The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  The doctor helped her find a male nurse to drive her father and keep an eye on him, and she insisted that on weekends she could care for him herself. All he wanted to do now was sleep anyway. She read to him from the familiar books he loved, although he usually fell asleep or seemed not to be listening to her. She spoke to him as though he still understood everything she said, and treated him with the dignity and respect he deserved, although it broke her heart to see him so confused. The disease was advancing by leaps and bounds, and by Christmas, he recognized no one except her. They added a second nurse. She could no longer manage him on her own. He had wandered down the street in his pajamas, and took his clothes off in the kitchen while Elena stood there and cried, watching him, and then ran screaming from the room. There was no hiding from the reality anymore. Less than a year after the first signs, his mind was severely impaired.

  Alex was trying to keep up with her homework, hadn’t written a story in months, and worried about him all the time, even when she was at school. Over Christmas vacation, he stopped eating and wouldn’t get out of bed. After a week of IVs, they transferred him to a hospital and fed him from a nasogastric tube. Pattie and Elena stood with Alex when they took her father away in an ambulance. And then Pattie held her while she cried.

  Alex spent the rest of her vacation at his bedside at the hospital, and by New Year’s Day, he stopped recognizing her too. His mind was a blank now, and he returned to an infant state. He slept and cried, laughed for no reason, refused all food, and pulled out his nasogastric tube and had to be restrained.

  The week before she went back to school, Alex was with him every night at the hospital, sleeping on a cot next to his bed, even though he didn’t know who she was. And on the first day of school after vacation, she left for class from the hospital, and came back that afternoon. His bed was empty when she got there, and she was startled to realize he had been moved. She wondered if they were doing tests on him again, and the head nurse came to see her while she was looking lost in the room, trying to guess where he was. She knew the minute she saw the nurse’s face. The nurses had grown fond of her during her father’s stay. Alex was very mature for her age, and always polite and respectful to them. And she was obviously devoted to her father. She took care of him like an adoring mother and never left him for a minute.

  “I have bad news for you, Alex,” the nurse said gently, and put her arms around her, as Alex went stiff as a board, and knew she shouldn’t have gone to school that day. She hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to him, but there was no one left to say goodbye to. The father she knew and loved had been gone for months by then. The nurse told her that he had died peacefully in his sleep right after she left for school.

  They called Elena for her, who came to pick her up. Bill Buchanan handled everything with Alex, and helped make the funeral arrangements. The church was full, with all the people who had worked with him, and known and admired him. And at the cemetery, she was shocked to see her mother’s grave. Her father had never told her that he’d had Carmen buried there, but now they were together, with her father’s first wife. She went home from the cemetery with Elena, and a few close friends came to visit her, but with Alex alone, most people didn’t want to intrude, and there was no gathering afterward. Alex sat in his room all that night in his favorite chair, feeling him with her.

  Bill Buchanan came to see her the next day, and said the court would confirm his trusteeship as a formality, according to her father’s will. He also explained to her that her father had been unable to decide where Alex should live. He told her that her father had appointed him her trustee, but he had no solutions either.

  “Can’t I just live here with Elena?” she asked in a quavering voice. She had hoped that would be possible and if not, what was going to happen to her? Bill had told her that her father had provided for her financially, for her education and to help her afterward, within reason, but where she would live was still unresolved. And she was too young to live alone. Eric had wanted the house kept for Alex for when she was older, and had suggested to Bill that they rent it out in the meantime, which Bill thought was a good idea. It would provide some income and preserve the house for her until she could use it.

  “I don’t want to go to boarding school,” she said, reading the lawyer’s mind. But there were no relatives to send her to, and she couldn’t live with the neighbors for the next four years until she turned eighteen, nor at the house, with Elena, who went home at night.

  “Let’s both think about it,” the lawyer said reasonably. “And for now you can stay here.” But boarding school was the only solution he could think of. Elena had agreed to stay at the house with Alex until they came up with a solution.

  He was so upset about the dilemma of where Alex should live that he talked to his wife about it that night.

  “Her father didn’t want her in a boarding school either. He knew she wouldn’t want that. But what am I going to do?” He felt like an ogre sending her away, but she was a fourteen-year-old girl with no living relatives. What else could he do? As her trustee, he had an obligation to solve the problem but had no idea how, other than a residential school. But even vacations would be a problem with nowhere for her to go.

  “Let me make a call. I have a crazy idea,” Jane Buchanan said, and got up from the dinner table to call her cousin, who was the mother superior of a busy Dominican convent in a Boston suburb. It wasn’t an orphanage or a home for young girls. It was a residence for teaching and nursing nuns, all of them with jobs outside the convent, and most of whom no longer wore the habit. It always reminded Jane of a college dorm for adult women whenever she went to visit her cousin, who was a lively, very intelligent woman who was engaged with the world. They ran seminars and taught evening classes to women in the neighborhood, and maybe she’d have a suggestion or creative idea. Jane’s cousin, Mother Mary Margaret, was the only one she could think of who might help. Her nickname in the family was MaryMeg. She had waited until she was thirty to join a religious order, and was a nurse practitioner by profession. And as usual, when Jane called, it took her forever to come to the phone.

  “Sorry, I was taking a Pilates class. We just started it here, and I love it.” She was in her late fifties, and she had taken cooking classes and photography lessons too. She loved taking advantage of the classes they offered, staying current with the world, and meeting the women who came to the convent from the community they served. Their adult classes were her personal and clever way to draw people back to the church. They were heavily attended, although the diocese reminded her occasionally that she was not running an entertainment center, but she insisted it was all in the interest of health and education, and somehow she got away with it. “What’s up?”

  “I need your advice. Bill has a problem relating to a client who just died.”

  “I don’t do funerals, and I’m not a lawyer. I’m a nurse.”

  “And my smartest relative.” She explained Alex’s plight to her, orphaned at fourteen, with nowhere to live.

  “And I assume there’s money if her father was Bill’s client,” Mother MaryMeg said practically.

  “A respectable amount, apparently. He wasn’t crazy rich. But they have a house, and he had savings and a sizable insurance policy. The problem is no relatives, and no one to live with.”

  “Poor kid.” Mother Mary Margaret felt sorry for her, but didn’t see what she could do. “What about boarding school?”

  “She doesn’t want to go. Bill says she’s an unusually bright kid. She’s lived alone with her father for years. Her mother abandoned them, and then died when she was nine. Bill says she’s exceptional, and she thinks boarding school would be like prison. I’m not sure how great she is with other kids. He says she’s shy and introverted, and was very close to her father. She may be better with adults than her peers. Her life was pretty different.”

  “Where does she go to school now?” Mother MaryMeg asked her cousin, and was impressed by the answer. “I
t’s too bad to pull her out of there, but you’re right, she can’t live alone. We don’t take kids, or I’d take her here, and you can’t put her in state foster care. That would be a lot worse than boarding school. What do you want from me?”

  “Any bright ideas you have. You’re the best problem solver I know. I thought maybe you could think of a place for her. She’s not really a child at fourteen.”

  “Nor an adult. Our nuns aren’t babysitters. They all have jobs, and they’re busy with our classes at night.” The mother superior sounded pensive for a minute. “On the other hand, it’s a crazy idea but I wonder if we could keep her here. The diocese would probably have a fit. Maybe I could get special dispensation, and we could try it for a while. If she doesn’t want to go to boarding school, she might not be thrilled with a convent either.”

  “She doesn’t have much choice.”

  “Let me think about it, and I’ll ask the others. We have a pretty full house. I’ve got twenty-six nuns here at the moment. But I’ve got an empty room upstairs. Wouldn’t it be odd for her to live with a bunch of nuns, though?”

  “Maybe you could get her to enlist early,” Jane teased her.

  “We don’t do that anymore. Half the women who come in are in their forties, or just over thirty at the youngest. We don’t recruit teenagers.” She laughed at the thought. “If we did, that would probably drive me out of the order. Have you met her? What’s she like?”

  “Bill says she’s a lovely kid.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, let me talk to the sisters.” She ran the convent democratically, although the final say was hers, with the permission of the archdiocese for anything unusual, of course.

  “Thanks. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  Mother MaryMeg thought about it that night, and prayed about it, and brought it up to the other nuns at breakfast the next day, after six o’clock mass. Most of them had to be at work by eight, and the convent was almost deserted during the day, between the teachers and the nurses. There were two older retired nuns who ran the front office while the others were at work.

  “So what do you think, sisters?” she asked, as they handed around a plate of toast. They took turns in the kitchen, and the food was basic.

  “Do we really want to be responsible for a fourteen-year-old?” Sister Thomas, one of the older nuns, looked skeptical. She had six children herself and had come into the order when her youngest turned twenty-one, after her husband died. “That’s an awful age,” she said with a grimace, and the others laughed.

  “You would know.”

  “It’s all sex, drugs, and rock and roll at that age. And a lot of backtalk. Even my two girls were awful at that age.”

  “She’s got nowhere else to go,” Mother MaryMeg reminded them. She had already made up her mind at mass, but she wanted the others to come to it on their own. She didn’t want to drag them to it, or force them, or it wouldn’t work. “What if we try it for a while, with the understanding that if we can’t manage it, or if she’s too difficult, she goes to boarding school, like it or not?”

  “Where would she go to school here?” Sister Regina asked. She was their youngest nun at twenty-seven, and had had a vocation since she was fifteen, which Mother MaryMeg thought was much too young, but she had done her novitiate in Chicago, and come to them after she’d taken her vows. Mother MaryMeg would have encouraged her to do so later.

  “She’d have to attend the parish school,” Mother MaryMeg said. “We can’t drive her into town to her current school. But she’ll get a decent education in the parish. She’ll manage if she’s as bright as my cousin says. Why don’t we meet her? She might not like us anyway. It was my cousin’s idea.” They all agreed to that, and then left for work hastily after taking their plates to the kitchen, rinsing them, and putting them in the dishwasher. It was a busy house. After breakfast, Mother MaryMeg checked her messages, ordered wholesale groceries and supplies to save money, and then called Jane. “The consensus is we’d like to meet her, which I think is a good idea. She might not want to live in a convent full of nuns either. Boarding school may sound great to her in comparison.”

  “And if you and the sisters like her?” Jane was hopeful.

  “We’ll try it for a few months and see how it works out.”

  “I’ll tell Bill. You’re a saint,” she told her cousin, and Mother MaryMeg laughed.

  “Not likely. I had too much fun before I got here. But it would be nice if we could help her out. Do you think he can get her here tonight?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “We have classes here tomorrow night, and it’s chaos on the weekends. Tonight would be better.”

  “I’ll tell Bill.”

  “We could meet her right before dinner at six o’clock.”

  “He can leave me a message if I’m out.” Jane and MaryMeg had grown up almost as sisters, and they were still very close.

  After they hung up, Jane called Bill at the office and told him to have Alex at the convent at six to meet the sisters, if the idea appealed to her at all.

  He met Alex at the house after school and explained the situation to her. It was the only alternative plan he could come up with.

  “In a convent? With nuns?” She and her father had gone to church occasionally, but they weren’t deeply religious. “Will they expect me to become a nun?” She looked shocked at the idea.

  He smiled at the question, although it was reasonable for her to ask. “Not if I know my wife’s cousin. If they do this, it would be to help you out. They’re the busiest bunch of women I’ve ever met. They all work as teachers and nurses, and have classes there at night. I think they’d expect you to go to school, get good grades, and pitch in to help. You would go to their parish school.”

  Whatever she did, she would have to leave the school she was in. Her whole life had been turned upside down by her father’s death, and after Bill left, she sat in her father’s room and looked at the bookcase full of books he had loved and they had shared. They were going to put everything in storage now, until she was older and came back to this house or had a home of her own. All that she had known and that was familiar to her was going to be boxed up and put away. Everything was about to change. And now she was going to meet a bunch of nuns, and maybe live in a convent. It was either that or boarding school, and she couldn’t decide which sounded worse. There were tears rolling down her cheeks as she walked out of her father’s bedroom, and Elena was crying in the kitchen when she walked in. The two women clung to each other and cried, and Alex didn’t know if she was crying for her father or herself.

  Chapter 5

  Bill Buchanan left his office earlier than usual to pick Alex up and get her to St. Dominic’s convent by six o’clock. She was waiting for him in a plain black dress and flat shoes when he arrived. When she got in the car, she looked like she’d been crying, which he could well understand. He couldn’t blame her father for not resolving her living situation before his death. Even he was having a hard time figuring out what was best for Alex. And in the last months of Eric’s life, her father had been incapable of making any decisions, let alone one as complex as where his daughter would live. Before that, in his early sixties, it didn’t dawn on him that time was running short.

  Alex was silent as Bill drove her to the convent. She sat staring out the window as depressing images wended through her head of a dark, dreary convent, ancient nuns, and then of her father in his final days.

  “Are you okay, Alex?” Bill asked her, and she nodded. “I think you’ll like my wife’s cousin. She’s a character even if she’s a nun. She’s got a great sense of humor, and she’s a nice person.” Alex had trouble making the connection between humor and the mother superior of a convent. It didn’t make sense to her. She just nodded and sat stone-faced when they arrived, and didn’t move for a minute. Boarding school was beginning to seem like the less unpleasant plan.

  The convent was a big, sprawling building that had been a good investment when
they bought it. It was behind the church on a large lot, with trees and a garden, and a maze of small rooms on the top floor for the nuns, with large rooms downstairs where classes were held. It was Mother Mary Margaret who had introduced all their after-school and evening activities for children, young people, and their parents, which had been a great success and integrated them into the neighborhood, rather than cloistering themselves and setting the nuns apart.

  Alex got out of the car slowly, almost dragging her feet, and followed Bill up the stairs. As they walked in, they were jostled by a flock of children being picked up by their parents. They were carrying clay objects, drawings, and paintings from an art class given by several of the nuns. The children were shouting and excited, and the mothers talking and laughing, and inside, a group of teenage boys were leaving the large meeting room that doubled as a gym. It was where their new Pilates classes were being held, which were a big success, but that was later in the evening, preceded by an exercise class for pregnant women. They also had an evening class for first-time parents on how to care for their newborns, which was given by two of the nuns who were nurses. And they were planning to offer art classes for older people in the community too.

  Bill hadn’t been to see the convent in several years, and was stunned by how many of the locals were congregating in the halls. Mother Mary Margaret had turned it into a booming community center, and Alex was looking around with awe as children ran by her, women chatted, and teenagers came and went. It wasn’t the dark, dreary, silent place she had expected, or anything like what she’d thought. Bill inquired at a reception desk, and a woman in jeans and a tee shirt, who was actually a nun, directed them to an office at the end of a long hall, past the gym. And when they walked in, a woman in jeans and a red sweatshirt was standing on top of a ladder changing a lightbulb in a ceiling fixture. She glanced down at both of them in dismay, saw Bill in his suit and tie, and Alex in her little black dress, and looked embarrassed. She had gray hair in a ponytail, and a pretty face that always reminded Bill of his wife’s. They were first cousins and the daughters of twin sisters.