And even fearless Mrs. Tierney sat back in her chair in pure amazement as her mother related a tale of how she had spoken up: when the butcher had his finger on the scale or the hot water at home was running tepid or the insurance man failed to properly mark his note. “You spoke up,” Mrs. Tierney would say, flabbergasted, admiring, proud, and her mother would reply, all strength and assurance, “I certainly did.”
Mother and daughter still shared the same bed, as they had done since Sally was born. They woke together, and together went down the apartment stairs just after dawn. The early-morning strolls with Mrs. Tierney ended when all the children were swept into school, but Annie’s impulse toward routine was strong and still she stopped most mornings to see her friend—often in yet another, only slightly larger apartment; the six Tierney children growing so quickly that the new place was always immediately tighter still. Chaos and mess, as always, in Liz Tierney’s place. And then the walk to school, the Tierney children swarming. And Sally coming down the basement stairs just after three, swinging her books, a story to tell. And then, when the day was done, mother and daughter returning home at dusk, under Mrs. Gertler’s watchful eye, to the small dinner they would eat together at the dining room table. Then the cleaning up and the hour on the couch, Annie with piecework and the radio, Sally with her books or the newspaper or, if the paper bore bad news or the day had been dark, a rosary said together in alternating voices.
The repeated prayers, handed off between mother and daughter, always spoken clearly and loudly, as if to reach someone in the next room.
They put out the lights, checked the stove. In winter, Annie stood on a chair to pull tight the transom above the door. In summer, she stood to open it. Mother and daughter undressed together—routine eliminating all self-consciousness, if not the demure turning away—and then climbed into bed, Annie always on Jim’s side. They held hands beneath the covers, or spooned, or merely put fingertips to the other’s shoulder or arm. A whispered exchange in the dark: Let’s remember the rent money, those dresses from the donation box that will surely fit the Tierney twins, a dime for the missions, darning thread for the Sisters’ stockings. Let’s remember first Friday tomorrow—no breakfast.
Mrs. Gertler took to saying when she saw them in the hall, “More and more like sisters than mother and child,” and both of them blushed, reluctant to decide which was preferable.
They had dinner at the Tierneys’ apartment, Christmas and Easter for certain, but any number of Sundays in between, and Mr. Tierney, Sally saw, was a smiling man with a thick mustache, the source of much of Mrs. Tierney’s conversation on weekday mornings when he wasn’t there, but, in the flesh, hardly presence enough to make a difference. He sat at the head of the long table, he carved the turkey or the ham, he was gracious to her mother and included Sally whenever he addressed his daughters, but once the meal was over, he retreated behind his newspaper or stood out on the fire escape with a cigar or disappeared into the bedroom for so long that Sally was always startled to see him back again, sometimes dressed in his regal doorman’s uniform like an actor on a stage, epaulettes and fringe, the cap tucked under his arm. “No rest for the weary,” he said. And then he would be gone, the crowded household unchanged by the loss of him.
As a child, Sally believed she would marry a uniformed man and preside over a crowded apartment like the Tierneys’, but the appeal of the dream had nothing to do with the lack of a male presence in her life. She felt no such lack. The dream arose merely out of what she recognized as her mother’s pleasure in the Tierneys’ bustling, comical household—the music and the drama of the talk, the argument, the settling of scores. Her mother took the Tierney children into her arms, the younger ones especially, as if they were her own. She brushed her lips against their hair or rode them on her knee. In Sally’s experience, the Tierney household was the only place on earth where her mother agreed to take a drop. Where her cheeks flushed red with laughter. As a girl, Sally took pleasure in imagining herself someday presiding over a household like the Tierneys’—if only because of what a fine gift such a crowded, restful life would make for the mother she loved beyond all reason
*
“ARE YOU ALREADY THINKING about how you’ll leave me?” her mother asked her in the familiar darkness of the room they’d always shared.
There were tears in her mother’s voice, and the sound of them brought tears to her own eyes. The truth was, she hadn’t thought of her mother at all in that moment when the holy card sunlight fell over her head, or in the hours since.
“There’s no room for novices here,” her mother said. “They’ll send you to the motherhouse in Chicago.”
Sally said, “I know.”
“It’s a dirty town, I think,” Annie said.
Sally said, “I’d like to see it.”
“You’ll have to study nursing. Is that what you want?”
“It is,” the girl whispered.
“And then you’ll have to go where they send you. No guarantee you’ll come back home.”
“Yes,” Sally said.
“You’ll leave the world behind,” her mother said.
“I know.” Placid.
“You’ll leave me behind.”
In the pale darkness of the room, Annie turned her head on the pillow. Streetlight shone through the worn shades, so she could just make out the tears that were welling in her daughter’s eyes. She saw them spill—a shining, gray, liquid light—and knew in an instant that her words had only honed her daughter’s vague resolve.
It was the same mistake her own widowed mother had made when she raised every good objection to Annie’s leaving home to follow Jim. He had no job, no prospects, and no promise of marriage had been made. He was—her mother’s word—peculiar: laughing and charming in one minute, gone blackly silent the next. His mother, too, was strange.
Sensible, sensible, everything she said against him. But at the core of every reasonable argument the old woman made, Annie heard her fear. Her need. Annie’s two sisters were in London. One brother was in Liverpool. Her elder brother lived just down the road, but he had a brace of small children of his own. Her mother wanted to keep her last unmarried daughter for herself—a stay against the loneliness of her final years.
Annie grew bolder with every good warning her mother spoke. Her resolve swelled, feeding not on the perfect sense her mother made but on her own new disdain for the woman’s weakness. Her selfishness. Annie had, until then, thought her mother stronger than that. More capable of great sacrifice for the sake of her child’s happiness.
In her mind’s eye, she saw a crone’s hand reaching up as if from a grave, reaching up to catch the skirt of a girl who had already danced away.
“Oh, we’ll see each other again,” Sally said calmly, into the darkness. “Life is like the blink of an eye.”
Of course, it was Sister Jeanne’s voice entirely.