Site Fidelity

by Claire Boyles

  “Mommy's having a boy,” Gretchen says.

  “You'll have a brother,” Sister says, and Gretchen smiles.

  “She's going to name him Finch,” Gretchen says.

  “Such happy little birds,” Mano says. “They bounce when they fly.”

  “Lovely,” Sister says. She has never heard of a boy named Finch, but she's heard stranger names. “How's she doing?”

  “She's strong,” Ruth says. “Bored, but strong.” Sister is comforted by Ruth's certainty.

  Gretchen will start kindergarten at St. Paul's this year. She climbs into Sister's lap. The child is tiny, weighs almost nothing. Sister pictures hollow bird bones, feather down, pink fluttering unblemished lungs. She imagines Gretchen on the school playground, imagines the day in the coming spring when Gretchen will learn, as a warm breeze pops green leaves onto the oak trees behind her, the proper way to pump her own legs, to swing without a push, to fly. Sister pictures the gas well site behind the swing set, pictures Gretchen rising to meet the flare stack fumes. Sister does not want Gretchen to fly in frack-chemical air. Sister wants Gretchen to have a healthy brother named Finch, for Marilyn to recover her energy and her joy. Sister wants clean air, birdsong, cool water to drink.

  If you don't want all these things too, Sister prays, I'd like to know why you bothered making them at all.

  Sister has kept her bleach sabotage a secret even from Ruth and Mano. They would help her if she asked, and she has thought about asking, but there is something thrilling about operating alone. Sister wonders how much of this is her own vanity. She has gone out with her bleach twice more, but still the site is leveled and cleared, the work progresses. Someone has added a few T-posts with Keep Out signs attached, but Sister has heard nothing about her attempts at sabotage, not in the news, not from the parishioners she sees every day. It takes so much energy to misbehave, more now that it appears to have had no effect.

  Sister carries a copy of the recent letter from the Vatican stating the priests' concerns that nuns across the United States are facilitating sin. The nuns, the priests worry, have become radical feminists rather than Catholics. Father Morel is a signatory of the letter. There are nuns, some whom Sister knows well, in prison for protesting the Republican National Convention, nuns in prison by their own choice, to minister to other inmates. None of these nuns were suspended from their orders for their justice protests, but none of these nuns protested during the time of the Vatican's investigation. Sister does not want to go to prison, does not want to be suspended from the order, but something in her feels enclosed now, separate, called to act up. Sister wants to believe this is God unsettling her. In the silence, she has no certainty about this.

  “The parish meeting is tomorrow,” Mano says. “Save us the good seats, won't you?”

  SISTER MAKES COFFEE IN preparation for the meeting, aggressively rinses mugs that have collected dust in the cabinets. She watches the room fill through the large window above the serving counter that separates the kitchen from the fellowship hall. John March, the owner of the oil field service contractor that will lead the drilling, stands next to Tommy Prince, the mayor, both fumbling with manila folders, laptops. John March seems to be watching her, has made eye contact a few times. Sister wonders what he knows, or what he suspects, and then she smiles, because no good Catholic would suspect an old lady nun of anything but upright, law-abiding behavior.

  It was Ruth who untwined the viny, murderous umbilical cord from Tommy's infant neck. Ruth who once wiped the vernix, thick and clotted, from the nose and mouth of Johnny March, so that he could begin the squalling fuss through which he continues to express his unrelenting discontent with the world. The two men, best friends, were holy terrors in Sister's kindergarten classroom. She can picture them both at the art station, years ago, dipping their entire hands in the red finger paint, reaching into their shirts to make fart noises with their armpits, scaring the other students with the fake blood effect. She remembers the resigned sigh of John March's mother, the overreaction of Tommy's.

  Sister pulls the drain plug from the sink. It is a large basin. This kitchen is built to feed the congregational masses. The water swirls and gurgles, the sound echoing off the wooden cupboards, each painstakingly marked with plastic strips from a label maker. Tea towels. Goblets. Spoons.

  Her sisters arrive with Gretchen, who runs toward Sister, eyes bright, brown braids bouncing. They sit together in a line of folding chairs. Sister feels the slightest pull as Gretchen tugs, gently, on her veil.

  “Marilyn's in the hospital,” Mano says, whispering so Gretchen won't hear her.

  Sister puts her hand on Ruth's arm, and for a brief moment Ruth rests her head on Sister's shoulder. “I almost didn't come,” Ruth says, “I'm heading there right after.”

  “I want to thank you all for coming,” Tommy Prince says to the room, which has become crowded and restless, uncomfortable.

  Tommy Prince is handsome. He is the town's golden child. Mano leans in toward Ruth, whispers, “I wouldn't kick that one out of bed for eating crackers.”

  Sister giggles. Ruth rolls her eyes.

  Tommy Prince continues talking. “I'm excited about so many good jobs coming here to our little town. I understand some of you have concerns, so I'm going to turn the microphone over to our own John March. I'm sure he can put your minds at ease.”

  Ruth leans in, whispers, “Spare me the nonsense of men lying into microphones.”

  Sister humpfs, loudly. People turn their heads to look at her.

  “Like Tommy said,” John March says, “thanks for coming. Of course, we understand your concerns about the project. There's been a lot of misinformation floating around out there. This video will show you that hydraulic fracturing is one hundred percent safe. There are no proven harmful effects on humans or on the environment.”

  Tommy pulls down a poorly mounted screen. John fumbles with the remote control for the projector. The technology does not work.

  Mano stands up. “While we wait, why don't you explain some of this proof?”

  Sister stands next to Mano. Gretchen stands next to Sister, tiny fingers warm against Sister's aching knuckles. She sees Father Morel watching her, sees frustration in the lines of his forehead. Sister knows that he sees her the same way he sees Gretchen when she squirms and fusses on the hard pews, bored by a sermon that does not speak to or for her. He wants Sister to sit still, pray silently, hope that God, in response, will change the world with His invisible hands.

  What if I'm God's hands? Sister thinks.

  She surprises herself with her teacher voice, its shocking volume, the authority it still carries. “Johnny, can you share with us, for example, the results of a longitudinal mixed-method study on the effects, specifically, of fracking emissions on children ages five through eleven when a drill site is only fifty yards from their outdoor play space?” Sister uses John March's childhood nickname out loud on purpose. She sees that it lands as she intended.

  The crowd whispers, the moment gone suddenly electric. People do not expect nuns to know about things like longitudinal mixed-method studies. Sister is proud of her education. She has had to confess to vanity about that many times.

  What if I'm not God's hands? Even as she thinks this, Sister can hear the faded nature of her doubt, the way it has quieted to a whisper even in her own prayers.

  “Hey professor,” Ruth whispers, “maybe tone it down a little.”

  Sister shakes her head, and Mano gives her an encouraging smile.

  Ruth rolls her eyes. “Longitudinal mixed-method show-off,” she mutters.

  A young man, holding a baby, also stands. His hair is twisted into an unruly bun on the top of his head. “Do you plan to do any air-quality monitoring near the playground?” he asks.

  Man Bun looks at Sister Agnes Mary. Sister does not recognize him. He must not be Catholic. This does not bother her. S
he smiles warmly at him, and he smiles back. The crowd, which Sister notices is full of young families, has gone rowdy.

  Tommy's face is calm, but Sister can see a wet spot under the left armpit of his shirt. Sister remembers Tommy's little boy fascination with the capillary action of plants, his delight at the way blue dye stained the fringed edge of a white carnation. She wonders how she could have failed, so utterly, to instill respect for God's creation in him, in any of them. “We don't typically monitor the air—” Tommy continues.

  “What we do,” John says, interrupting, “is check all the equipment on a biweekly basis to make sure it's functioning correctly. We can address any problems right away. As long as we know the filters are working, you can be sure the air is within allowable levels.”

  “So you won't be monitoring, and you don't have any studies about how this will affect the children,” Mano says. “Just to be clear.”

  “You tell him, Mano,” Sister says.

  “Yeah, Mano, you tell him,” Gretchen echoes. The child turns to face Sister, goes up on tiptoes, grabs Sister's other hand as well. It is like dancing, like ring-around-the-rosy.

  “Well, Sister, Mano, I appreciate your concern. But I know that you, that we all”—here John draws his hand, palm open, in front of his chest, indicating that he is one with the crowd—“want our children to be well fed and cared for. This is how we recover from the recession. These jobs are going to get our town moving in the right direction.”

  Sister can see that most of the crowd agrees with John, that Man Bun is an exception. Sister sees young mothers nodding, hears murmurs of support. A few people applaud. One man pumps his fist in the air and says, “Right on, John.”

  Man Bun begins arguing with this other citizen, and the crowd dissolves into chaos until Tommy is able to get the video projector to work. He dims the lights and sits down, looking relieved. John March stares daggers at Sister.

  Ruth rushes out after the video. Other people mill about the basement, drinking coffee, eating cookies that have begun to stale. Mano holds a sleepy Gretchen in her lap. The atmosphere calms into something like resignation. Father Morel approaches Sister.

  “Mr. March is a generous parishioner,” Father says. “His own children will be on that playground. You should be more respectful.”

  Sister's life, until recently, has been full of the fear of this sort of reprimand, but she cannot take this boy-priest seriously as a spiritual leader. She almost laughs out loud, but then she remembers herself at twenty-eight, sanctimonious, sure of all the wrong things. She has a moment of empathy. Maybe, at twenty-eight, this would have looked like leadership to her, too.

  “I wiped the snot from Johnny March's nose,” Sister says. “Just because he's willing to risk his own children for money doesn't mean he should get to risk everyone else's.”

  “The jobs in oil and gas feed these families”—Father Morel gestures for emphasis, his pointer finger raised to the sky.

  Sister thinks of Marilyn, in the cold hospital room, fighting to keep her baby boy alive. “And they should have to poison them in order to feed them?”

  Sister prays. This can't possibly be your plan.

  Father Morel drops his eyes, walks away. It is as though he hadn't been speaking to her at all.

  That night, Sister returns to the vestibule, prays the rosary silently except the end of every “Glory Be,” which she half sings, half sobs. She thinks of the way finches bounce when they fly, such happy little birds. Her prayers echo in the empty sanctuary.

  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

  EARLY JUNE BRINGS UNSEASONABLE heat. Without attention to irrigation and watering, drought parches the lawns. Finch is kept alive by NICU tubes, his prognosis unclear. The drill rig is on-site near the school playground. Ruth and Mano throw a dinner party. “Let's just try to make a little joy,” Ruth says.

  They curl Gretchen's hair into Shirley Temple ringlets, let her drink Hawaiian Punch and 7Up until her mouth is stained red, teach her the kick and twirl of the schottische, just as their father taught them. They wear the girl out so well that Marilyn has to carry her, sleeping, to the car.

  When it is only the sisters left sitting around the table with their gin rummy, Ruth says, “I don't trust that look on your face, Sister.”

  “Have another drink,” Sister says. “You'll trust everyone then.”

  “We know you're up to something,” Mano says.

  “You don't,” Sister says.

  “Sure we do,” Ruth says.

  Mano giggles into her tumbler. Ruth swirls her drink in circles. Sister adds a splash of vodka to her cranberry juice, hears ice cracking. Her sisters carry on, lighting thick cigars and chatting. Sister is not wearing cat-eye glasses or a corsage or her best dress from 1968 (let out a few sizes) as a gag, like the other two, but she is relaxed tonight, vaguely euphoric, grateful. She has still heard nothing about the bleach.

  She leaves the house through the screen door that opens onto Ruth's back porch and stands there for a moment, taking in the evening, the joy she feels in her freedom to move through it. There is no wind. The night is crisp, the moon illuminates the pink ruffles of Ruth's peonies in the rock garden. The backyard catalpa tree she and her sisters climbed as girls has opened into a spectacular June bloom, and Sister hears owls calling back and forth in the canopy, though it seems too late in the season. She decides that it can't be wrong to want to act for this world while she's still in it.

  She calls inside to her sisters, “Time for me to head home.” She hefts her tote bag over her shoulder and walks into the dark night. She is through the backyard and two houses down the alley when she hears Ruth and Mano. They are shushing each other and giggling, telling each other in loud voices to quiet down. They are louder than normal, the way drunks who are trying to be quiet are always louder than normal.

  They are faster than Sister and soon Mano's arm is through her right elbow, Ruth's through her left. She tries to be severe, even though part of her heart kindles when they touch her. “You two go home,” she says, her voice landing somewhere between a whisper and a hiss.

  The owls follow the sisters, their calls an alarm.

  “Go home,” Sister says again. “You'll get in trouble.”

  This sets Ruth and Mano into another fit of giggles.

  “Hear that, Mano?” Ruth says. “Sister thinks we'll get in trouble.”

  “And what about you?” Mano says. “Last I checked, that's a habit, not body armor.”

  “Wonder Woman,” Ruth says, red-faced, still laughing.

  “Super-Nun,” Mano says.

  Sister humpfs. “You two,” she begins, but they finish with her, in unison, “are really snagging my knits.”

  This only makes Ruth and Mano laugh louder, squeeze her more tightly between them. They have fallen into step with Sister, and the three of them move in tandem, like a marching band, on the sidewalk, on the newly greened tree lawns. They are approaching the playground now, the flare stack flame stretching toward the full moon, the chains on the swings knocking together in the chill, steady breeze.

  They reach the swings and each sister takes one, sits for a moment. Ruth and Mano laugh like loons.

  “Sober up,” Sister says, harshly. Ruth and Mano stop laughing. Sister reaches into her tote bag, pulls out the U-locks. Her joints ache so badly she almost loses her grip. “I'm going to lock myself to the machine.”

  “Then we are too,” Mano says.

  “Not enough locks,” Sister says.

  Ruth rolls her eyes and points as she counts out loud. “One, two, three. Three locks, three sisters.”

  Sister stands up and squares her shoulders. She tries to stretch herself to look tall. She smiles, shakes her head. “I'm going alone,” she says. “I want this for myself.”

  “What will Father Morel sa
y?” Ruth asks.

  Sister shrugs. Ruth nods. Mano hiccups.

  “I'm not supposed to want things for myself,” Sister says, “but I do.”

  Ruth nods again. “I guess God knows you're human.”

  Moisture from the irrigation ditch has slicked the weeds between the playground and the drill site. The sisters stumble and slip, but they make it past the Keep Out signs and into the clearing. The machines there—the water tank trailers, the industrial blender—are giants. Terrifying faces form in the patterns of the mixers and meters that line the side of the blender. The injector shines in the moonlight. It takes effort to make the sign of the cross, but Sister does it twice, once over herself and once over the U-locks.

  Ruth and Mano move toward her as she picks up the first lock, but Sister holds up one hand between herself and her sisters. Mano and Ruth step back.

  The pain is excruciating, all-encompassing, as if her joints have split open to leak poison into the rest of her, but her soul feels once more fertile and verdant, honeysuckle over boxwood, evergreen. Sister persists, but she moves so slowly through her pain that she worries she will not finish the job before the men arrive.

  “This is silly,” Ruth says, grabbing the lock out of Sister's hands. Mano and Ruth help fasten a U-lock around each of her ankles, connect her right hand to a small gauge wheel.

  “Thank you,” Sister says. “Now scram.”

  Mano gives Sister a hug. Ruth simply nods, but when they get to the edge of the clearing, both Mano and Ruth turn and wave. The sunrise looks like Gretchen's pastel hair ribbons. Sister, as she has done her whole life, prays fervently. She listens intently for a response from heaven but hears only the owls in the distance, near one another, calling back and forth.

  When you called us to protect your creation, Sister prays, this is what you meant, right? The silence that follows is a conglomerate silence, the heavy sum of the million tiny silences that have built Sister's faith.

  She sees a diesel truck heading toward her, a man behind the wheel, and she imagines this man is Johnny March, angry, dragon-like. She pictures Johnny as a wide-eyed kindergartener in need of protection. She pictures herself the same way. She imagines her feet supported by moonlight, the prick of feathers growing through the skin on her back. Sister gathers her wits. She wills herself to stay visible.