To what? I opened the door to the right of her bed. Inside the closet hung a thin, tattered afghan with Verandah House embroidered on it in script letters. I grabbed her white Keds from the bottom of the closet. I waited while she fit them on her feet. She grabbed the handrails and stood, waited a moment, then reached for my arm.
I held out my elbow, let her place her hand on my forearm, and dropped my other hand on top of hers. “Would you like to take a walk?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“It’s beautiful today,” I said. “The kind of day that fools the tourists into believing we don’t have no-see-ums or mosquitoes.”
She laughed. “Now that would be fooling them, for sure. There are enough of them here in South Carolina to eat a small woman alive.”
“Well, not today. Would you like to go out to the fountain?”
“Yes, why yes, I would.”
I slipped her tattered afghan over her shoulders and we headed toward the French doors at the back of the recreation room. Her weight against my elbow was insubstantial.
Residents greeted Maeve as she walked through the room. “You’re looking good today, Maeve,” “Nice to see you up, Maeve.” Several groups sat at tables. A man snored in his wheelchair, his head back and his mouth open. A group of school-children in pressed plaid uniforms stood in straight lines in the lobby, where a chalkboard announced that children from the Pointe Elementary School would be singing at ten a.m. in the recreation room. I pushed open the French doors to the outside. The air was as clean as a crystal glass, sparkling against the azure sky, as if the day could be poured into this vessel, drunk and enjoyed. The fountain gurgled in the side garden in an offbeat sound. We took our seats on a bench in front of it.
The gardens at Verandah House were lush and well tended: azaleas and dogwood were in bloom, a fulfillment of the promise of spring . . . and my wedding. I’d always wanted a spring wedding, since I was a little girl. The invitations were in the backseat of my car—four hundred envelopes addressed in calligraphy by hand. Soon they would go in the mail.
Maeve’s voice startled me. “It takes me three months to find him, it does.”
I turned my attention from the garden, from the invitations.
“I go to the police station and the Industrial Schools. I knock on the door of every state home I can reach by foot. I ask and beg for information, but can find none.”
I held my breath, my fist knotted again. Maeve reached down, uncurled my fingers before she resumed speaking. “Then one day in early spring, I knock on the door of still another school.”
“An Industrial School?” My chest expanded in the hope, in the need to know she had found him, that this motherless boy was found and loved, even if he wasn’t real.
“In that time there are more children in Industrial Schools in Ireland than in all of the United Kingdom put together.” Then she nodded, descended into her story. “A young boy in a torn T-shirt and tattered tweed pants answers the door. It is a wooden door, taller than any I’ve ever seen, except in ancient castles. The knockers are iron and larger than me. I tell the boy who I am looking for. He glances around the foyer like a trapped animal expecting to be hit at any moment. His eyes are wild and full of tears. He says, ‘Can you take me out of here, now, right now?’ I am confused. Then a nun appears from the side.
“At this time in my life, my experiences with the nuns and priests is all positive. I live below St. Mary’s on the Hill—the Dominican church. I live with a God of the water and earth, of love. Nuns mean comfort and beauty and an explanation of a God I cannot understand: the wild Irish God of St. Patrick and the Celtic language that is unexplainable. So when I see this nun appear, my instinct is not one of fear, but one of relief. I step inside the door.”
Maeve closed her eyes, and I thought she was gone, but then she continued and I was there with her, in the Industrial School.
“The stone walls are cold to the touch, but high and grand. The furniture in the hall is dark and polished until you can see your face. Celtic hymns