Reborn

1

Grace Nevins munched a Ry-Krisp as she dusted the largest of her Infant of Prague statues. It wasn't really an infant; actually, the twelve-inch porcelain figure looked more like a young boy wearing a golden crown and holding a globe before him. A cross jutted up from atop the globe. There were four such statues in the front room of her apartment, one at each point of the compass. All were still garbed in their Christmas raiments, but soon it would be changing time. Lent was fast approaching. Ash Wednesday was next week. That called for somber purple robes on each of the statues.

She moved on to the crucifixes. All told, she had twenty-two of them, and some of the more ornate ones were real dust collectors. After that she worked on the eight statues of the Blessed Mother, from the little six-inch one she had picked up in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., to the three-foot marble beauty in its own miniature grotto in the corner opposite the door. There were six pictures of the Sacred Heart, each with a blessed palm frond behind the frame. The fronds were brittle and brown with age, each being almost a year old. That was all right. Their time was almost up, anyway. When Palm Sunday came again in early April, she'd get fresh fronds for all the pictures.

She was about to start on her praying hands and relics when the buzzer rang. Someone was down at the front entrance. When Grace recognized Carol's voice on the intercom, her heart gave a little extra beat of joy as she buzzed her in.

Always nice to see her only niece.

As she waited for Carol to climb the three flights of stairs, Grace became aware of a vague uneasiness within her, a gradually mounting tension, with no object, no identifiable cause. She tried to shake it off.

"Carol!" she said at the door when her niece arrived, reaching up to give her a kiss and a hug. "So good to see you!"

She was a good quarter of a century older and three inches shorter than her niece, but probably weighed twice as much. Sometimes Grace fretted about her weight, and had even gone so far as to join that new group, Weight Watchers, but then decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Who was she trying to impress? There was no man in her life, and certainly the Lord didn't care how much you weighed when you came to Final Judgment. She told herself, The color of your soul is more important than the size of your waist. It was far more important to watch the shape your soul was in. Say, that was a great idea for a religion discussion group—Soul Watchers. Catchy.

"How are you, Aunt Grace?" Carol said. "I hope you don't mind. We were in town and—"

" 'We'?"

"Yes. Jim came along."

Grace's enthusiasm for this surprise visit dropped a few notches at the sight of Jim's face peeking out from behind her niece, but nothing could dampen it completely.

Except perhaps the nameless uneasiness growing within her.

She pushed it down.

"Hiya, Aunt Grace," he said, putting his hand out.

Grace gave it a quick shake. "Hello, Jim. I'm surprised the… both of you came."

"Oh, Jim's the reason we're in town," Carol said brightly.

Grace ushered them into the apartment. As she took their coats she held her breath, waiting for Jim to make one of his comments about her religious articles. It took a moment, but then he started.

"Have you added to your collection, Aunt Grace?"

"A few items, yes."

"That's nice."

She waited for a skeptical remark, but he merely stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, smiling blandly.

This was not the usual Jim. Perhaps Carol had warned him to be on his best behavior. Carol was such a dear. Yes, that was probably it. Otherwise her husband would be behaving as he had the last time he was here, commenting on the Infant of Prague's taste in clothes or citing the fire hazards of keeping old, dried palm fronds around the apartment.

She took a deep breath. The tension was beginning to stifle her. She needed help. She went to her curved-glass china cabinet and took out her latest treasure: a tiny fragment of dark brown wood on a bed of satin in a clear plastic box. She prayed that holding it would ward off the strangling uneasiness but it did nothing. She handed it to Carol.

"Look. It's a relic. A fragment of the True Cross."

Carol nodded. "Very nice." Then she handed it to Jim.

Grace saw that Jim's face was bright red and that he was biting his upper lip. She saw Carol hurl him a warning look.

Finally he let out a sigh and nodded.

"Yes. Very nice."

"I know what you're thinking," Grace said as he handed it back to her. "That if all the wood that's been sold as splinters of the True Cross were assembled in one place, the amount of lumber would probably equal the Black Forest in Germany." She replaced the relic within the cabinet. "Many religious authorities are skeptical too. Perhaps they're right. But I like to compare it to one of Jesus' miracles. You remember the story of the Loaves and the Fishes, don't you?"

"Of course," Jim said.

"Same principle."

And that was enough on the subject. She offered them tea but they refused. After they all found seats she said,

"What brings you here to the city from the wilds of Long Island?"

Grace saw Carol glance questioningly at Jim.

He shrugged and said, "Tell her. It'll be public knowledge next week."

And so Grace listened distractedly as her niece told her about Dr. Roderick Hanley's death, Jim's invitation to the reading of his will, and why they had good reason to believe that Jim might be Hanley's son.

Grace was having difficulty concentrating on Carol's words. The tension—she could barely stand it. Its intensity had nothing to do with what Carol was saying. It was simply there! And it was growing stronger by the minute.

She didn't want Carol to know anything was wrong, but she had to get away, had to leave the room, even if for only a few minutes.

"How interesting," she said, rising from her seat. "Excuse me for a moment, won't you?"

It took every ounce of Grace's will to keep from running as she headed for the bathroom. She forced herself to latch the door gently, and then she leaned against the sink. The glaring white tile and porcelain of the confined, cell-like space only seemed to intensify the sensation. In the mirror her face was pale and beaded with sweat.

Grace clutched her Miraculous medal in one fist and her scapular medal in the other. She felt as if she were about to explode. She pressed her fists tightly over her mouth. She wanted to scream! Nothing like this had ever happened before. Was she going crazy?

She couldn't let Carol and Jim see her like this. She had to get them out of here. But how?

Suddenly she knew a way.

She forced herself to return to the front room.

"I'd love to discuss this some more, dear," she said, praying her voice wouldn't break, "but this is the time I set aside each day in the weeks before Lent to say the Rosary. Won't you join me? I'm doing the Fifth Glorious Mystery today."

Jim shot to his feet and looked at his watch.

"Whoa! Time to get to dinner!"

Carol was not far behind.

"We really must be going, Aunt Grace," Carol said. "Why don't you come to dinner with us? We're going down to Mulberry Street."

"Thank you, dear," she said as she pulled their coats from the closet, "but I've got choir practice tonight, and then I'm on the eleven-to-seven at Lenox Hill."

"Still nursing?" Carol said with a smile.

"Until the day I die." She pushed their coats at them, wanting to scream, Get out! Get out before I go crazy right here in front of you! "Sorry you have to run."

Carol seemed to hesitate. As she opened her mouth to speak, Grace quickly pulled her favorite Rosary beads—the clear crystal ones, blessed by the Holy Father himself—from the pocket of her housecoat.

"Yes," Carol said quickly. "So are we. I'll call you soon. We'll give you a rain check on dinner."

"That will be lovely."

Carol paused at the door. "Are you all right?"

"Yes-yes. Jesus is with me."

She kissed Carol, waved a quick good-bye to Jim, then sagged against the door after she had closed it behind them. What would happen now? Would she have a convulsion or go into some sort of" screaming fit? What was happening to her?

Whatever it was, she couldn't let anyone be here. She knew that was foolhardy from a medical standpoint, but what if she said some things she didn't want to, things she wanted no one else to hear? She couldn't risk that, no matter what the danger…

Wait…

The feeling… the dread, the tension. It was lessening. As mysteriously as it had come, it was leaving. By slow degrees it was oozing out of her.

Quickly, fervently, Grace began her Rosary.