Chapter 6

How students indulged their time was of no interest to Hance. He could teach them history, theory and performance, but he could not teach them the results of their actions. If they had no desire to learn, if they were in college because it was the only place to go after high school, they would flunk out or be pulled out by parents unwilling to let their darlings use the semester as a vacation away from home with all expenses paid.

Most unsuccessful students presaged their fate by failing tests or skipping class. Some simply could not grasp the material. Still others disliked the school atmosphere, which one disenchanted soul said had the appeal of a mummy on a catwalk. Hance, who had overheard the remark, reasoned the student simply did not appreciate the school’s history: many of the small, ivy-covered buildings had been designed by architects active in New York and Providence in the middle of the 19th century, and the campus was on the National Register of Historic Sites. But Hance could not deny the premises had enough pointed dormers, tall, skinny windows and overwrought stained glass to make the House of Usher look like the happiest place on earth.

So what was Emmy Kydd’s reason for avoiding class? Why had she not gone to Aquinas Hall last week? Why was she not here now?

She was twenty minutes late. No, twenty-one. He watched the second hand on his watch trip over noon. The minute hand skipped into place.

He loathed lateness. He never knew what to do with himself while waiting for someone because he never knew how much time he had. Despite the proliferation of cell phones, students never called or texted to let him know when they expected to arrive. Their attitude was, “I’ll be there when I get there.” He was sorry Emmy took that approach. He had expected better of her.

A radiator the size of an easy chair clanked in the corner. Soon the steam would hiss, kissing a vague warmth around the room.

He played the introduction to Gute Nacht, from Schubert’s Die Winterreise, The Winter’s Journey. The plodding, minor-moded chords expressed the tedium of his wait as well as the agitation of his impatience to start the lesson.

No, not his impatience to start the lesson. The chords gave voice to the agitation of his impatience to see Emmy again.

Listening for her footsteps in the hallway, he sang so softly as to almost mouth the words. “Fremd bin ich eingezogen,  Fremd zieh’ ich wieder aus …” A stranger I came, a stranger I leave …

“Der Mai war mir gewogen, mit manchem Blumenstrauss.” May awoke me with its blossoming flowers …

There were footsteps. Not her footsteps. A door down the hall closed.

“Nun ist die Welt so trübe, der Weg gehüllt im Schnee …” Now the world is dismal; the road, covered in snow … He repeated the line, continued the accompaniment without singing. Where was she? Why did she not call or have somebody else leave a message?

He did tell her he would see her today, didn’t he? Did she not hear him? Did she forget? Did she confuse this day with another?

Remembering the last time he saw her, he also remembered her lesson in the church, and how he had yelled at her and struck his fist on the railing of the choir loft. Was she afraid of him? Could he blame her if she was?

He stopped playing; folded his hands in his lap. He had also berated a fellow priest. The thought that he had apologized and been forgiven, albeit lightly, was no consolation. He appalled himself. What was wrong with him? What must that priest think of him?

What must Emmy Kydd think of him?

The hour for her lesson was up. Voices made friendly commotion in the hallway as classrooms emptied. Hance hoped Emmy would appear with apologies, saying she had forgotten or had slept in. He waited ten minutes before realizing he needed to act, not wait.

He might have waited too long. The nuns had seen her only a few times during the last week. She had not dropped any classes, though, and she was still registered at the school.

He drove around town, praying to see her. The box in the alleyway near the liquor store was gone; its residents had left behind no sign of habitation.

Perhaps she’d taken up with friends or returned among the homeless?

He went to the camp site, which was still cordoned off with yellow police tape. A lone patrol car idled in a clearing near the side of the road, watching for trespassers. Hance wondered if the officer inside thought he was driving by to cause trouble. He almost stopped to ask the officer where the homeless had gone. He was tempted to explain he was a clergyman, but he was in a blazer and flannels, not his collar; the man might not believe him.

By noon, visions of Emmy sleeping under a highway overpass and sucking filthy water from the gutter had replaced his ability to reason. Hoping his head ached from hunger but fearing he had little time to return to his rooms if the other business was upon him, he drove to Dario’s rectory on the grounds of the Church of the Ascension.

Dario called the craggy brownstone church his cathedral for the way the church and rectory were connected, as they were with many cathedrals. The buildings were in a rustic part of town, set in from the street and backed by woods that belonged to the township.

As Hance parked in front of Dario’s garage in the back, he smelled chimney fire coming from behind the garage, in the direction of the woods. At first he thought landscapers were burning underbrush. But he saw no landscapers’ vehicles.

Edging between the back of the garage and an overgrowth of vines and hedges, he saw fluffy pillars of smoke rising from the woodland floor, like columns of steam he had once seen dancing from the ground around the base of Mount Vesuvius. People bloated by every piece of clothing they owned crouched near the fires or in tents formed by tarps and sheets stretched between trees. They spoke among themselves in whispers, and hunched over, as if determined not to be discovered. The amount of clothing the squatters wore and their secretive manner suggested to Hance that these were the homeless people who had evaded the police at the other camp. He could not believe the stupidity of the group: Making fires was not the way to elude notice. He quit the scene as quietly as he could.

The door to the rectory was unlocked—a good thing, because with so many children running around in an uproar, nobody would have heard the bell. Dario was perusing a list with the secretary, whose desk was in the front parlor. He straightened as Hance opened the door. “John, either wipe that look off your face and pitch in or go back to whence you came.”

The severity of the greeting knocked Hance into silence. He had no idea what his face looked like. He did know he suspected Dario was harboring these people without the approval of the Diocese, and he himself did not approve. He almost walked out. Then a red-haired girl in a short violet coat caught a rampaging toddler by the waist and lifted him high in the air going, “Wheeeeeee!”

He had found Emmy Kydd, and if he had not seen for himself, he would not have believed her capable of joy.

He closed the door. “All right, Dar. What do you want me to do?”