Saint Training (17 page)

Mary Clare nodded. But even before she stepped into the car that the valet brought around, Mary Clare knew she was finished writing letters.

“Can we go past the protesters?” she asked Dad once they were a few blocks from the hotel.

“It’s too dangerous, Mary Clare. And it would delay us for hours.”

But they did end up getting a clear view of the protest. Dad had to go several blocks out of his way because of road construction, which landed them on a street where they could clearly see the protesters crossing the 16
^th
Street viaduct. The protesters were singing a hymn Mary Clare didn’t know and carrying signs that said “Fair Housing Now!” and “Black is Beautiful.”

Mary Clare opened the window, leaning out to wave and
yelled “Hooray Father Groppi!” before her father had a chance to reach over and stop her. But when he saw that a few of the protesters were waving back, he waved too. They didn’t see Father Groppi, but Mary Clare spotted several nuns and priests in the crowd. She even spotted two nuns in the white Good Shepherd habits and wondered if they might be Sister Miriam and Sister Grace.

M
ary Clare placed the phone back on the receiver and put a check next to Pat Flanagan’s name to show that he was coming to the party tonight. Practically everyone was coming. Of the forty-six people who had RSVP’d, only three kids weren’t able to make it.

When she heard the mailbox lid clamping shut she said a quick prayer for Matthew and ran to pick up the mail. She had gone through this ritual for three weeks. Each day she would search the mail for an official-looking letter for Matthew and would brace herself for Matthew’s call, only to tell him it hadn’t come.

But today the day of her party, she was more anxious about the mail than usual. If Matthew got his letter and the news was good, he’d be in great form for playing that night. But if the news was bad, he’d be devastated. He’d be making plans, once again, to defect to Canada. Maybe if the letter came today she should try to read through the envelope, or steam it open. Maybe if it came today she should hide it somewhere until after the party.

Mary Clare made the sign of the cross before she pulled out the thick pile of mail. She sat on the top porch step to look
through it. She sorted mail into the usual three stacks: bills, stuff from Dad’s company, miscellaneous. On the rare occasion when anyone else got a letter or magazine, she would make a fourth pile. Today she was almost to the end of the stack when she saw Matthew’s name. She glanced at the return address. It was the letter. She frantically gathered the piles of mail and headed inside. Having the letter Matthew had waited so long for right here in her hands, Mary Clare knew that she couldn’t hide it or open it. She had to do the right thing. She had to call Matthew right away. When she set the letter on the kitchen table and was about to reach for the phone, another envelope, one she hadn’t realized was there, slipped to the floor. It had been hidden under the envelope for Matthew. Mary Clare reached down and picked it up. This one was for Matthew too, and it was also from the United States Government.

Mary Clare glanced at the clock as she dialed Matthew at the apartment he was sharing with a friend in Madison this summer. It was 4:00 p.m. He should be here by 6:00 with the rest of the band to set up.
Please be home, please be home, please be home,
she whispered. But no one answered. She counted twenty-seven rings before placing the phone back on the receiver. She would have to wait.

The sound of the back door slamming startled her. Matthew’s voice followed. “Hey little sister, doing any civil disobedience lately?”

“No!” Mary Clare said, too loudly. “But you got some mail.” She sounded almost hysterical. She held out the two letters.

Matthew froze. “There’s two letters,” he said, without reaching for them.

When he finally took them from her, he studied them carefully without looking inside. Suddenly he began to laugh. A hard, angry laugh. He looked at Mary Clare, who hadn’t moved
away from the phone. “One of these is a draft notice,” he said in a thin voice.

Mary Clare nodded.

He looked back down at the letters. “One of these is a draft notice but it’s the other one that’s going to change my life, because the other one will tell me if I’ve won the appeal or not.”

She nodded again.

“Actually my life will change either way,” Matthew said. “It’s a matter of which direction it will take.”

“Open them,” Mary Clare said.

Matthew set the envelopes on the table. “The house sure looks nice,” he said, noticing the freshly mopped floor and the clean kitchen counters. “I guess you’re ready for the party tonight.” He walked over to the refrigerator. “Do we have anything to drink?”

“Open the letters,” Mary Clare said.

The way Matthew abandoned the refrigerator and fell into a chair at the kitchen table made him look like a Raggedy Andy doll. All the strength seemed to have drained out of his body.

Mary Clare pulled a pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator and poured him a glass. She sat down beside him. Matthew’s face was gray, his eyes dull. He took a sip of the lemonade.

“I can’t,” he said, and slid the letters toward Mary Clare. He buried his head in his arms on the table. “You read them for me.”

Mary Clare carefully ripped open the first envelope. It was the draft notice. She held her breath as she read the words. “It says you are to report for duty on Monday, October 2, 1967.”

Matthew didn’t move.

Please God, please, please, please. I’ll do anything,
she prayed as she reached for the second envelope. She paused, thinking about how hard this summer had been because of her bargain to be a saint, and how God hadn’t kept up his end of the bargain by giving them the money she’d expected. She quickly
modified her prayer. Not
anything, Lord
—
I’m no saint
—
but I’ll certainly try to be a good person if you let Matthew get to be a conscientious objector.

Mary Clare tore the envelope open and scanned the words.

Dear Matthew O’Brian,

We are pleased to inform you…

She squealed and Matthew’s head popped up. He grabbed the letter from her hands.

“Oh, thank you, God!” he said. “This is so cool. Thank you, God.” He danced around the kitchen. “That priest I told you about from the seminary—Father Duane, he wrote a letter for me. It must have made the difference.” He picked the letter back up and studied it. “I’ll be hearing about my conscientious objector work in a few weeks,” he said.

“What work do you think the government will have you do?” Mary Clare asked.

“I have no idea, little sister, but it won’t be killing people.” His voice was thin, but the color had returned to his face. He set the letters side by side on the table. He shook his head. “And to think my draft notice and deferment came on the same day.”

He leaned over Mary Clare and smacked a kiss on her forehead. “Thanks for all your prayers,” he said. He tousled her impossible hair.

Mary Clare smiled as she followed Matthew’s pacing with her eyes. He paced the kitchen, then wandered into the living room and dining room and paced them too.

“Where is everybody?” he hollered. “Where are Mom and Dad? I want to spread the good news!”

“Dad’s on his way home from Chicago—he could be here
any minute—and Mom’s at the store picking up a few last-minute party things. Gabriella and Anne have sleepovers at friends’ houses. And the little kids are having an overnight at Gallagher’s farm.”

“Okay,” Matthew said. He reached for the phone.

“Mom and I made seventeen pizzas.”

“Okay,” Matthew said with a dismissive wave. “I gotta make some calls.”

Mary Clare took a last critical look around the main floor. Everything seemed to be in as good a shape as possible, and now she had to get herself ready. She ran up the stairs to take a shower. As she undressed, she thanked God over and over for Matthew’s good news. But Mary Clare also remembered what she’d told God before she’d opened the envelope. She had started to bargain with God, to say that she would do
anything
if God let Matthew get conscientious objector status. But she had suddenly been overcome with weariness. Now she tried to explain her reaction to God and to herself.
I’ll never be demure and sweet and obedient like the Virgin Mary. I don’t want to turn the other cheek like Saint Theresa. The best I can do, God, is be a regular person who tries to do good things.

When Kelly and Joannie arrived early Mary Clare was taken off guard. She’d forgotten that she’d asked them to help her straighten her hair. But at the last minute she reconsidered. She looked at her wet hair in the mirror, knowing full well that as it dried it would also curl and as it curled it would shrink until it was half its current length. But it was okay. Her hair was natural. Not like everybody else’s.

“I’m going to leave it like it is,” she said.

Kelly and Joannie were shocked. “Do you want to wear a headband, at least?” Joannie asked.

“Should we slick it down with Dippity-do?” Kelly asked.

“No,” Mary Clare said. “It’s fine.” She ignored the looks Kelly and Joannie were exchanging and headed downstairs. They followed.

T
he party seemed to take off by itself. One minute there were Kelly, Joannie, Mary Clare, and a fledgling band warming up, and the next minute the driveway and backyard were swarming with kids sipping lemonade and chatting in little groups of four or five. The Seminarians were set up partway in the garage “for acoustics,” Matthew said, so the driveway filled up with kids first, then spread out into the backyard as the party swelled to fifty or sixty people by the end of the first hour.

Mary Clare was suddenly blinded by someone who had come up from behind and covered her eyes. The hands were too rough and big to be Gregory’s. Besides, she’d been keeping track of Gregory and he was on the opposite end of the yard with all the other guys.

“Guess who?”

The voice sounded strange, but when Mary Clare caught a whiff of Wrigley’s spearmint gum she knew. She pulled the hands away from her face and spun around.

“Flipper!” she squealed. He was dressed in full army uniform, including an army hat on his perfectly shaved head. She couldn’t help looking shocked at his baldness. But Flipper just
laughed and grabbed her in a spontaneous hug. A hug! From a soldier! In front of all these people! Shivers of delight shot through her body. “It’s so great to see you,” she said.

“I wanted to make sure I had a chance to see all you guys, and Mark thought it would be okay for me to crash your party,” Flipper said.

Mark was standing behind him, but Mary Clare hadn’t noticed him until right then. He was smiling, happy to be with his best friend.

“How long are you home?” she asked Flipper.

“Just ‘til Monday, then I leave for Nam.”

“Wow! That’s really short,” Mary Clare said.

“That’s what I keep thinking,” Flipper said, taking in the wide circle of friends that had gathered around them. Mary Clare could see by their wide eyes that they were impressed by Flipper’s uniform.

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stick around for a while, hear Matthew’s band, and talk to your folks.”

“Sure,” Mary Clare said. “Mom’s in the kitchen getting food ready and Dad’s right up there.” She pointed to the top step on the back porch where he had perched himself. She could see his foot tapping to the band’s version of “Barbara Ann.” “Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Barbara Ann…Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Barbara Ann…” His lips moved along with the song.

Everyone seemed mesmerized by the Seminarians. Her friends were amazed at how many songs they knew and how well they played them. They could even play some of the brand-new songs.

“I heard it through the grapevine,” everyone sang along with the band. Joannie leaned into Mary Clare’s ear, “I just got the single for this. These guys are good.”

“This is the coolest party,” Sandy said. “I think I have a crush on Carl. Watch how his hair falls over his eyes while he’s looking down at his guitar.”

“I’ve been watching Butch,” Jen said. “His smile is gorgeous.”

Matthew was at the microphone, “We wanna see you guys dance out there! Let’s get this party moving.”

“Play ‘Twist and Shout,’” yelled a kid Mary Clare didn’t even recognize. She studied the crowd. There were lots more people than she invited. It seemed like her party was the biggest thing in Littleburg.

In a minute the popular Beatles song rang out and several of the girls started to do the twist. By the end of the dance almost everybody was dancing.

Mary Clare looked through the crowd until she found Gregory, who was half talking to a few of the guys and half watching her. She waved, trying to look casual. She didn’t know what to do except ignore him. If she approached him, he might ask her to dance and she’d be self-conscious. If he didn’t ask her to dance, she’d have to ask him to dance, and he might say no. Better just to stay away.

She noticed that one of the potato chip bowls and two pizza pans on the picnic table were empty. Mary Clare figured that her mother was probably tied up in the kitchen, so she swooped them up to refill them herself. But when she got inside the kitchen, her mother wasn’t there. The oven timer showed three more minutes, so she knew more pizzas were coming up and Mom would probably be right back. So she pulled another two bags of chips from the pantry and started filling the bowl.

Soft secret-sharing voices echoed from the living room. Then she heard a giggle that could be no one but Sister Charlotte. She crept to the kitchen doorway and listened in. She’d confess the sin of sneaking at her next confession, but she had to listen.

“But I wasn’t going to let that…that woman stop me. Believe it or not, I climbed out my bedroom window and walked over here.”

The peel of laughter came from her mother. “Good for you. I don’t know how I’m going to stand her as my principal.”

Mary Clare stood frozen—except for her mouth, which dropped open as she realized that they were talking about Sister Agony. She had never heard an adult talk about a Religious that way—and one of those adults was Sister Charlotte.

“God be with you!” Sister Charlotte said.

When the timer went off, Mary Clare knew she had to make a quick escape. She couldn’t face the party, or Sister Charlotte, so she bolted into the downstairs bathroom, almost knocking her mother down in the doorway. She plunked herself down on the edge of the bathtub. She had to sort out what she had just heard and what it meant.

Sister Agony must have said no when Sister Charlotte asked to go to the party, and Sister Charlotte snuck out anyway. Why would Sister Charlotte disobey her superior? She had taken a vow of obedience. Sister Agony was mean, everyone knew that. But Sister Charlotte had never shown anything but respect for her.

Suddenly pieces started fitting together, creating a picture Mary Clare didn’t want to see. Mary Clare remembered how Sister Agony flaunted her power over Sister Charlotte when they received the diocesan essay contest letter. She had opened Sister Charlotte’s mail and read it to the class. She had practically scoffed at Sister Charlotte’s new habit. She remembered that flash of sadness in Sister Charlotte’s eyes that day in the pharmacy when she said it would be good to see everyone in the class again. What was the big deal? She’d see everybody in a few weeks anyway, unless…

Unless it wasn’t Mrs. Simmons leaving. “A teacher from one
of the older classes is leaving,” Mom had said. Mary Clare had assumed it was Mrs. Simmons, of course, because she taught eighth grade and had just gotten married, and most married women didn’t work.

It was Sister Charlotte who was leaving. The shock of it felt like concrete settling inside her stomach. Sister Charlotte must have requested a transfer to a different school.

Mary Clare hated Sister Agony for being so difficult. But Sister Charlotte broke one of the vows she’d made to God. And why? Just to come to a party? It didn’t make sense. Mary Clare could understand if Sister broke her vow to do something important like protest the war in Vietnam or march for civil rights, but a party? Unless Sister Charlotte wasn’t transferring at all. Unless she was leaving the convent altogether.

Mary Clare had to know. If Sister Charlotte was leaving the convent, this might be the last time Mary Clare would see her. She wouldn’t tell anyone else, but she had to talk to Sister Charlotte. She pulled herself up from the side of the bathtub, wiping hot tears from her eyes. She steeled herself before returning to the party.

On the way out the door, Mary Clare passed her mom in the kitchen.

“I’m making another triple batch of pizza dough,” she said, smiling. Mary Clare gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “The food’s wonderful.”

“Thank God I bought a whole case of tomato sauce and way more toppings than I thought we’d need,” she said. “I suspected we’d end up with half the town.”

In spite of her heavy heart, Mary Clare felt blessed. Nobody else’s mother made homemade pizzas for their parties. Nobody else had a brother in a band.

Outside the party was hopping. The boys and girls were no
longer separated in the least bit. Everybody was dancing with everybody. Mary Clare had to smile. This was exactly the way she pictured it, laughing, dancing, singing, eating. Dad had even put torches up in the yard so that there was enough light, but not too much. The ambiance was perfect.

“There you are,” Gregory said, coming up behind her. He frowned. “I haven’t seen you dance once.”

“So you’re keeping track,” Mary Clare said lightly. “I haven’t seen you dance either.”

The band started to play another Beatles favorite, “If I Fell in Love with You.” Gregory smiled mischievously. “I bet you’re chicken to slow dance with me.”

“No,” Mary Clare said automatically. She didn’t know if she meant “no” she wasn’t chicken or “no” she wouldn’t dance with him. It didn’t matter. Gregory took her hand and they were dancing before she could say anything else. Mary Clare was stiff at first, but then she relaxed.

“Did you finish your addendum?” Gregory whispered in her ear.

Mary Clare shook her head. “Not one word of it.”

“I did,” he said, “and I’m sorry to tell you that it’s sure to be the big winner.” His eyes sparkled as he said it.

“You are soooo conceited,” Mary Clare whispered. She’d never been so close to a boy’s ear before.

Gregory grinned.

For a minute Mary Clare was self-conscious about being a head taller than Gregory, but the thrill of dancing—slow dancing no less—with a boy won out, and she lost herself in the moment.

When the band took a break a few minutes later, Mary Clare could see Sister Charlotte making her way to the house. She wriggled her way through the crowd to catch up.

“I have to talk to you, Sister,” Mary Clare said when she caught up with her.

“Of course!” Sister said. She looked at Mary Clare expectantly.

“Privately,” Mary Clare said.

Sister followed Mary Clare through the house and up the staircase to Mary Clare’s room. Mary Clare switched on the light and closed the door behind them.

Sister’s wrinkly nose smile turned into a look of concern as she took in Mary Clare’s serious expression. “Aren’t you enjoying your party, dear?”

Mary Clare nodded.

“I know you’ve had way more than your share of responsibility this summer. Your mom was thrilled to be able to do this to thank you.”

Mary Clare nodded again. “Sister,” she said abruptly. “I know that you’re leaving.”

Sister Charlotte sat down on the bed. Her face looked stricken. “Did your mother…”

“No,” Mary Clare interrupted. “I figured it out.” Tears flooded her eyes again and she felt violently ill. Sister wasn’t denying it, so it had to be real.

“I have to know, Sister. I have to know if you’re leaving Maria Goretti or leaving the convent.”

Sister bit her bottom lip and lowered her eyes. Even in the half-darkness of the room Mary Clare could see that Sister’s face had turned pale.

“I can’t discuss this, Mary Clare. I’m not allowed to.”

“Please, Sister. I’m sorry to be nosey, but I’m trying to understand so many things. Things about being a nun and vows and how convents are changing and…and everything. You’re the coolest nun I’ve ever known and if you’re leaving…”

Sister let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry to let you down, Mary
Clare. I am leaving the convent. I haven’t even been allowed to speak to the other nuns about this, but I’m leaving in the morning.”

“Sister, why?”

“I can’t give you a simple answer to that. It’s complicated. The Church is changing, the convent is changing, but none of it is changing as fast as I am.”

“Then it’s not because of Sister Ago—Sister Agnes?” Mary Clare asked.

“You mean Sister Agony?” Sister Charlotte laughed, and Mary Clare couldn’t hide her shocked expression. “I know you kids call her that, and, unfortunately, so does she.” She let out a sigh. “No. Sister Agnes is difficult, and she represents much of what I don’t like in the traditional Church. But I’m leaving so that I can be myself and serve God in other ways.”

“I was going to become a nun,” Mary Clare blurted.

“I know,” Sister Charlotte smiled tentatively. “Are you still thinking about it?”

“No,” Mary Clare heard herself say. And, for the first time she knew it was true.