by Maura Weiler
“But they’ll make us sleep in beds and wear shoes,” Sister Grace protested.
“If that’s what the Lord calls upon us to do. I don’t see any other way.” Scholastica closed her report. “I’m sorry.”
The first bell rang for Compline. Scholastica left the podium. The sisters rose quickly and quietly in response to the call to prayer but shared looks revealed their anxiety. It was the first time I could sense fear among these women who trusted their lives to God. I tried to catch my sister’s eye again, but Catherine avoided my look and hurried off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Getting used to each other’s presence while we worked in her studio built some trust that helped Catherine and I adjust to working together in the kitchen. My sister promoted me from cleanup to food preparation as she taught me to distinguish a potato peeler from a paring knife. Where I’d previously never had the patience for microwave popcorn, I came to enjoy the repetitive, measured tasks involved in basic cooking and baking. There were some things I still couldn’t do—like use a manual can opener—but I learned that the proper way to chop involved holding the steadying hand in a position similar to the way my right hand was shaped already.
My twin moved through the kitchen with the same grace that propelled her brush across a canvas. I still wished I could interview her, not for publication anymore, but for myself. Had Catherine ever been in love? How did she discover her talent? Did we all have such abilities but just don’t recognize them? Maybe that was what silence afforded her—a finely tuned, creative intimacy beyond what’s available to someone deafened by the noise of the world.
I tried to imagine my approach and her answers and then gave up when I realized that the medium was unfair. How could I accurately describe in words someone who rarely used them herself? The visual and culinary arts inform in a way speech and text can’t. Until I learned to interpret the world through color, taste, texture, and image the way my twin did, I couldn’t fully communicate with her, much less “tell” her story.
Instead, I tried to learn from her ways, appreciating the simplicity of her daily tasks and the level of her labor. I speculated on why Catherine seemed to value baking and cooking as much as she valued painting, concluding that there was a necessary, worthy end to the means of cooking. The food she made fed others’ bodies as well as her own. That left painting free to feed her soul.
As someone whose idea of a day’s worth was often determined by how many words I’d written, my two weeks inside the cloister taught me the value of a day of no words at all. The silence that initially drove me crazy now brought peace and freedom. I saw how hard such absolute quiet would be to accomplish in the secular world. No wonder the nuns chose seclusion.
• • •
When the days were long and daylight lingered after the gates were locked to visitors, several of the sisters walked the cloister grounds before dinner. A few hiked the rough trails carrying big sticks to ward off mountain lions or rattlesnakes who might be out sunbathing in the dappled evening light.
I soon embraced the walking ritual. I enjoyed the open space after the nearness of the enclosure and luxuriated in dramatic weather that was hot, sunny, and clear one moment, foggy and chilly the next. The quality of light, the color of the water, and the kiss of the air all felt heightened here. Or were my senses heightened? Maybe Catherine’s paintings and the Big Sur landscape were teaching me how to see just as the cloister silence had taught me to listen.
Of course I stopped to watch the sunset at the monastery. It became the obvious thing to do when there was no phone buzzing, no assignment to race through before deadline, no adjacent apartment building to block the view. There was just God’s majesty sinking slowly over the Pacific, the colors so brilliant they looked counterfeit; some retouched postcard that, unable to approach the real thing, overdid it with dazzle. No picture could truly capture the vista any more than my photographs could accurately represent the genius of my sister’s paintings—paintings that I now realized found direct inspiration in such a sky.
Walking along the cloister road before my departure interview with Mother Benedicta, I was as taken with the view as the day I’d come. I inhaled the ocean breeze and watched rabbits dart out from the underbrush before me. All the rabbits disappeared back into the bushes as a graceful, red fox sauntered across the road a few yards ahead. He paused and looked at me, arresting my own movements with his sheer poise. Then, he swished his tail and moved on.
I sat down on a small promontory rock tucked among reeds and chaparral. A gecko climbed onto the stone beside me. As fog descended below the cliff and erased the water and road below, I felt like I was sitting on the mountain of God looking down over creation. Wanting to leave at least part of myself behind always in this place, I pulled a few strands of hair from my ponytail and let the wind take them, then picked a saffron-colored bloom from a camellia bush and slipped it into my pocket in exchange.
• • •
“Two weeks already?” Mother Benedicta asked. We sat in her office where a shocking pink gladiola had replaced the calla lily in the Mason jar. “Are you glad you stayed?”
“Very glad,” I said. “Thanks for encouraging me.”
“My pleasure. Did you achieve clarity about your vocation?”
“Yes.” I snapped the rubber band on my wrist. “As much as I enjoyed my visit, I don’t think this is the life for me.”
“Very well.” Mother touched her cross and leaned back in her chair. “Then I won’t elaborate.”
“Elaborate on what?” I asked.
“On what we sisters thought about your vocation.”
“Oh, I’d like to hear what you thought, anyway.” My heart raced. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind telling you so long as you don’t mind hearing it. Typically, we’re able to determine if someone is fit for the life after an aspirancy visit. But more than a couple of us are still on the fence about you.”
“You are?” I sat up straight. “I’m flattered that you’d consider me at all, given my early scheming.”
“Nobody’s perfect. You’re a complicated young woman, Dorie. One we can’t quite figure out. One who can’t quite figure herself out.”
“I’m feeling pulled in a lot of different directions right now.” I rubbed my temples.
“Perhaps you need time to explore some more of them. You’re fairly certain you don’t want to make a commitment here, and we’re not certain we want to ask you for one. But we were going to do something unusual—put you on probation of sorts.”
“What does that involve?” I asked.
“It means we aren’t rejecting you, but we aren’t accepting you either. Whether we eventually invite you to join or not depends a lot on you.”
“Me? How so? I mean, were I to consider joining.” I spoke out of the corner of my mouth as if worried that someone would hear me. God, perhaps?
“We encourage you to go back to your life and do some soul-searching. Keep up our practice of physical sacrifice and silence as much as possible in the outside world, then return to us when or if you feel ready and we’ll consider admitting you. Do you have a spiritual director?”
“No.” Sister Barbara, the potter in South Central, leapt to mind as a likely candidate.
“I can recommend a few if you like.” The prioress wrote some names on a piece of memo paper and handed it to me. “Vocation or not, a spiritual director can help you with whatever work and life struggles you’re having.”
“Thank you, Mother.” I took the list and stood up. “I appreciate your kindness. I feel like I’ve wasted your time here.”
“Did you do your chores and say your prayers?”
“Yes.”
“Then you did as much as the rest of us, and we happen to consider that time well spent.” Mother stood and offered her hand. When I accepted it, she pulled me in for a hug. “Goodbye, Dorie. And good luck.”
“You too, Mother. I hope you find a solution
to your financial difficulties.”
“So do I.” She touched her stomach and winced. “So do I.”
• • •
There were no tears when Catherine and I said goodbye. I think we both knew I would be back again before long. Still, it was harder to leave her than I thought. The aching sense that something was missing I’d felt growing up was now replaced by the bittersweet feeling of missing someone in particular.
The world seemed loud during my drive back to Los Angeles. When I reached the busy part of the freeway, the rumble of diesel trucks and the wailing of passing car horns startled me; the merengue music pumping out of a neighboring car blasted through my open windows. Noise I hadn’t noticed before now made it difficult to think. I rolled my windows up.
I reflected on my talk with Mother as I drove. After I recovered from the initial shock that the convent might accept me, I was strangely irked by their suggestion of probation. Never mind not wanting the cloistered life, I never considered that I might be capable of it until someone told me I may not be. Now it seemed desirable, if only for the challenge. Or was it desirable for some other reason?
I rolled my windows back down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The moment I rattled the key in my front door lock, the apartment door across the hall opened and a bunch of sunflowers popped out. Matt soon followed.
“Welcome back, Dorie.” He held out his peace offering. “Listen, I’m sorry I freaked out on you. I had no right to judge you.”
“I’m sorry, too.” I dropped the duffel inside my apartment and took the cheerful blooms. “Thank you, but I should be buying you flowers. You were right. It wouldn’t be ethical to publish anything about my sister without her permission, so I won’t.” I didn’t mention that Phil might fire me as a result. “I wanted to do a story on something pure to make up for all the crap I’ve put out there with my name on it, but exploiting Catherine won’t bring me journalistic redemption.”
“You hardly need to be redeemed.” Matt hugged me. “But you do need to be fed. You feel a little bony around the ribs.”
He grabbed his coat and squired me to his Jeep.
Half an hour later, we ate at Hurry Curry. My huge bowl of udon noodles and side of sashimi looked almost obscene. I pushed the food around with chopsticks, unsure what to do with it.
“What’s the matter?” Matt asked between bites. “I thought you’d be craving your all-time favorite meal after two weeks of stems and seeds with the vegetarians.”
“My stomach must’ve shrunk.” I touched my belly in search of some extra room there. “This would be two days’ worth of calories at the convent.”
“Want to go somewhere else?” Matt leaned forward on the edge of his seat. “Burgers, Italian, whatever you want.”
“No, this is fine. I guess I’m not that hungry after all.” I set my chopsticks down. “I’ll get a box for it.”
When we left the restaurant a few minutes later, I took my to-go container from Matt and went around the corner of the building. I set my leftovers on top of the shopping cart of a homeless man asleep there. When I turned back, Matt stood watching me.
“He probably won’t eat sashimi, but maybe he’ll like the noodles,” I said as we returned to the car.
“How did you know that guy was there?”
“I’ve seen him around here before.” I hopped into the Jeep. “But I never had anything to give him until now.”
• • •
Back outside our apartment building, Matt took my hand and led me to the ocean. It was our first walk on the beach together since our dating days. Tiny, brown birds with curved beaks ran back and forth with each wave, pecking for dinner in the wet sand. I’d never noticed them or their industry before. On our way back, we stopped at the circle of rock cairns and totems that stood like sentinels and paused to cap them with our own stone additions.
“You’re awfully quiet for someone so fond of talking,” Matt said, kicking sand at me as he built up a cairn.
“Guess I’m out of practice.” I slipped off my flip-flops and kicked sand back, careful not to upset the wobbly balance of rocks on my totem.
“Well, I’ve got something to say.” He stopped working on the cairn and turned to me. “Something to admit, really. I got all high and mighty to scare you out of that trip because I was jealous.”
“Jealous?” I laughed. “Of my sister or the story?”
“Both. I’d gotten used to having all your attention. It was hard to see you get excited about someone and something else.” He looked out over the horizon. “And then when you went away, I realized that I don’t want to live without you.”
I lost my balance and took a step back. My totem followed suit—the top rock teetered and fell to the sand with a muffled thud.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Dorie.” Matt produced a black, velvet ring box from his shirt pocket and placed it in my hand. “Will you marry me?”
I opened the box to reveal a stunning, emerald-cut diamond ring. I dug my toes into the sand for support and looked around for an answer. The setting sun glimmered on the water, a wave moved in and washed over my bare feet, and the man I’d loved for years stood before me with a shy smile on his face. It was the best and worst moment of my life.
“Oh my God, Matt.” My mouth went dry. I licked my lips and tasted sashimi. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I know it’s kinda sudden,” he said. “But in a way, it’s not. You’re my best friend.”
“And you’re mine. But why now? Why not back when we were dating? If this is what happens when I leave town, maybe I should have done it a long time ago.”
“You did more than leave town. You went to a convent. I could compete with another guy, but not with God.”
I took a deep breath and snapped the rubber band on my wrist, unready to accept the implication in Matt’s words. This wasn’t a contest between becoming the bride of a man I loved, but rarely saw, and becoming a Bride of Christ, whom I’d never seen at all. Was it?
“I went looking for my sister who happened to be at a convent and ended up finding out a lot about myself instead. One thing I learned is that I’m not ready to get married. Not to you or God or anybody. Not yet, anyway.”
I paused, surprised at myself. The words had jumped out of my mouth before I knew they were in there. “Maybe down the line, but not right now. This last year and especially this trip have made me question my job, my lifestyle, everything. I’m learning about my past and it’s having way more effect on my present than I ever imagined. I can’t handle thinking about the future on top of that.”
I smacked my forehead with my palm. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. There was a time when I would’ve given anything to—”
“I know,” Matt said softly.
“You do?”
“I blew it with you a year and a half ago. I’ve been losing ground ever since, but I didn’t realize how much until I saw you get so passionate about researching your roots and writing this article.” Matt paused and watched the birds skitter away from the incoming wave. “I guess getting engaged was my last-ditch effort to stop the landslide.”
We stood in silence and let the whisper of the surf lull us. I didn’t dare try on the ring for fear I’d never want to take it off. Instead I closed the box and offered it back to Matt. He didn’t raise his hand to take it. It remained loose in my palm.
“I’m sorry, Matt.”
“So am I,” he said. “Sorry I ever took you for granted.”
“Like I’ve been doing to you lately?” I asked in an attempt to lighten the moment. “We’re both guilty of that.”
Matt smiled, gingerly took the box from me, and slid it back into his pocket. He walked back to our building alone.
Not sure what to do or where to go, I sat down among the rocks and tried to make sense of what had just happened. The sun glided across the ocean and dipped behind the mountains, leaving streaks of pink, orange, and purple t
hrough smog that managed to make sunsets more glorious than they had a right to be. Eventually, I gave up trying and headed home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Madre de Dios, you’re so thin!” Graciela gasped when I arrived at the newsroom in baggy khakis, a sweater, and no makeup the next morning.
Two weeks of jeans and T-shirts at the cloister had left me unprepared to face the vast array of my business wardrobe options. Since there was no point in dressing up in order to get fired, I’d decided to save the suits for job interviews.
“Didn’t I pack enough Twinkies for you?” Graciela asked.
“You gave me plenty of food.” I shifted in my flats and missed the comfort of bare feet. “I felt too guilty to eat that stuff when nobody else there was.”
“Wow, that’s sacrifice. I can’t even be in the same room with a Twinkie and not eat it. At least you had that carton of cancer to keep you going.”
“I didn’t smoke, either.” After setting down my keys, purse, and computer bag, I unpacked Rod’s camera, my laptop, cell phone, notebooks, and press pass, struck by the number of possessions it took to get through the day. Even more bizarre was the knowledge that I’d probably take all those items for granted again within a week. “Not after the first day, anyway.”
“But you’ve smoked since you got back, right?” Graciela tapped her own box of menthols.
“I tried one on the way over here.” I recalled the open pack of cigarettes I’d picked up off my dresser that morning. “But it was stale and made me kind of sick, so I figure I’ll save the money.”
“Un momento, por favor. You quit smoking and you lost weight? Those two things don’t go together.”
“They did this time,” I said. “I’ve wanted to kick the habit and lose ten pounds forever. In two weeks, circumstances made it happen without me even trying.”
“I hate you.” Graciela pulled a cigarette out of the pack with her teeth.