Cradle and All Read online

  Months later, I heard that Justin had been transferred to the Holy See in Rome. Not too long after that, I was at Harvard, no longer a nun. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote over and over in one of his novels, So it goes.

  Now, on a cold, windy, deserted beach in Newport, I knew that I wanted to see Justin again. I wanted to tell him about Kathleen Beavier, and how she had affected me. I wanted to talk to Justin O’Carroll, and I had no idea why the urge was suddenly so overwhelming.

  But maybe I did have an idea.

  Soon, I was going to be thirty years old.

  I was still a virgin myself.

  Chapter 17

  THERE WAS A VISITOR sitting in an armchair in the large Beavier library. I knew who he was and why he was here. He was head of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Hospital. Still, I was introduced to Dr. Neil Shapiro, who’d been brought from New York to examine Kathleen. A Jewish doctor, I thought. Well, does that represent some kind of acid test to the Church?

  Shapiro was an ordinary-looking man with thinning gray hair and a solid appearance that seemed to have been shaken by his trip to Newport. He talked rapidly about missed flight connections and a weird feeling of vertigo when he entered the city limits.

  I sat beside Carolyn Beavier on the chintz-covered sofa and accepted a mug of coffee. My mind chewed on several ironies of Shapiro’s visit, but then I gave my full attention to the doctor.

  “I understand that Kathleen has been examined previously, but I’ve been asked to see her anyway. Of course, a home gynecological exam limits severely what I’m going to be able to tell you,” Shapiro said in professional tones. “I’ll be using a hand-held sonograph, for one thing. And since the Church wouldn’t permit amniocentesis —”

  “Kathleen’s child may be a holy child,” I interjected, playing devil’s advocate. “It would be unconscionable to take even a one-in-a-thousand chance with its safety, don’t you think?”

  “Not my call, of course,” Shapiro said, and smiled thinly. “So, how is our patient?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Carolyn Beavier said with a stiff upper lip. Perhaps she and Kathleen did love each other, but they obviously weren’t close. They seemed to spend as little time together as possible.

  “She wasn’t delighted to hear that you were coming,” I admitted to Dr. Shapiro. “I can’t say that I blame her. I’ll go check on her.”

  I climbed the narrow stairs to Kathleen’s third-floor room. Kathleen was sitting up in bed. Copies of Jump, Moxiegirl, and Teen People were spread out on her quilt. Neo-swing music was playing loudly on the radio. The expression on her face plainly showed that she was very close to reaching her limits. I understood completely and I empathized.

  “Why should I let him examine me?” she said reasonably. “Dr. Shapiro isn’t even my doctor. He’s another stranger poking into my private parts! I feel like I’m in an episode from The X-Files. It’s a total invasion of privacy.”

  “I understand, I really do.”

  “Good,” she said. “It’s settled then. C’est fini. No stranger’s giving me a pelvic exam.”

  “However,” I said, “Dr. Shapiro is a doctor with no ax to grind. He doesn’t know you. He’s not a Roman Catholic. The public will find him believable. And that, Kathy, will make life easier for you and your parents, and a whole lot easier for your child.”

  Kathleen nodded her head. “Fine,” she said. Her lips were quivering with exasperation, though. I thought she was going to cry, but she managed to hold back the tears. She was strong.

  I helped her out of the oversize metallic knit cardigan and flea market–style skirt she had been wearing all day. I had thought her mother would be there with her, but Carolyn had politely declined.

  Kathleen’s breasts were swollen and her belly was huge. She looked about ready to burst. I couldn’t wait to hear what Dr. Shapiro had to say about her condition.

  Chapter 18

  “SAFE TO COME IN?” Shapiro said half-jokingly.

  “As long as you don’t touch me,” Kathleen said from her bed. I don’t think she was joking.

  Dr. Shapiro apologized for the intrusion, then sat in a rocker near the window. His eyes drifted up to posters on the wall: Justin Timberlake from the group ’N Sync; David Boreanaz from TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Affleck had a gold star affixed to his forehead.

  Very calmly, almost casually, Dr. Shapiro asked Kathleen a number of questions regarding her weight, sleep patterns, digestion, whether she was feverish, and where she was swollen.

  He removed a few things from his doctor’s bag. He took Kathleen’s blood pressure and her temperature. Then he measured her abdomen from pubis to the top of the downward slope. He took a peculiar-looking stethoscope out of his bag. It was a six-inch-square plastic box with a speaker on one side.

  “This is called a Doppler stethoscope,” he told her. “It’s like a mini-ultrasound machine. We can listen to the baby’s heart.”

  He pressed the Doppler on Kathleen’s abdomen, which he’d slicked with gel, and kept moving the instrument around until he got the strongest sound.

  Kathleen was entranced — and so was I.

  The sound that emerged from the little box was engaging, mysterious, and very real. It was the rapid beating of a tiny heart.

  “Would you mind removing your panties, Kathleen?” the doctor said, but it was clear he wasn’t asking her permission now. “And scoot down to the end of the bed. Thanks, now bend up your legs.”

  She took off her underwear and leaned back. Then she closed her eyes.

  “Kathleen,” he said, “you’ve never had sex with a boy?”

  “Right,” she said. Her eyes remained shut. “Never. Not in this lifetime, anyway.”

  “But you’ve had dates?”

  “Of course. Who hasn’t?”

  “And you’ve been kissed and so on?”

  “And so on?” Kathleen repeated.

  Dr. Shapiro paused. I sensed him trying to rephrase the question in a tactful way. “You know that a boy doesn’t have to put his penis all the way inside you in order for you to conceive?”

  Her eyes flashed opened. “No one has ever touched me down there,” said Kathleen, emotion choking her throat. “No penis has touched me down there.”

  “All right, Kathleen, thank you.”

  “You’re absolutely not welcome.”

  Shapiro signaled to me to assist him. I felt he was being a bit presumptuous, but I helped anyway. He pulled a stool out from under Kathleen’s vanity, then brought it to the end of the bed.

  “Hold this for me, will you?” he said. He took a slim flashlight from his jacket pocket and handed it to me.

  Instinctively, I angled the light so that he could see Kathleen’s exposed genitalia. He placed his hand on her outer thigh, giving her a reassuring pat. He tugged on latex surgical gloves.

  “I can’t use a speculum, obviously,” he said, “if her hymen is intact.”

  With gloved fingers he spread Kathleen’s labia majora, then her labia minora.

  “There,” he said to me, “the hymen ring.”

  The enclosed membrane was soft pink with a vertical squiggle of an opening at its center. The opening was tiny, too small to admit anything larger than a matchstick.

  Dr. Shapiro looked stunned.

  “I’ve never seen this before,” he mumbled.

  He had to steady himself before he spoke again. “We’re all done, Kathy. You can put your legs down now and get dressed.”

  He snapped off his rubber gloves.

  “She’s definitely pregnant,” said the expert from New York, the other paid gun in the room. “And this young lady’s hymen is definitely intact.”

  Chapter 19

  COLLEEN DEIRDRE GALAHER was alone in her small room, bundled in woolen blankets to keep away the cold of the night. Outside of the village of Maam Cross, less than a dozen people knew about her condition and few of them paid it much heed.

  The Virgin Colleen had
already been dismissed as either a fraud or a head case by the conservative Church in Ireland. The Vatican would have liked the same anonymity for Kathleen Beavier, but it was more difficult for the Vatican to hide things in America, the wild, wild West.

  Colleen was awake, and, as she did every night, she prayed to God and the Blessed Virgin that her baby would be born healthy.

  “Just let the child be healthy,” she whispered, “that’s all I ask. Please let my baby lead a good, healthy life. That’s all, Lord.”

  Colleen continued to repeat the prayer over and over as the wind whipped across the flatlands outside, through the trees, and up against her house.

  “Dear God, I don’t know why that priest came from Rome. I don’t even care. I only pray that my baby will be blessed and born in your grace, and live in your holy grace.”

  It was such a simple prayer, and the Irish girl said it beautifully, because it came from her heart.

  Over and over and over — until she finally fell asleep.

  Outside, someone watched over the house, the girl, and the child growing inside the girl.

  Chapter 20

  JOHN CARDINAL ROONEY KNEW that what he was considering was unusual and dangerous, to say the least. He couldn’t help that. Not anymore. He’d had lengthy conversations with Dr. Shapiro and Anne Fitzgerald. Then he’d spoken with Charles and Carolyn Beavier.

  Finally, he’d gone to St. Catherine’s Hospital and wandered through the wards, which were overflowing with sick and dying children. It was his walk among the poor, afflicted children that finally made up his mind. He saw, and felt, a connection between the polio outbreak . . . and Kathleen Beavier.

  He worriedly rubbed his hands together. The glass of Glenlivet wasn’t helping at all. Perhaps it was because it was so infernally cold that day in Boston.

  Dying children, a virgin birth, he mused. My God, how can this be?

  All across the city, thin plumes of gray-blue smoke rose determinedly and blended with the high, subtly warring skies. All day the story of a possible virgin birth had been building. He wondered how the rumor had started. Who was the leak?

  Finally, late on Sunday evening, he wrote out a terse statement from his office high over Commonwealth Avenue.

  In response to the interest in the pregnancy of Kathleen Beavier, there will be a press conference on Monday. The conference will be held at Sun Cottage, the Beavier home in Newport. Kathleen Beavier will be present to answer questions.

  Admittance will be by invitation only.

  Until Monday, God bless all of you. You remain in my prayers.

  He sat back, read it over twice, and reconsidered going public. A voice deep inside him said, Yes, you should. He wondered if the voice was his own, or his God’s. Or someone else’s.

  Chapter 21

  AT 9:39 P.M. thirty-year-old New York Daily News reporter Les Porter was home in his fourth-floor walk-up apartment on the West Side. He booted up his PC, and while his live-in lover prodded the lamb roast with a long steel fork, he checked his E-mail. He had a feeling the story was breaking tonight. His gut said it was.

  The instant he saw the “Heads up!” message from his source in Rome, Porter forgot everything else: the smell of the roast; Renata’s amusing anecdote about her day at work in the gallery; their cat, Annette Funicello, arching her back, passing her furry tail right under his nose.

  “Git,” he said, pushing the cat off the keyboard. “I’m working here.”

  He appended a note and forwarded the E-mail to Tom McGoey, international news editor in New York. Then he grabbed the cordless, flapped open his overstuffed Filofax on the lacquer telephone table. He punched buttons and finally connected with Boston. He had a confirmation in Rome; now he needed one from Cardinal Rooney’s office. The contact there was Father Justin O’Carroll. O’Carroll was clever, and worldly. For a priest.

  “Father O’Carroll, can you give me any other confirmation on the story? Anything? Anyone you can send me to? I have two confirmations now. I’d like to have one more. It’s in the best interests of all of us to get this absolutely right.”

  Porter cupped his hand over the telephone. He sensed that this was it. “Renata, turn it down. Please.” He glared meaningfully until the soundtrack of Les Mis was a mere thumping murmur.

  “All right, Father. Yes, yes. I understand your problems completely. Now please listen to what I’m saying. I’m going to talk with our international news editor right now. He’ll have to clear this with the managing editor. You will stay near your telephone? Yes, I honestly do understand. I know how sensitive this story is. Now please, stay by your phone. The News will do an honest and fair job with this.”

  He was already halfway out of his apartment, heading downtown to the Daily News offices on 42nd Street.

  Fifteen minutes after he flew out of his apartment house door and onto the street, Porter was at his desk in the newsroom — his command center. He pointed and clicked on the address book in his office manager program. He watched names and phone numbers scroll down his computer terminal. He pressed a key that connected his phone line to one James Lapinsky’s, a stringer in Boston. Lapinsky was in bed and, from the ragged sound of his voice, asleep when Porter told him he had to beat it over to Commonwealth Avenue, to the archdiocesan office.

  “Of course right now, Jim. I’m sorry about your headache. I’m sorry it’s Sunday night. I need a face-to-face confirmation. This is urgent. Father Justin O’Carroll will tell you the whole thing from their point of view. He’s Irish-Irish and has a quick tongue. He’s reluctant to take any kind of stand, but he knows the story is coming out one way or the other. He’s Rooney’s mouthpiece, so it’s official. Sorry to foul up your evening. You nelly,” he muttered, clicking off the phone.

  While he waited for Lapinsky to do his damn job, he took off down the hall to McGoey’s glass-walled box-shaped office. He rapped, entered, closed the door behind him.

  Then he told a perpetually snarly Thomas “the Colonel” McGoey the story that had just been confirmed by Father Justin O’Carroll of the Boston Archdiocese office.

  When he’d heard everything Porter had to tell him, McGoey picked up his hotline to the managing editor, Joseph Denyeau. In his own way, McGoey pitched like crazy, but he told it straight.

  When he hung up a minute later, the editor turned to young, frightfully ambitious Porter.

  “Frankly, Denyeau doesn’t know what the hell to make of it either. Just coming out of the cardinal’s office, it’s a story. The fact that they won’t deny the rumor helps our case. He wants to see some copy, Les.”

  At 11:45, the computer-generated layout of the day’s paper showed that there were additional news stories coming for pages one, nineteen, and thirty-two.

  At 11:59, the head union printer at the printing plant in Jersey City pressed the starter button. The midnight edition began to roll.

  At 12:16 the monster presses were screaming. Several hundred thousand copies would reach homes in the metropolitan area alone, by breakfast.

  Les Porter left the News Building a little after twelve-thirty with a fresh newspaper under his arm. The paper was still as warm as a loaf of freshly baked bread. No — hell, this paper was hot.

  Renata was waiting for him in the familiar surroundings of the Café des Artistes bar, two blocks up the street from their apartment. Les unfolded the newspaper and scanned it in the dim yellow light.

  He slid it between Renata and her Smirnoff with a twist. Renata let out a soft “Wow” when she read the headline over her lover’s byline:

  CATHOLIC CHURCH CLOSELY WATCHES

  A VIRGIN PREGNANCY IN NEWPORT

  “A divine child. A divine fucking American child,” Les Porter muttered in the buzzing Café des Artistes. “You heard it first here.”

  Chapter 22

  Rome, the Vatican.

  HIS HOLINESS POPE Pius XIII lay in his bed with one leg twisted under him. His skin was a sheet of running sores. He was in pain, and he was badly frighten
ed.

  Of the polio epidemics in America.

  Of the famines and floods in Asia and Mexico.

  Of the pregnant virgin girls.

  Of his own mortal body and what was happening to it.

  He could still breathe. He could still swallow. But he couldn’t move or speak. He was virtually helpless in his own bed. He couldn’t even press one of the buttons on the buzzer system for help.

  And the pope found that for the first time in his life — he could not pray.

  He knew that he would be found in his spartan bedchamber the next morning. The camerlengo would confirm his death in the presence of the master of papal liturgical celebrations and a worried knot of other high-ranking Vatican officials. He wondered, Will I be standing then in God’s holy light? Or will I be kept here, a prisoner of my own mind and body?

  He sensed he was not alone. He believed the Devil was with him this very moment and had been for what seemed an eternity, mocking his frailty and hurling a storm of grotesque images against the soft tissues of his brain.

  He felt no fear for himself, only for the void his passing would create. His terror was for the people.

  And for the virgins, the two young girls who had no idea that their destinies were crisscrossing.

  He stared at the wooden crucifix on the wall opposite his bed and wondered in all humility how he had failed God. How he’d been so easily defeated. He wondered if he would even be forgiven. Or if he was about to go to Hell.

  He reached out his mind to the young investigator, Father Nicholas Rosetti. Had he told him of the miracle at Fatima? He was no longer sure. But he found the memory of that day long ago in an untouched niche of his ravaged mind.

  The details were still as intact as they’d been for more than eighty years.

  The pope remembered October 13, 1917. This had happened, and was reported in The Times of London and in the New York Times.

  One hundred ten thousand witnesses from all over Europe and as far as the United States had collected on the hilltops of Portugal. They had stood in the downpour, waiting for the three small children. He had been there himself.