Waking Rose: A Fairy Tale Retold (29 page)

“I can come and visit her regularly,” Fish said. Jean glanced at him gratefully.

“We’ll certainly consider it,” Jean said. “That would be a real help. I’ve already been trying to work out the problems of the care in my head, and the situation seems rather grim. You see, I’m a full-time nurse myself, and my salary isn’t enormous. I would be happy to have Rose at home—I’m sure our insurance would cover some of it—but I’m afraid she would need, at least at first, more round-the-clock observation than I could afford to give her. And quality care at home isn’t inexpensive, as I’m sure you know.” Her voice trembled.

“You don’t need to give me your decision now,” Dr. Murray said gently. “I just wanted to make the offer.”

“We appreciate it, Doctor,” Jean said.

On the Tuesday that school resumed after break, Mercy College had a special Mass said for the intention of Rose’s healing. Jean, Blanche, and Fish, who had all been personally invited by the president of the college, also came.When Fish escorted Jean into the chapel, they were met by Paul Fester, who was wearing a suit coat and tie. Several other soberly-dressed male students stood with him.

“Mrs. Brier, I just wanted to tell you that my friends and I have been praying the rosary for Rose in the chapel every night,” he said earnestly.

“Thank you, Paul,” Jean said to the tall student, whom she had met in person when he came to visit Rose in the hospital. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done for Rose.”

“I wish I could do more,” Paul said. “My friends and I hope to go over regularly to visit her.”

“The doctor said visits would help her recover,” Jean said. “I appreciate it.”  And she squeezed his hand, for a moment looking a bit more at ease. Fish wondered what she thought of Paul. He was certainly a wholesome, clean-cut guy. Much more the type of guy a mother would want dating her daughter.

Paul and his friends were serving as ushers, and they led Fish and the Briers up to front seats in the chapel. Fish was surprised at how many students had come to the Mass.

Still, there was a sense of heaviness in the air that was difficult to dispel. Afterwards, the crowd filed out into the darkness of the night like sleepwalkers. Fish said goodnight to Blanche and looked around for Jean.

At last he spotted her, talking to a tiny nun in a blue habit.

Something awakened in him, something that he hadn’t thought about for a very long time. The ancient nun was holding Jean’s hand and patting it, saying something over and over.

Fish moved towards them as though he were climbing out of a dream. He paused beside Jean, and the nun looked into his eyes. Her blue eyes were penetrating and bright.

“Fish, there you are. This is Sister Maria, Rose’s godmother. I knew her when I was at college here.”

The wind billowed the nun’s veil in the haze of the spotlights outside the chapel. “It’s good to see you again, young man.”

Jean faded away into the crowd of condolers, but Fish kept looking at the nun. She looked at him with her clear, surprisingly young eyes.

“How did you know?” he said to her at last.

The little nun’s face was peaceful despite its pain.

“I am her godmother,” she reminded him mildly.

Does that mean you automatically have foresight?
he wanted to ask. “You said she was in danger.”

The nun took his arm and drew him away from the crowd to a vacant spot beneath the thorny crabapples flanking the chapel.

“She has been in danger ever since she was baptized.”

Fish, trying to figure out if this was a theological statement about the fallenness of the world, nodded vaguely. “But what was the serpent in the grass you told me about?”

“It wasn’t a literal snake, you know.”

“I figured that.”

“We just call it that, to illustrate that it was a hidden and unexpected danger.”

“We?” There was a prickle in his spine.

“My sisters and I. We have been praying for her, and for you. Come with me. You should hear the whole story.”

14
...And the princess pricked herself on the sharp point and fell into a deep sleep...

H
IS

Sister Maria crossed the parking lot and got into an ancient Honda Civic. “Do you have a car?” she asked.

Fish nodded, and, glancing back at the Briers, got into his own car to go after her. As he followed the sputtering car off campus, he felt streams of emotion run over him. There was something pulsing with life here, and he, living in the twilight of grief, distrusted it. At the same time, he couldn’t stop until he found out what this was all about.

The nun did not drive very far, parking her car on a residential street a few blocks from the college. He parked behind her, and got out. She led him down a sidewalk beside a wall, with Fish trailing after her. She began explaining where they were going.

“My sisters and I live together in a little house. It's all that's left of our convent. When we both entered, there were thirty-nine nuns in our cloister. But they're all gone now, died or moved on. Only we three—Sister Carmen, Sister Therese, and myself are left. You see, we were contemplative nuns, but we didn't want to leave the cloister for work in the world like so many of the others did. So the diocese was kind enough to give us a house by the church. I have become semi-active to maintain our house.”

 The little house was a thin brick building squashed between two other similar constructions. The windows had shades, but it hardly looked like a cloister.

Inside, the light was a golden glow of lamps. With padding, delicate steps of a woman half her age, Sister Maria ushered him down a narrow corridor to the parlor. There, two other women sat in old-fashioned padded chairs below a huge gilt-framed Spanish painting of the Virgin Mary in a cloak of stars, upheld by an angel.

“May I introduce you to my elder sister, Sister Carmen, and my younger sister, Mary Therese,” Sister Maria laid a fragile hand on his black jacket. “Sisters, this young man is a friend of Rose Brier.”

Sister Carmen looked as though she were about ninety. Age had stooped her, but she still wore her blue veil with a full white wimple, and the same blue habit as Sister Maria. Behind thick glasses, her eyes were dim but aware. Therese, the youngest of the three sisters, had eyes that looked older, but her voice was considerably younger and she talked faster.

“Welcome!” she said. “God’s blessing upon you!”

“Hello,” Fish felt awkward, as he usually did for introductions. “I'm Ben Denniston.”

 They both smiled and nodded. “But most people call me Fish,” he added lamely. That was probably how Rose would have referred to him.

“Fish,” Sister Therese said suddenly. “That was a symbol used by the early Christians, wasn't it, Sister Carmen?”

“To represent the name of Christ,” Sister Carmen spoke with a deep voice indicating a powerful strength in her frail body.

“Is that why you chose it?”  Sister Therese asked curiously.

He was embarrassed. “Ah, no.”

Sister Maria told Fish as she motioned for him to sit down on a red velvet seat covered with lace doilies, “Names are significant. Sometimes more than we know.”

“For instance, my parents named me after St. Therese, and I ended up becoming a nun, just like her!” Therese smiled, then added ruefully, “Though I sure took my time about it—I didn’t enter till I was thirty-seven! Have some cookies!” she offered Fish a dish from the marble coffee table, and he took one cautiously.

“Our Lord always has the proper timing,” Sister Maria reminded her sister. “As I’m sure you know, Fish.”

“Yes—I suppose,” Fish tried to say something polite. The parlor was very quaint and old fashioned. Except for his wristwatch and cell phone, they might have been sitting in the nineteenth century.

“So, you said you had a story to tell me,” he said.

“Were you aware that the Brier family has been in danger for some time?”

“No,” Fish said, disturbed. “What do you mean, danger? What kind of danger?”

“The danger here.”

“Here? But they live in New Jersey,” Fish said.

“That’s
why
they live in New Jersey,” Sister Maria said significantly. “That’s why the father moved them there. He never wanted any of them to come back.”

“But Rose came back,” Sister Carmen said. “As soon as she came back, we knew that she would be in danger, because of her name. Her father’s name.”

All of the sisters were nodding, but Fish sat staring at them, completely bewildered.

“Did you know Daniel Brier, Rose’s father?” Sister Carmen asked, murmuring a prayer for the souls of the faithful departed which the other two nuns also intoned, crossing themselves.

“No,” Fish said, hurriedly joining them for the last hand gesture of the Sign of the Cross. As a convert, he was late coming to the habits that were reflexes to the cradle Catholic. “He died some years before I met the family.”

“You know that Daniel and Jean Brier both went to Mercy College as undergraduates?” Sister Carmen continued.

“Yes. I did.”

“That was shortly after we lost our convent, so for a time, we three nuns would go to Mass at Mercy College. That was where we got to know Daniel, or Dan, as we always called him. He was a fine young man, intelligent and eager and curious, very much like Rose.”

“I can imagine,” Fish said, thinking additionally that Mr. Brier sounded like Paul Fester.

“He graduated before Jean and took a job at the local paper while she finished school,” she said. “He wanted to be a reporter. He liked to ferret things out, and asked good questions. Well, while he was on the job, he apparently started investigating an issue that had to do with the hospital here. He never told us what it was about, but he seemed to regard it as very important, because he frequently asked us to pray that the articles would get published. I took it that the articles were quite controversial, and I suspect it had something to do with the pro-life issue. Dan, like a lot of Mercy College students, felt strongly about life issues, and he was frustrated by the editorial bias of the paper he worked for.”

Sister Maria touched her sister’s shoulder delicately. “Sister, you should mention that Dan was helping to take care of his mother.”

“Oh, yes,” Sister Carmen said. “Rosanna Brier. She was a friend of ours, but she had been confined to her home for some time with Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband had already died some time ago when Dan was in high school. Dan was born late in his parents’ marriage, but he was quite close to them both. Rosanna was a wonderfully sweet woman; very charming even after her disease had progressed. After Dan married Jean, they had baby Blanche right away, but she had heart problems, and for a time they were quite worried about her. I expect her condition is better now, but you can understand how difficult that can be for an infant.”

“Dan must have had a terrible time trying to handle all that on a reporter’s salary,” Fish remarked.

“Yes, it was hard, but I think that living with his mother helped them out,” Sister Carmen said.

“And—the danger?” Fish queried.

Now Sister Carmen looked at Sister Maria, who cleared her throat.

“We want to tell you what we witnessed at Rose’s christening party,” Sister Maria said. “Rose was born just at the time that he was working on this story, his ‘top-secret’ story, as he referred to it. She was baptized at Mercy College, and afterwards, they had a party at a parish hall near here. We were all at the little reception, and Baby Rose, who had been so good during the baptism—just as peaceful and wondering as an angel, became fussy with all the noise and excitement. Dan was walking her up and down in the vestibule of the hall, because she was crying, and I was walking with him. We were taking turns.”

She leaned forward and touched Fish on the knee. “And then, just as we were getting her calmed down, the door opened and this woman walks in, wearing a raincoat, hat, and dark glasses. She walked over to Dan, and said, ‘Are you Daniel Brier?’ And he said he was, so I took the baby from him, thinking that he might want to talk to her alone. But he stood right where he was. I witnessed the whole thing.”