With a nervous smile Elise said, “You are very kind, but I don’t want to be a burden.”
Anna said, “Elise, Auntie doesn’t like to be challenged in these matters. She gets a great deal of satisfaction out of imposing her goodwill, and we humor her.”
“Why you—” Aunt Quinlan began, and then gave in to laughter. They all did, even Elise.
? ? ?
AT NINE ELISE could not keep her eyes open any longer. Mrs. Quinlan sent her off to bed with a pile of borrowed nightclothes that smelled of cedar shavings and lavender.
“I put out some things so you won’t have to go searching, soap and such,” Mrs. Lee said. “Now if you said thank you this evening five times you’ve said it fifty. Go to bed, girl.”
“Then I’ll say good night instead.” But she stood there in the doorway, feeling as if something important were hanging in the air waiting to be made real.
Mrs. Lee had turned back to the sorting of the clothes from the attic, putting aside the ones she would wash and press for Elise to use. The urge to protest was strong, but Elise had the idea that Mrs. Lee would not be amused.
“Really,” said Mrs. Quinlan, kindly. “If you’re going to start at the hospital tomorrow, you will need your sleep.”
? ? ?
THE DOOR TO the room Elise was meant to use stood half open. She hesitated, wondering why this particular moment was so difficult, and why it felt more final than getting on the train headed for the city. The room as her own for as long as she cared to stay, Mrs. Quinlan had told her. And how was a person to deal with such generosity?
To start with, she could appreciate the beautiful things around her.
There was a desk where she would do her work and study, below a window that looked out over the garden. Beside it was a small bookcase where she would line up her books—chemistry and anatomy, pharmacology and therapeutics. If that weren’t enough, there was a deep upholstered armchair to read in.
The bed was covered with a red and white quilt. Four plump pillows butted up against a high headboard that looked very old, the dark wood carved into a mural of branches in leaf and birds. She took note of the wardrobe and washstand with a jug of water and a painted porcelain basin. Mrs. Lee had put out a cake soap still wrapped in paper, a toothbrush, and a can of toothpowder with an elaborate label: Dr. Martin’s Camphorated Dentifrice for Clean, Healthy Teeth.
The whole house was full of pictures, and this room had its share. Elise especially liked the portraits of young children, most of them very simple, just touched with color. There were three in this room: two young girls with white-blond curls, a bald baby with fat red cheeks in a wheelbarrow, and four little boys standing in a row trying to look very fierce. The only portrait of an adult hung opposite the bed. An elderly black woman with deep-set, honey-brown eyes below a head cloth of sprigged muslin. She seemed to be watching over the bed itself, her expression patient. It was a very old face, quite possibly older than Sister Theresa, who was more than ninety.
It just occurred to Elise now that she would never see Sister Theresa again, and with that the tears she had expected when she walked away from the convent finally came.
With some resolve she opened her valises and unpacked the few personal items she had brought with her: underclothes, books and notebooks, a battered pen box, her missal and rosary, a comb. For a moment she considered the small bundle of letters from home, the first thing she had packed.
There weren’t many letters—just one for every year since she left to start her novitiate—but they were all many pages long and close-written. Every Easter her mother and aunts wrote the annual letter together, reading passages out loud at the dinner table for comments and soliciting contributions. The letters were almost like a magical mirror that let Elise watch them as they sat around the kitchen table arguing about when exactly the old mule had died, and the lightning strike that had taken down two trees at once on the far edge of the property, or Aldonce the butcher’s annual visit, when he came to call with such high hopes, and went home empty-handed because Aunt Bijou had turned him down, as she always did. As soon as he was out of sight Bijou would start contemplating next year’s excuse, because she liked Aldonce well enough and had no wish to injure him.
Elise had a letter of her own to write, but it must wait until she had slept. The things she needed to say would need careful wording.
She undressed and hung the awful dress on a hook in the wardrobe. The shoes she set neatly beneath. She washed and finally pulled the soft muslin nightdress over her head and let it drop, so that the hem whispered against her bare feet.