Patron Saint of Liars

  "Come in here and tell me what happened," Rose said. "I want to watch the soup."

  "The soup can watch itself," Sister Evangeline said. "You made him drive up to Owensboro alone, now at least take a minute to talk to him."

  Rose sighed and took the spoon out of the pot and set it on a saucer. "It's like living with your mother," she said.

  "That's right," Sister said.

  Rose came outside and closed the door. It wasn't too hot that day and everything was green on the count of good rains all spring. "What is it?" she said.

  "I want to take a little walk."

  "Then go on," she said.

  "A walk with you."

  "In your suit? Go home and change first."

  "Sissy isn't home from school yet?"

  "She's in a play, she won't be home till four. What is this, anyway? Was there a problem at the lawyer's?"

  "Don't you want to know what she left us?"

  "I hate to ask," Rose said.

  I thought how in a way we could be alike, both thinking it was bad luck to want anything from a will. "Come on," I said. I took her hand and she let me take it. Rose knew when to give in on things. I didn't ask her for very much at all, so maybe she just decided this once she'd go along on my walk. We went past our house, down through the back pasture, where the stories say the spring used to be. I remembered one night when me and Rose walked down there, the first time I took her to meet Miss June. I remembered another time when I found her in the snow, half out of her head, and took her home with me.

  "It's pretty here," I said, stopping in the middle of the field. It was good land. I'd always thought it would be good for horses.

  Rose shaded her eyes and looked around. Maybe she was thinking of things that had happened out there, too. "Same as ever."

  I sat down in the grass in my suit. I felt a little guilty, because right at that moment I wasn't feeling bad about June's death. I was happy for what I'd been given. "This is ours," I said to Rose.

  "What is?"

  "All this." I waved my hand out in front of me. "June left us the property. Everything underneath Saint Elizabeth's. Everything you're looking at in all directions."

  Rose looked at me. You just don't see Rose looking surprised. She never cared enough to look surprised about things. "She left it to us?"

  "All of it. Her house, too."

  Rose sat down next to me and picked at the grass for a minute. "My God," she said, and shook her head. We sat there for a while, with our arms crossed over our knees, and watched the land to see if it had changed somehow.

  "I came here almost eleven years ago," Rose said, staring straight out in front of her. "I was going to be here six months."

  "I was going to be here three days," I said. "And that's been more than thirty-five years."

  We were quiet for a while, just taking it all in, and then Rose said, "They ought to put up a sign, warning people."

  Rose went back to the kitchen to work, but I just couldn't settle down. I wanted to walk over every inch of the land and look at it again. Thirty-five years I had been tending to the trees and pulling the ivy out of the flower beds. I watched fields sit empty so many good summers and thought they should have let me put out corn or soy like I asked but Mother Corinne said I shouldn't take the time away from work. In the fall every maple on the south hill would turn red and in the winter the drive would still need shoveling, but it would all be different now.

  I was fifty-five years old when June died, and in those fifty-five years I had owned nothing, not the house that I lived in or the truck that I used for hauling. I can't say that I ever thought about it too much, at least not the way other men do. When I was growing up, I always thought about the things I wanted in terms of what Cecilia and I would have together. Then she died and my whole notion of the world went with her. I just never thought about things like that anymore. If I gave my life over to working on my own land or somebody else's, it didn't really make a difference to me. By the time I got married and Sissy was born, I was set in my ways. I never thought about getting something for them.

  But having it fall to me the way it did changed things. I just kept looking at the ground, the same dirt and the same tough grass, but no one could tell me to get off of it now. I wasn't beholden to anyone, not Mother Corinne or the church. It was no one's kindness that was letting me stay on. I could get old and not worry. I could die and Rose and Sissy wouldn't have to worry.

  I went over to June's house and went inside. It felt strange, not knocking. The last time I'd been there was the day she died. I took a hard look around, made note of how much sun came in and how tight the window casements were sealed. I ran a finger over the rose-covered wallpaper in the hall. I studied the light fixtures. There was a bedroom downstairs that had been June's and two more large bedrooms upstairs. I'd never been upstairs before, and I had to bend my head down to keep from hitting it on the low sloping ceiling over the staircase. Both of the rooms were made up real pretty, like June was expecting someone to come and stay, but I didn't remember her having guests. I sat down on the edge of the bed and folded my hands. I thought about waking up here every morning from now on and I put my feet up on the bed and stretched out. It was just starting to get dark outside. The girls would be coming off the porch of Saint Elizabeth's pretty soon and in for Rose's dinner. None of them knew that all they had been looking at belonged to the cook. This would be a good room for me and Rose. Sissy could be right across the hall. When she got older and wanted more privacy she could move into the bedroom downstairs, and after she grew up and got married and I got too old to climb the stairs, I could move into that bedroom.

  I walked back down and looked at the kitchen. It was plenty big enough. I could make new cabinets and tear up the linoleum on the floor, make it someplace Rose would want to be. Then every once in a while we'd eat dinner at home, the three of us. I stopped and read a note taped to the refrigerator. "Milk, tomatoes, Cheerios, corn meal," it said. I pulled it off, folded it, and slipped it inside my suit pocket.

  I headed back to Saint Elizabeth's in the dark and went inside through the kitchen door. Rose was sitting by herself at the table with her feet propped up on a chair. She was staring out the window at the dark. It wasn't often that a person got to see Rose sitting still, and I watched her for a while.

  "Where's Sissy?" I said finally.

  She looked up at me, almost like she'd been waiting for me. "She's eating with them tonight," she said, and tilted her head toward the dining room.

  "You getting used to all this?"

  "It's a lot to think about," Rose said.

  "You bet."

  "Look at you," she said. "You're still in your suit."

  "I went over to June's and looked around. I'm thinking we should move over there. It's a lot bigger. I figured I could pack up all her personal stuff and send it to her nieces. I don't know. The lawyer could tell us what to do."

  "We could go there, I guess," Rose said. "I've been thinking, I don't want to tell Cecilia about this."

  "About what?"

  "The inheritance, the land. I don't think it's a good idea." I sat down next to her at the little table. She kept looking off out the window. "She's too young. She's better off thinking that we don't have anything," Rose said. "She'll work harder, then. I don't want her to spend her life planning on staying here. She shouldn't think there's any reason for her to stay. There isn't. But if she knew that this was all going to wind up being hers, she might not ever look any farther than the end of the driveway."

  I wanted to tell Sissy. I wanted to pick her up in the air and swing her around and give her the land as a gift. "I don't want to lie to her about it, though," I said. "I don't think that would be right."

  "Why not?" Rose said. "We lie to her about everything else."

  "Jesus, what a thing to say."

  Rose put up her hand. "No," she said. "Forget that. I'm sorry. Tell her we're going to move to June's because it's bigger. Tell her Saint Eliza
beth's owns it. I don't think she'll ask any questions anyway."

  Rose got up and peered through the swinging door to see if everyone was about finished eating. I just sat there, staring at my hands on the green-topped table. "I am her father," I said quietly.

  Rose stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder. "I didn't mean it that way," she said.

  "I know what you meant," I said. "I'm always here. Every day for ten years. Don't tell me I'm not her father."

  "Yes," she said, like suddenly she understood what I was saying. "Of course you are."

  When Sissy came home from school the next day I walked her over to June's and told her which bedroom would be hers. She was in fourth grade then and smart as a whip. She acted just like me, going through a house she'd been in all her life like she'd never seen it before.

  "What if it's haunted?" she called out from the bathroom, where she was turning the shower off and on.

  "June wasn't the haunting type," I said. "Even if she was, she'd haunt the creek bed, not the house."

  "I can't imagine living in somebody else's house is all." She opened the hall closet and looked inside. "This is full of coats."

  "We'll have to box everything up." I looked inside. It looked like there were coats from her whole family, like everyone who had ever been there had left a coat behind.

  "Mom wants to do this?" Sissy said.

  "I don't think your mother much cares where she sleeps, as long as she doesn't have to walk too far to work." I took a gray felt hat off of the top shelf and put it on Sissy's head. She folded back the brim in the front.

  "How do I look?" she said.

  "Good," I said, and nodded. "Very good." I couldn't help but think she'd never be pretty like Rose. Sometimes I would stare at her so hard while she was sleeping, trying to see the smallest bit of her mother, in the eyes or around the mouth, but Sissy just looked like Sissy, no one else.

  Everything happened so slowly at Saint Elizabeth's that to see a change you had to wait and watch for years. But that's what I'd done and so I knew things. The girls were getting younger. Every year had one girl who set a new record. We'd had them seventeen and then sixteen. Over time a few more started to keep their babies. The state said we had to have a psychologist and a social worker come down with the doctor once a week. The sisters held regular classes for the girls so they could keep up with their studies. They came from farther away. Not as far as California, but you could tell, these places were shutting down. There were fewer and fewer places a girl could go.

  Other things had changed, too. Sissy got so big that most of the girls stopped trying to baby her. Sister Evangeline passed out the futures of unborn children without a thought to getting in trouble, and Mother Corinne got used to Rose, but she never liked her. She always acted like Rose was some kind of hanger-on who'd give up one day and go home. She never thanked Rose for the work she did or how she took care of Sister Evangeline.

  So when Mother Corinne found occasion to come into the kitchen every now and then to fuss at Rose about something, buying expensive olives or a new blender, Rose let it go. I'd been there before and seen it happen, Mother Corinne would be ranting and raving and half the time Rose wouldn't even look up from what she was doing.

  But once we got June's house cleaned out and started to carry our things across the back pasture, Mother Corinne decided to take offense at everything Rose was doing. You couldn't blame her in a way. All those years she'd been acting like the land was hers and then all of the sudden it wasn't. She didn't hold it against me or Sissy, but the thought of Rose having it drove her half mad. Except that Mother Corinne didn't really get mad, she just got firm and found ways of talking to you that made you feel small and smaller. One day just before we moved in, right after lunch, she came into the kitchen looking like her eyes were on fire.

  "All through that meal I had to sit there and watch the waste," she said to Rose, the soft veins on her temples coming up. "There was twice as much food on every plate as the girls could eat. That's food that will be thrown away." Her hands moved like quick knives in the air. Sister Evangeline and I sat at the table and watched. We hadn't seen her like this in a long time, but Rose hardly noticed.

  "I didn't see plates coming back with food on them. No more or less than usual," Rose said.

  "I don't know where you come from," Mother Corinne said. "Who taught you to lie the way you do."

  Rose started to turn away from her, then all of the sudden she cocked her head a little to one side, like she was trying to hear a song playing on the radio in the other room. She had a heavy wooden spoon in her hand and she turned back to Mother Corinne. "No more," she said. Her voice was low and steady and she moved the spoon slowly back and forth like she was blessing her.

  "I won't have this," Mother Corinne said, not hearing her, not knowing that anything had changed. But I knew it and Sister Evangeline knew it. Rose had changed her mind about what she was going to take.

  "Leave," Rose said.

  "You won't tell me where to go," Mother Corinne said. "You're here through my good graces, you and your daughter both."

  Rose raised up her spoon and Sister Evangeline said, "Rose, you come here!" and Rose turned around. Mother Corinne looked at the three of us in horror, like she didn't know who was worse. She was too angry to speak. I had never seen her so mad. But when she got to the door Rose called out to her.

  "My good graces," Rose said. "Not yours."

  After that, I don't remember Mother Corinne coming into the kitchen again. It was a big hotel. You could avoid someone forever if you wanted to.

  The first night in the new house I went to tuck Sissy in. "Here we go," she said.

  "You brush your teeth?" She nodded. "Say your prayers?"

  "Twice."

  "That's the way you're supposed to do it." I sat down on the edge of her bed and pulled the sheets up under her chin. I looked at her there on her white pillow, her hair all spread out like a fan, and I thought about June's father. He had died before I ever came to Habit, but June loved to tell stories about him, how he had saved her life. He would have watched his daughter bent with fever in this house, maybe in this room, and thought about how he'd do anything for her.

  "Show me where I am," Sissy said. She hadn't asked me that in more than a year. When she was little she used to say it all the time. It meant she wanted to see my tattoo and read her name on my arm.

  I took off my shirt and pulled up the sleeve of my undershirt. "Right there," I said.

  "So you'll never forget my birthday."

  "Not unless I don't take a bath that day," I said.

  "Cecilia and Rose," Sissy said.

  "Both of you right there." I tapped my arm.

  "But the rose isn't right because the tattoo girl's mother came home before it was finished and she got scared and dropped the needle," she said.

  She used to make me tell the story over and over again. "When I was born you went to Mamie's house and had her put my name on your arm and the day I was born and a rose for Mom."

  "You've got a good memory," I said.

  "You've told me about a million times," she said, sounding sleepy.

  "Good night."

  "And if you and Mom had had a bunch of kids, you would have put all their names on your arm, all the dates. And if you'd had even more kids you would have gone to the other arm and then your legs, and then your back."

  "Good night."

  "Until they'd be putting the names on the soles of your feet and the back of your neck. Charlie, Thomas, Mary, Douglas, Lee Ann, Susan, Octavia."

  "Octavia?"

  "I go to school with a girl named Octavia."

  "Good night," I said, and closed the door but not all the way.

  "Good night," she said.

  I went across the hall and got in bed with Rose. She reached up and turned off the lights. I kissed her good night on the forehead, but she didn't say anything.

  That night I dreamed about Cecilia. It was a dream I h
adn't had in a long time, the one where she comes and sits down on the edge of the bed.

  "How you doing, Son?"

  "Okay, I guess. Good, really. This is our house now. We moved. You look good." She was wearing a dark green dress, one I'd never seen before.

  "I look just the same," she said, and ran her fingers through her hair. Her hair was just the way she used to wear it. It was a real forties style, neat and waved. I liked hair that way.

  "Have you been doing all right?"

  She nodded, she seemed a little more tired than usual, but like I said, it had been years since I'd had this dream. "Not a lot happens, you know? I think that's the point of the whole thing." She leaned over and touched Rose's cheek gently with the back of her hand. "She has such nice skin," Cecilia whispered. "She's just so pretty. I wish she wasn't so pretty."

  I looked at my wife asleep beside me. Her steady breathing was a comfort. "She's no prettier than you," I said.

  "We're different," Cecilia said. "I always thought you'd marry someone like me."

  "Who's like you?" I asked, and took her hand.

  Cecilia bent her head down a little and smiled. She always needed to know she was special. "I'm going to go and look at your daughter," she said. "Is that all right? I won't wake her up."

  "Sure," I said. Dying had made Cecilia humble. She was easier to get along with, but I kind of missed the way she used to be.

  She gave my hand a squeeze. "You take care of yourself, now," she said. "Get some sleep."

  "You too," I said. She got up slowly, like she didn't really want to go, but she did. She waved to me from the door.

  When I woke up it was pitch-dark and I felt scared to death. I never got used to those dreams and I thought it was bad luck to have one the first night in the new house. I sat up in bed and tried to adjust my eyes to the light. There was a woman standing at the foot of the bed wearing a dress. I could hardly breathe. "Cecilia?" I said.