Nolan Trilogy (49 page)

Solie had been cooking and cleaning all week in preparation for the upcoming Halloween masquerade ball her father held in the warehouse every year.  They used to have it in their big house by the river, but it had grown in the past five years since her mother’s death, accommodating more and more people.  If Solie hadn’t had been a cleaning tornado that week, Erica never would have discovered the second set of keys.  She cleaned everything, even hired extra help to dust and polish and wipe down everything, vacuuming the sofa cushions and mopping the floors. 

It was Solie who set the mouse trap under Mr. Nolan’s mahogany desk, baiting it with peanut butter, which was far more effective than cheese, she claimed.  Erica heard it snap one afternoon while Solie was out grocery shopping and her father was at a meeting somewhere—he said he wouldn’t be home for dinner.  She was afraid to look, afraid to find the horrible sight of a mangled mouse in the trap, but she tore herself away from
American Bandstand
and went to check.  The trap had been sprung, turned over on its face, but there was no mouse.  Erica picked up the trap, studying it, curious.  Something had set it off.  Then she heard scratching.  It seemed to be coming from inside the desk. 

She opened the left-hand drawer, where the sound was coming from.  There were file folders in here, her father’s client folders, business stuff.  She didn’t know.  But the scratching was behind that.  She pulled some of the file folders out, laying them on top of the desk to make room so she could see to the back.  She pulled the rest of the files forward, peering into the space behind them.  Two beady, glassy eyes stared back at her and she jumped back, screaming in surprise.  When she dared to look again, the mouse was gone, but she saw he had been holed up in a compartment at the very back of the drawer.  He had clearly been raiding their house for material to build his nest.

Erica pulled the rest of the file folders out of the drawer, putting them with the others on top, and disengaging the drawer from its tracks, pulling that off too.  Now there was enough light she could see to the very back.  There was a hollow space at the back of the desk where the mouse had taken up residence.  It was as wide and as tall as the drawer and tucked inside the secret compartment was a leather zippered pouch.  She reached back and pulled it out, unzipping it and finding the jackpot.  They were keys.  Like the keys in her father’s desk drawer, but these keys were labeled.  Every key had a code written on a sticker stuck to the face the key.

She poured the keys out on the desk, wondering which one might fit the boxes she had under her bed.  Her boxes didn’t have codes on them, like the ones she had discovered in her father’s darkroom.  All of the keys had number and letter codes, except for three.  Those three had just two letters: S.  P.  She thought about it for a moment, wondering.  It could mean anything.  Her intuition told her the “S” must stand for Susan, her mother.  Her maiden name had been Parker.  Erica took the keys to her room, pulling the boxes out from under her bed.

She tried the first one, no luck.  Then the second key, turning it in the lock.  It turned easily.  Erica felt her heart soaring, her belly fluttering with excitement, as she pressed the latch and the case opened.  She expected more diaries, red leather bound five-year editions packed with her mother’s handwriting, but instead there were film reels.  Frowning, she picked up one of them, holding the film up to the light, trying to see what images might be captured there, but she couldn’t really tell.  She would have to watch them to find out.

She contemplated setting up the projector.  It was packed away, way in the back where she’d found her mother’s journals.  But she knew another place there was a projector.  Erica quickly unlocked the other two cases, finding film reels instead of diaries in those as well.  A little disappointed, but curious about the content of the films, she put the reels back in the cases, unlocked now, and carried them into the living room.

She found the key that would unlock her father’s hidden darkroom, pulling aside the tapestry to unlock the padlock and slide the bolt.  She took the film reels inside, going through the developing room, into the back room, where the projector was waiting.  Heart hammering hard in her chest, knowing Solie wouldn’t be gone more than an hour, she threaded the reels and turned the machine on.  She watched, seeing her instinct had been spot on, because these films were of her mother.  A much, much younger version of her mother.  She was sitting on a porch with a dog in her lap, smiling and waving at the camera.  Behind her was a woman Erica could only assume was Leah’s mother.  She looked like another version of Leah, like a sister or a cousin.

These were home movies.  Just home movies.  Disappointed, Erica went to turn off the projector, when the scene changed.  No longer her mother and Patty, now there was a room full of masked people.  Her brain associated it immediately with the masquerade balls they held every year, but this wasn’t at her house, nor was it at the warehouse.  This was somewhere else, a large space, the people masked but many of them completely nude.

She stared, watching, seeing a masked man standing in front of a girl who was strapped down to a table.  Was it a table?  She couldn’t be sure.  There were two girls.  One wearing a dark mask, the other one white.  The film was black and white so she couldn’t differentiate the color.  As she watched, the man who was clearly officiating, wearing a black mask to cover his features, a priest’s cassock and a priest’s collar around his neck, made the sign of the cross over the first girl, placing something directly between her legs, something small, like a poker chip or… the Eucharist.  He moved to the next girl and did the same, placing a Eucharist on her shaven labia.

Was he giving them communion?  Erica knew enough about the Mary Magdalenes to know what she was seeing must be part of her ritual.  Like the ritual she would be participating in the night after Halloween.  What had she agreed to do?  What had she gotten herself into?  Her initiation had been nothing in comparison—she was stripped down, forced to surrender everything, yes—there were candles and words in Latin, responses she memorized without understanding their meaning. 

But it had been nothing like this.

The priest was saying something, his lips moving, and he took a silver pitcher, pouring some sort of liquid between the first girl’s legs.  The priest, and Erica could only assume it was Father Patrick, she thought so by the way he moved, the shape of his jaw, poured the liquid between the second girl’s legs, then raising the pitcher into the air, saying more words, Erica didn’t know what, and there was applause.  It was silent, of course, because the movie had no sound, but people were putting their hands together

Now the tables, what she thought were tables but were in fact giant wooden crosses, were rising.  The girls were strapped to them, their arms fastened to the horizontal bars across, their legs open, kept that way by a metal bar put between them.  The girls were masked, but Erica had known both women her whole life.  She would’ve recognized them masked or unmasked.  It was her mother and Leah’s mother.  She had no doubt.  They were masked, their bodies painted, and still, she knew.

The camera panned back, taking in the whole scene, and Erica saw other masked girls in the room, some of them wearing light-colored masks, some of them dark, the entire room filled with masked men and women.  The room appeared to be round, and there were rooms, open to view with sheer curtains, all along the walls, one after the other, and in every room there were masked men and women in various positions, having sex—everywhere, they were everywhere. 

The camera focused again on the crosses, raised to a forty-five degree angle so everyone could see them, and then they began to lower.  She was sure of it—the girl in the white mask was her mother.  The Mary—the Virgin.  The girl in the darker mask—it had to be red—was Leah’s mother, the Magdalene, or the Magdala.  She realized the S and P on the keys meant Susan and Patty.  The crowd was applauding again as the crosses were lowered, leaving the women flat on their backs. 

More masked man moved to unstrap her legs, taking off the bar that had held them spread eagle, and Erica watched with dawning horror, as priests lined up to take turns with the women.

Erica heard the front door slam and she nearly screamed, turning off the projector and grabbing the reels.  She shoved them back in the box, closed it, and grabbed the others she had brought with her, slipping out of the room, hearing Solie grunting and complaining, calling for her.  Quickly, Erica locked the padlock, letting the tapestry fall into place.  She returned the key to the drawer, faced with all the file folders up on top of the desk, the mess she’d made.  She stashed the boxes full of film in her father’s closet, shutting the door, and running down the hall to meet Solie.

“There you are! I could use some help!” 

“I’m sorry,” Erica apologized.  “I found the mouse.” 

“Is he dead?” 

“No.”  Erica made a face.  “He got away.” 

She helped Solie with the groceries, then showed her where the mouse had been nesting.  The leather pouch with the keys was no longer there.  But Solie cleaned up the mouse nest, and reset the trap, putting all the file folders back in the drawer.  While Solie was busy putting away groceries and making dinner, Erica managed to stash the keys back in the hidden compartment and retrieve the three boxes of film reels from her father’s closet.

The next night was All Hallows’ Eve.  They would have a masquerade ball there at the house, and the priests and the nuns and her father’s clients and friends, everyone she knew, everyone her father knew, would wear masks and dance, and then at midnight they would unmask.  They would reveal themselves to the world.

The next night, All Saints’ Day, there would be another masquerade, a secret, hidden one.  Erica would be there for that one too, she would be on the cross, just like her mother had been.  She wondered how many of their masked guests on Halloween would be there the next night? 

Erica was going to unmask them all.

No one liked the “new Lizzie.”  She waltzed up the stairs into their room carrying two full suitcases, obviously in violation of the rules.  All the girls who came to Magdalene House were only allowed to bring their personals and the clothes on their backs.  Once the nuns had her dressed in gray wool, and she had been sufficiently humiliated by her first doctor’s exam, Leah thought the “new Lizzie” would change her tune, but she didn’t.  Her holier-than-thou attitude pervaded everything, making Marty, Frannie, and Leah tiptoe around their new roommate.  She insisted on being called Elizabeth, refused to get her hands dirty doing chores, and spent a great deal of her time manicuring and painting her finger and toenails various colors.

They all waited for the nuns to reprimand her, to take her in hand, to bring out the paddles and pointers they had all been subject to.  Leah was relishing the thought of Elizabeth, with her red lipstick and short, dark bobbed hair, sitting alone in the “correction closet,” until she learned her lesson.  But that never happened.  She got away with murder and no one understood why.  Poor Jean, who missed the old Lizzie so much she cried herself to sleep every night that week, had been kicked out of Elizabeth’s bed twice, hard enough to leave bruises.  Jean liked to crawl into Lizzie’s bed, but Elizabeth wasn’t having any of it.

“Get this retard out of here!”  Elizabeth demanded, kicking poor Jean, literally, out of bed.  The nuns appeared, dragging Jean off, and no one said anything about Elizabeth and her attitude or her airs.  They had made a little headway, getting Jean installed in their room, in Lizzie’s old bed.  This made both Jean and Elizabeth happy, killing two birds with one stone for the nuns.  But still, Elizabeth was a problem.  Marty tried to talk to her, get her to open up, tell them something about her, but Elizabeth just rolled her eyes and filed her nails and ignored them.  Leah couldn’t understand the nuns’ disregard for the new girl’s disobedience, but they all wondered at it. 

“Who dropped her off?”  Frannie inquired, taking the cigarette from Marty and puffing.  “Did anyone see her parents?” 

“It was a priest.”  Marty piped up.  “I saw her come in.  He didn’t stay.  I didn’t recognize him.” 

“She’s not human.  She probably doesn’t have parents.”  Leah was bored, flipping through one of the magazines Jean and Lizzie had left among the contraband.

“Sure she does,” Marty countered “Her mother is the Wicked Witch of the West and her father is the Abominable Snowman.” 

“She sure thinks a lot of herself.  Did you see her tattoo?  Ew!”  Frannie blew a smoke ring, and then another, she’d been practicing, trying to get one ring to go through the other.  They had all seen it in the showers, a rose on her thigh.  Leah had never known anyone with a tattoo before.  “Oh well.  If the doctor’s right, I’ll be out of here soon anyway.” 

It had taken him forever, and the rest of them had known it all along, but Dr.  Glum had finally diagnosed their Frannie with twins.  She was carrying two babies in there, so it was no wonder she was so much bigger than the rest of them.

“Do you think they’ll let me keep one, if I give the other one away?”  Frannie had joked.  “Just kidding.  But I hope they keep them together.  It would be nice if they could grow up having each other.” 

Leah didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d overheard the ghoul talking to the nuns, telling them that giving two babies to two different families was far more profitable than giving two babies given to one family.  The Sisters and the church received generous donations from adoptive parents.  Adopting out babies was a very lucrative business for the church.  Leah had always thought the nuns were doing it in order to save the souls of their young charges, but she understood now.  It was all about the money.

“So have you thought up twin names yet?”  Marty asked.  “I got some.  How about Abbott and Costello?  Archie and Veronica?” 

“Amos and Andy?”  Frannie rolled her eyes.

“Fred and Ginger?”  Leah offered.

“Roly-poly and Ollie!”  Marty suggested, all of them giggling.  “This little girl is going to be named after her grandmother.  Sarah Louise.” 

“What if it’s a boy?” 

Marty scoffed.  “It won’t be.  But if it’s a boy I like Gregory Adam.” 

“What about yours, Lily?”  Frannie asked.

Leah shook her head.  “I haven’t decided.” 

“Ugh.  I have to pee.  Again!”  Frannie struggled to her feet, waddling toward the door.  If Leah thought her stomach couldn’t get any bigger—and it kept growing—poor Frannie’s was twice that size.  She held her belly, supporting it, wherever she went.  “I’m just going to go back to bed.  Good night, you guys.” 

Leah and Marty said good night, and Marty stamped the cigarette out in the ashtray as Frannie descended the back stairs.  Things weren’t the same without Lizzie, and her tagalong, Jean.  She missed their giggling and silliness.  It had lightened everything.

“So are you ready?”  Marty asked, glancing at Leah in the moonlight.

“I’m a little nervous.”  Leah shrugged. 

She had initially agreed to go with Marty because she had hoped the fifty dollar paycheck would help give her a new start.  Now she wasn’t so sure.  She didn’t see a way out of Magdalene House, or her predicament.  She had been trying to focus on the end, pretending it didn’t matter, that she could hand over her baby and go on with her life.  It’s what her mother wanted.  Her mother had even dangled the American School of Ballet in New York, the carrot and the stick, even though she knew her mother didn’t approve of her dancing.

They hadn’t talked about Leah going back to Mary Magdalene’s Preparatory College for Girls, but as much as she missed Erica, as much as she wanted to see her and Rob, even with the new, devastating knowledge he was her father and could never again be her lover, she knew she couldn’t face them.  She had already decided if she didn’t get a scholarship for ballet school, she was going to take this fifty dollars, and anything else she could save, beg, borrow or steal, and leave Detroit.

“I got a letter back.”  Marty stretched out on the floor, putting her hands behind her head, looking up at the ceiling.  Marty had a way to send and receive secret letters, unopened, unread and uncensored by the nuns, using someone she’d met on one of their trips to town.  Marty was incredibly resourceful.  “There’s one in Australia.  Can you imagine me in Australia?” 

“Lots of koalas and kangaroos.”  Leah smiled, but she didn’t like thinking about leaving Magdalene House, about leaving these girls behind.  She thought she understood a little what Marty was talking about when she called the women in her Mary Magdalene society “sisters.”  Their experiences bound them together.  Leah could understand that.  And yet, Lizzie was gone, back to her life.  They would all go back to their lives, as if nothing had happened, as if this time had simply been, like an operator putting a caller on hold, dead space, a waiting silence.  They would never talk about it again.  They would pretend it hadn’t happened.  That made her sad.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to have anything else to do with men.”  Leah teased her.

“Better some Australian bloke who wants a wife to cook and clean than having to give up this baby.  It’s a trade-off, I know, but at least I’ll have my child.” 

“I hear the statistics on arranged marriage are pretty dismal.”  Leah couldn’t imagine marrying a stranger.

“I’ll make it work.  I’ll do whatever I have to do.  I always do.” 

“No more Mary Magdalenes.  I doubt they have them in Australia.” 

“I don’t know.  I haven’t asked.  But if I were to guess, wherever there are Catholics, there are Mary Magdalenes.” 

“You really think so?” 

“Yeah.” 

Leah yawned.  “Are you ready for bed?” 

“Sure.” 

They went down the back stairs, quiet as church mice.  In their room, Jean was turned to the wall, snoring loudly.  She had a cold and had declined a trip to the turret that night.  Frannie too, was tucked in bed, fast asleep.  Leah and Marty slipped out of their nightgowns and quietly into Leah’s bed, face-to-face, bellies kissing first, followed by their mouths, soft and open, warm and wet.

They had to be quiet, so they were.  Their flesh was hot, their bodies burning with fever, longing to be touched.  Leah caressed the bulge of Marty’s belly—the protrusion of her navel, finding her sex, hot and swollen.  Marty wiggled and rolled her hips forward at Leah’s touch.  She had done this enough to know what her friend liked, the stroke of Leah’s thumb at the top of her cleft, teasing the button of flesh, while Leah’s fingers explored below.

Marty’s hands roamed all over Leah’s newly developed curves.  Her breasts had blossomed, full and heavy, the areolas even darker, and when Marty squeezed her nipple, little beads of pre-milk appeared.  Marty licked it off.  For the first time, Leah had hips, full, rounded hips Marty grasped in her hands as they kissed.  Their bellies were so big, they had a hard time getting close enough, so they took turns, Marty rolling to her back first, Leah under the covers, creating a humid, musky tent as she parted Marty’s fiery red pubic hair, parting the Red Sea with her tongue, tasting her—no dry, dusty riverbed, but a lush, swollen, flowing crevice.

Marty didn’t speak, hardly moved, but Leah felt her pleasure in the shift of her hips, in the curl of her toes against Leah’s shoulders, in the wet pulse against her tongue.  Leah couldn’t help but reach down and touch her own sex, fat with desire, rubbing the spot, that little tender morsel of flesh, round and round and round.  She knew Marty was ready, feeling it, just a slight shift in her, the tense, taut pull of her muscles, and a sudden, copious amount of fluid between her legs.  Marty sighed softly, quivering, flooding Leah’s mouth.  She swallowed it, and swallowed it again, never letting her own pleasure get away from her.  She wanted her friend’s tongue between her thighs.

And so they switched, Leah rolled onto her back, pulling her knees up, biting her lip as Marty’s mouth covered her mound, expert tongue, back and forth, up and down.  The soft, hot attention between her legs brought her climax into focus.  She wanted to wait, she wanted it to last, but she was no match for Marty’s greedy mouth and fingers.  She couldn’t hold onto her orgasm, and it got away from her, like a slippery fish hopping out of the boat and plunging back into the water, it was like breathing again, oxygen for the lungs, a primal necessity, and Leah came like that, every bit of her, every atom, every cell opening, expanding, becoming the universe imploding on itself.

And when they were satisfied, the girls rested again, belly to belly, Leah’s hands on Marty’s, and Marty’s hands on Leah’s, their babies kicking, riding the wave.  Leah found herself drifting off to sleep, and Marty kissed her on the lips, a purging sweetness, before slipping back into her own bed for the night.