Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  “A lot of people draw comfort from knowing we’re here,” Mother Benedicta agreed.

  “I’m one of them,” I said. “As much as I appreciate all the good work apostolic sisters and priests are doing out there in the world, I’m personally more attracted to a life of monastic contemplation.”

  “Speaking of attraction, are you currently involved in an intimate relationship?” the prioress asked.

  “No,” I answered, after a pause.

  “Are you certain?” The prioress wrinkled her brow. “I sense some hesitation.”

  “I’m sure. But I do have a close male friend.”

  “Do you hope for more with him? I don’t mean to pry, but romantic relationships tend to distract us from a potential commitment to Our Lord.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “We tried that a couple of years ago and it didn’t work out.”

  “I see. The convent is not a haven for broken hearts. Are you aware that we strongly encourage at least a year, preferably more, of celibacy before entering?”

  “No, I wasn’t.” I felt my cheeks grow hot. “But, it’s already been um—”

  “Spare me the details.” This time Mother Benedicta held up both hands to silence me. “Just so you know that for down the road. Do you have any questions?”

  “I don’t think so.” My internal reporter drew a rare blank.

  “All right. I’ll have to review your aspirancy application and references with the other sisters, but I don’t foresee any problems. Most aspirants find the visit helpful in discovering if they’re ready to give themselves wholly to God. I hope it will be the same for you.”

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  “Let’s close our meeting with a prayer, shall we?”

  Mother reached through the grille and took my hands in hers with the comfortable acceptance of my disfigurement that I’d come to appreciate from all the sisters. We bowed our heads.

  “Heavenly Father, we pray that you look upon Dorie’s vocation favorably. Please watch over her as she takes this important step in Your holy service. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “May the good Lord bless you, Dorie.” Mother Benedicta gave my hands a final squeeze and departed.

  I walked to the chapel and sat in a pew to gather my thoughts. I thanked God for swaying the prioress and wondered uneasily how I had pulled off my own part so convincingly. I wasn’t even sure if I’d been lying. My answers came so effortlessly that I concluded I was either callous—a hardened journalist comfortable bending the truth into whatever shape best suited her purpose, or I was curious—a lapsed Catholic considering not a vacation at the cloister but an actual vocation.

  Was I unethical enough for the former? I couldn’t fathom the latter. I was honestly interested in a vocation; it just didn’t happen to be my own. I had asked Sister Teresa and Melanie all the right questions and answered all of Mother Benedicta’s more or less correctly because I truly wanted to know what went into my twin’s decision to become a nun.

  I hoped to learn how the contemplative religious life had come to be such a perfect complement to Catherine’s artistic life. Whether my methods for gleaning this information harmed the nuns or not wasn’t something I was ready to look at.

  • • •

  Now that Mother Benedicta had agreed to my aspirancy visit, I found myself in the awkward position of needing my boss to approve a research trip for a story idea he’d already rejected.

  “How am I going to do this?” I drummed my fingers on my newsroom desk.

  “Easy.” Graciela tacked her daughter Sophie’s latest crayon drawing to her cube wall. “You’re going to tell el Jefe you’ve discovered a scandal at the convent and then act like you don’t want to cover it.”

  “I won’t have to act,” I said. “But what happens when I come back and he expects a juicy tell-all?”

  “Then you write a scandal-free, boring article and hope he vetoes it.”

  “It’s not fair to Phil,” I said.

  “When has he ever played fair with us?” she asked. “If it makes you feel better, you can offer to make up the missed time when you get back.”

  “That might make it okay.” I squirmed, not believing it.

  We batted around a few more options. There was the possibility of unpaid leave, but I couldn’t afford that. I could pitch a different story he would approve—one about Big Foot sightings in Big Sur, maybe—and then write Catherine’s article on the side. That seemed plausible until I realized that the cloister rules would prevent me from leaving to talk to locals or research anything else, even if I did have time between their work and prayer routine. That left us with Graciela’s scandal suggestion.

  A plume of acrid smoke wafted toward us as our editor’s office door opened. Phil felt that California state law did not apply to his cigar habit.

  “Here he comes,” Graciela said as Phil exited his office behind her. “Just go with me on this.”

  Out of ideas, I shrugged and nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me when.”

  I waited for our boss, who was nose deep in a piece of copy, to make it within ten feet of Graciela, and then whispered, “Now.”

  Graciela stretched and let out a luxurious yawn. “So what’s the deal with that cloistered nun running a brothel for priests, Dorie?” she asked in a voice loud enough to break through whatever Phil was reading. “Are you going to write a story about it?”

  Our editor slowed his step but continued walking past us.

  “Nah,” I said. “Sex scandals are a dime a dozen.”

  Phil stopped, turned and wagged a finger at me. “Blasphemy!”

  • • •

  “What’s the pitch?” Phil asked, chomping on his cigar as I sat across from him in his office a few minutes later. The disarmed wires of the smoke detector hung down from the ceiling above his black, lacquered desk. “Lay it out.”

  I paused, not having really thought through the details of the phony scandal and still uncomfortable using it.

  “Well, there’s this priest who had an affair with one of the nuns,” I began, my stomach churning as if I’d drunk battery acid. “And he realized that the cloister would be a great place to…”

  I trailed off and sat staring at my hands.

  “Go on,” he said, taking another puff and leaning forward in his chair.

  I couldn’t. I was already bending the truth with the nuns. I didn’t want to make it worse by lying to Phil. He may have rejected my pitch about Catherine’s art before, but he hadn’t heard the whole story.

  “Actually, there isn’t a scandal,” I said. “There’s a cloistered nun who’s an amazing painter.”

  Phil leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and delivered a rattling, fake snore. “Ho hum.”

  “Hear me out,” I said, warming up. “Not only is this nun a great painter, she’s also the twin sister I never knew I had.”

  Phil’s eyes popped open. He leaned forward again as I explained who our father was, and how he had raised Catherine and arranged for my adoption after our mother’s death.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so before?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I had just met my sister and it hadn’t gone so well.”

  “Exactly,” he said, pointing his cigar at me for emphasis. “There’s plenty to write about with you reuniting with your long-lost twin, not to mention your mother dying in childbirth and your famous alcoholic father keeping your sister and giving you up.”

  “So you’ll approve it?” I asked.

  “On two conditions,” he said. “One…you have to deliver a thorough, well-researched article about your sister. Paid for too many ‘research trips’ where reporters came back with little more than a sunburn. You’re going there to work, not party with the nuns. ”

  “That’s fair,” I said, praying I could convince Catherine to let me publish. “What’s the second condition?”

  “It has to be good. Lately, your output
has been low and your pieces have reflected an irksome sense of ethics that’s downright undesirable in the tabloid business. This article had better knock my socks off or you’ll be looking for a new job when you get back.”

  I gulped and shuffled out, relieved and happy he’d said yes, but unsure that my piece would be up, or, more accurately, down, to Comet standards.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Does this mean we can’t have sex anymore?” Matt asked, only half-joking as he watched me pack a duffel bag in my spartan bedroom a few days later. Two years after moving in, I still hadn’t hung pictures on the walls or softened the lines of the stark window blinds with curtains. An odd sense that I was merely passing through had left me unmotivated to decorate.

  “That would imply we were having sex now,” I pointed out.

  Matt dropped onto my futon, bounced up and down, and beckoned me with a big grin.

  “No way.” I threw my worn childhood teddy bear at him. “Casual sex with my workaholic ex-boyfriend is a bad idea.”

  “You never know until you try.”

  “Oh, I know. I’ve got too much emotional baggage from you as it is.”

  “Well, let me lighten your load.” He leapt up and took the half-packed duffel from my hands. I tried to take it back, but he held on.

  “Seriously.” He gripped the bag tighter. “You’re not really going to do this, are you?”

  “I really am.” I wrested the duffel from him with my good hand. “The prioress gave me permission and I’m going.”

  “Permission to what, deceive her? Do you want to be a nun?”

  “No, but I can get better access to my sister and her paintings if I’m inside the cloister. I don’t want to publish the article without Catherine’s approval.” Happy to leave my suits and heels behind, I reached for a clean pair of jeans from the stack of blue milk crates that served as my dresser. “The only way she’ll get to know me well enough to give that approval is if I’m inside the cloister. And the only way I can get inside is by pretending I want to become a nun.”

  “You’re obsessed.”

  “I thought you said I was passionate.”

  “Now you’re just obnoxious. If this is some sort of misguided attempt to get back at the church you left or the father who left you—”

  “Ouch. You don’t pull any punches, do you?” I took a moment to absorb the blow before continuing. It wouldn’t have hurt so much if there weren’t some truth to his words. “You’re giving me way too much credit for vengeance.”

  “Why do you want to expose your sister? She’s perfectly happy not showing her work to anyone.”

  I couldn’t answer him because I didn’t have an explanation. So I evaded. “Catherine has a responsibility to—”

  “To what? Advance your career?” he asked. “Who benefits besides you?”

  “The cloister, for one. If I can convince Catherine to sell her paintings, she can help the order financially.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with your art dealer friend again,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, Trish says her clients will pay top dollar for Catherine’s paintings. The convent has some serious damage from the last rainy season that they haven’t repaired, so I know the nuns need the money. If the show eases their financial troubles, then they’ll have more time to pray.”

  “Top dollar, eh?” Matt gave a grim nod. “A high price will be paid, but not by the buyers. You don’t mess with someone else’s creative process. Period.”

  “I know. It’s awful, it’s lying, it’s deceitful– it’s all of those things.”

  “Then why are you doing it?” he asked. “And don’t give me your sound bite answer this time. I want the real reason.”

  “I can’t, I don’t—”

  “Let me take a stab at it then,” Matt said. “From where I sit, you’re the worst kind of soccer mom. You’re projecting your ambition onto a sister who doesn’t want or need it. You see her with a talent you wish you had, so you want to live through her or at least prop up your career on her gifts.”

  “Don’t spare my feelings or anything,” I said.

  “No reason to, because you have your own talent and your own story to tell. Maybe the article you really need to write is the one that explains how you feel about being adopted.”

  “Oh, please. That’d put people right to sleep.” My heart knotted as it did whenever I remembered that I would never have the chance to meet either of my birth parents. “I don’t sympathize with my situation. Why would anybody else?”

  “You may not think your story is that interesting,” Matt said. “But a lot of people can relate to it.”

  “Maybe other adoptees who don’t know who they are, but—”

  “I’ve got news for you, Dorie. Even non-adoptees don’t know who they are.”

  “Well, then a story about Catherine is that much more fascinating,” I said. “I may not know who I am, but with a twin I at least get to see who I might have turned out to be under different circumstances. So, in a way, writing about Catherine is writing about me, only safer.”

  “Safer for you, maybe.”

  I reached for a Marlboro Light and a book of matches. “I’m sorry, but I feel compelled to go.”

  I struck a match and lit my cigarette.

  “How did you get the time off?” Matt took the cigarette from my mouth and stubbed it out in the ashtray. I glared at him and pulled out another. “You’re out of vacation.”

  “Phil thinks he wants to run the article in The Comet after all, which I’m grateful for since I couldn’t afford this trip otherwise,” I said, lighting the second cigarette. “So it’s not a vacation, it’s research.”

  “It’s dishonest, is what it is.” Matt made a grab for my new cigarette, but I moved out of his reach.

  “Why are you freaking out on me? I’ve gone on research trips before.”

  “This one’s different.” Matt sat down and hugged the teddy bear. “You’re different. I know how excited you are about this article, but pretending you want to be a nun just so you can get close to your sister is taking it too far. It’s one thing to exaggerate in a tabloid article, but lying to nuns? That’s just bad karma.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m going,” I said, stubbing the cigarette out myself. “I can’t explain it. It’s like I don’t have a choice. If I don’t go, I’ll always wonder.”

  “Wonder what? How it feels to be hungry and sleep on a straw mat?” he asked, incredulous. “Wonder how it feels to deceive your sister?”

  “Wonder how it feels to have a sister, for starters.”

  “If you’re so interested in getting to know Catherine, why don’t you tell her who you are?”

  “I tried to tell her.” I sat down on the bed, deflated. “Based on her reaction, I’d say she either already knows or doesn’t want to know. But it’s not just about spending time with her anymore. It’s about her art, too. I wonder why Catherine’s paintings affect me so much. Am I getting out of them what she put into them, or did she intend something else altogether?” I heard my voice rise an octave but couldn’t bring it down again. “I wonder why this talent, this gift, this miracle was granted to her and not somebody else, how it is she’s come to know God in a way most of us haven’t. I wonder when I got so damned preachy,” I checked myself.

  Matt stared at me. “Wow.”

  “Sorry.” I blinked. “I don’t know where that came from.”

  “I do.” He dropped the teddy bear and examined his fingernails. “That’s exactly what scares me about this trip. You’re basically a good person. You don’t mess with people. And you wouldn’t be pretending you wanted to be a nun, invading these women’s privacy, just to see a few paintings and hang out with the twin you haven’t even told is your twin. Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “Nothing,” Matt muttered and shook his head. “Whatever.”

  He stood up and walked out of my apartment.

  “Matt, wait.” I tripped on my ba
g in my hurry to chase after him, knocking over my milk crate dresser in the process. By the time I picked myself up and got out to the hallway, he was gone.

  • • •

  “Phil threatened to fire you?” Trish asked as we walked out of the Rose Café the next morning. She and Graciela had insisted on taking me out for a big breakfast before I spent two weeks limited to the one full meal and two minimal meals a day allowed by the nuns’ practice of perpetual fasting. “But I thought you were one of his best reporters?”

  “She is,” Graciela answered, following us out of the restaurant and over to our cars.

  “I was,” I corrected. Beach sand blew down the street and worked its way into my contact lenses. “Phil says I’ve lost my edge, that my stuff isn’t racy enough lately.”

  “He’s just trying to scare you,” Graciela said.

  “It’s working.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’ve gone from hoping he’ll reject the article to possibly losing my job if he doesn’t like it and definitely losing my job if Catherine doesn’t agree to let me show it to him.”

  “Just focus on convincing Catherine and let me worry about el Jefe,” Graciela said.

  “Besides, who cares about Phil when you’ve got Glen?” Trish pulled a bottle of Glenlivet tied with a red bow from her bag.

  “Never mind Glen. I brought you the real essentials.” Graciela went to her car and produced a carton of Marlboro Lights and a grocery bag full of Twinkies, Cheetos, and Hershey bars.

  “You’re too kind.” I took the offerings and put them into my trunk alongside my duffel.

  “Do you have your camera charger?” Trish asked. “I need decent images to familiarize myself with the paintings before the show.”

  “If there is a show.” I closed the trunk again.

  “Oh, there’ll be a show.” Trish patted me on the shoulder. “Blood is thicker than holy water.”

  “Not when the blood in question either doesn’t know or refuses to acknowledge that we’re related.” I climbed into the driver’s seat of my car. “Matt says what I’m doing is wrong.”

  “It’s completely wrong, but it’s the only way, and that makes it okay,” Trish said.

  “What about you, Graciela?” My coworker’s opinion was the one I really wanted. “Would you do it?”