Carol Sister O'Marie: The Missing Madonna

The weeping woman, pale and shaken, slumped onto the steps. Before Mary Helen fully realized what had happened, a broad-shouldered black man, who looked like a college fullback, burst from the jewelry department. He spoke into a walkie-talkie. Seconds later, three men came running from different parts of the department store, and streaked past them. Taking the steps in one leap, they shot out onto Lexington.

“Glory be to God!” Eileen was the first to get her voice back. “Glory be to God!” she repeated, her brogue unusually thick. “We’ve seen a mugging!”

Stunned, Mary Helen nodded her head. Beside her, Erma’s pudgy hand shielded the gold medallion hanging around her own neck. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to this,” she whispered. Clearing her throat, she stared sympathetically at the shaking woman now being comforted by the fullback. “I tell you, girls, I would be absolutely inconsolable.”

Shoving her bifocals up the bridge of her nose, Mary Helen studied the filigree-edged medal hanging around Erma’s neck. It was Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The Byzantine image of Mother and Child dangled from a gold chain.

“My husband, Tommy, gave it to me a year or so before he died,” Erma said quietly, her brown eyes suddenly filling. Embarrassed, she looked away.

Pretending not to notice her tears, Mary Helen took the medal in the palm of her hand. “It’s lovely, Erma,” she said. And it was. Even though the medal was small, in the raised image the Mother looked sad; the Child, terrified. It was no wonder, Mary Helen thought, that this was the most famous of what were called the Passion Madonnas.

She turned the medal over, noting with surprise the 24K stamped on the back.

“It’s valuable.” Erma, now fully recovered, nodded. It was as if she could read the old nun’s mind. “But its real value to me is sentimental. Tommy knew I had special devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”

No doubt, being married to Tommy Duran, poor Erma had needed all the help she could get. Mary Helen let the medal slip from her hand.

The cab ride back to the Sheraton was silent Each woman clung to the edge of the seat as the cab swerved and screeched through the traffic. Each was lost in her own thoughts. They arrived at the hotel just in time to go to their rooms and freshen up before the four-o’clock session.

As she crossed the hotel lobby, heading for the elevator, Mary Helen noticed Erma out of the corner of her eye. The woman had stopped at the main desk again.

The schedule for the final day of the annual OWLs convention was chock-full, so full in fact that even that morning Mary Helen had not yet decided which workshops to attend.

“Do you know which sessions you’re going to?” she asked Eileen while the two were still dressing in their hotel room. It wasn’t that she wanted a suggestion, but rather reassurance. She’d feel a great deal better knowing she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t make up her mind.

Eileen stuck her head around the bathroom door-jamb. “Oh, my, yes,” she answered brightly, or at least as brightly as she could with a mouth bubbling with pink toothpaste.

She rinsed. “But it took some doing,” she added diplomatically. Mary Helen realized her face must have fallen.

“Which topics did you decide on?” she asked, this time from pure curiosity. How in the world had Eileen been able to choose among such stimulating subjects as Nursing-home Reform, Job Discrimination, and Arms Control?

“I’m going to hear the paper on Pain-free Arthritis,” Eileen said, “and then the ones on Elderhostel and How to Age Happily.”

Mary frowned. “But, Eileen”-she tried not to sound critical-“you don’t have arthritis, do you?”

Eileen ran a comb through her wiry gray hair. “No, but Sister Therese does!” she answered, with a bit of logic that eluded Mary Helen.

“I see” was all Mary Helen could think of to say. Immediately she decided against asking, Why Elderhostel? Or remarking that Eileen couldn’t be aging any more happily if she tried. Right then Mary Helen made up her own mind to attend the session dealing with pending bills affecting older citizens. Legislation was one of the few things more complicated to follow than Eileen. Snatching her navy wool jacket from the closet, she quickly left their double room.

The final reception that afternoon took place in the hotel’s convention center. Waiters circulated through the crowd, serving expensive wine in tulip-shaped glasses. More waiters followed with trays of unusual-looking hors d’oeuvres harpooned with colored toothpicks and artistically arranged on frilly white doilies.

Helping herself to several pieces of what she felt surely must be chicken, Mary Helen moved slowly around the room, greeting other conventioneers and wondering where they had dropped their used toothpicks.

Noelle Thompson stood in the corner, chain-smoking. Through the blue haze of smoke, she listened intently to a group of women clustered around her. Even from a distance Mary Helen could see her snapping blue eyes peering over her half glasses. “Don’t agonize-organize!” she heard Noelle remind the group. That was the organization’s motto and a good one too. Although Caroline Coughlin had once remarked that “Do it, damn it!” would be more to the point.

Against the far wall she couldn’t help noticing Erma Duran and Lucy Lyons nose-to-nose in conversation. Craning her neck, she could see that the usual smile was missing from Lucy’s round face. In fact, she was frowning slightly. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, her eyes were fixed on Erma.

One glance at Erma’s expression told her that whatever they were discussing was bothering them both. Erma seemed distraught. Odd, Mary Helen thought. In all the time she had known Erma she could not remember ever seeing her upset. Now… twice in two days? What was going on? Not that Erma didn’t have plenty to be upset about. It couldn’t be easy, Tommy dying and leaving her-to use the old phrase-less than well provided for. And her children! If you could believe what you heard, they fell a little short of the Waltons! But the Erma she knew had always seemed so solid and optimistic about everything.

Carious, Mary Helen watched Erma anxiously fingering the medal around her neck, then stopping just long enough to push a straying curl back in place.

What in the name of heaven is going on, she wondered. She watched Erma’s face pucker as if she were about to burst into tears. Something was definitely wrong, and Mary Helen intended to find out what it was.

Slowly, she began to thread her way across the crowded convention room. She had moved only a few feet, when she felt a firm hand on her elbow. Who in the name of goodness…? Whirling around, Mary Helen came face-to-face with Alice Taylor-Smith. Mrs. Taylor-Smith arched her long, slender neck and smiled her cat-smile.

“I have so enjoyed meeting you, Sister dear,” she purred.

Mary Helen could feel herself bristle. Being called dear at seventy-plus was only slightly less offensive than being called honey .

What was it about Alice Taylor-Smith that affected her this way? The woman meant no harm. Mary Helen was sure of that. But there was something in her manner, something that gave the impression she thought herself-what was Eileen’s old Irish saying?-“just a cut above” the rest of us.

It took Mary Helen several minutes to exchange pleasantries with Mrs. Taylor-Smith and settle on their departure time for the next day. This business concluded, she turned to find Lucy and Erma gone.