As with every major change, there was fierce debate at first. The oldest nuns feared that to embrace such girls was madness, desperation. But Mother Placid saw that the world was changing. They needed to change along with it or they would perish.
“There are as many paths to God as there are souls on earth,” she said in a meeting with the abbey’s hierarchy. This seemed to move them.
Afterward, Mother Cecilia said, “That was beautiful, the way you put it.”
“I agree,” Mother Placid said. “But don’t be too impressed. That’s not me, it’s Rumi.”
Mother Placid convinced them, of that and more.
The young people all came for parlors. When Mother Cecilia met with them in private, she was amazed at how open they were. They wanted someone to listen. The women, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, reminded her of herself when she first visited the abbey. She remembered how it worked. The first time you spoke with a nun, all you saw was her habit. But if the connection was strong enough, by the second or third conversation, you stopped noticing. You might talk for an hour, say your good-byes, and later wonder if she had even had her head covered, though you knew she must have.
They were surprised that the nuns did not proselytize or try to get them to see the light. They just listened. Some only came once or twice. But the ones who returned again and again began to realize on their own that the conversations were about God, even if He was never mentioned. God through the lens of their own lives.
Perhaps their early experience with the church, if they’d had any, was something different. How easily she could recall the fear of arriving late to Saint Joseph’s in Miltown Malbay, where Father Donohue would single a person out in front of the congregation if she came in a minute past the hour.
A handful of angry parents asked what exactly the nuns were teaching their daughters. What had their faith meant to them before? A white dress for Communion, a cake with a crucifix piped in buttercream. Simply what they were born to. But now they saw more. The girls who wanted to stay begged to join immediately, but the nuns told them it was too soon. Better to experience something first, just to fill out their humanity, to become whole people, but also to let them have something for the community when they returned. They went off and got degrees, they worked in activism or teaching or the arts. They traveled the world. They kept in touch. She knew they would return when the time was right. If some of them never came back, that too would be the right decision.
Her own early confidante, Mother Lucy Joseph, had died in her sleep in the spring of 1967. It was April, and they were preparing to bless the gardens on the Feast of Saint Mark. They buried her with the others, behind the chapel, under the blooming magnolia trees.
Mother Cecilia swore she felt her spirit each time she set foot in the abbey’s vegetable garden, or when she went to the grave and placed flowers in springtime. And especially when, in the presence of some lost soul, she attempted to give her solace.
As many paths to God as people on earth.
There was a girl named Angela, with long straight hair to her waist.
“I love it here,” she said in a parlor, their third together. “It’s so nice to get a chance just to spend time with my girlfriends in the guesthouse, to get away from the stresses of life. Our guy friends are here too, in the men’s guesthouse. We can walk around together, work together without all the pressures of immediately figuring out if we want to go to bed with a person, which is increasingly part of the deal. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be shocking. My mother says I live for the shock value, but it’s not true, I swear. I just say what I’m thinking.”
Mother Cecilia could laugh, stepping out of her skin, wanting to tell them that she had been a girl once herself. She was not so old that she couldn’t remember.
“I think I know what you mean,” she said.
When they asked about sex, she was supposed to tell them not to have it. But that felt like a lie. She didn’t offer an opinion unless they asked her straight out if it was wrong. Then she told them that it was and that they shouldn’t stand in the way of God’s plans. Every time she said it, a catch in her throat. A memory of a hospital room in Boston, of the consequences of the thing she had done, which had felt like nothing consequential at the time.
“My parents asked me what I’m doing here,” Angela went on. “I told them, ‘I talk to Mother Cecilia. She’s teaching me how to be happy.’ You must have had hundreds of bedraggled hippies tell you their stories by now. You know all the secrets. Who’s brokenhearted or falling in love or dropping out of school. You could write a book.”
She had begun to see patterns in what the young women worried about. It so often came down to sex. They regretted it. Not the act itself, but what came after.
Though the young ones were responsible for shifting her mind, rattling her preconceptions, it was an older woman, older than her, who truly changed her way of looking at it. Until then, when they asked about birth control, Mother Cecilia toed the party line.
But one day, she was out in the driveway, pulling groceries from the trunk of Mother Annabelle’s car, when a woman drove past, slowly, looking at her.
She turned the car around at the entrance to the gift shop. Mother Cecilia supposed she had made a wrong turn.
But the woman was still looking. Mother Cecilia waved.
She pulled to a stop when she reached her, rolled down her window.
“I got lost,” she said.
“Can I give you directions back to the highway?”
“No. I’m not a Catholic. Not anymore, I mean. I was, once.”
“Well, that’s all right. We give directions to all denominations.”
She was trying to make a joke, but the woman didn’t seem to hear.
“When I saw the abbey here, I took it as a sign. I guess I’m wondering if I might be able to talk to someone.”
“I’m very happy to talk to you.”
“Do nuns hear confession?”
“We have parlors. We can’t absolve you of anything but we can listen.”
A few minutes later, they were sitting in one of the small rooms, on opposite sides of the grille.
“Do you need to say a prayer first?” the woman said. “Should I kneel?”
She laughed. “Heavens, no. Just talk.”
Her name was Gloria. As a teenager, she had been sent off to a home for unwed mothers. After she gave birth and the time came to hand over the child, she begged to be allowed to keep her. Her parents told her that to move on, to forget, was the only reasonable plan. But she never could forget. Her life spun apart. She married an abusive man and divorced him. She sank into a depression and found no work for years. Now that baby would be eighteen. Gloria still thought about her. She agonized over where the child had ended up. She had no idea of the circumstances. She swore all the time that she saw her daughter, in the street, at the bank.
“God forgive me for saying it, but I wish I had just found a way not to be pregnant anymore,” she said.
Mother Cecilia was met with a memory. Kitty Rafferty. Charlie’s sister. Her roommate in Boston all those years ago. Kitty had wanted her to take that path. She understood what it would cost to lose a child you had brought into the world, held in your arms.
“Do you know how many of us there were?” Gloria continued. “Thousands and thousands. Forced to hand our babies over. How do they expect us to go on like it’s nothing?”
“I don’t know,” Mother Cecilia said. “Truly, I don’t.”
“And what about the children?” Gloria said. “A whole generation of them, growing up never knowing who their mothers were.”
She wished she could tell Gloria her own story, that she might pass through the grate and hold her hand. God had placed them together for a reason.
She had always felt guilty, as if what happened had only happened to her. Something she brought on herself. But now she thought of her roommates and all the other girls at Saint Mary’s, lined up in the hall when
the doctor came.
For the first time, she felt angry. For the choices denied her, the things thrust upon her. And Nora too. They were part of some larger system they knew nothing about at the time. Nora had made the sacrifice for them all. She hoped Patrick would know, someday, how selfless her sister had been.
From then on, when the young ones asked, she told them to protect themselves. Their hearts, first and foremost. But all the rest as well. She knew it was a radical decision, one that could get the abbey excommunicated. It was as serious a thing as that. But she reminded herself that they served a higher power than man. Everything they had done was from love—the love of God, the love of this place, and the love of one another. They would do the right thing, but quietly.
A Benedictine took three vows. Stability, obedience, and conversatio morum, a conversion of life. All three bound them to the abbey and to their community. But the conversatio morum also asked that a nun be willing to change.
She still believed that what happened with Patrick was a miracle. She knew his life with Nora was what was best for him, even though when Nora told her about his struggles, she got nervous.
She couldn’t imagine him in some stranger’s home. She knew the Blessed Mother had been in that room, had given her the strength, and that the moment had led her here. God met you where you were. He showed you His face when you needed Him most. She prayed that soon enough He would meet her Patrick.
—
It was with all her learned knowledge and experience that she had greeted her sister a year ago. A moment Mother Cecilia had prayed for. Letters were lovely, but nothing was a substitute for being together.
She had written to Nora when she was elected prioress, told her how they held a beautiful ceremony in her honor. But Nora didn’t even mention it in her reply. She wanted to tell Nora how Mother Placid’s big mouth often made her feel the way Nora must have when they were girls, and she was always saying whatever came to mind. She wanted to tell her so many things. But Nora seemed from her letters to be frantic, busy, overwhelmed. Mother Cecilia told her to come for a retreat, and Nora brushed it off as if it was an absurd and frivolous idea. I couldn’t leave the children for that.
There were things she needed to say, face-to-face. Since Nora started telling her about Patrick’s troubles, she had thought that what he needed now was their honesty. She had learned over time that to know anything was bearable. It was secrecy that could not be borne. She wanted to free her sister of that burden, and Patrick too. He was practically a man now. It was time.
She still felt this way. But she shouldn’t have said what she did. She could tell from the moment she saw Nora that her sister wouldn’t be responsive to it.
She regretted what she had said about Nora’s marriage. Once, years earlier, she said to Mother Placid, “Imagine living your whole life out with a man, just because once, when you were both impossibly young, he kissed you on the way home from a dance.”
But her own words, as she heard herself say them, didn’t sit with her. It occurred to her then that that wasn’t why Nora had married Charlie at all. She had married him for her, for Patrick. This was what she wanted to say to Nora, that she understood. But the words got twisted. They came out as an accusation.
The things Nora said stayed with her.
I see right through you, Theresa.
I will never know how you sleep at night.
This is where you choose to hide?
She was inconsolable after Nora left. She went to Mother Placid, told her what had happened. She regretted rushing in without listening, which wasn’t her way. Not anymore.
Part of her wished she had just taken Patrick on Nora’s terms. She wished she had told Nora how the nuns prayed for him every morning at Mass, during the Prayers of the Faithful. Each day at dawn, she slipped his name into the box of intentions. When the priest said, “For Patrick Rafferty,” the entire congregation called back, “Lord hear our prayer.” On certain days, Mother Cecilia swore it was loud enough to reach him.
She regretted most of all that letter to Patrick, sent in haste, desperation, after Nora left. She had thought in the moment that the medal might be one way she could help him. She wanted him to know that God had used it to guide them both to the places where they belonged. She thought she knew what was best.
She had written and written to her sister to try to make amends, but her letters were all returned. She got permission to make a phone call, but the line in Dorchester was disconnected. She hoped Patrick wore the medal. She hoped he was doing better now. That it had only been a momentary lapse, a mistake born of youth. She prayed for Nora to come back to her and tell her. Each morning, first of all, she prayed for this.
—
Mother Cecilia was in bed, long since asleep, when a crashing sound jolted her awake. She looked into the silent hall, then out the window. She thought she could make out figures standing below.
She pulled on her robe and went down.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph stood on the dewy lawn, barefoot in their nightgowns, looking up.
Sister Evangeline pointed skyward.
“Fireworks,” she said. “They’re pulling out all the stops for the Bicentennial.”
“Where are they lighting them?”
“Probably just on one of the local farms,” she said.
“Some bored teenage boys,” someone said.
With that, she thought of Patrick. Any thought of him, a thought of her sister.
Her life was blessed, joyful. She was utterly content, but for the lack of them.
Sometimes she missed a baby boy who didn’t exist, who was almost a man now, with such a sharp yearning that it shocked her. Sometimes she indulged in what-ifs. If Patrick had come into the world now, in an age of greater understanding, she might have kept him. Had she been just a bit older, had she had her life established, maybe she would have fought harder. She knew there was no point in thoughts like these. It had happened when it happened. The moment a woman was born determined so much of who she was allowed to become.
Mother Cecilia regarded the pure black sky, sprinkled with stars. Twin sun blossoms exploded gold, bursting forth from the center, showering down in glorious, glittering slow motion.
Some of her fellow nuns had been drawn to the windows. They gazed out through the screens, and she waved up to them. After so many years, they were the ones she knew best. Her memories were mostly of them—a snowy afternoon when they abandoned their chores and sledded down the giant hill at the back of the property in their habits. The February when every single one of them was down with the flu, and still they sang seven times each day. The sight of the postulants, lined up in the meadow, doing their morning jumping jacks, as the dogs looked on, barking. How, on a chilly Saturday, ten of them might gather out in the barn to put up the hay, sweating in peaceful silence as they went about their work.
They were the ones she laughed and cried with, the ones whose trials she worried over, the ones whose quirks drove her mad and delighted her in equal measure. They were her sisters now. Her family.
Part Seven
2009
19
BRIDGET STOOD OUTSIDE the door to the funeral home in the cold, keeping her aunt Kitty company while she smoked a cigarette. It seemed a bold gesture, as if Kitty were giving the finger to death itself. Nobody smoked anymore. Yet here she stood, smoking, because she was eighty-two, it was what she had always done, and she was too old now to change.
For the past few years, Kitty had lived in a retirement community. A nice one, where everybody had his or her own little condo. Where they did yoga and had Italian cooking demonstrations on Friday nights. She always seemed to be dating someone new. Her eyesight was shot, so she couldn’t drive anymore. But she kept her old Cadillac parked out front. In case of emergency, she said.
Bridget and Natalie had gone to pick her up. Now Natalie was inside with the others. The only one who had yet to arrive was Brian.
Since he appeared to be
half in the wrapper back at the house, Bridget had tried to insist that he go with someone else instead of driving his own car.
“I’m fine to drive,” Brian said.
“He’s fine,” Nora said.
She wondered why her mother would rather risk seeing another son drive into a concrete wall than experience an awkward moment. But Bridget left it alone. The fact was, all of them had been in a car with a driver who had been drinking a million times, thinking nothing of it. She remembered when she was six or seven and in the middle of a family party, her mother sent her and John and their cousins along to the package store with their uncle Matthew. He swerved onto the curb. He whooshed past red lights. “It was pink,” he said. They laughed and laughed. A great adventure.
Kitty’s scalp was visible beneath tufts of white cotton candy hair.
“You need a hat,” Bridget said.
Kitty waved her away. “It would wreck my whole look.”
Under her fur coat she wore a black velour pantsuit with rhinestones on the front. A pair of black patent leather flats.
She was once a tall and striking woman, but years of slouching had left her hunched. Bridget straightened her own spine, looking.
From this close up, Kitty’s deep wrinkles seemed punishing. Her face looked like the shell of a walnut. Bridget had last seen her at Christmas, but she swore that even in the span of a few weeks, Kitty had gotten smaller. There were so many years in the middle of life when a person didn’t change much. But old age was like childhood, when if you went a month without seeing someone, you might find an entirely different person waiting.
Despite it, Kitty was somehow still a beauty. Her high cheekbones, her sparkling eyes remained. She still wore red lipstick every day.
Saints for All Occasions Page 29