Once she was immersed, Mrs. Costello quieted. There was only a whispered, sucking kind of sobbing. Sister Lucy looked around and then barked, “Take those towels off the dirty floor.”
Sally obeyed—although she noticed with some resentment that the worn wooden floor was not at all dirty—and then stood with the two rough towels clutched to her chest. The woman, naked in the water, was awful to see, and yet Sally could not draw her eyes away. She had, on occasion, glimpsed her mother’s solid body in the bath, but she had never before seen another human being so exposed. The woman’s throat and arms and small puckered breasts were thin, raked, as if the flesh had been scraped away by a dull knife, whittled from Ivory soap. Mrs. Costello’s one full leg floated, the other flailed weakly as she moved, now, suddenly, placid, rubbing the soap between her hands, leaning forward to let Sister Lucy wash her back. The tail of her braid was dark with water. A fine pink stain rose into the bath from between her thighs.
“Stand watch,” Sister said, straightening up, and then left the room.
Once more Mrs. Costello turned her blue eyes on Sally. Her eyes were sunk into her skull, and the surrounding flesh had a dark hue, but the irises themselves were vivid. Her pale nakedness made them more striking still. Sally smiled at her. She could think of nothing to say. Expressionless, the woman stared for what might have been a full minute, and then turned her attention to the soap. The word brazen—her mother’s word—came to mind: there was no impulse on the woman’s part to cover herself, to apologize, to beg forgiveness for her sorry state.
When Sister Lucy returned, she had Mrs. Costello’s clothes in her arms. A simple dress, wool stockings, underwear. She had a white cloth on top of it all, four safety pins in her mouth. Expertly, Sister pinned the napkin to the inside of the underpants, and then took the towels from Sally’s arms. She placed one on the seat of the wheelchair, threw the other over her shoulder. She lifted Mrs. Costello smoothly out of the tub—now the woman was as trustful as an infant—placed her in the chair, and dried her flesh with a vigorous rub. She dressed her, lifting and pushing. At one point, Mrs. Costello began to sob again, but Sister hushed her and she remained hushed. Then, with an abrupt tilt of her head, Sister Lucy told Sally to follow her back into the bedroom, where she maneuvered the chair to the window so Mrs. Costello would be facing out. She lifted the hairbrush from the dresser and handed it to Sally. “Do a nice job” was all she said. Then she stripped the linen from the bed and left the room.
The woman’s long fair hair was coming out of its tangled braid. Even Sally could tell this was the clumsy work of a man. She pulled the damp braid apart as gently as she could while Mrs. Costello fidgeted in her chair, leaning forward abruptly, turning her head to look up and down the street. “Is it a nice day out there?” she asked, and Sally told her it was. She sat back abruptly. “My husband will carry me down this evening,” Mrs. Costello said. “We’ll sit in the park for a while.”
“Won’t that be nice,” Sally said.
Suddenly Mrs. Costello reached back, swatting at her hands. “Don’t pull.”
“I’m trying not to, Mrs. Costello,” Sally whispered. She ran her fingers through the last tangles, loosening the braid, releasing the human odor of what her mother called “winter scalp.” Carefully, tentatively, she began to brush out the wet ends, her hand held beneath them so she would not pull.
She asked Mrs. Costello, “Would you like a braid or a bun?” glancing up as she did, catching in the window before them the faint image of Mrs. Costello’s face and, hovering above it, herself, being so kind.
Mrs. Costello said, thoughtfully, “Oh my.” She bowed her head. “What do you like?” This was a new voice entirely, gentle and demure.
“I’ll braid it first,” Sally suggested. “Then I’ll coil it nicely. I do this for my mother sometimes.” Which wasn’t true. Her mother did her own hair. She couldn’t have said why she lied.
With more confidence now, she gently ran the brush over the woman’s scalp. Mrs. Costello’s head was small and her hair was thin—not like Sally’s own, she thought, not without vanity, which had a nice wave, or her mother’s, which was Irish thick and dark still, her crowning glory, she sometimes said. The brushing stirred the oil on Mrs. Costello’s scalp so that the roots of her hair began to grow as dark as the ends that were still wet from her bath. There were gray strands mingled with the blonde and Sally remembered Mr. Tierney last Christmas singing to his wife, “Darling, you are growing older, silver threads among the gold.” Three sheets to the wind, Mrs. Tierney had said, turning away from him as he tried to kiss her—his thick mustache and his wet lips—all of them laughing.
Mrs. Costello bowed her head as the brush ran through it. She seemed to purr a little, a pleasant humming in the back of her throat. There were hairpins in a dish on the dresser. Sally reached for them, glancing at the mirror as she did, at her own face under the short veil. There was a small wedding picture on the doily that covered the dresser top. Mrs. Costello was seated in a chair, two feet beneath her lace skirt. There was a bouquet of silk flowers on her lap. Her husband stood beside her, his bowler hat in the crook of his arm. It was a slimmer, darker version of the milkman she knew. Both of them were somewhat wide-eyed, serious, and maybe afraid. He looked very young. She looked somehow lifeless in her solemn beauty, like one of the china dolls that were slumped together on the dresser. The dolls’ faces, too, were finely shattered. One had a glass eye askew.
Sally turned back to the woman. Mrs. Costello was sitting calmly now, her hands in her lap. Sally felt a surge of pride: she was doing very well here. She coiled the thin braid into a golden bun and pinned it carefully. She patted it with her palms and then stepped around the wheelchair to look at the woman straight on. She bent down, smiling at her.
“You look very nice,” she said.
Mrs. Costello raised her head slowly, almost coyly. Her blue eyes sought Sally’s, and Sally stepped back a bit to smile at the woman, but then Mrs. Costello’s gaze slipped away, to the rooftops across the street. Her eyes grew distant and then glistened with tears.
“I have a pain,” Mrs. Costello whispered, and she pointed to the place where her foot should have been. “I’m in pain.” And then she looked at Sally straight on. Her mouth crumpled the way a child’s will when it can no longer resist its tears. Sally felt her own lips turn down in sympathy.
“I am abandoned and alone,” Mrs. Costello said.
Sister Lucy shouted “Nonsense” as she came into the room with the breakfast tray. She glanced at what Sally had done with the woman’s hair, but said only, “Step aside.” She placed the tray on the dresser, opened a small tea table that had been leaning beside the radiator. Sister’s bustling seemed to bring the woman back to herself. She narrowed her eyes.