1.
“I don’t know a thing about poetry,” Sister Mary Teresa Dempsey said, and Kim and Jane exchanged a look. Such a disclaimer usually prefaced a lengthy lecture on the allegedly unknown subject. Their visitor stirred in her chair.
“What I really want to know is whether the college literary magazine has been preserved.”
“Preserved?”
“There were bound copies in the college library, from the very first issue to...”
Hannah Fence’s voice trailed off. The closing and subsequent sale of the college that the Order of Martha and Mary had once run in a northern suburb marked a dark day for many alumnae. For Emtee Dempsey, it had been almost apocalyptic. In those mad days when novelty was its own excuse, the past had been cast aside like a squeezed orange. The house on Walton Street in Chicago and a summer retreat in Indiana were all that remained of the once extensive property of the order. The three nuns were the remnant of a once thriving community.
“Preserving the past was not uppermost in many minds at that time. You are referring of course to Fennel and Rue?”
“Of course.” Hannah sat back. “Where did they ever find that name for the magazine?”
“William Dean Howells, of course.”
Neither Hannah nor Emtee Dempsey’s housemates responded to this.
“You don’t know William Dean Howells?” A shadow passed over the rounded countenance of the old nun, but in a moment it was gone. She put her fat little hands on the arms of her chair. “But enough. So you have made your debut as a poet, Hannah?”
Hannah’s small book of verse had recently been issued by a local press. Small books of verse are regularly issued by small presses and the usual fate is swift and sure oblivion. But Hannah’s collection had known a surprising reception. A review in the Sun Times and a piece on the poet in the Sunday Tribune had created a demand for copies in bookstores throughout the region. It had actually gone into a second printing, the first run of 500 copies having sold out. That a woman in middle age had produced such fresh and haunting lyrics made it news indeed. She had brought a copy for the old nun, suitably inscribed.
“Are you at work on a second collection?”
“Sister, I don’t think I could go through it all again.”
“Perhaps some juvenilia?” The old nun’s countenance suddenly brightened. “Is that the basis of your interest in Fennel and Rue?You did publish in it, didn’t you?”
Hannah looked hurt. “Sister, I was editor in my senior year.”
“Ah yes. I remember now. I should have thought you would have saved issues of the magazine.”
“Only the odd ones. Perhaps if I had majored in history I would have realized how fragile the past...”
But Sister Mary Teresa was not listening. There was a far-off remembering look in her blue eyes. “Who was the girl who wrote such lovely poems? It must have been in your time.”
“So many of us tried to write poetry, Sister.”
“But this girl succeeded. Oh!” The little hands flew up. Delight gave way to dismay. “The girl who disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Kim cried.
“Disappeared off the face of the earth. She didn’t leave a trace.”
“Catherine Raines,” Hannah said softly. “Catherine Raines.”
Over the next fifteen minutes, Emtee Dempsey recalled the facts of that long-ago episode in the college history. Hannah reluctantly corroborated the old nun’s memory.
“We were classmates, Sister.”
“Ah.”
“I have a theory. During the days before her disappearance I was nagging her to submit a poem for the Cardinal Mundelein prize. You may remember that the Mundelein was the most prestigious prize of all.”
“And Catherine never submitted a poem?”
Hannah shook her head. “Inspiration is an unreliable friend.” Emtee Dempsey recognized the phrase from the Tribune interview. “She became almost desperate. The deadline came and went and Catherine had disappeared.”
“A wise virgin is always supplied with the oil of inspiration.”
Hannah blushed prettily. “Then you’ve already read it.”
“It?”
“My book. One of the poems...”
“Just coincidence.”
Eventually they got back to the subject of bound back issues of Fennel and Rue. The only hope Emtee Dempsey could offer was that there might possibly be a set in the attic and soon Jane took Hannah off to the attic.
“How could a student just disappear?” Kim asked.
Emtee Dempsey tipped her head to one side. “Admittedly, it was rare in those days, but given the veritable plague of disappearances in recent years I cannot understand your surprise. It is almost as if the Rapture had begun. Two men at work in the field, one is taken, one is left. Two women writing poetry in a college, one is taken, one is left.”
“Is that a new translation?”
Emtee Dempsey looked stern. The constant flow of new translations of Scripture irked the old nun, and she was for banning them all.
“There are only two worthy English translations. The King James, precisely for its English, and the Douay-Rheims, for its closeness to the Latin vulgate. You realize that medievalists rely on the Douay-Rheims for just that reason. You must read the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in either of those translations.”
“Tell me about Catherine Raines.”
“You’ve already heard what is known. One day she was a student on campus, the next day she had vanished as if into thin air.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Of course it’s impossible. But it was never learned exactly what happened.”
“What do you think of Hannah’s theory?”
“It’s possible.”
“You’re not serious. Disappear because she couldn’t write a poem and win a prize?”
“Sister Kimberly, you were once that age, and not all that long ago. Of course it’s possible. The scale of importance is proportionate to circumstances and age. I realize that you could dismiss the momentary loss of poetic inspiration...”
“I have never written a poem in my life!”
“You should try. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote poetry,” she added piously.
“Have you ever written poetry?”
“You must wait for my autobiography.”
Jane returned with Hannah empty-handed. Not only was there no bound set of the college literary magazine in the attic, there were not even loose copies of one issue or another.
“I can’t believe they could disappear without a trace,” Hannah said.
“Like Catherine Raines.”
Hannah turned to Kim and seemed about to say something angry. But the moment passed.
“Like Catherine Raines,” she repeated.
2.
Kim looked into the matter of the disappearance of Catherine Raines during the next several days, convincing herself that this was more or less in the line of duty. Her own research always took second place, of course, but how was she to operate as Sister Mary Teresa’s research assistant if she did not... Well, it wasn’t much of an argument but Kim was determined to find out about the girl who had disappeared into thin air.
The disappearance had been a three-day wonder in the Chicago papers and then subsided, giving way to other horrors and outrages. Kim wondered if the address given for the girl’s parents could possibly still be valid. It wasn’t. The current owner had no idea where Mrs. Raines had gone.