What Matters Most

by Luanne Rice

  “We are,” he said.

  “Aren’t we too old for adventures now?”

  He shook his head, his blue eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Not at all.”

  She shivered, as if a cool draft were coming from somewhere. But there wasn’t anything cool happening in that basement room. It was all so hot—the furnace blazing, and the emotions swirling inside her chest. James looked into her eyes, kissed her lips lightly. They had done this before, once or twice—enough so she’d felt the difference from the innocent little-kid kisses they’d once had.

  James’s kiss was gentle and tentative, but the way his lips felt, his tongue touching hers, made Kathleen feel she was going to explode. She held him tightly, her heart hammering so hard it almost hurt.

  He gathered some old cloths and pads from a shelf—used for wrapping and moving furniture, donations from wealthy patrons—and arranged them on the concrete floor. The maintenance staff stored brooms and mops here, and James pushed them aside. Holding Kathleen’s hand, he eased her onto the makeshift bed.

  Her heart was going so fast, she felt almost dizzy enough to pass out. Her body ached, and instinctively she knew it was from desire to be touched by James. It made her feel almost crazy.

  “We’re best friends,” she whispered as he caressed the side of her face with his hand.

  “Always.”

  “So how can this be happening?”

  “It’s what I feel for you,” he whispered. “I can’t explain it. It’s just that I have to be with you, Kathleen….”

  “Isn’t it wrong, though?”

  “No, Kathleen. It’s right. Don’t you feel it?”

  She nodded, because she did feel it. Alone in her room at night, all she thought about was James. Standing by her window, waving at him before they went to sleep, she would imagine the day they were grown-up enough to get married.

  He kissed her again, still a little uncertain. But she suddenly felt so sure, she lay on her back, pulling him closer. She wanted to feel his weight on her body, pressing against her, almost as if she could pull him into her very being.

  They stayed dressed; they hugged and kissed, wanting to do more but not really sure how to get started. Their souls merged that night, in the stuffy warmth of the St. Augustine’s furnace room. Kathleen held James, and he held her.

  It was the night they started growing up. When she returned to her room later, to stand by her window and gaze across the courtyard at him, she knew that she was no longer a child in the same way.

  Yet waving at James in the darkness, a part of her had felt so empty. Her body ached to be held by him, yet she felt a nagging feeling inside. What lay ahead for them? Would there be more adventures, exploring each other’s body as well as new places to hide and kiss?

  She wanted to be James’s family, and for him to be hers. Other girls her age had mothers to show her how it was done. She’d see them sometimes, at church or in school, mothers and daughters together. Kathleen never felt envious of those family girls’ nice clothes or good shoes, their pierced earrings and pretty necklaces—no, she felt jealous because they had mothers who could teach them about life and love.

  Even at twelve, she thought of the future. She wanted to know how to be, how to act. She felt panicked, falling in love with James. They had lost their childhood, but she wasn’t sure how to step into adulthood.

  That night, standing at the window, she’d raised her eyes over the chimneys of St. Augustine’s, wishing on a star that her mother would come and find her. It was a crazy wish, considering how deeply she felt for James. Maybe that was why—maybe the depth scared her.

  In any case, her wish came true.

  The next summer, her mother came out of the shadows of the past and took Kathleen out of St. Augustine’s. Kathleen had wished on that star, and it had delivered.

  And now, huddled in the attic of Oakhurst, thinking of everything her parents had taught her, how far they had taken her from James and that innocent love they had started to discover together, Kathleen held herself as tightly as she could, crying into her pillow, already soaked with too many tears.

  Nine

  The flat was a fourth-floor walk-up, in a building inhabited mainly by students. Its gray stone facade reflected in the River Liffey below, and its windows overlooked a row of brick buildings across the river, and the domes and spires of the city beyond.

  The apartment house was owned by Loyola Manhattan, for students in Ireland for their junior year abroad. When she had moved out of the convent, Bernie had called an old friend, a Jesuit who sometimes made retreats at Star of the Sea and who taught philosophy at the New York campus. He had made a call, and she was given the use of a flat reserved for visiting lecturers.

  Sister Anne-Marie took the bus from the convent to see her. Bernie buzzed her in, opened the door, and waited as her friend climbed the stairs, her sensible black shoes clicking on the linoleum. Bernie stood in the doorway, her heart pounding.

  “Bernie,” Anne-Marie said, standing in the hall, gazing into Bernie’s eyes. She looked startled to see her without her habit. Bernie tried to hold her head high, show that she was strong and in command of her emotions, but the minute Anne-Marie opened her arms, she fell into them.

  “Oh, Bernie,” Anne-Marie said. “It’s all right…bless you, Bernie.”

  “I couldn’t go back to the convent,” she said.

  “No, I understand. Most of us want to wring Eleanor’s neck,” Anne-Marie said.

  “Did she call the gardai?”

  “Of course not!” Anne-Marie said. “She doesn’t want to be found out for what she did.”

  “What did she do?” Bernie asked, wiping her eyes, holding the door open wide so Anne-Marie could enter. They walked into the small flat, and Bernie led her through the narrow kitchen into the sitting room. They sat opposite each other in shabby armchairs, light reflected in the river bouncing off the chipped ceiling.

  “She cleaned up the mess,” Anne-Marie said. “And told Theodore to do damage control. Which meant talking to all of us, asking if we knew where you’d gone.”

  “You didn’t tell her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why is she taking this so personally?” Bernie asked. “What does she care about whether Tom and I find our son or not?”

  Anne-Marie tilted her head, eyes sparkling, waiting for Bernie to figure it out for herself. But Bernie felt so dull and exhausted, she couldn’t make anything come together in her mind. The tall windows were splashed with raindrops, and they overlooked the river winding to the sea, and Bernie stared at the gray sky and felt cold.

  “You know that the community is just a microcosm of life,” Anne-Marie said. “Just because we’re nuns doesn’t mean we’re perfect, or even close. You of all people know we don’t have all the answers.”

  “I know I don’t,” Bernie said quietly.

  “She’s jealous. Of your holiness, of the fact you’re well thought of. Also, believe it or not, she thinks she’s doing the right thing. Hiding him from you…”

  “But why?” Bernie asked.

  “Well, because she hates unwed mothers.”

  “I’m a nun,” Bernie said dryly.

  “Maybe she thinks that she’s protecting your son from you; if someone had taken her away from her mother, maybe her life would have gone better….”

  “The situation is so different,” Bernie murmured, shaking her head, then looking back at her friend. “Did you know where he was, Annie?”

  Anne-Marie shook her head. “I hadn’t any idea. I’ve never worked in any of the Children’s Homes; I’ve always taught in our schools. Nobody ever talked about him, after you left Ireland to go to the convent in Connecticut—I took that as protection of both of you. So few people knew that you’d had a baby….”

  “Sister Eleanor Marie, Sister Theodore, you,” Bernie said. “I showed up on the convent steps, four weeks before I had him.”

  “Yes, but so did many girls. Most of them
don’t then join the order. Those of us who were there back then were so young ourselves, focused on our own vocations. Hardly anyone put it together, after you returned as a novice, that you were the same young woman who had shown up pregnant a month earlier. Besides…”

  “What, Annie?”

  “Well,” she said, raising her eyes to meet Bernie’s, “you were much better known as the Sister who’d seen Mary.”

  “Same girl, two lives,” Bernie said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Bernie closed her eyes. Back when she was young, there had always been Tom. They had grown up together, playing on the beach and green fields of Star of the Sea. He had been one of her closest friends and first love, but she had felt pulled in another direction as well.

  The convent there in Black Hall, Connecticut, right on the beautiful coastline, had always seemed such a sanctuary. She’d felt drawn to the nuns, wondered what their lives were like. Some days she felt called to join them—give up worldly pursuits and enter the order.

  She’d dream of becoming a Sister, kneeling in prayer and devotion, opening her heart to the Holy Spirit and all of God’s love. She’d imagine wearing a habit; she’d put on her mother’s black dress, high-collared and lined with silk, and pin a black mantilla to her hair.

  Then she’d tear the veil off, go running outside to meet her friend Tom. They’d have so much fun—laughing, swimming, sneaking grapes in the vineyard. When she was young, the two desires had seemed to go together: a love of God and a love of Tom. But when she got older, when she’d finished college and begun to realize how serious religious vows were, she came to understand the gravity of the decision she was facing.

  To choose one life, she would have to give up the other.

  Tom had started talking about a trip to Ireland, and wanting her to go with him. His Irish heritage was so important to him—it always had been, and no one knew that better than Bernie.

  The summer before he was scheduled to take his trip, Bernie had walked the grounds of Star of the Sea. She’d entered the Blue Grotto and knelt on the hard ground. Praying for guidance before the statue of Mary, she had watched as the stone became flesh and Mary came down to wipe her brow.

  Visions, apparitions, were controversial in the church. Many people believed they were figments of a person’s imagination—a psychological solution to a deep, personal problem. The church always tried to keep such things quiet—and so had Bernie. She’d told her priest, and an investigation had taken place. Rumors about the Blue Grotto had begun almost immediately. People whispered that Bernie had the calling. But then she’d come to Ireland with Tom, gone to the Cliffs of Moher, and everything had changed.

  “I told Eleanor Marie because she was the Novice Mistress,” Bernie said.

  “That was the right thing to do,” Anne-Marie said.

  “And she told me my vision meant I was being called to be a nun. She was so adamant about it,” Bernie said, her hand drifting to her belly now, remembering how it had felt to carry her son. “The thing was, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You made a good choice,” Anne-Marie said. “You’ve run a school and a convent, shaped so many young minds, given great numbers of girls a wonderful education.”

  “But what about that one boy?” Bernie asked.

  Sister Anne-Marie leaned forward, reached for her hand. “You have to trust that he’s had a good life. That he’s been loved and cared for.”

  Bernie nodded. She wanted to believe that so badly.

  “Bernie,” Anne-Marie said, gazing at her street clothes, “I have to ask. What does this mean?”

  Bernie glanced down at the jeans and thick white sweater. Her closet door was ajar, her black wool habit hanging on a hanger inside. Their order was permissive about wearing lay clothing during retreat time. Bernie had often gone incognito on short prayer weekends. And when she’d go to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the monastery where she made her annual retreat, she would walk the hills of bluegrass in jeans and sneakers and an old Aran sweater Tom had bought for her that week in Doolin.

  “Bernie?” Anne-Marie pressed.

  Tears filled Bernie’s eyes. This felt different. Her heart was gripped with such doubt and anger. She felt as if she’d come to a dead end. Her chest ached with hurt and panic. This morning her prayers had fallen like stones into the Liffey. They’d felt hard and inanimate, without life or hope, sinking to the bottom, into the river mud.

  “Tell me you’re not leaving the order,” Anne-Marie said.

  Gazing at the pale gray sky, Bernie didn’t reply.

  “Take some time off. Give yourself a chance to think. But don’t make any rash decisions,” Anne-Marie said.

  Bernie sat still, aware of her friend’s concerned gaze. But she couldn’t move or respond.

  “Tell me one thing. Are these old doubts? Dating back to the vision? Or do they spring from what Eleanor Marie did?”

  “Both,” Bernie managed to say.

  “You did get the file, though,” Anne-Marie said. “Right?”

  “Yes,” Bernie said. “Tom’s coming in a few minutes, and we’ll start looking.”

  “Well, please let me know what you find,” Anne-Marie said, standing. She reached into her black knapsack, pulled out a small package neatly wrapped with brown paper.

  “What’s this?” Bernie asked, accepting it, opening the paper. She saw the folded black square and knew immediately.

  “Your veil,” Anne Marie said. “You left it the other night. I thought you should have it, for when you decide to put it on again.”

  “Thank you,” Bernie said, hugging her friend. Then she put the veil on the top shelf of the glass-front oak bookcase and walked Sister Anne-Marie to the door. Hearing her footsteps going down, she walked back into the sitting room.

  Tall windows overlooked the river, and Bernie rested her forehead against the cool glass. Rivers made her think of home, Star of the Sea, located where the Connecticut River flowed into Long Island Sound. She had always found peace in the water’s flow. But right now, gazing down at the Liffey, she felt unsettled, unsure of where she was being taken.

  Turning from the window, she closed her eyes and prayed she would find out soon.

  Tom had parked on the quay, and sitting in his car, he stared up at Bernie’s window. He felt tired and sore, as if he’d run a marathon. His heart was going so fast, a thought flashed that maybe he should get checked out. The thing was, all he’d been doing was sitting still. After the scene at the convent, Bernie had retrenched so deeply into herself, he’d been powerless to get through to her. His bones and muscles ached from having to restrain himself. He held the file in his hand, and all he wanted to do was run with it.

  Now, climbing out of the car, he saw the front door to her building open. Expecting a student to come out, he was shocked to see Sister Anne-Marie. Hurrying across the cobblestone quay, he felt the wind picking up and bowed his head to walk into it. There was a storm out at sea, and the atmosphere felt charged.

  “Tom!” she called, spotting him.

  “Hey, Sister,” he said. “How is she?”

  Sister Anne-Marie shrugged, cocking her head to look up toward Bernie’s windows. “She’s troubled, that’s for sure.”

  “She hasn’t talked to me at all. I’ve got the file right here—we practically got arrested, taking it—and she hasn’t even looked through it.”

  “Be patient with her, Tom,” Anne-Marie said, looking worried. “She’s going through something profound. Doubts about herself—the decisions and choices she’s made, even her life as a nun.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see, when you get upstairs,” Anne-Marie said. “The standard term for what she’s going through is ‘discernment.’ But I’d say it’s much deeper than that. It’s a classic ‘dark night of the soul.’”

  “Don’t let Bernie hear you say that,” Tom said. “Back at Star of the Sea, she said that’s the most o
verused phrase in the church—everyone from kids mooning over each other to rich people having a bad stretch in the market uses it to describe feeling bad.”

  “She’s right, of course,” Anne-Marie said in her gentle Kerry accent. “Bernie’s not one to coddle someone for a little angst. But I know Bernie, and I see it in her eyes. She’s tormented over something. And remember…”

  A truck rumbled past, windows open and radio playing, struts and axles bouncing over the cobblestones.

  “Remember what?”

  “The original ‘dark night of the soul’ was described by St. John of the Cross…a mystic.”

  “You’re saying Bernie is a mystic?” he asked.

  “Bernie would never call herself that,” Anne-Marie said. “But she sees things, and feels things more intensely than many of us. St. John wrote about a night of dark contemplation, of grief and purgation, of the terrible pain that afflicts a person in that state.”

  “I can’t stand to think of her feeling pain like that,” Tom said.

  Anne-Marie squeezed his hand. “Remember, St. John also said that the night brings darkness to the spirit in order to illuminate it and fill it with light. Bernie will get through to the other side, and she’ll have new understanding.”

  “I hope I do, too,” Tom said.

  Sister Anne-Marie smiled. “Of course you will,” she said. “In many ways, you are the light for Bernie right now. You’d better go up to her now….”

  “I will,” Tom said. “Thank you, Annie. If you wait a minute, I’ll give you a ride.”

  She shook her head, already crossing the quay. “I love the bus,” she said. “It’s like going to the movies, watching the story of life unfold right in the seat in front of me!”

  Tom watched her go, then rang the buzzer to 4B. Bernie had refused the idea of staying in one of his cousins’ homes on Merrion Square. Tom had tried telling her she wouldn’t have to stay at Billy’s, under the same roof as him—she could go to Sixtus’s or Niall’s. But she wouldn’t even listen, didn’t want him to tell his cousins anything. She was so private, and so used to running the show at Star of the Sea. He’d tried to get her to sit down at O’Malley’s with him, maybe order a pint of Guinness and talk things over, but she’d refused.