Amazing Grace (6 page)

“Who are you?” he asked, fascinated by her. “I feel like I'm in some kind of strange movie, with an angel who came to earth, and maybe no one can see you but me.” She laughed at his description of her and reminded him that no one else was having a problem seeing her. She was real, human, and entirely visible, as any of the hookers on the street would have agreed.

“Maybe the answer to your question is a what, not a who,” she said comfortably, wishing she could get out of her habit. It was just a plain, ugly black dress, but she was missing her jeans. From what she could see, her building had been shaken up but not damaged dangerously, and there was nothing to stop her from going in. Firemen and police were not directing people to shelters here.

“What does that mean?” Everett asked, looking puzzled. He was tired. It had been a long night for both of them, but she looked fresh as a rose, and a lot livelier than she had at the benefit.

“I'm a nun,” she said simply. “These are the people I work with and take care of. I do most of my work on the streets. All of it, in fact. I've lived here for nearly ten years.”

“You're a
nun
?” he asked her with a look of amazement. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged comfortably, perfectly at ease talking to him, particularly here on the street. This was the world she knew best, far better than any ballroom. “I didn't think about it. Does it make a difference?”

“Hell, yes …I mean no,” he corrected himself, and then thought about it further. “I mean yes … of course it makes a difference. That's a really important detail about you. You're a very interesting person, particularly if you live here. Don't you live in a convent, or something?”

“No, mine disbanded years ago. There weren't enough nuns here in my order to justify keeping the convent going. They turned it into a school. The diocese gives all of us an allowance, and we live in apartments. Some of the nuns live in twos or threes, but no one wanted to live here with me.” She grinned at him. “They wanted to live in better neighborhoods. My work is here. This is my mission.”

“What's your real name?” he asked, totally intrigued now. “I mean your nun name.”

“Sister Mary Magdalen,” she said gently.

“I'm utterly blown away,” he admitted, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. It was the first one he'd smoked all night, and she didn't seem to disapprove. She seemed to be totally at ease in the real world, in spite of the fact that she was a nun. She was the first nun he'd talked to in years, and never as freely as this. They felt like combat buddies after what they'd just been through, and in some ways they were. “Do you like being a nun?” he asked her, and she nodded, thinking about it for a minute, and then she turned to him.

“I love it. Going into the convent was the best thing I ever did. I always knew it was what I wanted to do, ever since I was a kid. Like being a doctor or a lawyer or a ballet dancer. They call it an early vocation. This has always been it for me.”

“Have you ever been sorry you did it?”

“No.” She smiled happily at him. “Never. It's been the perfect life for me. I went in right after I finished nursing school. I grew up in Chicago, the eldest of seven children. I always knew this would be right for me.”

“Did you ever have a boyfriend?” He was intrigued by what she said.

“One,” she confessed easily, with no embarrassment about it. She hadn't thought about him in years. “When I was in nursing school.”

“What happened?” He was sure some romantic tragedy had driven her into the convent. He couldn't imagine doing that for any other reason. The concept was totally foreign to him. He had grown up Lutheran, and had never even seen a nun until he left home. The whole idea of it had never made much sense to him. But here was this happy, contented little woman who talked about her life among hookers and drug addicts with such serenity, joy, and peace. It utterly amazed him.

“He died in a car accident in my second year of nursing school. But even if he'd lived, it wouldn't have made a difference. I told him right from the beginning that I wanted to be a nun, although I'm not sure he believed me. I never went out with anyone else after that, because by then I was sure. I probably would have stopped going out with him too. But we were both young, and it was all very innocent and harmless. By today's standards, for sure.” In other words, Everett understood, she had been a virgin when she entered the convent, and still was. The whole idea seemed unbelievable to him. And a waste of a very pretty woman. She seemed so alive and vibrant to him.

“That's amazing.”

“Not really. It's just what some people do.” She accepted it as normal, although it seemed anything but to him. “What about you? Married? Divorced? Kids?” She could sense he had a story, and he felt comfortable sharing it with her. She was easy to talk to, and he enjoyed her company. He realized now that the plain black dress was her habit. It explained why she hadn't been in evening clothes like everyone else at the benefit.

“I got a girl pregnant when I was eighteen, married her because her father said I had to or he'd kill me, and we split up the following year. Marriage wasn't for me, not at that age at least. She filed for divorce eventually, and got remarried, I think. I only saw my boy again once after we divorced, when he was about three. I just wasn't ready for fatherhood right then. I felt bad about it when I left, but it was so overwhelming for a kid the age I was then. So I left. I didn't know what else to do. I've spent his whole life and most of mine running around the world covering war zones and catastrophes for the AP ever since. It's been a crazy life, but it suited me. I loved it. And by now, I've grown up, and so has he. He doesn't need me anymore, and his mother was so furious with me, she had our marriage annulled by the church later, so she could remarry. So officially, I never existed,” Everett said quietly as she watched him.

“We always need our parents,” she said softly and they were both quiet for a minute as he thought about what she'd said. “The AP will be happy with the pictures you took tonight,” she said encouragingly. He didn't tell her about his Pulitzer. He never talked about it.

“I don't work for them anymore,” he said simply. “I picked up some bad habits on the road. They got out of hand about a year ago, when I damn near died of alcohol poisoning in Bangkok and a hooker saved me. She got me to a hospital, and eventually I came back and dried out. I went into rehab after the AP fired me, and they were justified doing that. I've been sober for a year. It feels pretty good. I just started the job at the magazine I was covering the benefit for. It's not my kind of thing. It's celebrity gossip. I'd rather be getting my ass shot off somewhere uncivilized than in a ballroom like tonight, wearing a tuxedo.”

“So would I,” she said, laughing. “It's not my thing either.” She explained that she was at a donated table and a friend had given her the ticket, even though she didn't want to attend, and she had gone so as not to waste it. “I'd much rather be working on the streets with these people than doing anything else. What about your son? Do you ever wonder about him or want to see him? How old is he now?” She was curious about Everett too, and brought up his boy again. She was a great believer in the importance of family in people's lives. And it was rare for her to have a chance to talk to someone like him. And even odder for him to be talking to a nun.

“He'll be thirty in a few weeks. I think about him sometimes, but it's a little late for that. Or a lot late. You don't walk back into someone's life when they're thirty and ask them how they've been. He probably hates my guts for running out on him.”

“Do you hate your guts for it?” she asked succinctly.

“Sometimes. Not often. I thought about it when I was in rehab. But you just don't spring up in someone's life after they're all grown up.”

“Maybe you do,” she said softly. “Maybe he'd like to hear from you. Do you know where he is?”

“I used to. I could try to find out. I don't think I should. What could I say to him?”

“Maybe there are things he'd want to ask you. It might be a nice thing to do for him, to let him know that your moving on had nothing to do with him.” She was a smart woman, and Everett nodded as he looked at her.

They walked around the neighborhood for a little while after that, and everything seemed to be in surprisingly good order. Some people had gone to shelters. A few had gotten hurt, and been taken to hospitals. The rest seemed to be doing okay, although everybody was talking about the force of the quake. It had been a huge one.

At six-thirty that morning Maggie said she was going to try and get some sleep and then go back out on the street in a few hours to check on her people. Everett said he was probably going to try and get a bus, train, or plane back to L.A. as soon as he could, or rent a car if he could find one. He had taken plenty of pictures. For his own purposes, he wanted to cruise around the city a little and see if there was anything else he wanted to shoot before he went back. He didn't want to miss a story, and he was taking some great material back with him. He was actually tempted to stay a few more days, but he wasn't sure how his editor would react. And for San Francisco and the surrounding areas, there was no phone communication with the outside world at the moment so he couldn't check out his reaction.

“I got some nice shots of you tonight,” Everett told Maggie as he left her on her doorstep. She lived in an ancient-looking building that looked as disreputable as it did old, but it didn't seem to worry her. She said she had lived there for years and was a fixture in the neighborhood. He jotted down her address and told her he'd send prints of the photographs to her. He asked her for her phone number, in case he ever came back to the city. “If I do, I'll take you to dinner,” he promised. “I had a nice time talking to you.”

“So did I,” she said, smiling up at him. “It's going to take a long time to clean up the city. I hope too many people weren't killed tonight.” She looked worried. They had no way of getting news. They were cut off from the world, without electricity or cell phones. It was a strange feeling.

The sun was coming up as he said goodbye to her, and he wondered if he'd ever see her again. It seemed unlikely. It had been an odd and unforgettable night for all of them.

“Goodbye, Maggie,” he said as she let herself into the building. There were bits of broken plaster lying all over the hallway, but she commented with a smile that it hardly looked worse than usual. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too,” she said as she waved at him and closed the door. An evil smell had drifted toward them as she opened the door into the hallway, and he couldn't imagine how she could live there. She was truly a saintly woman, he realized as he walked away, and then laughed softly. He had spent the night of the San Francisco earthquake with a nun. He thought she was a hero. He could hardly wait to see the pictures of her. And then oddly, as he walked away from her building, back through the Tenderloin, he found himself thinking about his son, and the way Chad had looked when he was three, and for the first time in the twenty-seven years since he'd last seen him, he missed him. Maybe he would look him up one day, if he ever got back to Montana, and if Chad was still living there. It was something to think about. Some of what Maggie had said had gotten under his skin, and he forced it out of his head again. He didn't want to feel guilty about his son. It was too late for that, and would do neither of them any good. He strode off then in his lucky boots, past the drunks and the hookers on Maggie's street. The sun was coming up, as he walked back into the heart of the city to see what stories of the earthquake he would find there. There were endless opportunities to shoot. And for him, who knew, maybe even another Pulitzer one day. Even after the shocking events of the previous night, he felt better than he had in years. He was back in the saddle as a journalist, and felt more confident and in control of his life than ever before.

Chapter 3

Seth and Sarah started the long walk home from the RitzCarlton after the benefit. Her high-heeled sandals were nearly impossible to negotiate, but there was so much broken glass on the streets that she didn't dare take them off to go barefoot. She got blisters with every step she took. There were lines down and sparks spitting from live wires which they carefully avoided. They were finally able to hitch a ride from a passing car for the last dozen blocks or so, from a doctor returning from St. Mary's Hospital. It was three o'clock in the morning, and he had gone to check on his patients after the earthquake. He told them things at the hospital were relatively under control. The emergency generators were working, and only one very small part of the radiology lab on the main floor had been destroyed. Everything else seemed to be in good order, although patients and staff alike were visibly shaken.

Like everyone else in the city, at the hospital, they had no phone communications, but they were listening on battery-powered radios and TVs for news bulletins, to see which parts of the city had suffered the worst damage.

He also told them the Marina had taken a terrible hit again, as it had in the smaller '89 earthquake. It was built on landfill, and there were fires burning out of control. There were also reports of looting downtown. Both Russian and Nob Hills had survived the 7.9 earthquake relatively well, as had been witnessed by everyone at the Ritz-Carlton. Some of the western areas of the city had suffered severe damage, as had Noe Valley, the Castro, and the Mission. And parts of Pacific Heights had been badly shaken. Firemen were attempting to rescue people trapped in buildings and elevators, and still have enough manpower to fight the fires that had erupted in many parts of the city, which was no mean feat with broken water mains nearly everywhere.

As their benefactor drove Seth and Sarah home, they could hear sirens in the distance. And both of the city's main bridges, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate, had been closed since minutes after the earthquake. The Golden Gate had swung wildly, and several people had been injured. Two sections of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge had collapsed onto the deck below it, and several cars were reported crushed with people trapped in them. So far, the highway patrol had not been able to effect a rescue. Reports of people blocked in cars and unable to get out, screaming as they died, had been horrendous. So far, it was impossible to even guess at the death toll. But it was easy to assume there would be many, and thousands injured. The three of them listened to the car radio as they drove carefully through the streets.