Road to Paradise

by Paullina Simons

  Candy was blankly silent. “Is Harvard a good school?”

  I laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said to Gina, getting up. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  Gina stood from the table. “Shelby got real lucky,” she said. “But sometimes luck does run out, don’t you think, Candy? I read in the paper that five upstate New York girls were all killed in a car wreck, less than a week after graduating from high school.”

  “That’s not luck,” said Candy. “That’s destiny. You best pray it’s not yours.”

  SEVEN

  NEW MELLERAY

  1

  Hours of the Divine Office

  We were on the open road away from the Quad Cities by 9:30. The road was a rolling highway between Iowa farms and corn fields, the day was gray. There were no trucks, no cars, sky to the earth was empty, and up and down we went, like on a rollercoaster, flying along, the view and the silos forever.

  After we’d gone about sixty miles, Candy asked me to slow down and peered at the road signs. Making a left, we drove up and around a winding road where the Iowa vistas disappeared; what was left was tall pines and shady canopies. It didn’t seem like Iowa at all, no fields till the horizon, but forested and woodsy, like Maine, where I’d been once with Emma. I wanted to ask if her father was a farmer, but didn’t. Everything was very still and there were no other cars on the road. We passed a small cemetery on the left, and up ahead on the hill, partially covered by trees, stood a brilliant snowy stone building, like a historic school, or a museum from the Middle Ages. Solemn, it stood like a beacon and Gina said, “What is that?”

  “That’s the New Melleray Abbey. Make a right here. On Melleray Way.”

  “New Melleray?” I said. “Does that mean there’s an even older Melleray?”

  “Yes, Mount Melleray Abbey in Ireland,” replied Candy as if she knew about these things.

  We drove through pristine green grounds and tall pines. There were benches under the trees near a statue of the Holy Mother. The large light building stood silent, as if deserted.

  “We’re going to the abbey?” I asked.

  Candy nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because my father lives here.”

  “Your father lives in the abbey?” Gina said, while I attempted not to crash into the statue of the Holy Mother.

  “Careful,” said Candy. “Don’t drive like a maniac.”

  “Why does your father live in an abbey?” Gina asked.

  “Because he’s a Trappist monk.”

  “Your father is a monk?” I had stopped the car in the empty parking lot—more like screeched to a diagonal stop. When I spun around to look at Candy, I took my foot off the brake, and my Mustang pitched forward and went over the curb onto the grass.

  “Shelby! Please.”

  Brake slammed on, car reversed, gingerly parked, ignition off, I turned to Candy. “Your father is a monk,” I repeated.

  “Why is that surprising?” she asked, frowning. “Do you know my father?”

  “Uh—no,” I said cleverly. But, I wanted to add, I know you. “You don’t seem like a . . .” How to put it mildly? “. . . a monk’s daughter.”

  “I did not choose who I was born to,” she said. “When he was in college, he went looking for answers. First he had a thing with my mother, then he petitioned the Formation Council about joining the Cistercian order.”

  “Not because of your mother, I hope,” I said.

  “Your mother went to college?” Gina asked disbelievingly.

  Candy squinted from the back. “Do you know my mother, Gina? Shel, open the windows, we’re gonna die in here.”

  We rolled down the windows. No one was getting out of the car.

  “So your mother went to college?”

  “She cleaned the humanities building.”

  “Your father is a monk?” exclaimed Gina, as if just hearing it. “Oh my God.”

  “Shh.” Candy crossed herself.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  “Shh!”

  “Candy,” Gina asked, “does your father know the kinds of things you’ve been up to?”

  “Gina, you have no idea what I’ve been up to,” said Candy.

  We sat. “So what do we do now?” I asked. “Wait for you?”

  “No. We leave the car, go inside. Ask for him.” She paused. “But look, just so you know—they don’t care what you do outside these walls. Really. So don’t have that worried face on, because then for sure, the brothers will think you were up to no good, you look so guilty. And because you are guests, announced or unannounced, they will welcome you. That’s their way. But please—respect their rituals. Do not talk inside the church or the cloister. Do not say, ‘Oh God,’ as often as you take a breath. Don’t laugh.”

  Gina rolled her eyes.

  We left the car and went inside, Gina and I extremely reluctantly. There was no one around to ask for Candy’s father. We wandered through a small unattended bookstore (“Aren’t they afraid someone is going to steal stuff?” asked Gina, and Candy replied, “In a monastery?”) through a room full of urns and caskets (!), through a stone hall, opening and closing heavy solid wood doors, and finally found our way into what Candy whispered to me was the tabernacle.

  “Is that a place of worship?” I whispered back.

  “Yes!”

  It was a long narrow hall, plain and rectangular, built in stone and wood, with ceilings tall like Ponderosa pines. The oak pews were in the back, where we sank down under stark shadows. The church was filled with light, streaming through the clear glass of the stone arched windows. A long way in front of us stood twenty white-robed monks in two straight lines on opposite sides of the church, in stalls, chanting a monophonic song. I thought at first it wasn’t in English because there was not one word of it I understood. But then something plain filtered through, like the wiping away of snow on the windows and glimpsing beyond. My soul waits, they sang. I wait. My soul waits for the Lord . . .

  Their somber voices filled the church. I wait in hope for the Lord . . . in his word do I hope . . .

  We had come at the tail end; barely minutes later it was over. They crossed themselves and filed out, leaving in place an echoing silence, almost as if the semitones of their last hymnic notes still lingered in the wooden beams, reflecting off the glass windows.

  “Which one was he?” I whispered.

  “Shh,” Candy said. “Don’t talk inside the church.”

  I was as quiet as can be. I told her so.

  “What, you think God can’t hear you?” she said.

  Gina had been rendered mute, not out of reverence but out of critical astonishment. I, on the other hand, especially after hearing that mystical singing, felt as if I had been walking in mud and then accidentally stepped into an alluvial deposit. It was still mud, and I couldn’t for the life of me get my feet out of the morass, but underneath, in the wet slickness, I felt there was something gilded this girl was showing me with her extreme life that was out of my existence, beyond my understanding, and almost out of my reach.

  “I’d never been inside a church, you know.”

  Candy looked at me with the kind of incredulous expression we must have been bestowing upon her these last days for not knowing the words to Blondie and Andy Gibb.

  “What service was that?” I asked. “I didn’t know they had services in the middle of the day.”

  “They have services all day long,” Candy replied. “Seven separate services of the Divine Office, not including Mass at seven A.M. That one was sext. The noon service.”

  “What was the song they sang?”

  Candy stared at me. “Um, Psalm 130,” she replied slowly. Much the way we had said, Um, “Baby Come Back.”

  “So you do know some songs?” Gina smiled.

  “Yes,” said Candy. “Psalms, the songs to God.”

  We loitered in the store. Eventually a monk appeared, as if out of thin air. One moment there was no one
near, the next, he, in his white tunic and black apron was walking past, his hands folded together. He looked at us and said nothing. “Hello, Brother Placid,” said Candy. “Can you please tell my father I’m here?”

  Brother Placid, a short squat man, observed her pink hair without reaction, cocked his head, nodded slightly, and poof was gone. His shoes and robes made no sound, not even an echo off the walls. We walked outside into the square stone deck with benches and waited there. It was quiet outside; the air smelled of pines. We didn’t speak. Finally, the tall narrow solid oak door opened and out came a tall narrow man who looked like solid oak himself, with gray hair and glasses. He was clean shaven, blue-eyed, grave. He wore a white robe and a sleeveless black tunic over it. He came out, stood still, and Candy got up off the bench, stood still also.

  “Hello, Dad.”

  “Hello, Grace,” said the man she had called Estevan Rio.

  Grace? I whispered sideways to her, as if in ventriloquy.

  “These are my friends,” Candy said. “Shelby and Gina.”

  Estevan Rio nodded without expression. “Your friends are always welcome here.”

  They walked away from us then, down the steps and across the garden.

  “She’s using the term friends loosely,” whispered Gina.

  Was she? “Shh.” I stepped away from her. Grace?

  The grounds around the abbey were vast and Gina and I would every once in a while glimpse Candy and her father on the meandering paths, beyond the trees, behind the statues. Gina said she was hungry.

  “Okeydoke. Thanks for letting me know,” I said.

  “How long is she going to stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Five minutes? Five days?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You think they’ll feed us?”

  “Candy did say they receive guests. They’ll probably feed us.”

  “But when?”

  “Man does not live by bread alone,” said a male voice behind us, and as we turned around, a monk walked by, bowing his head slightly. He had a bemused, exasperated expression on his face, as if he had seen the likes of us many times and didn’t know why the likes of us continued coming. He said he was Brother Benedict Babor; could he help us? We explained that we were waiting for our friend, the daughter of Brother Estevan; could we walk the grounds in the meantime?

  He waved his hand, curlicue in the air, meaning, go, do what you like, just don’t shout, you spoiled children. “Of course,” he said. “All are welcome here.”

  So we walked the grounds, our conversation stilted. We expressed surprise at the gust of wind that had blown us into an abbey. “Can you imagine, Sloane, you in an abbey?”

  I was offended for my own agnosticism. “Well, perhaps I would’ve gone to one, but there weren’t any abbeys in Larchmont,” I said, huffing.

  “How do you know? Have you looked?”

  What an odd question. “Have you?”

  “I’ve been to the Ashram many times,” Gina said loftily. “Same difference.”

  “Is it the same difference? And what does that mean, same difference? Are they the same? Or different? Or it doesn’t matter?”

  Pointing to me, Gina said, “Now you got it.” She wiped her perspiring face. “For God’s sake, are they ever coming back?”

  Out of nowhere, footsteps behind us made their own shuffling noise, and a male voice said, “Children, respect the premises. Don’t blaspheme on our grounds. We don’t pray in your nightclubs, do we?” It was Brother Benedict Babor again.

  Chastened, intimidated by his robes and authority, I clammed up. Gina whispered, “Why is he following us?” We turned around. He was gone.

  Unnerved by the magical realism of his effective transformations, we hastened our step and walked back inside the abbey. For some reason it seemed safer to me. Not talking also seemed safer. “Maybe she isn’t coming back?” Gina ventured after half an hour had passed. “Let’s go. What’s she gonna do? She’s in a monastery. She’ll be fine.”

  “Gina . . .”

  “What, you don’t think she’ll be fine here?”

  Before I could say that I didn’t think I’d be fine, Gina announced she was bored. And hungry. She wanted to go—now. “It’ll take us a while to find a McDonald’s.”

  “Let’s go inside the church,” I said. “Another service might be beginning.” I wanted to hear the singing again.

  “Are you out of your mind? I’ll go crazy if I stay outside another minute, and you want to go inside?”

  “Just to note,” I said, “I don’t remember you rushing me along out of the casino—for two days straight.”

  “Why would I?” she said as if she had no idea what on earth I was talking about. “The casino was fantastic and fun. This is slow death.”

  I looked at her as if I had no idea what on earth she was talking about. Throwing up her hands, she stormed outside to the car. “Don’t stay in the car, Gina,” I called after her. “You’ll suffocate. It’s so hot. At least crank open the windows.”

  She waved me off the way I used to wave Emma off. I sighed.

  There was no one inside, and though I peeked in one of the corridors, I got nervous. What if I wasn’t allowed to walk here, look here?

  I went in to the casket room. The Melleray monks supported themselves by making pine and walnut caskets out of indigenous wood. The three they had on display looked well made.

  I knew I was allowed inside the chapel, so that’s where I went, tip-toeing, not wanting to make a sound, holding my breath, clutching my purse so the keys wouldn’t jangle. I sat in the back again, resting my hands on the wooden pew in front of me.

  I was the only one inside. I guess it wasn’t time for songs.

  I sat and waited.

  What was I waiting for? I wasn’t sure. What was I feeling? A little like a dry sponge onto which warm water was dripping. At the Isle of Capri, I had been bone dry for two days.

  I stayed past the point of reason, waiting for something that refused to commence; just sat in that long narrow tabernacle, and waited. The wooden pew was warm under my fingers, the stone floor cool under my sandals.

  The absolute silence unnerved me. There was no music playing, no clanging, no clinking. It was as if I had gone deaf. The solid oak doors and the hardwood floors muffled all comings and goings. Now contrast with the river casino last night: few human words, except for “Deck shuffle!” but a constant din, an endless clatter of levers, of cherries lining up, drinks falling, and the ching-ching-ching of the quarters dropping through. Here the world was on mute. Nothing but the noise inside my head.

  What was surprising about the noise inside my head, however, was how low-key it was compared, say, to the car when the music was at the seventh decibel, blaring of the warm smell of eucalyptus, my head screaming about California, and injustice, Emma, guilt and fear. Here, even Lorna Moor receded. I was not thinking, not feeling, just breathing, my eyes open, a sponge, warm water dripping onto me. How many hours had passed since the tall man said Hello, Grace?

  This child named Candy was known to him as Grace. What did he know of her? At the hotel last night she told me she hadn’t seen him in years. But when would she have seen him at all? Yet he recognized her instantly. He wasn’t surprised, he didn’t look like someone who was seeing his child for the first time. Hi, Dad. Hello, Grace.

  What would it have been like for me to see my father? Hi, Dad. Hello, Shelby. What would it be like for me to see my mother? Hi, Mom. Hello, Shelby. And then we would take a long walk in the tall pines. Would it be a little like that? Would she recognize me the way Estevan Rio had recognized his daughter? Lorna Moor, was she in her version of a monastery? Did she run off and join the Order of the Childless Mothers? Or was that a paradox I couldn’t deal with, sitting in an empty tabernacle, waiting for the monastic choir? Did Estevan Rio, the Trappist monk, write his daughter, call her? She didn’t seem nervous or afraid of him, like I imagined I would be facing my own par
ent, trembling with panic at the prospect of finding my mother.

  I thought Candy had kept her makeup off and her clothes plain because she was wary of her father, but now I began to think that maybe she did it out of respect. Respect the rituals. Man does not live by bread alone. No? What else does he live by?

  I sat so long that the shadows blackened and the light glowed vermilion before the monks noiselessly glided back in. I had been waiting only for them and now sat breathlessly as I absorbed the beginnings of their measured incantations in that monolithic chamber. Nothing was familiar, all was new and strange. But I had my answer. Man does not live by bread alone, the monk leading the service sing-songed, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

  Is that what man lived by? What man? Not me. Not Gina.

  Did Candy?

  Finally, my keenly awaited Psalms. I tried to hear the words, tried to glean meaning, like in the car when Candy was telling me about Judas, but just like then couldn’t grasp the threads of it. Ah, finally! Something I understood. It is vain for you to rise up early . . . to sit up late . . . to eat the bread of sorrows . . . for so He gives His beloved sleep.

  That was me!

  Behold, children are a gift from the Lord . . . the fruit of the womb is a reward . . .

  Suddenly Candy, like a Trappist, appeared next to me in the pew. “What are you doing?” she whispered, pulling on me. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  I closed my mouth, said, “Shh!”

  “Come,” she whispered.

  “Shh,” I said. “Don’t talk inside the church. What do you think, God can’t hear you?” And before I saw her reaction, I turned back to the choir. She sat next to me until the service was over.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she asked when we came outside.

  “I don’t know. What are you doing? Where’s Gina?”

  “In the car suffocating herself in the heat. She fell asleep there and is now livid and starving.”