The Passion of Mary-Margaret

by Lisa Samson

  I didn’t realize then, of course, that Jude wouldn’t live long enough to develop lung cancer or emphysema. Still, I was glad for the heads-up. It saved us a lot of arguing.

  It was important, all through those twenty-seven years, that I be on Jude’s side. I can’t say it any more simply than that.

  So we sat there chatting with our rough-around-the-edges friends, laughing at their crazy stories from the seventies, when one of the working girls got up, stumbled a little as she walked toward the door, teetering into one of the strangers, a guy named Ted.

  He turned and grabbed her arm. He’d thrown back at least four beers with a couple of shots. Don’t ask me why, it must be the morality meter inside of me, but I count people’s drinks. Anybody within eyeshot is going to get a tally in my brain. Isn’t that ridiculous? It does wonders for the short-term memory, however.

  She cried out. Her name was Barb. I liked her. Had been in Ocean City for about seven years. Runaway. Typical story other than the fact that she was headed for valedictorian and could do long division, and I mean looooooong division, in her head.

  Of course, Jude sprang to his feet to try and defuse the situation, and Ted’s friend, a man named Dale, did as well. What we didn’t know then was that Ted had recently returned from the men’s room after taking a hit of PCP.

  He reached into his boot and pulled out a knife. He drove it right into Jude’s chest and, quicker than you can blink, yanked it out and lodged it into the side of my husband’s neck.

  Jude went down and Ted scrambled out of the bar.

  I saw it all. God help me, I wish I hadn’t. The shock in his eyes, the dawning, but not fear. Actually, thinking about it, he looked a little ticked off at first. I don’t wish to describe the noises from him and the blood. It’s still too much to bear and so you must grant me a little grace in the telling of this.

  There we all were, the people who he’d helped at the mission, jumping from our seats and rushing over as he crumbled.

  I didn’t scream or cry. I just reached under his shoulders as the bartender called the police (and more people quickly left). Even as I held him that day years before on the bay as we sat on the hood of Mrs. Bray’s old station wagon and he cried and wailed as life returned to him like blood into a sleeping appendage, I held him as that same life seeped out. He couldn’t speak, he just reached for my hand and looked into my eyes. I curved my other hand around his cheek. “Hang on, Jude. It won’t be long before the paramedics are here.”

  He smiled, one corner of his mouth barely lifting. He mouthed the words, “Thank you.” And then it was done.

  It was done.

  He’d lost too much blood. The paramedics couldn’t save him. I stayed with his body as long as I could, slept little that night, waiting up for John, who came home right away. Together we paced in the coroner’s office as the autopsy was done the next day, and rode back to Locust Island, following the hearse that transported Jude’s body to the only funeral home in Abbeyville. John and I wept and laughed during the two-hour drive, remembering husband and father. I felt a little saddened by the fact that John didn’t know just what a transformation had occurred, how God can work so thoroughly, binding a human life to his Own and saying, “It is good.”

  A young couple bought the shop and our house the next year, just after my final season. He’d just inherited enough money to make a go of business but not enough to live on the interest. She did hair and was planning on having a shop on the upper floor where Jude had his workshop. I liked them. They bickered lovingly and liked kites. They didn’t want to live a normal life and I told them buying The Kite Shack was a good start.

  I contacted the School Sisters of St. Mary’s and after several steps and a couple of years, I entered the order, taking my final vows and coming back to the school on Locust Island.

  After all those years, I was truly a sister in the place I always wanted to be. Five years later it became the assisted-living village. How’s that for irony? But I found out I belonged more to the island than to teaching and was only too glad to stay. Oh, and I’d had so many exciting plans as a young woman, ready to follow Jesus into the darkest places and up to the brightest suns.

  It wasn’t the same without Jude, though. The place just wasn’t the same. And Gerald and Hattie weren’t needed to man Bethlehem Point any longer.

  Thank goodness Jesus told me I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And Angie returned after a while to pick up where we left off. When the Bray cottage went up for sale a decade ago, I bought it and gave it to the school with the provision that we be allowed to live out our lives there and serve at St. Mary’s Village.

  Sister Thaddeus, still sharp, and believe it or not, still elegant, thought it was the best idea she’d heard in years.

  I think Jude would have agreed.

  FEAST OF THE ASCENSION, 2010

  I suppose I should tell you what happened to Mary after this because she left this book by accident in Africa with John. When he came home for her funeral seven years later, he gave the book to me and now I’m finally sitting down to tell the rest of the story. So, no. Nobody found it in her underwear drawer. But it was me who cried over each piece of her belongings that we either threw away, kept for posterity, or sent to St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift store in Salisbury.

  As you can see by what is written here, I’m more of a doer than a teller. I told Mary-Francis that she’d better not expect a memoir from me. And I’m not nearly the upstart Mary says I am.

  I miss her more than I can say. She was my life’s companion.

  Mary-Margaret was extremely busy the last seven years of her life. She brought Father Ignatius back to Mercy House and cared for him for almost two years until his death. Oh, we loved having the old man around and the love they had for each other seemed to have collected over all those years only to be dumped on them all at once. She’d wheel him out to Bethlehem Point and they’d sit and read for hours on end. She also took care of Samkela from afar, ensuring he had school fees, food, and clothing. The rest of us left at Mercy House picked up the torch after she passed away.

  Mary continued to teach arts and crafts here at St. Mary’s Village, wept beside me the day we buried Sister Thaddeus in Baltimore, and probably the most unusual part of the story happened before her father died.

  It tickles me to see Father Joe talking about having “a little money.” The man came from an old shipbuilding family and, although he had to give up his inheritance when he took the vow of poverty, he told his brother about Mary-Margaret. Monies were put in trust for her upon his death. You can imagine the interest that accrued.

  As life sometimes does, opportunity meets up with resources and Mary found herself the proud owner of a lighthouse. The Coast Guard, making the decision to decommission the structure, and rightly so with the computer navigation ships use these days, was planning on scrapping it.

  Mary took her inheritance, bought it for a few thousand dollars, and had it moved to St. Mary’s. With the rest of her inheritance the order built another school. The girls give tours for a small fee and it helps keep the school running. She said things needed to be made right about that place. I like the fact that the light is still revolving. What a gift.

  Believe it or not, as of this writing, Gerald is still living nearby on that boat and he volunteers on Tuesdays at the lighthouse. People who are privy to his tours of course learn more than they bargained for.

  I should tell about Mary’s death. We found her upright at the kneeler in her bedroom, a candle burning before her crucifix, her head upright, neck stiff. Her expression was one of such tender joy we hated to close her eyes. But close them we did. Now, after reading this, I know she was looking at her dearest Friend who’d come to collect her as promised. Her final time on this earth was with him. I wish I could write down for you what that was like, for that, truly, was the final chapter to this story.

  I miss her. I’d recommend her for sainthood, but she’d yell at me for eternity, so
perhaps someone else will have to get that ball rolling. As it stands, though, I finally got her a gallery showing. Mostly drawings of Jude. One of her portfolios was marked My Best Friend and Life’s Companion and inside all of the pages were blank. Most mysterious at the time. Now I know.

  So, School Sisters of St. Mary’s who will follow us old gals, I don’t know what you may take from this little collection of stories and thoughts. But I hope you find peace in the journey and strength for your calling. And when you want to sit in quiet by the lighthouse, there’s a bench that Father John donated. Just behind it lays a garden of glorious white daffodils Mary finally planted. If you go there in the spring, close your eyes, and allow the love of God to enfold you as it did the Kellers. Pray for renewal and resurrection. It’s always a good time for that.

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, world without end. Amen.

  Sister Angie

  Acknowledgments, with thanks to God for:

  Sister Ellen Kehoe, who read the manuscript and loves my kids to pieces. Father Walt Bado, SJ, my pastor and spiritual advisor, who encourages me, writer to writer. Father Tom Farrell, also my pastor, who answered a lot of questions by e-mail and in person. Sister Iris Ann Ledden, SSND, whose teaching stories provided so much for the story.

  Ami, Erin, Allen, Natalie, Katie, Jeane, Jennifer, Rachelle, all the fiction gang, sales gang, and marketing gang.

  My agent, Chip MacGregor.

  My family. My friends. My fellow pilgrims. My readers.

  Fellow NFs: Claudia and Alana

  Especially: Will, Ty, Jake, and Gwynnie.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. Did it surprise you to learn that not all religious sisters wear habits? Did you know that they use such modern technologies as cell phones and computers? Were there other characteristics about being a religious that you found interesting?

  2. What did you think about Mary-Margaret’s discussions with Jesus? Were they real?

  3. Mary-Margaret says she prayed for Jude “without words”(p147). Have you prayed without words?

  4. Have you ever felt Jesus calling you to do something that was in complete opposition to what you expected? How did you handle the situation?

  5. Mary-Margaret says that her Grandmother “didn’t emote much” but she “showed her affection in her sewing” (p147).Are you loved by anyone this way? Do you love anyone this way?

  6. When asked if Mary-Margaret could have both Jesus and have a child, she replied, “I don’t know. I’ve never even thought of that as a possibility” (p143). Do you know anybody who feels it’s impossible to love Jesus completely and yet be happily married with children? Do you think the two are mutually exclusive?

  7. Do you think Mary-Margaret felt she had to become a sister given the way her mother died?

  8. Mary-Margaret cannot seem to make the time to plant the bulbs that Jude gave her. Is this a metaphor for something else?

  9. What did you think of the author’s circular way of storytelling? Why do you suppose she wrote it in this manner?

  LISA SAMSON is the award-winning author of twenty-six books including Quaker Summer, Christianity Today’s Novel of 2008, and Justice in the Burbs, which she co-wrote with her husband, Will, a professor of Sociology. When not at home in Kentucky with her three children, one cat, and six chickens, she speaks around the country about writing and social justice, encouraging the people of God to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” She loves nothing better than sitting around her kitchen table, talking with family and friends, old and new.