Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  I usually didn’t care for abstract art, and yet I’d been fascinated by Wagner’s work long before I learned he was my father. Most abstract paintings frustrated me because they seemed too easy for the artist to render and too difficult for the viewer to decipher. But here, understanding felt effortless, the experience collaborative, even strangely familiar.

  “It’s in excellent condition,” Trish said, reflexively going into sales pitch mode even though she’d already shared everything she knew about the painting with me. I let her continue because she loved talking about it and I loved hearing it. She picked up the canvas for better viewing. “So beautifully done. His use of light is inspired. I’d have to get an appraisal, but based on its size and quality, I’d say it’s worth at least a million dollars.”

  “So you’ve told me,” I said. That kind of money would take care of my Stanford loans, plus a lot more. But selling my only tangible link to my birth family was the last thing I wanted. “I’d like to keep it if I can.”

  My eyes swam into the canvas and lost themselves there. Beyond shapes and paint, the piece was pure emotion—mine or my father’s, I wasn’t sure which. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen the image somewhere long before I’d encountered it on canvas. In the painting, I saw my fantasy life as an artist’s daughter presented in muted oils. I felt the exhilaration of a two-year-old blowing bubbles at my first swim lesson, the ecstasy of a six-year-old running through the lawn sprinkler, skidding on flattened grass slick with moisture and mud. I sensed the strength in fragile things and the weakness in strong ones. Just as I had with Catherine’s Madonna and Child, I stared at Rene’s Shift and tried to imprint every brushstroke on my mind, hoping it would provide me with some insight into my birth family.

  “I think you should keep it.” Trish examined the back of the canvas. “But will you be able to cover the inheritance taxes on something this valuable?”

  “Good point.” I frowned. “Probably not.”

  “Well, you don’t have to part with it just yet.” Trish placed the painting back against the wall. “Nothing’s due until tax day. I’ll put some feelers out in case you decide to sell. Meantime, you enjoy it.”

  It wouldn’t be difficult. I looked back at the painting. The writer in me stood agape at such skillful communication with no words at all. My father hadn’t bothered with color or recognizable images, yet managed to say more than everything I’d ever written put together.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “No way,” Matt marveled when he found me up and fully dressed in the gloomy apartment hallway at four thirty in the morning. Five a.m. call times during the week made it impossible for him to sleep in when he wanted to. “Has hell frozen over?”

  “Close. I’m going to Mass again,” I said. “It’s Visiting Sunday and Sister Teresa’s Diamond Jubilee celebration at the convent.”

  “Diamond? That makes her—”

  “Over eighty,” I said. We almost bumped heads bending down to grab our newspapers. “The woman hardly looks sixty years old. Turns out she’s been a nun for longer than that.”

  “The Lord takes good care of His women. Or so I’ve heard.” Matt handed me The New York Times Magazine and Book Review pull-outs. “I was going to make you breakfast.”

  “You were?” I’d never known Matt to make anything besides Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk. Of course, that may have been what he had in mind. I passed him The Los Angeles Times Sports and Business sections. “To what do I owe such an honor?”

  “I thought eating here might reduce my chances of being left out on the curb after the meal.”

  “Sorry about that.” I laughed. “Can I take a rain check?”

  “It never rains in Los Angeles.”

  “I’ll take a sun check then.” I turned a circle in my black turtleneck and demure skirt. “Do I look okay for church?”

  “Looks good to me. ’Course I’m just a pagan.” Matt frowned. “Who am I going to play with on my day off if you’re bailing again?”

  “You could come with me. I could use some moral support.”

  “Already plenty of morals to go around at the convent.” He raised his hand in benediction. “Go with God.”

  • • •

  I arrived for ten o’clock Mass with three minutes to spare. Enough garden flowers festooned the chapel to make the potted begonia I’d brought as a gift look paltry. The special recognition of Sister Teresa’s anniversary made the service more personal and enjoyable. Father Charles’ sermon, “God Bless Sister Teresa,” once again set the standard for brevity.

  Despite the brief sermon, the service still gave me plenty of time to get nervous about my first chance to formally meet Catherine. Was my interest in her paintings enough, or would I have to admit we were twins in order to see her? I still felt I could write a better article if I didn’t acknowledge our relationship just yet, given that Catherine didn’t seem to want to hear about it at our initial meeting. But part of me really wanted to get it out in the open.

  After Mass, I found Sister Teresa on the public side of the parlor encouraging the guests to eat from a continental breakfast set out for her celebration. Based on my brief chats with the extern, I knew the petit fours and cucumber and mint sandwiches were much more extravagant fare than the perpetually fasting, vegetarian nuns allowed themselves.

  “Congratulations,” I said to the guest of honor. “Sixty years is quite an accomplishment.”

  “Oh, not really. Spending my life serving God is hardly work. On the other hand, sharing close quarters with fifteen other women can be rather...” Teresa’s keys jangled as she chuckled. “Well, maybe it is an accomplishment.”

  “For you.” I held out the begonias.

  “Thank you, but I can’t accept them. Our vow of poverty forbids individual ownership.”

  “But…” My shoulders slumped as I thought about the money I had put down at Art Mart for painting supplies a few days before. “How can you take donations if no one can—”

  “We may accept donations and gifts to the convent as a whole, but not personal gifts,” Teresa clarified.

  “Okay, then these are a donation to the whole convent.”

  “Now you’re talking. In that case, ‘we’ thank you.” She took the flowers and inhaled their fragrance. “We’ll all enjoy them in the garden.”

  I pulled the art supplies from where I had stowed them in the corner and presented them next.

  “I know you said Sister Catherine, I mean all the sisters, were short on supplies. Since I didn’t know her preferences, I bought several different types of paints, thinners, and brushes. At the very least she, er, everyone, can use the canvases and the stretchers.”

  “We thank you.” Teresa accepted the supplies, leaned over, and whispered, “I promise Catherine will get first crack at them.”

  “Is she here?” I scanned the knot of sisters gathered on the cloistered side of the grille to share in the celebration.

  “Oh, no. She won’t come out with all these people around. She’s already congratulated me privately. But why don’t you hold on to the art supplies and give them to her, I mean us, personally?” The extern gave the supplies back to me with a wink. “I bet I can convince her to meet you a bit later when things quiet down.”

  That was all the encouragement I needed. I sat and waited as a parade of relatives and friends came and went. At lunchtime, the entire extended family of a young local nun, Sister Carmella, arrived, bringing food and speaking Spanish as they filled the visiting side of the room to capacity. A toddler got passed from lap to lap to be cooed over, his feet never touching the ground. An older child climbed through a window to play ball just inside the garden as her grandmother clucked out a warning to be careful.

  “Ever since we were kids she wanted to enter.” The young nun’s sister handed me a plate of carnitas as she spoke.

  “She knew even then?” I asked.

  “Mmmm-hmmm. You can see the convent from the house where we grew up.”
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  The woman nodded toward the teenage Sister Carmella hugging relatives through the grate. Everyone laughed when she got to the end of the line of people and then went back to the beginning to start all over again.

  “You’re still here?” Sister Teresa asked when she came in to tidy up the parlor a few minutes before five and found me alone. “I told Sister Catherine you were waiting hours ago. Did she ever show?”

  “No, but it’s all right. Sister Carmella’s family fed me very well.”

  I patted my stomach and got up to leave.

  “Hold on there. Let me see what I can do. But don’t expect too much from her. She’s very shy.” Teresa started to exit and then turned back to me. “Oh, and try not to give her credit for the paintings. Focus on telling her about your vocation instead.”

  “Got it.” As I watched the nun leave, I realized that in order to make Catherine more comfortable, I was going to have to go deeper into my vocation lie. I wasn’t sure how I would talk my way out of that fiction when the time came.

  Moments later, I heard Sister Teresa talking to someone in the hall outside the parlor.

  “Just see her and make an old nun happy. Consider it my Jubilee present.”

  The door opened and Teresa and my sister entered the room. As soon as Catherine spied me, she dropped her gaze to the floor and shifted from foot to foot. Her cheeks went rosy with what might have been anger, embarrassment, or both. When she looked up again, I thought I saw confusion in her eyes, but she mustered a nervous grin with that crooked smile I recognized as my own.

  All the jealousy and rejection I felt after our first meeting disappeared. I was just so happy to see her again. I wanted to speak but was afraid to say the wrong thing and snap the thread of connection her smile had established. Did she know we were twins? I still couldn’t tell for sure and didn’t want to ask in front of Teresa, who didn’t seem to notice the high emotion in the room.

  “Sister Catherine, may I present Dorie McKenna,” Sister Teresa said.

  Catherine nodded in acknowledgment and looked away. She didn’t need to worry about seeing my deformed hand again. I was careful to keep it in my pocket this time. My twin’s own hands were hidden behind the paint-smudged blue smock that protected her habit.

  “Dorie is considering a vocation with us,” Teresa continued.

  I stiffened as my lie was repeated back to me, and tried to think of something to talk about besides my phony vocation.

  “I’m so glad to meet you, Sister Catherine,” I said, extending my left hand through the grate. My twin didn’t take it but displayed her own to indicate that it was sticky with pigment.

  “You’ll have to excuse Catherine. She paints up until the very last minute before prayers,” Teresa said. “I’m afraid I interrupted her.”

  I had decided to discuss the rituals at the cloister that resonated with me, but the minute Sister Teresa referred to Catherine’s painting habits, I lost my cool and went exactly where the extern had asked me not to go.

  “I think you’re extremely talented,” I blurted, giddy as a teenager meeting her pop star idol. “Your paintings are stunning.”

  Catherine’s whole body tensed as the eggshells I had been walking on broke under the weight of my compliment. Catherine frowned, folded her arms without thinking about the paint now smearing her smock and didn’t respond. When Sister Teresa elbowed her, Catherine unbent her frown but didn’t smile as she dropped her hands to her sides and nodded to the extern.

  “Sister doesn’t like to take credit or praise for her work. She believes God works through her,” Teresa reminded me.

  “Yes, well, it’s certainly beautiful,” I said, kicking myself and yet unable to stop complimenting her. “I’ve brought you and uh, the other sisters some fresh supplies.” I turned my back to Catherine and picked up the sacks of canvases, oil paints, and brushes from where they leaned against the wall. “I hope they’re the right kind.”

  I slipped the cumbersome items through the space between the bars with my good hand, but my twin kept her arms firmly at her sides. After several agonizing seconds, Sister Teresa took the supplies.

  “We thank you very much, Dorie.” Teresa juggled the shopping bags. “I’m sure Catherine and the other painters here will enjoy these. Won’t you, Sister?”

  Sister Catherine bowed and nodded her head.

  “I’m glad. I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future,” I said, having given up on avoiding the topic.

  I hoped seeing more of the art would include seeing more of the artist. The walls Catherine had built between us seemed higher than those surrounding the cloister. Not that I blamed her—my enthusiasm was pretty obnoxious.

  The first bell chimed for Vespers. Sister Catherine looked to Sister Teresa with pleading eyes as if to say, “May I go now?”

  “Well, we’d better give Sister time to clean up for prayers,” Teresa said.

  “Nice to meet you,” I called out as Catherine disappeared.

  “As I said…” Sister Teresa shrugged, “She’s very shy and doesn’t respond well to praise of her work.”

  “I understand.” I was fairly sure shy had nothing to do with it. “Thank you so much for the introduction.”

  I headed to Vespers myself to get another glimpse of my twin. Her height made her easy to pick out among the nuns lighting candles in the darkening chapel. Catherine kept her eyes on her prayer book, but I kept mine focused on her throughout the service, as if staring would provide the answers our brief meeting hadn’t. Why was it so difficult for her to accept praise of her work? Why did she react to me as she had? Given that she’d had some time to process our first chance meeting by now, I’d thought she might somehow silently acknowledge our relationship during this visit. When she didn’t, I wondered if maybe she didn’t know who I was after all.

  My sister was the first to exit the sanctuary at the conclusion of Vespers. I smiled, hoping that she was in a hurry to break in the new supplies.

  When I walked out to my car, I heard a racket coming from the side of the parking lot behind the cloister wall. I peered through the gate and saw Sister Catherine, her face glistening with tears and sweat. She was dealing with the supplies all right—by tossing the new brushes, paints, and canvases into the dumpster.

  I felt a smile creep onto my face uninvited. I’d always been strangely detached from most material things, and I liked that my sister displayed the same trait, even if it was at my, or more correctly, Trish’s expense. I suppose I could have taken her rejection of the supplies personally, but I was determined to stop assuming I knew what Catherine thought about me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Check out Father What-A-Waste.” I showed Graciela the pictured author of an article entitled “Celibacy: Is It Right for You?,” a square-jawed, blue-eyed priest handsome enough to make a grandmother blush. “That’s just cruel.”

  “Madre mia.” Graciela leaned on my desk, took one look, and waggled a lacquered fingernail at the newsroom’s polyfoam ceiling to indicate the sky beyond. “God’s got some nerve keeping that all to Himself.”

  “God’s keeping the hotties pure, and my sister is keeping her art unseen.” I chewed the end of my pen. “Not fair.”

  “How did she like the supplies? Was she thrilled?”

  “Don’t tell Trish, but she threw them out,” I said, smiling again.

  “In the trash?” My coworker dragged her eyes away from the priest’s photo and puzzled at my odd grin. “Why aren’t you upset?”

  “At least she didn’t paint the canvases first—that would have been way more painful,” I said. My detachment from material things didn’t extend to sentimental items like my family’s artwork. “And I like a challenge.”

  While I respected Catherine’s efforts to keep her work for God alone, I really believed that in the grand scheme her paintings would be even better prayers if she shared them with the world. My task was to persuade her of that.

  “She’s challengi
ng, all right.” Graciela rubbed her stomach. “You want to go grab some ice cream?”

  “No thanks.” I set down the pen and turned to my computer. “I’m leaving for another artist interview in twenty minutes.”

  Since my access to Catherine was limited, I’d met with a former priest who sculpted and a sister who made stained-glass windows, hoping to gain some understanding of how each one’s religious vocation affected the creative process.

  “Oh, yeah? Who’s headlining ‘Dorie’s Holy Roller’ tour today?” Graciela asked.

  “Sister Barbara Nolan. She sells her pottery on the Internet.”

  “Fear factor on a scale of one-to-ten?” Graciela knew how much nuns flustered me until I got to know them.

  “Five. She sounded pretty nice on the phone.”

  “Not bad.” Graciela checked her watch. “You still have time for ice cream.”

  “I wish. I have to write up this piece on psychic tree frogs before I can leave.”

  “Well, you, or maybe the tree frogs, know best.” Graciela grabbed her bag. “Adios, amiga.”

  As Graciela left, I pounded out the frog story in fifteen minutes. Since I’d discovered my sister’s paintings, my regular Comet assignments had taken an interesting turn. I found it more difficult to write unscrupulously after witnessing the hyper-ethics of cloistered nuns, but I had no problem being sloppy in my haste to get back to researching Catherine. The combination resulted in articles that were the equivalent of a cherubic, wholesome child with chocolate pudding all over her face.

  My editor had been less than pleased with the change.

  “If I wanted Pollyanna amateur hour, I’d read the Girl Scout newsletter,” Phil had said in response to some of my recent stories. “Juice it up, McKenna.”