Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  “That’s true, if she was willing to get to know me, which I’m still not sure about. I don’t know why I entered. I guess I was curious. Isn’t everybody curious about what goes on in here?”

  “Yes, but few are take-off-two-weeks-to-fast-and-pray curious.”

  “Maybe I’m a masochist.” God, I wanted a smoke.

  “Heaven forbid. Masochists enjoy suffering. Contemplatives endure it in order to offer it up to God.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that—” I wound my foot around the chair again.

  “Oh, I suppose we are on some level.” Mother leaned back in her seat. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

  “I guess I don’t have an answer.” I shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m still here.”

  “Well, then I suggest you stay until you have at least one good reason why you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ve got two right now. My sister despises me and I don’t want to be a nun.”

  “You and Catherine stand a better chance of making peace if you stay. And you’re not a nun, nor will you be at the end of your two weeks.”

  “I don’t ever want to be a nun,” I insisted.

  “I’m not sure I ever want you to be a nun, either. But you’re welcome to finish out the aspirancy visit if you like.”

  “Why would you let me do that?”

  “Because it’s not always up to us. One woman here fought the call for years. Gave herself an ulcer not wanting to be a nun.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got tired of drinking Mylanta.” Mother patted her stomach and got up. “When God calls, you don’t say no.”

  “But I really don’t want to be a nun,” I said.

  “If that’s the case, then you can leave right now with a clear conscience. For whatever reason, God brought you to this place. Whether it was to write an article about your twin or not, I don’t pretend to know. I do know that if there’s any inkling of ‘or not,’ I suggest you explore that, because it’s not going to go away. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a meeting to attend.”

  Mother Benedicta rose to leave and then paused. “By the way, the inside of any car parked in our public lot is virtually soundproof from the cloister.”

  The prioress exited, leaving her non sequitur behind like Cinderella’s glass slipper—interesting but of no immediate practical use. I sat alone in the office, momentarily stunned. I stood up and shot the crucifix above Mother’s desk a nasty look before storming out of the room.

  • • •

  Back in my cell, I packed my bag, bundled up the linens for the laundry, put on my noisiest shoes, and click-clacked loudly through the courtyard toward my car. I thought I saw Catherine watching me from a window, but when I paused to look, she’d disappeared. I considered finding her and talking things over, but for what? I wouldn’t get any answers from a silent nun.

  I was angrier than I had a right to be—at myself, at my ambition, at the world, and anyone in it who crossed me. Who did Mother Benedicta think she was, anyway? Couldn’t she have accepted my promise not to publish and left it at that? All I’d wanted to do was come clean and get out of there, and the prioress had to go laying this vocational head trip on me.

  Of course I liked being at the cloister. Big Sur was paradise, for God’s sake. It was a damned tourist attraction full of campgrounds and national forest, with an eight-hundred-acre nature preserve that happened to belong to cloistered nuns smack dab in the middle of it. I’d discovered my long-lost sister doing some of the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen in one of the most beautiful places I’d ever been. So I was drawn to it. It didn’t mean I wanted to be a nun.

  Or did it? Maybe I wasn’t interested in the paintings as a way to forward my career or get to know Catherine. Then why had I gone to such extraordinary lengths to be close to them and her on false pretenses? Whom had I fooled? Maybe the joke was on me.

  I heaved my duffel into the trunk, grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the carton, and lit one. I took a long drag, leaned against my car, and waited for a chemical rush that never came. The cigarette tasted like dirt. I threw it down and ground it out with my loafer before opening the car door and sliding into the driver’s seat. The moment I shut the door, I understood why Mother Benedicta had made the soundproof comment.

  “ARRRRGGGGGHHH!” I bellowed from deep in my gut, smacking the steering wheel with my palm. It felt good. “SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!”

  I thought about my options. I’d driven up to the monastery on Saturday so I hadn’t missed any work yet. Producing an article for The Comet or even for freelance purposes was out of the question now, but maybe if I showed up in the newsroom as usual on Monday, Phil might let me keep my job.

  When I went to turn the key in the ignition, I was shocked to find that I couldn’t bring myself to start the car. The view of the Pacific beyond my steering wheel hypnotized me and I suddenly realized I didn’t want to leave. I shook the thought from my head, reached for the ignition, and tried again. A goldfinch landed on my hood. It blinked at me, its yellow and black feathers dazzling against the backdrop of blue sea. I sat there, captivated.

  When the sun grew hot, I climbed out of the stuffy car. Occasional highway traffic hummed below as the wind rustled the laurel trees and cooled the air with a welcome breeze. I wandered into the public garden and sat on a stone bench beside the cloister wall. The decision not to publish relieved my conscience, but staying the full two weeks without producing a story would relieve me of my job. Remaining at the cloister also meant I’d have to reach some sort of truce with Catherine, something I feared as much as I craved.

  I took in the orange and yellow marigolds, burgundy roses, emerald ferns, pink impatiens, and purple begonias as cicadas chirruped in a nearby lilac tree and wasps came and went from a small nest under the eaves. A black-headed blue jay tried to peck open a nut with no success and then hopped about, chirping in apparent frustration. I could relate.

  I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the wall, and let out a deep sigh. I was tired of the indecision and endless questions taking up all the space in my brain.

  “I give up,” I whispered.

  As my mind quieted, I started to pray without thinking about it—a welcome change from the constant doubt. I kept praying, sinking deeper and deeper.

  A bell rang and took me out of my trance. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and counted eleven chimes. Over two hours had passed. When the bell summoning the sisters to chapel for the next Divine Office sounded ten minutes later, I calmly got my bag from my trunk and returned to the cloister.

  Smuggling the carton of Marlboros back into my room would’ve been easy enough, but I left it behind. I’d already survived twelve hours of withdrawal, as well as a dearth of food and sleep and a surplus of caffeine. If I was going to be miserable anyway, I may as well quit smoking too. It was just two weeks, I told myself. And it was all about Catherine and her art, even if I couldn’t publish. Maybe Phil would accept some other article in lieu of a cloister piece. I doubted it.

  “How’s the ulcer?” I asked Mother as we walked toward the chapel a few minutes later.

  “Haven’t had a pain since the day I entered, praise God.” The prioress touched the cross around her neck. “How’s the lung cancer?”

  “I’m working on it. But I don’t think I can beat my addiction to Catherine’s paintings.”

  “None of us can. So long as you lose the liquor and cigarettes, we’ll get along fine.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” I checked the back of Mother’s head for the extra pair of eyes she apparently had there and then decided to offer up restitution. “I will say the Act of Contrition prayer for violating your ban on smoking and drinking.”

  “Good idea. And I’ve got just the thing if you’d like to throw in some penance.”

  “Whatever you think.” I gulped.

  Mother patted my shoulder and we entered the chapel together.

  • • •

  Despite my recent crim
es, I had to break one more rule of the cloister and talk to my sister as soon as possible. I’d lose my nerve if I waited until recreation hour.

  I found Catherine tidying up her studio after lunch. She set down the canvases in her hands when she saw me in the doorway. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I’m pretty sure you know that you and I are twin sis—”

  Before I could finish, Catherine wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug I wasn’t prepared for. Then she pulled back to look at me as she cradled my deformed hand between both of her own.

  “I thought so,” I said in a quivering voice. “So our father told you about me and my handicap?”

  She nodded and looked at the floor.

  “How long have you known? When did he tell you?”

  Catherine turned and sorted through several finished canvases stacked against the wall. She paused at one and beckoned me over.

  The background of the scene showed only hints of furniture and structures to put the figures in context, but my recent studies of religious art helped me recognize the subject as Mary on her deathbed, surrounded by attendants and angels ready to convey her soul to heaven. Catherine pointed to Mary.

  “Okay, yes, Mary is dying, I get that,” I said.

  Catherine gestured between Mary and herself to suggest a connection.

  “Mary talked to you on her deathbed?”

  Catherine shook her head and kept gesturing.

  “Not Mary. Our mother? That’s not possible.” I smacked my forehead. “Duh. Our father. Our dad told you about me when he was dying.”

  Catherine nodded vigorously and held up nine fingers.

  “I understand. And since he died when we were seventeen, you’ve known about me for nine years.”

  Catherine gave me the thumbs up to indicate “yes.” I felt a twinge of old pain in my sternum. It hurt to learn she’d been aware of me for so long and hadn’t looked for me. Then I remembered that I wouldn’t have sought her out, either, if Graciela hadn’t arranged it.

  “I found out about Rene, Lucy, and you when my adoptive dad died last January,” I explained.

  She lowered her chin and put her hand to her heart, which I took to mean that she was sorry for my loss. We stood there for a long time. Unsure how to proceed, I decided to tell her everything.

  “You probably also know that I’m not here because I want to be a nun,” I began.

  Catherine nodded. As I explained my real motives, my twin visibly stiffened but didn’t look surprised. When I told her I’d decided not to write the article, Catherine mouthed the words “thank you” and hugged me again.

  I hugged her back; grieving over the years we’d lost. It was a relief to be close to her, letting our genetic memory take us back to a time before we were born, before the death of our mother and the complication of my handicap took away what might have been and replaced it with insecurity.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Later that day, after the prayers of the 2:30 Divine Office focused on the impermanence of temporal things, I returned to my cell for a lesson in the impermanence of my attention span. Attempting the sisters’ afternoon meditation practice of Lectio Divina, I opened the Bible, picked a random passage to reflect on, and reminded myself to aim for inner stillness. Emotionally exhausted from the recent events, I grew so still that I fell asleep.

  The five o’clock bells woke me with a soothing melody rather than the usual chimes. I followed the sound, a parade of one.

  The lights were turned on inside the chapel now and trees cast stained-glass shadows across the pews during Vespers. I joined in the chanted Magnificat.

  And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,

  And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

  For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:

  For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

  When Sister Teresa slid the cloister’s gate to a close after the service, I was inside its walls.

  • • •

  That night I went to bed long before the nine o’clock chimes, too tired to write in my notebook. I barely survived midnight Vigils and then returned to my cell and set the alarm for one forty-five a.m. I hoped it wouldn’t go off. As penance for the previous evening’s smoking and drinking, Mother had “suggested” I take over the two a.m. perpetual adoration shift of a nun suffering from the flu. Contrite as I was, it was still a sobering thought.

  • • •

  “I’ve never prayed in front of the Eucharist before,” I had told Sister Teresa during that evening’s Scrabble game. “What if I mess it up?”

  “Well, if you do, at least there won’t be anybody else awake to see you,” Teresa said. “Anyway, you can’t really go wrong.”

  “Trust me.” I watched the extern set down the word templum. “I already fell asleep during my Lectio Divina.”

  “Oh, everybody zzzz’s through that from time to time. The meditation lulls you.”

  “But what do I do for adoration?” I flipped through my loaned Latin dictionary and managed to use my “X” tile with luxor. “What do I say?”

  “Nothing special, or nothing at all. Most of the time on my shift I just look at God and God looks back.”

  “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Okay, fine,” Teresa said. “Sometimes I yell at Him.”

  “No way.”

  “Sure I do. Where else can I make noise and bring my problems if not to the Eucharist? It’s God after all. He won’t break.”

  “No, I don’t suppose He will,” I said.

  • • •

  When my alarm went off at one forty-five in the morning, I slogged off to the candlelit chapel in my sweats and T-shirt to relieve Sister Carmella. My predecessor was far too bright-eyed by comparison. I desperately hoped that there wouldn’t be more to perpetual adoration than looking at God and letting God look back. That was about all I could manage. My nicotine withdrawal had revealed itself in a headache and a surplus of nervous energy. I wasn’t sure I could make it through another minute, much less an hour, without smoking something, anything.

  In fact, I was quite convinced I would die if I didn’t have a cigarette. Yet I knew how seriously the sisters took this special charism. I decided I would rather keel over right then and there than leave my post and risk offending them again. Not knowing how seriously God Himself took the ritual, I wasn’t willing to court His ire either.

  Chewing my fingernails, I sat and waited for death, or at least the next wave of nausea. Somehow I made it through the hour. Sister Teresa arrived a few minutes early for her shift.

  “How’d it go?” she whispered.

  “Ask Him.” I pointed to Christ embodied in the consecrated communion wafer displayed on the altar. “I’m guessing He was disappointed.”

  “Are you kidding? After what you’ve just gone through to keep Him company? That was a beautiful prayer.”

  “I dunno, I’m suffering a little nicotine withdrawal.”

  “I knew you were a smoker and realized what you were in for.” Sister Teresa shuddered. “Went through it myself when I entered. Back then nobody knew cigarettes were addictive. Boy, did I find out the hard way.”

  She sat down beside me and shared the silence for several seconds.

  “We don’t seek out suffering at the cloister.” Teresa put her hands in her pockets. “But when it happens, we try to embrace it and offer it up as a little death to Jesus. It gives us an idea of what He went through.”

  “I definitely feel like I’m going to die, but I doubt it’s as bad as that.” I tipped my head to the cross above the altar.

  “Remembering the crucifixion helps us keep things in perspective. The other thing to remember is that suffering doesn’t last forever, especially when I place the pharmacy orders around here.” Teresa placed a hand on my bare arm and guided me to the exit. “Go get some rest.”

  The extern’s pharmacy comment didn’t make sense until I was out
in the hall and noticed the nicotine patch she’d placed on my bicep.

  Back in my room, I discovered a pack of nicotine gum and a rubber band with a note attached:

  Wear the rubber band on your wrist and snap it whenever you want a cigarette. It’ll give you something to do with your hands. Hang in there, Sister Teresa

  Ignoring the rubber band, I ripped open the package of gum, chewed all the pieces at once and promptly threw up.

  Vomiting produced some relief, but I was still too uncomfortable to sleep. When a shower didn’t help, I slipped the rubber band on my wrist and resigned myself to roaming the halls in hopes of discovering a painting that Catherine had forgotten to take down.

  When nearly an hour of wandering produced no stray artwork, I went to the studio. Light and the pungent smell of oil paint emanated from underneath the door and spilled onto the hallway tiles. I pressed my ear to the wood and heard the whir of the electric fan inside but couldn’t bring myself to knock. I didn’t want to intrude but didn’t want to go back to my room either. I eased my spine down the wall and sat on the hallway floor, happy for the company on the other side of the door.

  Penguin trotted down the hall bearing her regular offering between her teeth. She dropped the mouse long enough to snarl at me, presumably for occupying her post. When the threat didn’t result in my departure, the cat placed the mouse at the door beside me and went off in hunt of further spoils. Too tired to scream this time, I eyed the bedraggled corpse.

  “Did you offer your suffering up to Jesus?” I snapped the rubber band on my wrist.

  The mouse was beyond reply.

  • • •

  My withdrawal symptoms decreased after a couple of days, but I continued to sit outside my sister’s studio door every night after my shift. Previously, I would have knocked until I got an interview. Now I was satisfied to sit outside, writing in my notebook and snapping the rubber band that had become as addictive as the cigarettes it had replaced. I drew strength from my belief that the creative process thrived within.

  Filling page after page, I recorded all the experiences I’d normally just chat with Matt about. Phone calls were against house rules.