The Love Letters Read online

  She ran, without looking, into a group of blue-aproned children playing ball in the rose garden. The roses were brown and dry from the heat. Sister Maria da Assunção grieved over them, but there was no longer any point in keeping the children from playing there. One of the little ones ran up to the novice and flung her arms about her.

  “My own darling sister!”

  The novice picked up the ball which had been thrown onto the dry grass near them and tossed it back into the center of the group. “No, Peregrina, I’m not your sister any more than anyone else’s. Not since I put on this habit.”

  The child stamped jealously, possessively. “You are, too, Mariana! You are, too! We have the same blood in our veins, you know how papa’s always talking about blood. You are, too, my sister!”

  Mariana spoke automatically, smoothing back the child’s dark hair which was curling moistly from the heat. “Yes, my sweeting, I’m your sister, and I’m Sofia’s sister, and Ampara’s sister …”

  The child pulled at the deep sleeve of the habit. “I don’t want you to be their sister. I just want you to be mine. Mariana! What’s the matter with your cheek? It’s all red!”

  Swiftly the novice put her hand up to the still tingling skin. There would be a small bruise where the wedding ring had struck. “Nothing.” She reached out and caught the ball which one of the children had tossed to her. “Here, Teresa. Catch.”

  But Peregrina was unwilling to have anyone else take her place as the center of Mariana’s attention. “How different you look since your Clothing. I can’t get used to you in a veil. I’m not always even sure when it is you. And I can’t tell whether you look older or younger.”

  “Older, I hope.”

  Peregrina studied the novice judiciously. “Well, you don’t look old, anyhow. Now Sister Joaquina looks much older than you.”

  “She’s not,” Mariana said shortly. “And the ages of the sisters is nothing for you to discuss.”

  Peregrina giggled, butting her head affectionately against the nun. “You know we’re always guessing at it. It’s one of our favorite games. But we can’t guess the Most Reverend Mother Abbess Brite’s age. Even papa won’t tell me. I think he’s scared of her, even if she’s his sister. He will tell me that she’s his older sister, but since I don’t know papa’s age that really isn’t much help.”

  Mariana smiled down into the little girl’s eyes. “You’re an awful little gossip.”

  “Oh, I’ll confess it,” Peregrina agreed glibly. “But I really don’t see what’s wrong with wanting to know people’s ages.” She looked at the novice, an old and almost wizened look of shrewdness coming over her child’s face. “Are you happy, Mariana?”

  “Sister,” the novice corrected.

  “Yes, but are you?”

  “Very.”

  A roly-poly little girl who could not have been more than three or four stumbled and tumbled onto the dry, stubbly grass. Bellowing, she ran to Mariana to be comforted. The girl picked the child up, kissed her eyes dry, put her down, and gave her a little shove back towards the group.

  “Your Clothing—” Peregrina said, “it’s like a wedding day for you, isn’t it?”

  “It is a wedding day.”

  “Of all of you who were clothed together Sister Michaela’s my favorite—next to you, of course. I’m scared of Sister Beatriz. We all are, but we respect her, you know. And Sister Joaquina’s an old crab, even if she isn’t old.”

  Mariana put her hand up to her cheek. “You’re impossible,” she said, absently. “How’s your embroidery going?”

  Peregrina shrugged. “The stitches in my dove’s foot were too big. At least Sister Isabella said they were, and she made me take them out and do them again. She’s half blind so I really don’t know how she knew. And she made me miss ten whole minutes of our playtime. I don’t see why I should have to waste so much time on dove’s feet and never get to the interesting part of the pattern.”

  One of the littler children threw the ball at Mariana, deliberately hitting her with it, and then ran up to her to retrieve it, shouting, “Sister! Sister! Pay attention to me!”

  Mariana bent down and looked into the flushed face. It was no wonder the children tended to get out of hand in this heat made more unbearable by the searing winds that blew across the Alentejo plains. “You’re getting very good at catching the ball. Now see if you can throw it to Maria da Gloria.”

  The little girl threw the ball wildly so that it went back over her head and into the withered rosebushes.

  Mariana pushed through the dead flowers, catching her unfamiliar habit on thorns that had lost none of their sharpness. “Oh, Dolores, you just won’t aim …”

  Peregrina followed, pulling at Mariana’s skirts. “I’ll get it. You’ll tear your habit. Move.” She pushed into the thicket and grabbed the ball. “There, Dolores. Run along, now. I scratched myself. Look, Mariana.” She licked the long rough mark that ran across her wrist, then sat back on her heels. “Mariana, does papa expect me to stay in the convent, like you? Or am I to be married? He simply won’t say.”

  Mariana dropped down onto the grass beside the child, rubbing the palm of her hand softly over the stubble. “It’s too early to be thinking about such things.”

  Peregrina glowered at her. “If I’m to be married I’ll have to have a bigger dowry than if I just become the Bride of Christ.”

  “Peregrina!”

  “It’s true.”

  “Peregrina, I shall have to send you to her Reverence.”

  Peregrina scowled blackly. “I don’t care. And it’s true, anyhow. I heard papa say so.”

  “Papa’s a man of the world. He can’t be expected to understand the things we’ve grown up with here at the convent. You can.”

  With one of her lightning changes of mood Peregrina grinned impishly. “But I’m only a child. Anyhow, I think papa’s right. All I hope is that he’ll be willing to spend the money on me. I don’t want to be wasted on Christ.”

  Mariana rose, turning on the child in real anger. “Go Go at once. I don’t know what to say to you.” …

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Charlotte,” the superior said. “I realize that it is disappointing to you to have to stay with us over the holidays, but that is no excuse for you to be blasphemous.”

  “My father promised—”

  “You saw his letter. I showed it to you. He will not be able to get back to England until after the first of the year.”

  “But he promised about Christmas. He said—”

  “Charlotte, stop crying and go look in the mirror. I want you to see how you look with your face all red and mottled.”

  The rain on her face seemed to have the salt taste of remembered tears. Why should she think of such a stupid childish disappointment when there were instead all the holidays they had spent together? In England, in France, in Belgium, in New York in the house on Seventy-fourth Street.… So why remember the one time he had failed her, the one time he had not come to pick her up at school or at least meet her train or plane? Or why remember the opposite side of the coin, the time he had failed her precisely by bringing her home to the dark, high brownstone on Seventy-fourth Street for Christmas? Aunt Ada, who was her father’s sister, was there, Aunt Ada, who stayed with the house, not with her father. Where were Reuben and Essie? They were not in that memory. Well, they wouldn’t be. It was Christmas Eve so they would have been in church …

  Her father sat at his desk in the library, writing, an ashtray and a glass of whiskey and soda beside him. The light from the desk lamp illuminated his bent head, and Aunt Ada, mending Charlotte’s school uniforms (“What do you do to get them in this condition, Charlotte?”), said, “James, your hair’s getting thin.”

  “It is not,” Charlotte started to say, but didn’t, because she looked, and it was.

  No. No. No.

  She got up and left the library and sat on the bottom step of the stairs where she could see her father through the open doo
rs, but not Aunt Ada; she could, therefore, pretend that Aunt Ada did not exist.

  But she could not shut out her aunt’s voice saying, “James. When are we going to trim the tree?”

  Her father continued to write. “I don’t care.”

  “Are you going to wait until Charlotte is in bed? It’s time she went to bed now, if you’re ready.”

  “Let her stay up as long as she likes. She has enough rules and regulations at school. Why can’t she help trim the tree? She’s old enough.”

  Aunt Ada sounded aggrieved. “Charlotte is twelve. She’s been old enough for years. It’s been your idea to keep the tree trimming for yourself.”

  At last James Clement raised the pen from the paper. “Hardly for myself, Ada. The whole point has been to give her at least a little of the magic of childhood. We’ve taken most of it away.”

  “All right, then, what do you want to do about it this evening? James? Am I disturbing you? You’re not writing, are you?”

  “Obviously,” her father said.

  “But you’re not at the typewriter, it’s not—”

  “It’s only a letter, if that’s what you mean, Ada, but even a letter does have to—” He flung down his pen, took a drink. “Tell Charlotte to come help trim the tree. Let’s get it over with.”

  Charlotte stood up, backed two steps up the stairs. Her knees felt weak. She thought—I won’t do it. I’ll go upstairs. I’ll hide.

  But her aunt was standing in the library doorway. “Charlotte. Your father wants you to help trim the Christmas tree.”

  “I still have another Christmas present to tie up …”

  “That can wait,” her aunt said. “Your father can’t.”

  Charlotte followed her aunt into the library. The tree was in the corner where a large potted plant of her aunt’s usually stood. Her father got up from his desk and poured more whiskey into his glass from the bottom-heavy sea captain’s decanter.

  Aunt Ada pursed her lips. “Haven’t you had enough, James?”

  He looked at her darkly, but did not speak until she went to the cupboard where he kept his liquor bottles. Then he barked, “What are you doing in there?”

  Her voice came muffled from the cupboard. “I am simply getting the decorations for the Christmas tree.” She emerged, her arms filled with white cardboard boxes which she spread out on the black leather couch.

  Charlotte asked, “Do you really want me to help trim the tree, Father?”

  “I wouldn’t have sent for you if I hadn’t wanted you to.”

  “Because I really don’t mind not—I mean—”

  He did not respond. Instead he left the library and Charlotte simply stood, waiting, not listening to her aunt urging her to start putting on the decorations, until her father came back with the kitchen ladder. “Hand me the star, Charlotte,” he said. “Please.”

  They worked in a terrible, empty silence. Charlotte broke it, her voice babbling too rapidly. “Honestly, Father, that bookstore is awful. I ordered a book for you at the beginning of November and it hadn’t come when I had to leave for vacation. They said they’d send it to me, that I’d be sure to have it in time for Christmas, but it never got here. It’ll probably come along some time in March. With luck I’ll get it in time for your birthday.”

  Her father made an effort to respond. “What is it?”

  “Oh, I’m not going to tell you, Father. It’s going to be a present no matter when you get it.” Then her voice trailed off. She spoke again only when the decoration of the tree was complete. “There!” She stepped critically away from the tree in a twelve-year-old imitation of her father. “I think we’re about finished. It does look gorgeous.” As there was no response from either her father or her aunt she said, “Well … Do you want me to do anything more?… You don’t want me to be here while you put the presents out or anything, do you?”

  “No, child,” Aunt Ada said. “Run along to bed now.”

  “Aren’t we—going to sing Christmas carols?”

  “It’s too late,” her father said shortly, then, softening his voice, “I’m coming up to bed in a few minutes myself.”

  “Oh. I guess we did take rather a long time trimming the tree, didn’t we? Will you come in and say good night to me, Father?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I’m going to tie up that last present and take a bath. I didn’t have time this morning, but I won’t be long.”

  “It’s too late for you to take a bath,” Aunt Ada said.

  “Please, Aunt Ada, would you really mind? At school we only have baths when they’re assigned and we only have fifteen minutes and—and I won’t have time tomorrow morning. You know how things always are on Christmas morning.”

  “Let the child take a bath if she wants to,” her father said.

  She ran up the stairs quickly, but when she reached the third floor she stopped and walked to her bathroom slowly, her hands trembling a little as she turned on the water. Then she went back to her room and stood looking at the small pile of carefully wrapped presents on her bed. She picked up the last present for her father that remained untied, a little bottle of his favorite and very expensive shaving lotion; it had taken her several weeks of saving her pocket money to accumulate enough to buy it. She wrapped it, slowly, carefully, and put the presents in a cardboard box on her closet floor, presents for her father, very carefully the same number of presents for Aunt Ada, for Reuben, for Essie. Her mind was numb as she undressed. She simply looked at her room as though she had never seen it before, and something inside her—it seemed to have nothing to do with her thinking—repeated over and over again, “But he always trims the tree. Even when we’re in a hotel. Anywhere. He always trims the tree. We always sing Christmas carols.”

  She expected to cry in the bath, but didn’t. She lay back in the hot water and relaxed and felt sleepy and thought that everything would be all right the next day, when Christmas day actually came, everything would be as it always had been, Christmas itself would make everything all right.

  She heard Aunt Ada come upstairs, to the third floor, then her father, his footsteps slow, to his room on the floor below. She washed, then, and dried, quickly, and got into bed and lay there waiting.

  Her father came up the stairs to her floor; she listened to each footstep, counting the stairs. He came into her room and opened the window, stood there, looking out onto the street.

  “How soon can I wake you?” she asked. She had asked him that question every Christmas eve. She was afraid either to ask or not to ask it now.

  “Try to wait until a reasonable hour,” he said. From one of the houses across the street a radio was on, too loud, blaring Silent Night, Holy Night. “Why can’t they turn the damned thing down?” he said. “How is anyone expected to sleep?” Then he said, “God damn God, Cotty. Damn him.”

  She lay silently, her pale hair spread damply on the pillow, watching his back as he stood looking out the window. Yes, his fair, still ungreyed hair was thin and this was as wrong as his asking her to trim the Christmas tree.

  She noticed now that he carried a glass in his hand. He drank, then put the empty glass on the small table between the windows. He still did not turn to her bed. She lay there, breathing very carefully, counting each breath. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three.

  She thought of the words of the carol that they had sung every year but this year, that was one of his most favorite. Of the Father’s love begotten, Ere the worlds began to be.

  “You still pray, Cotty?” her father asked her. “You still say your prayers at night? The nuns see to that?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You don’t forget? Even when you’re away from the convent?”

  “No, Father.”

  “And what do you pray for, hah? Now that you’re too old to ask for dolls and toys.”

  Her voice was low. “That we may be together for Christmas. That we may be happy.”

  “But that’s not in it, Cotty. That’s no
t part of the bargain. Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but don’t forget that he never promised he’d say yes. He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all. Except one thing. Just one thing.”

  After a moment she asked, “What one thing, Father?”

  “That he cares. Never forget that, Cotty. That is all. Nothing else. But it is enough. It is why I write what I write …” His voice faded. Then, “It is enough. Isn’t it, Cotty?”

  When she did not reply he suddenly shouted, “Why don’t you answer? Haven’t those damn nuns taught you any manners? Why do I send you to a convent school if they aren’t going to teach you anything?”

  Without kissing her, without saying good night, he stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  She waited a long while for him to come back, but he did not come. She began to writhe as though she were in pain, pressing her feet against the foot of the bed until it creaked, beating her hands softly against the wall (Aunt Ada must not hear), feeling every muscle tense, trying to press against something she could resist. She got out of bed and looked at the little pile of presents on the floor of her closet, then walked over to the window and stood looking out, as her father had stood.

  The floorboards were so cold that her feet ached up to her ankles, and she pressed them even harder against the cold floor as though the physical pain were welcome. The lights across the street were still on, the radio still blaring; now it was Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Her father would loathe that. She loathed it. As though in response to her disapproval the nasal singing stopped in the middle of a note; the light was extinguished.

  She turned back to her bed, not getting in, standing there, the warmth of the rug kind to the cold soles of her bare feet. She knelt, finally.

  —Of the Father’s love begotten, Ere the worlds began to be, she thought numbly.—I don’t understand. Don’t be mad at him, God, please. Don’t strike him down. Let him be all right in the morning. Let him be Father again. Let it be Christmas. Not presents. That’s not what I mean. I don’t care if there aren’t any presents. Just don’t strike him down. Just don’t be angry with him …