Father Kuzdek stepped in and said, “Come, Eddie. We’ll tell the children together, you and I, and then you and Mary and Richard and Irene can all take them home.”
“Yes,” Eddie agreed, grateful to have someone tell him what to do next. “Yes, thank you, Father.”
The little group dispersed to the various cars, a new dread spreading through them. For they all knew that as difficult as the last hour had been, the next one would be even worse, telling the children.
CHAPTER TWO
Sister Regina rang the brass handbell and waited beside the west door for the children to come in from recess. They came barreling down off the hilly playground and gathered on the narrow sidewalk that connected the schoolhouse with the convent, a stone’s throw away. Double file they lined up, the same obedient ones doing so quickly while the usual troublemakers jostled and aggravated. She waited patiently until all of them were in rank and file before leading the way inside. The hall was narrow and shadowy after the stark sunlight of the playground. Some children detoured to the bathrooms while Sister went on ahead and placed the brass bell on one end of the parapet where it remained while not in use—and woe to the student who touched it without permission! She waited beside the drinking fountain outside her room, her hands hidden inside her sleeves, monitoring their return to classes.
St. Joseph’s Parochial School was laid out symmetrically, with three rooms on either side of a central gymnasium, divided from it by a thick parapet topped with square columns that created a hall on either side. Each hall had two classrooms holding two grades apiece. At the northwest comer was the lunchroom; at the southwest comer the flower room, where the nuns raised plants for the altar.
At the east end the gym gave onto a storage room with a full bank of windows, but the folding doors were usually kept closed so the gymnasium remained gloomy. At the opposite end was a stage with an ancient canvas curtain sporting a tableau of a Venetian canal and gondolas rendered by some long-ago artist in the dull, monochromatic hues of rutabagas. Countless piano recitals had been held on that stage, for musical training was so vital a part of the curriculum at St. Joseph’s that the gymnasium had been named Paderewski Hall, in honor of Poland’s most famous composer.
That afternoon, as the third- and fourth-graders finished up in the bathroom, Paderewski Hall was dusky, as usual, the stage curtain lowered, the fold-aside storeroom doors closing off the rich east light from the gym.
Sister Regina held her classroom door open for the last straggler who tested her patience by continuing to guzzle water at the hall fountain.
“That’s enough, Michael. Come along.”
He took three more gulps, then swiped his face with the back of a hand as she swept him inside her room with the closing door.
She clapped her hands twice, then left them folded. “All right, boys and girls, let’s stand and begin our afternoon lessons with a prayer.”
Michael Poplinski jabbed his buddy Jimmy Lucas on his way down the aisle, feinted to avoid the retaliatory punch, then put on a burst of speed and skidded to a halt beside his desk. Sister waited with her hands folded while the shuffling subsided and the room grew quiet.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost...” Thirty-five children made the sign of the cross with her and began the afternoon as they always did, with a prayer. When it ended, they took their seats with a sound like a flock of geese landing, while Sister walked around her desk to face them. She was a tall, thin woman with pale skin and kind hazel eyes. Her eyebrows were the light brown of summer cornsilk and her lips as prettily curved as the top of an apple. Even when she was displeased, her expression never grew grim, nor did her lips lose their forgiving lift. When she spoke, her voice was filled with patience and quietude.
“Third-graders, you’re going to work on your spelling.” Her two rows of third-graders occupied the right half of the room nearest the south windows. Every girl wore a dress. Some of the boys wore overalls with striped T-shirts, others wore corduroy pants and cowboy shirts. “The list of words is on the blackboard, and I want you to write them once on a paper of your own—has everyone got a tablet?” Fourteen children tipped sideways to search for their tablets. “Tear off one page, please.” Fourteen sheets were ripped off fourteen tablets before the children tipped sideways again and stuffed their tablets away. Finally it was quiet and Sister Regina continued. “After you’ve written the whole list of words, use them again to fill in the blanks on this worksheet.” She passed out the worksheets and got the third-graders busy, then went to the left side of the room to work with the fourth-graders on their arithmetic tables. She had brought a basket of oranges into the room to demonstrate addition and subtraction: three oranges plus two oranges equals five oranges. She gathered her twenty-one fourth-graders around her desk so they could all see the oranges and the corresponding flash cards.
At close range, it was obvious that the children had played hard in the hot sun at noon recess. The smell of their sweaty heads reminded her of the dogs they used to have on the farm who would follow her dad and brothers through the snow when they went to feed the stock, then come back inside and lie on the kitchen floor by the wood-stove to warm and dry.
Still lecturing, Sister Regina maneuvered herself to the bank of south windows and raised three of them, letting the fresh air waft in, then pulled down the green roller shades above. The bright autumn afternoon light continued streaming in below the shades as she returned to her desk, where the arithmetic lesson continued.
She was still there shuffling oranges when someone knocked on the door. The interruption signaled a swell of chatter, and she shushed the children as she moved to answer.
In the hall Father Kuzdek stood with Eddie Olczak.
“Good afternoon, Father. Good afternoon, Mr. Olczak.” She could tell immediately something was terribly wrong.
“Sister, I’m sorry to interrupt your class,” Father said. “Could you shut the door please?” Father was recognizably distraught and Eddie had been crying. When the door closed Father said, “We’ve brought some very bad news, Sister. There’s been a horrible accident. Eddie’s wife was killed by a train this morning.”
Sister Regina gasped softly and her hand flew to her lips. “Oh no.” She made the sign of the cross, then broke a cardinal rule by touching a layman. “Oh, Mr. Olczak,” she whispered, laying a hand on his sleeve, “I’m so sorry.” Horror had sent her heart clubbing at the thought of those two little girls in the classroom behind her and this hardworking and gentle man with whom they were all so familiar. Why them, she thought as she retracted her hand and knotted it tightly with the other against her black-clad chest. “Oh, my goodness, not your lovely young wife. What... what happened?” She looked to Father for an answer.
“She was driving,” he replied, having trouble controlling his own emotions. “It appears that she was, ah...” He swallowed and bumped his glasses up to clear his teary eyes. “... she was trying to beat the train to the crossing on her way out to her folks’ house.”
Sister felt the shock rush through her, prickling her skin and making her skull tingle. Of all the women in the parish, Krystyna Olczak was the one the nuns relied on the most for help. One of the most cheerful, pleasant ladies in town. “Oh, dear me, this is so terrible.”
Eddie tried to speak, but his voice was choked. “I have to...” He had to clear his throat and start again. “I have to tell the girls.”
“Yes, of course,” Sister whispered, but she made no move to return to the classroom and get them. Fully realizing his daughters must be told, she found herself reluctant to open the door and watch their happiness be shattered. They were such lovely children, Mr. Olczak’s girls—carefree, polite, above-average students with Krystyna’s sweet disposition, who never caused problems in the classroom or on the playground. They were children who were fussed over at home, clothed in pretty dresses that their mother made herself and kept starched and ironed to perfection. Many days Anne and Luc
y came across the school grounds holding hands, their hair fixed in ringlets or French braids, their shoes polished and their hot-lunch money tied into the comers of their cloth handkerchiefs. Some days they went home for noon dinner, across the brow of the green playground, one block down the alley to their house, always returning well in time for the bell that ended noon recess, never late. Sometimes Sister Regina could tell that their hair had been neatened, their barrettes tightened and the bows on the backs of their dresses retied when they returned. Their mother had taken pride in her children, sending them off looking like little Shirley Temples, and when the Olczack family walked into church together on Sundays, everybody watched them and smiled.
But now she was dead. How unthinkable.
Poor little children, Sister thought. Poor Mr. Olczak.
Eddie Olczak was a simple, diligent, easygoing man whom Sister Regina had never heard criticized for anything. He had worked as the church janitor since before she came here four years ago, and everyone rather took his presence for granted. Tens of times a week she heard people say, “Ask Eddie,” or (if it was a nun speaking) “Ask Mr. Olczak.” Whatever anyone requested, he provided without complaint. He didn’t talk much, just went about his duties with the tenacity and tirelessness of a draft horse, keeping out of people’s way, but always there when he was needed.
It felt peculiar to see this man cry, to see him needing help when it was always he who was sought for help.
Yet here he was, standing in the hall weeping, with Father’s arm around his shoulders. He was dressed as always, in a worn blue chambray shirt and striped overalls that his good wife had washed and ironed for him. He swiped his eyes and tried to summon the fortitude to have his children brought into the hall.
“I... I’ll be all right,” he managed in a cracked voice, drawing a red hanky from his back pocket. “I’ve...” He cleared his throat and blew his nose. “I’ve just... just got to get through this, that’s all.”
Father was cleaning his glasses—Father often cleaned his glasses when he was out of his depth—and replaced them on his head one bow at a time, letting the springy earpieces grab him behind the ears. When they were firmly in place, he pushed on the nosepiece and said, “Please get the children, Sister.”
Give me strength, O Lord, she prayed, turning back into her classroom to carry out the hardest assignment she had ever been given.
The room had grown noisy in her absence. The fourth-graders were still gathered around the oranges at her desk. She clapped her hands twice and sent them back to their desks, all but Anne Olczack to whom she said, “Please wait here, Anne, by my desk.”
“Should I put the oranges back in the basket, Sister?” Anne offered. She was a thoughtful child, taught to be helpful by both of her parents, always eager to please in any way she could.
“Yes, Anne, thank you.”
Anne had pretty blue eyes and brown hair parted in the middle today and drawn back with matching barrettes. Her dress was green and brown plaid with a white collar and a ruffle that formed a V in the front. Sister Regina touched her on the shoulder and felt a welling inside such as she’d never experienced before, made up of empathy and love for this child who had blithely bid her mother goodbye this morning with absolute trust that she’d be there at home waiting at the end of the school day.
Who would be there for her and Lucy from now on?
Halfway down the aisle closest to the windows, Lucy was laboring over her spelling words, gripping her pencil and concentrating so hard that the tip of her tongue was showing. Lucy resembled her older sister, but with a smattering of freckles and one dimple in her left cheek. Teachers were not supposed to have favorites, but Sister Regina couldn’t help favoring the Olczak children. It wasn’t only that they were pretty as pansies, but that they showered their inveterate sweetness indiscriminately on their classmates and on each other.
Anne, the older, mothered and protected her younger sister. Last year when one of the big boys, a seventh-grader, had knocked Lucy down, Anne ran halfway across the playground and gave him what-for, and told him that Jesus was disappointed in him, and if it happened again she’d march straight to Father Kuzdek’s house and report him. What made Anne Olczak different from the other big sisters was that she’d have done it.
Lucy, the younger, reflected the care she received from Anne by demonstrating it with others in her class. Yesterday, when her classmate Jimmy Plotnik had cried because he’d put glue on the wrong side of his construction paper, she had patted his shoulder and said, “Don’t cry, Jimmy, that’s the way we learn is by our mistakes.”
Lucy was dressed today in a starched yellow dress with bubble-shaped sleeves, biting her tongue and forming her oversized spelling words with the concentration of one who believes the only way to make it to heaven is to do exactly as she is told.
Sister Regina stopped beside Lucy and leaned down to whisper, “Lucy, your father is here to talk to you and your sister. Will you come out into the hall with me?”
Lucy looked up and took a beat to register this interruption, for even though her father was there every day of the week, this was unusual.
“Daddy?”
“Yes. He wants to talk to you.”
Lucy flashed a smile totally bereft of concern.
“Yes, S’ster,” she whispered and, with an air of importance, laid her yellow pencil in the groove at the top of her desk, then slid from her seat and led the way to the door. Sister Regina opened it and followed the children out into the hall, her heart heavy with dread for them and for their poor, grief-stricken father who waited. She wondered what was proper, to linger nearby or to return to her room and give them privacy. The children—she sensed—liked her and might possibly feel comforted by her presence. As for herself, the thought of returning to her classes at this moment was insupportable. She was still so stricken that she needed time to compose herself.
Anne and Lucy, unsuspecting innocents, smiled and said, “Hi, Daddy!” going to him as if he’d come to take them out of school early on some lark.
Eddie dropped to one knee and opened his arms. “Hi, angels.” His little girls hove against him and hugged his neck while his throat worked and his face reflected torture. Sister Regina watched the children go up on tiptoe in their brand-new brown shoes, bought for the start of the school year. She watched their daddy’s arms go around their waists and crush the bows on the sashes that their mommy had tied for the last time ever, that morning before they left for school. He kissed their foreheads hard and clung to their small bodies while Sister pressed the edge of her folded hands against her lips and told herself she must not cry. A line from the Scriptures went through her mind: Suffer the little children to come unto me, and she committed a venial sin by questioning God’s wisdom in taking their mother. Why a good and young woman like that? Why not someone older who’d lived a full life? Why Krystyna Olczak when she was needed here by her family?
Eddie sat back on his heels and looked into his children’s faces. “Anne... Lucy... there’s something that Daddy’s got to tell you.”
They saw his tears and sobered.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Anne asked, her hand on his shoulder.
“Well, honey...” Against her small back his open hand looked immense. Stained and callused, it covered the plaid cloth of her dress while he cleared his throat, trying to make himself say the words that would alter their lives forever. “Jesus has decided to... to take your mommy to heaven.” Anne stared at him silently. Her mouth tightened slightly. Lucy said matter-of-factly, “No, Mommy’s at Grandma’s making pickles. She said that’s where she was going today.”
Eddie forged on. “No, sweetheart, she’s not. She... well, she wanted to go there, and she started to go there, but she never made it.”
“She din’t?” Lucy’s eyes got wide with bemusement, still no fear. “But how come?”
Eddie knew Anne would grasp the truth before Lucy, so he looked into her eyes when he said it. “A train hit
her car at the railroad crossing, and Mommy died.” The last words were uttered in a ragged whisper.
Anne’s mouth grew more and more stubborn while she considered her father’s words. Her concept of death came largely from attending requiem Masses. She and her sister, like many children in the parish, had been impressed into the children’s choir, which sang at funerals. But the solemn Latin words and the distant coffin so far below the choir loft left little understanding of what death really meant. Now, for the first time, its true meaning was beginning to dawn on Anne, and with it came denial.
“She did not!” Anne spouted angrily. “She’s at Grandma’s! I know she’s at Grandma’s!” She looked up at Father Kuzdek, the ultimate authority figure at St. Joseph’s, a man who would set things straight. “My mommy didn’t die, did she, Father? Tell my daddy that it’s not true! She’s making pickles at my grandma’s!”
Father Kuzdek struggled to lower his considerable bulk down on one knee. His cassock puddled on the floor around the child’s feet as he placed his hands on her shoulders and put his round pink face close to hers. His spectacles had bifocals and he had to lower his chin to peer above them. “We don’t know why Jesus took your mommy, Anne, but it’s true. She’s in heaven now with the angels, and what you have to remember is that she’ll always be there looking out for you, your own special guardian angel who loved you and took care of you while she was here on earth. Only now she’ll keep doing the same thing from heaven.”
Anne stared into the priest’s eyes. Her chin remained stubborn, but it had begun to quiver. This time when she spoke it was in a whisper, much less certain.