Fourthfloor,St. Rose Convent, Milton, NewYork
Before the previous day, Evangeline had believed what she’d been told about her past. She trusted the accounts she’d heard from her father and the sequence of events the sisters had told her. But Gabriella’s letter had shattered her faith in the story line of her life. Now she distrusted everything.
Gathering her strength, she stepped into the immaculate, empty hallway, the envelopes tucked under her arm. She felt weak and dizzy after reading her grandmother’s letters, as if she had just escaped from the confines of a horrible dream. How had it been that she’d never fully understood the importance of her mother’s work and, even more astonishing, her mother’s death? What more had her grandmother meant to tell her? How could she possibly wait for the next two letters to understand it all? Fighting the urge to run, Evangeline walked down the stone steps, making her way to the one place she knew she might find the answer.
The Mission and Recruitment offices were in the southwestern corner of the convent in a modernized series of suites with pale pink carpeting, multiple-line telephones, solid oak desks, and metal filing cabinets containing all of the sisters’ personal files: birth certificates, medical records, educational degrees, legal documents, and—for those who had departed this earth—certificates of death. The Recruitment Center—combined with the Mistress of Novices’ Office due to the decline in membership—occupied the left arm of the suite, while the Mission Office occupied the right. Together they formed two open arms embracing the outside world to the bureaucratic heart of St. Rose Convent.
In recent years traffic to the Mission Office had risen, while recruitment had fallen into a deep decline. Once upon a time, the young had flocked to St. Rose for the equity and education and independence convent life offered to young women loath to enter into marriage. In modern times, St. Rose Convent became more stringent, demanding that women make the choice to profess vows on their own, without family coercion, and only after much soul-searching.
Thus, while recruitment flagged, the Mission Office became the busiest department at St. Rose. On the wall of the office hung a large laminated map of the world with red flags affixed to affiliate countries: Brazil, Zimbabwe, China, India, Mexico, Guatemala. There were photographs of sisters in ponchos and saris holding babies, administering medicine, and singing in choirs with the native populations. In the past decade, they had developed an international community-exchange program with foreign churches, bringing sisters from all over the world to St. Rose to participate in perpetual adoration, study English, and pursue personal spiritual growth. The program was a great success. Over the years they had hosted sisters from twelve countries. These sisters’ photographs hung above the map: twelve smiling women with twelve identical black veils framing their faces.
Arriving at such an early hour, Evangeline had expected to find the Mission Office empty. Instead there was Sister Ludovica, the oldest member of their community, installed in her wheelchair as the early edition of a National Public Radio broadcast played from a plastic radio on her lap. She was frail and pink-skinned, her white hair springing about the bandeau edges of her veil. Ludovica glanced at Evangeline, her dark eyes glistening in a way that confirmed the growing speculation among the sisters that Ludovica was losing her mind, slipping further and further from reality with each passing year. The previous summer a Milton police officer had discovered Ludovica pushing her wheelchair along Highway 9W at midnight.
Lately her attentions had turned to botany. Her conversations with the plants were harmless but signaled further disintegration. As she wheeled through the convent with a red watering can dangling from the side of her chair, one could hear Ludovica’s stentorian voice quoting Paradise Lost as she watered and trimmed: “‘Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night / To mortal men, he with his horrid crew / Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe / Confounded though immortal!’”
It was plain to Evangeline that the Mission Office’s spider plants had taken to Ludovica’s affection: They had grown to enormous proportions, sending shoots dripping over the filing cabinets. The plant had become so profound in its fecundity that the sisters had started snipping the baby plants and placing them in water until they sprung roots. Once transplanted, the new spider plants grew equally enormous and were stationed throughout the convent, filling each of the four floors with tangles of green spawn.
“Good morning, Sister,” Evangeline said, hoping that Ludovica would recognize her.
“Oh, my!” Ludovica replied, startled. “You surprised me!”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was unable to pick up the mail yesterday afternoon. Is the mailbag in the Mission Office?”
“Mailbag?” Ludovica asked, furrowing her brow. “I believe that all mail goes to Sister Evangeline.”
“Yes, Ludovica,” Evangeline said. “I’m Evangeline. But I wasn’t able to pick up our mail yesterday. It would have been delivered here. Have you seen it?”
“Most certainly!” Ludovica said, wheeling the chair to the closet behind her desk, where the mailbag hung from a hook. It was, as always, filled to the top. “Please deliver it directly to Sister Evangeline!”
Evangeline carried the bag to the far end of the Mission Office, to a darkened cove where she might find more privacy. Spilling the contents over the desk, she saw that it was filled with its usual mixture of personal requests, advertisements, catalogs, and invoices. Evangeline had sorted through such muddles of post so often and knew the sizes of each variety of letters so well that it took her only seconds to locate the card from Gabriella. It was a perfectly square green envelope addressed to Celestine Clochette. The return address was the same as the others, a New York City location that Evangeline did not recognize.
Pulling it from the pile, Evangeline put the card with the others in her pocket. Then she walked to the metal filing cabinet. One of Ludovica’s spider plants had all but buried the tower in leaves, and so Evangeline found herself brushing aside green shoots to open the drawer containing her records.
Although she knew that her personal file existed, Evangeline had never thought to look at it before. The only time she’d needed vital records or proof of her identity had been to get a driver’s license and to enroll at Bard College, and even then she’d used identification drawn up by the diocese. It struck her again as she flipped through the files that she had lived her entire life accepting the stories of others—her father, the sisters at St. Rose, and now her grandmother—without bothering to verify them.
To her consternation, the file was nearly an inch thick, much bulkier than she would have thought. Inside, she had expected to find her French birth certificate, her American naturalization papers, and a diploma—she was not old enough to have accumulated more records than this—but upon opening the folder she found a large pack of papers banded together. Sliding the rubber band from the pages, she began to read. There were sheets of what appeared to her uneducated eye to be lab results, perhaps blood tests. There were pages of handwritten analysis, maybe notes from a visit to the doctor’s office, although Evangeline had always been healthy and could not recall ever having been to a doctor. In fact, her father had always resisted bringing her to the doctor’s office, taking great care that she would not get sick or hurt. To her dismay, there were opalescent black plastic sheets that upon closer inspection Evangeline saw to be X-ray films. At the top of each film she read her name: Evangeline Angelina Cacciatore.
It wasn’t forbidden for the sisters to look at their personal files, and yet Evangeline felt as if she were breaking a strict code of etiquette. Momentarily restraining her curiosity about the medical documents in her file, she turned to the papers relating to her novitiate, a series of run-of-the-mill admission forms that her father had completed upon bringing her to St. Rose. The sight of her father’s handwriting sent a wave of pain through her. It had been years since she’d seen him. She traced a finger over his handwriting, remembering the sound of his laughter, the smell of his office, his habit of reading himself to sleep each night. How odd, she thought, pulling the forms from the folder, that the marks he’d left behind had the power to bring him back to life, if only for a moment.
Reading the forms, she found a series of facts about her life. There was the address where they had lived in Brooklyn, their old telephone number, her place of birth, and her mother’s maiden name. Then, toward the bottom, written in as Evangeline’s designated emergency contact, she found what she was searching for: Gabriella Levi-Franche Valko’s New York City address and telephone number. The address matched the return address on the Christmas cards.
Before Evangeline had a chance to think over the repercussions of her actions, she lifted the phone and dialed Gabriella’s number, her anticipation clouding all other feelings. If anyone would know what to do, it would be her grandmother. The line rang once, twice, and then Evangeline heard it, the brusque and commanding voice of her grandmother. “Allo?”