Saints for All Occasions

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  A vision of herself screaming in Sister Bernadette’s face, clinging to her child. A story she could never tell.

  “I have a thing about nuns.”

  “These are easygoing nuns, kind nuns, I swear. It’s the quietest place I’ve ever been. When you get there, this sense of absolute tranquility comes over you.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “You’ll love it,” Cathy said. “I promise. It’s not at all what you think.”

  Theresa looked at her friend and smiled. Cathy had a way of making her do things she never thought she would.

  “All right,” she said at last. “Just for a night or two.”

  —

  They drove up on a Saturday morning. Theresa was anxious, but she tried to focus on the surroundings and the conversation. Vermont was beautiful—curtains of tall trees in every direction. They turned off the highway and drove through a quaint town square, then followed a winding road through the countryside, past farms and fields, until Cathy said, “Here it is.”

  The first thing Theresa noticed was the emblem of the Miraculous Medal emblazoned on the gates.

  “What is that doing there?” she asked.

  “It’s their symbol, I guess you could say. You see it all around here.”

  Inside the gates, Cathy stopped the car in front of a massive stone building.

  “It’s converted from an old brass factory,” she said. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  Attached to the building at either end were high wooden fences, ten or twelve feet tall. They made Theresa wonder what was on the other side.

  An entryway with walls made of stained glass jutted out at the front of the building. They went in. The room was a conservatory. There was a small fountain flanked by birds of paradise, peonies, alliums, cactus plants in all shapes and sizes. At the back wall, a short flight of stairs led to an open door, a small, dark vestibule. Inside the space was another door, the top half of which was a wooden grate. A nun stood behind it. She looked trapped in there, a prisoner, but she smiled warmly. It was impossible to say how old she was.

  She greeted them in Latin. Theresa didn’t know how to reply, but Cathy said something brief and formal, also in Latin.

  And then the formality was over. The nun squeezed Cathy’s hand through the grate.

  “We’re so happy you’re back.”

  “Sister Ava, this is my friend Theresa Flynn. Theresa moved to New York from Ireland.”

  “Ahh,” the nun said. “With your family? Your husband?”

  “Just me,” Theresa said.

  “How brave,” the nun said.

  No one had ever said that to her. Theresa and Nora came alone, just as millions of other girls had before. No one she knew seemed to think of it as brave. It was simply what one did.

  Sister Ava told them lunch would be served in the women’s refectory in an hour. Afterward, if they liked, the nuns would put them to work.

  “We’d love to, Sister,” Cathy said. “Thank you.”

  When they were back outside, she said, “When you work with them, you get to go into the enclosure.”

  The other side of the high fence.

  Saint Gregory’s guesthouse was a creaky old cottage with wide wood plank floors. The house was empty when they arrived. Theresa stepped from the front hall into a cozy living room with two floral couches and two armchairs, one blue and one white. The room was lit by lamps. Books were everywhere—on the coffee table, the dining table, the end tables, on the built-in bookshelves that flanked the stone fireplace. A mix of religious and not, left by guests, she supposed. Green potted plants sat on the shelves and climbed the lace-curtained windows. Dark wood beams lined the white ceiling. Paintings of the Madonna and Child hung on every wall.

  The pink afternoon light as it shone into this room gave Theresa a sense of peace she hadn’t felt in ages.

  Cathy showed her the dining room with its plain wooden table and chairs. No two chairs were the same. In the kitchen, the plates too were all decorated in different patterns, most of them chipped here or there. The refrigerator was full of homemade jam and bread and raw milk from the dairy.

  Every bedroom was named for a saint. A chalkboard listed their room assignments. They’d be sharing Saint Lawrence on the second floor. A woman named Maura would be in Saint Agatha on the first. There were four more rooms besides. In their bedroom, the mattresses were so old and soft and thin, you could feel every spring. Threadbare towels and sheets sat folded at the foot of each bed.

  Lunch was fried fish and French fries with tartar sauce. Mushy peas. Raw milk. Tea and cake. It was served in the same stone building Theresa saw when they arrived, which she now knew was the enclosure where the nuns lived. She and Cathy entered from the public side, a door that led to a tiny dining room but with nothing to connect it to the rest of the building except a window with a wooden grille crisscrossing it.

  The nuns who had prepared the food handed it through the grille. The brief glimpses of them, standing there in full habit with a steaming bowl or glass jug of milk in their hands, did something to Theresa. She felt desperate to pass through that wall and sit down to eat with them in their private quarters, though she couldn’t say why. Maybe it was just the old curiosity that Nora was always trying to tamp down in her, the sense of not knowing, and as a result wanting more than anything to know. The nuns were friendly, they smiled. They seemed tranquil, satisfied, in no rush. But they said almost nothing, leaving her to wonder how they ever came to live in a place like this.

  Her job that afternoon was to work with Mother Lucy Joseph in one of the gardens.

  The nun was probably in her late seventies. She said she’d had a recent injury and couldn’t do much. “You’ll be doing most of the work, I’m afraid.”

  She instructed Theresa where to cut back the plants, big and small. Some were just weeds, but others were actual tree branches. Theresa got the enormous shears around a particularly thick branch and pulled the handles together as hard as she could. The sharp blades nicked the branch, exposing the green flesh beneath. But she couldn’t get the blades any tighter than that.

  “Let me try,” Mother Lucy Joseph said kindly. She took the shears, and with a quick snap, the branch fell to the ground.

  “Well then,” Theresa said.

  The nun winked. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “May I ask you a question, Mother?”

  “Of course.”

  “How old were you when you came here?”

  The nun stood up straight. “Much younger than I am now. Older than you, though. I was an opera singer in a past life.”

  Theresa thought she was joking, but the woman went on. “I sang at Carnegie Hall. I had the biggest record contract of any American opera singer in history up until then. But. At a point, it all began to feel flimsy. So. Now I sing the Divine Office louder than most would probably like me to, and that suits me fine.”

  An orange cat sat watching them. “That’s Chester,” the nun said.

  Theresa saw another nun, a young one, toss a tennis ball to a collie as she hauled out the trash.

  She had the feeling that the immediate, the task at hand, was everything here. She thought about the women in the teachers’ lounge at school, who seemed to be waiting for something better, some man who might set life in motion.

  At five-thirty, the nuns sang Vespers in the chapel, separated from the pews by a black metal gate.

  In the half hour between Vespers and dinner, Theresa and Cathy escaped to the Gulf station in town, a ten-minute drive away. It was the closest marker of civilization, the only one near enough for them to get there and back in time. All the shops were closed, but the Gulf sign glowed.

  “My mother and I made this our tradition. We always came to the station and got a bottle of Coke from the machine. Good to know that there is still a world out here and that we will soon be back in it,” Cathy said. Theresa agreed, even though she had felt elated during Vespers, a sense of lightness coursing th
rough her.

  They got back two minutes before the start of dinner. The only other person at the refectory table was Maura, whose name they had seen on the blackboard. She was a nervous-seeming woman, the mother of a young postulant. She had a short silver bob, poufed up and flipped at the ends. She wore a black dress, belted at the waist. Theresa wanted to ask her so many questions, but she held back.

  The nuns sang Compline at seven-thirty, after which all work was complete. The women were expected to be in the guesthouse for the night.

  Theresa and Cathy got into their beds with cups of peppermint tea and talked about the day, about the nuns themselves. Theresa was reminded of something. Remembering it for the first time in so long, she laughed. “I wanted to be a nun when I was small,” she said.

  “So did I,” Cathy said with a smile. “I think all Catholic girls go through that phase, don’t they?”

  The bed was uncomfortable, springy. Theresa was sure she wouldn’t sleep. But as soon as her head touched the pillow, out she went. She couldn’t remember ever sleeping so well, not since leaving home. Not since leaving Patrick.

  The next morning, the bells woke her at six o’clock.

  “They have to pray again already?” she whispered.

  “Yes. They prayed at two a.m. too! You must have slept through the bells.”

  “Could we have gone?”

  “No. That one is done in the enclosure.”

  Once again, the forbidden nature of the thing intrigued her. She felt as if she would do anything just to be there, to hear the voices rising into one in the darkened chapel.

  The nuns couldn’t technically talk to them outside of private parlors or while they were working together, but they found their ways. After eight o’clock Mass, a nun approached and handed them each a slip of paper. Theresa’s said that Mother Monica would pick her up at ten to go clean out a house on the far edge of the property.

  At five after, the nun pulled up in an old Ford station wagon.

  “Who are you?” she asked with a frown through the open window.

  “I’m Theresa Flynn, Mother.”

  “Where’s Maura?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  The door to the house opened behind her, and out she came.

  “Maura!” the nun exclaimed joyfully, as if they were the best of friends. “Such a delight to meet you!”

  She reached across and opened the passenger door from inside. Maura got in front, so Theresa sat in back.

  On the drive, Mother Monica explained that a nun had made her final vows a few days ago. Her family had stayed in Saint Gertrude’s guesthouse, and it was now their job to tidy up after them.

  They passed fields of grass, dried to a wheat-tinged gold. There were massive pine trees clustered around them, and maples that she thought must be glorious in autumn. Theresa felt sad that she wouldn’t be here to see them. Two old boxcars stood in a field—the nun said one was used as a pottery studio, the other for stained glass. A shed behind them was the blacksmith’s workshop.

  She explained that whatever the abbey had was donated. Hence the denim habits that they wore to work outdoors—someone had provided reams and reams of the stuff, and the nuns had found a clever use for it, as they did for all things.

  Saint Gertrude’s was a white farmhouse with a wide front porch. They entered through the kitchen. Mother Monica pulled sheets and towels from the clothes dryer, placing them in a wicker basket.

  “Theresa, was it?” she said.

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and vacuum the bedrooms and clean the bathroom? Maura, you stay here with me and fold all this laundry.”

  There wasn’t much laundry to fold. Certainly not enough for both of them. Silently, Theresa questioned the logic of giving up her weekend to come clean a bathroom that had been dirtied by strangers. But she wasn’t about to argue with the nun. She walked upstairs, found the vacuum in a narrow broom closet in the hall.

  The guesthouses were lovely, but when she looked closely, she saw the humble nature of it all. In the bedrooms, ceilings were lined with cracks. Below drafty windowsills, paint peeled off the wall and fell in flakes to the floor. Electrical outlets were dead or hanging loose. Nothing matched.

  Every so often, Theresa would go to the top of the stairs and listen.

  “Sister Jane is a beautiful fit here,” she heard the nun say. “The mother abbess says she’s never seen a girl take so naturally to the abbey.”

  Theresa understood that Sister Jane was Maura’s daughter.

  —

  In the afternoon, Theresa and Cathy worked with Sister Antonia on a patch of grass outside the Monastic Art Shop. A young Japanese maple stood there. Sister Antonia explained that the tree was diseased, and the salt brought in each winter on the snowplows was making it worse. They were to build a fence out of wooden stakes she had sharpened earlier that week, joined together by a long sheet of thin metal and a roll of burlap. The aluminum she had had for years, the burlap she didn’t know what she’d do with until the idea came to her that morning. Nothing wasted.

  “Didn’t cost a penny!” the nun said.

  Theresa wondered how old she was, how long she had been here. She mentioned in passing that she had studied philosophy for twelve years. She had wrinkles all over her face. Her designation, sister, meant she had not yet taken final vows.

  They worked for hours in the cold, using heavy mallets to drive the stakes into the ground. Theresa could see her breath. She was reminded of the farm back home in a way, yet this was entirely different. Not a man in sight.

  When they were half finished, Sister Antonia went into the enclosure kitchen to make them a pot of tea so they could warm up. She returned with a metal teapot and three paper cups. She filled the cups to the top, handed one to each of them. Cathy and Theresa began to drink. The door to the art shop opened, and out came the big-haired blonde who volunteered at the register. Theresa had overheard her earlier, gossiping away with a customer.

  Sister Antonia raised the remaining cup of tea, the one that she had intended for herself, and said, “Judy, tea?”

  “Sister! Thank you!” the woman said. “It is chilly out here, isn’t it?”

  She had only been outside for thirty seconds, Theresa thought. She was about to climb right into a warm car and, no doubt, drive home to a big warm house.

  “We’re so grateful to you for the five hundred dollars,” Sister Antonia said. “We’ve designated it for the chapel roof. It will be a godsend.”

  “Good, good,” Judy said. “And what have we here?”

  “A fence that we pray will stay standing for at least a few more weeks,” Sister Antonia said. “It’s ugly, but it’ll be enough to protect the tree.”

  “What you need there is a low stone wall,” Judy said.

  The nun laughed, as if it were a fantasy beyond all reckoning, which Theresa assumed it probably was.

  “I’ll talk to my husband,” Judy said. “I’m sure we can cover it.”

  After she drove off, Sister Antonia said, “We are so fortunate to have her. She’s marvelous.”

  Did she actually think so? Walking the property that morning, Theresa had noticed bands of loudmouthed women who came to see the crèche and go to Vespers and the shop. Her own uncharitable reaction to them made her think that she could never be a nun.

  Some of the nuns seemed to be without motive. Others had a clear agenda, a more businesslike approach. Mother Lucy Joseph was articulate and kind and warm. Mother Helena was stern, but with a soft heart. This one, Sister Antonia, was a salesman. They needed all of these things in balance. They needed to sell themselves. They thanked their benefactors during Prayers of the Faithful. They required money and recruits, and yet they couldn’t be so bold as to actually ask for either one. Theresa thought of the greeting the portress had given her, inquiring whether she had come to America with a husband.

  As they were packing the tools into Sister Antonia’s pi
ckup truck, she said to Cathy, “We’re all so happy to see you here again. The mother abbess hopes you might join us one day. She thinks you have a calling.”

  “Not me, Mother, I’ll be engaged soon,” Cathy said.

  Theresa wasn’t sure why this surprised her. And she couldn’t say why it hurt her feelings to be excluded from the abbess’s remarks, even as she felt relieved that the comment hadn’t been directed at her. She reminded herself that she had not yet met the abbess.

  Late that night, from the bathroom at the top of the guesthouse, Theresa found that she could look across the road right into the nuns’ dormitory. She felt a sense of longing mixed with revulsion. She was so grateful that she still had the option to leave when she liked.

  Before they went home the next morning, Cathy said they should each have a parlor. Theresa’s was with Mother Lucy Joseph, the nun she had worked with in the garden. They sat in separate rooms, connected through a grate like the one in the dining room. Theresa tried to see all that was on the other side. She could make out a wooden cross on the wall, a stack of books on a shelf in the corner.

  “You’ve been a very good helper,” Mother Lucy Joseph said. “How did you find your time here?”

  “Oh, I enjoyed it very much. I don’t want to go back to New York.” Theresa laughed as she said it, meaning for her words to sound light, but Mother Lucy Joseph didn’t reply. She let the comment sit there between them.

  “I’ve never had a parlor before,” Theresa said. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to talk about. God?”

  Mother Lucy Joseph laughed. “You can talk about whatever you like. Tell me what’s in your heart.”

  Theresa found herself saying that teaching was often exhausting, that she wondered if the job, which she had always felt drawn to, really mattered at all.

  “My students don’t seem to get much from the lessons,” she said. “But maybe that’s my fault.”

  “Why would it be your fault?”

  “Maybe I’m too distracted.”

  “By what?”

  She had a choice. To keep the conversation at the surface, or go deeper. She had never confided in a nun before. But Mother Lucy Joseph struck her as wise, unflappable.