I pulled slowly out of the driveway, signaling my turn though there was no other car in sight. I followed the curve of the road, concentrating on keeping the wheel steady. The feel of the car came back to me as I guided it through the turn. When the road straightened for a stretch, I put on the radio and rolled the window down. I stuck my arm out in the wind as I picked up speed.
We’d passed through town on our way from the station, so it should have been easy to find my way back. But I missed a turn somewhere. After a few miles the road became unfamiliar. I was sure that Main Street was somewhere to my right, so I took the next turn in that direction. But the road twisted, sending me in the same direction I’d already been going, away from both town and the Manse. It ran one way, so I could only go on wherever it was taking me. There was no one around at that hour to ask for directions. There weren’t even houses on the side of the road, only fields where horses paced and ate. The road turned uphill, tracing a series of cutbacks that I followed helplessly. As that helplessness settled, I spotted a little wooden sign near a dirt path that split off from the road: The Abbey of Regina Laudis.
I’d known the place existed, that it was a few miles from the Manse. Sophie had mentioned it to me, long before her conversion, as a local curiosity. But stumbling on it now meant something. I don’t know what I expected to find at the end of that dirt path, but I came upon a half-filled parking lot. Beside it stood a building in the straight-lined style of postwar suburban churches, similar to the one my grandparents had attended each Sunday on Long Island, the one to which I’d gone for my father’s funeral. I followed a small group of people inside. Everyone who entered found a pew and knelt in silence. Reflexively, I did the same.
For twelve years, I had knelt that way each morning in the St. Albert’s chapel. Sometime around fifth grade, I’d stopped trying to pray during those minutes of silence before our daily chapel talk began. Instead I thought about the day ahead of me, or the homework I hadn’t done the night before. Once this became unbearable, I would give up those thoughts and just turn words around in my head until we stood to sing from our thick red hymnals. Sometimes a sentence would click—not the meaning of it exactly, but its shape—and I would try desperately to hold on to it until I got to class, where I could write it down. On the page it usually sat lifeless, making me wonder what had excited me about it. The words retained their power perhaps a dozen times over a span of years, and the resulting satisfaction lasted through the day. I’d forgotten this fact until that morning: my first real efforts at writing had happened while I was on my knees.
A bell rang and a line of nuns entered from the sacristy. An ornate metal fence, reaching nearly to the ceiling, separated them from the congregation as they surrounded the altar. No doubt the barrier had some theological justification, perhaps as protection from us sinners outside, but it seemed that the wall might as easily serve to keep them in as to keep us out. It hinted that these women weren’t contained quite of their own volition, that the sight of us among them might drive the weaker-willed to escape.
There were about thirty nuns, some old and infirm, most in late middle age. The occasional woman even as young as my mother surprised me. But the last to enter was no older than I was. The hushed church seemed to fall into a deeper silence with her appearance, though most of the congregation must have been used to the sight. The shock didn’t come entirely from her youth, but also from her beauty. She would have been beautiful in any setting, but in this place her beauty seemed like a beatitude granted to the rest of us. What could have led her to this place?
Some prejudice on my part, or failure of imagination, gave a sinister turn to every answer I considered. No one retreated so completely from the world unless there was something unbearable about it. There had been abuse by a father or a boyfriend. There had been an assault, an unwanted pregnancy, some kind of scandal for which she was now making amends. I knew this last notion was antiquated—not just the idea of the religious life as sanctuary, but the idea of sanctuary itself, of escape from the shame of the past. The past could now simply be forgotten. It was no longer possible to disgrace oneself. If any of the women in front of me had come to the abbey to redeem a wayward youth, it would have been one of the stooped nonagenarians, children of the Depression, old enough to have lived in a world where certain mistakes were irrevocable.
The women took up places beside the altar and started to sing. To chant, I should say. I remembered a time in college when Gregorian chant had been common background music for dorm room study. It was soothing, even inspiring, but it was also popular as an ironic statement on our artificial surroundings. We sat in medieval turrets, in monastic solitude, reading some gloss on Derrida. What I witnessed at the abbey that morning was entirely different. It was happening right in front of me, emanating not from weak computer speakers but from the other side of that metal divide. There wasn’t a hint of irony to it, no sense of an outdated habit being cultivated or an endangered art preserved. They sang as though it was simply the best way they knew of being in the world. And the people around me listened as though listening was their own best way.
When the chant was done, two priests performed a mass in Latin while the nuns looked on like the rest of us. The strangeness of ritual performed in a dead tongue was beautiful in its way, but none of it so moving as the chant had been. Briefly, everything had become still; the voice in my head had quieted. If I were capable of faith, I thought, I would have felt it then. After that, I returned to observing it all with respectful curiosity. When Communion was offered, I went up to take it. The last time I’d done so had been at my father’s funeral, surrounded by family members unaware that I hadn’t been raised in the Church. I knew as I walked to the altar that I wasn’t properly qualified, but I went up anyway, hoping to recover the feeling I’d had when the chanting started. Nothing came of it. I received the little cardboard quarter in my hands, brought it to my mouth, and let it dissolve into mush on my tongue.
It was after 9:00 AM. when mass ended. Sophie would be awake, perhaps upset about my disappearance with her car, and my breakfast plan would be spoiled. Still, I wandered the grounds for a few minutes instead of going straight back to the parking lot. I was on the edge of some insight, and I couldn’t take myself away. I pictured that beautiful young girl in her habit. If I could capture the sight of her, convey it to Sophie when I got home, she would understand. It would make a great story, she’d say.
So it would. As I wandered, I thought of writing something about that girl, about her motives for coming there. Certainly, it would be different from the empty scenes of literary parties and ironic conversation in my first book. I wanted to spend time in this place, to find out what life was like for her now, not just the small public portion at mass, but the private moments that together made her days.
Of course, I saw none of that. The women were cloistered away from eyes like mine. That was part of the point. What I saw instead was a kind of farm: two barns and beyond them the residential spaces. The women had filed out the back of the church after mass, and there was no sign of them now. One small building was open to the public, and I followed some of the other churchgoers into it.
It disappointed me to find a gift shop there, though I can’t say why. Up front was a shelf of literature about the order, and I took a pamphlet to bring home with me. Beside the shelf sat a stack of mounted prints showing scenes from the abbey.
“Those are all painted by the sisters themselves,” the woman behind the register said when she saw me looking through them.
I took a painting of the church from the pile and brought it to the register.
“Are you in the order?” I asked the woman.
“I just work for them.”
“What is it like here? For them, I mean.”
“The sisters are Benedictine,” the woman said. “That means they follow the rule of Benedict: ora et labora. Prayer and work. The work depends on each woman’s skills and her interests and her experi
ence before coming here. It’s mostly contemplative, you know. Lots of prayers and study. And they stay inside the enclosure.”
“Do you think they’re happy here?”
I don’t know what made me ask her this, but she accepted the question as natural.
“Did you hear them this morning?” she asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, I imagine you’d have to be happy to make such joyful noise.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Will that be all?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“You don’t want any cheese?”
She pointed to a dozen large wheels of cheese sitting behind the register.
“The sisters make them. They’re sort of famous for it.”
“Are they good?”
“Absolutely. And they make bread to go with it.”
She handed me one of the wheels, letting me feel its weight, its gratifying solidity. I liked the idea that these women, sequestered for ascetic contemplation, produced this round thing that found its purpose in the world they’d left behind. I remembered the meal I’d planned. I wouldn’t be returning empty-handed. Perhaps the goal that had kept me at the abbey had been breakfast after all, not revelation.
Back in the car, I pulled out of the driveway and turned in the direction I’d been heading. I followed the curves up the hill. After another mile, the road swung around to intersect with the one I’d started on. I turned back toward the Manse, and in another ten minutes I was back. The dashboard clock read 9:40 AM when I turned off the car.
Everything was as I’d left it. I found a knife and a plate in the kitchen. The cheese let out a smell of satisfying pungency as I sliced through its rind. I brought two pieces of it upstairs with some bread. The door to Sophie’s room was half open, and I called in to her, but no answer came. I gave a light knock before pressing into the room. The bed was empty, and I was about to leave and look for her somewhere else when I saw her on the floor. Right away I knew that something terrible had happened, but I was halfway across the room before I had any sense of how terrible. A halo of blood or bile surrounded her head on the floor, and her cheeks had gone a sickening gray. I dropped the plate and tried to shake her awake. When she didn’t respond, I grabbed the phone from the bedside table and called for an ambulance. Then I sat down beside her and waited for help to come.
When I heard the sirens I went downstairs to direct the paramedics to her. There were three of them and they all rushed in, but their response when they got to her side told me everything. After that, things slowed down. I don’t mean this metaphorically or impressionistically. I mean that the urgency was gone and the paramedics moved with tired deliberation. The time to hurry had passed. We were into the time that came next. Two of the men stood around, seeming embarrassed, while the third pressed his hands to various parts of Sophie’s body. Then one of the onlookers came to me in the doorway.
“Your, ah, your.” He spoke with a professional calm even as he struggled to find a name to put to her. “Your wife?” he hazarded.
“My friend.”
“Your friend,” he said, as though trying it out. Then he hit on something he preferred. “The young lady,” he said with evident satisfaction. “The young lady. I’m afraid we’re too late for her.”
“She’s dead?”
He turned his head, as though in disappointment at the poor taste I’d shown by putting the situation in such terms.
“Yes,” he said.
“What happened?”
“I can’t really say at this point. The police will be on their way to take a closer look at everything. In the meantime, we’d like you to wait downstairs.”
Twenty minutes later two officers arrived in a single car with sirens off. They took dutiful notice of me where I sat on the porch with a cigarette, but they said nothing before meeting one of the paramedics in the doorway. The three conferred for a few minutes before one of the cops approached me.
“You’re the one who called in the emergency?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “My name is Charlie Blakeman.”
“I’m Detective Sutton,” he said. “Can I ask you for identification?”
I gave him my driver’s license. The picture on it was almost fifteen years old, taken in high school, before I’d even met Sophie, but he hardly looked at it.
“What’s your relationship with the victim?”
“I’m just an old friend from college. I came to visit for the weekend.”
“All right,” he said. “I’d like you to tell me about the two of you, about what happened.”
How far back did he want me to go? How much would be necessary or even helpful? I said that we hadn’t seen each other for years until she’d come to a party at my house in Manhattan a few weeks before, and that she’d invited me to visit for the weekend. He wrote in a continuous scribble, seeming to give equal weight to each word, not to value any one fact above another, making it impossible to know whether he found this history irrelevant or telling in some way. I told him that we’d both had quite a lot to drink the night before, that she’d left me to sleep in another room and gone off to bed. I didn’t mention that we’d been together first. He kept writing, letting me go on with the story.
That morning, I said, I’d gone out for a drive, hoping to go into town to buy us breakfast, but I’d gotten lost and been gone from the house for a few hours. I knew this sounded improbable, but I didn’t want to mention going to the abbey. I was saving that story for Sophie; it would spoil if I told it to anyone else first. I only repeated that I’d gotten lost and returned later than intended. Then I’d gone upstairs to look for her. When she wouldn’t wake, I called 911.
He kept writing for a minute after I’d finished talking. I couldn’t tell if he was still transcribing my words or adding his own commentary about my demeanor or some inconsistency in what I’d said. Once he’d finished, he looked up at me.
“Do you know who William Crane is?”
It was as though he’d only heard the things I hadn’t said.
“That’s her father-in-law.”
“She’s married?”
‘
He wrote all this down carefully.
“Was your friend suffering from any kind of emotional difficulty?”
“She was pretty shaken up about Crane’s death. Do you mind if I ask where you got his name?”
He looked me over.
“It was on the bottle of pills she took.”
“She took pills? What kind of pills?”
“We don’t know that yet,” he said. “So she was depressed after her father-in-law died?”
“I don’t know if I would call it depression. Like I told you, she’d split up with her husband. She’d started drinking again, which she’d quit for years. But she didn’t kill herself, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure of it.”
He stopped taking notes and looked up. For the first time since we’d started talking he seemed truly interested in what I had to say.
“What makes you think that?”
“She’s a Catholic,” I said. “It’s against her religion.”
He seemed to think I was trying to make his job difficult with this remark, but he responded calmly.
“I’m Catholic myself. Suffice it to say she wouldn’t be the first of my coreligionists to contradict Church doctrine.”
“My family is Catholic,” I said, “and I wouldn’t tell you this about any of them. But Sophie took it very seriously. She really believed. She would have been sending herself to hell.”
“Okay,” he said. He wrote a few more lines down. “Thanks for that. And do you know anything about these pills?”
“No.”
“There were two empty bottles near the bed. It’s possible that she’d been taking them to get to sleep, that there were just one or two left in each bottle, and she overestimated, things mixed with the alcohol, et cetera. Especially if she wasn’t used to drinking.”<
br />
He was saying all this for my sake. He’d already decided what had happened, though he hadn’t even been inside.
“We’ll figure this all out in the next few days. But I want to be honest with you. In my experience it’s not easy to overdose accidentally on these kinds of prescriptions. I suspect she knew what she was doing.”
He told me to wait a bit longer while he joined the others inside.
When they came out again, they brought Sophie with them, zipped up in a bag on the stretcher. I turned away as they loaded her into the ambulance. Officer Sutton stayed behind to talk with me. At the end of our conversation, he handed me his business card and took down my cell phone number.
“Thanks for your help,” he said. “And I’m sorry for the loss. We’re going to know a lot more within the next twenty-four hours. You should feel free to give us a call if anything occurs to you. We might have some more questions for you, so for the time being, you probably shouldn’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” I promised. He hardly needed to ask. There was nowhere left on earth for me to go.
5
THAT NIGHT SOPHIE slept uncomfortably but deeply. When the buzzer woke her in the morning, her neck was stiff where it had been pressed against the arm of the chair. She wondered how she’d look to whoever was on the other side of the door. Her clothes were wrinkled. Her hair, grown longer than she usually wore it, was pressed into an awkward part. Her watch said eight o’clock. She didn’t expect hospice for hours.
Through the peephole she saw two men, one white and one black, both of them large. They didn’t look unfriendly, but Sophie had no idea what kind of business they might have there. She put the chain lock on before opening the door wide enough to look out.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re here to deliver the bed,” one of the men answered.
What Happened to Sophie Wilder Page 17