Then Came Heaven

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “They’d be company. Days get pretty long since your uncle Tony died. Besides, every housewife in the whole town knows Krystyna is gone. Your girls’ll have more mothers keeping an eye on them than they want. And you're right over there at church. Shucks, if they need you, they can just run over there, can’t they?”

  “I guess so. ’Course, it won’t be so easy in the winter.”

  “Then they can come here, like I said.”

  “Are you really sure, Aunt Katy?”

  “They ain’t learned to make rag rugs yet, have they?”

  “No.”

  “Nor to crochet.”

  “No.”

  “Nor to embroider much.”

  “No.”

  “Well, they got to learn all three, ain’t they? I’ll keep their hands busy, you can bet on that.”

  ________

  She kept their hands busy all right. The next afternoon when Eddie walked into her house he found his daughters elbow deep in flour.

  “We’re making biscuits!” Lucy exclaimed. “Grandma Katy’s letting us cut ’em out with this. See?” She held up a round cookie cutter.

  “And she’s already got pigs-in-the-blanket cooking!” Anne added. “She let us roll the meat up in the cabbage leaves, and put them in the roaster and I got to put the roaster in the oven!”

  “You’re staying for supper,” Aunt Katy decreed.

  And so a pattern was established. In the mornings Irene came before school, and in the afternoon Aunt Katy watched the girls after school. She fixed supper for all four of them and Eddie bought the groceries. She taught the girls to dry dishes for her, and on wash day Eddie would run over across the school grounds to her house sometime in the late morning and help her carry out her washtubs and empty them in the yard. On Saturdays, when he wasn’t needed at church so frequently, he cleaned his own house. The girls learned to dust the furniture and beat the rugs. On Sundays they learned to fix their own hair the best they could, and he tied their sashes, and sometimes helped Lucy fasten her barrette in her hair. On school days at four o’clock Eddie need not worry.

  It was a small, safe town, Browerville, and as Aunt Katy had pointed out, parents watched out for everybody’s children, not just their own. Every adult in town knew not only the name of every kid in town, he knew the names of their dogs as well. A back door would open and a housewife would yell, “Rexy, get out of that flower bed!” or “Bunny, stop digging!” just as they might yell, “Anne, it’s cold out there. Go home and get your jacket!” or “Lucy, you can get hurt on that woodpile! Get down off of there!” Doors were not locked—not Eddie’s, not Grandma Gaffke’s, not anyone’s—so the girls could have walked into anyone’s house and gotten whatever they needed. If they had fallen and needed a bandage, someone would put it on. If their wound had been more serious, they would have been led down to Dr. Lenarz’s office. If they had been hungry and needed a snack, a cookie jar and glass of milk would have been offered. If they had grown sad and needed their mother, a pair of loving arms would be there to gather them in.

  And so, just as the doors to Eddie and Krystyna Olczak’s house had always been open to others, others’ were now open to their children. The insurmountable logistics of being a working daddy without a mommy to look after his children were ironed out for Eddie by the simple charity that was taken as rote in this close-knit Catholic community.

  Yes, his friends and neighbors and relatives took care of everything.

  Everything but the loneliness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Chapter of Faults was a forum for the nuns to express their sorrow for any misdeeds committed during the week. It was regulated by the Constitution of their order and was held every Friday evening in the community room, presided over by Mother Agnes.

  On the Friday following Krystyna’s funeral the entire community of nuns gathered after supper and Sister Agnes led them in the Veni, Creator Spiritus, followed by its versicle and prayer. From youngest to oldest, the nuns knelt before Mother Superior to accuse themselves of two or three exterior faults, ask for a penance from her, then return to their places. It wasn’t Confession—only a priest could preside at Confession—but it felt the same afterward, a cleansing and renewal to start over and do better next week, bolstered by the loving if silent support of those who knew the demons with which each nun was doing battle.

  As it turned out, Sister Regina was the youngest one at St. Joseph’s, so she knelt first. Sister Agnes sat on an armchair while the late sun settled behind the playground and the room’s rutabaga walls faded to umber. In keeping with their vow of poverty, no one turned on a light yet, even as the shadows deepened.

  Sister Regina bowed her head, giving herself a view of Sister Agnes’s skirts and cracked black shoes.

  “Reverend Mother,” she murmured, “in the days since Krystyna Olczak died I have repeatedly questioned God’s wisdom in taking her. My sorrow over her death and the plight of her children has at times taken the form of anger, and sometimes that anger has been directed at members of this community. At other times it has forced me away from my community to be alone, which I know is contrary to Holy Rule. I’ve also defied our Constitution by voicing my discontent about all of this to one of the other sisters. For this I ask a penance, Reverend Mother.”

  Reverend Mother touched Sister Regina’s bowed head and said, “Pray the Rosary for the needs of the congregation, Sister.”

  “Yes, Reverend Mother.”

  When it was Sister Dora’s turn to kneel before her superior, much to Sister Regina’s surprise, she confessed almost verbatim what Sister Regina had confessed with the exception of seeking solitude. Reverend Mother also told her to pray the rosary for the needs of the congregation.

  Each nun in turn knelt before her superior.

  Sister Samuel confessed to impatience in handling a student who continually missed choir practice.

  Sister Mary Charles said she had shouted at her students one day and also that she had wished for candy.

  Sister Ignatius confessed to wasting time: she had fallen asleep one afternoon while polishing the silverware. (Sister Regina supposed she was not the only one trying to suppress her smile when she heard this, for Sister Ignatius confessed this nearly every week.)

  Sister Gregory confessed to a violation of nocturnal silence and to having uncharitable thoughts about a parent of one of her students.

  Sister Cecelia, the perpetual busybody who so energetically tried to keep everybody else in line, confessed to nothing.

  The Chapter of Faults closed with the recitation of an Act of Contrition and an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be in honor of St. Joseph for the needs of the congregation.

  When recreation time resumed the others visited, but Sister Regina did not. She occupied herself making small tablets out of leftover worksheets that had writing on one side, cutting them into fourths, punching holes and binding them with bits of yam for her students to fill with autumn leaves. While she worked she berated herself for failing to confess another entire list of faults regarding Mr. Olczak. Had she not touched him the day his wife died? Wished to embrace him and his children the same day? And felt anger on his behalf when his family let him ring the death bells? And she’d encouraged idle conversation with him not only on one occasion, but on two. She had hugged his children in the flower room that one day before school—she could still feel the maternal response to them when she closed her eyes. Worst of all, she’d admitted to herself that the feelings she harbored for Mr. Olczak went far beyond those which any nun should be having for a secular, particularly for one of the opposite sex whom she encountered every day of the week. And even more particularly, one who had so recently lost his wife.

  What would people think? More important, what would God think? And why was it that any infraction against the vow of chastity was the hardest to confess? Obedience and poverty, yes—these were vows of equal import: breach these and the words came tumbling out easily at the Chapter of Faults or at con
fession. But breach the vow of chastity and it became complicated by one’s failure to confess it, after which it lay on the conscience heavier than ever.

  Sister Regina decided that what she needed more than all else was silence and recollection to help her combat the incipient attraction she was feeling for Mr. Olczak. Silence and recollection—she’d been taught—were essential to the formation and preservation of the interior life and to a living awareness of the indwelling presence of God in the soul. She’d known this since she’d first entered the postulate. Put plainly and simply, she’d been talking too much.

  She made up her mind she would try very hard from now on to talk less, think of Mr. Olczak less, and avoid being in his vicinity whenever possible.

  After recreation ended she went to her room and prayed, prayed long and hard that she might rekindle the zeal she had once had for her vocation and dispense with all the unsisterly inclinations she’d been having. Night fell but, in keeping with her vow of poverty, she left the lamp off, kneeling on the hard floor in the dark and attempting to empty her mind of all worldly thought and achieve a true communion with God. For a while she thought she’d succeeded, but as her knees began aching she’d find herself searching for distraction beyond prayer, and more than once that distraction came in the image of Mr. Olczak stopping in the far comer of her room, stacking his hands on his mop handle and admitting that he resented his sister-in-law for invading Krystyna’s territory. He had loved his wife the way Sister Regina imagined dreamy-eyed young girls hope to be loved by their husbands. She had never given herself the chance to be a dreamy-eyed young girl, for she had committed herself to being a nun from the time of her early teens. How odd that she’d never dreamed of boyfriends or husbands. It almost seemed abnormal now. But with Grandma Rosella whispering in one ear, and the nuns whispering in the other, what chance had she had?

  Pray! she admonished herself. You are not praying! And so she would start again.

  “Virgin most clement, pray for me...”

  She had been trained to espouse the highest ideals of the evangelical counsels—poverty, obedience and chastity—and she wanted to excel, to be a content, obedient, chaste nun. Truly she did! The idea of being anything else was terrifying, for she’d had the sanctuary of communal convent life throughout all her adult years. Its structure and ritual were so ingrained that the idea of living alone was as scary to her as divorce was to a married woman.

  A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.

  But something had changed within her, and the perfection for which all nuns aspired, as delineated in their Constitution, seemed unattainable. Indeed, at times, it seemed egotistical to believe one could be perfect.

  ________

  On Saturday she went to Confession. But she lumped all her Olczak-related sins into one statement. She told Father, “I’ve had unchaste thoughts.”

  ________

  On Saturday afternoon she was once again getting set to carry out her charge as sacristan, when she encountered not only Mr. Olczak but Anne and Lucy as well. He had brought them along with him in his green pickup, which he’d backed up into the driveway between the buildings just as she came out of the convent to head over to church.

  When the girls saw her coming, they both burst into smiles and ran toward her.

  “Sister Regina!” they both shouted.

  “Hello, girls.”

  Lucy ran smack into her and hugged her skirts, hanging her head back to look up. Her hair was braided and untidy, and she was dressed in faded dungarees and a wrinkled white blouse with a ketchup stain on the front. She looked happy and adorable.

  “How come you’re wearing an apron?” Lucy asked.

  “Because I’m going over to clean the church.”

  “But our daddy cleans the church, how come you got to?”

  “I do more than clean. I make sure everything is ready for Father Kuzdek for Sunday Mass.”

  Mr. Olczak approached at that moment and paused in the balmy autumn day, wearing leather gloves and carrying a tall load of boxes stacked one upon another. His blue shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and the boxes reached the middle of his chest.

  “Afternoon, Sister.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Olczak.”

  “Bowling leagues starting tonight.” In the basement of the school building there were three alleys that he maintained along with everything else. “Got to get the candy case stocked and the pop coolers filled.”

  “Yeah, and guess what!” Lucy spouted. “He says if we help him load the cases we can each have a candy bar! I like Zagnut the best!”

  Sister Regina had never tasted a Zagnut candy bar. As a youngster in a large farm family, opportunities and cash for buying candy were rare. As an adult nun, any money she received was turned over to Mother Superior to be put into a communal pot.

  Out of nowhere, on this splendid fall afternoon, came a sense of having been cheated, and an innocent wish to taste a Zagnut.

  “My, aren’t you lucky?” she said to the child.

  “Sounds like we’re going to have a busy bowling season,” Mr. Olczak remarked. “Alleys’ll be in use five nights a week.”

  “Ah,” she said, acknowledging his remark without encouraging more, and keeping her eyes chastely lowered. But what she saw were his bare forearms wrapped around that stack of candy cartons, the blue veins standing out like welting on a chair cushion. She wondered what it was like to have a man’s arms around you at night, then lying wrist-up on the pillow beside you in the morning. To share a breakfast table with your life’s mate and talk about your plans for the day; then supper at the end of the day when you were tired and fulfilled by work. To put a child to bed, and kiss her, and leave the door ajar as you tiptoed out together.

  Guilt struck swiftly. “I must get over to church,” she said, keeping her head averted and hurrying on.

  He yelled after her, “Call me if there’s anything you need over there.”

  She kept walking and replied, “Thank you, Mr. Olczak. I will.”

  When she got inside the church she put both hands to her face and found it hot, the image of his strong arms vivid and unsettling. She stood awhile in the cavernous coolness, alone and confused about what was happening to her. Had she chosen wrong? Had she wasted the best years of her life on a vocation for which she was not meant?

  Fear struck and she hurried inside, kneeling to say a quick prayer of supplication.

  Dear God, what is happening to me? Why do these thoughts persist and why can I not be happy here as I’ve always been before? Is this lust? It must be, for it is most powerful, and I need Your help to combat it. Reside in me, help me, strengthen me. I would not know how to live in any other life. Where would I go? What would I do? Help me, Heavenly Father.

  ________

  September moved on and the leaves began to turn. Sister Regina’s third-grade class made their colored leaf booklets, and Eddie Olczak emptied the window boxes at the convent and transferred all the geraniums from the outdoor urns into the church basement for winter storage.

  Sister Regina’s fourth-grade class began studying liturgical vestments and nuns’ habits, cutting pictures of them out of catalogues and memorizing their names: it was time to begin encouraging a new generation of Catholic children to think of the priesthood and sisterhood as the most esteemed walk of life to which they could aspire.

  At Eddie’s house, his girls began “playing sister,” cutting out bandeaux and guimpes of cardboard and draping them with Krystyna’s silk scarves, and hanging rosaries around their necks. Up in their bedroom they played school, teaching imaginary students, begging for a toy blackboard so they could write on it “like Sister Regina did.”

  Father Kuzdek began preparing the fourth-graders for their First Communion in the spring, and Sister Mary Charles began feeling familiar enough with her new students to periodically whip the bad boys in the flower room.

  As the weather cooled, Father announced at Sund
ay Mass that the nuns needed firewood, and a load appeared in their backyard, donated by some parishioner who owned a farm and offered the wood in place of his annual parish tithe.

  Eddie spent the better part of one day throwing the wood down the metal chute into the storage room in the nuns’ basement, then stacking it to the ceiling inside.

  Sister Regina saw him at his work when she took the children out for recess. Anne yelled, “Hi, Daddy!” and he straightened and waved to her. Then he tipped his cap to Sister Regina and watched her go past with her black knit cape snugged around her shoulders. She felt his eyes following, but she told herself he was merely pausing for a breather; he’d have done the same if it had been old Sister Ignatius passing.

  She took the children as far away from him as possible, clear up to the top of the playground, where she organized a game of pump-pump-pull-away. But distance could not dull her awareness of the man working below, nor drown the rhythmic klung-klung-klung of the wood hitting the metal chute. The sound reverberated through the crisp autumn air, reminding her he was there. Sometimes she’d give in to temptation and glance down at his black-and-red-checked lumberman’s jacket in the yard below as he loaded the wood that would keep her warm through the winter.

  Then she said an Act of Contrition because she was wed to Christ, and such thoughts violated the vows she’d taken.

  ________

  In early October Sister Ignatius got some dizzy spells and had to go into the hospital at long Prairie for some tests. While she was gone Sister Cecelia, the housekeeper, tried to take up the slack and cook as well as clean, but it soon became apparent she could not handle both jobs. Mother Agnes ordered the entire community to help in the kitchen. She posted a schedule and gave them a special dispensation to skip chapel and pray their Divine Office whenever was convenient on the days when they helped out in the kitchen.

  Sister Regina was helping Sister Cecelia cook supper one Tuesday afternoon when a knock sounded on the back door. Sister Cecelia was busy peeling potatoes and said, “Will you get that, Sister Regina?”