Things We Never Say

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  She also contacted Ryan Gilligan to let him know that she was finally going to see her mother and discuss the inheritance. He sounded quite pleased at the prospect of things finally moving on. Billable hours, she reminded herself. All lawyers love ’em.

  She wasn’t thinking about the will, or the competition, or billable hours, or indeed anything other than the fact that she hated flying in bad weather as her plane made a bumpy landing at San Diego airport. Even as they taxied towards the terminal, however, the heavy rain began to ease, and by the time she parked her rental car outside the downtown hotel where she’d reserved a room, the skies had almost cleared.

  She walked up to the reception desk and checked in. The receptionist, whom she’d never seen before, welcomed her back to the Old Inn. Abbey knew that because she always stayed in the same place near the Pacific Highway when she visited her mom, her details were already in the hotel’s system, which meant that even the newest person on the desk could welcome back previous guests.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ said the receptionist as Abbey took her key card and made her way to the fourth floor.

  She was pleased to have been given a room that overlooked the bay and not the car park, and she stood gazing out at the ocean for a couple of minutes before telling herself that it was the same damn water that she saw every single day and that she should unpack and get on with it. She knew that she was wasting time so as to delay the moment when she set off for the monastery of Santa Ana in Los Montesinos, which was a little under an hour’s drive from the hotel.

  She’d told the prioress that she’d be arriving at the monastery mid afternoon, which meant that she didn’t have too much time to spare. Sister Inez, a kindly and efficient woman, had said that she’d allocate one of the visitors’ rooms to her and Sister Benita, and that she hoped they’d have much to share.

  Sister Inez would get her wish, thought Abbey, as she left the room and went downstairs again. She had far too many things she needed to share with her mother. Her heart was tripping in her chest as she went over them all again. She wished (as she’d known she would) that she’d accepted Pete’s offer to come with her. But when he’d suggested it, she’d told him that she’d prefer to meet Ellen by herself. Pete had looked a little wounded at that, but Abbey pointed out that Ellen would immediately assume something terrible had happened if she saw him, and she didn’t want her mother being defensive straight away. Besides, she wasn’t sure that Claudia would approve of Pete seeing his ex again, even if she was now a celibate nun!

  ‘Call me as soon as you’ve spoken to her and let me know how it went,’ he ordered, and she’d promised that she would.

  As she drove along the dusty road that led to the monastery, she toyed with the idea of calling him now but quickly dismissed it. Ellen (Abbey never thought of her as Sister Benita) was her mother and her family. And this was between the two of them, even if Pete now had a vested interest in their inheritance. She pressed the on button for the car radio and listened to the pre-set station, a Mexican one playing a selection from Linda Ronstadt’s Jardín Azul album. The songs were traditional, and Abbey remembered singing them with her mother during their Latin American days. She wondered if Ellen had felt the tuggings of a vocation even then. Had she wished that she could leave Abbey somewhere and join the nuns? Many of the health facilities that Ellen had worked in had had religious volunteers as well as lay staff. Abbey hadn’t recognised all of them as nuns then, because not all of them wore habits. Sister Teresa – young, pretty and vivacious – came to the clinic every day dressed in jeans and a checked cotton blouse, and it wasn’t until they were leaving that Abbey discovered she was a nun at all.

  Had Ellen wished that she lived Sister Teresa’s life, going back to a peaceful convent instead of the shabby apartment she and Abbey had shared? She must have thought about it, Abbey mused, but how could she have done anything about it when she had a child to look after? Had Ellen resented her? She’d never made her feel anything but loved and wanted back then, but perhaps it had all been a facade. Yet she’d come back to California for Abbey’s sake. And she’d had a loving relationship with Pete.

  Gramps and Gramma dying had been the catalyst, Abbey decided. After that, Ellen had gone on the retreat that had obviously been enough to make her give up everything, Abbey and Pete included.

  She clearly remembered the day that Ellen had told her. It had been shortly after Abbey had given her the news that she was doing the nail technician’s course and that she was going to move in with some friends. Ellen had frowned at the idea of the course, asked about her art studies, told her that she was cheapening her life and focusing on the wrong things. There’d been a row, Abbey had stormed off in a rage and then, when she came home ready to apologise to her mother, Ellen had sprung the bombshell about wanting to spend some time at the monastery to see if the life was the right one for her. Abbey had been dumbstruck by her decision, but at the time had thought it was an easy way of allowing both of them to do their own thing for a while. Living together had become claustrophobic, which was part of the reason why Abbey had been so keen to move out of their apartment, even though she’d loved it. She had, however, been devastated for Pete, because she’d been sure that he and Ellen had a future together. Shortly after Ellen’s decision, Pete had called Abbey and met her for coffee, asking her what it was that he’d done to drive Ellen away. It was a question that Abbey hadn’t been able to answer.

  Although she’d grown even closer to Pete, she couldn’t, in all honesty, say that she’d missed her mother in those early months. And even when Ellen said that she’d decided she wanted to stay with the community as a postulant, Abbey had dismissed it as a fad. She’d told Pete to hang in there, that she was sure her mother would be back and that she’d be looking to both of them for support after her mad venture. But that wasn’t how things had turned out. And as Ellen grew more distant, Abbey realised that this wasn’t like the times when her mother had decided she needed a change and had upped sticks and moved to a different town to use her nursing skills there. She’d formed a bond with the monastic community which seemed stronger than the bond she’d had with Pete. Stronger, even, than the bond that she and Abbey had once shared. The realisation had hurt Abbey deeply. Mothers were supposed to care for their children above everything and everyone else. But she wasn’t enough for Ellen. She never had been. That was why her mother had spent so much time looking after other people. Abbey herself had never measured up. But then, she asked herself, as the music switched from traditional Spanish songs to something more upbeat and recent, who on earth could measure up to a relationship with God?

  After about fifty minutes, she saw the monastery building. Dating back to the early 1800s, it had originally been a convent consisting of a hacienda-style adobe construction around a central courtyard. At that time, many of the nuns were women who had been sent there by family, either for protection or because they wanted to get rid of them. When the convent closed nearly seventy years later, the building fell into disrepair, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that a group of nuns who wanted to live a monastic lifestyle took it over and restored and remodelled it. They retained the courtyard layout, rebuilt the walls and the campanile and founded the Hermanas de Santa Ana, a community that now had almost fifty sisters. That number was down from over a hundred in the initial years of its existence but was nevertheless a sizeable community for modern times. Abbey knew that the average age of the nuns was creeping inexorably higher. Despite the fact that a surprising number of young people came to the monastery on retreats, very few girls wanted to live their particular lifestyle. Abbey didn’t blame them. She wouldn’t have been able to put up with it herself.

  There was a small parking area covered by a corrugated-iron roof outside the monastery walls. Three other cars were parked there, and she pulled into a space beside a dusty red pick-up. She got out of her rental and locked the door, although, she thought to herself in amusement, the likelihood of it being stolen was pre
tty remote. For as far as she could see in either direction, the ribbon of road was deserted.

  Abbey took a few deep breaths, then pressed the buzzer on the gate. A bead of sweat traced its way along her spine. She didn’t know if it was from nerves, or because without the protection of the iron roof, the heat of the sun was intense.

  It was Sister Esperanza who opened it. Abbey remembered her from the last time she’d been to Los Montesinos, a tall, ebony-skinned woman wearing the coffee-coloured skirt and jacket with white blouse that was the habit of the monastery. When Ellen had first talked about joining the enclosed community, Abbey had visualised her in a long black tunic and veil, but Ellen had smiled and said that fortunately the nuns were a bit more up-to-date than that and that spending the day wearing heavy black in the heat of southern California would be madness. Abbey had eventually put away many of her preconceptions about monastic life, but what she couldn’t avoid was knowing that Ellen’s choice meant that she would be permanently living in Los Montesinos and would rarely step outside its exquisitely maintained garden.

  Sister Esperanza led her along the terracotta-tiled inner corridors to a small room, redolent of beeswax and hibiscus, with a narrow stained-glass window which reflected reds and blues on to the opposite wall. In the centre of the room were two chairs either side of a round wooden table. A jug of iced water, containing mint leaves and a slice of lemon, and two tall glasses were neatly placed on the table.

  ‘Sister Benita will be with you shortly,’ said the nun, before leaving Abbey alone in the room.

  Abbey realised that her hands were shaking as she poured herself a glass of water from the jug. She sipped it slowly, willing herself to be calm and relaxed as she strained her ears for the sounds of someone approaching. But the door opened without her having heard any footsteps. And then she was looking at her mother for the first time in nearly a year.

  Abbey stood up as Ellen crossed the room. Like Sister Esperanza, she was dressed in the coffee-coloured skirt and jacket. Before she’d joined the monastery, she’d liked to wear vibrant primary colours. But it wasn’t the vibrancy of her clothes that people noticed when Ellen – Sister Benita – came into a room now. It was the brightness of her smile and the intelligence that shone from her blue eyes that drew immediate attention. Her face, smooth and barely lined, would have done justice to an anti-ageing-cream advertisement. She’s hardly changed, Abbey thought, from the days when she lived in San Francisco, although perhaps she’s a bit more serene now.

  ‘Hello, Mom,’ she said.

  ‘Hello, Abbey.’ Ellen opened her arms and embraced her daughter. And suddenly Abbey felt the years roll back so that Ellen was the mother she’d always known.

  ‘How have you been?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘Oh, not bad.’ Abbey gave her a quick resumé of her working and social life. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank God,’ said Ellen. ‘I’ve led lots of people in prayer and contemplation since I last saw you. I’ve treated a variety of ailments, stitched a few cuts and popped a dislocated shoulder back into place.’

  Ellen was in charge of the monastery’s infirmary. Her undoubted nursing skills were one of the reasons, Abbey had always thought, that she had been so readily accepted into the community, despite being a late vocation and having a daughter.

  ‘But you’re not here to talk about these things, are you?’ asked Ellen. ‘You want to discuss something else with me.’ She looked steadily at Abbey.

  ‘Yes.’ Abbey took another sip of the cold water. ‘I … I’m not sure exactly how to start.’

  ‘At the very beginning.’ Ellen’s face broke into a smile. ‘Didn’t Julie Andrews say it was a very good place to start?’

  Abbey laughed. ‘Is The Sound of Music compulsory viewing here?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, it shows nuns as very resourceful people,’ Ellen told her. ‘And the music is lovely.’

  ‘OK then.’ She felt slightly more at ease. ‘I guess the place to start is to ask you if you knew you were adopted.’

  She kept her eyes fixed on Ellen as she spoke. She was sure the answer would be yes, but when she didn’t see any flicker of expression cross her mother’s face, she wondered if she’d been wrong. And if she’d shocked Ellen so much that she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘How did you find out about that?’ asked Ellen after a long pause.

  ‘So you did know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Abbey clenched her fists and her nails dug into the palms of her hands. ‘Always?’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘My mom told me when Dad was sick,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ asked Abbey. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Ellen said nothing for a moment, and Abbey could see that she was gathering her thoughts.

  ‘I was very shocked at first,’ Ellen admitted. ‘And with Dad being so ill, it wasn’t something I had time to process properly. Then Mom got sick too and … I guess I kind of put it to one side.’

  ‘You still should have told me,’ said Abbey.

  ‘I know.’ Ellen looked contrite. ‘I’m not sure I was thinking very clearly myself back then. I was angry at my mom for not having said anything sooner, even though in those days people weren’t always as open about adoption as they are now. I was frustrated that I hadn’t been able to talk to my parents about it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you found out about it from someone else.’ She looked at Abbey curiously. ‘And surprised. Who told you? And when?’

  Ellen was completely still after Abbey finished her account of meeting with Ryan Gilligan and her stay in Ireland. Abbey continued to sip her glass of water while she watched her mother’s face. Once again it was almost expressionless, but she could see that Ellen’s mind was working hard, because her eyes gleamed with the intensity that she remembered well.

  ‘You’ve had a traumatic time,’ said Ellen eventually.

  ‘Challenging,’ agreed Abbey.

  ‘And you’ve learned a lot about me. More than I knew myself.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘I didn’t know my mother’s name,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Didn’t Gramma and Gramps tell you? Didn’t they know?’ Abbey was astounded.

  ‘Maybe they knew her full name,’ said Ellen. ‘But if so, they didn’t share it with me. All they said was that she was a mother who’d died in childbirth.’

  ‘Ryan Gilligan, the investigative lawyer, told me she died shortly after you were born,’ said Abbey. ‘Not, I suppose, that it makes a huge difference, but …’

  ‘But perhaps she knew I existed,’ said Ellen. ‘Dilly.’ She said the name slowly. ‘Poor, poor girl. It must have been an awful time. Imagine how she was feeling.’

  ‘Fred Fitzpatrick said I looked like her.’

  ‘In that case, she was beautiful,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Fred told me that too,’ said Abbey. ‘But that’s just an old man and a biased mother talking. Besides, I don’t look like her. If anything, I think I might look a bit like him. Because I look like his daughter Suzanne. So do you.’

  Ellen blinked a couple of times. ‘I never thought I’d know anything about my birth family,’ she said. ‘After Gramma told me, I wondered about them. Anyone would. But they had their own lives and there was no reason for me to try to find out about them.’

  ‘Your father felt differently.’

  ‘Eventually.’

  ‘Do you resent it?’ asked Abbey.

  ‘It took me a while to come to terms with the knowledge when I first found out,’ admitted Ellen. ‘Not because of being adopted, but because I hadn’t known. I felt like a different person. But then – then I discovered my vocation and nothing else mattered.’

  That was true, thought Abbey. But the fact that Ellen had joined the monastery so soon after learning about the birth mother she hadn’t known existed was surely more than a coincidence.

  ‘Mom …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is she
why you became a nun?’ asked Abbey. ‘I mean – she died in a convent. The nuns treated her badly. Are you sure you’re not simply trying to make amends?’

  Ellen looked at her, startled. ‘Of course not. I didn’t know she’d died in a convent. All I knew was that she’d died and that her family couldn’t cope. My vocation might have been triggered by events, but it’s very real. I’m not trying to make amends for what happened to her, even though it was so very dreadful.’

  ‘Now you know the full story, does it make a difference?’

  Ellen contemplated silently for a moment before speaking.

  ‘The past is the past,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. I have to live my life the best way I can in the present.’

  ‘So joining the monastery wasn’t some sort of … of penance?’

  ‘Everyone wants to find reasons when somebody does something unexpected,’ Ellen replied. ‘But the only reason is – and this is the truth – I truly found God. Which I know sounds very cultish and strange in the modern world. People are far more accepting of New Age stuff than they are of Christianity, and I understand that, honestly I do. But all the time I was working in the hospitals and all the time we were travelling, I was searching for something. I’ve found it here. Nevertheless …’ She looked intently at Abbey. ‘I’m sorry that in doing that, I left you behind.’

  ‘Oh.’ Abbey caught her breath. Ellen had never apologised to her for her vocation before.

  ‘I should have talked to you about it.’