Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  I squirmed and tried to reassure myself that he couldn’t possibly know where I worked. “Are any of them artists? I saw a beautiful painting in the visitor’s parlor.”

  “Oh my, yes.” He folded his embroidered stole and placed it in a drawer. “Gift shop is fulla pictures for sale.”

  That was all I needed to hear. Anxious to see more paintings, I said goodbye to the priest without remembering to ask him if he knew who had painted the Madonna and Child, probably because part of me already knew. Once outside, I went in search of Sister Teresa or the gift shop—whichever came first.

  The courtyard that had been so forbidding in the darkness was resplendent in daylight. Lemon, lime, and apricot trees punctuated the spectacular ocean views. Camellia, bougainvillea, oleander, and dozens of other West Coast varietals I couldn’t name bloomed everywhere, their delicate fragrances competing with the earthy, wormy smell that followed a night of rain. A black-and-white cat sat as still as the surrounding religious statuary and stared into a burbling fountain teeming with koi fish.

  I found Sister Teresa and the gift shop at the same time as she prepared to unlock the door and open for business.

  “Welcome back.” Teresa grinned. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I said to be polite. As friendly as Sister Teresa was, I still felt my unease around nuns kick into high gear. “Sorry about my hasty departure last night.”

  “No need to be sorry.” Teresa reached for her key ring. “Considering a vocation is a scary business.”

  “Yes, it is.” I guessed it was almost as scary as looking up your long-lost twin. “And seeing my handicap depicted on the baby Jesus in that Madonna and Child painting was pretty unsettling.” I held up my right hand to show her.

  My impaired hand didn’t fit neatly into any diagnosis. The most likely cause was a brachial plexus nerve injury incurred during birth. Three surgeries and ongoing physical therapy produced some improvement, but not the full recovery that had been expected. Over the years, new ingredients like arthritis, atrophy, and symptoms of ulnar neuropathy stirred the soup, leaving doctors unable to find a recipe for a cure.

  “Oh, but it shouldn’t be, dear,” the nun said, holding my hand with both of hers. “The peace sign is a common gesture of blessing that appears in a lot of Christian artwork.”

  I felt like an idiot. Of course it was. I’d made a big deal out of nothing. Just because my father was an artist didn’t mean my sister was, too. The baby Jesus’ gesture was a fluke.

  “Sister Catherine has at least one figure giving that blessing in each of her paintings,” Sister Teresa said.

  Or not.

  “’Course, she would never call them ‘her’ paintings,” the nun continued as she flipped through dozens of keys. “She says it’s God painting through her.”

  God, or the father, anyway, I thought. Our father.

  “So the Madonna and Child painting is hers.” I found myself unnerved, delighted, and envious all at once. “Sister Catherine’s, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  My mind reeled. Did the baby Jesus’ grip in Catherine’s painting mean she knew about my hand, or did she suffer from the same disability? My adoptive parents had told me that my birth father tried to keep me but got overwhelmed and ended up choosing adoption when I was six weeks old. He was struggling to manage my recurring infections from a prior hand surgery and didn’t have the money for the additional operations that the government would cover if I were made a ward of the state. As a closed adoption, he wasn’t told the names of my potential adoptive parents, nor did they know his. But he was told that my adoptive mom was a nurse, and the agency said that my mom’s ability to care for me convinced him that I would be better off with them.

  That was all my parents knew. When Wagner’s estate lawyer later told me I was a twin, he explained that back when Catherine and I were born, my father was an unknown painter living in his tiny art studio because he couldn’t afford two rents. I guessed that when he realized he couldn’t afford two children either, he chose to keep Catherine because she was healthy and had fewer medical bills. Assuming she wasn’t similarly handicapped, then my twin must know about my hand, and in turn, me. Or did she?

  Teresa stopped searching her key ring and tilted her chin toward me. “Do you know her?”

  “Oh, no. No, I don’t.” I shook my head a little too vehemently. “And yet the painting feels familiar somehow.”

  “Catherine has a gift for touching people on a personal level.” She put a hand to her heart. “Her work moves me.”

  “Father Charles said there are paintings in the gift shop.”

  “Plenty. Lots of the sisters paint during recreation hour.” The extern resumed flipping keys until she came up with the one that turned in the lock. “Once in a harvest moon we sell one.”

  My eyes devoured the walls for more artwork as soon as the nun opened the door. Unfortunately, they remained hungry.

  There were paintings all right, but they were staid, pedestrian affairs and not very good. Flowers, wishing wells, and dogs were the dominant subject matter. The colors were standard, predictable, primary. A well-stocked book section, handmade crafts, assorted religious items, and some random rummage sale pieces rounded out the vaguely musty merchandise.

  “I don’t see anything similar to the Madonna and Child in here,” I said, trying and failing to hide my disappointment.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t.” Teresa shook her head and straightened a bookshelf. “Sister Catherine doesn’t display her paintings in the public areas and she never sells them.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Says they’re never finished. She often traipses around in the middle of the night to fiddle with them some more.”

  “But the one in the parlor is perfect,” I protested, almost fearing for the piece.

  “Which is why I take it from the wall and stash it in the public bathroom every night hoping she’ll forget about it.”

  “I see.” I smiled, suddenly very fond of Sister Teresa. “And they’re not for sale?”

  “Nope. Whenever I sneak one of her paintings into a public area like the parlor, a visitor offers to buy it, but Catherine always refuses.” The extern spit-polished the figures in a ceramic nativity scene priced at $19.95. “A shame, really. She would probably be excused from her kitchen job and get to paint full time if she’d let us sell them.”

  “May I speak with her?” I asked and then panicked. But I calmed down when I realized that I had found a safe way to see my sister without having to reveal our true relationship right away. I could meet her and get a sense of her first. Then if she seemed open to it, I would tell her who I was. “I mean, uh, maybe she’ll make an exception about selling that Madonna and Child.”

  “You can meet her on the next Visiting Day, but I doubt she’ll sell the painting and I know she won’t speak to you.” Teresa set the baby Jesus figurine back in the small, wooden manger. “Sister Catherine has taken a vow of silence. It’s not required in our order, but she seems to prefer it. She’s a bit of an odd duck who goes her own way, God bless her, but a true child of our Lord.”

  Odd duck. If that was Sister’s Teresa’s polite way of saying Catherine was stubborn, my twin and I had a lot in common.

  “She doesn’t make it easy for fans of her work, does she?” I pursed my lips in frustration.

  “I’m pretty sure her idea is not to have any fans.”

  Too late.

  “Would you mind if I took one last look at that painting before I leave?” I asked.

  “Help yourself. The parlor’s open.”

  “Thanks.” I stepped outside.

  The courtyard walk from the gift shop to the parlor afforded a stunning view of the ocean. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for the nuns to live that close to the Pacific, and yet be unable to dip their toes into it. I crossed the sand outside my Venice Beach apartment every morning just to touch the water.

  Back in the parlor, I tried to
memorize every detail of the painting but got caught up in the emotion it evoked instead. Love, pride, envy, and understanding superseded line, color, texture, and content at every turn. I pulled out the camera, planning to photograph the Madonna and Child, but the battery light dimmed and died as I turned it on. Disappointed, I clicked it off. Next I tried to take pictures with my phone—also dead after almost twenty-four hours of roaming in search of Wi-Fi.

  I wasn’t disappointed for long. As I zipped the camera back into my bag, there was a rustling of fabric. The door on the cloistered side of the grille opened to reveal a young nun carrying a mop and bucket. Her hair was brown to my blonde, her eyes blue to my green, but a quick glance at her jawline, freckles, and height was all it took for me to know she was my sister.

  Sister Catherine crimped her brow and stared at me for a moment before waving her apologies and turning to leave.

  “No, please wait,” I said, my skin feeling prickly one moment and numb the next as adrenaline swamped my veins. I shoved my weak hand into my pocket before she saw it. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

  My twin paused, set down her bucket, and turned to me with a smile. She looked about as tall as my five-foot-ten and was as thin as Sister Teresa. Her pale skin, accented by a lock of brown hair that slipped out from under her veil, softened her posture of humility. Her expression had a quiet radiance that surpassed even that of the Madonna’s in the painting. I found her beautiful in a way that transcended physical traits and rested in what looked to me like...well...joy.

  “Is that your work?” I pointed to the Madonna and Child with my strong hand.

  Catherine startled at the question. Her eyes flicked to the art, then back to me. She nodded a bit sheepishly and broke into a beatific grin. So this was definitely my sister. I couldn’t help noticing her well-formed, perfect hands.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. “Would you be willing to sell it?”

  My twin shook her head. I was neither surprised nor disappointed, considering that I couldn’t afford such a painting anyway. For me, this one-sided conversation was an excuse to stare. Was it the same for Catherine? Maybe my twin sensed that our incidental meeting was somehow important but didn’t quite know why. I, on the other hand, knew exactly why I gaped. I was looking at the first person I’d ever met who was biologically related to me.

  I tried to open my mouth again and tell her that we were related, but the words camped in the back of my throat and refused to exit. What if she wasn’t ready to hear it? Did she know I existed? If so, how did she feel about being the one our father kept when he gave me away?

  The staring continued. It didn’t matter that Catherine and I weren’t identical. It was enough that we were sisters. Seeing this woman, whose freckled nose, straight posture, and crooked smile matched my own, I felt grounded for the first time in my life. The emotion of the moment made my throat tighten into a cough. When I unconsciously pulled my weak hand out of my pocket to cover my mouth, Catherine’s gaze went straight to my disfigurement.

  Panic clouded her eyes and chased the smile off of her face. Her whole body constricted. She picked up her bucket and rushed out of the room, sloshing water in her wake.

  “Sister Catherine, wait!” I called out, feeling pretty shaky myself. “It’s okay. I’m your…”

  But she was gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Stung, I wandered out to my car, where a red-tailed hawk and a turkey vulture shared the sky overhead.

  No matter how many times I was reminded of the circumstances of my adoption, or acknowledged to myself that it really was in my best interest, the irrational part of me never understood how my father could let me go. Catherine’s swift exit made me feel rejected all over again. And that pissed me off. Graciela had insisted that meeting the twin my father kept would help me sort out my feelings about being adopted, but instead I felt even more confused.

  How could she, my flesh and blood, run away like that? I couldn’t tell for sure if Catherine knew we were sisters—she was out of the room before I’d had the chance to tell her—but I had to assume she did given the way she panicked when she saw my hand.

  It wasn’t unusual for people to react inappropriately to my disfigurement. People giggled or blushed, said the wrong thing in an effort to say the right thing, stared at it or pointedly avoided staring. Normally, I wrote it off to nerves or discomfort in the face of disability. But Catherine’s extreme reaction, combined with the fact that she painted a hand shaped just like mine in all her art, led me to believe that she knew I was her twin.

  I hesitated before starting my car and driving away. Angry as I was at Catherine’s reaction, I ached when I left her. I’d found and lost my twin in a matter of seconds. It was unsettling. I felt like I’d left some part of myself behind in that parlor, a rare flicker of true, raw emotion, a profound connection, before I’d had the chance to fully experience it.

  • • •

  Still struggling with my feelings, I arrived at my affordably dingy apartment a few hours later. I walked past my front door and out onto the sand toward my favorite place to think—a cluster of jagged boulders near the shoreline. Several large rocks were balanced, one on top of another, to form a totem that stood six feet tall. Similar totems towered nearby. Together they made up a circle big enough to walk around inside. Smaller stones had been piled into sturdy cairns that marked the perimeter.

  The effect was elegant, dramatic, and always changing. Whenever the wind upset the tenuous balance of a totem or shifting sands scattered a cairn, someone walking by built it up again into a different configuration. It reminded me of Stonehenge, except that these feats of engineering withstood the test of time not through the staying power of the rock, but that of the human spirit.

  I sat down among the stones, mourning the hoped-for relationship my sister didn’t seem to want. Admittedly, the urge to connect hadn’t been strong until I found myself driving to Big Sur. And in her defense, Catherine didn’t get any warning or time to prepare herself for our meeting. Maybe she would warm up after recovering from the initial shock of seeing me. But what if she didn’t? How much of a relationship could I have with a cloistered nun anyway?

  Still, even if she didn’t know who I was, what the hell was her behavior about? How did she get to act all holy and pull this my-paintings-are-for-God routine and still be that rude? Aren’t nuns supposed to be extra nice to people? I’m the one our father gave up, and now she’s literally running away from me? It wasn’t fair.

  Furious all over again, I stood up and pushed over the nearest totem. The rocks fell with a muffled thud that was just satisfying enough to goad me on. I knocked over every totem there, ignoring the battering of my legs and feet when stones bumped my body as they fell. Finally, a sharp-edged rock tumbled too close, slicing skin and pounding the top of my foot so hard that I cried out.

  I dropped to the sand and cradled my injury, tears of pain streaming down my face. I cried for a long time, longer than I needed to. A fist-sized purple bruise formed around a garish, bloody cut, but it was a shallow wound that wouldn’t slow me down much. Yet I cried on, not so much for my foot but for me and the family I would never know—the mother who died the day I was born, the father who took himself out of my life long before he died, and the living sister who panicked and ran when she saw me. Sitting there bleeding, I threw a pity party with myself as the guest of honor and the fallen rocks as the only other attendees.

  After about twenty minutes of feeling incredibly sorry for myself, I remembered the painting. If Catherine didn’t want to get to know me, I could at least get to know her artwork. Seeing the Madonna and Child was as close to a religious experience as I’d ever had. I wanted to see more of her paintings, all of them, inspiring and humbling as I knew it would be. I’d spent years nurturing whatever seedling of writing ability I’d been born with, only to be instantly cowed by Catherine’s enormous artistic talent. It made me wonder why I bothered to write at all.

  And ye
t, the only way I could think of to process my overwhelming feelings about my sister was to write about her and her art. For me, writing wasn’t so much a choice as a need. It was the way I made sense of life, and the only way I knew how to sort out this new reality. Most of my personal writing remained hidden in my notebooks, but in this case I felt compelled to introduce my sibling’s genius to the world. Twin or no, if I was moved by her painting, others would be also.

  My skin tingled with the exhilaration of considering writing Rene Wagner’s story only to discover a better one in Catherine’s. The only new angle I could add to Rene’s multiple existing biographies was my relationship to him, something I couldn’t be articulate about yet, if ever. But no one had written about Catherine’s amazing artwork—paintings that demanded attention no matter who her father was. I wouldn’t even need to reveal that we were sisters if she didn’t want me to. Phil would reject the serious, scandal-free article, leaving me free to pitch it to more legitimate publications. That elusive landmark story was staring me in the face.

  That is, if I could convince Catherine to let me tell it. Frustrated as I was by her intentional obscurity, and as much as I felt that her paintings should be seen, I also had to accept that she’d probably say no. But in many ways the story would be incidental. Researching it would provide the excuse I needed to spend more time with my sister. Even a one-sided relationship would be better than nothing.

  As I began to rebuild the first totem I’d knocked over, I realized I hadn’t smoked a single cigarette since the night before. Nor did I want one.

  Miracles never ceased.

  • • •

  I was so excited when I returned to the newsroom late that afternoon that my words chased each other out of my mouth. “I can’t tell Phil she’s Wagner’s daughter because I don’t want him to find out I’m Wagner’s daughter, and I want to make sure he’ll reject the story, so—”

  “No worries there. Good journalism doesn’t sell tabloids, so Phil will reject it just like he rejects every idea you’re enthusiastic about,” Graciela said. “We both know that the only way to get el Jefe to agree to a piece is to act like you don’t want to write it. Then he’ll immediately know it’s worthless trash and assign it to you.”