Nothing.
“I’m going to hang up now,” Cary said. And he did.
He pulled his office door open wide. She was impossible to miss, out there, on the other side of the frosted glass. Given her age and the shape she was in, Cary was surprised she could keep up the pacing for so long. He wondered what she’d told the security guard so that he let her pace and didn’t bother her. Cary was stuck there, too. You couldn’t have the security guard throw out a legitimate tenant. Even a legitimate tenant in a building you wished you didn’t have to own.
He went out across the reception room and opened the door to the hallway. She’d tried the door when she first came up, but she hadn’t knocked. He wondered why not.
He put on the best face he had. It wasn’t a very good one. “Miss Warkowski,” he said, “I thought I heard somebody out here.”
She brushed past him and went right through into the reception room.
“I’m going to talk to you.”
“Well, yes, I assumed you needed to talk to somebody, but I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re actually closed. Everybody’s gone home for the night. I was just about to go home myself. If you could come back in the morning, there will be people here who could help you a lot more than I can—”
The huge wiggling hulk of her whirled around.
“I’m going to talk to you,” she said yet again. “And it’s going to be for the last time.”
7
Father Tibor Kasparian remembered everything about the day he arrived in America. He stepped out of the tunnel from the plane into a space so cavernous he could almost see the echoes. It was 1980. The Department of Homeland Security did not exist. The long lines for TSA screening didn’t exist either. He had a Greek passport, because the Greeks had been willing to give him a passport after he’d slipped into their country one night under cover of darkness. The Greeks liked the Armenians, more or less. At least both peoples belonged to the Orthodox Church.
There was a welcoming committee waiting for him when he got through the checkpoint. There was a small priest from the archdiocese, another immigrant from Armenia. All priests had to be imported in those days, because it seemed to be impossible to get American boys to go to seminary. Tibor always wondered about that. Armenian priests could marry. What was the disincentive?
There was also a small group of women from some kind of benevolent association. At the time, Tibor hadn’t been used to the American habit of forming these organizations of laywomen who were not directed by priests and did not intend to be. The women were all American born and raised, and they showed it in their every movement. The way they stood. The way they walked. The way they tilted their heads. Tibor had seen all that in the American movies he had watched over the years, but he had always thought that was just Hollywood. That was the day he discovered that American women behaved with authority and didn’t care who knew it.
Now, crossing the last street before he turned onto the block for St. Catherine’s Church and School, he couldn’t tell if anybody walked with authority anymore. Maybe it was just the sleet and the bitter cold, but the people around him all seemed to be hunched. They were all closed off within themselves, as if they were trying not to be seen. Tibor sympathized. He wished he could close himself off and not be seen. It was as if, in the last two years, the entire world had blown up. Nothing was the same. Nobody was the same. Nothing made sense anymore.
Sometimes I think Russ is making sense, he thought. He caught sight of the lit-up fronts of the church and the school. The buildings were halfway down the block and with all the security lights and safety lights going full blast, they drowned out the more timidly glowing streetlamps. There was a metaphor for you. The light of God was shining in the darkness. It was calling out to you.
Forget Russ, Tibor thought, I am going crazy all by myself.
He reached the steps of the school just as an enormous black van came down the street beside him. It kicked up a spray of wet from the asphalt and disappeared.
Tibor rang the front doorbell and waited. A few seconds later, Sister Peter opened up. American nuns moved with just as much authority as all other American women. Tibor did not envy their bishops.
Sister Peter practically pulled him through the doorway.
“You look absolutely miserable,” she said. “You should at least have worn a hat. Well, don’t worry. I’ll get you a cup of coffee to warm you up. Or tea? I’d offer you hot chocolate, but the children have been drinking it, and I don’t know where we’re at.”
“Is everybody still here?”
“Oh, absolutely. Even your dog. And there’s a buffet out. I don’t know how you’ll feel about it. It’s mostly Mexican food, because of the children, you know. They’re not usually from Mexico these days, of course, but none of us has ever been to Central America. I think we’re just hoping the food will be similar. And maybe it is. Everybody’s been eating like crazy.”
“I like Mexican food very much,” Tibor said. Then he thought: Mexican food made by Irish nuns in a Spanish neighborhood.
“Listen,” Sister Peter said. “I know Sister Superior will say it herself if she hasn’t already, but I really have to tell you how wonderful I think it is that you’re taking part in this project. I know it seems useless sometimes, what with all those pictures on the news with children in cages and I don’t know what anymore. Not that we watch a lot of television, really, but you know what I mean. You can’t avoid it. It takes everything we have just to get these few children to some kind of safety. And you’d be surprised how hard it is to find sponsors.”
“There are no sponsors in the local communities?”
Sister Peter flushed. “A lot of the local families are mixed. Some of them are here legally and some of them aren’t. And ICE checks sponsors these days. And you can’t be a sponsor without oversight by CPS. Most of these families will do anything to stay away from CPS.”
“It was called the Immigration and Naturalization Service when I came,” Tibor said.
Sister Peter ushered him into the auditorium and pointed across to the benches. The small boy was there, methodically eating his way through a plate piled so high it looked ready to tip over. Pickles was sitting on his lap.
“I think the food is very satisfactory,” Tibor said.
Just then, Gregor Demarkian, who was standing a little off to the side of the group, looked up and saw him. Gregor leaned down to say something to Bennis, who was sitting in a folding chair, then stood up straight and started over.
“Krekor,” Tibor said.
“Did you make your weekly phone call?”
Tibor nodded. “And it went on and on, Krekor. There have been developments.”
“You mean he’s started to make sense?”
“Tommy went up there for visiting hours today.”
Gregor threw his head back. “Dear God. Does Donna know?”
“If you mean, did she know before he went, Krekor, no. After he left, Russ called her and left a message on her machine. She won’t talk to him directly.”
“Of course she won’t talk to him directly. How the hell did he get there?”
“Russ believes he may have hitchhiked.”