by Ruby Spinell
“If The Lord was a dirty old man,” a great intake of breath surged through the conference room, “he might derive something from the practice.” A dozen older sisters ducked their heads and covered their ears; what they were hearing was unbearable. One had tears in her eyes. She looked across the table, her lips silently forming the words of the rosary she thumbed beneath the table.
“With all due respect, Reverend Mother, I refuse to lift my skirt, lower my pants, and beat myself on the bare bottom. It’s a dated, inquisitional practice. It has no psychological soundness. Let Luke draw blood!” This last she threw across at the lips mouthing Hail Mary full of grace.
A generous round of support flew to the silent figure saying her rosary. Yes there were stains difficult to remove; those on wash detail would attest to that. And some finding themselves unfortunately in line, asked to change places in chapel. The new young Sister Resignation hadn’t caught on yet. She thought her own fervor sprinkled the dark and slipped in, early Saturday mornings, to drip hydrogen peroxide on her immediate floor.
Michaels, looking over the high-ceilinged refectory, with its great peaked beams, felt very tired. This series of weekend conferences had been in planning for six months. If this first day was any indication … she shook her head inwardly in exasperation.
Encouraging frankness—for how, unless they spoke honestly about their constitutions could they interpret them for their times—she hadn’t bargained on some of the outspoken younger generation. But she was glad this particular matter of the discipline was out in the open. Attendance had been dwindling on Friday nights, and it was not written into their rule as a matter of individual conscience.
“We have made a beginning, only a beginning. Each of us is going to have to make sacrifices. I want you to search your hearts this coming week and remember we are working for the continuance and good of the congregation.” She wanted them to read between these lines. She wanted them to know she had not seen anything today but trenchant selfishness. If this was their idea of dialogue, it just wouldn’t do.
Some of these women belong in board rooms, she thought. Their energies are bottled up here without an outlet; they need to test their power. In lieu of that opportunity, they amass little armies of followers. If they could direct all that energy within, they would be saints.
She looked over to Ellen as sub-prioress for help. Ellen surprised her. Catching her glance, she cleared her throat, and in her usual coloratura soprano, “We have made a start, let us be grateful. Before we part, I think we should air last Tuesday’s incident.” There was immediate and total silence. Leave it to Sister Ellen to know how to stop the angry buzzing. Thirty faces faced her corner of the table. Even Luke’s mouth was stilled, the rosary recitation stopped for the first time in two hours.
“The body parts left at our turn were all Asian,” Ellen began. That sounds a bit ridiculous, Michaels thought, but how else could she put it. “Six different individuals. The police do not know at this time if these people are dead. Some barbarian is maiming, possibly killing human beings. Close to home! This isn’t something you might see on the evening news,” she directed this last to Sister Anne and her cadre. “Which means there is some connection with our life, with our work. Has anyone heard anything? On the phone? At the turn? Any passing comments, new bitternesses? What about the black mass near the college? We all know how much filters through cloister walls.” A murmur of assent went around.
“We have inquired of all our Asian families. No one seems to have heard a thing. No relatives are missing. Four men. Two women.” The words dropped like a bloody ax on the room. Always a touch theatrical, Reverend Mother Michaels observed the effect. There was a long, shocked silence.
“We will keep you posted of developments.” Well, that will keep attendance high, Michaels thought. Ellen continued, “A Detective Janah is in charge of the investigation. If you have any information, anything that might help … if you wish to talk to him, about this business of course, let Reverend Mother or myself know and we will arrange it.” She then nodded in Michaels’ direction, handing over the prerogative.
Mother Michaels, listening to Sister Ellen, wondered again if she should have canceled the conferences, at least for the duration of the investigation. Friends had called and counseled her to do just that. She prayed about it long and hard and decided that you could not fold up shop just because evil hit you in the face.
Bishop Danley had argued that “this was not your ordinary evil,” but he tactfully refrained from making her decision for her, a gesture that earned her gratitude. She appreciated the looseness of his control of the Congregation. Ordinary evil. Extraordinary evil. When Ellen gave her the nod she was trying to find the subtle distinction.
The large moon-faced clock on the wall read four. One third of the sisters would return to their places in the world, the remaining filtering back into the life of prayer at the monastery.
Her voice, when it broke the silence, was much softer than Sister Ellen’s. “I’m sure you all agree that the individual who did this is in dire straits. As much as the six need our prayers … let us not forget this one. This soul must be in absolute torment.” Her chin shook imperceptibly. “Go in peace.”
“Paul, sweet, it’s good of you to think of me, but I’m fine, truly fine. Tell Jackie I appreciate the invitation but I can’t, not now. Tell her I’m between the death of a monarch and the accession of the successor.” The tall, sandy-haired young man sitting opposite his mother at the round oak kitchen table did not bat an eye. He knew her.
“You should come for dinner at least. You’ve been here almost a week. Who have you seen?”
“Clam? Chowder?” Mir was teasing him. She struck a serious tone then, “It’s not who I’ve seen, Love, it’s what I’ve accomplished. Oh Paul, I’m doing such good work! You know what a drug that is. I don’t want to break. The Valery article is moving right along. I’ve got food here.”
“You haven’t had the phone connected.”
“I know,” Mir tried to look chagrined.
“Suppose you need help? Get sick?”
His mother gave him a long, loving look that said I’m fifty, young man, not eighty! “I will have it connected, first thing this week I’ll stop in at the telephone company.”
“I could call for you.”
“No, I’ll take care of it myself, promise. But it isn’t going to change anything. You needn’t hit Jackie on the head, but I wish you’d break it gently and make it clear that I’m not here to babysit; I’m here to work. I love my grandson … I’ll call Jackie after I’ve submitted the piece.”
Snow was falling gently on the hill. It sifted through the hemlocks and flung white scarfs about the knobby ends Eli had cut one year to keep the boughs from scratching on the kitchen windows. Clam and Chowder devoured the woodpecker on the suet with their eyes. Whip-whip, whip-whip went the excitement their tails could not contain.
The first heavy snow caught her feeling strangely content. She couldn’t even shake herself loose from the hill to drive down for the Sunday Times. She had been thinking of Valery’s advice to the poet to stay out of the time, send an occasional stanza to the living. When the familiar chug of her son Paul’s VW Bug made itself heard, it had roared up, made a complete turn, and came to rest ready for a quick departure, heading outward just as he had done since he was sixteen. This car, not the souped up Mustang he re-built at sixteen, was more sedate, as befits the twenty-five year old father of a young son. But his easygoing, solicitous care hadn’t altered; it didn’t surprise her that he was the first of her offspring to check on his mother.
Her daughter-in-law (Mir thought of Jackie with a measure of detached amusement) was all nervous, outgoing energy. She made Paul content. That was probably important. To Paul.
As she aged, Mom was no longer sure that contentment was so good. Maybe it was the boundaries that were becoming fuzzy, good and bad switching places in her mind. I think she left Dad because of too much uncha
llenging, contented security. She was sure it was a good move. She was not as sure of her reasons.
Paul’s Jackie was conditioned to believe that grandparents lived for the opportunity to grandparent. Quite willing, then, was she to relinquish Jonathan, their curious, intent, one-year-old, diaper full of creeping, crawling, leaky energy, on less than a moment’s notice.
It was evident she thought Mom—unlike her own mother—deficient in essential urges, an anomaly that somehow, by the grace of God, raised five children. Probably with a lot of help.
There had not been help, yet, she had not seen any bitterness in her. She lived one side of the coin; now she lived the other. Which was heads? Which was tails? Or is that a youthful question?
“Dad’s conducting the investigation at the Wind Hill Monastery.” Eli’s name provoked the usual mixture of light and dark, gratitude and bitterness. “Might be a story there.” Innocent enough remark, he continued stirring a bit more sugar into his coffee. She couldn’t tell if this was a subtle gesture at maneuvering them together. Admittedly, she had thought of it. As she did her errands for the essentials, she noticed the headlines, listened to the garage mechanic give his rendition, the checkout girl at the food market, hers. Carnage and contemplation … there may be a feature article there, not on Eli.
He would solve it though. Admitted expertise in subjectless simulacra … she had been very angry the night she threw that at him. She still could see the look of confusion. Images seemed to accumulate in him, vague feelings. He caught the wind, the synchronicity of a scent, a word, a foreboding.
And from these vagaries, he brought forth an amalgam, knowledge as firm as any rational construct logically acquired. Then he only had to prove it.
Strange, that he could be so sensitive in some things!
Dipping a cruller in her coffee, she sucked the sugared end before biting it off, “These are really good!”
“Self protection,” he had checked the fridge when he came in the kitchen and gestured to it now, “I don’t see all that much in there. What happened to the health nut, the woman who made all those fresh baked pastries and bread stuffs, all those casseroles and stews we had to eat?”
“She’s turned.” Munch … munch.
The energy must be going into her writing for she felt no inclination to cook; cans suddenly looked good. When she sank to TV dinners … then she would take notice!
“Promised Jackie I’d take Jon sledding … you real sure about dinner?”
“Yes.” It was very, very nice of you to stop.” She meant it. The young frame unwound itself upward, the look of pleasure telling her he heard. “Careful on the drive. Does it need ashes?” Shaking his head, he hugged her.
After he went, she stood at the side door watching through the glass dew drops as the VW made its little toy tracks down to the old furry ones. Following the drive to the street, it went winking off to the right.
She had planned to go into the City in the morning. Why not now? Nibbling on a knuckle, she glanced at the dial over the stove. There was a three o’clock train.
Two phone calls from the station … maybe three. Lise to care for the cats, she already had a key. Pius, to book a room. And Arthur, he’d made it quite plain he was interested. Any time, he said. She flipped the Rolodex, checking for his unlisted number.
Qualms about clergy? Mir made a monkey face at herself in the mirror of the sideboard, not when it comes to even exchange, my dear. And NOT the kind you think! She grabbed Clam up from weaving about her ankles, put her nose to the moist black one and leered, “Right? Right!” Priests, bishops, cardinals … men, just men. Often enough, more fucked up than ordinary men, but she could handle that.
Arthur was the one to give her the lead into the Annunciation. Valery was three quarters completed. That in itself meant she should begin researching the next.
At two-thirty, not wanting to leave the Buick at the station, she called a cab. At three, she stepped on the southbound central with her black attache case, her overnight bag, and the Times, hurriedly bought at the stand next to the ticket window, under an arm, just as Eli gunned the Nissan up the snowy driveway of the home he’d kept for twenty-four years.
Two sets of tracks.
He parked the car and bypassing the front, went around to the back door they had always used, on the way casting a practiced eye on the siding. Should be painted soon. Especially the trim! The garage windows look bad on the north, very bad. They looked like the carrots and radishes someone had worked over on an office party platter—all curls of festered paint. The house was Mir’s now, part of the settlement, but he still felt a proprietary interest.
She was not home; he could feel it.
The second-hand Buick she bought, because she considered the color electric, was in the garage. Two sets of tracks, one narrow, one regular …? She left with one of them. Who? No concern of yours anymore, Janah, leave it. Hands deep in his overcoat pockets, snow setting on his hair and shoulders, he turned about slowly, there by the back door, surveying the buried flagstones, the hemlock, the fir he had planted. No continuity, he thought. We’re changing too damn fast. Maybe not fast enough.
Chapter Eight
Tops of the cloister garden hanging heavy-lidded and white over the black fence—he was early and drove slow—a dozen branches cracked and fallen outside the enclosure, snow-laden trees unable to contain the weight, touching uncircumcised ground. It all looked quite wild and beautiful.
And it’s going to be some cleanup, still coming down. Parking the car on the street, he trudged through the accumulation to the heavy, dark wooden doors of the Church of the Annunciation and pulled one open.
A wave of incense struck him. He shook the snow from his hair, removed his overcoat, and stomped the excess from his shoes in the vestibule. Quietly, he opened the inner door, slipped in, and sat down in one of the rear pews.
Approximately thirty people were scattered through the semi-darkness. A blaze of light about the high altar stood in marked contrast with the rest of the church. Many candles flickered on either side of a gold throne before which Father Elias was prostrate, while a cloud of smoke rising on either side made its way forward, gained status, and engulfed the round, white circle within the gold.
Two young boys wearing white lace smocks, swung their censors with abandon, clickety-click, the chains dangled against the brass while smoke poured from circular mouths in the metal.
Over it all, the high ethereal song … coming from behind the great grill left of the altar. Twenty-four feet from floor to ceiling, this grill in the church was even more impressive than the one in the speak. A curtain half-way up, extending the width, allowed the community to see the altar while remaining unseen.
After an Amen, there was a brief pause. Elias stayed where he was at the foot of the altar. Very slowly, the hymn started and Eli could make out the words ‘Tantum ergo sacramentum … ve ne re mur cer nu i.’ So paced was the delivery, so crisp the syllables, he could have written it down without knowledge of the Latin. Et an ti quum do cu men tum … from within the cloister wing of the church, the song rose like the cloud.
He felt surprisingly let down at Mir’s absence. He hadn’t called, deliberately leaving himself just enough time for it to look like a friendly hello. Casual. Nothing serious. On the way somewhere … It was sort of like having the rug pulled out from under your feet to have this rehearsal for nothing.
Pomp and circumstance. But curiously beautiful. There was perfect stillness among the onlookers in the church. He compared the scene before him to the inner chamber, the Holy of Holies, circumspect, guarded by angels and flaming swords. Here were a scrap of bread raised up and two little snot-nosed kids having a ball.
Eli ignored the surreptitious glances of more than one parishioner. Finally, the church empty, two young boys came side stepping down the aisle pummelling each other’s nonexistent biceps. They stopped when they came even with his pew, poked each other, and tumbled through the door, leaking thei
r smothered laughter into the vestibule.
An occasional rustle told him the nuns had remained quietly on their side of the grill. There were a series of clicks as one light after another was doused. Then, the shadowy tall figure of Father Elias came out from behind the altar, genuflected in the dim light, turned, and walked toward him.
“How many people have keys, Father?” He stood to the side as Elias pulled the outer heavy doors closed with a decisive click, locked them and straightening up, looked Janah calmly in the eye. “Only me. Sister keeps a set at the turn in case of an emergency. She can pass them out and have someone else open up. The church has been locked between services for as long as I’ve been here. It just does not pay to allow anyone to drift in whenever they please.
“Vandalism, theft, the homeless sleeping in the pews” … there was a hard edge to his voice, “you have to protect your own, Detective. When the Lord isn’t able, we do it in his place. Do you want to walk?”
The two men looked down the slope at the snow falling heavily under the street light. Eli’s feet had just about dried out. “Why don’t we take the car, Father? How about coffee?”
As the car moved slowly away from the sprawling shadow of the Annunciation, Father Elias sat up straight, “I know just the place, take a left three blocks ahead.”
Father Elias didn’t act nervous. Neither man smoked. They sat at a rear table in the small cafe behind the college annex.
“You have a current passport then?”
“Yes. I made my first trip for the sisters six years ago. I couldn’t fill Monsignor’s shoes, he handled so many details, took such risks when it was an open fire pit over there. I did soon see why though … by actually standing on Cambodian soil, many arrangements were made easier. He had found that out long ago.
“The sisters have probably told you they’ve helped some few dozen people re-locate.”
“They haven’t mentioned numbers.”
“I thought not,” there was a look of satisfaction on Elias’ face. “Those numbers run well over two thousand. Koreans … Vietnamese … Thai … Cambodians … Laotians … Often enough, they hated each other’s guts over there … Did you know, detective, that Buddhism has been more successful in healing tribal war between same-skinned peoples than Christianity? I know some Vietnamese and Korean Buddhist families that are closer than most Americans.”