The Missing Madonna (3 page)

“I was a bit surprised when you agreed so quickly to pronounce it,” Eileen called from the small closet where she was hanging up her clothes.

Mary Helen sat on the edge of the bed, removing her shoes. She was too tired to unpack.

“I agreed to . . .? What are you saying, Eileen?” She yawned and unbuttoned her blouse.

“Agreed to pronounce it. I thought you didn’t like to speak in public.” Eileen stood with her hands on her chubby hips.

“What in the name of all that is good and holy are you talking about?” Mary Helen adjusted her glasses and blinked at her friend. “When did I agree to . . .?” Suddenly she remembered: In the airport, when she had let her mind wander. She cleared her throat. “What did I agree to?” she asked, feeling a little foolish, not to mention apprehensive.

Eileen sat on the adjoining bed. “Just as I suspected. You haven’t the foggiest clue what they were asking you.”

“Good night, nurse! Eileen! Get on with it. What did I agree to do?”

“To pronounce the benediction at tomorrow’s opening breakfast meeting, Mary Helen. From what I gathered, it is rather like a solemn high grace before meals.”

Groaning, Mary Helen climbed into bed. From the street below she heard taxis honking and car tires squealing. Streaks of light angled in between the slits where the heavy draperies failed to meet the window-frame. They moved along the ceiling of the darkened room, making grotesque shadows slide down the wall.

“Can’t you sleep?” Eileen whispered from the next bed.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m thinking about what I’m going to say at the breakfast tomorrow, of course.”

“Have you any ideas?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ll think of something, old dear. You always do.” Eileen grunted consolingly and turned over.

Mary Helen stared at the shadow-etched ceiling. She didn’t have the heart to tell Eileen that, at the moment, the only grace she could think of was one she had learned from a mischievous third-grader.

“Rub-a-dub-dub. Thanks for the grub. Yeah, God” was the way it went. Somehow, she didn’t think that it would do.

The luncheon speaker, a stately-looking woman, paused to entertain questions. How in the name of all that’s good and holy do you
entertain
a question, Mary Helen wondered, glancing down at the convention program. Answer, maybe; ignore, possibly. But entertain?

Running her finger down the program schedule, she checked her watch. The session should be over in about ten minutes, unless some long-winded participant commandeered one of the four floor microphones. From the restless stirrings of the five hundred conventioneers seated at round tables, it didn’t seem likely. The OWLs had sat long enough. She could feel a stretch in the air.

Right after lunch there was to be a minisession for new members. The rest of them were free to sightsee, shop, or nap. All around her Mary Helen could hear the pop of lipstick tubes and the click of powder compacts. Obviously, most of the OWLs were not going to rest.

Before they had left their bedroom this morning, Eileen and she had agreed to meet after lunch in front of the waterfall in the hotel lobby. It was a good thing, too, because they hadn’t seen each other since.

As soon as the group was dismissed, Mary Helen followed the arrows marked
LOBBY
, planted herself firmly in front of the waterfall, and searched the milling crowd for her friend. Quickly, she spotted Eileen elbowing her
way across the crowded lobby, with Lucy Lyons and Erma Duran trailing in her wake.

Erma hung behind the other two, and even from this distance, Mary Helen thought the woman looked distressed. What’s wrong, she wondered, watching Erma stop at the main desk. She couldn’t remember ever having seen her upset before. Erma said something to the man in a morning coat behind the desk.

The gentleman smiled brightly, checked the slots behind him, then shook his head. The thick mane of gray hair bounced from side to side, making him look, Mary Helen thought, for all the world like a friendly lion. He picked up the phone receiver, spoke briefly, then shook his head again.

Erma clutched her cloth purse to her chest. For a moment her shoulders drooped, but only for a moment. Running her hand over her gray-streaked hair, she pushed a stray curl behind her ear. She straightened up, smiled at the gentleman, then bent forward to pat his hand. She wouldn’t want him to feel bad. As he gaped, she turned and bustled across the crowded foyer.

“Congratulations on the remarkably erudite blessing you gave this morning,” Eileen said before Mary Helen could wonder what that was all about.

Eileen’s gray eyes twinkled. “You do amaze me!” she said. “We’ve been friends for more than fifty years and I’ve never heard you say the Prayer of St. Cyril of Jerusalem used in the Coptic Orthodox Church.” She moved closer. A group of women going to the Cafe Fonda squeezed around her. “To tell the God’s honest truth, I hadn’t the ghost of an idea you even knew any Coptic Orthodox prayers. Where did you manage to dig up such a thing?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” Mary Helen said.

“That was a lovely grace, Sister.” A stout woman touched Mary Helen on the shoulder. “Very inspirational.”

Mary Helen smiled and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. The woman paused to exchange pleasantries with Erma and Lucy.

“Come clean, Mary Helen.” Eileen was not to be put off.

“It was printed on the back of the plastic bookmark I stuck in my murder mystery,” she whispered. Mary Helen was happy that Erma and Lucy were busy chatting.

“And there are those among us who dare to doubt the luck of the Irish!” Eileen rolled her eyes heavenward. Mary Helen not only doubted that the Irish had an edge on luck, she had her doubts about the rest of Eileen’s superstitions as well. She was just about to say so when Lucy turned back to the group.

“Did I hear
Irish?”
she said. “Which brings to mind St. Patrick’s and Fifth Avenue. What kind of devilment can we get into this afternoon?” Her eyes twinkled behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Mary Helen asked.

“I can’t hear myself think in here, which probably is no great loss.” Lucy leaned in toward the group. “But I can’t hear you either. Can we talk outside?”

“Where are the other two?” Eileen shouted over the crowd.

“Noelle is introducing the speaker in one of the minisessions,” Erma explained, “and Caroline has a childhood friend living in an apartment on East Fifty-sixth Street whom she promised to visit.”

Outside the hotel, New York City was having a sparkling spring day. The sky above the tall buildings was a clear, picture-postcard blue and the air had a snap to it.

The noontime crowd bustled along in all directions. Taxis honked at trucks, cars, and pedestrians alike. A tight group of young men with yarmulkes and earlocks dashed across Seventh Avenue against the light Businesswomen
in smartly tailored wool suits and tennis shoes rushed past one another on the crowded sidewalks.

Although Mary Helen had visited New York City several times in her seventy-plus years, she never seemed to get over the sense of excitement she felt whenever she was there. There was a certain verve in the air that could not be denied.

“Shall we head for St. Patrick’s Cathedral first?” Erma’s brown eyes snapped with eagerness. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”

They all nodded. Who would have the heart to say no, Mary Helen wondered. Lucy led the way and the others followed her, zigzagging single file across West Fifty-third Street to Fifth Avenue. Sister Mary Helen brought up the rear.

“We must look like a string of gray-haired ducklings,” she shouted to Eileen, who was just ahead of her. She was not sure her friend had heard her. She wished Eileen would wait. She wanted to tell her about Erma looking worried and stopping by the front desk of the hotel. She also wanted to ask Eileen if she had any idea why, but they had reached St. Patrick’s before she caught up.

The four women stood for several minutes, looking up at its Gothic splendor. Then they threaded their way through groups of people seated on the entrance steps, having lunch, chatting, or just leaning back to enjoy the sunshine.

Skirting the bronze doors, they entered the vestibule. Once inside the cathedral, Mary Helen paused while her eyes adjusted to the cool dimness of the immense structure. Behind her on the west wall, the rose window, framed by the thousands of shining pipes of the great organ, shed muted light on the nave.

The group moved reverently down the side aisle past the altars of St. Anthony, St. Anne, and St. Monica. They
stopped for a moment at the shrine of Elizabeth. Ann Seton, the first American-born saint.

Mouth open, Erma pointed to the cardinals’ hats hanging from the ceiling hundreds of feet above them. Craning their necks, the women stared up at the four round, flat red dots, with their clusters of dangling tassels.

“These cardinals!” Lucy whispered after a few moments. “They really have their heads in the clouds.”

Mary Helen had wondered how long it would take her to say it.

“But they do keep on top of things,” Eileen whispered back. Egad! Lucy Lyons was rubbing off!

The group decided to split up. Mary Helen and Eileen would attend the one o’clock Mass in Our Lady’s Chapel, drop by the elegant old Scribner bookstore, and then simply windowshop. Lucy and Erma intended to shop in earnest: Saks, Gucci, Tiffany, F.A.O. Schwarz. The four agreed to rendezvous at quarter past three at the Lexington Avenue entrance of Bloomingdale’s.

*  *  *

Mary Helen didn’t realize how sore her feet were until three-ten, when Eileen and she were seated on two hard chairs next to the fine-jewelry department in Bloomingdale’s. From where they sat they had a perfect view of the store’s glass doors and the three or four steps leading to the old revolving door that opened onto Lexington Avenue. No one could get in or out without their noticing.

She and Eileen had bought a Big Apple T-shirt to take back to Sister Anne. The shirts were so cute. But in Mary Helen’s opinion, Anne was the only nun at Mount St. Francis College young enough and thin enough to wear one. They had picked out a large box of Fanny Farmer chocolates to bring home to the others. Which calories they didn’t need, they both had agreed.

Right on time, Lucy and Erma arrived, smiling and
laden with brightly colored shopping bags. They had just greeted one another when a piercing cry echoed from the entryway. The milling shoppers stopped, momentarily stunned. Mary Helen could feel the hair rise along the back of her neck.

She strained to see. A thin redheaded woman grabbed at her throat, paled, then burst into tears. In front of her a sinewy teenager in jeans and a maroon velour shirt turned and bolted down the steps. Hitting hard against the revolving door, he whirled out onto the crowded street. He was fast, but not so fast that Mary Helen didn’t see a piece of thin gold chain dangling from his clenched fist.

The weeping woman, pale and shaken, slumped onto the steps. Before Mary Helen fully realized what had happened, a broad-shouldered black man, who looked like a college fullback, burst from the jewelry department. He spoke into a walkie-talkie. Seconds later, three men came running from different parts of the department store, and streaked past them. Taking the steps in one leap, they shot out onto Lexington.

“Glory be to God!” Eileen was the first to get her voice back. “Glory be to God!” she repeated, her brogue unusually thick. “We’ve seen a mugging!”

Stunned, Mary Helen nodded her head. Beside her, Erma’s pudgy hand shielded the gold medallion hanging around her own neck. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to this,” she whispered. Clearing her throat, she stared sympathetically at the shaking woman now being comforted by the fullback. “I tell you, girls, I would be absolutely inconsolable.”

Shoving her bifocals up the bridge of her nose, Mary Helen studied the filigree-edged medal hanging around Erma’s neck. It was Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The Byzantine image of Mother and Child dangled from a gold chain.

“My husband, Tommy, gave it to me a year or so
before he died,” Erma said quietly, her brown eyes suddenly filling. Embarrassed, she looked away.

Pretending not to notice her tears, Mary Helen took the medal in the palm of her hand. “It’s lovely, Erma,” she said. And it was. Even though the medal was small, in the raised image the Mother looked sad; the Child, terrified. It was no wonder, Mary Helen thought, that this was the most famous of what were called the Passion Madonnas.

She turned the medal over, noting with surprise the 24K stamped on the back.

“It’s valuable.” Erma, now fully recovered, nodded. It was as if she could read the old nun’s mind. “But its real value to me
is
sentimental. Tommy knew I had special devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”

No doubt, being married to Tommy Duran, poor Erma had needed all the help she could get. Mary Helen let the medal slip from her hand.

*  *  *

The cab ride back to the Sheraton was silent Each woman clung to the edge of the seat as the cab swerved and screeched through the traffic. Each was lost in her own thoughts. They arrived at the hotel just in time to go to their rooms and freshen up before the four-o’clock session.