Элис Макдермотт - The Ninth Hour

And then, over the child’s head, he asked, “What’s up?”

Loretta whispered, “Sister Lucy is here again. She’s talking to the girls.”

Charlie said, “Oh yeah?” He lowered the little girl to her feet and then looked at Sally. He was close enough that she could smell the perspiration from him. A scent she associated with the subway or the trolley, with the workingmen who boarded late in the day, carrying lunch pails. His eyes were dark blue, and one strand of his thick black hair fell across his forehead. Casually, he reached up to smooth it back. There was a deep dimple in his chin, the trace of a five o’clock shadow, handsome on a boy so young. He was handsome. “You a novice?” he asked her. She said she was just following Sister Lucy today. Learning things.

He nodded. Put his hands in his pockets and then leaned in the doorway, one foot kicked up on its toe, still watching her. His shoulders were broad beneath the white shirt. He was tall, over six feet, she guessed. He cast his eyes around the room, smiling with straight white teeth. His eyes were the color of deep water. He was as handsome as a movie star. “Sister Lucy’s a pistol, ain’t she?” he said. “Six-shooter Lucy, I call her.”

Sally saw Sister Lucy herself come through the room behind him. She was carrying her black bag. The two girls followed at some distance, cowering, it seemed, at the entrance to the short hall. They were both dressed now, their hair combed.

Sally had not realized that Sister Lucy was such a short woman, dumpy, even, in her dark habit, until she stood before Charlie and raised her crooked finger toward his face. He looked down at her.

“You lay a hand on these girls again and I’ll have the police here,” Sister Lucy said.

The boy only smiled. He seemed both kind and tolerant. “They were acting up,” he said patiently. “My mother told me to spank them when they act up. I’m in charge,” he added. “They have to learn to behave.”

“Your mother told you,” Sister Lucy repeated sarcastically, hissing it. “I know your mother. She told you no such thing.” Her finger was trembling. Even her bonnet and her veil seemed to be trembling. She pumped her elbows in her dark sleeves: bellows to the fire of her indignation. “Locking them up all day,” she said, growing shrill. “Keeping them from school.” Her voice broke: “You’ve left welts on their flesh.” Even her jowls were trembling against the tight linen of her cowl. She closed her hand into a fist, shook it in his face. “I know what else you’ve done to these girls,” she said, nearly shrieking it. “Sinful.”

Handsome Charlie shrugged, uncrossed his legs, folded his arms across his chest, stood even taller. “When my mother is away at work,” he said again, “I’m in charge here.”

His smile was a kind of sneer, but it was lopsided, too, which made it boyish, even charming. His bare forearms were covered in dark hair. Above the casually rolled sleeves, there were muscles beneath the white cloth. His legs were long. His hips narrow. He said, “Lookit, Sister,” and then paused. He glanced at Sally, waved a hand in her direction. His eyes were deep blue. “These girls ain’t obedient, like this holy one. They need to be disciplined.” He shook his head sadly, amicably. Then he shrugged again and added, “I’m sorry to have to tell you what you don’t know.”

Sally felt her cheeks burn.

“You brazen boy,” Sister Lucy said evenly. She had gotten control of her voice. Little Loretta was at her brother’s side, looking up at the nun with big eyes.

Glancing at the child, Sister Lucy said, “I’ll have the police here if you so much as touch these girls again.” She said, “I’ll go straight to the Monsignor.”

Now there was no avoiding how helpless, how foolish, Sister Lucy seemed, shaking a fist at him, trembling with rage in her long black skirt and her silly bonnet.

Charlie reached down to take little Loretta’s hand. “Okay, Sister,” he said easily. “Calm down now. I had to teach them a lesson and I did.” He narrowed his glistening eyes, still smiling. “You can go mind your own business now.”

“Beast,” Sister Lucy whispered, turning away. She said, “Come,” to Sally, and Sally brushed past him to get through the door. He might have been laughing under his breath. Loretta said, “Bye-bye.”

In the living room, the two girls were leaning together like victims from a storm. Sister Lucy told them, “If he puts another hand to you, you go over to the convent at St. Ann’s. Immediately.”

The girls said they would, but Sally wondered how they would go over to the convent at St. Ann’s if they were tied with leather belts to their bedstead. “Don’t hesitate,” Sister added weakly, as if she understood this, too. Her eyes went to the elder of the two, whose hand was once again cupping the mark on her neck. “Don’t let him touch you,” Sister said.

Going down the apartment house stairs, which were well tended, not a trace of cobweb or dust, Sister Lucy said, “If I were a man, I’d take a strap to him myself.”

When they reached the street, Sister Lucy said, “Come,” once more, and then turned away from the trolley stop that would have taken them back to the convent. Sally followed her, walking rapidly—“Good evening, Sisters,” people whispered—four blocks, six blocks, until they came to a squat red church with a sprawling school. They passed them both, passed the empty playground, and then climbed the steps of a brown rectory. Sister Lucy rapped at the door and waited on the doorstep with her head down, her foot tapping impatiently. The woman who answered was plain and gentle-looking, her salt-and-pepper hair curled tightly to her head. She wore a calico apron over her dress.

Sister said, “Hello, Trudy, is he in?” and the woman nodded, “Just upstairs,” and then added, as a warning, “He’s just about to sit down to his dinner. He’s got a Holy Name meeting at seven.”

“Only a minute,” Sister Lucy said, and the woman, reluctantly, invited the two of them in.

The vestibule was chilly, despite the June weather, and as dim as winter. There were two leather chairs, thin-backed and slim, flanking an icon of a glowering, dark-eyed male saint. There was a rich Persian rug over the tiled floor. The vestibule held the stone smell of a church, although there was a whiff as well of seared meat from the kitchen. Sister Lucy told Sally to sit, but she continued to stand. She paced, moving her free hand, flicking it back and forth as if she were dealing cards or quickly saying her beads, although the hand was empty.

Sally had never before seen Sister Lucy expend so much energy on what seemed a pantomime.

Beyond her, the doorway through which the housekeeper had disappeared offered promise of a warmer part of the house. There was a table with a Tiffany lamp in a narrow passage, and then a high-backed couch and a mullioned window. Sally glimpsed the turning of a staircase, and after what seemed more than a few minutes, she saw the black shoes and the cassock hem of a priest descending.

The priest was another large man, perhaps even taller than Charlie. He filled the doorway when he appeared—large chest and big head and thick dark hair; a belly, covered by his black soutane, that seemed to precede him into the room. He looked as if he’d just finished shaving. His fair face was flushed around the jaw, a pinprick or two of fresh blood. He greeted Sister Lucy by name and gave a thin smile to Sally. There were black hairs on the backs of his big hands. His eyes were very small in his large face. Sister Lucy said, “A word,” and indicated the passageway behind them.

The priest held out his arm, and Sister Lucy walked ahead only a few steps before she turned to look up into his face. Sally saw the priest bend to put his ear toward Sister’s bonnet. She saw him glance her way as Sister spoke. He may have winked. Sally looked away. This secrecy on Sister Lucy’s part seemed foolish since Sally had been there herself to see the girls with their wrists tied and the strap marks on their skin.