Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  Sophia, on the other side of the box, noticed. “That’s one pretty man,” she said.

  Gladys sat in the shade of the building’s wall, on an overturned milk crate, her bulk hanging over the sides. She raised the can of Diet Coke she was drinking and winked. “Damn shame to let that go to waste, ain’t that right, Angela?” And then she and Sophia broke into cackles and leg slaps, while Angela blushed furiously and tried to laugh along.

  Despite the teasing, and how obvious it was she didn’t live in Trenton; she was there more than ever. Her house felt sepulchral. She didn’t want to see her friends, not even Deedee. She felt more at home with Sophia, Gladys, Sister Caroline, Roland, Sister Eileen, and Isobe. Isobe, a tall man from Liberia, with small eyes that never gave away what he was thinking, had done a long stint in prison. Now he worked trying to keep young kids from going into the gangs and helped them get out if they wanted to. It was dangerous work, and he knew it. Angela asked him once if he wasn’t afraid he’d get killed. He’d just shrugged and said death wasn’t so hard, but living without hope was agony.

  People at the Pantry knew not to ask too many questions. Prying was impolite, since almost everyone had family troubles of one kind or another. A pregnant daughter, a drug-addicted son, a kid who came home sporting gang tats, another involved in street-corner enterprises. Everyone knew someone in jail. Everyone was struggling to find work and to make ends meet. Angela bought fresh, whole-grain bread, and fruit and cheese, and they ate lunch together. Sister Eileen joined them, bringing her own offerings of homemade brownies or lemon squares. Sophia and Gladys, sometimes other women, brought chicken and pasta salad. Isobe, Roland, and the other men around brought their appetites, and sometimes a case of soda. Angela beckoned to Byron one day, as he sat on a bench by the front door, eating a hamburger.

  “Come join us!” she called.

  Byron saluted and said, politely, “Thanks, but I don’t socialize with white people. No offence.”

  “Manners, boy!” said Gladys.

  Byron ignored her. Angela had been taken aback, but she also understood it. He didn’t mean the white people who lived on his block; he meant the white lady from Princeton. Fair enough.

  Carsten had moved on to other jobs now and they met at the end of the day. She had a key to his house. The neighbours — Norman Cody, a quite-famous photographer who had captured some of the early graffiti artists in New York City on one side; on the other, Glenn and Derrick, both lawyers — had introduced themselves and were frequent visitors. Angela would sometimes find one or more of them in the garden with Carsten when she arrived, sitting under the wisteria, sipping cold beers. Their enchanted garden. They asked few questions, beyond inquiring as to how Carsten and she had met. If they noticed her wedding ring, they were too polite to ask about it, and they were also too polite to stay long after she arrived, intuiting their desire to be alone, and naked.

  They developed a habit, a rhythm. She began to feel it could go on forever. Why shouldn’t it? Other people had long-term affairs. What was that movie about the couple who met once a year on the same weekend, year after year, for decades? Of course, Same Time, Next Year. Alan Alda. Ellen Burstyn. They had been good for each other, helping each other through difficulties, no strings attached. It hadn’t affected their marriages.

  But one weekend a year wasn’t what she was doing. Still, she could, she decided, manage this compartmentalization of the men in her life. She told herself Carsten was helping her marriage. She could be kinder to Philip when she had a real life, something meaningful and important, even if it wasn’t with him. She could be more patient, and even enjoy sex with her husband now and again, especially with a couple of drinks in her.

  Sister Eileen

  Eileen and Angela sat across from each other at a table covered with a checkered cloth, on which was centred a small arrangement of flowers. Angela wore a sleeveless blush-toned tunic over skinny black pants and heels. Her fingernails were painted the colour of pinkish pearls and her hair gleamed. She looked, Eileen thought, like the sort of woman who had come from a job at a fashion magazine, or maybe an advertising agency, something chic and a little edgy. Her perfume smelled of jasmine.

  “You look awfully pretty,” said Eileen.

  Angela picked up her glass of white wine and held it out for Eileen to clink with her own. “Rough day?”

  “Ruth was feeling under the weather, so I took her place at the prison.”

  “She works in a prison?”

  “Yup. Chaplain at the men’s prison down in Bordentown.”

  “I don’t know how you do that. How do you get used to it?”

  “I hope I never do. That would mean a hardening of my heart, I think. The chaplain at the women’s prison in Clinton is a Sister of Saint Joseph, as well. Sister Brigid. I don’t know why, but the women’s prison … look, the men’s stories are just heartbreaking, but they somehow don’t leave me with such a sense of … not despair, despair is a sin against my understanding of a compassionate God … but perhaps weariness. These women, mothers, so many of them addicted, often abused, sometimes taking the rap for the men in their lives, their sons and lovers and brothers … and sometimes mentally ill.”

  “Really?” Angela flicked her eyebrows upward. “Mentally ill? I didn’t realize.”

  “Oh, yes. They go off their meds. Things happen. They end up on the street as prostitutes, drug addicts. Babies. Children left behind.” Eileen dropped her head for a moment, sniffed, then raised her head and smiled. “Well, let’s just say that Sister Ruth and Sister Brigid have found their callings. God chose rightly, as always.”

  “He chose rightly with you as well, Sister. The Pantry. The cooking classes, the garden … you do have the gift of making people comfortable.”

  “Well, I’m just glad you asked me to dinner.” Their salads arrived and Eileen said, “I was delighted you called. So nice to have a dinner with someone so smart and full of life. The work you’ve been doing at the Pantry is wonderful. We are in your debt.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Angela.

  Someone at the table behind them snorted with laughter and Angela flinched, as if they were laughing at her.

  Eileen poured oil and vinegar on her salad. “I did think, though, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?”

  Angela cocked her head and absently dragged her fork around her plate. “Why did you want to become a nun?”

  Eileen smiled. She didn’t think that was what Angela really wanted to talk about, but the truth would come out when she was ready. “That’s a good question.” She clapped her hands like a child. “It started when I was thirteen with a dream one night of sweeping, flying, down a green and lavender hillside to a silver and crystal cave and finding a statue of Mother Mary inside, her dress all blue and white, with stars on a crown around her head. She came alive and reached out to me. I woke up crying and laughing at the same time and knowing I would never again be happy until I found that woman in that sacred place and rested forever in her arms. The wonder and terror, the reassurance from the woman that all would be well, and that I was safe and understood completely and loved all the more for it — it was amazing.

  “It didn’t last,” she continued, “not in the same intense way, but I never forgot it. It’s like she was near me. Inside me. I know it sounds odd, but it’s like she’s my most important relationship. And the more I learned about her, the more I had the sense she, like Christ, has always been with us, in one guise or another, since the beginning of time.”

  “Really?” Angela dabbed delicately at her lips with her napkin. “Is that Church doctrine?”

  Eileen shrugged. “Doctrine or not, it’s a sense I have. I prefer to focus on that, rather than the patriarchy in the Church and the erasure of the female. The truth is that the hierarchy of the Church wasn’t what drew me to this life. It was the miracle. It was the grace. It was the wonder and miracle of deep, deep, and eternal life. But
,” she said, “maybe there was something. Women have always been a bit underground, haven’t we? At least in modern history. There’s a lot of evidence that women had a much more powerful and equal role in the early Church. But perhaps that’s why nuns are at the forefront of so much social activism in the Church. Why we try to help the forgotten, the marginalized, the hungry, the homeless, those without a voice. I’m not saying priests and brothers don’t, of course. I’m not saying that.”

  Angela said, “The priests have a lot to account for, and the Vatican, too, for that matter. All that child abuse and now the rape of nuns, and no one doing much about it, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “I don’t mind,” Eileen said. “The structures of the Church have to change.”

  The waiter came, bringing a simple linguini with olive oil and garlic for Eileen, and branzino, grilled, with roast vegetables for Angela.

  “That looks lovely,” Eileen said to the waiter. “Thank you.” The waiter sprinkled grated parmesan on the pasta, and ground pepper on the fish.

  Angela looked up and said, “So, your order. About that. Why Saint Joseph?”

  Eileen chuckled. “Because he wasn’t the main event. We believe in doing what needs to be done. We honour the beloved neighbour without distinction.”

  “Devil’s advocate here … even the divorced? Even women who have abortions?”

  “Well, let me be clear.” Eileen chewed, swallowed, and dabbed at her lips. “I believe all life is sacred. Firmly pro-life. Of course, that also means education, housing, healthcare, all that. Otherwise you’re just pro-birth. There are terrible decisions humans must make sometimes, and life is complicated. Extremely so. I would want a woman who’s had, or is going to have, a termination to know that God loves her even then, even there, and that she is still precious, and that I love her, as well. I might even admit to accompanying one or two women on that journey, were that admission not so easy to misconstrue.”

  Angela’s chewed her lip for a moment. “Life is complicated, isn’t it? It’s hard to know what people go through, why they have to make the choices they make.”

  “It is indeed.”

  They ate in silence for a moment, the sounds of the restaurant — the espresso machine, the conversation, the clink of glass and silverware, the pop music coming over the speakers — creating a sort of white noise. Finally, Angela drank deeply from her glass of wine and said, “Not ever having a father, I find it hard to relate to a male god.”

  “I don’t think God has a gender.”

  “But you refer to God as Him. The Father and all that.”

  “It’s what most people are used to. I tend to try and avoid pronouns and so forth. But, maybe because of the way I feel about Mary, I think of God in more feminine terms, honestly. I don’t think it matters. What matters is that we are in relationship with God, that we know God loves us.”

  “No matter what?” Angela put her fork down. She plucked her napkin from her lap and began folding it into a triangle on the tabletop. “Doesn’t God get angry with us? I mean if we do something we shouldn’t … if we behave badly?”

  Eileen put down her knife and fork, as well. She entwined her fingers and held Angela’s gaze. “God always loves us. I think God grieves when we do something that will hurt us, and others, because … she … wants so much more for us than we could possibly imagine, so much more joy and peace.”

  “And if doing the right thing means we’re in pain? If doing the right thing, the selfless and kind thing, the thing everyone expects of you, makes you feel like you’re dying?”

  “That’s not what God wants for anyone. Is that the way you feel?”

  Angela looked up from the napkin. “Yes. It is. When I think about having to spend the rest of my life with a man I don’t love. When I think about having to give up the man I do love.”

  Eileen opened her mouth to speak, but Angela stopped her. “Oh, come on, you can’t say you didn’t guess.”

  “No, I can’t say that.” She smiled. “You haven’t been all that good at hiding it.”

  “So, I suppose you think I’m sinning.” Angela picked up her wineglass and drained what was left in it.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to end up in pain, and that other people will, too.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I’m not going to give him up.”

  “Does your husband know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to divorce?”

  “I don’t know. Another sin.” She widened her eyes and feigned horror.

  “You must be lying to him. Are you?”

  “Yes. Of course, I’m lying to him, and I hate that. It makes me feel awful.”

  “Can you break if off with Carsten, at least for a while, until you decide what you’re going to do? How you’re going to do it? It’s so important for you, for everyone involved, that whatever happens, you don’t do things now you’ll regret later.”

  “You’re saying the same thing my friend Deedee says. You haven’t been talking to her, have you? Sorry. Paranoid.” Angela’s lip began to tremble. “I regret so many things. What’s a few more?” She began to cry.

  “Oh, Angela. I’m so sorry you’re in this pain. How can I help?”

  “Be on my side.” She took the tissue Eileen offered and dabbed at her eyes, being careful not to smudge her makeup.

  “I am on your side, but because I want the very best for you, I must tell you I think you’re making a mistake if you keep on seeing Carsten, as things now stand.”

  “I probably am. People keep telling me that.” Angela looked up and her eyes narrowed with defiance. “And I don’t care. I won’t give him up. I don’t know if I’m going to leave Philip, but I’m not leaving Carsten.”

  “The world doesn’t work like that. We don’t get to have our cake and eat it, too. Cliché, but no less true.”

  Angela bristled. Her eyes narrowed, went darker. “It doesn’t sound like you’re on my side.”

  “I’m sorry for that. But I am. I think you’re smart and kind and so full of life. You’re such a flame, you’ve got such spark. You bubble with it; you glow with it. That’s God’s love. Big and bright and bold.”

  Angela didn’t answer, but hung her head, shook it and busied herself with the tissue, blowing her nose. It was a messy sound.

  A family sat at the table next to them. Parents and two children, a boy of perhaps seven, and a girl maybe twelve. He wore a blue-and-yellow soccer shirt and held something on his lap. He was petting it, Eileen realized. A turtle? Tortoise. The boy pulled a piece of lettuce from his plate and fed it to the animal. The parents were talking, something about an upcoming vacation, and the girl was staring at her and Angela, eyes full of curiosity. She wore a pink long-sleeved T-shirt and her hair was wrapped in the kind of bun ballet dancers wore. It accentuated her long, thin neck, just as it was meant to do. Perhaps she had just come from a barre class? Angela followed Eileen’s gaze and seeing the girl, smiled at her. The girl blushed, picked up her pink bedazzled phone and began texting furiously.

  “So why,” Angela said, “does God punish me so?” She was soggy and snuffling now.

  “God doesn’t punish you. God loves you.”

  “He feels punishing to me.”

  “What I’m hearing is shame. I’ve felt that. I was terribly shamed as a child, and I kept asking, ‘What is the Truth?’ A question intellectual answers didn’t help. Intellectual answers don’t touch that feeling of shame. For me, it was the irresistible image of Jesus and his love for the least and the lost that pulled me back from the edge. The healing took a long time, and, to be honest, I had a difficult time being patient with God, understanding that God isn’t mean or punishing, but painstakingly thorough in the healing. Yes, I fail. I do things wrong, but Christ’s desire is to heal the wounds that tempt me to sin. Shame, hiding, they have no place. Soul-corroding secrets have no place. Angela, shame is a limiting, constricting prison. Its windows into reality are small and smea
red.”

  “Yes, it sure is … and you know what? I’m going to leave here now and I’m going to see Carsten.”

  “I know.”

  Angela stood up. “Dinner’s on me.”

  “You don’t have to do that, and you don’t have to rush off, either.” Eileen took her hand. The girl at the next table looked over again and sneered.

  “Yes, I do. I shouldn’t have told you all this, anyway.”

  “I’m glad you did.” She patted Angela’s hand with her other and said, “Will you call me tomorrow and let me know how you are? I want to be sure you know I am on your side, that I’m here for you.”

  “Sure. Sure. I’ll call.” Angela bent down and kissed Eileen’s cheek. “Thanks,” she said, and then she dashed off, leaving a trail of perfume behind her.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Eileen stood at the kitchen counter, chopping onions. It was Saturday, and so the Pantry wasn’t open, and it was her turn to cook. Peel back the papery skin. Onion skin, she thought, that’s what we used to call airmail letter paper. Pale blue and fine, nearly transparent. The idea was that the onion-skin paper was lighter than regular paper and therefore less expensive to mail. One didn’t need an envelope; one merely folded the paper over, wrote the address on the front. Didn’t even need a stamp. The onion skins came pre-stamped. She would write birthday letters to her great-aunt Kate way off in County Sligo on such paper. Aunt Kate was something of a rebel in the family, more pagan than Catholic. She was her father’s aunt, and would write much longer letters back to Eileen, filled with strange stories about the Great Worm, warriors and druids, banshees, Balor of the Evil Eye, and the Cailleach, the Old Woman of Winter. The Cailleach was a wild and willful woman, who made the stones and storms. The Cailleach was that force of nature that shaped the world and still did, said Aunt Kate.

  The letters would arrive from Ireland in packages with tins of shortbread and loaves of soda bread wrapped in tea towels Aunt Kate had embroidered herself. Eileen’s mother would keep the shortbread and tea towels, toss out the soda bread (for of course it was stale and hard as the rocks created by the Cailleach, Aunt Kate having no sense of the great distance from County Sligo to New Jersey), scan the letters and then, with a snort of derision, toss them away as well, muttering about godless pagans. Eileen, however, would pluck them out of the trash, ferret them away, and read them when she could. A child of twelve or thirteen, she found no sacrilege in the old tales and the spirits of the sky and earth. She didn’t then, and she didn’t now. What was all the world and everything in it, after all, except a metaphor for God, who spoke in the language of whomever God sought, and didn’t God seek us all?