“Sister, what would you do?”
“With a man?” Sister Matelda was around Domenica’s age. When a young woman neared thirty, she was in the waning months of her marriageability, though this did not seem to be an issue with Domenica. “I chose a different path, or rather, it chose me. So I am not one to give romantic advice.”
“If you loved a man, and he had brought you nothing but aggravation, would you go back to him?”
“If we’re talking about George Garrity of County Cork, I had to leave him behind when I took my novitiate. I left him a bereft man in Macroom. I was told he was useless like a chair with no legs after I broke his heart. But somehow and eventually, he found his footing. He married soon after I took my final vows five years later. A lovely girl. Mary Rose McMasters of Killarney. She had red hair like a sunset, I was told. They have six children now. Love finds its way; it clears all obstacles.”
“You don’t regret becoming a nun.”
“There are days. I left my father’s home in hopes of an adventure. There was none of that in Macroom. But as God would will it, I’ve had adventure here. I love to teach, and I have my calligraphy. I have my interests. The love of God makes me question my life, and that same love gives me the answers when I need them too.”
“I want peace.” Domenica stood and went to the window.
“Have you thought any more about becoming a novitiate?”
“When this is all over, and it will be, I want to go home. I’m an Italian and I belong there. I miss Viareggio and my family and my work in the clinic. If I were to become a nun, I would have to give that up. And I’m afraid I’m not selfless enough to do that.”
Sister Matelda nodded. She understood. “Some of us can make our way in the world anywhere we happen to be. You have a place that you long for—that’s not a selfish thing at all. It just means you know where you are best loved and the most useful.”
Sister Matelda went back inside the convent. Domenica tucked the letter from John into her apron pocket and walked down to the river.
* * *
The curtains were drawn in the window of John McVicars’s bedroom. A sliver of light rested on the sill under the rolling shade. He turned over in the bed away from the light and squeezed his eyes shut to finish the dream that was in full play as he slept. He found his way back to the scene where he had left it when the light stirred him.
“Where are you going?” he called to Domenica, who was in midair.
The wind fluttered her dress and lifted her body higher into the clouds. He could not reach her.
“Where are you going?” John hollered up to her again.
When McVicars woke up, he was feverish and his mouth was dry. He remembered the dream. Domenica was out of his reach. It was one of those dreams where you have a task and you cannot complete it because your feet are rooted in the earth.
Another chance, he thought to himself. Hastily he rose, dressed, and packed his duffel. He folded the letters on the desk and returned them to their envelopes before tying the stack together with a string. He tucked the letters into his uniform jacket before going down the stairs. He threw the duffel by the door before joining his mother in the kitchen.
“Do you want beans and toast? Bacon?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“How did you sleep?”
“Fitfully. Mother, I’m leaving this house.”
“Where are you going?”
McVicars said nothing. He pulled the stack of letters from Domenica out of his pocket. “Mother, what did you do?”
The color left her face. She turned away and lifted the teakettle off the stove.
“You kept these letters from me. Why?”
“No son of mine is going to end up with a Tally.”
“She’s a nurse. And a good person.”
“I know all about her.” She snickered.
“Because you opened my mail and read my letters and then you hid them from me.”
“They came to my house.”
McVicars was furious, but he knew from years of experience that his rage would do nothing to move his mother to see his point of view. “I’m going to go to her, if she’ll have me after what you’ve done.”
“She won’t,” his mother assured him.
“Did you think for one moment pretending to be me, sending a letter I did not sign, typed on your old Underwood, would stop me from marrying the woman I love?”
McVicars grabbed his duffel and left.
Grizelle opened the Daily Mail newspaper on the kitchen table. She read the front page, then slowly turned to read the second. She adjusted the eyeglasses on her nose and peered down to read an article that caught her eye.
THE DAILY MIRROR
By John Boswell
There are more than 20,000 Italians in Great Britain. London alone shelters more than 11,000 of them. The London Italian is an indigestible unit of population. He settles here more or less temporarily, working until he has enough money to buy himself a little land in Campania or Tuscany. He often avoids employing British labour. It is much cheaper to bring a few relations into England from the old hometown. And so the boats unloaded all kinds of brown eyed Francescas and Marias, beetle-browed Ginos, Titos and Marios . . . now every Italian colony in Great Britain and America is a seething cauldron of smoking Italian politics. Black Fascism. Hot as Hell. Even the peaceful, law abiding proprietor of the back-street coffee shop bounces into a fine patriotic frenzy at the sound of Mussolini’s name . . . we are nicely honeycombed with little cells of potential betrayal. A storm is brewing in the Mediterranean. And we, in our droning, silly tolerance are helping it to gather force.
Grizelle McVicars picked up a pencil and circled the word “betrayal.” He’ll be back, she said confidently to herself.
* * *