When We Were Saints (30 page)

"So, how are you?" Archie said, studying Clare's profile. She wasn't looking at her hands but over the top of the piano, at the wall.

"I'm doing very well," she said. "The meds they give me are very good."

"That's great," Archie said, his own voice sounding dull. He knew he should feel happy for her but he couldn't help it, he wanted his old Clare back.

"I'll be leaving here in a few more weeks," Clare said.

"Great," Archie said again. "Then what will you do, do you know?"

Clare sped up her waltz. "I'll live with my mother and finish up school."

"That's good." He looked around at the other patients in the room. He wanted to leave. He knew he had been there less than five minutes, but seeing Clare that way felt like torture to him.

"I—I've been praying for you, D-Doris."

Clare played louder. "Have you?"

"Yes. I've started going to church, the Catholic church, with Clyde." Archie cleared his throat and then said, "So, do you—have you prayed for me? I mean, are you allowed to pray here?"

Clare played a little faster. "Not really. It's frowned upon."

"So then that's over—all that. You don't hear voices and have visions and stuff because..."

"Of course not. Do you like my music?" Clare asked.

"Yeah, sure. It's nice."

"Listen, Francis," she said.

Archie smiled. She had called him Francis.

"Are you listening?"

He listened to the piano music and nodded, and then he heard it and his heart skipped a beat. Clare was humming. She was humming to the music.

Archie slid over closer to Clare, hope rising in his chest. "Do you play the piano a lot here—Clare?" he asked.

Clare nodded. "As often as I can. I've come to love music so much."

Archie looked over his shoulder and noticed one of the staff people looking at them. He nodded at him and turned back to Clare, who said, "Even when I'm not playing the piano, I'm humming a tune. We're allowed to hum here."

Clare glanced at Archie and smiled, and he saw, for the briefest moment, a flicker of the old light in her eyes.

The crying Virgin in this story is a sculpture of the enthroned Virgin and child from Autun, Burgundy, in France, dated 1130–1140. It is usually on display behind the altar in the Langon Chapel at the Cloisters; however when I visited there in October 2002, the sculpture had been removed temporarily for conservation purposes. The other sculpture mentioned in that room, the Auvergne Virgin and child, had been moved outside the entrance to the Langon Chapel and is now encased in a clear container. I believe that the Autun Virgin will return encased as well.

1. It seems that Armory brings out the worst in Archie, and Clare brings out his best. Do you think Archie's attraction to Clare has anything to do with being betrayed and treated cruelly by Armory? What initially attracts Archie to Clare?

2. Why do you think people instinctively open up to Clare?

3. Clare has very clear ideas about what it takes to be a saint—discard all material possessions, pray constantly, and go on a pilgrimage. What actions would you take to get in touch with your spiritual side?

4. At several points throughout the story, Archie grows frustrated and even jealous that he is not as close to God as Clare is. What do you think is standing in Archie's way but is not a barrier for Clare?

5. Clare finds her spiritual center in the Cloisters, a museum containing religious artifacts and iconography. Archie, by contrast, feels his spirit is most alive when he is on his family's mountain, communing with nature. What do these distinct ways of experiencing the spiritual world tell you about the differences between Clare and Archie?

6. When it comes to spiritual matters, do you think it is better to go on blind faith, like Clare, or to question and doubt as Archie does?

7. In what ways did Clare manipulate Archie into being an accomplice to her self-destruction?

8. Do you think that Clare's faith is real, or just a product of her anorexia and mental problems? Do you think it is a condition that can be cured in a hospital?

Q
UESTION: HOW
long have you been writing?

H
AN
N
OLAN
: I started writing stories as soon as
I
could write, or so my mother says. What I remember is reading Nancy Drew Mysteries and wanting to write some of my own mysteries. I was about nine years old at the time.
Harriet the Spy
also influenced me back then. I started spying and keeping a journal. I soon realized that I didn't make a very good spy (I kept getting caught), and that I wanted to write more about my own thoughts than about the people I spied on. Still, that was the beginning of keeping a journal and
I
've kept one ever since.
I
wrote my first novel-length story in the hopes of getting it published back in 1988.

Q: What is your writing process? Do you work certain hours or days?

HN: I
use a computer to write, and
I
try to write from about five or six o'clock in the morning until about four o'clock in the afternoon. When my children were living at home, I wrote during the hours they were in school and stopped when they came home.

Q: Are your characters inspired by people you know?

HN: I guess they would have to be in some way—but not really. I never sit down to write a story based on a specific person I know. The characters evolve as I'm writing and they act and react to the situations I've created. I never know who I'm going to meet when I write.

Q: How do you come up with story ideas?

HN: I write about things I care about—those things closest to my heart or things that scare me the most. My ideas come from inside me but they are stimulated by conversations I've had, things I've read, and stories I've heard.

Q: Do personal experiences or details ever end up in your books?

HN: Yes. All the interiors of the houses in my stories come from houses I've been in before. They never come out just the way they are in real life, but in my mind's eye I am picturing a certain familiar house. Casper Alabama, in the book
Send Me Down a Miracle,
was based on a street in Dothan, Alabama, where many of my relatives have lived. The street is named after my great uncle. I created a small town based on that one street.

Q: Your characters often face a life without one or both parents. What do you hope readers will take away from your exploration of this situation?

HN: Every reader comes to a book with their own history and will respond to the book according to that history. I want my readers to take away from this exploration whatever they need. I don't create a story to teach a certain lesson to my readers. I create a story to explore a certain truth about life.

Q: In retrospect, the lives of saints, martyrs, messiahs, and other intensely spiritual people are admired and revered. This book seems to speak to the fact that during their lives, many of these types of people were misunderstood social outcasts, despite the good in their hearts. Were you inspired by the lives of any particular saints or other spiritual figures when you wrote this book?

HN: I think in today's world people like Clare are often misunderstood and even thought of as crazy, as Clare's mother believed Clare to be; however in medieval times, this was not necessarily the case. More people back then believed in such things as visions and miracles and the stigmata. My desire for this story was to portray someone in today's world who has the intense spirituality of the Middle Ages and see what happens.
When We Were Saints
is the result of that. I was of course inspired by the lives of Saints Clare and Francis of Assisi since they are who Archie and Clare emulated.

Q: You have used themes of faith, religion, and spirituality in other books you have written, such as
Send Me Down a Miracle
and
If I Should Die Before I Wake.
Why do you think it is important for young-adult readers to explore these areas?

HN: I believe that young adults naturally explore these areas, whether they call it spirituality or philosophy or even poetry; they are hungry for meaning in their lives. That is why I write about it. It is a part of their lives even if it becomes the part that they reject for a while.

Q: Clare finds her spiritual center at the Cloisters. Archie finds his spirit most alive when on his family's mountain, communing with nature. Where do you go or what do you do to find your own spiritual center?

HN: I turn inward, through meditation and/or prayer—so it doesn't really matter too much where I am, in a basement or on a mountaintop, just as long as I can quiet my mind.

Q: This book explores the fine line between divine knowledge and mental instability. Do you think the two conditions must always be mutually exclusive?

HN: I don't know—especially since scientists and religious experts themselves have trouble defining that fine line, and on which side of the line one particular person falls. Where do we draw that line, even? Who's to judge whether or not someone like Clare might be the real thing? She believes she is. Her visions and her experiences are her reality. Her mother and the doctors believe something else. Why should they be right and Clare wrong just because their ideas fit into society better? Of course, as a parent, Clare's mother couldn't sit still and let her child waste away, and neither in the end could Archie, but that still doesn't prove anything, does it?