Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell (9 page)

“The ungodly precludes the holy,” the Bishop says after the board meeting. I say I don’t follow. “I know you don’t,” he says.

I stay over for breakfast in the city with Charles Evans at his request after the board meeting. You want the truth? I say. The truth is a man can do whatever he damn well pleases, make a complete horse’s ass out of himself in every way, and the world will still protect him. Look at you, Charles! But let a woman step outside the lines and you want to squash her like a bug. “‘Step outside the lines?’ Is that what you call sleeping with a girl young enough to be your daughter? A nun sleeping with a
nun
?”

I brush Jane’s hair every night before we go to bed. I like to count the strokes the way the devout count Hail
Marys. Lust can be a kind of religion.

“I know what you’re doing,” Nancy tells me over the phone. “It’s so obvious.” Come again? I say. I thought you wanted to get away from here, from
me
. “You know better,” Nancy says.

Thanksgiving Day. Nancy calls for Jane, not for me. I watch tears slide down Jane’s cheeks as she listens to Nancy without saying a word. “I never knew about you and Nancy,” Jane tells me later. “If I had known, I never would have.” There was no need for you to know, I say. All of that was over long ago,
finito
, end of story. “It’s not the end for me,” Jane says.

“The Church may be deaf and dumb,” the Bishop says, “but we have not yet gone blind.” I don’t follow. “If you keep on with this young Sister, the board will have your neck,” the Bishop says. “Do you follow
that
?”

The Bishop calls Jane for a meeting and she’s scared to death. He’s going to warn you, I say. “About what?” About sin. About
me
. “How does he know?” I say it’s the shepherd’s job to know his sheep.

Well? “He was very nice to me,” Jane says. “Very kind.” And what did he ask you? “He asked me about the recruits. I told him things are getting better and better. That was all. He said he always wanted me to feel like I could come to him.” Don’t you dare, I say.

Jane decides she will have Christmas with her family, without me. She leaves me a note without saying goodbye.

I spend Christmas Day at Diana’s apartment in New York with Becca and Diana, with Luigi and G. The city is alive with Christmas, the lights on Park Avenue, the skaters at Rock Center—the
ring-ring-ring
of the Salvation Army Santas—but I am in my own world, alone, a nun in plainclothes no longer in love or even in lust.

I go to Southampton to be by myself by the ocean. I decide that I have won and there’s no reason not to keep on winning. The board and the Bishop can’t stop me. I will be a bad girl because I see no reason not to be.

Jane is back and she asks to speak with me immediately. “I love being a Sister,” Jane says. “But I love you more.” What about Nancy? “Nancy?” Jane says.

“I have begged the Bishop to give you another chance,” Charles Evans says. “I told him to look at everything you’ve done for the Order, the financing, the new hospitals, the overall growth, your importance to Wall Street.” He agreed? “I persuaded him with a very large check.” And? “And I’m looking at my bank statement. He cashed the check.”

Jane is beating the bushes again for recruits and her magical touch is intact. No one in their right mind would become a nun in the year 1969, but she is convincing one girl after another to join the Order. She is winning against all odds.

I look at Jane now and feel—nothing. In bed she does what I tell her to do. I wish I could feel something for her, love or lust or even longing.

February 7, 1969

Jane is more woman than girl now. She has worries and cares. She has a past and a history. She has black smudges under her eyes and her forehead is a broken line when she cries. She hurts.

February 11, 1969

Jane sneaks into my room late at night wearing a sheer nightgown and nothing else. She chins up under the blankets and mushes in against me. “I love you,” she says, but I pretend to be asleep.

Jane has become our miracle worker, I tell the board. Her numbers are way up when every other order in the world is falling off a cliff. The Bishop wants to know: “To what do we attribute this miracle?” To an act of God, I tell him.

March 10, 1969

“I’ve been praying to the Holy Ghost,” Jane says. Why not God the Father? I say. Or the Virgin Mother? Why not God the Son? “The Holy Ghost works for me,” Jane says. I ask her what she has been praying
for
? “For you,” Jane says.

March 17, 1969

I know St. Patty’s Day is all wrong but this is my day to think of Will and who killed him. I miss his purity, his smile, his need to save the world, even the overcoat he wore at the Yale Club over nothing at all. I would give anything to bring him back in a flash for one last drink. But I can’t. All I can do today is to hate Tom with all my heart.

“Don’t you love me?” Jane says. The board ordered me to stop, I say. “April fool?” she asks
—
but I say my hands are tied.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jane says. “First Nancy leaves me. Now you.” I haven’t left you, I say. I’m just not sleeping with you any more. Jane starts to bawl like a baby. All right, I say. Stop.
Stop
.

I am going through the motions with Jane but it seems to be enough to keep her happy. We are much more careful about it than before. She only comes out at night, padding down the hallway of the Convent to my room when all the lights are out. Jane will do anything for me now. She is becoming expert at doing
exactly
what I want.

Now I understand my problem with Jane. I am twice her age but she is much too old for me. I can see by her tiny wrinkles and lines what time is going to do to her. The Jane I loved, the Jane with the perfect young body and the innocent face of a child, that Jane is gone now, replaced by a being more complicated and more mundane, a grownup in thought, word, and deed. I begin to wonder about the next class of recruits coming in. Young blood is the beauty of the Order.

“Attrition,” the Bishop says. “What are we going to do about it?” We are going to change the world, I answer. We are going to take the earth off of its axis, divide the globe into continents instead of countries, and alter the course of human events. “Don’t trifle with me,” the Bishop says.

I want pictures, I tell Jane. I want to be able to put names to faces. I want to know who the recruits are and everything about them
before
they get here.

“You have to work with me on this,” Charles Evans says. “
The board is not going to sit back and lose 28 percent of our Sisters to attrition over three years and do nothing about it. We can’t just sit on our hands.” And what would the board have me do? “You need someone to focus in on this problem to the exclusion of all else. You need someone to stop the bleeding.” I say I know just the person.

I’m going to set you free, I tell Nancy over the phone. The board wants someone to go around the country to talk to Sisters about staying in the Order. “Why me?” Nancy says. Because you’ve had every reason to leave and you’re still here, I tell her. This gives you a chance to tell them why. “Redemption?” Nancy says. That depends on you, I tell her.

I spread the pictures of the incoming recruits on my desk, gauzy yearbook shots of unformed girls in uniforms, all blemishes blushed out, the shots of legs in white tennis dresses creased like fans, tomgirls in helmets on horseback, girls with long teased tresses and prom gowns cut low. I can’t wait for school to start.

I write up a questionnaire for all the new recruits to answer before they come to the Convent. I need to know everything there is to know.

We go to Southampton for the holidays. Jane is like a little girl about the fireworks so she goes off with Diana, Luigi, and G. From the house I hear cherry bombs crackle on the sand and then big explosions in the sky that bring
oohs
and
ahhs
. The beach is where I had my fun with Nancy, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to clutter up my memories with Jane. She’s just another pretty face to me now.

Jane has nothing to complain about. She’s become one of the most important Sisters in the Order at a very tender age. I talk her up to the board. She travels all over the country on our tab. I watch her back. I’m starting to feel like she’s my favorite charity.

Jane says: “I need you to feel
something
.” I am what I am, I tell her. “And what’s that?” she says. You don’t want to know, I tell her.

I have the answers to all of my questions
about the recruits. The targets have been identified. Soon I will meet the chosen few.

August 10, 1969

Jane says: “I can’t love a person who won’t be loved.” I tell her that’s her problem, not mine.

“The board is pleased,” Charles Evans tells me at “21.” “Even the Bishop is pleased.” Recruits are off the charts because of Jane. Nancy has indeed stopped the bleeding. One or two of our Sisters have left the Order, but everyone she talks to personally stays put. “Nancy and Jane have the power of faith,” Charles Evans says. “And you, Eleanor? You’re the Mother Superior. What do you have?” I have the power, I say.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Jane says. Can’t do what? “I can’t be your lover when you feel no love.” Nobody’s perfect is what I say. Perfect timing is what I think.

To not care is to know the true meaning of power.

Jane has succeeded too well. Our recruits are girls with doubts, with every reason to break the rules or to leave us outright. The weak ones practically nominate themselves for my own personal instruction. When they walk in the door Paradise has already been lost.

Do the names matter? When they come to the Convent we change their names. Do they care? Who cares! The girls come here not to find themselves, but to lose themselves in something larger. They call it the Order. They call it God. I don’t care what they call it. They are here to let go.

September 4, 1969

The vow of chastity is something you must embrace over time, I tell the recruits when they come into my chambers one by one. I am here to help you do that. But it takes time, child. It takes months and months. It takes years and years. It takes a lifetime. Trust me. I am your Mother Superior. Mother Superior knows what you need.

September 5, 1969

Tomgirls. That’s what I’m looking for. Big-boned girls with a rawness and a weakness to them, girls who like their bodies and like to show them off.

Here’s what I know about my Tomgirls, about Martha and
Mary Beth and Megan. I know they have lost their names. I know their new names are the names of saints who were men. I know they trust me with their lives. Now it’s only a matter of time.