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.
2
"Do you think she's all right?" Carol asked Jim as they stepped out onto cold, wintry East Twentieth Street. "Her face looked kind of strained to me."
She dearly loved that pudgy little woman with her twinkling blue eyes and apple cheeks. Grace was the only family she had left.
Jim shrugged. "Maybe it was me. Or maybe living with that decor is affecting her."
"Oh, Jim."
"Really, Carol, even though she doesn't like me, I think Grace is a sweet old lady. However, she's a paradigm of religiosity, and maybe it's getting to her. Look at that place! It's loaded with guys nailed to crosses! Disembodied hands folded in prayer rising out of the counters. And not one—but six pictures of bleeding hearts on the wall."
"You know very well that's the Sacred Heart." She fought a smile away from her lips. She couldn't let Jim get rolling. Once he got started, there was no stopping him. "Now cut it out! Seriously, Jim. I'm worried about her. She didn't look well."
He looked at her more closely. "You really are worried, aren't you? Come to think of it, she did look ready to jump out of her skin. Maybe we should go back up."
"No. I don't think she wanted company today. Maybe I'll give her a call tomorrow to see how she's doing."
"Good idea. Maybe we should have insisted on taking her out for a drink at least."
"You know she doesn't drink."
"Yeah, but I do, and right now I could use a drink. Two drinks. Many drinks!"
"Don't overdo it tonight," she warned, sensing that he was in the mood for some serious celebrating.
"I won't."
"I mean it, Jim. One word about warts later on and we're on our way home."
"Warts?" he said, all shock and wounded dignity. "I never talk about warts!"
"You know you do—when you've had one too many."
"Well, maybe. But drinking has nothing to do with it."
"You never mention them when you're sober."
"The subject never comes up!"
"Let's eat," she sighed, hiding a smile.
3
Later, when she was calmer, Grace sat on the edge of her bed and thought about what Carol had told her about Jim being an heir to the Hanley estate.
She felt good now. The Rosary, a bowl of hot cream of mushroom soup, and it was as if nothing had happened. Within minutes of Carol and Jim's departure, she had felt fine.
An anxiety attack, that's what it had been. She had seen so many of them back in her days as an emergency-room nurse but had never imagined she would ever fall victim to one. A little phenobarbital, a little reassurance, and the patient, usually a thin young woman who smoked too much—I certainly don't fit that picture—would be sent on her way in much-improved condition.
But what could have triggered it?
Guilt?
Very likely. She had read articles in her nursing journals about guilt being at the root of most anxiety.
Well, I've certainly got plenty to be guilty about, haven't I?
But Grace didn't want to think about the past, nor even about her anxiety attack. She turned her thoughts to what Carol had said. Astonishing things, such as Jim being an orphan—Grace hadn't had the slightest notion about that—and about his being named in a will…
Dr. Roderick Hanley's will.
Grace vaguely remembered doing private duty for a Dr. Hanley, in the early days of World War II. She had cared for a newborn boy in a town house about twenty blocks uptown in Turtle Bay. It had been a live-in job. The child's mother, whoever she was, was nowhere to be seen. The doctor never mentioned her. It was as if she had never been.
Could that have been the same Dr. Hanley?
Could that infant have been Jim Stevens?
It didn't seem probable, but the timing was right. Jim would have been an infant at that time. Jim Stevens could very well have been that child.
Oh, I hope not, Grace thought.
Because there had been something wrong with that child, with that whole house. Grace hadn't been able to identify exactly what it was that had made her so uncomfortable there, but she remembered being grateful that the job lasted only a few days.
Shortly thereafter she changed her evil ways and returned to the Church.
She wished Carol would return to the Church. It saddened her to think of her only niece as a fallen away Catholic. She blamed that on Jim. Carol said he wasn't to blame. She said the Church just didn't seem "relevant" anymore. Everyone seemed to talk about "relevance" these days. But didn't she see that the Church, as God's instrument in the world, was above and beyond something as transient as "relevance"?
No, the relevance angle sounded like Jim talking. The man was an incurable skeptic. The Church taught that no one was beyond hope of redemption, but Grace was quite certain that Jim was testing the limits of that teaching. She hoped he hadn't permanently endangered Carol's soul."