It all struck her as senseless now: food and drink carried in just a moment ago, carried in to feed a body now lifeless. An absurdity.
Slowly, with nothing to hold on to, Sally sank to her knees behind the two nuns. Behind their dark veils and skirts and the worn, upturned soles of their black shoes. They were saying the Hail Mary. Sally sat back on her heels. The rug here was a worn Persian, not unlike the rug in Sister Illuminata’s laundry, where she had played as a child. It was clean enough, Sally thought, but perhaps threaded here and there with street sand or mud. Whatever Mr. Costello brought in on his big farmer’s feet. It was February. No doubt the rug had been swept often in these last few months, but not taken out for a beating since spring.
Now Sister Lucy was standing, slowly, leaning on Mrs. Costello’s bed to get to her feet. Mrs. Costello’s body moved slightly in response to the pressure on the mattress. Sister Jeanne knelt still, her head bent. Sister Lucy, towering over them all now, looked down at Sally and tilted her head to indicate that she should leave the room. “Pick up those cups,” Sister Lucy said, her voice weary. Sally had never before heard weariness in Sister Lucy’s voice. Obediently, she picked up the cup and saucer with the poisoned tea and ran her finger through the ring of the cup of applesauce. She held both close to her chest. On her way out, Sister Lucy stopped at the dresser, opened a drawer, and removed one of Mrs. Costello’s neatly folded nightgowns, the one Sister Jeanne had put away just minutes ago. She put it on the top of the dresser and went out.
Sally followed the nun into the kitchen. Sister Lucy lifted the teakettle and then filled it at the sink and put a flame under it on the stove. She went to the kitchen cupboard and found a tin washbasin. She poured the warmed water into the basin and then, as if just remembering something—she let out a “tut” and shook her head—she went back into the living room. And quickly returned with her cloak taken off and her apron over her habit, her veil tied back with a black ribbon. She poured the rest of the water into the basin, took a bar of soap from the milk box beside the draped tub, placed it in the water. She lifted the basin and walked out. Pausing as she did to look Sally up and down, the two cups and the saucer still clutched to her chest. She saw Sister Lucy’s eyes look into the cup of applesauce, saw her eyebrow rise. But Sister Lucy only said, “Clean up, won’t you?”
Sally poured the tea and the pale dregs of sugar and alum into the sink. She scraped the applesauce into the sink as well and saw the large pieces of apple and apple peel hesitate at the mouth of the drain. She pushed them through with the spoon, running the water until all of it was washed away. She could not think of the future. She could not think of the next hour. And all of the recent past seemed faded and unreal. She could barely recall her ridiculous plan. What had she wanted, exactly? Why was she here?
She took the dust rag and the broom from the corner and returned to the living room, where she ran the rag along the two faded lampshades, then across the mantel of the sealed fireplace. Over the statue of St. Joseph with his hammer in his fist, his hand to his heart. From the bedroom, she could hear the two nuns moving about; there was the swish of the water in the basin, the clean scent of the soap, the occasional exchange of brief words, “Another towel, Sister,” “Thank you, Sister,” “If you’ll just hold her there…”
Sister Jeanne emerged from the room with the basin full of soapy water, but her head was bent and Sally could not see her face. She heard her empty the water and put a few things away. And then she passed through the room again. She touched Sally’s arm and looked up at her. Sally could see that her eyes were bloodshot and her face was drained of color, gray against her white coif and the white brim of her bonnet. Her small mouth was drawn. “Come in for a prayer,” she whispered.
Reluctantly, Sally leaned the broom against the mantel, placed the dust rag beside it. She ran her damp palms over her skirt. Sister Jeanne waited for her at the door of the bedroom, and then put her arm out as Sally approached, to indicate that the girl should go ahead of her. Sally recalled the way Sister Jeanne had put out her arm as she’d tried to near Mrs. Costello’s bed, blocking her way.
The room held a new light. At first Sally thought the day outside had cleared, sunlight breaking through the clouds and the window shades, but then she saw that two candles were lit on the dresser. The smell of the new flame mixed pleasantly with the fresh linen on the bed and the lingering scent of the soap they had used to bathe her. Mrs. Costello was as she had been. Her body still and narrow under the counterpane, the slope of her knee, the space of her missing leg. Her hands were now crossed over the breast of her fresh nightgown, small wisps of damp hair prettily framing her face. Her face was as pale as ever, but there was a new grayness to her lips, and her features had grown sharper, more finely honed.
The china-faced dolls on the dresser were terrible.
Sally began to cry. She lowered her head. She gave herself over to it freely. She thought of nothing at all, not the last hour or days or weeks, nothing of the hours ahead. Sister Jeanne put an arm around her waist. Sally felt the nun’s small hand press itself into her side, clutching and letting go. Everything she had planned, imagined, hoped for, all her fraught negotiations with herself, with God, with the future and the past, were nothing before this stillness. She could not trace, for the moment, what had brought her here, could not parse, for a moment, what it meant. She simply cried. The scent of candle flame and soap and Sister Jeanne’s habit, the fresh handkerchief the little nun placed gently into her hands. Sister Lucy. The sound of rain on the windows, rattling in the gutters. The still figure on the bed and the scent, too, of death, animal death, a dead mouse behind the wall, encroaching on the room.
Sister Lucy said, whispering—Sally had never heard her whisper before—“Mr. Costello will be home shortly.” Which meant Sally should go.
She returned to the living room with Sister Jeanne, still drying her tears. She put on her hat and her coat—it seemed a lifetime since she had taken them off—and then had to return to the kitchen for her purse. Sister Jeanne followed her. She said, “Take a drink of water before you go. Put a little cold water on your face,” and Sally went to the sink to obey. And then as she turned, Sister Jeanne handed her the pocketbook. The clasp was open. Sister held on to the strap for just the extra second it took for her to raise her head, to meet Sally’s eyes. Sister Jeanne said, “You did no harm, dear. Whatever you’d thought to do.” She said, “God is fair. He knows the truth.”