Then Came Heaven (34 page)

A powerful and foreign reaction caught Sister in the region of her chest, a hand that seized and twisted for the passing of five awful seconds before she recognized it for what it was: jealousy. It spread an uncomfortable warmth, like a lightning bolt, up her neck and down her arms, and brought forth an insidious inner voice that said, 
but I was supposed to be the one to help them. I’m the one who offered first.

Appalled at herself, she turned away. But some truths were at work, and undeniable. Irene Pribil was more like the children’s own mother than any other living being. She had the artistic knack to care for them with Krystyna-like flair that Sister Regina had never learned, living a life devoid of pin curls and bows and lipstick as she had. Irene could flirt, practice her wiles on her brother-in-law, comb her hair in a perky flounce, even lose weight in an effort to win him. She could demonstrate her abilities as a substitute mother, and—who knows?—maybe wangle a proposal out of him yet.

Sister Regina, on the other hand, was forbidden to voice a word of her own feelings. She was forced to stand aloof, beg his silence, and pretend she felt nothing for him. Maybe he was hurt by the fact that she hadn’t divulged her plans to quit the order. Maybe he took that as an indication that he was nothing special to her. Maybe before her dispensation came through he would reconsider Irene and realize what a perfect stepmother she’d make for the girls.

________

That night, at evening prayers, she performed her daily examen, found herself guilty of jealousy and said one of the most fervent Acts of Contrition of her life. After lights out, she lay awake remembering with great chagrin what she had felt while watching Irene with Eddie and his children. How peculiar. She was twenty-nine years old and had never experienced jealousy before. Oh, maybe as a child, when one of her older siblings got a new pair of shoes or the last piece of pie. But jealousy over a man was different. It had been swift and nasty and thorough, and had left her with a sin on her conscience that must be confessed.

In the dark, she rested the back of one hand over her eyes.

Oh, she was so blasted tired of guilt. It seemed as if everything she’d done in the last six months resulted in guilt. She was tired, too, of the unorthodox irony of falling in love as a nun, being unable to speak of it, unable to verify that what she was feeling, he was feeling. How she longed to walk right up to him and say, I 
do
 love you, and your children, but I’m still bound by my vows until my dispensation comes through. Please be patient. Please wait. Only two more months.

But she could not do that, of course, under pain of sin.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was a warm sunny Tuesday, May eighth, and school had just been dismissed for the day when Mother Agnes came into Sister Regina’s room and closed the door behind her. They greeted each other as usual.

“Praise be to Jesus.”

“Amen.”

Then Mother Agnes said, “Your dispensation has come through from Rome.”

Sister Regina’s hand fluttered to her heart. It felt as though it had leaped to her throat from its accustomed place and pelted there like some berserk battering ram. “Oh! So soon? I... I was told six months.”

“Three to six months. It’s been five, I believe.”

“Nearly... yes. It’s...” Sister Regina stepped back and dropped into her desk chair, short of breath. “Why am I so stunned?”

“It’s a step that will alter your life. And very final.” Sister Regina tried to conquer her emotions, but now that the time was here, the uncertainties of her future reared their heads like dragons. She sat in a state of fluster barely listening to Mother Superior.

“Arrangements have been made for your father to be here at five o’clock this afternoon to pick you up. He’ll be bringing clothes for you to wear. In the meantime, you may strip your bed and remake it and pack your belongings.”

“F... five o’clock?” That was prayer time when everyone would be chanting Matins and lauds and would be unaware of anything happening in the rest of the house.

“Am I... I mean, am I not to be allowed to say goodbye to the other sisters?”

“Under the circumstances, the prioress and the president of the congregation would rather you didn’t.” It was understood, of course, given the hush-hush methods of dealing with this issue, that preservation of the Order was a major concern.

“But...” What could Sister Regina say? 
But some of them are my friends?
 She was not supposed to have nurtured special friendships while she lived within the religious community. It suddenly seemed absurd that they would not allow a simple goodbye. What did they expect, a stampede out of here?

“Not even Sister Dora?”

A disapproving quirk of Mother Superior’s eyebrow said she would brook no wavering on this issue.

If not Sister Dora
, 
then surely not the children.
 Sister Regina glanced over her empty classroom. On the board some cursive writing angled uphill; her fourth-graders had put it there. From the book slots of some of the desks, the edges of papers protruded. On the back of one desk a worn pink sweater hung crookedly with one arm nearly touching the floor.

“But what about the children? Who’ll be teaching them for the rest of the year?”

“One of our retired nuns from Saint Ben’s will be coming to take over your classes for the last three weeks of school. If there’s anything special you want her to know, you may tell me, and I’ll relay the message.”

The revelation that all these plans had been going on behind her back implied that Sister Regina was doing something wrong here, something that needed covering up. No matter that Mother Superior had told Sister Regina last Christmas that it was not a sin to question her vocation, now that the time had come for her departure, everyone was certainly trying to hush it up.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell my pupils I’d be leaving,” she said.

“I believe that’s for the best, Sister.”

I don’t,
 she wanted to argue. Those children were not merely strangers who sat in these desks five days a week. They were individuals, with unique personalities and needs, young people she cared about in myriad ways, who brought to her something vital and important with each school day. Some, at her urging, had been slowly drawing out of their shells, others were learning to curb their negative tendencies. Some were being encouraged to read more, others to jabber less; some to do their adding and subtracting a little more carefully, others to be more kind or patient, others to brush their teeth every day. All were enjoying a book she’d been reading, chapter by chapter
—The Green Turtle Mystery
—and hadn’t finished yet. And two special ones, Anne and Lucy Olczak, would think she cared so little about them that she hadn’t bothered with goodbyes or explanations.

But the church saw every one of the youngsters as a potential priest or nun, and it would not do to be candid about a nun who was leaving the order. It might breed the dread question, 
why?

So she must depart without goodbyes. Not to the children, or to her friends, particularly Sister Dora, most certainly not to Mr. Olczak. Her eyes lingered on the box of building blocks he’d cut for her, but there was no time for dawdling.

Mother Superior was waiting.

“I’ll show you where we were working in our reading and arithmetic books, and I’ve put a marker in the novel I’ve been reading them every Friday afternoon.”

All the while she marked the pages and gave Mother Agnes verbal instructions to pass along, her heart grew heavier and heavier. She’d always assumed she’d stay until the end of the school year, and would have a picnic on the school grounds with the children on the last day, and watch them board the school bus, waving goodbye, ending the school year like any other.

But everything was orchestrated to keep this departure quick and clandestine. No time for reveries or goodbyes. No opportunity to speak of dissatisfactions or futures. Pack up the traitor and get her out of the convent without anybody finding out. Pretend she has gone anywhere but where she has: toward freedom.

The moment came to walk out of her classroom for the last time, and she requested, “Please, Mother, may I be alone for just a few minutes?”

“Yes, of course.”

When Mother Superior was gone, Sister Regina opened her center desk drawer and found the Zagnut bar at the very rear. She tucked it into one of her deep pockets, shut the drawer silently and stood a moment, trying to force herself to go. She had not thought it would be this hard, but five years was a long time. Finally she made herself move as far as the doorway, but stopped and turned with tears in her eyes. This room felt very much hers—her writing on the alphabet that circled the top of the blackboard, her grades in the red grade book in the top-left drawer, her writing on the holy cards that were stuck in the pages of the children’s catechism books.

Goodbye, children,
 she thought. 
I will miss you so much.

In the hall she found Mother Superior waiting, a discreet distance from her classroom door. From across the auditorium in the seventh- and eighth-grade room she heard Mr.

Olczak whistling while he cleaned, but with Mother Superior waiting to accompany her to the convent, she had no opportunity to say goodbye to him.

I’ll write to him, she thought, and explain why I left without a word. 
Goodbye, Mr. Olczak. I’ll miss you, too.

________

In her room at the convent she stripped and remade the bed and packed her personal belongings in her cardboard suitcase. There were pitifully few—underclothes, the black shawl that Grandma Rosella had knit for her, prayer books, rosaries, the crucifix she’d received from her parents when she took her vows, a black-bound copy of Holy Rule, shampoo, toothbrush and toothpowder, a partially used bar of Ivory soap, and class pictures from the last five years.

The pictures brought on a fresh onslaught of emotions. She dropped onto her ladder-backed chair holding the photograph from last school year on her knees. There was Anne, a little shorter than now, still missing one of her teeth, which had grown in beautifully this year. And herself, standing dead center in the last row between all the smiling farm boys whose hair was slicked back with Bryl-creem for the occasion. She could still remember the smell of them on picture day, perfumy like their dads on Sunday. This year’s class picture included both Anne and Lucy. It had been taken shortly after their mother died, and Regina thought she could see the sadness in Anne’s eyes. Lucy was smiling foolishly big, so her eyes disappeared and her lips pulled flat.

What would happen to them? Would she see them again? Would their father come and find her? Or would he, too, believe she thought so little of him she hadn’t bothered with goodbyes?

She placed the pictures atop her personal items and the Zagnut bar beside them, then closed the suitcase just as the bell sounded for afternoon prayer time. Right or wrong, she opened her door and stood within its frame until Sister Dora emerged from her room and passed by on her way to chapel. She stopped at the sight of Regina in the open doorway, with the suitcase on the bed behind her.

“Oh, no,” Sister Dora breathed. “I was afraid of this.”

“I’m not supposed to tell you, but I’ve received a dispensation and I’m leaving today. They’re trying to whisk me out without anybody finding out about it, but...”

Sister Dora looked stunned and saddened. She extended a hand and Regina took it, squeezing it hard between both of hers.

“Where?”

“To my parents’ house for now.”

“God bless you.”

“And you.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“No matter what Holy Rule said, I considered you my friend.”

Sister Dora had tears in her eyes as she squeezed Regina’s hand one last time, then continued along the hall toward chapel.

Moments later the chanting began. It echoed through the upstairs hall in one sweet, haunting, soprano note, ascending up, up, beyond the rafters and roof, carrying the Latin words to the heavens beyond. How displaced Regina felt, listening to unison voices without adding hers. She felt the urge to hurry, join them: she was late for chapel and would have to confess it at the Chapter of Faults on Friday!

But she was a nun no more. She would not chant the daily office again, or confess to anyone except a priest in a confessional.

A knock sounded below. She hadn’t known Mother Agnes was still down there until her voice, chanting too, moved along the main floor hall from the rear of the house to the front. She stopped chanting before she opened the door, then Regina heard her father’s voice. And her mother’s—quiet, almost secretive. And Sister Agnes’s low murmur, greeting them, telling them to have a seat in one of the music rooms.

Regina slipped inside her room, closed the door and waited.

Momentarily, Sister Agnes appeared with a packet of white butcher paper tied with store string.

“Your parents have arrived, and they brought these for you. And here are your dispensation papers, signed by Pope Pius.” She offered a white envelope. “There’s also a small amount of cash. It’s not much, but you brought a dowry when you joined the Sisters of St. Benedict. They feel it’s only right and proper not to turn you out without something to fall back on. Well, Regina, how do you feel?” Not 
Sister 
anymore, just plain 
Regina.

“Scared.”

Reverend Mother offered a benign smile. “No need to be. God will watch over you.”

“Yes, of course.”

“May I say again, Regina, that I’m sorry to see you go. I hope you’ll teach again somewhere. You have too much talent to waste.”

“Thank you, Mother Agnes.”

“Now if you’ll kneel for my last blessing...”

Regina knelt and felt the older nun’s hands on her head for the last time.

“Good and gentle Savior, watch over Regina as she goes forth into the secular world to carry out Thy holy will in different but important ways. May she continue to practice obedience to Your commandments, and to offer up for Your greater glory whatever work she chooses to do in the future. May she practice charity to all, but especially to those less fortunate than she; and continue to espouse the cardinal virtues so that at the end of her temporal life she may dwell with You in life everlasting. Amen.”