Reborn ac-4 Page 6

  Grace saw that Jim's face was bright red and that he was biting his upper lip. She saw Carol hurl him a warning look.

  Finally he let out a sigh and nodded.

  "Yes. Very nice."

  "I know what you're thinking," Grace said as he handed it back to her. "That if all the wood that's been sold as splinters of the True Cross were assembled in one place, the amount of lumber would probably equal the Black Forest in Germany." She replaced the relic within the cabinet. "Many religious authorities are skeptical too. Perhaps they're right. But I like to compare it to one of Jesus' miracles. You remember the story of the Loaves and the Fishes, don't you?"

  "Of course," Jim said.

  "Same principle."

  And that was enough on the subject. She offered them tea but they refused. After they all found seats she said,

  "What brings you here to the city from the wilds of Long Island?"

  Grace saw Carol glance questioningly at Jim.

  He shrugged and said, "Tell her. It'll be public knowledge next week."

  And so Grace listened distractedly as her niece told her about Dr. Roderick Hanley's death, Jim's invitation to the reading of his will, and why they had good reason to believe that Jim might be Hanley's son.

  Grace was having difficulty concentrating on Carol's words. The tension—she could barely stand it. Its intensity had nothing to do with what Carol was saying. It was simply there! And it was growing stronger by the minute.

  She didn't want Carol to know anything was wrong, but she had to get away, had to leave the room, even if for only a few minutes.

  "How interesting," she said, rising from her seat. "Excuse me for a moment, won't you?"

  It took every ounce of Grace's will to keep from running as she headed for the bathroom. She forced herself to latch the door gently, and then she leaned against the sink. The glaring white tile and porcelain of the confined, cell-like space only seemed to intensify the sensation. In the mirror her face was pale and beaded with sweat.

  Grace clutched her Miraculous medal in one fist and her scapular medal in the other. She felt as if she were about to explode. She pressed her fists tightly over her mouth. She wanted to scream! Nothing like this had ever happened before. Was she going crazy?

  She couldn't let Carol and Jim see her like this. She had to get them out of here. But how?

  Suddenly she knew a way.

  She forced herself to return to the front room.

  "I'd love to discuss this some more, dear," she said, praying her voice wouldn't break, "but this is the time I set aside each day in the weeks before Lent to say the Rosary. Won't you join me? I'm doing the Fifth Glorious Mystery today."

  Jim shot to his feet and looked at his watch.

  "Whoa! Time to get to dinner!"

  Carol was not far behind.

  "We really must be going, Aunt Grace," Carol said. "Why don't you come to dinner with us? We're going down to Mulberry Street."

  "Thank you, dear," she said as she pulled their coats from the closet, "but I've got choir practice tonight, and then I'm on the eleven-to-seven at Lenox Hill."

  "Still nursing?" Carol said with a smile.

  "Until the day I die." She pushed their coats at them, wanting to scream, Get out! Get out before I go crazy right here in front of you! "Sorry you have to run."

  Carol seemed to hesitate. As she opened her mouth to speak, Grace quickly pulled her favorite Rosary beads—the clear crystal ones, blessed by the Holy Father himself—from the pocket of her housecoat.

  "Yes," Carol said quickly. "So are we. I'll call you soon. We'll give you a rain check on dinner."

  "That will be lovely."

  Carol paused at the door. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes-yes. Jesus is with me."

  She kissed Carol, waved a quick good-bye to Jim, then sagged against the door after she had closed it behind them. What would happen now? Would she have a convulsion or go into some sort of" screaming fit? What was happening to her?

  Whatever it was, she couldn't let anyone be here. She knew that was foolhardy from a medical standpoint, but what if she said some things she didn't want to, things she wanted no one else to hear? She couldn't risk that, no matter what the danger…

  Wait…

  The feeling… the dread, the tension. It was lessening. As mysteriously as it had come, it was leaving. By slow degrees it was oozing out of her.

  Quickly, fervently, Grace began her Rosary.

  2

  "Do you think she's all right?" Carol asked Jim as they stepped out onto cold, wintry East Twentieth Street. "Her face looked kind of strained to me."

  She dearly loved that pudgy little woman with her twinkling blue eyes and apple cheeks. Grace was the only family she had left.

  Jim shrugged. "Maybe it was me. Or maybe living with that decor is affecting her."

  "Oh, Jim."

  "Really, Carol, even though she doesn't like me, I think Grace is a sweet old lady. However, she's a paradigm of religiosity, and maybe it's getting to her. Look at that place! It's loaded with guys nailed to crosses! Disembodied hands folded in prayer rising out of the counters. And not one—but six pictures of bleeding hearts on the wall."

  "You know very well that's the Sacred Heart." She fought a smile away from her lips. She couldn't let Jim get rolling. Once he got started, there was no stopping him. "Now cut it out! Seriously, Jim. I'm worried about her. She didn't look well."

  He looked at her more closely. "You really are worried, aren't you? Come to think of it, she did look ready to jump out of her skin. Maybe we should go back up."

  "No. I don't think she wanted company today. Maybe I'll give her a call tomorrow to see how she's doing."

  "Good idea. Maybe we should have insisted on taking her out for a drink at least."

  "You know she doesn't drink."

  "Yeah, but I do, and right now I could use a drink. Two drinks. Many drinks!"

  "Don't overdo it tonight," she warned, sensing that he was in the mood for some serious celebrating.

  "I won't."

  "I mean it, Jim. One word about warts later on and we're on our way home."

  "Warts?" he said, all shock and wounded dignity. "I never talk about warts!"

  "You know you do—when you've had one too many."

  "Well, maybe. But drinking has nothing to do with it."

  "You never mention them when you're sober."

  "The subject never comes up!"

  "Let's eat," she sighed, hiding a smile.

  3

  Later, when she was calmer, Grace sat on the edge of her bed and thought about what Carol had told her about Jim being an heir to the Hanley estate.

  She felt good now. The Rosary, a bowl of hot cream of mushroom soup, and it was as if nothing had happened. Within minutes of Carol and Jim's departure, she had felt fine.

  An anxiety attack, that's what it had been. She had seen so many of them back in her days as an emergency-room nurse but had never imagined she would ever fall victim to one. A little phenobarbital, a little reassurance, and the patient, usually a thin young woman who smoked too much—I certainly don't fit that picture—would be sent on her way in much-improved condition.

  But what could have triggered it?

  Guilt?

  Very likely. She had read articles in her nursing journals about guilt being at the root of most anxiety.

  Well, I've certainly got plenty to be guilty about, haven't I?

  But Grace didn't want to think about the past, nor even about her anxiety attack. She turned her thoughts to what Carol had said. Astonishing things, such as Jim being an orphan—Grace hadn't had the slightest notion about that—and about his being named in a will…

  Dr. Roderick Hanley's will.

  Grace vaguely remembered doing private duty for a Dr. Hanley, in the early days of World War II. She had cared for a newborn boy in a town house about twenty blocks uptown in Turtle Bay. It had been a live-in job. The child's mother, whoever she was, was no
where to be seen. The doctor never mentioned her. It was as if she had never been.

  Could that have been the same Dr. Hanley?

  Could that infant have been Jim Stevens?

  It didn't seem probable, but the timing was right. Jim would have been an infant at that time. Jim Stevens could very well have been that child.

  Oh, I hope not, Grace thought.

  Because there had been something wrong with that child, with that whole house. Grace hadn't been able to identify exactly what it was that had made her so uncomfortable there, but she remembered being grateful that the job lasted only a few days.

  Shortly thereafter she changed her evil ways and returned to the Church.

  She wished Carol would return to the Church. It saddened her to think of her only niece as a fallen away Catholic. She blamed that on Jim. Carol said he wasn't to blame. She said the Church just didn't seem "relevant" anymore. Everyone seemed to talk about "relevance" these days. But didn't she see that the Church, as God's instrument in the world, was above and beyond something as transient as "relevance"?

  No, the relevance angle sounded like Jim talking. The man was an incurable skeptic. The Church taught that no one was beyond hope of redemption, but Grace was quite certain that Jim was testing the limits of that teaching. She hoped he hadn't permanently endangered Carol's soul."

  But he seemed to make Carol happy—happier than she had ever been since her parents died. And there was much to be said for making another person happy.

  Maybe there was hope for Jim yet. Grace vowed to pray for both their souls.

  Grace worried about souls. Especially her own. She knew that before she returned to the Church in her late twenties, she had blackened her soul almost beyond repair. Since then she had worked at cleansing it by doing penance, doing good works, and seeking absolution.

  Absolution was the hardest for her. She had received a plenary indulgence on a number of occasions from various visiting bishops, but she wondered if it had worked for her, wondered if it had really had the effect she'd prayed for: to wipe her soul clean of all her past sins. There were so many! She had committed the worst of sins in her younger days, terrible sins she was afraid to think about, hideous sins that so shamed her, she had never been able to speak them to a priest, even in the confessional. The lives she had taken! She was sure—knew—that if anyone in the Church learned of the things she had done in her youth, she certainly would be excommunicated.

  And excommunication would kill her. The Church was her only source of peace now.

  Grace glanced at the clock next to her bed—the dial was set into a pair of hands folded in prayer—and saw that she would be late for choir practice if she didn't hurry. She didn't want to miss that. She felt so good when she was praising the Lord in song.

  4

  "They outdid themselves with the garlic tonight," Jim said as he twirled his linguini in the thick golden clam sauce.

  They had discovered Amalia's last year, a tiny restaurant on Hester Street, right off Mulberry, where the waiters were unperturbed by Jim's habit of eating his meat course before the pasta. Everyone at Amalia's ate together at long tables covered with red-and-white-checkered cloths. Tonight, though, they had a corner all to themselves.

  "This is so good!" he said. "Sure you don't want to try even a bite?"

  Carol shook her head. "You finish it."

  His eyes were a little bloodshot and she could guess why. They had each had a cocktail before dinner, and wine with. Carol had only had one glass of Soave with what little she had eaten of her pasta, but now, as the meal drew to an end, they had an empty Soave plus a near empty Chianti.

  "Hard to believe that I've finally found my father," he said. "And by next week I'll probably know who my mother is too. Is that great, or what?"

  Carol reached over with her napkin and wiped a bit of the butter sauce off Jim's chin, thinking how she loved this grown man but loved equally the little lost boy inside him who was still looking for his Mommy and Daddy.

  He took her hand and kissed her fingers.

  "What was that for?" she asked, touched.

  "For putting up with me."

  "Don't be silly."

  "No, I mean it. I know I get pretty wrapped up in myself when it comes to finding my parents. It's got to be a drag for you. So thanks for the support—as always."

  "Whatever's important to you is important to me."

  "That's easy to say. I mean, anybody can mouth the words, but you really mean it."

  "That's because it is easy when you love someone."

  "I'm not so sure. You've encouraged me to go on writing novels that no one wants to publish."

  "It's only a matter of time." She never wanted him to stop writing, no matter how many rejections he got.

  "Let's hope so. But the important thing is you never made me feel I should give it up or that you were impatient with me. You never once used it to put me down, even when we fight."

  She winked at him. "It's an investment. I know you're going to be a rich and famous author before long and I want you to feel you owe it all to me."

  "So there's a financial motive, ay? Well, I think I'd better— wait a minute!"

  He suddenly dropped her hand and poked through the remains of clam sauce with his fork. He lifted a small, round piece of garlic and put it on her plate.

  "Doesn't that look like a wart to you?"

  "That's it!" she said, beating him to the Chianti bottle as he reached for it.

  "What?" He looked baffled. "What'd I say?"

  "Time for coffee."

  His eyes lit. "With Sambucca?"

  "Straight and black. Espresso, even!"

  "Aaaawww!"

  5

  Grace was in good voice tonight. She listened to her voice mix with the deep chords from the organ as they reverberated through the vaulted spaces of St. Patrick's Cathedral. She was hitting the highs with a richness of tone that was exceptional even for her. "Ave Maria" was her favorite hymn. She had begged for the solo and had been granted it. Now she was doing it justice.

  She was aware that the other members of the choir had remained in their seats behind her, listening. This added personal pride to her usual joy of praising the Lord in song, for it was common during a soloist's practice for the choral singers to step outside for a cigarette or retreat to a distant corner for quiet conversation. Not this time. They sat in rapt attention as she sang.

  A meaty voice, her choir director had said. Grace liked that expression. She did have a full, rich, meaty voice. It went with her solid, meaty body. She had given over most of her spare time to singing for the last two decades of her fifty-three years, and all those years of practice were finally coming to fruition. Her "Ave Maria" would be the high point of the Easter Mass.

  Grace lost herself in the rapture of the song, giving it her all… until she noticed that the organist had stopped his accompaniment. She glanced back and saw the horrified expressions on the faces of her fellow choir members.

  And then she heard it, the one, high, clear voice ringing through the otherwise silent church, singing a simple, repetitive melody, almost a chant. A quarter note, followed by two eighths, then another quarter. She could pick out the melody in her head: Fa-re-fa-mi… fa-re-fa-mi…

  Then she heard the words: "Satan is here… Satan is here…" Over and over.

  Who was—?

  And then Grace realized that it was her own voice singing so high and sweet, and she couldn't stop it. The rapture was still there but horror mingled with it as her voice sang on, faster and faster.

  "Satan is here… Satan is here… Satan is here…"

  6

  It was warm in the car. As Jim dozed beside her, Carol blinked to stay awake as she guided the old Rambler up Third Avenue through the Fifties toward the Queensboro Bridge.

  She wondered how Aunt Grace was doing. Right now she was probably at choir practice just a few blocks west of here in St. Pat's. She hadn't looked well. Carol hoped it was noth
ing serious. She loved that chubby little spinster.

  She found the on ramp for the bridge and headed across the East River, looking for the signs that would direct them toward the Long Island Expressway. Behind them the city gleamed brightly in the crystalline night.

  The car swerved as a particularly strong gust ripped across the span.

  "You okay?" Jim said thickly, straightening up in the seat and looking at her.

  "Sure," she said, keeping her eyes ahead. "I'm fine. Just a little tired is all."

  She didn't say so, but she too was sleepy from the wine she had had with dinner.

  "Me too. Want me to drive?"

  "No thank you, Mr. Goodtime Charlie."

  "Smart girl."

  Jim did like to celebrate, and when he celebrated, Carol drove.

  To help keep them awake, Carol turned on the radio. She wished they could get FM like some of the new cars. She liked the music on that new station, WNEW-FM. But she gladly settled for the WMCA Good Guys. The psychedelic bubble-gum sound of "Green Tambourine" filled the car.

  "Some meal," Jim said.

  "One of the best."

  He slipped an arm around her shoulder and nuzzled her ear.

  "Love you, Carol."

  "Love you, too, hon."

  He snuggled closer to her in the warmth of the car as the Lemon Pipers faded out and Paul McCartney began the vocal to "Hello Goodbye."

  Interlude on Central Park West—II

  "Are you going to stand at that window all night?"

  "Just a moment longer, my dear," Mr. Veilleur told his wife.

  The feeling was gone—or almost gone. He wasn't sure. He stared down at the dark blotch of the park below, its blackness cut by the illuminated ribbons of its traverses, mostly empty now on this wintry night. The same with the street directly below, and Columbus Circle off to the right.

  The prickling alarm in the most primitive regions of his brain had finally quieted, but that gave him scant comfort. Its cause could be out there still, its aura attenuated by distance. It could be growing stronger beyond the limits of his perception.

  Or maybe it was just a bad dream. Maybe he had fallen asleep in front of the TV and had had a nightmare that carried over briefly into consciousness.