We sat about in my room with our neat hair and washed hands and waited until the peals of a bell rang through the building.
“Suppertime,” Greta said, leaping from the mattress of the other bed.
The refectory was a large room with wood-paneled walls and two long banquet-style tables with benches. We lingered on the threshold as the nuns filed in from the door on the left wall. In their white habits and scarves the sisters all looked identical at first, but as I let my eyes settle on them I began to pick out the details. Not all the nuns were old, as I’d expected. Some were older even than Donna Maria, with gummy mouths and lined faces. But there were young nuns, too. I figured at least five nuns were under thirty, although it was difficult to guess their actual ages without hairstyles or clothes to give them away. Most of the sisters appeared to be Italian, tan and freckled from outdoor work. One nun walked with a limp; one had such rosy coloring I would have sworn she was wearing rouge if I didn’t know any better. There were even two black nuns.
“Before you came, I was by myself on this whole table; it was dreadful,” Greta whispered.
“Are we supposed to talk in here?” I whispered back.
She shrugged. “How would I know?”
This struck us as terribly funny and I had to look away from her so as not to catch the giggles. A pale nun with a long nose served us a jug of what I took to be apple juice, and two small glasses, like the kind you might use to gargle mouthwash.
“This is the famous hard cider,” Greta said, sticking the tip of her tongue out as she poured.
“I don’t know,” I said nervously. “I mean, are we allowed?” The only alcohol I had ever tasted before was champagne, since dawdling by the catering table was a convenient form of social camouflage at St. Cyrus events.
Greta smiled. “It’s positively encouraged. Look, even the sisters are drinking it.”
And true enough, the sisters were pouring themselves glasses and sipping it as if it were pink lemonade instead of liquor.
Greta held up her glass to mine. “Cheers,” she said, and we clinked.
The cider was bitter, with a loose silt swirling in the bottom of the glass. It was flat, ice-cold, and terribly strong. My eyes watered.
The long-nosed nun returned with two plates of buttered pasta with slivers of garlic and tiny clams. Donna Maria rang a bell and said a short grace in Italian. Then all around came the clink of forks against plates and the clatter of hollow shells tapping against the china.
I watched a young nun with a pointed chin slurp noodles from her fork. “Have you ever seen a nun eat before?” I said.
Greta put down her fork. “I guess not.” She paled.
“You don’t think we’re supposed to wait for another sitting?” I said.
We looked around us hopelessly.
“Maybe it doesn’t count because it’s not term yet?” Greta said.
“Maybe.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Greta said seriously. “It’s like being chaperoned by ghosts.” She lowered her voice. “They don’t even really look at you.”
“The others will be here before too long,” I said. Isabella would probably be late, I decided. Just to keep me waiting, as usual. I focused on prying a tiny clam from its shell, but it kept slipping through the tines of my fork. It was queer, though, how the sisters were in the room with us, but still separate. All year we’d be running parallel.
“Do you think the other girls will all speak Italian?” Greta said, suddenly.
I dabbed the butter from my mouth with my napkin.
“I mean, it’s not a requirement, so . . .” She trailed off. She was looking down at her plate, but there was tension through her neck.
“I’m sure we don’t need to worry,” I said. “I know Isabella can’t speak a word.”
“Is she another student?” Greta frowned, fumbling in the pocket of her dress.
“Yes, she’s a friend from high school.” After a moment, I added, “My best friend.” As I said this, I tested it in my mouth. It was a new era, after all, and I was poised to take over as best friend, confidante, champion.
“Hello there—oh dear.” Greta yanked a single pearl earring from her pocket. She grimaced. “I’ve been searching for this everywhere.”
I waited silently so we could return to the matter of Isabella.
“Wait.” She twirled the stud between her fingers. “You have a friend coming? Oh, but you must both be awfully smart,” she said with some alarm.
“Well.” I hesitated. I wished with a palpable ache that Isabella was there to laugh off the question, to put Greta at ease without talking us down. “Our school always has two academy places,” I said carefully. “This year, we were the most eager. I don’t know about the best,” I finished with an apologetic shrug. I had tried to talk myself into guilt about our placement, despite our B grades. But it was hard to feel anything else but blessed—it was something closer to a miracle.
Greta smiled. “The other girl who was supposed to come with me, Maggie Asquith, her mom got squirrely about it, and so I ended up coming alone.”
“That’s bad luck.”
“Tell me about it,” Greta said. “She has to take etiquette classes in DC instead! I already had such mournful letters from her. Did you know there are twenty-nine different types of spoons?” Greta began to rattle off a taxonomy of spoons and I stared at the backs of the sisters’ heads. If Isabella were here, I thought, she’d be pointing out how noisily the nuns were eating, she’d be kicking the bench, poking fun at the middle-aged nun who had dropped a clam inside her wimple and was now searching for it with some consternation.
“And she already learned the pinwheel fold before her coming-out,” Greta finished, staring at me with an incredulous expression.
I supplied her with a sympathetic smile.
Greta was still twirling the earring. “What luck to have your best friend with you. And here I thought you were an orphan like me.”
“Promise, we’ll look after you,” I said, trying for a reassuring smile. It hadn’t occurred to me before how difficult it must be for the others, to come to the academy alone.
A different nun, one with beady brown eyes and heavy jowls, collected the pasta plates and left us with a silver platter piled with fruits. Red grapes and rough-skinned ginger apples and egg-size violet plums, cloudy, as if they were breathed with condensation.
Greta and I attacked the fruit plate, and my tongue was soon raw; the apples were tart and coarse. Even if we did have to take meals in silence, I decided it wouldn’t be so bad. In the far left of the room one of the nuns cut an apple in half and passed a section to her sister, who accepted it without even acknowledging the gesture. It must be quite relaxing, I thought, to be so close to someone you can forsake all the petty transactions of offer and reward.