Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  I wondered if the painting process was anything like journalism. Making entries in a private journal was easy, but I generally put off articles intended for publication as long as possible, even straightforward, puff pieces. I often spent more energy on useless research and stalling than it would take to write the story, until the agony of avoidance became worse than diving in. Once I finally started, it was still a struggle. More than a struggle, it was a daily, monumental effort to overcome my anxiety. Giving meaning to a blank page or a white computer screen was way more than I wanted to face on any given day, yet I felt compelled to do so.

  Sometimes, for a few, fleeting seconds, everything flowed. And for that one instant, I felt complete, as though all were right with the world, or at least my place in it. Even a bad day of writing left me with a sense of accomplishment just for showing up. Sometimes the hard days were more satisfying than the easy ones simply because I had survived, endured, and persevered through them. And while they weren’t typically the days when the best work was done, they were still necessary. Even if all they produced was thrown out, difficult days made the easy, flowing, miraculous days possible. They laid the groundwork and, to paraphrase Louis Pasteur, prepared me to be lucky.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Despite our heartfelt acknowledgment of each other in her studio, tension remained high between Catherine and me as we worked together on kitchen duty. While I appreciated her new-found patience with my culinary bumblings, I couldn’t help wishing that she would talk to me as she showed me how to slice, dice, simmer, and stir. I knew the basics of her life with our father but not her perspective. I found it exhausting to have so many questions that could neither be asked because cloister rules prevented talking during the day, nor answered because of Catherine’s vow of silence.

  If anything, physical closeness increased our emotional distance. As much as I wanted to be near my twin to make up for lost time, I was also repulsed and wished for complete independence from her as if I feared letting myself need her. I asked for a switch to the mailroom to give us a break from each other.

  Mother Benedicta wouldn’t allow the change.

  “We all have our cross to bear,” the prioress said.

  Somehow the closed studio door provided just enough distance between us for me to feel close to my sister and her creative process without intruding upon it.

  On the fourth night of my studio vigils, Sister Teresa walked by after her shift in the chapel and found me sitting on the hallway floor writing in my notebook. Her eyebrows darted up and then dropped into frowning disapproval when she realized I was outside the studio. The extern reached for the knob to open the door for me, but I placed a hand on her arm. Teresa shook her head and went to open it again, but I insisted with pleading eyes. Sister Teresa shrugged and left.

  Mother Benedicta called Catherine and me to her office the next morning.

  “Sister Teresa told me about your nightly stand-offs,” the prioress said.

  “They aren’t exactly stand-offs, Mother,” I clarified. “I’ve never even asked to—”

  “You shouldn’t have to ask.” Mother turned to Sister Catherine. “May I remind you that nothing is our own in the cloister? I allow you that studio with the express understanding that both the room and supplies are available to everyone. Everything is shared, including space. That means no one shall close a door on another member of the community.”

  Sister Catherine nodded without protest. Mother turned back to me.

  “At the same time, I strongly discourage anyone from encroaching on another sister’s contemplative process, whatever form that process takes, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

  I nodded, contrite as a teacher’s pet suddenly finding herself in detention.

  “I don’t want to have this discussion again. I can’t believe we had to have it at all.” The prioress returned to her papers as Catherine and I filed out of the room.

  That night, I found the studio door wide open as I passed after my perpetual adoration stint. I saw the light on inside and smelled fresh paint but still didn’t enter. Penguin looked up when I didn’t stop. I returned to my room in search of the sleep that continued to escape me.

  The next night, a paint-smocked Catherine stood in the studio doorway when I passed by. Her open hands and wide-eyed expression seemed to say, “I’ve opened the door, why don’t you come in?”

  I entered with as much trepidation as when I’d stepped inside a Catholic church after eight years away. Penguin watched from the threshold, seemingly hoping for a similar invitation. Inside, I settled into a corner chair and tried to make myself invisible.

  There was no need to be inconspicuous. The moment Catherine resumed work on a portrait of the Holy Family, she appeared to forget my presence. I was free to study the emotions playing across her face as she worked—the furrowed brow of intense concentration, the shining eyes of sheer, creative abandon, or a blank expression wherein she seemed to see nothing except the canvas.

  The lighting that was so poor when I had photographed the paintings seemed somehow better now. A soft, natural glow bathed the room and highlighted the canvas resting on the easel. Was it moonlight? I scanned the walls for a window. There wasn’t one. She hadn’t changed the lights—the same merciless bulb burned overhead along with the single candle she kept lit in the corner.

  I shifted position and accidentally jostled a low shelf on the wall. Several tubes of paint clattered to the floor, one of which knocked over the burning candle. A startled Penguin jumped in the doorway as I lunged and put out the flame before anything else caught fire, but Catherine didn’t flinch. I picked up the scattered vials and realized it was unlikely that my intensely focused sister knew about my hallway vigils until she was reprimanded for them. I probably could have entered the studio and observed her unnoticed from the beginning.

  As I sat in the silence, I couldn’t decide what was most fascinating—the art, the artist, or the relationship between the two. The contemplative repetition of Catherine’s addition and removal of paint was a kind of visual chant—an exchange with an unseen listener who responded in oils.

  I concluded that Catherine’s process was singular performance art. Unlike actors who conjure sentiment via tidy, preordained actions onstage, my twin waded through the mire of real-world, real-time emotions. The resulting artistic expression seemed to sometimes crash against her technical ability and other times jibe with it perfectly. The work always appeared personal and deeply felt. I realized that any sort of audience, even an appreciative one consisting of only an adoring cat and me, was an invasion.

  After an hour or so working on the painting, Catherine removed it from the ladder-turned-easel. She then ascended that same ladder, pulled down a completed canvas from the shelf, climbed to the ground, and set the new piece on the middle rung.

  It was the Madonna and Child from the visiting-room parlor—intact after all rather than painted over as Sister Teresa had assumed. I couldn’t help but let out a little yelp of joy when I saw the glorious painting again.

  I reveled in the Madonna’s body language—the contentment in her eyes, the warmth with which she cradled her child. Her expression waited for no one but beckoned to all in an effortless invitation to inner peace. Calming reassurances. Restful naps. Time for everything.

  Time for nothing. Before I could fully appreciate the image, Catherine dragged a swath of white across the Madonna’s face as she started a new painting over the old.

  The desecration was swift. I opened my mouth to protest and then remembered that it wasn’t my loss to mourn or my place to lecture. The painting belonged to no one, not even the canvas that hosted it, and certainly not to me despite the ache its absence now produced in my sternum. I snapped the rubber band on my wrist, and struggled to deal with a type of loss that the painter herself seemed very comfortable with.

  Occasionally, Catherine paused to close her eyes briefly or sit in the broken office chair for a rest while the canvas wai
ted for her. After a few hours, she lay on the floor and took a nap, the concrete not much harder than her own sleeping pallet. Even with her eyes closed, I could see that she was still painting, could hear it in the rise and fall of her breathing, could sense it in her movements, could feel it in her stillness. Then she awoke, drew back the veil of sleep, and looked at the canvas anew. Whether she’d solved whatever creative problem she’d dozed off with I couldn’t tell, but she carried on with a new angle, a paler color, a different approach.

  Catherine’s different approach sometimes involved switching hands. I first thought my twin was left-handed like me, but then I saw her manipulate the brush with her right hand as well. It led me to wonder if the talent for painting wasn’t in one’s skill or dexterity with a brush at all, but instead in one’s ability to see, just as I had begun to realize that writing wasn’t about pen, keyboard, or new combinations of words but about listening. Transforming. Translating what you think you see or hear into what is actually there. Bridging the gap of perspective.

  I imagined the touch of the brush against the canvas, stared at the pure, saturated color, inhaled the heady resin. I savored the breeze in the room, yet held onto the stillness. Sitting in the studio with my sister was the closest I’d ever felt to God. I felt God in the room, smelled God in the paint, saw God on the canvas.

  I realized then why Catherine didn’t care about the ends. The means were more than enough.

  • • •

  If painting really was in the eye and not in the hand, could anyone become a great artist? Maybe if one learned to see things the right way, the ability to illustrate them naturally followed.

  I decided to test the theory myself during recreation hour one evening. While the sisters fixated on the latest ping-pong match, I snapped the rubber band on my wrist and slinked over to the easels by the common room’s windows. Not ready to commit paint to canvas, I chose a sketchpad and a box of colored pencils from the available supplies.

  I soon discovered that facing a blank sketchbook was just as intimidating as facing a blank computer screen. Unable to bear the void, I reverted to the simple stars, hearts, flowers, and primary colors I’d relied on as a child just to have something covering the unnerving whiteness.

  My skill level was right where I’d left it the last time I picked up a crayon or a brush at age twelve. I wasn’t surprised but still rattled. Drawing was easier as a kid. Everything was refrigerator-worthy in the eyes of enthusiastic parents.

  My own adult eye was far more critical. Now every line, every mark seemed so permanent, so irreversible, so firm a judgment, that I was afraid to make a serious start. At least a writer had the benefit of the delete button. Most artwork can be erased or painted over too, but it will still be there underneath, if only as a groove on the surface, ready to haunt the new image. Did those hidden relics bother Catherine? They unsettled me, almost as much as whatever efforts I decided were good enough to keep. No wonder Catherine wanted to undo any potential permanence by creating new works over old. Maybe recycling her canvases wasn’t just about honoring God, but also about avoiding criticism, and acclaim, for that matter. Art was far less daunting when it was temporary.

  Finishing my childish drawing of nothing in particular, I ripped off the sheet of paper and crinkled it up in my own version of undoing what I’d done. Yet somehow that seemingly useless first drawing did make the second blank sheet appear less intimidating. Was it because I’d been able to destroy it before anyone else saw it? Or had the amateurish results given me perspective and lowered my expectations? Whatever the reason, I relaxed.

  I looked around the room for something to draw. My eyes settled on a coffee mug full of paintbrushes. I resisted the urge to immediately put pencil to paper and toss something off. Instead I forced myself to study the contours of the ceramic, the wispy bristles on the brushes, the dried paint running down the broken handle of the cup until it ended in one perfect drip on the jagged edge, permanently poised to fall but never falling.

  I stared. I stared until I saw it differently. Until I could distinguish between what my eyes saw and where my mind filled in the blanks of what I knew was there. The rim of the cup was curved, but to do a correct rendering from my angle, it had to be drawn straight. For a moment, I forgot about everything else except the line. A whole world in that line.

  I finished the drawing and found myself surprisingly happy with it. I tucked it in my pocket, unsure whether I would share it with anyone else or not. I definitely wouldn’t be attempting anything abstract. Drawing from a model was hard enough. The talent for seeing beyond the visible was beyond me. I left the common room with a whole new respect for my birth father, my sister, and their craft.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A couple of minutes late for recreation one evening, I entered expecting ping-pong but found Sister Scholastica reviewing the monastery budget in front of the entire community. Even Catherine was there, shifting from foot to foot by the fireplace. I turned to leave, assuming it wasn’t my business. Mother called out to me.

  “Come on in, Dorie,” the prioress insisted with a wave of her hand. “If you’re thinking about joining us, you ought to know what you’re getting into. Please continue, Scholastica.”

  Sister Scholastica pushed her round glasses further up the bridge of her nose. I lowered myself into a folding chair.

  “We’ve addressed most of the structural damage caused by the last rainy season, but the chapel roof and foundation repairs wiped out our prudent reserve, leaving us with only eight thousand in the building fund,” Scholastica said from a podium fashioned from a cardboard box atop a card table.

  “As you all know, shipping altar breads was impossible during the two months that Highway One closed due to the mudslide damage,” she continued. “The financial repercussions of that closure will continue to plague us for years to come. As for our driveway, we’re still short of what we need to make the repairs of the March slides. With rainy season coming again soon, we’re in for a lot more of the same. We simply can’t afford to sustain that much damage again.”

  “How can we avoid it?” asked Sister Teresa, her keys jingling with agitation. “The rain’s gonna fall.”

  “We can commission a hydro-geological survey of our water table to see how to reconfigure the road and retrofit the buildings to limit future slide damage. But the study alone will cost sixty thousand—not to mention the cost of the repairs that they’ll recommend.” Scholastica looked up from her notes and addressed the group. “In short, we can’t afford to do the study or the repairs, but we can’t afford not to, either.”

  I watched Catherine stare at the floor across the room. I couldn’t tell if she was listening.

  “Can’t we sell off some of our land?” Sister Carmella asked as she mended a torn habit with tiny hand stitches. “We’ve got eight hundred acres.”

  “Eight hundred acres of designated wildlife preserve,” Mother Benedicta said. “The reason the Murphy family deeded us the land in the first place was because we promised never to develop it.”

  “Couldn’t the Diocese bail us out?” Sister Teresa asked.

  “They’re struggling just like we are.” Mother rubbed her stomach and grimaced. “Most of our diocese is national park land. There aren’t a whole lot of parishes to support us.”

  “We’ll have to cut back on other things, then,” Sister Teresa concluded.

  “I wish it were that easy.” Scholastica shook her head. “Even if we slashed our daily living expenses, it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket.”

  “The Ladies’ Auxiliary’s fundraising campaigns and bazaars on our behalf may bring in as much as twenty thousand this year, while our volunteer oblates’ activities will give us another ten. But that only meets half the cost of the study,” Mother said. “And we don’t know exactly how much or how soon those donations will come in.”

  “Do we have any estimates on the actual repairs?” Sister Dominica tried to straighten her white novice veil wit
hout success.

  “The study and damage-limiting plans will run us about sixty thousand.” Scholastica paused and took a deep breath. “The repairs themselves might cost as much as one point five million.”

  The normally reserved women all spoke at once.

  “So you’re telling us we’re sunk?” asked Teresa.

  “Unless God shows us a way to make a lot of money in a little amount of time, yes,” Scholastica said.

  “Do we have anything of value we could sell?” Sister Dominica asked.

  Scholastica frowned. “Yes and no. We had a collector interested in buying our floor tiles, but it’d be a small fortune to rip them up, and they’re so fragile that many of them would be ruined and unsalable anyway.”

  “What about our antique vestments and altar cloths?” Carmella tied off the thread on the repaired habit.

  “Our chapel statuary and reliquaries are worth something, but they’ve been with our order for over two hundred years and will only fetch a few thousand dollars on the market anyway. So no, not really. We have nothing of value to sell,” Sister Scholastica concluded.

  I couldn’t help but look at Catherine, who quickly turned away when I caught her eye.

  “Then what are we going to do?” Sister Carmella asked.

  “We’ve applied for three different loans,” Mother said. “If the largest one doesn’t come through, we may be forced to move.”

  A wave of panic passed through the women.

  “You’re saying we have to leave our home?” Sister Grace, a wheelchair-bound nun in her nineties, asked.

  “I’m sorry, but it will be unsafe to spend the winter here if the repairs aren’t made,” Sister Scholastica explained.

  “Where will we go?” asked Dominica. “We’re not going to have to split up, are we?”

  “The most promising site we’ve found doesn’t have infirmary facilities,” Mother Benedicta said. “Our more elderly members may have to stay with other orders.”