Read Online The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ann Patchett
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already seems like my whole life."
I tried to think of that, being here my whole lifetime. It made my head hurt worse. "So what do I need to know?" I said tiredly.
"Sister Bernadette and Sister Serena are the ones you want to go to if you've got something on your mind. Sister Evangeline is sweet but she's older than time and pretty much blind. Sister Loyola is a snitch. She seems nice enough when you meet her, but she takes everything from your lips right to Mother Corinne's ears."
"And Mother Corinne?"
"Well, you already met her. And you can bet that anything you thought about her was right on the money." Angie looked at me. "I wish you'd stop crying," she said.
What I couldn't understand was why, in a place with nearly a hundred rooms and only twenty-five girls, we had to have roommates at all. I asked it carefully, making sure Angie understood it wasn't her I minded, I was just wondering. She told me that years ago they used to have the whole place set up like a hospital ward, with all the girls in rows of beds in the grand ballroom, but then one girl got the pox and they couldn't control the spread at all. "All those little babies born blind or missing arms," she said. "Can you imagine just waiting on that? All the girls in front of you having crippled babies and you know you will too but all you can do is sit around and wait for it to happen. After that they put people in rooms. They say we can't have our own rooms 'cause of the heating costs, that they don't like to open the whole place up, but really it's because they don't like for us to be alone, or they 'don't think it's natural,' as Mother Corinne likes to say."
I had never shared a room with anyone but Thomas.
I put on a clean dress. Billy's mother had washed and ironed the few things I had before I left Arkansas. The only vestige of the days of the grand Hotel Louisa was that people still met on the front porch at five o'clock in the warm months. The bourbon and sodas were strictly forbidden, but we went there as if pulled by tradition, just to sit in the chairs and look out over the Clatterbucks' back pasture.
"You've got to be respectful to the girls ahead of you," Angie told me as we were walking downstairs. "The farther along a girl is, the nicer everyone will be, like fixing her plate at supper and giving up chairs. It's only right, you know, we're all going to graduate sooner or later. There are three girls now, Charlotte and Nora and Lolly, who are already two weeks late. That's a lot to have late at the same time. Everybody's real nervous about it."
The stairwell was lined with grand paintings, mostly of a beautiful, dark-eyed woman I later learned was Louisa herself. Louisa with her hair up, standing in front of the fireplace. Louisa with her hair down, walking through the gardens. Louisa with Lewis, his hand resting gently against her shoulder. I don't imagine she had time to do much else but sit for paintings. At the bottom of the stairs was a small dish of holy water nailed up to the wall. Angie dipped in her fingers without looking down and crossed herself, and after thinking about it for a moment, I did the same.
We walked onto the porch in the late August afternoon of Habit, Kentucky. It was hot, but not like Flagstaff and Amarillo and Oklahoma City. There had been good rains all summer and the grass in the pasture was heavy and dark. I had never seen such thick banks of trees, such softness growing from every surface of a field. Kentucky was another country, and in that country, Saint Elizabeth's was a country unto itself, where on the porch of a grand hotel, twenty-five pregnant girls drank sweaty glasses of iced tea and watched the sun set west while their loose dresses blew around their hips and pressed against their huge stomachs. I couldn't imagine which ones were two weeks overdue. They all seemed two weeks overdue to me. I watched their faces carefully; they looked like they had forgotten themselves and maybe for a moment
I tried to think of that, being here my whole lifetime. It made my head hurt worse. "So what do I need to know?" I said tiredly.
"Sister Bernadette and Sister Serena are the ones you want to go to if you've got something on your mind. Sister Evangeline is sweet but she's older than time and pretty much blind. Sister Loyola is a snitch. She seems nice enough when you meet her, but she takes everything from your lips right to Mother Corinne's ears."
"And Mother Corinne?"
"Well, you already met her. And you can bet that anything you thought about her was right on the money." Angie looked at me. "I wish you'd stop crying," she said.
What I couldn't understand was why, in a place with nearly a hundred rooms and only twenty-five girls, we had to have roommates at all. I asked it carefully, making sure Angie understood it wasn't her I minded, I was just wondering. She told me that years ago they used to have the whole place set up like a hospital ward, with all the girls in rows of beds in the grand ballroom, but then one girl got the pox and they couldn't control the spread at all. "All those little babies born blind or missing arms," she said. "Can you imagine just waiting on that? All the girls in front of you having crippled babies and you know you will too but all you can do is sit around and wait for it to happen. After that they put people in rooms. They say we can't have our own rooms 'cause of the heating costs, that they don't like to open the whole place up, but really it's because they don't like for us to be alone, or they 'don't think it's natural,' as Mother Corinne likes to say."
I had never shared a room with anyone but Thomas.
I put on a clean dress. Billy's mother had washed and ironed the few things I had before I left Arkansas. The only vestige of the days of the grand Hotel Louisa was that people still met on the front porch at five o'clock in the warm months. The bourbon and sodas were strictly forbidden, but we went there as if pulled by tradition, just to sit in the chairs and look out over the Clatterbucks' back pasture.
"You've got to be respectful to the girls ahead of you," Angie told me as we were walking downstairs. "The farther along a girl is, the nicer everyone will be, like fixing her plate at supper and giving up chairs. It's only right, you know, we're all going to graduate sooner or later. There are three girls now, Charlotte and Nora and Lolly, who are already two weeks late. That's a lot to have late at the same time. Everybody's real nervous about it."
The stairwell was lined with grand paintings, mostly of a beautiful, dark-eyed woman I later learned was Louisa herself. Louisa with her hair up, standing in front of the fireplace. Louisa with her hair down, walking through the gardens. Louisa with Lewis, his hand resting gently against her shoulder. I don't imagine she had time to do much else but sit for paintings. At the bottom of the stairs was a small dish of holy water nailed up to the wall. Angie dipped in her fingers without looking down and crossed herself, and after thinking about it for a moment, I did the same.
We walked onto the porch in the late August afternoon of Habit, Kentucky. It was hot, but not like Flagstaff and Amarillo and Oklahoma City. There had been good rains all summer and the grass in the pasture was heavy and dark. I had never seen such thick banks of trees, such softness growing from every surface of a field. Kentucky was another country, and in that country, Saint Elizabeth's was a country unto itself, where on the porch of a grand hotel, twenty-five pregnant girls drank sweaty glasses of iced tea and watched the sun set west while their loose dresses blew around their hips and pressed against their huge stomachs. I couldn't imagine which ones were two weeks overdue. They all seemed two weeks overdue to me. I watched their faces carefully; they looked like they had forgotten themselves and maybe for a moment
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