“Oh, honey, I shouldn't have told you that story. Why don't you just forget all about it? Dream about what you have seen, not the unseen. What about that bobcat in the woods?” She held him until he settled, then sent him off to bed.
Blankets drawn to his chin, Sean fidgeted to find a warm and comfortable spot. In the dim light, he could make out the familiar shapes of objects in the room, and he spent a long time staring at the toy teacup Norah had given him and the books and games on the shelves his father had built. He wondered where his father was that night, worried that something bad would happen, and they would not ever get the chance to see each other again, though perhaps, he thought, one day in heaven after they both had died. Reunions were possible, he decided, in the afterlife when everyone gone and forsaken would have the chance to go over every harsh word and every word left unsaid, and such a possibility made sense of heaven, gave the idea some meaning and reason. Hanging on a hook in the open closet, his winter coat looked just like a pair of folded wings, ready to wear. Anxious, he rolled away toward the dim light at the window and felt a stab in his shoulder. Sean could not sleep and wondered if Norah was his guardian or had some dire message for him. Has she come to warn me? he wondered. Is now the hour of my death?
26
The sisters taught the girl to play gin, and she was winning every hand. Sometimes Norah would even lay down after picking up two or three cards, and the winners were astonishing: four queens and three eights; a straight flush to the jack of hearts. Margaret and Diane laughed with surprise each time, sipped their Irish coffees, and had another bite of the brownies Norah had baked with Auntie earlier that Saturday. The cards snapped as they were shuffled. Every so often, the furnace roared and bellowed for a few minutes, then the ducts pinged as the metal expanded and contracted. Like clockwork, Norah coughed abruptly just as the blowers stopped. Diane's turn to deal came round again, and as she passed out the seven cards, she asked what time they would be going to Mass in the morning.
“I'm not.” Margaret began arranging her hand. “This weather is killing me. I'll kneel down and never come up.”
Play began. Norah picked blind from the deck, discarded a two of clubs.
“Have you been to see a doctor, Maggie?”
Margaret drew a four of hearts, laid down a nine of diamonds. “No lectures, please. I had a doctor in the house for almost thirty years. It's nothing—arthritis, gingivitis, age-itis. An ordinary illness, life.”
Diane took her sister's nine and left a five of clubs for Norah, who folded it into her hand and put down a second nine. Diane sneered at her. Margaret passed on the discard and drew from the deck, throwing down a jack of diamonds atop the pile. Diane scooped it up before her sister had second thoughts, and left the ace of spades for Norah. “I think I'll go anyhow, you don't mind?”
“Gin.” Norah laid down three fives and four aces. “I'll go with you, Auntie Di.”
? ? ?
AT THE PROPER TIMES in the Mass, Norah knew when to kneel and when to stand; she said her prayers in concert with the people in their pew; she sang every hymn without looking at the words in the songbook, though she stayed behind when Diane rose to join the lines for Communion. Head bowed to her folded hands, she knelt and waited for her aunt's return, sighing when the whole congregation sat as the rite concluded. The priest and altar boys processed to a choir of voices, and it was over. Had they been the first to leave, they might have noticed the figure in the camel hair coat at the back of the nave, guarding the door as if a sentry to another world, but he left before the final blessing. They bundled into their coats and headed through the massive double doors, the frigid Sunday air bone-chilling after the closeness and warmth of so many people.
“What say we go see your grandfather?”
“My grandfather?”
“Pay a visit to his grave. Awful lonesome in wintertime with so few visitors.”
The others hurried to their cars, revved engines, sent thin clouds of exhaust into the air, and sped away. Diane and Norah waited till the last had left, then crossed the parking lot to the cemetery tucked behind a stand of sheltering firs. As they reached the gate, a crow lit out for parts unknown, a black smudge against the pale sky. A hundred souls or so lay buried by St. Anne's, and their stones and memorials rose like bergs on a rolling sea of snow. A caretaker had shoveled the main pathways, and here and there, a set of prints trailed off with dedication to a particular stone. Flowers and wreaths, some recalling the most recent Christmas, lay encased in ice, perfect until the first thaw. They meandered through the gardens, uncertain where Paul Quinn resided.
“You know, I've been meaning to steal you away from the moment I arrived. Just us girls. A chance to talk without you-know-who.”
“But you've been here a whole week.”