Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  “I apologized the day I was sentenced,” the actress said. “I said it directly to Mr. Sampal. So, I’ve apologized, I just don’t think I should have to keep doing it.”

  Angela snorted. Really? She didn’t? How bizarre. How could she do anything but spend the rest of her life apologizing?

  She turned off the television and sat staring at her hands, and at the plate of mostly untouched food.

  That woman, she thought, is going to be miserable the rest of her life, and so is everyone associated with her. It was so crystal clear. She was the sort of person, Angela presumed, who would say going to prison might be interesting for her narrative. Annie Bright probably fancied herself another Robert Downey Jr. Anything that interfered with that take on events was, well, annoying.

  Was this who Angela was doomed to become? Or was this what she already was? Some privileged woman, some Martha Stewart who might have made, you know, a mistake, but really, life had to go on? Feeling sorry for herself. Trying to justify herself? What good did that do anyone? Was that why she was having this furious reaction to this has-been television actor? Because she saw so much of herself there? Because they were no different? Not really?

  Her phone rang. Carsten again. This was the third time he’d called. She hadn’t answered the others but now, something about her anger at Annie Bright, and at herself; something about her sorrow over Connor and whatever one called her confused emotions about Philip made her want to hear Carsten’s voice, if for no other reason than to snip away that final barb stuck in her skin, to simplify just a bit.

  “Hello.”

  “My God, Angela! I have been trying to contact you. Why have you not returned my calls? Are you all right?”

  “What do you want, Carsten? Didn’t we say it all?”

  “I know that you had certain expectations, and yes, I may be guilty of not being clear, but you knew who I am.”

  “I do.”

  “And now you sound very cold.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “My feelings have not changed. I want to see you. I care for you. There is no need to end things.”

  Oh, but there was. So many reasons.

  “No, I’m not going to see you. There just isn’t any point. Things are different. They’ve changed.”

  “What do you mean changed? Ah, you are going back to your husband, yes?”

  “Sure,” she said, since that would be the easiest explanation. “That’s it.”

  “Will you keep my number? And I will maybe see you at the Pantry, yes?”

  “Take care of yourself, Carsten. I have to go.”

  “You are not being altogether reasonable, to ignore what is between us.”

  Jesus. Did he really think she’d continue as his mistress? Even without What Happened, that certainly wasn’t the life she’d wanted. It was never for her to be alone, with him floating on the periphery of her life. It didn’t matter, though. What Happened had happened. It was not a bell one could unring.

  “Goodbye, Carsten.”

  She hung up before he could say anything else. She doubted he would call again. Snip. Snip. Another thread attaching her to the old life gone.

  She stood and went into the bedroom, although she wasn’t sure why. One room was no better than the other. Nothing changed. The double bed. The floor lamp. The rickety bedside table. The rag rug on the floor. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the closet door. She saw herself. Skeletal. Dirty. Her skin grey. The sweatpants and T-shirt and cardigan all baggy and unwashed. She was useless. A liability to the world.

  Without family. Without a home. Without her son. Oh, Connor. Without friends, none of whom she blamed, except Sister Eileen, who couldn’t keep the disapproval out of her eyes, no matter how hard she tried. Without Carsten. Carsten. Carsten. Oh. Oh.

  Angela fell onto the bed, face buried in the pillow, crying until her eyes hurt too much to cry anymore and then she fell into something like sleep.

  Sister Eileen

  She was finishing up some bookkeeping at the Pantry when the phone rang.

  “Our Daily Bread Pantry. How may I help you?”

  “Is this Sister Eileen?” asked a male voice, one she recognized.

  “It is.”

  “This is Detective Danberg. I’d like to ask you a few more questions and I think it would be best if you came into the station.”

  “If you like, Detective.”

  “I like. Tomorrow, shall we say, if it’s convenient for you.”

  She ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “I’d like to be here to open the Pantry and get through the busy hours.”

  “I was thinking two o’clock.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  She hung up and stared out the window to the litter-clogged metal fence surrounding the parking lot behind the Pantry. She tried to imagine Angela in prison and found it difficult. The women’s prisons were, of course, less hideous in some ways than the men’s prisons, but then again, they were more depressing. Mothers without their children. Women doing time for the men in their lives. Drugs. Despair. Gossip and fights. Fights and gossip. Well, it was as yet unclear if Angela would take accountability for the accident. Eileen might be in jail before Angela. This was the third time Detective Danberg had called her. The previous times he’d been polite enough, even though the hostility she’d noted at their first meeting lingered. When she’d said, during one conversation, that as a nun she was duty bound to try her best to do the right thing, he’d said, “I wish the nuns in Catholic school beating the crap out of us had felt that way, or maybe your idea of what’s best and mine aren’t the same.” She had tried to apologize for any pain he’d experienced at the hands of the Sisters, but he shut her down, and she didn’t blame him. It explained a lot, however, about his dislike of nuns. He’d gone on to ask, as he did in every conversation, if she remembered anything yet that might help the investigation. She said she hadn’t, and she’d understood that part of his reason for calling her was to remind her she was still on his radar. George Clarence was still in hospital, but Darlene was back in the apartment, and the Sisters were checking on her. She was doing remarkably well, really, but part of that might be the result of her not engaging with the world emotionally. Sometimes, thought Eileen, such emotional isolation might be a blessing. Angela, Angela. Well, all Eileen could do was to keep praying, and keep the relationship with Angela alive. No matter how much the police might pressure her, she would keep Angela’s secret until Angela came to the right decision herself. Let it, she prayed, be soon.

  Things kept changing. And yet some things didn’t change. God, ever constant, even while the world danced and tilted and struggled. Even when God wasn’t speaking to her. Even then, yes … The river of faith flowed on, sometimes wild and white-capped, sometimes placid and calm, but always itself. The trick was to get your feet up off the bottom, not to try to swim against the current but to let the water carry you where it would, trusting in the destination and the water’s fidelity to you, to the weight of your body. Even in the rapids? Yes, even there.

  EILEEN NEEDED TO SPEAK with her spiritual director, Sister Felida. She drove to the Mother House, praying as she drove for discernment and guidance.

  She believed God was with Angela, but still … when she thought of Angela two things came into her head: the woman’s nonchalant way of moving through the world, as though she expected things to flow around her, always showing her in the best light and making allowances, her utter selfishness and self-serving, even now, post-accident; and the physicality of her, the languid way she moved, the … oh, there was no other word for it … the sexuality of the woman.

  These two things, combined with her inability to be satisfied, to sit still, to reflect, had led her to this terrible place. And, oh, how the circle of people adversely affected by her kept widening. It was infuriating. Enraging, almost, if Eileen were someone so inclined. Which she wasn’t, she thought, not anymore. Or was she?

  If she was to love the neighbour
without distinction, she must do so here. She mustn’t judge Angela, only try to see her as God saw her.

  With gratitude, and a loosening of her grip on the wheel, she pulled into the parking lot of the grey stone house where Felida lived with six other Sisters, just down the road from the Mother House. As she walked up the path, it began to rain, and the stone beneath her feet turned from being the colour of a pigeon’s wing to shiny charcoal. Thunder rumbled in the distance over Philadelphia.

  Felida waited for her in the hallway and within a few moments they were sitting in the living room, which was largely unused except for these sorts of meetings. The house had been very grand at one time, a place of servants and formal dinners, built by a Philadelphia financier in the 1920s. When he had lost his money in the Great Depression, it had, like its owner, fallen on hard times, going from hand to hand, even housing orphan boys at one point, before the Sisters of Saint Joseph bought it in the 1980s.

  The Sisters who lived there cared for the old place, but felt it was all a bit too grand for them, with the butler’s pantry and high-ceilinged salons, which they used mostly for seminars open to the public, on subjects like contemplative prayer and how to be of service in the community. But this one rather cozy room, the leaded-glass windows, the bookshelves, the huge old fireplace, the window seat and low, coffered ceiling, gave the impression of, perhaps, an idealized convent setting, nestled and cloistered and hushed. Talks of importance and intimacy were held here, over cups of tea and biscuits.

  Now, Felida sat in an old burgundy horsehair chair near the fireplace. She wore navy blue slacks and a cotton-candy-pink T-shirt. Eileen sat on the other side of the fireplace in a chair meant to be tufted red leather, but was irrefutably imitation, and it creaked when she moved. The room was dark, as it would have been even had it not been raining. The moderate shower that had begun as Eileen arrived was now alternating with raging torrents that made her feel as if she were crouched in a cave behind a waterfall, perhaps the hermitage of one of the Desert Mothers who sought nothing but silence and communion with God.

  Laughter came from somewhere in the house. Someone was playing classical music, something by Mozart? Chopin? A piano something. Someone was talking on the phone in the hall.

  Felida’s intonation rose. She was asking Eileen something …

  “What do you fear will happen to this woman?” Felida’s head was cocked to the side, her eyes earnest.

  “I fear she’ll never come to terms with herself, with God. I fear she’ll spend the rest of her life running and fighting and never realizing what she wants is her own soul, in God’s hands.”

  “You care about her deeply; I can see that. How does it make you feel that you are offering your hand, your help, and she doesn’t seem to want to take it?”

  “She takes the material things, but not the spiritual. It breaks my heart. I feel helpless.”

  Felida nodded. “Imagine how God feels. Imagine how Christ felt, with this wonderful gift just waiting to be claimed. This is the grief of God.”

  Sorrow swelled in Eileen. Yes. The vastness of God, and the loneliness. Yes, the loneliness of God, of Christ in the garden, knowing something awful must come, knowing it and having to accept it. She had her own dark nights of the soul. Had thought they were over, more fool she.

  “But more, too. I also feel something else. I feel a kind of anger.”

  Felida nodded, which encouraged Eileen to continue.

  “There’s something careless about her.” She struggled for the words. “I can’t go into all the details, but she’s hurt people, a number of them, in a number of ways. She has certainly misused her sexuality.”

  “Hmm. Well, let’s talk about female sexuality.” Felida ran her finger around the rim of her teacup. “There’s nothing wrong with sexuality, with enjoying one’s body. But anything taken to the extreme will hurt people. It’s an archetype, isn’t it? The femme fatale. The woman whose worth is measured by her allure. It’s a delightful persona to explore when appropriate, but like any archetype, one can become trapped in it.”

  It dawned on Eileen, not for the first time, how incredibly lucky she was to have someone like Felida in her life. Or, Dr. Felida, as she might be called. With multiple degrees in theology and psychology and literature to her name, she was one of the most widely read people Eileen knew, and reminded her a good deal of Sister Elizabeth Johnson, Eileen’s mentor in college, who had taught her so much about the theology of Mary. Like Elizabeth, Felida never judged, although she sometimes mirrored, as Eileen suspected she was doing now.

  “Consider the enchantress Circe,” she was saying. “She’s one of the symbols of this archetype, and what did she do in the Odyssey? She turned men into pigs. While it’s true the femme fatale can be interpreted as the embodied rebellion against traditional gender roles, Jung saw it, rightly I think, as the lowest manifestation of the anima. Such a woman is irresistible on a certain level, and extremely dangerous, but what about the danger she presents not only to those around her, but to her own soul?

  “Which bring us to your soul, of course.” She smiled softly and tilted her head to the side. “Being subjected to someone’s insatiable sexual desires has blocked you from your own rage, don’t you think? Angela, in this way, serves you. She enables you to access that rage and in accessing that rage you come home to your own self, where …”

  “Where God waits,” said Eileen.

  There was a great crack of thunder and flash of light, and then the power went out.

  Felida laughed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, “God certainly isn’t being very subtle today, is She?”

  Eileen had almost spilled her tea. “Did the house get hit, do you think?”

  “I doubt it.” Felida cocked her head, listening. There was silence, nothing but the rain falling, and then someone laughed again, and the piano music began again. “No, I don’t think so.” The older sister rose and took some matches from beside the fireplace. She struck one and lit three candles, two on the mantel and one on the table between them. “Power goes out all the time here. Never for long, though, thank goodness.” She sat down again. “Where was I? Oh, yes …” Felida shook her head. “I would think that’s a terrifically painful space to occupy. I always remember poor Lilith, Adam’s first wife, according to Jewish legend. His equal, we’re told, powerful and sexual. Adam wanted to rule over her — and from what you’ve told me, that’s what Angela’s husband wanted to do, be it through negligent kindness and the sort of false security that demands servitude, or through outright cruelty, and the discounting of her personality. That’s what those men, I can’t call them priests, did to you, isn’t it? Servitude, cruelty, a discounting of self. When Lilith could take no more, she fled the garden. After that there are a lot of stories about her being a savage seductress who killed her children. Useful stories if you want to study the reinforcing legends of the patriarchy.”

  Felida chuckled. “But more to the point, her rage, such a potent force, rose up in her and forced her to freedom outside the garden, which certainly wasn’t a paradise for her. My point is, this archetype is wonderful if it isn’t repressed, but if one makes peace with it, and acknowledges the wound.”

  The storm, having made its point, was moving away, and the rain against the windows was softening.

  “I see that. Seems God’s inviting me to do some soul-work around that.” It rattled her to see so clearly what she hadn’t seen, but it made sense. What bothered us about the other was always what bothered us about the self. “I’ll bring it to God. It feels right. One more thing, though. I’m holding space for Angela, and for her wounds, her pain, and that may lead to certain, um, complications. There are things she has told me I’ve promised I would keep safe insofar as I can. Quite serious things.”

  “Let me ask you, Sister, are these things of a legal nature?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “I see. Well, you have been in discernment, I assume, and feel you are taking the path God
wishes you to take?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, this helplessness you’re feeling, and your fear, which I share, that Angela may be headed for a difficult time … has there been another time in your life when you’ve felt that?”

  Eileen made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Oh, how breath was hard to get into the lungs at such a time. “There is. Something I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Would you like to talk about it now?”

  “No. The opposite, but I have to.” She brought her fingertips to her forehead and massaged it, as though trying to erase the memories there. No such luck. “When I was twelve, I babysat for a neighbour. A little boy, a year and a half old, named Jack. He, he wouldn’t stop crying. I was at my wits’ end. Well, no excuses.” Breathe. Breathe. “I hit him. Hard. I slapped his face. I still remember his face in front of me, like he’s sitting right there. It took a second, you know. He was in shock, I think; he’d never been hit before, I’m sure. He just looked at me, mouth open, and then the wailing started. And the red mark showed up. There was so much despair.” Eileen was crying herself now and Felida passed her a box of tissues. “So much anguish in that cry. I felt, feel, like I ruined the world for him. I can’t even now, I can’t …” She made a sound and then couldn’t go on.

  Felida let her cry for a moment and then said, “You can’t get out from under the guilt, just like Angela can’t, and you recognize that fear, just as you recognize the anger. She’s quite a gift to you, and a reminder that God makes good things come, even from bad things.”

  “I try to believe that.”

  “Slapping a baby, like causing whatever harm Anglea has caused, is a bad thing. It’s a sin. We can’t soften that.”

  “No, we can’t.”