Quicksilver(94)
I reached out with both hands.
She hesitated to take them. “If this crazy thing were even half-possible, if there could be any truth in it, why aren’t the police here to question her? Why you and your friends, not the police?”
Continuing to offer her my hands, I said, “If you’ll just help us, you’ll see. Everything will be clear. Dear Sister, when I was so depressed that I didn’t want to live, you saved me from suicide.”
She objected strenuously. “You never would’ve killed yourself!”
“Children do. More every year. These days, they’re taught to fear the future for a hundred reasons, and they do. Back then, eight years ago, I considered it quite seriously, more than I ever let on to you. I was in an abyss of despair. You gave me hope. More than that, you taught me to be in awe of our free will, showed me that it’s nothing less than a miracle. Please help me again. Please help me now. If I’m able to show you a miracle, at least something that seems like a miracle to me, will you help us?”
“Show me what? What will you show me?”
Intuiting my intention, Bridget said, “Are you sure you can do this, Quinn?”
I smiled at her and sounded more confident than I felt. “The talent matures, just as it does with you. Besides, what do we have to lose? We’re coming to a rejection here.” I leaned forward in my chair, beseeching the nun with both hands. “You have nothing to fear from me, Sister. You know that’s true. I don’t think you’ve ever feared anyone in your life, so it makes no sense that the first would be me. Just take my hands for a moment, and then help us if you feel you can. At the end of all this, we’ll get éclairs from Bellini’s—two each!—and never give a thought to the calories.”
The bleak evils with which I’d charged Sister Margaret both offended and anguished Sister Theresa, but the reference to the éclairs, harking back to the day when she’d at last fished me from the dark sea of depression, spoke to her heart. Her clenched face softened, and after a hesitation she took my hands in hers.
Together, we saw ourselves through the eyes of Winston, and the tableau we formed together was more striking than I could have hoped for: the warm light from the desk lamp and the silty softness of the silken shadows, my dark clothes contrasting with her white habit, I the former student who had once bent forward to receive her wisdom, now she the student bent forward to learn something from me. Then Winston came closer, between us, and put his head on her lap. He looked up at her, and together Sister and I were gazing into her eyes from the dog’s perspective. I could feel how the experience rocked her. For the first time in her life, she saw herself now as someone else saw her, in this case a loving dog. She peered deeper into her eyes than she could ever do when looking in a depthless mirror. As her irises widened and her pupils grew large, she might have felt as if she were staring into her own soul, into all the strangeness—the potential and the mystery—that is a human being.
If that was a little frightening, it was also exhilarating, and it was good.
|?37?|
Winston’s new friend went alone to Sister Margaret’s room to report that a stray dog had wandered into the building at some time during the day. She claimed to have corralled it in Hilda Detrich’s office. As Sister Margaret had overseen student caretakers of the previous Mater Misericordi? hound, the late and much-missed Rafael, she would of course tend to this one and select the children who would most benefit by having responsibility for the animal.
Sister Margaret had not yet retired for the night, and she returned with Sister Theresa in less than five minutes. Her red hair was flecked with gray, which it hadn’t been in the days when Annie Piper, under her tutelage, learned to take proper care of a dog. Her freckles burned bright in her smooth pale skin, and she looked as fresh-faced and guileless as ever she had. She startled slightly upon discovering four people waiting with the foundling shepherd, but she played the shy and humble soul as she’d always done, meekly settling in one of the office chairs when told that I had a few questions for her.
Winston occupied the knee space under a desk to observe the proceedings from there, his ears pricked. Sister Margaret seemed to know at once that this was not about a stray dog, after all. She said nothing either about or to the shepherd.
I could see that Sister Theresa suffered regret at having so deceived the younger woman. She was, however, a psychologist as well as a nun; perhaps she’d begun to read some disturbing telltales in Sister Margaret’s performance that she had never noticed before.
Sparky closed the door and stood in front of it, while Panthea went to stand with her back to one window, Bridget at the other. Sister Theresa took up a position by the filing cabinets.
This left most of the large office to me, and I intended to use it. Remaining on my feet, moving about not like a sharky prosecutor prowling in front of a witness stand, but rather imagining myself, at least for the first few exchanges, as being the still-tormented former student forever haunted by the loss of his friend.
“Sister Margaret, I’m sorry to trouble you at this hour. You must know I wouldn’t do so if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” With a hint of an Irish brogue, her voice was like faraway music. Her hands rested in her lap, palms up. They began to curl into fists, but then she relaxed them once more.