Angela flushed. She put her fork down. “So, Philip, you don’t think blind luck has anything to do with good fortune. Fortune like yours, like ours?”
Oh, she didn’t want to have this conversation, especially not in front of other people, but she couldn’t stop.
“I do not,” said Philip. “Hard work, smarts, focus, and not hanging out in the streets selling dope has more to do with it than luck.”
“You don’t call inheriting the family money ‘luck’? Having your college paid for? Daddy’s contacts on Wall Street? Let me tell you, there are things people go through you can’t imagine.”
“Like what?” Paula asked. “I’d really like to know.”
“Well, okay,” said Angela. “Listen, I didn’t think I’d like going to the food bank. I didn’t. And I’m sort of surprised it’s grown on me so much. The people … they’re troubled lots of the time, sure, but they’re also amazing. I, don’t know …” A woman’s face popped into her head. “Right. Let me tell you about Yvette. She wrote poetry. Not a great poet, I admit, but still, she had this passion, you know? Anyway, when she was fourteen, she served a short stint in juvenile detention after getting stopped by the police with a little bit of weed. The sort of ‘crime’ that results in rich white kids from Princeton being driven home by the police and reprimanded.”
“Oh, come on, Angela,” said Philip. He drained his glass.
“You know it’s true …”
“She has a point about that,” said Ellen.
Angela thought Ellen might have said more, save for the look her husband shot her.
“So,” Angela continued, “the day of her release she was waiting for her mother, but her mother never showed. Why? Because she’d fallen down icy steps at her apartment and died. After that, Yvette lived with her older brother, or cousins, or friends. She got a part-time job at Target as a cashier.”
“Did she finish school? High school, I mean?” asked Paula.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not.”
“Well, she was hardly going to get anywhere without even a high school diploma. I mean, that’s a big problem, right? These kids dropping out of school,” said David.
“Sure, sure, it is, but that’s not what I’m getting at here.”
Paula sipped her wine and then put the glass down. “Let Angela finish,” she said.
“Thanks. Okay. So. A couple of years ago her face started to hurt and she went to the emergency room. They said she had a sinus infection and should see her regular doctor. A bit of a joke, of course. She didn’t have a regular doctor. People in her neighbourhood can’t afford regular doctors and since she wasn’t full-time at her job, you know … no benefits.”
Angela put up her hand to silence Philip, who she could see was about to interrupt her. He shrugged, and she went on.
“A week later it got worse. She went to a clinic. They gave her antibiotics, which did exactly nothing. Six months later someone thought to send her for X-rays, but by then the cancer — yes, cancer — was so far advanced all they could do was hack off parts of her jaw and ear and cheekbone.”
“Oh, good lord,” said Ellen, as she passed the couscous to David.
“Right? I knew her for three months, and then she died, but right up to the end she was writing poetry, and drawing, and laughing. Even when she looked like something out of The Walking Dead, she always had a joke. That Walking Dead line, for example, that was hers. Thirty-two years old. There’s a picture of her hanging on the wall at the Pantry. She’s holding one of her little poetry books, the ones she made herself at a copy shop.”
There was silence at the table and then Paula said, “Well, I think what you’re doing is really admirable.”
“Why don’t you come down with me sometime?” Angela picked up her wineglass and drank, hoping the blush she now felt rising on her skin wouldn’t be too noticeable in the low lighting.
Paula’s hand went to her throat. “Oh, I would, but I work, I’m afraid.”
“Uh-huh, like I told you,” said her husband.
THE ONLY THING PHILIP SAID to her on the way home was, “You sure know how to kill a party. Remember next time, these people are the ones who help you pay for that greenhouse of yours, okay?”
Sister Eileen
Eileen sat at one of the two chairs beside the tiny Formica table pushed up against the kitchen wall. It was seven-thirty in the morning and, not having slept well the night before, she was grateful for the strong coffee in the cup around which she warmed her hands. Anne leaned against the counter, absurdly upbeat and energized for someone of her advanced years. Anne was seventy-four, thirty-four years older than Eileen, and was alarmingly chipper in the morning. The cabinets were once a jolly yellow, but now they were dull and chipped. One of the doors was gone completely, and the dishes on the shelves were mismatched. Anne’s hair was tied up in a messy knot atop her head, and she was dressed in what Eileen had come to think of as the Nun Uniform: sensible shoes, loose-fitting pants, a blouse and light jacket. What Eileen was, in fact, wearing herself.
“Test today,” said Anne. “We’ll see how well I’ve done teaching algebraic word problems. Scares them. Don’t know why. It’s all about breaking it down and turning it into an equation. Anne tipped her coffee cup to her lips and drained the dregs, with what looked like regret. She shrugged. “I have to run.”
“See you later.” Eileen, who had been scared of algebraic word problems herself, thought it was way too early for mathematics of any kind.
Anne ducked out the door just as Caroline appeared, slipping her arms into a pale blue cardigan. She strode to the coffee pot.
“Want some more?” Caroline held the pot up and tilted her head. She tucked a strand of the curly black hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ears.
Eileen rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I didn’t get much sleep last night with all the noise. So, yes, please, even though it’s my second. Did you sleep?”
“Sort of. Anne said she did, but I think that’s because she turns her hearing aid off. I don’t see how anyone can sleep with the sirens and I’m sure those were gunshots I heard. Do you think it was?”
“Probably. Not uncommon, I’m sorry to say.”
Caroline filled Eileen’s cup and then fiddled with one of the dials on the stove. “We really should see if someone can fix this.”
The appliances were old, but serviceable — although one of the burners on the stove had stopped working the week before.
Caroline looked around at the room. “Maybe we could get a couple of gallons of paint. Yellow, maybe, something cheerful and clean.”
Eileen chuckled. “That would be pretty. If you’ve got time to paint. Do you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I envy you your energy,” said Eileen as Caroline sat down beside her. “At the end of the day I’m exhausted.” She blew on her coffee and then sipped it, sighed, and leaned back in the chair. “You’re with me today, I think, right?”
“Yup, all this week.”
As part of her mission year, prior to taking her first vows, Sister Caroline was discovering where her talents might best be employed, shifting her time between working alongside Eileen at the Our Daily Bread Food Pantry, and with Anne at the school.
Caroline got herself a bowl of cereal and returned to the table. She said, “Maybe we could get someone to tear up that concrete out front. We could put in a garden. You’ve got that gardener guy coming to the Pantry today, don’t you? We could ask him, maybe.”
“It would be nice to have a garden. We’ll see. Does the house bother you?”
“No, I mean, not for me. But you know, it might be nice for the street. It might set an example and would certainly be more welcoming than that slab of grey.” Caroline paused. “I’m not a snob; at least I don’t think I am.”
“I don’t think you are, either. And you’re right. It would be good to spruce the place up a bit, as we can.”
“A coat of
paint. A few flowers. Sort of a bare minimum, I think.”
Eileen smiled but said nothing more. Caroline had been raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a Nantucket-style shore colonial worth five million dollars. She had once said to Eileen that she had imagined a house full of nuns in an urban neighbourhood like this would stand out, be a beacon of cleanliness, calm, and serenity in a jumble of chaos, when in fact this plain-fronted, almost tumbledown place bought at foreclosure auction looked like every other building on the street. Theirs was grey siding, some of the others were brick, and most were duplexes, while this one wasn’t, and it did boast an ash tree in front, and a tiny porch with latticework from which, in the summer, the sisters hung potted plants and set out chairs. Eileen wondered what Caroline would think if she knew where Eileen had grown up — over a bar on the Jersey Shore, amidst the drunks; the fights; the motorcycles; the stolen cars; the shit-faced, fist-happy father; the narcissistic, martyred mother. It must surely be a sign of God’s great plan that women from such different backgrounds would both find their way here.
Caroline was tall, with big wrists and wide shoulders, strong-looking, suited to soccer and field hockey. Now, she fingered her necklace. All the Sisters wore one. It bore the symbol of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, a silver globe with a cross to the side. One of the cross’s arms was elongated, as was the downward portion. The symbol represented the Order’s vision of embracing the whole world: downward toward earth, upward toward the cosmos, outward to humanity, creating lines of communion and union with God, with each other, and with the “dear neighbour without distinction.”
Eileen got up, wiped the counter, frowned, and said, not unkindly, “I do wonder if you’ll be comfortable here in Trenton. I find it challenging enough and I’ve been here for a long time.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one, at least,” said Caroline. “I like a lot of the people, but it’s kind of shocking to see some of them working two minimum-wage jobs and still not able to make it through to the end of the month.”
Eileen rinsed out the cloth she’d been using on the counter. “Having the electricity turned off. Kids doing homework by candlelight.” She sighed. “Ah, the ‘deserving’ poor, right? They’re easy to love, but it’s harder to love those not only to whom harm has been done, but who have done harm in return.”
“That’s where I am. I know Christ calls on us to love everyone, to see Him in everyone, but the guy who beats up his wife and kids? The ones who fight dogs?”
Eileen could see Caroline was about to continue with what she suspected was a long list. “Yes, Caroline, even them. Hard as it is. Listen, I try. Often fail. I try again. But it’s not for everyone, and that’s no shame. It’s what you’re here to find out: how best to serve God, being exactly who you are.”
Caroline bowed her head and took the medallion in her mouth like a child. “It just seems so dangerous.”
Just then Ruth, lean, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair and the air of an eager, bounding wolfhound, stuck her head in the door. “I’m off! Have a good day, everyone!” She waved and disappeared again, off to her job as chaplain in the New Jersey State Prison. “Oh, Eileen,” she called, “can you take the lasagna out of the freezer? Tonight’s dinner!”
“Will do.”
“Bye, Sister Ruth! Have a blessed day!” called Caroline.
Eileen reached into the freezer and produced a large tray of frozen lasagna. “Ruth cooks enough for a dozen,” she said. She put it on top of the stove and peeled off the plastic wrap covering the top. She glanced at Caroline. “You know, I was raised on the Jersey Shore. Bars and blue-collar families, the hardscrabble church-centred life where everyone knew everyone’s family and every family had its troubles. Domestic violence. Drunks. Car crashes in stolen vehicles. Rape, sometimes by members of the clergy. Oh, don’t look like that, you know it happened … happens. Abused kids. Drug abuse. It wasn’t the sort of community that could hide its bags of bones. I grew up understanding life is both as messy as the beach after a hurricane and as indescribably beautiful as moonrise over still water.”
“So, you think I shouldn’t be here?”
“I didn’t say that. You’ve only been here a few weeks. Give it a chance. But look at Anne. She adores teaching. It’s what she’s made for. You have a master’s in English literature. You won’t use that much here. You might be better suited to a more suburban posting, maybe a teaching post. You’re wonderful with children. Just something to consider. Time will tell, and you and your spiritual director will work it all out.”
“You never wanted to teach?”
“Me? Nope. Not my thing. Not great with kids, at least not for any period of time.”
Eileen did not tell Caroline about the time she was twelve, babysitting her little eighteen-month-old cousin, and when the child would not stop crying Eileen had slapped him, hard, across the mouth. Oh, that terrible moment when, in shock, he’d stopped crying, his mouth and eyes wide and wild, and then, a wrenching moment later, the screaming had begun. Crying of an entirely different order, a wordless protest to the world’s cruelty and injustice and horror, having been betrayed by love for the first time. She’d done that, destroyed a child’s innocence, just like that, as her own had been destroyed by her mother with a similar slap. Teach? No. She was not made for children. Her great shame.
“I’m just saying I found it difficult when I first arrived, and I still have my moments.”
“Was it always like this?”
“Trenton? Oh, it goes through ups and downs, but it’s been a sad place ever since the late sixties, I guess, when most of the industry left. Always trying to get back on its feet, to be the great city it once was. Hard, though, when there’s nothing much for people to do.”
“You don’t get scared? Ever? Come on.” Caroline snorted.
“I’ve been scared, of course. A couple of times. But after a while I began to see it as an opportunity to rely more fully on God. And we’re not in danger, you know. Not really. Other than some random incidents that could happen anywhere, the violence is self-contained. Gangs. Young people against each other. I think of the parents, how difficult it is on them.”
Caroline hunched over her mug and put three heaping spoons of sugar from the blue-and-white bowl into her coffee. “I don’t know how anyone gets used to gangs and guns.”
Eileen shook her head. “You’re right. Getting used to something like that would be awful. It would be a kind of heartlessness.” Eileen walked over and hugged Caroline with an arm around her broad shoulders. “Keep praying. Bring your fears to God. The way will become clear, I promise. And what a gift it is, to be able to feel the fear other people feel. Think how you’ll be able to help them, should the need arise.”
Caroline nodded. “I know I’m not alone. I feel it more all the time.”
“That’s a very good start. Thank God.”
Eileen did not say that what she felt more and more was the great silence of God. When she had been Caroline’s age, she, too, had felt God’s loving embrace, God’s clear presence, leading her, protecting her, guiding her. When had it left? She didn’t know. She only knew that now when she prayed, she felt the words were going out into some great void. She felt as though she was dying of thirst sometimes, her soul cracked and parched as old leather. She felt like King David crying out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. She understood she should see this as a call to trust the promise of God more than the perception, and that wasn’t really indifferent, or absent, or silent … but where once there had been a garden perfumed with God’s presence, for the past number of years there was nothing but an arid wind across a blasted landscape of unrelenting darkness.
She hoped Caroline would never experience this dark night of the soul.
Eileen shook her head to scatter the bleak thoughts. No time for this. There is work to be done. B
lessed is the day the Lord has made.
Angela
Angela and Deedee sat in the cozy book-lined room next to the kitchen of Deedee’s farmhouse a few miles outside of Princeton.
Angela said, “I think I might be entering menopause.”
“Hardly, sweetie. A few years in the old girl yet.”
“Well, something’s going on.”
“Such as?”
“I am so … I don’t know. Discontent.”
“The winter of your discontent?”
“Made not glorious by this son of York.”
Deedee giggled. “Philip?”
“Yup.”
“He does not caper nimbly in a lady’s chamber?”
“Pardon?”
“Sorry. Just more of that speech by Old Will. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. Philip and I have nothing in common. He has no passion for life, only for making money. I want more, and I think it’s too late.”
Deedee was Angela’s only real confidante. Whom else could she be honest with and not fear her complaints would end up rattling in the ear of every woman at the golf club, at the bridge games, at the ladies’ dinners? The year she moved to Princeton, a woman had invited her to a “girls’” dinner when the men were all off at Hilton Head playing golf. They had spent the entire dinner complaining about a woman who hadn’t been invited. No, not complaining … eviscerating. Angela had tried, with as much subtlety as she could manage, to make them see they were behaving like the mean girls of high school, but doubted she got through to any of them. She was the odd one out. They thought her strange indeed. And so, Angela avoided such gatherings as if they were held in a viper’s den, but no matter, the gossip slithered out with distressing rapidity whether she was present or not.
Photographic portraits of Deedee’s grandparents as small children in frilly christening gowns stared out wide-eyed from the walls. Angela thought there was an alarming amount of chintz. For all that Deedee had been raised in Tennessee, her taste ran decidedly to English Country, complete with a tumble of three large, shaggy dogs of indeterminate breed sleeping in the corner. The wildish Victorian garden beyond the mullioned window was ragged this time of year, but amidst the brown leaves and stalks, the purple butterfly bush, burgundy chrysanthemums, pink toad lily, and yellow helenium offered hope of better days. Angela was something more than an amateur gardener, and the women had met ten years earlier when a mutual friend introduced them, and Angela had helped Deedee design her garden. She considered it now with a critical eye and found it adequate. She made a mental note that it would be improved come spring by some lavender, maybe even a kitchen herb garden.
Even So Page 2
