Even So

by Lauren B. Davis

  AND AFTER A PLEASANT enough dinner, during which she’d enjoyed a vodka martini and several glasses of wine, Philip and Angela came home and he followed her into the shower, and she didn’t protest. His breath stank of Scotch and wine. She turned around and put her palms against the tile and wanted him to take her from behind, but he took her hand and led her to the bed, and she let him. She told herself the physical response she had was, like dinner, pleasant enough, was an assurance from the universe that awakened passion regardless of the source was a good thing for her marriage.

  Everyone fantasized. She was sure Philip did. In fact, early on in their relationship he once started talking dirty to her, but his fantasy was about Angela as a naughty schoolteacher with himself as a student she’d kept after class to satisfy her insatiable needs, and it appalled her. She told him to stop, and he never shared a fantasy with her again. She believed that what went on in his head was his business, and now, if she closed her eyes and turned her head away, imagining the hands of a Viking raider claiming her body, what was the harm?

  She rationalized that the good thing about her fantasies was that, no matter how embarrassing, no one would ever know. It was something just for her, something to help her cope, not unlike the vodka that relaxed her. It changed her perspective. She was nicer to Philip when a little buzzed. How could that be a problem?

  Sister Eileen

  Eileen walked along the sand, watching the waves crest and roll and the spray drape a lace veil over the seawall. A pair of dolphins rose and dove just past the breakers. Dawn was beginning to send its rays east, toward the distant horizon. The only other people on the beach were a couple of fishermen standing at the end of the jetty.

  The Sisters of Saint Joseph had a retreat house here on Cape May called St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea, a great rambling U-shaped building facing the ocean, with a red roof, 150 rooms, and twelve hundred feet of covered porches scattered with rocking chairs. The place had been built in 1889 as the Shoreham, once named as one of America’s foremost hotels. Ten years later, when the hotel failed, it was sold and became the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People, a venture that also failed in 1909, which is when the Sisters bought it. The ballroom became the chapel. Since then it had weathered a number of brutal storms, set out on the point as it was, as well as occupation by the U.S. Army during the Second World War. This latter set of “visitors” left the property at least as damaged as any storm. But through it all, the time and terrible tides, the erosion and occupation, the will and hard work of the Sisters prevailed. Families came for vacation. Nuns came for retreat and rest and these days they led those same retreats for people of any and all faiths, or none at all.

  There had never been a time when St. Mary’s wasn’t a part of Eileen’s life. She had come as a child with her mother and siblings as volunteers during the summer. They lived not far away in Wildwood, over Dead Davy’s, the bar her father owned, named for the previous owner, Davy Culligan. For Eileen’s mother, this was a time of both work and contemplation, and the work itself — preparing meals, gardening, doing laundry, etc. — was a sort of contemplation. The nuns didn’t usually take in young volunteers but, knowing the family situation, they understood the need and so welcomed them. They made salads and set the tables and gathered the dirty dishes from the dining hall and, during their downtime, they swam in the sea and walked the beach, while their mother sat in a rocking chair on the second-floor veranda, gazing out at the water and sky. Rooms at St. Mary’s were furnished with a single bed, a chair, a bureau, and a coat stand. Bathrooms were shared. No phones in the rooms, no televisions. Bare bones it might be, but it was quiet, and there was no booze, no brawls, no bad language, and Eileen’s father did not join them. And there, just yards away, was the sea, the shining, ever-moving, ever-changing, life-affirming miracle of the sea.

  Now, Eileen carried her shoes in her left hand, delighting in the feel of warm sand on her square, callous-heeled feet. She glanced back at St. Mary’s. Though her mother had now passed on, she imagined she could still see her there, sitting on the farthest corner of the southeastern arm of the building, second floor, rocking away, rosary in hand, fingers moving. She was, as always it seemed, praying for her husband, for him to put down the bottle, for him to stop tossing all their money into the wind, or into the hands of other women, or bookies … she was praying for guidance, and for patience.

  Eileen kept walking, praying for the same things. Well, not for her father, who was long in the grave, his liver finally giving out, and no surprise there. But she prayed for patience, for the ability to see Christ in the face of every human, even the messy ones, even the highly annoying ones. And she prayed for guidance. How to help? How to heal? How to stay faithful in times when God seemed to go silent? Like now. Only the seagulls sang; God remained mute.

  Caroline came to mind. Eileen doubted she’d make it as a nun. Rich girl. No Catholic background. Eileen could tell the young nun was less than thrilled with her accommodations, the old furniture, the handoffs, the grubbiness of it all. Eileen suspected she had grown up on a diet of movies featuring whatever the contemporary version of Loretta Young/Ingrid Bergman nuns were — Whoopi Goldberg? Didn’t Eric Idle play a nun once? Killer nuns, sexy nuns, mean nuns, funny nuns, crazy nuns, sainted nuns, where did one go to find portrayals of real nuns? Just women, trying to deal with life on God’s terms, full of questions, joys, fears, weaknesses, strengths, doubts — yes, that, for what kind of faith would not stand up to questions — anger and moral agency? And so, she walked, and prayed for Caroline, that she might find the path God wished for her.

  As the sun rose, Eileen turned back. She was at St. Mary’s to lead a weekend retreat on centring prayer for all those in twelve-step programs. There were eighteen participants this weekend, including her sister, Alice. Eileen knew Alice would want to speak to her this morning; knew the conversation would be difficult, in spite of the fact they’d had it more than once, heck, more than a dozen times over the years. Eileen sighed. She said a prayer. Come on, Jesus, help me find the right words. Let me be a servant to the greatest good. Hello? Hello?

  She followed the path up through the beach grass, past the wild rose bushes toward the lookout on the top of the dune. Alice sat on one of the benches, her long brown hair braided down her back. A plump woman in her early forties, she had inherited their father’s love of drink, and only been sober for the past two years. The long history of cigarettes and whisky, of late nights and broken hearts, had left its mark in the deep lines on her leathery skin and in the shadows under her eyes. Her hands moved nervously, pulling her T-shirt down over the swath of skin between it and the waistband of her shorts. She crossed and uncrossed and crossed her ankles again, then brushed invisible sand off her thighs.

  “Hey,” Alice said. “I thought I’d find you here. I was going to join you on your walk, but you were gone so early and then, when I saw you out there, I figured you were praying or something, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “How did you sleep?” asked Eileen.

  “Okay. You know. It can get pretty hot in those rooms on the third floor.”

  “I thought you wanted to be up there, away from everyone. Do you want to move? There’s a second-floor room open, I think, one with a breeze.”

  Alice looked toward the sea and paused before speaking. “I was surprised you said what you did in the meeting last night.”

  “Were you?”

  Alice snapped her head back to look at Eileen. Her eyes sparkled. Tears coming. “Of course I was. How can you talk about something like that in front of all these people?”

  “How did it make you feel?”

  “How do you think? People looking at me now, wondering if Father Devlin went after me as well.”

  “You’ve said he didn’t.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Eileen let the silence sit between them. Her abuse at the hands of the neighbourhood priest was no secret, nor was the abuse of her siblings Monica, David,
and Peter. And so why, now, was Alice so upset by Eileen’s not-very-new revelation? Alice kept looking out at the ocean, at the light dancing there now the sun was up. In profile she looked very much like a pouting child, mad that she hadn’t been invited to something. This was, if not an old conversation between them, at least not a new one.

  “Alice, I’ve come to terms with all this.”

  Eileen thought about that day, so many years ago, when she’d finally been willing to let it go. She had sat in the sand, not far from this very place, and written the names of the priests who had abused her on pieces of paper. She wrapped the paper around rocks she found. And then, she stood, walked to the water’s edge and, with a prayer that her fury and brokenness might go with them, she flung them far out into the waves.

  “Good for you,” said Alice.

  “What is it that still upsets you so?”

  “Someone should have done something. Mom and Dad, they should have.”

  “Is it the injustice, then?”

  “Yes, sure. No.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. It just makes me so fucking mad.”

  “Our parents were pretty wrapped up in their own lives. Dad’s drinking and all.”

  “Like that’s an excuse.”

  “Not an excuse. Maybe just an explanation. Mom was so busy covering up for Dad during those years, I don’t think she really knew what was going on. Having Aunt Toni take us off her hands for a few hours was a godsend, I expect. Things were different by the time you came along. Dad was more or less dry by then.”

  “Great. Rage instead of booze.”

  Eileen looked out across the sand at the fishermen far out on the jetties. No one was catching anything this morning. “I didn’t say sober, Alice. That’s something else entirely, as you and I both know. Are you still going to meetings?”

  Adult Children of Alcoholics for Eileen, and Alcoholics Anonymous for Alice. Eileen, like her sister Mary, didn’t seem to have inherited the alcoholic gene, not the way Peter, Alice, and Anne had. Paul, too, although his drug of choice was much harder stuff. Off the needle fifteen years now, but every day was a struggle.

  Alice was crying now. Fat, oily tears slipping down her cheeks, dripping onto her T-shirt. “It’s too hard,” she said, “all of this. It’s too fucking hard.”

  Ordinarily this might have been the moment when Eileen would ask, what’s the invitation? Here, in this pain and darkness, what’s the invitation? To release? To forgive? But how did you ask these things of your own sister? This is why Freud should never have analyzed his own daughter. He knew too much, he projected too much. He knew so little.

  Eileen took her sister’s hand, and Alice allowed it. “It’s all right,” she said. “I promise, all shall be well …”

  Alice smiled, “And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, right?”

  “And this too shall pass,” said Eileen. “Eventually.”

  There was laughter then, against the blinding light of the glittering sea, with all that depth and turbulence, unseen, unexpected, and oh so dangerous.

  The two women walked back to the retreat house, arm in arm. The storm had passed, and Alice was chattering about her new job with the Department of Children and Families and how difficult it was to see what really went on in people’s houses, how impossible it was to believe the terrible things people could do to their children. “Careless,” she said, “they’re all just so involved in their own dramas, they never see what they’re doing to other people.”

  And Eileen thought, with a snottiness she recognized, Right, it must be so hard to take care of other people, to keep cleaning up their messes. Silence, though. She kept her silence and prayed for patience and release.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Eileen and Felida, her spiritual director, sat in the corner room of the retreat house that was set aside for conversations between directors and directees. Felida, grounded as an oak stump, with the air of a pioneer wife, someone who would be as comfortable behind a mule team as leading a chapel service, wore a long denim skirt and a white short-sleeved blouse. On her feet she sported Birkenstocks and socks, which made her bunions less painful.

  “And yet?” asked Felida, in response to her inquiry into Eileen’s prayer life.

  Eileen shrugged. “It is, as it has been for so long, a one-way conversation.” She sighed and lay her palm over the Sisters of Saint Joseph’s medallion at her throat. “It’s not getting any better.”

  “What’s that like for you?”

  “It’s damn hard. Miserably hard. I’m getting pretty annoyed at God.”

  “She can take it.” Felida chuckled. “Anyone else you’re annoyed at?”

  She thought about Angela Morrison. Eileen was drawn to the vivacious woman while at the same time she was vexed by her, a reaction that shamed her. There was a kind of glow about her, an energy, a glamour, with her chic bobbed hair, her quick smile, and the easy way she had with people. Charm, Eileen supposed it was. Something she had never had. “Yes. There is, as it happens.”

  She looked at Felida with her Buddha-placid face, slightly sunburned, her skin etched with tiny lines. A peaceful face. A face with no strain in it. A surrendered face. It was the face Eileen wanted for herself, plain but kind, unadorned and open.

  “I think,” she said, “I have trouble seeing God in careless people.”

  “The dear neighbour.” Felida raised an eyebrow to encourage Eileen to keep going.

  “Although God has been distant for a long time, I can still almost see Her in ordinary things, just a glimmer, and it disappears the second I try to look directly at it, which makes it feel like a sort of hide-and-seek God’s playing, but sure, there, in the everyday stuff — the dish soap, the tea towel, and the recycling bin. In the ordinary activities, in the cleaning of a toilet, the scraping of a plate, the making of a bed, the scrubbing of a floor.

  “No! You know what it is? It’s like a piano. I can feel the tap on the keys, I can feel the hammer move on the string, but there’s no music.”

  “Wow.”

  The two women sat quietly, allowing that image to resonate.

  Then, Felida said, “I hear you talking about things you do alone.”

  “I know it. It’s people who are the problem. And not all people. I don’t find myself annoyed with the clients at the Pantry, no matter how often they seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. I see how the Sacred works in their lives, even if She’s not obvious in my own at the moment, but it’s people who are careless in that Great Gatsby sort of way, running after their own desires, knocking other people down to get them, expecting other people to clean up after them.”

  “In what way careless?” asked Felida. “Like who else?”

  Eileen snorted. “Damn. Well, it always goes back to the old wounds, doesn’t it? Yes, my father was a careless man. Careless with booze, with his fists, with his money, with his wife, with his kids. And Mom, well, that was another kind of careless. Narcissistic. Dramatic.”

  “So, as the oldest, you were left to clean up after everyone.”

  “I’ve had enough of that crap.”

  Felida laughed. “I’m sure you have.”

  “There’s someone at the Pantry, a volunteer, and I don’t know why she reminds me of all that, but she does. She was flirting with someone today and it was all I could do not to smack her hand and say, ‘No! Not for you!’” Eileen chuckled. “That little voice is telling me, well, my dear, there’s trouble. You know, sometimes I think I should have gone into a cloistered order and spent my life praying and making cheese or something.”

  Eileen said it as a joke, but part of her yearned for stained glass and gothic arches, for wide, fragrant meadows and star-encrusted nights. The Great Silence that was not in fact silent at all, but rather filled with the breath of God. The swish of long skirts. The sound of bread being kneaded on a wooden table. Soft footsteps on stone stairs.

  Felida said, “And here we are stuck with the G
od of the daily mess. God of the salt and pepper shakers. You know, Eileen, that’s the God who gets me through, silly as it may sound. We all want the visions and the glory; we hope for it. We want to be Hildegard of Bingen or Julian of Norwich or St. Joan — well, except for the burning bit — but we end up being more like the Buddhists with their ‘before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’”

  Eileen raised an eyebrow. “So, is it wrong that I want the pillar of mercy and light right there next to the salt shaker?”

  “Not wrong, Eileen, but imagine with me, the pillar of salt. That’s what comes to my mind when you say that.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” She paused. “Lot’s wife looked back, didn’t she?”

  “Exactly. Although she was saved, and her family with her, she didn’t look forward to God’s grace, but behind her, to a place that offered her nothing.”

  Eileen made a face, wrinkling her nose. “She did, however, become a lesson for others. What a damn cost, though.”

  Felida folded her hands in her lap. “I wonder if this great distance you feel from God, Her apparent refusal to draw you near, isn’t in some way linked to the carelessness you felt at the hands of your father, at the hands of the priest who so horribly harmed you, and now, is perhaps mirrored in the behaviour of this woman? What does it feel like in you when I say that?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Something to meditate on, then, yes?”

  The old novitiate maxim, “Resistance is the edge of growth,” came to mind, and for sure she felt that resistance, like she was about to undergo a spiritual root canal, and it confirmed to Eileen it was precisely what she needed to do. Another reluctant yes, but yes nonetheless to this mysterious God, because of the resistance, not in spite of it.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And more shall be revealed.”

  Eileen didn’t say so aloud, but in her head a small voice said, That’s what I’m afraid of.