“You don’t see your parents anymore, I gather,” said Jean, trying to feel her way around this delicate subject.
“How do you know that? Have you spoken to them?” Martha reached for another florentine.
“Only to try and get an address for you. Your father asked me to send you his good wishes.” Something like that. Jean couldn’t now recall his exact form of words, only an impression of aloofness that was both unparental and unchristian.
Martha raised her eyebrows. “Well,” she said. “That’s a surprise.”
“He said your mother’s not in the best of health. That was the gist.”
“Oh hell. I suppose I’ll have to get in contact.”
“You might regret it if you don’t,” said Jean, now bizarrely cast as an agent of reconciliation between people who were strangers to her.
She couldn’t help feeling that this unsought burden of responsibility entitled her to a measure of curiosity.
“Did you have a falling-out?”
“I got tired of their disapproval.” She picked absently at a scab of blue paint on her smock.
“You don’t share their beliefs?”
Beneath the crust the paint was still soft and in the space of a few seconds Martha had managed to transfer blue smudges to her coffee cup, skirt and face.
“That’s a mild way of putting it. We disagree about everything. Religion, politics, art, life. My life, anyway. They’re Edwardians essentially, absolutely at sea in the modern world. They can’t help it.”
“The world has changed so much since they were young,” said Jean, somewhat distracted by the mess Martha was making and wondering if she should point it out.
“Not nearly enough in my view,” said Martha, wiping her finger on her sleeve. “Anyway, what’s your interest in St. Cecilia’s?”
Jean took out her pen and notebook and flipped it to a clean page.
“Do you remember the girls on your ward?”
“Yes. Gretchen, Brenda and poor Kitty.”
“Everyone calls her ‘poor Kitty,’” said Jean.
“Well, she spent about twenty-three hours a day in an iron lung. What a life. And she was still madly religious. You wonder how she could have any time for a God who saw fit to create polio.”
“I’m sure your father could explain the Christian teaching on suffering if you asked him,” Jean replied.
She was beginning to resent having to do without her jacket. Although it was a warm day outside, in here it was mysteriously chilly and behind her back the couch felt damp.
“No, thanks. I wonder if Kitty’s still there.”
“Not at St. Cecilia’s. It’s been turned into a boys’ school.”
“That’s quite a reversal. I don’t think I so much as glimpsed a boy all the time I was there.”
“Interesting you say that,” Jean remarked. “It’s Gretchen I’m here about. You were friends, I understand?”
“Yes, briefly. It was a choice between her on one side or ghastly Brenda on the other. Kitty was out of the frame, really.”
“Poor Kitty.”
Without breaking eye contact, Jean began to doodle on her notepad. It was always the same sketch—a single staring eye.
“Indeed. So what about Gretchen? Is she all right?”
“She’s made a rather extraordinary claim, which I’m doing my best to verify, that she became pregnant while still a virgin during her time there.”
Martha put down her coffee cup with a jolt and stared at Jean.
“Seriously?” she said.
“She is deadly serious. And willing to be subjected to all sorts of medical tests to prove it.”
“God. I can’t believe she’s still going on about that after all this time.”
Jean’s pen skated across the page. “You already knew?”
“Yes—she told me at the time. She came to visit me in Chatham not long after I left the place. She told me then that she was pregnant and that it was a ‘miracle.’”
“What did you think? I mean, you were right there when it must have happened.”
“I just assumed she was lying about the dates.”
“Why would you think that? Why would she lie to you—her friend?”
“Why do women lie? To protect themselves, of course.”
This exchange left Jean reeling.
“Do you know, you’re the only person I’ve spoken to who knows Gretchen who has even hinted that she might be lying.”