The Good Sister (10 page)

It takes her a moment to realize that the rows of numbers and letters are the answers to the algebra test, complete with the equations that show how the problems were solved.

Why would anyone want to help her?

Maybe because you’re sitting here crying, and someone in here heard what happened to Nicki and actually has a heart?

Could it be Kendra?

She no longer makes conversation with Carley, much less invites her to anything, but she’s not one of the mean girls.

But even if it came from Kendra—why would she assume Carley would want to cheat?

Maybe that’s no big deal to someone like her. Maybe she’s just trying to help.

So now what?

Would
Carley cheat?

Absolutely not
, she reminds herself firmly.

She glances up at the clock just in time to see the big black minute hand jump to the next notch.

She looks back down at her nearly blank test page, and then, reluctantly, at the unfolded paper in her lap.

T
he drafty corridors of Sacred Sisters look exactly the same as they did decades ago: beige and black speckled tile floors, yellow-painted interior concrete block walls, rows of tall, narrow, battleship gray lockers.

If Jen had walked in while classes were changing, those locker doors would be slamming amid the sound of female chatter. But sixth period is in full swing and her footsteps echo in the empty halls, past hushed classrooms where teachers’ voices drone or students are bent over their desks, pencils in hand.

She passes the tree an artistic hippie nun painted on the wall back in the seventies, its bare branches always seasonally decorated by a couple of lucky students. Right now, the tree is covered in small green construction paper buds. Soon, Jen knows, they’ll be swapped out for large green construction paper leaves.

It’s momentarily comforting to know that in this little corner of the world, at least, even the things that are meant to symbolize change never change.

Comforting—until she remembers the bullies who have made Carley miserable here.

Jen passes the memorial plaques and photos on the wall outside the principal’s office. When she was in school, there were just a handful, and the only one she knew was Ruthie Bell, killed in that car accident during their sophomore year.

Ruth Ann Bell: 1969–1986
.

Jen still can’t bear to look at that plain, familiar face, frozen in grainy black and white; can’t bear the memories even after all these years.

Now there are at least a dozen additional tributes to students who have since walked the halls of Sacred Sisters, but tragically died before graduation.

Is there a similar wall at Woodsbridge High, where Nicole Denise Olivera will be memorialized?

Stop.

Go.

She walks on, searching for other memories. Happier memories.

She allows herself to glance into the glass display case outside the coach’s office, filled with trophies and plaques, many of which are inscribed with her sisters Bennie and Frankie’s names. And the gym, echoing with the sounds of bouncing ball and rubber sneaker soles squeaking on the varnished maple floorboards. And the health office, where she overhears the school nurse on the telephone telling a parent that it’s just a low-grade fever, and glimpses a girl lying on a vinyl cot, furtively messaging on her cell phone beneath the watchful painted gaze of the Blessed Virgin.

Jen remembers playing hooky on that same orange cot beneath that same framed print of serene, blue-mantled Mary; remembers reading an issue of
Seventeen
magazine hidden in the pages of an oversized textbook while waiting for her mother to come pick her up.

More than the familiar sights and sounds of the school, it’s the smell that, for Jen, is the most powerful memory trigger.

From the moment she stepped through the big glass double doors, she was struck by the familiar scents of pine floor cleaner, incense from the chapel, and what she and her friends used to call Eau de Sloppy Joe. Chances are, the cafeteria lunch ladies aren’t even serving Sloppy Joe today, but for some reason it smells as if they are. Always has, and probably always will.

As the scent infiltrates her nostrils, memories of her days here at Sacred Sisters begin working their way into her brain. By the time she reaches the warren of second-floor offices that house various staff members who fall under the guidance department umbrella, she half expects to see old Mrs. Esposito manning the reception desk.

But she died years ago, and Jen isn’t here to discuss her own college applications or SAT scores. She’s here to introduce herself to the new social worker and find out how Carley is doing.

“Do you have an appointment?” the department secretary asks when Jen inquires whether Sister Linda is in today.

“No, but I won’t keep her for more than five minutes.”

The woman purses her lips. “Have a seat. I’ll go find out if she’s available.”

As she disappears, Jen finds herself wondering why the people who sit at reception desks—at schools, at medical offices—so often seem to have dour personalities. Are those the kinds of people drawn to these jobs, or does the pressure of dealing with people all day, every day, eventually wear on them?

Back in Jen’s day, Mrs. Esposito was such a force to be reckoned with that even the guidance counselor seemed intimidated by her. Jen remembers sitting in this very spot—perhaps on this very chair—under Mrs. Esposito’s watchful gaze, trying not to reveal that she had a forbidden wad of strawberry Bubble Yum in her mouth.

“Sister Linda will be out in a few minutes,” the receptionist announces, reappearing and settling back at her desk.

Jen’s thoughts return to the past as her gaze settles on a nearby bulletin board, where a thumbtacked poster advertises an upcoming school trip to Italy and the Vatican over Easter break.

When she was at Sisters, she begged her parents to allow her to go on a similar trip. They refused, saying they couldn’t afford it. But after Jen took an after-school job to earn the money herself, they still wouldn’t agree to let her go. “It wouldn’t be fair to your sisters” was Mom’s excuse. “They didn’t get to go to Italy. Even Daddy and I have never been to Italy, and Grandma and Pop-Pop haven’t been back there since they left on the boat.”

At the time, Jen was devastated. Even more so when her boyfriend, Mike Morino, got to go on the same trip with his classmates at Cardinal Ruffini, the all-boys Catholic school he attended. She was certain he was going to fall in love with someone else while he was there, and spent a miserable Easter break envisioning Mike strolling the streets of Rome hand in hand with another girl, a beautiful Italian girl who looked like a young Sophia Loren.

It didn’t happen . . .

Or more likely it did, but she never knew about it.

Looking back now, remembering how much that mattered then, she wonders, not for the first time, how Mike is doing.

Driven by nothing more than idle curiosity, she’s searched for him a few times on the Internet. But he has a huge extended family that, in Italian tradition, names their sons after fathers and grandfathers. There are a number of Mike Morinos in the area. If she searched harder, she could probably figure out which one he is, but why bother?

“Mrs. Archer?”

Jen looks up to see a black-habited woman coming toward her.

“I’m Sister Linda. I wasn’t expecting you—”

“I know, I’m sorry, but I’m here to pick up Carley and I was running early, so I thought I could stop in and see you if you have time.”

“I do. Come on into my office.” The social worker turns to the secretary. “Hold my calls, please, Lenore.”

Appearing as pleased by that request as she is by anything else, Lenore gives a hard-faced nod.

Sister Linda leads Jen down the hall and through a maze of file cabinets and cubicle partitions.

This isn’t the first time she’s ventured into the guidance counseling department since her own days at Sacred Sisters. She was here for an evening academic orientation meeting last fall when Carley enrolled.

But she’s never had any reason to visit the social worker. For all she knows, there wasn’t even one on staff when she was a student here.

Sister Linda came on board last September to replace the school’s previous part-time social worker, Sister Helen, who had passed away during the previous school year.

Jen recalls hearing about it at the family Memorial Day picnic last year, courtesy of her mother’s grand plan to have all her daughters living close to home again. That might actually happen with recently divorced Maddie, an attorney who’s in the process of trying to sell her Cleveland townhouse and return to the area. Mom is always sending her job leads for local law practices.

Unlike Maddie, Jen’s sister Frankie has no intention of moving back. She has an MSW and works for the state Department of Social Services in Albany, making decent money with good benefits. But that didn’t stop Mom from showing her the listing for the opening at Sacred Sisters.

“Did you see the starting salary, Ma?” Frankie shook her head. “There’s no way I can afford to do that. Catholic schools pay peanuts—especially Sisters. That’s why only nuns are on staff there. They’ve taken a vow of poverty.”

“But you can at least apply and see what happens. Wouldn’t it be nice to work at your old school?” Mom coaxed. “And the cost of living here is lower . . .”

“Not low enough. I’d have to live in a cardboard box if I took that job. It’s only part-time.”

“You could move back home with Daddy and me. We’ve got plenty of space even with Maddie coming back, and your roommate could visit whenever she wanted.”

Jen’s sister, looking sufficiently horrified, quickly changed the subject.

Though Frankie came out to their parents years ago, Mom persists in referring to Patty as Frankie’s “roommate”—her way of reconciling her daughter’s lifestyle with her own staunch Catholicism. And as thrilled as she is that her firstborn is thinking of moving home again, Theresa can’t even begin to discuss the topic of Maddie’s divorce.

“This is my office.” As Sister Linda steps across the threshold of a tiny windowed room, Jen sizes her up.

She has a full, almost homely face, thick torso, and bulky limbs beneath her habit, worn with lug-soled black shoes and outdated granny glasses. Formidably old school, but of course that doesn’t mean she isn’t kindhearted, or that the girls can’t relate to her.

Jen can’t help but remember Sister Patricia, one of the few nuns who did wear a habit back in the old days, but used to throw on a pair of Nikes with sparkly pink laces to lead the girls in after-school aerobics classes. She was only a couple of years older than they were at the time.

I wonder whatever happened to her?

Sister Patricia, Mrs. Esposito, Mike Morino . . .

All part of another era, permanently erased from her life like resolved equations on a chalkboard. Now there’s just Sister Linda, closing the office door and moving a stack of papers off the lone chair opposite a cluttered desk. “Here, have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

Jen watches her look around for a surface where she can put the displaced papers. With a shrug, she plops them on the floor.

“Sorry,” she says as she pushes aside a couple of books with the toe of her sensible shoe. “I’m still trying to dig my way to the bottom of this mess I inherited. Sister Helen was a wonderful person, I’m sure, but she really was disorganized. Did you know her?”

“Me? No. Carley is just a freshman,” Jen reminds her.

“I realize that, but you were a student here, too, weren’t you?”

“Oh, I didn’t know that was what you—yes. I did go here, back in the eighties. Did Carley tell you?”

The woman nods.

“We didn’t have social workers back then. Just guidance counselors.”

“I see.” Sister Linda settles into her desk chair, pressing her palms together and propping the steepled fingers under her double chin as if in prayer. “You said you’re picking up Carley. Does she have an early appointment, or . . . ?”

So she doesn’t know.

That makes sense. Nicki Olivera wasn’t a student here. If she had been, the social worker would be busily consoling students. The administrators would probably bring in grief counselors, too. For all the talk of teaching the girls to be independent and handle problems on their own, there are certain situations in which any modern school would step in with a support system.

It wasn’t like that back in the old days. When Ruthie Bell was killed in that car accident, Jen is pretty sure that life marched on as usual here at Sacred Sisters, aside from a special prayer for her soul at daily Mass and the plaque that went up on the wall over the summer.

Things would be different now. Or maybe things would have been different back then if poor Ruthie herself had been different; if she’d been the kind of girl whose loss had had great impact on the student body . . .

Uncomfortable with the path her thoughts have taken, Jen pushes Ruthie from her mind yet again and addresses Sister Linda’s question.

“I’m picking up Carley early because we’re going to a wake.”

A shadow crosses the woman’s eyes. “Oh . . . I’m sorry. Was it a family member, or . . . ?”

Jen finds herself irrationally annoyed with Sister Linda’s stilted conversational habit of trailing off with questions half unspoken.

“It was a friend.” She shifts her weight on the hard wooden chair. “Carley’s best friend, actually, from the time they were two or three. She’s not a student here, she goes to Woodsbridge High—
went
to Woodsbridge High,” she amends, and drops her gaze to her hands clasped in her lap, feeling the familiar lump start to work its way into her throat.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. What
happened
?”

“She—died. Suddenly. I . . . I’d rather not get into the details. But between this and all that’s been going on here at school, I’m worried about Carley.”

“Has she mentioned any more trouble to you?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. She doesn’t like to talk about it with me.”