The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

  Mother MaryMeg was satisfied with their reports. She arranged to send Alex to a Catholic camp that summer in New Hampshire, where she would be an assistant counselor. And although Alex complained bitterly about going, she actually enjoyed it, and came back healthy and tan after swimming and sailing and taking care of younger kids for two months. But she couldn’t wait to get into her writing again as soon as she returned. Her stories were becoming more intricate and longer, and the nuns who read them could see progress and growth. Sister Xavier said they were more disturbing than ever, which Alex took as a compliment, and she was particularly pleased when Sister Xavier said she had had nightmares for two days after reading the latest one.

  “Yes!” Alex said, and did a little victory dance around her. “And wait till you read the next one. You won’t sleep for a week!” she promised, and Sister Xavier rolled her eyes. But they had missed her when she was away, and were happy to hear her tales of the camp, the other counselors, and the campers, whom she had loved. It had been a great summer, and she had played baseball on the counselors’ team against the older kids. It reminded her of playing baseball with her dad.

  She went to work on the school newspaper in sophomore year. She had totally settled into her life at the convent by then, and made a few friends at school, but always met them outside, and didn’t want them to know where she lived. She was invited to a few parties, and she commented to Sister Regina that she had nothing to wear, and Sister Regina organized a shopping trip to a mall with her. Sister Xavier came along, and the three women enjoyed it, and came back with four new dresses for Alex to wear when she went out with her friends, and her first pair of high heels.

  “Can you walk in those?” Sister Xavier asked with an incredulous look, and Alex demonstrated that she could, and then Regina tried them on just for fun. She looked terrific in them. They were high-heeled black suede sandals with gold studs. And Sister Regina was shocked at the miniskirts Alex tried on, but that time Sister Xavier was the indulgent one.

  “Oh, why not? She looks cute in them.” Neither of them had ever owned a skirt that short, but Alex looked so innocent with her perfect face and straight black hair that they thought she could get away with the short skirts, and all the other girls her age were wearing them. They got her some new jeans too, and sweaters for school. They came home with bags full of pretty new clothes that were the first she’d had in a long time. And she had loved shopping with them.

  Before, she had gone shopping with her dad, who spent as little time as possible in any store, and rushed to leave. Suddenly she had women to shop with, which she’d never had. And instead of the mother she’d always longed for, she now had two or three, or twenty-six. And Sister Tommy insisted on checking what they’d bought to make sure they hadn’t gone too wild. She raised an eyebrow at the miniskirts and high heels, but gave her approval in the end, and threatened to come along the next time, just to enjoy the outing with them. It brought back happy memories for her. They giggled like three friends when Sister Regina and Sister Xavier helped Alex put her new clothes away. And then Alex wrote a story that night about a murder in a department store.

  “You have a very sick mind if you can turn a nice day like that into a crime like this,” Sister Xavier said when she read it, but she had to admit it was good, and Alex laughed at her as the nun walked away shaking her head. They had come to love her in the year that she’d been with them, and she was growing up before their eyes. She was maturing into a lovely young woman, and was always a willing participant helping in the classes they gave at night.

  At the end of sophomore year, she won an award for her work on the school newspaper, and she finally got up the courage to send two of her stories to a crime magazine. They published both, written by A. Winslow, and paid her a hundred dollars for each, and sent her a letter praising her work and encouraging her to continue writing. She showed the letter and the check to everyone, and it was the buzz around the convent for days that Alex had sold two stories to a magazine, and they bought two more when she got back from summer camp again. She was sixteen years old, and she had to start thinking about what colleges she would apply to the following year, and visit them. Both Sister Xavier and Sister Tommy looked at lists and brochures with her to help her decide where to go. She wanted to stay in the Boston area so she’d be close to them, but Mother MaryMeg encouraged her strongly to live in the dorms when she went to college. She could come home to the convent whenever she wanted, but she thought it was time for her to enter the world of her peers, and fully experience college wherever she went.

  She visited half a dozen colleges in the Boston area, as well as Middlebury in Vermont, Brown in Rhode Island, and Yale in Connecticut, and she went to New York for a day with Sister Regina to visit NYU and Columbia, but the school she liked best in the end was Boston College. There were ten she was going to apply to, but BC was her first choice.

  Sister Xavier and Sister Tommy helped her with her applications the first term of senior year, and they urged her to write tamer essays than her usual fare, which she did. She had been selling stories to detective magazines for over a year by then, but since she wrote under a pseudonym, she didn’t put it on her application. But she did enough extracurricular activities at St. Dominic’s, had been a counselor at summer camp for three years, and had won two awards for her work on the school newspaper, so she had enough to beef up her application. And her teachers, school advisor, and the mother superior wrote glowing recommendations for her. The nuns were sure she’d get in everywhere, and when the letters came back in the spring, she had been accepted by Yale, Brown, Boston University, Middlebury, and Boston College, and was wait-listed at the others, but she decided on Boston College immediately, which was still her first choice.

  “And I’ll be nearby and can come home on weekends, if I want,” she said, beaming at Mother MaryMeg. It touched her that Alex considered the convent home now after four years. The arrangement had worked out better than any of them had hoped. She was the child most of them had never had, and a fresh breeze of youth in their life. When she had her first date for the junior prom, a dozen of them had watched her get ready and seen her off in a pretty little black dress that set off her figure but was appropriate. Her date was wearing a tux when he picked her up and had to live through twenty-six nuns taking photographs of them and watching them pull away in the limo with his friends. Alex had told him where she lived, but he hadn’t fully understood till he saw it when he picked her up. They had become friends, and didn’t date again, so it didn’t matter to her what he thought of it. Alex was in no hurry to start dating. She spent all her spare time writing, which was her passion. She continued to publish stories regularly in crime magazines under the name “A. Winslow.” They paid very little, but it was gratifying to see them in print.

  Word spread around the convent like wildfire that Alex had gotten in to Boston College, and there was celebrating in the dining hall that night. Mother MaryMeg managed to pull strings and got twenty-nine seats at Alex’s graduation, so all the nuns could be there, and the Buchanans. Alex invited Elena, but she had taken a job in New York and said she couldn’t come, and Pattie and her family had faded from Alex’s life by then and lost touch. Her family and the center of her universe now were the nuns of St. Dominic’s.

  When she walked across the stage in her cap and gown to receive her diploma, Alex was beaming and the nuns sent up an embarrassing cheer in unison. They were all thrilled and so proud of her, and Sister Tommy said she felt as though her seventh child was graduating. Sister Xavier was crying, Mother MaryMeg looked on proudly, and Sister Regina gave Alex an enormous hug when they joined her after the ceremony. It was hard to believe that she’d been with them for four years and they’d watched her grow up from a young girl to a beautiful young woman, and she was off to college now.

  Mother MaryMeg had convinced her to live in the dorms, although Alex was nervous about it, but she’d agreed. Five of the nuns went to settle her in her new ro
om at the end of August. It reminded them all of the day she’d moved into the convent, but this was an exciting, happy event. She had two roommates, and the nuns unpacked for her, made her bed with the sheets and bedspread she’d bought, and helped her put up posters on her side of the room. One of her roommates asked if they were her aunts, and she didn’t answer. She set out a photograph of her father on her desk. She had brought her typewriter with her, and a laptop for her schoolwork, and had bought her books a few days before. She was all set, and all of the nuns who’d come with her had damp eyes when they left her in the dorm with her new roommates, and they cried openly in the car on the way back to the convent, already missing her.

  “I feel as though my baby just left home,” Sister Xavier said, blowing her nose in a tissue, as Sister Tommy wiped the tears off her cheeks and agreed. Sister Regina was quiet, and was going to miss Alex acutely. And although she was thirty-one, and Alex eighteen now, their friendship had deepened, and she had confessed to Alex a few weeks before that she was having doubts about her vocation for the first time in sixteen years, and she was no longer sure she had made the right decision. Alex was shocked to hear it, and had promised not to tell anyone.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Alex had asked her, as they whispered in her room late at night, while Alex was starting to pack for school.

  “Nothing for now. I can’t leave. I don’t want to. But I’m not sure I can stay either. All of a sudden I can’t imagine never having children, and not being married. I don’t know what’s happening to me. And what if I regret it forever if I leave…or if I don’t?” She was seriously confused and going through a personal crisis, and Alex had urged her to think about it and not do anything hasty, which was wise advice. Her words were still ringing in Sister Regina’s ears as they drove back to the convent, and she felt intensely lonely without Alex in her little room right down the hall from her own, clacking away on her typewriter in every spare moment. Her stories had matured and were more complicated, but just as violent, and Sister Xavier said she couldn’t read them anymore, but the magazines loved them and couldn’t get enough.

  Dinner at the convent was a mournful event that night, without Alex. Mother MaryMeg began the meal with a prayer for her that she would find joy and growth, knowledge, and wonderful friends in her new life, and there were tears in many of the sisters’ eyes as they prayed for her. And a few miles away at Boston College, Alex was getting to know her roommates.

  They all went out for pizza, and met boys from the neighboring dorm. There were a dozen young people at dinner together, boys checking her out, girls chattering around her, pitchers of beer passed around, and for a moment Alex missed the sisters at St. Dominic’s, and then started talking in earnest to her roommates. There was no stopping it now. A new time in her life was beginning. She had grown up, and she felt as though she was spreading her wings and taking flight, awkwardly at first, and then she could feel herself soaring. It was exciting and exhilarating, and terrifying all at once. Here she was, starting college. She just sat there for a minute, watching all of them, and as she did, she had an idea for a story about a murder in a college dorm. She could hardly wait to write it that night. And when the others went out after dinner to explore the campus, Alex rushed back to her room to write.

  Chapter 7

  Alex had taken on a heavy load of six classes for her first semester. She wanted to get her required classes out of the way as quickly as possible, so she could take more that she would enjoy. But she found that she liked the ones she had signed up for, including an eighteenth-century English literature class, which required writing. She knew it was good for her to write more than crime stories and mysteries. She took history and a math class, and a women’s studies class. She had a lot of reading to do at night, and loved being challenged by the work. Most of her high school classes had been easy for her, and it was exciting to be taking more challenging courses, taught by professors she admired. She noticed that one of her roommates studied as much as she did and they went to the library together. She was from Hong Kong and a physics major. She’d wanted to go to MIT and didn’t get in, but was hoping to try again and transfer for sophomore year. They never saw their other roommate, who was out all the time and had met a boy she was crazy about the first week.

  At the end of her first month, Alex went home to the convent, delighted to see the nuns and have a weekend with them, although she had brought home a lot of reading to do, and had a paper to write for her English lit class. She hadn’t had time to write any of her own stories for a month, and was frustrated about it.

  Sister Regina came to her room after dinner on her first night back, and they talked late into the night. Regina was as troubled as ever about her vocation qualms, and she was debating about talking to Mother MaryMeg about it. She had seen other nuns leave over the years, and told Alex she didn’t want to be one of them, but staying in the life she had chosen was becoming harder and harder. She had been depressed for months thinking about it, and Alex was worried about her.

  “You should talk to Mother MaryMeg,” Alex encouraged her. She didn’t know what else to advise, and the choice that women made who wanted to be nuns was still a mystery to Alex, even after living with them for four years. She believed in God, but her religious convictions were not strong enough to make her want to give up the world. She had never been in love and had dated only a few times, for proms, or gone to the movies in groups, but the idea of never marrying and never having kids still seemed strange to her, and an unnatural choice, so she sympathized with Sister Regina’s confusion. Regina had started writing, inspired by Alex, but it was more of a distraction, or an outlet of some kind, not a burning desire like what drove Alex, who was compelled to write. But she thought that Regina’s short stories were good.

  “What kind of work would you do if you left?” Alex asked her.

  “Teach, like I do here.” But leaving the convent would be like leaving the womb, and the thought of it frightened her enough to keep her there for the time being. But she wasn’t happy, and Alex could see it. She didn’t know what the right answer was for her, and didn’t feel she had the experience to advise her.

  Alex came home to the convent again for Thanksgiving, and for the Christmas holiday and semester break, and she had a chance to write then. She had an idea for a novel, but decided to wait until the summer when she had more time.

  Her classes were keeping her busy. But in spare moments between assignments, she worked on the outline for the book, which was gnawing at her loudly by spring. She knew she had a story in her, and had to get it out. She couldn’t wait for her classes to end in May to start the book. She vacated her room at the dorm, since she would get a new room in a different dorm in the fall, and moved back to the convent. Her first night back, she started work on the novel, which had been developing in her head for months. She worked day and night for the first three weeks and hardly left her room, and she had several chapters written before she began a summer job in a bookshop that specialized in rare books and first editions. Her father had bought books there frequently, and they were impressed by her knowledge, and offered her the job for two months.

  She came home from work and wrote every night, and in the last week of August she finished the first draft of her book. It was perfect timing, since she was going back to school the following week. Alex sat staring at four hundred pages of manuscript in her hands the night she finished. She was nineteen years old and had just written her first book. She was so excited she could hardly breathe, and couldn’t sleep all night, thinking about it.

  She saw Mother MaryMeg at breakfast the next day, who commented that she looked like she’d had a rough night. To her knowledge, Alex still had no social life. She preferred to spend every moment on her book, and was more interested in writing than dating.

  “I finished the book last night, the first draft,” she said, looking awestruck. She felt as though someone else had done it, channeling through her. Her fathe
r maybe. Another writer. Someone. She couldn’t believe she’d done it, and felt a little lost without the book to work on. The final weeks had been intense, and she’d worked until three or four A.M. every night, and until dawn occasionally, and then showered and dressed for work. She’d finished her job at the bookshop a few days before, and now the book.

  The mother superior smiled at her, impressed by her dedication. There was no question that Alex was a writer. It was in her bones and her blood, a force she couldn’t stop and didn’t want to. “Would you read it for me?” Alex asked in a low voice. “I don’t know if it’s any good or not, or if I should just throw it away.” She’d had her doubts about it several times, and needed someone to read it objectively now. She knew that her work upset Sister Xavier, and mysteries didn’t interest Sister Regina, but Mother MaryMeg was always curious about her work.

  “I’m sure it’s very good, Alex. I’d love to read it.” Twenty minutes later, Alex was in her office with the ragged manuscript in her hands. She had made many corrections and changes, and the pages were a mess. She handed it to the superior, who took it from her and set it on her desk. “I’ll start it tonight,” she promised. Alex would have been relieved to see her light on until three in the morning. Alex slept like a baby that night, free at last of the story that had pounded through her and tormented her for months.

  She noticed that the superior looked tired the next day, but didn’t dare ask what she thought of it so far. She was sure that she would hate it, or tell Alex she had gone too far this time. It was a strong book, with a terrifying story and multiple mysteries to solve, and had been difficult to write, like riding five horses at once in a circus act and not losing control.