Visible Signs

Chapter 1I f God is calling her, she wishes He’d speak louder. Or send her a sign. Once again, she can’t sleep, no matter how hard she tries to ignore her nagging heart. Sister Jude rubs the bony ridge above her eyes, behind which pinpricks of light herald the throbbing pain. Sister Immaculata had said, “This too shall pass.” But it hasn’t. Not the sleepless nights or restless days eroding her peace of mind, capsizing the equilibrium of the life she chose, the life she’d loved. She kneels next to her narrow bed and bows her head. O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. He had shown her the way once, so clearly, so completely. On her Confirmation day, returning from the communion rail at Our Lady of Sorrows and seeing her mother’s face as luminous and nacreous as pearl, despite her useless body in the wheelchair. Jude was thirteen, and by then, all too knowledgeable about the disease, how it attacked the nerve cells in the spinal cord and the brain; how some people could live for decades and others just a few years; that whatever the manifestation, all had the same pitiful, inevitable end. But on that day—for long, slow-motion seconds outside of time—she’d felt her mother’s arms around her as real and warm and solid as muscle, flesh, and bone. She’d stood riveted in the aisle, transfixed by ‘the peace which passeth understanding.’ And her heart had stirred with the sudden, sure, ineffable desire to serve the radiant God who could lift her dying mother halfway to Heaven with His grace. A desire burnished by the solace she found in her mother’s daily devotions, her clear-eyed sacred journey to her death; a desire that withstood her father’s furious opposition, her friends’ shocked reactions, as if entering the convent were a deprivation greater than the one she’d already suffered by losing her mother in increments from the time she was a child of eight until she turned eighteen. But her mother had remained incandescent throughout, despite the wasting. And dispassionate about her prognosis in a way that Jude had envied and her father had hated. He had insisted on carting his wife to Mt. Sinai, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic, or anyplace else that offered a wisp of hope with experimental drugs or therapies. She had begged her mother to stop allowing herself to be poked and prodded and tested. “It’s what he can do; not doing it would murder him,” her mother said. “Besides, I’ve no pain, love, and all my senses to drink in my last of this glorious world.” An ache blooms in Jude’s chest. That’s how her mother spoke, in words effusive and grand. She brushes away the tears that ambush her frequently these days, outbursts that the others have learned to ignore, much the same way they abide Sister Theresa’s menopausal mood swings. But Jude has come to realize that her own condition is neither biological nor transient, but what feels like the shifting of tectonic plates, the familiar terrain altered, and she cannot find her bearings. Although she’s tried, roaming the acres of monastery grounds in silent meditation so frequently, she’s had to tighten the cincture around her waist. Jude slips on a robe and tiptoes downstairs to the chilly refectory kitchen. She turns on the burner under the kettle and stands there, mesmerized by the necklace of blue flames, their bright warmth, the odor redolent of those mornings when—her father long gone to work at the docks—she’d take tea to her mother, frail and shrinking under the chenille bedspread. With no one to check her homework, or braid her hair, still, she felt safe in the sanctuary of her mother’s room, remembering the soft light from the silk-shaded lamp on the nightstand, the vase of flowers on the dresser, the emerald green rosary beads that matched her mother’s eyes. She’d walk the six blocks to Connie’s house, an alternate universe where Connie’s sisters teased their hair and each other, their brothers roughhoused, Rose scolding her sons as if they were six years old instead of six feet tall. Where, as the years went on, Louis, Jr. and Carlo coached her through JV basketball, high-fiving her when she made varsity, griping when she regularly beat them at free throws. Her killer foul shot was more likely the result of the sheer physical release of hurling her body into the air and slamming the ball into the basket, rather than reaching her full height of five foot ten. Connie’s house was as raucous and crowded as hers was quiet and spare, her home away from home until the convent. The word primes her well of sadness, blurring her vision. Jude runs her hand over the worn countertop where she’s spent hours in happy communion chopping vegetables, stirring batter, or slicing roasts; the sighing of the radiators as familiar to her as the pale blue coffee cups lined up for the morning, next to a stack of matching plates. With trembling hands, Jude lifts the kettle before it whistles, fills a mug, stirs in Sanka, and carries it into the parlor, already set up as the reception area for this weekend’s retreat. Their annual Advent retreat, three weeks before Christmas, is always well-attended by busy wives and mothers. Women—she knows by now—from elegant Westchester houses, East Side high-rises, duplexes in Queens seeking respite and reflection. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for nuns, no way for her to slip into secular life for an occasional weekend. She walks through the foyer past the statues of the Blessed Mother and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A beautiful, tranquil Jesus holds his own red heart surrounded by flames. Her heart feels as combustible and unstable, made up of warring elements. She climbs the stairs and hesitates outside Immaculata’s door but resists the temptation to knock. At seventy-three, she needs her rest. Besides, what else can they say that hasn’t been already said? She’s been Jude’s spiritual director for years, from before she entered the convent, when she was still Rita Mooney and came here on a retreat for young women considering religious life. “That’s God’s plan for me, is it?” her father had said when she told him where she was going for the weekend. “That my wife and daughter leave me to be with Him?” His words had stung and she carried them with her on the subway to the city, on the bus back upstate, in the taxi to Holy Name. She remembers the Shirelles crooning “Soldier Boy” on the radio. It aired endlessly that summer, an anthem for girls whose boyfriends were in Vietnam. But they dissipated as soon as she entered the monastery grounds, the gradual rise to the weathered stone building surrounded by woodlands and crowned by high altitude clouds. All she could think of was that e.e. cummings poem her mother loved, “I thank You God for this most amazing.” That weekend Rita had prayed in the simple white chapel and attended the talks. Spent hours scrupulously examining her conscience. She had doubts. Of course, she had doubts, which she confided in Immaculata. Was she compensating for the loss of her mother or indulging a prideful need to be extraordinary? Abandoning her father? “Perhaps it is grief, or guilt,” Immaculata had told her then. “Perhaps not. But you’re barely eighteen. See how you feel when you’re twenty-one. If it’s a true vocation, it will not only endure, but strengthen. And God is patient.” Even though Rita lived at home all through college, and dated and partied and flirted with temptation, those experiences never eclipsed the profound joy she’d felt at the monastery. She entered the cloister at twenty-one, gaining a precious peace in handing her heavy heart over to a loving God. Her father never once stepped foot on the grounds. And he never forgave her. “Then you must forgive him,” Immaculata said. Jude had tried. Hadn’t she? She trudges along the silent corridor to her own cell, past the rest—ten in all, each nun’s room sacrosanct and off-limits to one another—to her own private purgatory. She sets her coffee next to the letter from her father and draws her feet up onto the ladder-back chair, hugging her knees to her chest. Except for her canonical year, when her contact with the outside world was completely restricted, she had dutifully visited her father each spring. Seven times over eight years. At first, their only common ground was the cemetery, where she would pray (silently) and he would tend her mother’s grave. She spent more time at Connie’s house or in her mother’s sickroom—left untouched save for the absence of medical equipment—than in her father’s company. Once, thinking it would be too painful for him, she’d offered to go through her mother’s things and give what they could to charity. His horrified look angered her, as if she were adding to his burden instead of lifting it. She’d cook his favorite meals and they’d eat in an excruciating silence, which she interpreted as her punishment instead of his despair. Their infrequent exchanges bore no resemblance to affection let alone the love she’d enjoyed when she was a little girl and her mother had been well. The three of them at Rockefeller Center each Christmas, Jones Beach every summer, at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Whatever the cause—the passing of time, the power of prayer—her last visit home offered her hope. One evening, they were watching Ed Sullivan when an Irish tenor began to sing “Danny Boy.” Her father flinched and she reached for the remote. “Leave it,” he told her. “If I shut out everything that reminds me of her, I’d never see or hear again.” It was the first time he spoke of his pain and her heart hurt for him, but it was also a crack in the veneer of their entrenched formality. So, with not a little trepidation, she offered to put the boxes of photos, which had been moldering in the attic, into albums. “For when you want to look at them,” she told him. “They could get ruined. I know you wouldn’t want that.” He nodded. “Okay, Reetie. The next time you’re home.” The endearment disarmed her. She was his child again, his daughter. He made her breakfast her last morning, the toad-in-a-hole that delighted her as a little girl. She was so choked up she could hardly eat. If he noticed her tears, he didn’t say, but he’d given her a fierce hug when she left. She’d taken the subway in a trance, hardly cognizant of the usual stares at her attire. Jude hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him, them. Who else remembers her first day of school, carrying her weeping to the schoolyard, staying with her all day, despite the scowling nuns, standing sentry in the hallway, where she could see his reassuring grin; or her mother, rousting them out of bed at dawn to go sledding in the pristine snow in Prospect Park; or the summer nights, shooting hoops until one of them caved, staggering back inside sweaty and exhausted, her mother serving the biggest sundae to the loser? Next time, the bus terminal thick with shamrocks and leprechauns and St. Patrick’s Day revelers, they’ll have their own celebration. They’ll sit on the sofa, surrounded by piles of photos, and reminisce about her mother’s rowdy laugh, her goofy jokes. Next time, she’ll tell him she loves him, that she’s sorry she’d hurt him; next time she’ll call him her Da. But the next time was a drear September day in a hospital room, after a stroke left him unable to comprehend speech or even recognize her. His room had been dark, except for the frenetic flickering of the TV. His eyes were closed and when she touched his arm, he turned his head and looked at her unseeing. Her headache ratchets up a notch. Jude stands to open the tiny window, drinking in the cold air. She tried to care for him at home, her big, strapping Da, as bewildered and frightened as a lost child. Jude was lost as well, unable to comfort him or to give him some small joy. Even at her last, her mother insisted on being taken outdoors no matter the weather, dining with everyone else when all she could manage was a morsel, lavishing them with her fierce attention and affirmations. “You’re strong,” she’d tell them, or wise, or funny. And to her, always, “It’s a beauty you are, daughter, through and through.” She was extravagant with her praise, profligate with her love. When it became clear that her father was too easily confused, too difficult for her to manage, his older brother, Raymond, helped her choose a nursing home, then ten days later, after a second, fatal stroke, his casket. The desolation blindsided her. That was how she expected to feel when her mother died, their final words accompanied by the eerie sound of the ventilator’s artificial breaths. She felt relief, however, at the end of her mother’s temporal body, unable to swallow, or even breathe on its own. They had taken leave of each other with fullness and tenderness and tears. No regrets, not one. But for her father, she had so many. “You did the best you could,” Immaculata told her. She knew she hadn’t. For years, she’d been as withholding as he, as unforgiving. The knowledge haunted her; she became pale and withdrawn. Maybe she’s had her signs. Maybe helping Tomás is simply a lesson in charity. And her father’s bequest, a test of her faith. Maybe she’s not meant to do anything, other than pray. She retrieves his letter from the nightstand. She believes her father loved her in his own cramped way, but his gift feels like a reproach. How did he put it? Daughter, I’ve left my estate (such a grand word!) and such as it is to Raymond. I couldn’t take the chance that naming you in my will would automatically give those crows a right to it. Your uncle (another foolish papist) knows it’s meant for you and would cut off his thumbs sooner than touch a penny of it. It’s you I’m after protecting, don’t be mad at your Da. The money is yours, throw it off Canarsie Pier, if that’s what you want, but you’re not to give it to them. When the carillon peals for Vigils, she puts the letter away and then slips the black tunic over her head. Covering her head with the coif, she tucks the front flaps (like a bib only hidden, Sister Immaculata had instructed that first time) inside her tunic. Jude places the white vinyl band like a crown over the coif. The trick to attaching the black veil, she’s discovered, is a combination of safety and straight pins. Now for the stiff discipline of the starched wimple, which encases the sides of her face and her chin, circles her neck, and lies over her heart like a white shield. She reaches back to fasten it, forced then to hold her head high and keep it there. After looping her rosary under her belt, she kisses the worn silver crucifix and pins it over her heart. She joins her Sisters crossing the courtyard, their serge habits sibilant, their clacking beads a counterpoint, her spirit rising with their first words—a prayer. The day breaks in a chalky mist so still the echoes of the monastery bells linger in the foothills and the cross at the crest of the drive seems suspended in mid-air. Mother Superior stands at the lectern as they file into the modest chapel, the air silky with incense and candlelight. They take their places by seniority, Sister Immaculata first. Kneeling beside Sister Catherine John in the last pew, Jude begs God to have mercy on her father’s soul, and to show her the way back to contentment. When she finally looks up, she meets Mother Superior’s level gaze. After chapel, Jude takes her place next to Immaculata in the dining room. When Mother Superior finishes saying grace, Jude leaves her breakfast untouched, savoring instead the skitter and hum of female voices, the crowded table, the food, plain but delicious because of their company, the youngest part of her thinking: Good. Solid. Mine. “You won’t find any answers by fasting,” Immaculata tells her. “I’m not hungry.” “You’re losing too much weight. It does not go unnoticed.” She inclines her head towards Mother Superior seated at the head of the table. “Eat something, Jude. Now.” For such a tiny person, she wields a commanding tone. Jude tears a roll in half and takes a bite; she forces herself to chew, to swallow. She doesn’t taste a thing. After breakfast, they scatter to their assigned chores. Hers begins with clearing up and washing the dishes, which she dispatches with alacrity. They expect twenty-six guests this weekend. It’s going to be a hectic day. She towels out a porthole on the refectory window. Across the courtyard, the midday sun bisects the chapel. The monastery wing is still in shadow, its mortared stone sugarcoated with frost. A lone figure trudges toward the convent, as happens occasionally. A car breaks down on the back road. Or perhaps it’s an early arrival for the retreat. She hangs up her apron, rolls down her sleeves, adjusts her habit, and opens the back door. “Tomás, what are you doing here? It’s not allowed.” She signals the boy to be quiet and motions him inside. “How on earth did you get here?” she whispers. He sticks out a bony thumb. She warms it between her hands. “Has something happened to your mother?” He shakes his head. “She sent me. The food place, it closed.” “The grocery store?” “The free place.” “Oh, no! When? Never mind. Let me think.” She throws open the cupboards. Nearly everything is allotted for the resident nuns or the retreatants. She grabs a box of graham crackers and glances at the clock. If she hurries, she can make it back in time—barely. She snatches the car keys from their hook and tugs a coat from the bulky assortment by the back door. “Let’s go Tomás, I don’t have much time.” Tucking her veil securely behind her head, she double-checks the rearview mirror then eases the station wagon down the steep hill, pausing at the entrance marked by the weathered sign, and then pulls onto the county road. She turns up the heater and drives faster than she should, past clumps of empty summer cabins, a scattering of year-round houses in various states of disrepair, a trailer park or two. The bleak homesteads are usually obscured by the Catskills’ glorious seasonal palettes, but in winter, their splintered bones are a plain and sorry sight. “Are you warm yet?” She hands him the crackers. “Where’s your scarf, your gloves?” “I’m okay.” He’s rubbing his hands together, but he refuses to wear anything more than the coat she gave him. She shakes her head. Maybe it’s boys. At least he has all the clothes he needs now, whether he wears them or not. The first time she saw Tomás—his long hair wild with cowlicks, his ankles bare—he was combing through trashcans along the street in the little town not twenty miles from here, not in the Bronx or Appalachia but close enough to hear, however faintly, the monastery bells. It still gives her the chills. “Any word from your father?” He nods. “He found work in St. Augustine.” At the A&P she parks between a car missing its front bumper, and a pea-soup green VW bus with paisley-curtained windows. “Wait here. I won’t be long.” She leaves the heater running full blast and sprints to hold the door open for an elderly man clinging to a shopping cart for balance, his shoelaces untied, trousers tight around his waist, baggy everyplace else. “Thank you, Sister, God bless you,” he says, as if she’s performed an act beyond a common courtesy. Is kindness such a rare commodity? Or is it the veil? She’s never sure. In record time, she picks up the boy’s favorites, franks and beans, raisin bread, Ovaltine. Gets butter and eggs, some ground beef. That should tide them over until she can figure something out. Jude hesitates before getting back in the car, grinning at the sight of him drumming a backbeat and singing along to the music cranked up on the radio. It’s not until the rousing chorus of ‘na-na-na-nas’ that she recognizes her name and her laughter becomes a frozen lump in her throat. Ten minutes later, she pulls up in front of the Liberty Launderette. Its plate glass window reflects the faded brick façade of an abandoned building where some hippies set up a makeshift way station, selling preserves and beaded jewelry and weavings from their commune, distributing mysteriously acquired foodstuffs from USDA handouts to vagrants, migrants, and burnouts. The front door is boarded up. “When did they leave?” she asks. He shrugs. “A few days ago, after they gave everything away. Here, my mother says to take this.” He hands her a neatly folded five-dollar bill. “Tell her no. Gracias, but no.” She smiles at him and tucks the money into one of the grocery bags. “I’ll see you soon, okay? We’ll figure something out.” She waits until he disappears into the narrow doorway between the launderette and the drug store window clotted with dusty advertisements before she pulls away. God only knows how many more there are like him, living God knows where, invisible as seraphim. At least it’s nice and warm in the apartment above the dryers. But now what? Without Social Security numbers, they depend on seasonal work, money from relatives, the erstwhile hippies, and her. And if the convent washer hadn’t gone kaput, their paths would never have crossed. How do people manage? In the city, soup kitchens serve daily meals but here the little villages are too scattered for people to travel to a central location every day. It’s prohibitive anyway, subject to all kinds of regulations, to say nothing of the cost of equipment and labor. The hippies had the right idea, even if they may have stolen from Peter to pay—that’s it. Her father never said she couldn’t give to the poor.