Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell

by Michael Conniff

  July 10, 1958

  Mother is asking Tom questions about O’Kell Consolidated and our money and his plans for our money in the future. I’m all for it, and I do what I can to help Mother understand where our money comes from and where it’s going. Tom has all the power in the world when it comes to our family fortune, and the idea of him controlling our destiny makes me retch, even if he is so good at it. It’s not about money. It’s about control, and he controls me in ways that scare me. I haven’t told anyone except Mother St. Joseph about what happened between us.

  August 16, 1958

  Will and I are the only ones at The Big House this weekend and he is going a mile a minute, drinking all day, jabbering about all the things he wants to do with his life. He keeps me up half the night, like he’s afraid to slow down, and by the time it’s time for coffee in the morning he has already drunk three cups. Just listening to Will leaves me exhausted.

  September 3, 1958

  My favorite time of year, when the new Sisters-to-be come to the Convent for the first time. Every year I seem to do more and more to help them understand the Order, to help them understand what it means to be a nun. They are all so beautiful in their innocence, in the softness of their bodies and their hearts. I now make it my duty to sit down with each one of them, so that I can help them on their way when they are ready to leave the Convent. They so much want to love and to be loved and they think I can show them the way.

  September 9, 1958

  A young girl from Ithaca comes into my room and cries and cries until I can ask her why. “Because I love Him so much,” she says. I rub her back until the sobbing stops, and then she holds me like she won’t ever let go.

  September 12, 1958

  Ithaca comes back and says she is feeling things she doesn’t want to feel. “Desire,” she calls it. For whom? I ask. “Does it matter?” she says.

  December 9, 1958

  It is time for the new Sisters to be sent out into the world. Ithaca asks if she can stay here, with me, to work in numbers for the Order. I say that I don’t see why not.

  February 6, 1959

  Becca and Will and I and Diana and Luigi make plans to go to Southampton for two weeks in August. I can’t wait.

  March 22, 1959

  Becca calls to say she’s in love again, with a musician named Rocco McCarthy. Anything has to be better that what she’s been going through.

  April 30, 1959

  Becca and Rocco got hitched at City Hall this morning. They asked me to be a witness but I said no. Nuns make the worst witnesses.

  August 15, 1959

  We are all here, now, finally, at The Big House, everyone except Tom, with each of us off in our corners as always. Will is up in his room writing, writing, writing, on long yellow legal pads.

  August 19, 1959

  Damn that Luigi! He has found a new sport at The Big House, whispering dirty things into my ear about all the things he would do with me if I were not Diana’s sister and a Sister. He says he can tell what my body is like beneath my habit, like Diana’s, he says, only softer, sweeter. He says he can almost taste me, like I’m a piece of taffy. He flicks his tongue at me. God how I hate him!

  August 20, 1959

  Luigi keeps talking and I keep listening. I want him to do those things to me, to touch me here and there the way he says he wants to. I touch myself there now, just as Luigi would, for the first time. I can imagine his hard body against my soft body and his soft curls teasing my breasts, first one and then the other—I touch them, too—and then I have him inside of me, hard as wood. Is it a sin to even imagine these things? I know it is. I covet Luigi. But I can’t help it. So I’m going to hell. And there’s not a thing I can do about it.

  August 21, 1959

  I let Luigi touch me for the first time, beneath my habit, in ways no one since Bucky has touched me, and I wonder how can this be a sin if it feels so wonderful, so pure, if only for that moment? I want him to touch me, to lick me, again and again.

  August 22, 1959

  I want him inside of me, all the way up inside of me the way he was today at the beach house, with the wind blowing sand that stuck to our wet bodies on the sandy clapboard floor. Now I know why people go to hell.

  August 28, 1959

  I don’t even think about Diana or my sin any more. We all have free choice. This is what I’ve chosen to do. What’s wrong with me, Lord?

  August 30, 1959

  He won’t let me take off my habit today. He says he doesn’t want to see me, just to touch me everywhere, to dive under my habit and to stay down there while his tongue sends me to heaven.

  August 31, 1959

  I am going to hell.

  September 8, 1959

  Back at the Convent now, living in mortal sin. I ask Mother St. Joseph if she would come back to work at the Convent, to be with me. I tell her I need her now, because I feel myself falling further and further into sin. She says she would like nothing more, that she thinks about me all the time, that she absolutely aches for me. And I for her. My heart and soul are empty without her.

  October 9, 1959

  I hate Luigi every bit as much as I hate Tom.

  November 12, 1959

  I never understood before what it was like to want a man’s touch, a man’s tongue. I never felt so alive. May God strike me dead.

  December 21, 1959

  Mother St. Joseph—Nancy—will be coming first thing in the new decade, in the New Year. My prayers have been answered.

  The Sixties

  January 1, 1960

  Nancy and I celebrate the New Year alone together with highballs in my room. I tell her everything, even the part about Luigi, and she hugs me like a baby while I cry and cry. She pours me drinks and says I must go to Confession in a parish far away, so that I can confess to my sins with both Luigi and Tom. But Tom wasn’t my fault, I say. Nancy says everything in our lives is our fault, that we have free choice and that we have to live with our choices. There is evil in the world, she says, and in ourselves. I am so glad that she’s here.

  January 2, 1960

  Confession. Nancy was right. I need to do this. But it’s hell when I tell the priest everything about Tom and Luigi, all the details, that I am a nun and that I can no longer live with myself while I am living in sin. Behind the cross-hatched bars the priest sounds to me like a young priest, like he should be confessing to me for stealing a candy bar from the counter. But he knows exactly what to say, that I have committed a mortal sin, that I have gone over to Satan, and that I must fall on my knees and beg God for forgiveness. He keeps me on my knees in Confession to punish me, and then he punishes me with the Act of Contrition one thousand times. By the time I lose count my knees are so sore I can barely stand, and the candles in the church are no better than night lights at the end of the day. I am sad and sore and shameful, but when I leave I am no longer going to hell. That has to pass for heaven for now.

  January 12, 1960

  I go to Tom’s office. I’m here because of the bomb, I say. “I remember Bimini quite well, actually,” he says. “You and I had a bird’s eye view of the whole proceeding.” No, I say. We were down below, and you were raping me. Tom sits in his big black leather chair without moving, without saying anything, his fingers touching his mouth at the tips to make a steeple. “You just remembered now?” he says. I kept having dreams, I say. “Ahhh,” Tom says. “Dreams are a horse of a different color. You may have been dreaming about what you wanted to happen, rather than what actually happened. It may have been a fantasy.” It was no fantasy, I say, it was as real as anything in my life. He stands up. “I’m glad you came,” Tom says. Why? I ask. “Because you’ve never come before,” Tom says, “and now there’s no reason for you to ever come again.” He is the one with horns, and we both know it.

  February 1, 1960

  Diana and Luigi are back from the Australian Open, where Luigi won the mixed doubles. He is happy, they are celebrating, and I am in darkness. Diana go
es to the powder room at the Stork Club and Luigi and I are alone. “I know what you want to say,” he says. “You want to say you can no longer see Luigi, that you have been to Confession to confess all of your sins, and that you and Luigi must no longer be in sin against your sister. Yes?” Yes, I say. “But Luigi has committed no sin because nobody has been hurt by Luigi’s sin, and nobody will be hurt by Luigi’s sin unless somebody tells Luigi’s wife.” I can’t tell her, I say. “No.” Luigi slides his finger along his throat. “Because if you do, I will kill you.” I am white as a ghost when Diana comes back from the powder room. “What’s wrong?” she says. I tell her the shrimp went down the wrong pipe.

  March 17, 1960

  St. Patrick’s Day. Will comes to visit and we drink and drink. He is writing a family saga called “Sins of the Flesh,” a make-believe history of the real story, he calls it, and he babbles on like he has to keep talking or the idea will go away forever. I am too ashamed to tell him what happened between Tom and me, between me and Luigi. He’s still my little brother. Even when I’m drunk I don’t want him to know the whole truth.

  June 19, 1960

  I have confessed my sins. I have done my penance. I feel like I am going to hell.

  July 8, 1960

  Tom is everywhere in the newspapers with the scare about the Communists and Sputnik. Everyone is afraid the Communists will bomb us with their rockets. But not Atomic Tom. He says all we need is more money for nuclear weapons, that everyone and their brother should build a bomb shelter, that we can bomb the Commies back to the Stone Age any time we want if we vote for Kennedy. Whenever I think of him, I want to explode.

  October 1, 1960

  Wall Street absolutely loves us. They love Mother Superior like a mother and me like a pet. We now have another successful bond offering and Mother Superior won’t let me forget it. “The Order is all about money,” she tells me, “about having the money to do God’s work.” God’s work can’t be done by someone who is in sin, I tell her. “Have you been to Confession?” she asks. She knows that I have, a hundred times. “Then that’s that,” Mother Superior says. It’s not that kind of sin, I tell her.

  November 11, 1960

  Becca finally comes to visit here at the Convent. Her face is bloated, her eyes a blur, like it takes all of her concentration just to say hello. I want to pinch her to see if she’ll say “Owww!” Instead I ask her how she’s feeling to see if she’s feeling anything at all. “I’m better,” she says. What are they giving you? I say. “Something to take the edge off,” Becca says. Do you have them with you? I say. Becca takes out a bottle with enough pills to keep the edge off for years. Throw them away, I tell her. “The doctor says I can’t live without them,” she says. What else does this doctor say? I ask. “He doesn’t really say anything,” Becca says. “He just sits there until I have something to say.” And what do you say? I ask. “Do we have to keep talking?” Becca says. I pinch Becca on the arm. Did that hurt? I ask her. “What?” she says.

  December 4, 1960

  I’m worried about Will. He writes his crazy stories all day and all night right here in The Big House, like words are the only things that matter. He’s telling me things about Tom, too, that Tom is selling all of our patents without telling anybody, that Tom has some master plan. Will is talking a mile a minute, like he’s gone haywire.

  February 20, 1961

  Becca seems better. She says her doctor is giving her something “milder,” something that makes her feel more like herself. And how does that feel? I ask. “I don’t know yet,” Becca says. What do you do with your day? I ask her. “Quiz shows,” she answers.

  May 23, 1961

  Tom is building a bomb shelter beneath The Big House and the whole front lawn is dug up like he’s looking for a body. There are trucks and cranes everywhere as if we are making ready for war, which I suppose we are. Tom says we will all be quite comfortable down there when the end comes. He says the wine cellar will be the very best in all of Southampton. I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not.

  June 25, 1961

  “It’s not his,” Diana tells me. What do you mean? I say. “I mean Luigi’s not the father,” Diana says and she starts to cry. “He says he loves me,” she says, “but I catch him with things, smells and scraps of paper with phone numbers and first names. He cheated on me so much I had to cheat back.” Who is the father? I ask. “Does it matter?” Diana says.

  August 21, 1961

  Tom wasn’t kidding—there is a wine cellar in our bomb shelter. He’s built something that’s more like a luxury ocean liner than a place to hide from nuclear war. All the passageways are lit by a generator, and each one of us has our own room. Behind a locked metal door off the wine cellar he has built some kind of command room in case there is a war and he needs to talk to the President. In the event of a nuclear disaster we will have wine, women, and telephone service.

  August 31, 1961

  Mother Superior asks me to indoctrinate all the girls when they first come to the Convent, to be what she calls “the eyes and ears of the Order.” I say yes so long as Nancy can help me.

  October 2, 1961

  Our offering on Wall Street is oversubscribed again, and Mother Superior is beside herself with joy. I get a call from our investment banker, Charles Evans, saying he wants to celebrate with me. “How about a date, Sister?” he says. He sounds just like Bucky Harwell.

  November 20, 1961

  Mother Superior officially puts me in charge of the Order’s recruitment, training, and indoctrination. To me it’s all a matter of marketing and organization, of dollars spent in the right places. The Order has a story to tell, I tell Mother Superior, and we have to make sure the right girls can hear it. I tell her our best asset is our Sisters spread all over the world, that each one of our nuns must take responsibility for the survival of the Order. Mother Superior looks so happy she could bust.

  January 9, 1962

  Charles Evans takes me to “21” and I’ve never seen a grown man get so drunk in daylight. They know him here, and by the end of lunch his drinks are 99 percent water, and his conversation is 100 percent lewd. “Did you ever do it, Sister?” he leers at me. I ask him why he needs to know. “I like to think about it,” he says, “when I’m doing it with my wife.” You like to think about me? I ask. “I mean, you’re a beautiful woman, Sister,” he says. “I can see that.” I say we best be going. “Don’t you ever think about doing it, Sister?” he says to me on 51st Street. Not with you, I say.

  December 31, 1962

  Will shows up sloshed at the Convent on New Year’s Eve. Nancy and I are sitting by a fire, reading, ready for a quiet end to the year, but Will is slobbering about ringing in the new. “Have a drink, have a drink,” he says. We don’t want to but we do, and Will starts to ramble on like a lunatic about his made-up story of our family. “It’s a tell-all and I can’t tell you anything,” he says, but after another drink he tells us everything, about all the crazy sins in “Sins of the Flesh,” the name of the story he is writing. It sounds crazy, with mad hatters and archbishops and a great big fire, it sounds like it has nothing to do with the O’Kells. Nancy and I let Will talk and talk until he passes out on the floor of my room.

  February 16, 1962

  Will has taken to wearing long capes and drinking from a vial.

  March 17, 1962

  Will is drunk again. He’s been marching down Fifth Avenue in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in his cape and that is all the excuse he needs to get stinking drunk and to pound on my door at the Convent. But there is no excuse. It is one thing to get drunk. It’s another thing to be a drunk.

  March 30, 1962

  I’ve never seen Diana so happy. “It is his, after all,” she tells me. There can be no doubt about their baby, not with all those curls and those eyes. They name him Gino O’Kell Campobello. I tell Diana that God works in strange ways.

  July 20, 1962

  I had to come down from the Convent to get Will at the Yale Club
. They said they wouldn’t press charges if I would take him and if he never came back. He went in there tonight drinking from his vial and wearing his cape with nothing on underneath. He whipped the cape open in the dining room and then he began flashing the alumni as they were sitting down to dinner. The doorman wrestled him down. When I took him home, he was crying like a baby asking for his bottle.

  July 21, 1962