops, and slowly turns and faces the café. Josephine holds her breath. The girl seems to be looking right at her. Josephine stares back. I am here, she thinks, willing her words to leave the café and float out into the street, where they could settle on the girl.
“A pretty moon,” Elisabetta says in that way she has that seems like she is talking to herself and not Josephine.
Still, Josephine nods. The moon is a perfect crescent, her favorite, silver in the blue-black sky.
Now the girl smiles. At me, Josephine thinks. She is smiling at me. Her heart lurches and she gets to her feet. Without thinking she is moving toward the door, and then she is out the door, standing in the cold night air.
But the family has continued walking, and the father is saying in a loud voice with a strange accent, “That’s a good one. Tell it again.”
The girl’s high-pitched voice drifts in the air. “Why shouldn’t turkeys do math?”