I picture the scene, with stupid Northcutt fleeing the office with his tail between his legs, some old lady in a giant winged nun’s hat scolding him as he goes. It’s a very nice scene to imagine.
“So you’re okay? She’s okay? I was so fucking worried when I heard.”
“We’re okay,” Zenny says sleepily. “Believe it or not, we can take care of ourselves without Sean Bell coming in to save the day.” She pats my chest as if I’m a tamed bear who thinks he’s ferocious, but is only a harmless old lump instead.
“I know, I know…I just want you to be safe, is all. I—” wrong word, Sean! “—care about you.”
“Mmm. I care about you too. And I like that you care about me.”
She says it simply, dozily, and it’s the last thing she says before she falls into sex-exhausted sleep.
But me? I stay awake for a long time, my brain still spinning and reeling with this new thing, this new love. This new love that I can’t ever, ever keep.
***
The next week passes in a blur of sex and work. We find a rhythm that feels impossibly right—sex in the morning, then work for me and classes and rotations for her. In the evening she has her shelter shifts and I start going with, because I can’t stand to be apart from her (of course, I don’t just get to hover around her and steal kisses when no one’s looking; she puts me to work in the kitchen). And then we come home and fuck late into the night. Her curiosity knows no bounds, it makes her brave, and she tries the jeweled plug for the first time and loves it. We fuck in every position she wants to try, every position I can think of, we sneak a fuck in my office and one in the corner of an expensive restaurant. We snuggle and watch movies and I burn with this secret love for her and it chars me up inside, it sears me and cracks me. I can’t get enough of it.
I try to make her doubt in earnest.
It never works.
And it’s a stinging thing to note that even as I try my hardest, even as I throw every reason I ever hated God or despised the Church at her, I can’t crack her faith the way her love cracks me. I can’t carve away her connection with God the same way she’s carved a gap into my heart that she refuses to fill.
I can’t bear to tell her I love her. It feels manipulative somehow…and also I’m frightened. I don’t think I’ll survive it if I tell her and she dismisses it. Dismisses me. I can even imagine it, in my worst moments, the way her mouth will soften in pity and her eyes will shine from compassion.
Sean, I’m flattered, she’ll say, and she’ll do something mortifying, like pat my shoulder. But you know I don’t feel the same way. You know I never will.
God, the fucking irony of a sinner loving a nun. It’s agony. I’m dying. And as I’m both alight and aflame with loving her, these splashes of thought keep coming out of nowhere, like raindrops on a sunny day.
Raindrop number one: I’m jealous of Zenny’s relationship with God—not only jealous like a lover watching his beloved with someone else but jealous that she has it. Jealous that she’s mature enough to be angry about all the pain in the world and to accuse God of not doing enough, and then in the same breath, work to change that pain in His name.
Raindrop number two: Zenny reminds me of the things I loved about God. A sense of curiosity, a bravery, a turbulent emotion bundled close with the deepest peace. Things I felt about God once upon a time, and felt about myself.
Raindrop number three: if loving Zenny is even close to the way she loves God, I understand why she’s choosing this life.
I realized being furious with Him was not the same thing as wanting Him out of my life. That’s what my mom said the day I found her with the rosary. What if that were true for me too? Is hating God the same thing as not believing in Him? Can you hate a thing you don’t believe in?
And when I say I hate God, what do I mean? Do I mean that I’m angry about Lizzy, angry that humans who were supposed to serve goodness were actually monsters, and that it’s all His fault? Do I mean I never want to think about Him again? Or do I mean that I want to rage at Him, to howl and pace and scream, and have Him listen? Have Him witness and hear and see my pain?
And one night, in the dark as Zenny sleeps, I send up a thought like a balloon.
I still hate you, I think up to the ceiling. You let us all down and I’ll never forgive you.
Nothing happens. The ceiling remains a ceiling, my room remains quiet save for the soft snores of the little nun at my side. There’s no burning bushes or shimmering prophets poking their heads out of the walls.
Except when I tell Zenny about it the next morning, she gives me a knowing smile and eyes full of compassion.
“Sean,” she says. “That was a prayer. You prayed.”
It’s like looking up and seeing a green sky, this thought.
It haunts me for days.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two weeks left.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I stare at my phone for a minute before I slide it back into my pocket. The property owner is ahead of me, talking in over-bright tones to the Reverend Mother and Zenny, gesturing around to windows and load-bearing beams. I should be up there with them, and I will be.
In just a moment.
It’s another bowel obstruction, Dad had explained. They don’t know if it’s the old site flaring up or something new—new mets in her intestines, maybe. Adhesions from the last surgery. They did a suction on her stomach to relieve the pressure; she’s about to go in for a scan now.
It’s funny how quickly everything can fall apart. Only last week she was putting away dishes and arguing about God…and now we’re back in the hospital, possibly facing another surgery.
I glance at my watch. It’s 4:13 now, and Dad thinks Mom will be done with her scan and back in her room before six. That should give me plenty of time to finish the tour and drop Zenny off at the shelter and the Reverend Mother back at the monastery.
Maintain, you idiot, I chastise myself. Because my hands are shaking, and for a dumb, terrible minute, all I can feel is this kind of stale fear and even staler exhaustion. Because I know once I get to the hospital, it will be the triple duty of comforting Dad and handling the doctors and keeping Mom company. I love my father, but he can barely be strong enough for her—he can’t be strong for himself. Or be counted on to ask hard questions and to chase down nurses and to demand every next step Mom needs.
It has to be me.
I take a breath and catch up with the group.
“And here, we can easily build in an office for you,” the owner is saying.
The prioress is nodding thoughtfully. “And the expense?” she asks.
“Well, ideally…” the owner trails off as the prioress studies him. She’s in her mid-seventies, black, short and stout, with massive glasses and wrinkled, expressive hands. They’re folded over her belly now as she waits for him to finish saying whatever stupid thing he’s going to say.
He wisely reconsiders. “I’d be happy to do the renovations myself.”
“Oh, how kind,” the Reverend Mother says. “That would be a lovely gift.”
She says it in a way that’s genuine, that even I feel, and I think she is warmly grateful. But I also recognize as a businessman that she’s getting exactly what she needs from him, and all it took was a silent look. I wonder if she gives lessons.
And then it’s done. The prioress approves the site, both parties sign a provisional contract I drew up, and then I’m driving the women away from the property. I can’t kiss Zenny goodbye at the shelter with the Reverend Mother waiting in my car by the curb, but I do get out and walk her to the front door and tell her things that have her lashes fluttering until she disappears inside. And then I climb back into the car, preparing to drive the Reverend Mother back to the monastery, which is a sprawling old house in Midtown.
“So you’re the man having sex with Zenobia,” the Reverend Mother says before I can even get my seat belt buckled.
My hand fumbles for a minute on the bel
t; a thousand awful, awkward scenarios roll through my mind, the worst ones featuring Zenny exiled from this vocation she holds so dear and the least worst involving unwelcome lectures about chastity and propriety.
It occurs to me, in a racing shadow of desperate expediency, that I could lie to her. I could say that I’m simply helping with this shelter move and trying to make up for my part in the Keegan deal. I could say that Zenny’s an old friend, that what I feel for her is nothing more than older-brotherly, and I’m merely looking out for her for Elijah’s sake.
But right after the shadow comes a quick slant of light.
I can’t lie.
Not only would lying to the Reverend Mother be—I suspect—quite futile, as she’d see through it immediately and be understandably unimpressed with my deceit, but I can’t help but feel that Zenny wouldn’t want me to lie. That she’d want me to be honest no matter what the consequences were, because she would do the same in my place. Because she has lived honestly, even when it came at the cost of her identity as the model Iverson daughter, even when it brought her parents’ disapproval down around her ears. Here I am, a thirty-six-year-old millionaire taking courage from a college student, but there you are. When the college student is Zenny, you’d be foolish not to use her as an example.
And—cheeringly—I realize that any lecture can only last as long as the drive to Midtown, which is about fifteen minutes in the afternoon traffic.
I finish buckling, start the car, and glance over at the prioress. She’s staring serenely back at me, knobbled hands folded in her lap, the stark framing of her wimple around her head making her eyes behind their glasses look even bigger, inescapable.
“Yes,” I say. I don’t know what else to say after that, though, so I turn back to the road and shift into gear and we pull away.
“And?”
Well, that was definitely not what I was expecting. Does she want some kind of report? Or am I due for a lecture and she wants to start with me accounting for my actions like a schoolboy?
“And what, ma’am?”
She makes a noise—it’s the noise old people make when they think young people are being deliberately obtuse. “How is she? How is she feeling? Where does her heart wander? I might be her mentor but you are her lover—surely you know these things.”
My hand opens and closes on the gearshift as I search for words. Trying to describe Zenny in some kind of bizarre moral report—and within such a short time as the drive allows—is an impossibility. Zenny defies simple observations, simple explanations. It’s part of why I love her so much.
“Try,” the old nun says, seeing my struggle.
I don’t like talking about Zenny like this—when she’s not here—so I decide to talk about her only in the most abstract and broad strokes, so as not to accidentally betray any confidence.
“She’s magnificent and fierce and smart,” I say. I think of the roller-skating rink, of our nights together at the shelter, and then say, “She cares more than I can tell you about the people in the shelter and becoming a midwife for the needy; she speaks about God with reverence and balance. She told me she wanted to take this month to make certain of her path and her upcoming vows, and all I see from her is ironclad certainty.” I give a smile that I mean to be lighthearted but it twists bitterly on my mouth instead. “She’s more committed than ever.”
“Ah. You love her.”
What’s the point of denying it? “Yes,” I say, helplessly. “Yes, I love her.”
“And you don’t understand why she chooses this path.”
I shrug with one shoulder as I shift gears. “I understand it better than I did two weeks ago, but…you’re right. I still don’t understand. Not all the way.”
The nun is silent for a moment, and I get the impression she’s more comfortable in silence than she is in words, and it’s not as awkward as I would have thought it might be, sharing a car with someone who prefers quiet.
It’s actually quite soothing, the silence not heavy or demanding or smothering. It’s restful, and everything takes a kind of bluing, quieting hue like this. Zenny and my unrequited love for her, my mother in a hospital bed right now, getting scans and tubes and medicines.
Images of empty sanctuaries flit through my mind, the kind of reverent hush that comes with a sacred space. The calming way candles flicker and dance along the edges of the room.
“Zenny told me about your sister. It was a terrible thing that was done to her. A terrible, evil thing.”
And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, I trust this woman. I trust her because she didn’t give me some blandishment about God’s will or how Lizzy is “in a better place” (although even the last phrase was only sparingly handed out following Lizzy’s suicide, given the uneasy Catholic attitude toward self-destruction and its implications for the immortal soul). The Reverend Mother didn’t offer up an empty apology or murmur something about praying for our family or Lizzy’s soul.
She simply said the truth. And having the truth acknowledged feels like an embrace and comfort all on its own. I thought of the night last week when I prayed; when I decided to believe in God just long enough to accuse and censure Him, when I realized I wanted Him to sit and listen to me roar and scream until my voice was hoarse. Because having God listen to the truth, to really hear it, to really see it, was the only thing that could heal the sister-shaped gouge in my soul.
I’d tried disbelief, I’d tried scorn, I’d tried every kind of nonbeliever’s stance and sinner’s trick, and I tried them for a decade and a half, and still there was this ragged, infected wound somewhere inside me. The only thing left to try was going back to God and informing Him of the mess He’d made.
“It was terrible,” I echo. My voice is barely there when I say it.
“And so you wonder how anyone can believe in God after that? After what She let happen?”
That catches my notice. “She?” I taunt, gently. “That’s not very devout.”
The prioress smiles. “Biblical metaphors for God include a laboring woman, a breastfeeding mother, even a mother hen. And man and woman were both created in God’s image, were they not? Why use Him and not Her? In fact, why even say God instead of Goddess? Both Him and Her are not enough to contain the fullness of God, who is outside the construct of gender, who is so much more than the human mind can conceive.”
I smile too, because if this is a sample of the Reverend Mother’s mentoring style, I can see why Zenny is at home in her order.
“I don’t know what to think about God,” I say, going back to our earlier thread. “I used to know exactly what I thought, I used to know exactly how I felt. But I’m more confused than ever. It feels like going backwards, going from being sure to not sure at all. Going from all the answers to none.”
The nun nods, as if I’ve said something wise and not just confessed to my own muddle-headed stupidity.
“Isn’t that bad?” I follow up. “Not to know anything? And then I look at Zenny and how she is so comfortable with what she doesn’t know, and that scares me too. I’m worried getting comfortable with not knowing means surrendering something crucial.”
“Sean, faith and belief are the practices of committing a life in the face of no answers. God is and always will be outside of human comprehension. And loving Her is an act, it’s not stubbornly repeating creeds and trying to force Her into modern expectations or rational paradigms. She’ll never fit in the same boxes we apply to science and reason; She’s not meant to. And to try to force it only breeds spiritual violence in the end.”
“Okay,” I concede, although the things she just said are all things I’ll have to think about later. “That’s God. But what about the Church then? Can’t Zenny—or you or any of the sisters—do these same good works without pledging away your free will?”
“Our free will?”
“Obedience is one of the vows, isn’t it? Obedience to the Church? Obedience to the men who run it?”
The old woman snorts, and
I look over in surprise. “I’ll be obedient to those bishops the day I die and not a day sooner.” At my expression, she huffs again. “I’m obedient to God and to my conscience and to the poor. I’m obedient to my fellow sisters.”
And then under her breath, she mutters, “Obedient to men. Hmph.”
“But they’re the entire administrative structure of the Church.”
“For now. But the Church belongs to us as much as it belongs to them.” And then she nods her head at her own words.
I want to protest this—there’s still so much I can complain about, ways that the Church hasn’t changed since the abuse scandals for example—but then she adds, “We make a place for people to meet God and for God to meet Her people. A place that is safe and free of corruption.”
And I can’t argue with that. In fact, it’s the perfect counterargument to my complaining about the evil hierarchy of the Church—the nuns have carved out a place separate from the bishops and the bullshit and the bureaucracy, a place where they can put their heads down and get on with the work of serving the sick and the poor.
Of course, I understand that it’s not that simple—I’ve heard Tyler talk enough about the troubles between the nuns and the Vatican to know that the men still frequently try to take the women in hand. But the sisters, as the saying goes, persist.
I notice the Reverend Mother shivering the slightest bit and turn down the AC. “So that sorts obedience,” I concede. “But what about chastity?”
“I’ll admit, I’m less strict about it than many Reverend Mothers—as you well know. But we ask chastity of our vowed nuns not only as a trust and sacrifice to God, but also so that they live lives free of other obligations. Our sisters are free to serve the poor completely because they don’t have children and families of their own. Because they don’t have needy men taking up their time.”
Sinner (Priest Book 3) Page 24
