The neckline looked all right. Joan Esther went back into the freezer and got a handful of shaved ice from the bucket of it kept for drinks. She thrust this handful at the gash in the sculpture’s right shoulder and stood back to see if she needed any more.
“Fine,” she declared. “That’s wonderful. What about the rest of the statues? No other damage?”
“Not a thing,” Agnes Bernadette said, “but they weren’t in the same place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I had room for all but one of them on a single shelf. The shelf above the dairy shelf. Usually it’s full of frozen cookies because I always make enough cookies so I have extras to thaw for when the girls want them, you know what college girls are like, they spend all their time eating. But I didn’t have anything on that shelf this time because I’ve been keeping the freezer deliberately clear. You know. For things we’d need for the convention.”
“But we’re keeping the things we need for the convention over at the convent,” Joan Esther said.
“I know, Joanie, I know, but I was trying to be prepared. And then I made the statues and, you see, I was right I did need the space. So I put nine of the statues on that shelf and then I ran out of room.”
“And you put the other one where?”
“On the other side of the freezer on the bottom shelf next to the green beans.”
“And the fish were there, too?”
“Well, no,” Agnes Bernadette said. “They weren’t. They were stacked up in boxes in the far corner.”
“Then why do you think this had anything to do with the fish?”
“Well,” Agnes Bernadette said, “the little man has to do with the fish.”
“How do you know this has to do with the little man? Did you see him break the statue?”
“Well, no, Joanie, but he must have, mustn’t he? I mean, I walked in and he was standing right next to it and it was smashed. And it was out If it had been just lying out, it would have melted.”
“Right,” Joan Esther said.
“Is this like a detective story, Joanie? Do we have to figure it out and catch who did it? Maybe we could ask that Mr. Demarkian who’s supposed to be coming and he could do it for us.”
“That’s all right,” Joan Esther said. “I don’t suppose it matters. I just didn’t want to go saying anything to Reverend Mother General and getting that little man in trouble when we don’t even know if he’s responsible. Give me a paper towel, will you please? My hands are frozen.”
“Are we going to be able to use it?”
“I think so,” Joan Esther, said.
“Oh, good,” Agnes Bernadette said.
Joan Esther took the paper towel Agnes Bernadette handed her and started to rub against the statue’s shoulder. At the rate they were going, this thing was going to melt just as they carried it up the stairs.
Melted or not, Joan Esther thought she’d be covered.
Reverend Mother General had sent her down here to fix this thing.
She was fixing it.
It was the first time in forever she’d been able to feel she’d done something right
2
NORMAN KEVIC HAD BEEN standing just past the double doors into the reception room when Nancy Hare had dumped the contents of the flower vase on Mother Mary Bellarmine, and right after it happened he’d taken the prudent way out and headed for the garden. He’d been in the garden for less than a minute when he’d decided it was the wrong place for him to be. Norman Kevic had never been the kind of man who loved the great outdoors. The lesser outdoors was always intruding on him. As soon as he got near grass, he got to feeling as if he were crawling with bugs. He’d read once in the Reader’s Digest that “sexier” people were more assiduously plagued by mosquitoes than unsexy ones, but it hadn’t helped. Mosquitoes sucked blood. Ladybugs had tiny, tiny feet that tickled the hair on your arms. Cockroaches were unmentionable. He stood for a while watching a bee go from flower to flower on one of the bushes near the bare feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and then he decided he needed to use the John.
Finding a men’s John in a building on the campus of a women’s college run by nuns is not as easy as it might be elsewhere. Norman Kevic didn’t even know who he would properly ask for directions. Nuns had always made him nervous even when they were not paying attention to him. When they were paying attention to him, they shot his anxiety levels into the stratosphere. Then there were all these posters and signs and displays dedicated to Motherhood, virgin and otherwise. Norm wouldn’t have guessed nuns could be so hyped on mother love. Several of the nuns he’d bumped into had been wearing little pins that said “On Mother’s Day, Remember the Mother of God” just the way, at Christmas, they wore little pins that said “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” The pins were very tiny and very discreet. In all likelihood, Norm was the only one who’d noticed them. The problem was, mothers made Norm even more nervous than nuns did. Norm’s own personal mother had been a harridan of the first water. If he’d had the sort of mind susceptible to the recovery movement, he could have made a career out of going to support groups and listing the ways in which his mother had alternately terrorized and suffocated him, never mind the times she’d simply taken off her belt and let him have it. The idea of calling a nun “mother,” the way he had been supposed to do in the receiving line, made him physically ill.