Killer in the Cloister Page 4

  Her forkful of roast beef was poised mid-air, her eyes like the blades of a sharp knife. The look on her face set my teeth on edge and I drew in my breath as if to retract my comment.

  “What do you mean?” Sister Teresa asked, almost in unison with at least two others.

  What indeed? I asked myself. Before anyone could speak again, Sister Felix clanked her knife against her glass of water, the standard way Mothers Superior got attention at the table.

  “Sisters, I’ll ask you not to speculate on the final hours of Mother Ignatius, except to pray for her. Mass tomorrow morning will be in her memory. Later in the week, there’ll be a formal memorial service. I’ll keep you informed as I know more.”

  “Will you be staying on here as our Mother Superior, Sister Felix?”

  I couldn’t tell who had asked the question, but I noticed a slight smile come across Sister Felix’s face.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as our Motherhouse makes an announcement, Sisters.”

  I remembered with gratitude that Sisters at St. Lucy’s could leave the table when they’d finished eating, not waiting to say grace together after meals. I stood up, made the sign of the cross, and left the refectory, my roast beef dinner untouched.

  <><><>

  Back in my room, I turned to my books, deciding the best course of action was to forget Mother Ignatius, except to pray for her soul as Sister Felix had recommended. My extracurricular activities were doing no one any good, especially me.

  My new textbooks were piled on my desk, taking up at least half the surface. I looked at the spines and read the titles, from the top down.

  I’d bought a required text by the renegade French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, plus Harvey Cox’s The Secular City, which appeared to be more like a sociology book. Another author was the German theologian Hans Kung, whose name I’d heard in conjunction with a controversy with the Pope. From what Mother Julia told us, Kung questioned a central doctrine of Catholicism—the divine nature of Christ.

  Three other paperbacks were by non-Catholic philosophers and theologians. Except for an anthology of the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and a church history text, I could hardly tell from the collection that I was enrolled in a Catholic university.

  I longed to bury myself in the traditions that had sustained me, but it seemed unlikely that I’d be able to hide from the twentieth century.

  <><><>

  I’d removed my bonnet and untied my bib when I heard a gentle knock on my door. I added this event to the growing list entitled Never Before In My Life As A Nun. My SMI community kept the Great Silence, the rule that no one speak a word on the dormitory floor after dark, unless it was a life-threatening emergency. We assumed this was a precaution against latent homosexuality, although the term was never used by Mother Julia at our formal lessons.

  “It’s wise always to avoid temptation, Sisters,” was all she’d ever said about the practice of Great Silence.

  “Sister Francesca?”

  I heard Sister Ann William’s soft voice and lilting accent. I pinned myself back together and opened the door to find her holding a plate of food covered with waxed paper.

  She held it out to me. “I thought you might get hungry when you were feeling better?”

  “Thank you so much, Sister,” I said, taking the warm platter from her. “I’m better and I am hungry.”

  “The Sisters told me this would not have been possible with Mother Ignatius in charge. She wouldn’t allow food on this floor.”

  Although Sister Ann William’s whispery drawl turned these statements into questions, the terrible implication remained. Possibly because of a horrified look on my face, she covered her mouth and drew in her breath.

  “Not that I’m glad she’s dead,” she said. “And not that I believe in all the reforms of Sister Teresa.”

  “Ironic isn’t it?” I asked.

  “You mean that a nun named Teresa would once again be instigating a reform?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but in the opposite direction wouldn’t you say?” I knew she’d also been thinking of St. Teresa of Avila, who’d brought her sixteenth century Carmelite nuns from the relaxed, worldly environment they’d slipped into, back to poverty, hardship, and solitude. “This Teresa seems to want to blur the distinctions between us and women of the world,” I said, lowering my voice to keep our conversation private.

  While we were still standing at my door, several Sisters had come up the stairs and gone into rooms, some in twos and threes, chatting with a gaiety I hadn’t heard since glee club trips I’d taken in college before I entered the convent. I considered inviting Sister Ann William into my room, but decided I’d broken enough rules for one day.

  “Thanks again, Sister,” I said, cradling my dinner tray. “Shall I meet you after breakfast for our walk to campus?”

  “That would be lovely. Good night, Sister Francesca.”

  A few minutes later, as I finished up my lukewarm potatoes, I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude that I’d met someone as thoughtful as Sister Ann William. She’d even remembered to include silverware with her room service. The term particular attachment—we called it PA for short—came to my mind. I mentally replayed the lessons I’d heard about the dangers of forming friendships as religious.

  “Human friends are for people of the world, Sisters. They are the greatest distraction from doing the will of Our Lord,” Mother Julia had often said. “How are we to know God’s will if we’re following our own likes and dislikes? Our own preferences have no place in religious life. It will be our life’s work to rid ourselves of ourselves, Sisters.”

  Mother Julia drilled into us the wisdom of the three-person rule we followed. We’d walk in threes and we’d talk in threes, to reduce the likelihood of forming one-on-one bonds. For SMIs, as for most religious orders, recreation was a formal term—the only time of day when talking was permitted. During inclement weather, recreation might include a game of cards or a board game. At other times we were allowed to take our mending to the room and sew as we talked. For the most part, recreation periods were immediately after meals, after we’d finished our scullery chore, and seldom lasted more than thirty or forty minutes.

  We were admonished to enter a recreation area with our heads down and our eyes lowered as far as it was possible without tripping. We didn’t survey the room first for Sisters we might like to be with, and we never planned to meet someone.

  “When we have reached some measure of spiritual perfection, Sisters,” Mother Julia told us, “we will find ourselves praying to be at the card table with the Sister who most annoys us.”

  I hoped I hadn’t acted outside the bounds of detached collegiality toward Sister Ann William. It’s not that I’m making friends with her, I told myself. I’m just being charitable, as Our Lord also commands.

  <><><>

  At about nine o’clock, while I was sitting at my desk writing a note to Mother Julia, I heard the house bells ring in the sequence of my room number—two rings, a pause, then five rings. It meant I had either a phone call or a visitor in the parlor, neither of which I was expecting.

  I pinned on my bonnet and walked half way down the corridor to the intercom connecting the dormitory floors to the main office.

  “This is Sister Francesca,” I said into the speaker grille, my voice sounding extra loud as it echoed down the hallway. From the other end, I heard the unmistakable high-pitched tones of Sister Felix.

  “Sister, you have a visitor.”

  “A visitor?”

  “Yes, Sister.” Sister Felix sounded annoyed. “Please come to the small parlor.”

  “Yes, thank you, Sister,” I said, although I had the feeling that my acting Superior had already walked away from the phone.

  I tugged at my veil, checked that I had all the pieces of
my habit on, and headed down the stairs, my mind empty of guesses about my visitor.

  The first person I saw when I reached the first floor was Jake Driscoll. He was in a dark suit, leaving Sister Felix’s office, his arms full of long rolls of paper, as if he’d come from a real estate meeting.

  “Evening, Sister,” he said, giving me a wide smile as he touched a scroll to his forehead in a gesture of salute. “Your young man is in there.” He used the thin tube to point to the parlor next to the front door and across from the mailboxes.

  I nodded without saying a word to him. I found myself blaming him for Mother Ignatius’s death, for no reason I could pinpoint, other than he was alive and happy and she wasn’t.

  I entered the parlor and saw the young man Jake Driscoll referred to—handsome in spite of his disheveled appearance, unshaven, wearing an old sweatshirt minus its neck ribbing, and jeans torn at both knees. His sad face tugged at my heart.

  “Hi, Sis,” he said.

  CHAPTER 7

  I searched my brother’s scruffy face and long, untended hair for his trademark impish grin, and grew melancholy for a moment when I couldn’t find it. When I went to embrace him, he stepped back and turned away from me.

  “I’m kinda dirty,” he said.

  In profile, nineteen-year-old Timothy Wickes appeared as stooped over as an old Cardinal of the Vatican. Unlike the clerical hierarchy, however, Timothy wore greasy denims with American flag patches spaced at random around his hips.

  “I don’t care if you’re messy. I—”

  “I know. You changed my diapers.”

  Timothy turned and I put my arms around him. I felt his body relax. We gave each other our standard playful poke in the shoulders before breaking apart and I was grateful for any sign that he was still my little brother.

  When it was clean, Timothy’s hair was dark brown with hints of red, not carrot-like. His was the only normal-color mane among the Wickes children. Probably he had my mother’s Italian side to thank for that. He was tall and thin like most of the family, except for Kathleen. Katie’s wide hips and our younger sister Gabriella’s name were two other constant reminders of our mother’s Italian heritage.

  “Did you—?”

  “Yes, I reported to my parole officer.”

  “We were worried about you.”

  Timothy frowned. “I wasn’t that late checking in. He said I needed professional help. So I came to see you. You’re a professional, right?” Timothy grinned, and I was grateful for whatever reason he’d found to recover his sense of humor.

  “Does he—?”

  “He knows I’m here.”

  “Since you’re finishing all my sentences this evening, try this one. Does Dad . . . ?” I trailed off.

  “Funny,” he said, giving me another grin. “I called Dad. He said, ‘Timothy, young man, we have a few things to talk about.’”

  Timothy did a near-perfect imitation of our father’s throaty voice, seasoned by alcohol and cigarettes, although he’d finally given up both after a heart attack a few years ago. It had been a mild one, but enough to frighten him into healthier habits.

  I sat down on a low cushioned sofa that matched three other chairs in a dark, rosy brocade with wood trim. For a moment my mind drifted to the last time I’d been in the small parlor, waiting in vain for Mother Ignatius.

  Timothy looked around at the spotless furniture in the dust-free room and threw up his hands as if to indicate he’d found no available seating.

  “It’s all right to sit down,” I said.

  “I’m kinda dirty.”

  “You said that. There must be more important things for us to talk about, Timothy.”

  “You sound like Dad. And you’re the only two people who still call me Timothy.”

  “I didn’t say ‘Timothy, young man.’”

  We both laughed at my attempt to imitate our father, not as good as my brother’s had been.

  As he sat in front of me, having finally plunked himself down on a footstool, I had a hard time thinking of Timothy as a criminal. But he’d sold drugs, even if it was only marijuana, and even if it wasn’t more than once or twice. For all I knew this is how every big time drug dealer in the country got his start.

  For the next half hour, Timothy and I talked about the crises of his life. Timothy was only nine when our mother died, leaving him with four older sisters to fill the role. When he ended up in jail for selling marijuana to his college classmates, we all blamed ourselves.

  “Four mothers are worse than none,” he’d said, more than once.

  Our conversation today was as circular as the so-called dialogues I’d heard between Christians and Jews, or Catholics and Methodists, for that matter. No common starting point.

  “I don’t want to go back to college. But if I don’t, I’ll be drafted.”

  “Your suspension ends in January. You can go back then, and no one will bother you for at least three or four years.”

  “But my classes are meaningless. Bourgeois professors teaching the children of the bourgeoisie. Promoting the glorification of the military industrial complex.”

  This was not my little brother speaking. I dismissed the idea that Timothy had become one of the raving liberals Mother Julia had read to us about. More likely his professors at Potterstown Community College were filling his head with sloppy thinking and words he didn’t even know the meaning of.

  “What do you want to do with your life, Timothy?”

  “Maybe I’ll be a priest.” Another grin. “Oops. Too late.”

  “Timothy!”

  He scratched his head. “Sorry. I don’t know. Hang out with Melody.”

  “I thought her name was Maureen?”

  “She changed it. She says she feels more like a Melody.”

  I had a hard time stifling a laugh. I wondered about a young woman who’d abandon a name that was a form of Mary, in favor of one that was a common noun used by the doo-wop disc jockeys I’d heard in college.

  “You want to hang around with, uh, Melody, but still have Dad pay your expenses?”

  “Oh, like you have a job? Dad paid your expenses all the way through college and you haven’t exactly paid him back.”

  Timothy had stood up to deliver this remark. The small parlor seemed to collapse to minute dimensions as my insides shrank from the stinging comment. I thought I’d gotten over the guilt I suffered when I left my family, even though—except for Timothy—they looked upon my vocation as an honor for the Wickes clan.

  I remembered the conversation I’d had with my father about my vocation as if it were six days ago and not six years.

  “I could wait another year so I can help out,” I’d said. “I’ll get a job, live at home, and enter later.”

  “God is calling you now, Susan Marie,” my father’d said. “And I’m so proud He wants one of mine. Your mother prayed for this every day of her life.”

  I’d tried to explain to my father that a vocation wasn’t like a call from a radio quiz show where you had to have the right answer in less than a minute. Nor was it a trumpet sound from an archangel telling you to show up immediately for a habit fitting.

  For me, God’s call was a more ordinary summons. I believed in everything the Catholic Church had taught me and I wanted to spend my life doing work that I could be sure was God’s will. I’d known SMI’s since kindergarten and felt drawn to their life of prayer and service to others. I’d waited until I finished my degree so I might be more prepared to teach for the order.

  Timothy’s voice called me back to St. Lucy’s Hall, where God’s will for me seemed more vague than I’d gotten used to.

  “I’m sorry,” Timothy said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just that there
I am, under the thumbs of Dad and Patty. She might as well be the nun. She’s completely minus any understanding of normal sexual . . .” Timothy’s face turned red. “Well, it’s tough, is all.”

  “I’m sure it is, Timothy.”

  I knew that my sister Patty felt an obligation to be the mother, as next in line when I left. I couldn’t disagree that her life was nun-like. Twenty-six years old, keeping house for our father and Gabriella, who lived at home while she went to college. Patty never dated, and spent her leisure time at novenas and helping out at the rectory of the parish church.

  “And Gabriella doesn’t get it either,” Timothy continued. “She doesn’t have a care in the world. Her only goal in life is to make it to Italy where they’ll know how to pronounce and spell her name without help.”

  I wanted to ask Timothy what all this had to do with his selling drugs. I was saved from that bad idea by the chimes of the grandfather clock in the main parlor at the end of the corridor. For the second night in a row I heard the ten o’clock chimes from the main parlor.

  “Where are you going to stay tonight?” I asked him.

  “I hitchhiked here. Got left off on the Grand Concourse. I guess I’ll just go back the same way.”

  “But we’re not finished Timothy. I’d really like to have a talk with you when we’re both rested.”

  “Me, too, Sis. Maybe it would actually work without Dad around. Any room here?” He grinned at my exasperated look. “Just kidding. I can probably crash in the lounge on St. Alban’s campus.”

  “Crash?”

  “Uh, sleep. Stay overnight.”

  “What if they’re not open? I doubt you can wander in at any hour.”

  “There’s always the lawn.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t sleep outside.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  I pictured the wide flashlight beam of a St. Alban’s security officer landing on Timothy’s cold cheeks as he lay sprawled on the campus lawn. The vision was enough to convince me that God wanted me to use whatever resources I had to help my brother.