Rueful Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  A costume for the King of Hearts. A gold crown with emeralds and rubies.

  Maybe I wouldn't come back.

  Chapter Two

  The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for Him there.

  George Bernard Shaw

  "You look like you're glad to get away," Maggie said.

  We were headed into Pecan Springs, several miles away, to leave Maggie's van behind the restaurant and meet Ruby, who would drive us to St. Theresa's. The sky was a chilly gray and drops of rain were splattering on the windshield. In central Texas, winter is never what you expect, and usually not what you want. Before Christmas, when I'd been stuck in the shop, the sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the temperature was a balmy seventy. Now that I was free, the next two weeks would be cold and blustery. But what did it matter? I had books to read, a place to stay warm, and time to be quiet. A blizzard could blow down from the Panhandle, and I'd still be content.

  "Glad? You bet." I stretched my legs in the roomy front seat. "I've got a lot to think about while we're gone."

  "St. T's is the place for thinking," Maggie said. She grinned wryly. "There isn't much else to do out there but cultivate the inner life."

  Maggie is in her mid-forties and stockily built, with sturdy arms and hands made for work. Her graying hair is razored flat in a no-nonsense boy-cut, and in the two years she's run the restaurant, I've never seen her wear lipstick. Her beauty is in the smile that softens her square face. And in her eyes-blue, intelligent, caring. She's been out of the monastery for a while, but she still has the look of a nun. It's a quiet, inward-turning look, as if she were engrossed in a reality that the rest of us don't see.

  Nuns are a mystery to me. They seem different, otherworldly, untouchable, self-contained. But there's a deeper mystery about them, a contradiction I've never quite understood. They're independent enough to reject things that women in our culture are supposed to want-a career, a house, a husband, children. But at the same time, they're dependent on God and the Church and obedient to their superiors, including the male hierarchy that has such power over them. Then there's commitment. How can somebody commit herself for an entire lifetime, for God's sake? It's hard enough for me to commit myself to an eighteen-month lease on a house.

  "Yes, St. T's is very restful, very quiet," Maggie remarked. She paused. "Or at least it was. Now…"

  I glanced at her. "Now what?"

  "It's complicated," Maggie said. "There are a lot of uncertainties. A lot of unrest."

  "In a monastery?" I asked, surprised. From the outside, monastic life looked settled and certain, a cocoon of perpetual calm.

  Maggie was looking straight ahead. She didn't answer.

  "Tell me about the place," I said. "I don't know much except that it's famous for its garlic."

  There is garlic and there is garlic.

  The garlic you buy in the grocery store in spring and early summer (eight or nine months after it was dug out of the ground) has probably already expired. The living, breathing bulb was sprayed with sprout inhibitors and asphyxiated in a tightly wrapped plastic coffin. By the time it arrives in your kitchen, it's DO A, a victim of the packing and shipping industries. It can be moldy on the outside and empty inside. You'll probably throw half of it out.

  But even if it's fresh, garlic fanciers say, supermarket garlic still isn't the most flavorful garlic. Commercially grown garlic is called "soft-necked" or "nonbolting" garlic. The bulbs are small and tight and white, easy to harvest, easy to store and ship. But if you want sweet, sharp, smooth-tasting garlic, you want rocambole, which is not easy to find.

  If rocambole (the word rhymes with soul) tastes so much better, why don't more producers grow it? The answer lies in the odd growth habit of this plant, which is sometimes called "top-setting" or "serpent" garlic. Cheered on by spring rains and bright sun, rocambole sends up an enthusiastic flower stalk, two or three feet high, coiled like a snake. At the top of this curlicue stalk is a pod of a hundred or so bulbils, each one keen on sprouting into a new garlic plant when the top-heavy flower stalk falls over. This curious arrangement is garlic's way of ensuring that another generation will be around to carry on the delightful business of being garlic.

  Rocambole's fervent insistence on providing for the future, however, makes it a commercial disaster. The snaky stalks snarl harvesting equipment. The bulbils fall between the rows, where they sprout, come spring. To make matters worse, the cloves are only loosely attached at the root base. They fall apart and bury themselves in the soil, happily intent on growing into adult rocambole. These untidy pro-creative habits result in a whole slew of eager volunteers sprouting greenly between the rows in April and May, where they must be pulled by hand or rousted out by a cultivator. Finally, and perhaps most damning of all, the cloves aren't paper white (which is the politically correct color if you happen to be garlic). Sometimes they're brown skinned. Sometimes they're red. Sometimes they're purple. The garlic that is grown by the sisters of St. Theresa's is a hard-necked, top-setting rocambole with flavorful, colorful cloves that practically pop out of their richly purpled skins. It is arguably the best garlic grown in the state of Texas-or anywhere else, for that matter. In the past few years, St. Theresa's rocambole has become increasingly popular among cooks who are fussy about garlic.

  I turned toward Maggie. "You'd have to sell quite a bit of garlic to make ends meet. Do the sisters really manage to support themselves growing rocambole?"

  "Pretty much," Maggie said. "But there's always maintenance and equipment and emergency expenditures. They'll be glad of the trust fund."

  "What trust fund?"

  But the answer to that question would have to wait Maggie was parking in the lot behind her restaurant, where she planned to leave the van for her employees to use. We got out and carried our bags across the street to the Crystal Cave. I steadfastly averted my eyes from the wreath-decked front door of Thyme and Seasons, which I had recently painted an inviting forest green.

  I'd locked the store the night before, and I didn't need to check to see how things were. I know the place by heart-stone walls, scarred wooden floor, beamed ceiling hung with braids of garlic and ristras-strings of dried red peppers. Wooden shelves that hold glass jars and stone crocks full of dried herbs, as well as vinegars, teas, herbal soaps, potpourri. Baskets of strawflowers, nigella, globe amaranth, celosia, blue salvia, and poppy pods. Wreaths of artemisia and dried sweet Annie. Red clay pots of lavender, thyme, rosemary, scented geraniums.

  Thyme and Seasons is the shop I had dreamed of, filled with useful, delightful plants. But the dream had swallowed my life. I thought of Wanda Rathbottom owning the store instead of me-a thought that six months before would have turned my stomach. Today, it almost seemed inviting. Maybe I could sell the shop to Wanda with the provision that I stay on as gardener. That way, I could spend spring in the garden, rather than behind the cash register. Maybe I could-I pushed the thought away. There was time later to think of options. For the next fourteen days, I planned not to think at all.

  Before we actually reached the Crystal Cave, the door opened and Ruby came down the walk, carrying a large suitcase. I did a double take. Ruby is six feet tall, with fiery red hair that she wears in a wild frizz. She was dressed in an ankle-length brown caftan belted with a length of rope.

  The hood of the caftan was pulled up, hiding her hair. " I've never been to a monastery before," Ruby said, seeing my inquiring glance. "I didn't know what to wear."

  She looked nervously at my jeans and Maggie's dark slacks. "Am I okay? Should I change into something more appropriate?"

  "What could be more appropriate?" I asked. "You look like you're auditioning for Sister Act III."

  "I didn't wear perfume," Ruby said, as if that explained something. She unlocked the trunk of her red Honda, which was parked at the curb. "Or nail polish. Or my tinted contacts."

  "You must feel practically naked," Maggie replied with a grin, putting her bag into the trunk.

&
nbsp; Ruby nodded, taking her seriously. "I didn't think nuns were into mat sort of tiling. I thought I should be just plain Ruby."

  "Whatever you do, you'll never be just plain Ruby," I said affectionately, adding my bag. "It's a contradiction in terms." Ruby's suitcase went in last, with difficulty, and we climbed into the little car, Maggie in the back. As we drove off, I said to Maggie over my shoulder, "Now, tell me about that trust fund."

  "Trust fund?" Ruby asked, making a left turn in front of a telephone company truck. "Did somebody inherit something?"

  "The monastery inherited some money," I said, fastening my seat belt. Riding with Ruby can be thrilling. "Maggie was just starting to tell me about it.''

  "Actually, it was quite a lot of money," Maggie said. "But the story goes back a few years, and it's complicated. Maybe I'd better start at the beginning."

  So while Ruby drove westward under an increasingly threatening sky, Maggie told us the tale of St. Theresa's legacy. It began in a Catholic high school in San Antonio, where an English teacher named Sister Hilaria befriended Helen Henderson, a young student teacher. The two maintained their friendship through frequent letters even after Helen married her college sweetheart, Bert Laney, and moved to his two-thousand-acre ranch near Carr, ninety miles northwest of San Antonio. A few years later, he died in an automobile accident, leaving Helen Laney a wealthy, childless widow. The next year, Helen was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. It would ultimately kill her.

  Meanwhile, back in San Antonio, Sister Hilaria's energetic work had brought her increased visibility within her order, the Sisters of the Holy Heart. She was active in every community project and served on a dozen local and national boards. But over the next few years, Sister Hilaria began to think wistfully about living a quieter, more prayerful life. After consulting God and receiving His approval on the project, she went to her superior and requested permission to establish a contemplative house where sisters might step out of their active lives of service to engage in prayer and reflection.

  Sister Hilaria's superior was not exactly overjoyed at the idea of retiring one of her most outstanding achievers, but she dutifully bumped the request up the chain of command. After a great deal of hemming and hawing, the order's Reverend Mother General finally said yes-if Hilaria could find an acceptable site for her contemplative community and raise the operating expenses to keep it going. Obviously, Sister Hilaria had gotten permission to do what she wanted because nobody in the order believed she could actually do it. Real estate in Texas was booming, land prices had shot up like Roman candles, and people who had been accustomed to investing in God were looking for better returns from Mammon and Company. In that economic climate, why should anybody sink a nickel into a new religious community that would never turn a dime?

  But Sister Hilaria was praying, and when Sister Hilaria prayed, God listened. She was also writing letters. One of the letters went to her old friend Helen Laney, who invited her to visit the Laney Ranch and look around. By now, Helen was quite ill, she was living alone in a large house, and she had no children to inherit her property when she died-no relatives at all, in fact, except for her husband's nephew and his wife, the Townsends. The ranch, Helen thought, might satisfy Sister Hilaria's needs.

  When Sister Hilaria arrived at the Laney Ranch, she saw that God had answered her prayers with a resounding "Yes, ma'am." Remote but accessible, the property was situated along the wild Yucca River a couple of hours south and west of Austin. The rambling stone-and-cedar ranch headquarters could serve as office, chapel, and refectory. The large bunkhouse could easily be converted into a dozen eight- by ten-foot cells, and several small cottages along the river could serve as guest quarters. There were the usual outbuildings-barns, vehicle storage sheds, a repair shop- and plenty of room to build more. With her practical eye, Sister Hilaria observed the tillable acreage along the Yucca River and the river itself, which could be partially diverted for irrigation. While she had enormous faith in the long-term productivity of prayer, she also believed in the short-term rewards of work. If the nuns wanted to eat, they could get their hands dirty.

  Following visits from the Reverend Mother General, correspondence with Rome, and enough red tape to stretch from here to the Pearly Gates, the final arrangements were blessed by the order's lawyers. After the initial fuss, however, nobody paid a lot of attention to the details of the transaction. The Laney land wasn't oil or coastal property, and it had no real value except to Sister Hilaria and her new community. Helen Laney deeded the ranch house and eight hundred acres to the Sisters of the Holy Heart, and constructed several necessary facilities-a small chapel, a dormitorylike building with individual cells for sisters, and additional residential cottages. In return, the nuns cared for Mrs. Laney until she died, five years later. In her will, she created a foundation to be managed by Sister Hilaria-now Mother Hilaria. She endowed it to the tune of some seven million dollars.

  "Seven million dollars!" Ruby exclaimed.

  I gave a long, low whistle. "That's a lot of garlic. The nuns obviously don't have to work for a living. Why didn't they give up their garlic farm long ago?''

  "Because in monastic life, work is a kind of prayer," Maggie said. "You do it for love, not for money." Her voice thinned. "And because Bert Laney's nephew-Carl Townsend-challenged the will in court."

  "Did Mrs. Laney leave him anything?" I asked. Relatives who aren't mentioned in a will often feel neglected. Sometimes they decide to take the matter to court. To forestall such a challenge, most lawyers suggest that you leave a dollar to any relative you're not fond of.

  "She gave the Townsends twelve hundred acres when she split the property. And she left them a hundred thousand dollars in her will."

  "Only a hundred thousand?" Ruby clucked her tongue against her teeth. "Some people are never satisfied."

  Maggie shifted her position, as if talking about the Townsends made her itchy. "The trouble is that they didn't get access to the river. They apparently expected to get the bulk of the estate, too. They were Bert Laney's only relatives and the money came from his side of the family in the first place."

  We were miles out of town by now, still heading west. Outside the window, a pale sun flirted with the dark clouds. The gray light gleamed on an arid landscape of scraggly cedar and bare mesquite, the rocky hillsides studded with patches of gray-green prickly pear. The annual rainfall in this area is only twenty inches a year, and surface water is at a premium. If I were a rancher in Carr County, I'd want access to that river. It didn't surprise me that the Town-sends had challenged Mrs. Laney's will.

  "Has the dispute been settled yet?" I asked. Estate claims are often appealed from one court to another, dragging on for ten or twenty years. "Last April, finally. The money's coming in now." Maggie's face grew somber. "Unfortunately, Mother Hi-laria didn't five to see it. She died in September. She was… electrocuted."

  Ruby gave a startled cry. I shuddered. "How did it happen?" "She was making coffee on the hot plate in her cottage. She spilled milk on the floor and apparently stepped in it when she switched off the hot plate. Even so, the jolt wouldn't have been enough to kill her if it hadn't been for her bad heart."

  "Mother Winifred-the woman I spoke with on the phone-is the new abbess, then," I said.

  "Yes. By the way, she's the one who's responsible for the monastery's herb garden. Not the garlic farm-that's somebody else. Mother Winifred grows all kinds of herbs. She's looking forward to showing you the garden."

  "I'm surprised that an abbess has time for gardening," Ruby remarked. She pulled out to pass a tractor pulling a wagon loaded with baled hay. A dog was perched on top of the bales, surveying the road ahead.

  "I'm surprised too," I said. "Especially an abbess with seven million dollars to manage-plus whatever the legacy has earned since it was invested. The principle must have doubled since then." Fourteen or fifteen million dollars, maybe more, depending on the savvy of the monastery's financial advisers
.

  "I don't think Mother Winifred has much to do with finances," Maggie said. "The bank manages the trust. Anyway, she's only acting. Last spring, you see, there was another complication. A surprise, actually, and not altogether pleasant." Her voice darkened. "The Sisters of the Holy Heart has eight or ten communities, scattered around the country. The day after the court decision was announced, the Reverend Mother General closed the community in Houston, St. Agatha's. Three months later, she sent a bus and some trucks and moved the St. Agatha sisters to St. T's."

  "Closed the community?" I turned to look at Maggie. "Why?"

  Maggie looked out of the window. "It's the way things are these days, I'm afraid. The Holy Heart Sisters have been losing vocations, like a lot of other orders. When I came to St. T's ten years ago, there were thirty-five sisters. Now they're down to twenty. But the situation at St. Agatha's was worse-down from sixty-something to twenty. The St. Agatha property was valuable because it was close to the airport. So Reverend Mother General sold it and packed the nuns off to St. T's."

  The sun had given up and let the clouds take over, and the windows were beginning to steam up, a sure sign that the temperature outside was dropping. I pulled my denim jacket tighter around me and wondered whether I should have brought mittens and a scarf. "How do the St. Agatha nuns feel about garlic?"

  Maggie's laugh was wry. "I haven't visited the monastery since they moved in, but Dominica-one of my friends at St. T's-tells me that they're definitely not happy campers. St. Agatha's was a conference center. The nuns were used to seeing important people and being on the fringes of important decisions."

  "And St. T's is on the fringe of nowhere," I said. It must have been quite a comedown, from serving church bigshots in a conference center to digging in a garlic patch. The sisters must be terribly hurt and resentful about having been moved.