Souvenir of Cold Springs (26 page)

“Maybe next week we'll have our outing, then,” he said. He laid his cheek against her hair; she felt his warm breath. He whispered, “Tonight has changed my life.” He told her to take care of herself, he would call her tomorrow.

“I'll probably just sleep most of the day,” she said. “Let me call you when I'm feeling better.”

She didn't call him. When he phoned her two days later, she said she still didn't feel very well. She called in sick at work and stayed home most of that week, doing crossword puzzles in a book she bought and listening to the radio, turned down very low. When Lloyd called her again, she told him she was sorry, she didn't want to mislead him, she liked him very much, but she wasn't ready to start seeing anyone, she was very very sorry.

She stopped eating at Tomasita's. She walked home on her lunch hour and ate any old thing, sitting on her bed and looking out the window at the mountains. She took a different route to work, so she wouldn't run into Lloyd Vegara. She stopped spending Saturdays with Lee; instead she joined the group that cleaned and tended the altar at the Santuaria on weekends. She got involved with organizing their building fund, and she went to a Bible study group on Sunday afternoons. When she went to get her hair cut short, the hairdresser told her she should keep the pageboy, she looked like Eva Marie Saint, it was a crime to cut that hair, but in the end she snipped it as short as Jean Seberg's in
Saint Joan
.

At night she began to dream of suffering—her own and that of others—sometimes rooms full of hospital beds and people crying out in pain, sometimes her own dull red anguish as she lay in a desolate place, wounded and wanting to die. Once she was making her way through the ruins of a city that had been devastated by an earthquake, climbing over rubble, hearing the screams of the injured. Once she was running through a narrow tunnel full of bodies that pressed against her, oozing blood. Her own cries often woke her up—sweating, with tears in her eyes.

On Saturdays, after she arranged the flowers and polished the carvings at the Santuaria, she went to Confession. After she had confessed to having sex with Lloyd Vegara, she had nothing more to say than, “I have given in to despair because I feel my life is useless.” And Father Grady would reply, “The sin of despair is a very great one, my child. You must work hard at your life to make it worthwhile.” After a few weeks, he asked her if she wanted an appointment to talk to him, to discuss her problem, and she said, no, thank you, that wouldn't be necessary, and began going to Confession at the cathedral, where she could confess to a different priest every week.

After work one day just before Christmas, she stayed behind to speak to Mother Rosaria in the convent parlor.

“I want to become a nun,” she said.

Mother Rosaria crossed her hands on her breast. “My dear,” she said. “This is rather a sudden vocation.”

Caroline shook her head. “It isn't. I've wanted to be a nun for years. I used to dream about it, when I was first married.”

“But—you have been a married woman, Caroline. What do you mean by this?”

“I mean I want to join the order. I'm divorced. I haven't lived with my husband in six years.”

“But you know the Church doesn't recognize divorce,” said Mother Rosaria. “If you were married as a Catholic, then you are still married in the eyes of God.”

They were sitting together on a small sofa. Caroline slid off the sofa and fell to her knees. She took Mother Rosaria's hand and bowed her head over it. Against her forehead she could feel the coarse wool of the habit. “Please,” she said. “I want this so much. There must be some way.”

Sister Marie brought them a pot of coffee on a tray, and they sat in the parlor discussing it for the rest of the evening. Mother Rosaria was very kind. She said Caroline's sincerity impressed her, and she had been unable not to notice her piety. She believed that she might have a real vocation. But the divorce could be an insurmountable obstacle. A dispensation from the Pope, perhaps. An annulment. That would take a long time, maybe years.

Caroline wept. She told Mother Rosaria about the sin of despair that lurked in her heart, no matter what she did. She refrained from saying that if she couldn't join the order she wanted to die, because she suspected Mother Rosaria would recommend medical instead of spiritual help.

Finally, Mother Rosaria said she would consult Father Grady. Perhaps Father Grady could talk with the bishop. Caroline should put it out of her mind for now. She should certainly not get her hopes up. They would talk further.

Caroline walked home in the cold, through streets lit with
farolitos
, and wrote letters to Lucy and Teddy explaining that she wouldn't be coming east for Christmas, after all. She was mailing their presents: sombrero for Teddy, turquoise jewelry for Lucy. They must forgive her. She was ill with a cold she couldn't shake.

And, in fact, when she went to bed that night she was hot and feverish, unable to sleep. The pleading litany to Mother Rosaria went on and on in her head:
If I could only make you understand. My life depends on this. If you knew what goes on in my head, in my soul, in my body. I need this. I need something. If you could see inside my soul
.

Please
.

She wished for a Voice, a
yes
from the heavens, from the white walls with their empty niches, from the red mountains outside her window, but it wasn't going to be made so easy for her: the only voice she heard was her own.

Christmas passed, Epiphany passed, Lent began. Caroline helped drape the statues in the Santuaria in their purple shrouds. She went daily to Mass. She told Lee the truth: that she hoped to enter the convent, and she watched Lee's eyes fill with tears as if she had admitted she had a terminal illness.

She had a letter from Stewart that surprised her with its passion. He accused her of alienating the children by her long absence. Lucy was unhappy at college, already thinking of transferring, and she was deeply in need of her mother. Could Caroline come home in the spring? Or at the very least invite Lucy to visit her out there? Just because her children were growing up she had no right to abdicate her responsibility to them. Hadn't he, all those years when Caroline had custody, done his duty by them? And shouldn't the same standards apply to her? Caroline imagined Stewart in his office, biting his lip, wrestling with the stilted phrasing. She didn't answer the letter. She wrote to Lucy and told her she loved her, she was sorry, she knew Lucy was going through a crisis in her life but she was going through one herself.

It was finally agreed that, for the moment, she could become a lay sister. She would continue her secretarial duties, but she would live at the convent and dress in a modified habit and wear a small veil. She would receive a reduced salary. Although the prospects were dim, she could petition to Rome through the Chancery Office for an annulment of her marriage. If grounds were found, and the annulment was granted, she could begin the process of entering the order. The path was long and hard, full of pitfalls. There was no guarantee that she would end as a Sister of Mary. Nor was entering the convent in any form a guarantee of God's grace. As a prospective sister, even more would be asked of her by God: He made great demands on His chosen ones.

After Easter, Caroline closed up the apartment on Camino del Monte Sol. She had few possessions, mostly clothes and books and collections of crossword puzzles. She sent her jewelry home to Lucy and gave her clothes to the mission; she threw out everything else except the carved statue of the Virgin, which she brought with her to her cubicle at the convent.

In some ways, her new room wasn't much different from her old apartment. It was smaller, and the view from her tiny window was of the parking lot instead of the mountains, but it was just as clean and just as still. At night after Vespers, when she was free to go to her room, she listened to the silence, and nearly every night, as soft and as distinct as the wind in the aspen grove beyond the parking light, she thought she could hear the Voice, and she wasn't sure, it was very faint, but she thought it said her name.

LUCY

1952

Doris Day hadn't dried the dishes, and Queen Dragnetta was very, very angry.

“It's not enough to just wash,” said Gold, moving toward Doris threateningly.

“I'm sorry,” whimpered Doris Day. “I'm just a poor servant girl.”

“And it's not enough to be sorry,” said Gold.

“Let's get her,” Weasel suggested. He had the broom, and he lurched forward with it. “Let's make her really, really sorry for this.”

“Not yet,” said Lucy.

Teddy frowned at her. “Why not?”

“It's too soon. We just started.”

“All right, if you want to be the boss,
you
do Weasel.”

“You know I don't like doing Weasel. Besides, Weasel's yours.”

“Yeah, but Gold is yours, and I did Gold.”

Lucy hesitated, considering this. The real reason she wouldn't do Weasel was that she hated him. Teddy had made him in art class from a plaster cast, and he was badly painted and beginning to chip. She didn't think he looked like a weasel at all. In spite of his snarl, he looked more like a plain dog. But Teddy said Mrs. Palmer said he was a weasel.

She looked at Teddy. He was sitting on the rug with his knees hunched up and his chin on them. He wore brown corduroy pants and brown socks with a hole in one. His big toe stuck out. In his right hand he held Weasel, in his left Gold. He was moving his lips and making first Weasel, then Gold, sway back and forth and bow, which was how Teddy showed that they were talking.

“What are they saying?”

“Ssh, just a minute.” More bowing and swaying, mostly by Gold. Then Teddy said, “Gold's on your side. He convinced Weasel that they should wait.”

“Oh, good.” It was what she had suspected. She knew she wasn't allowed to thank him, but she couldn't help smiling. He smiled back. It was a Wednesday morning, and they were both home from school with colds. Lucy said, “So.”

“Okay.” Teddy said. “Back to that kitchen.”

Lucy coughed and cleared her throat. “We can't have this,” said Queen Dragnetta. “It may seem like a small thing, Doris, but the kingdom is going to wrack and ruin. Look at this place. It's a pigsty.”

“I—I'm so sorry,” Doris said. “I didn't know. I'm just a stupid servant girl.”

“I'll say,” said Gold. “Well, get those dishes dried and put away before I count to ten.”

Doris limped over to the sink. She had had polio and then a broken leg. The Queen had magnanimously allowed her to be cured, but she was left with a limp. The kitchen was the area next to Teddy's bed, and the sink was a cigar box filled with Lucy's tin doll dishes. The cupboard was an egg carton. The dish towel was one of their mother's old embroidered hankies. The dishes were too big for Doris to manipulate, but Lucy helped and got them all dried and stacked in the cupboard. Then the Queen said, “And now I want you to scrub this floor. On your hands and knees. And if I see one spot, you will be severely punished.”

“And when the Queen says severely, she means it,” said Weasel.

“I mean everything I say,” shouted Queen Dragnetta, jumping up and down. Her crown fell off, and Lucy replaced it. “Everything!”

“Y-yes, your majesty,” whimpered Doris. “I'm so tired, and my hands are red and raw from all the work I've done all day. I—I don't think I can scrub the floor. I think I'm going to faint.”

She bounced around and swayed for a few seconds, and fell to the rug in a dead faint, her red felt dress above her knees. Underneath she wore panties made from a white sock.

“Water!” shouted the Queen. “Awaken her! We can't have this!”

“Water!” cried Gold. “The show must go on!”

Lucy giggled. “It's not a show, dummy.”

Gold began to bounce across the rug. “The show must go on! The show must go on! Where is that stupid Renard? Renard! Get in here with a bucket of water.”

Teddy dropped Gold and brought in Renard with a thimble that had belonged to their grandmother. Renard dumped the water on Doris Day while Teddy said, “Pssssshh!” Doris groaned and stood up, wobbling dangerously. “Oh oh oh, this is terrible. I feel awful, oh poor me, what am I going to do?”

“Get to work, that's what!”

“I can't, I can't,” sobbed Doris Day. Lucy had perfected sobbing; she loved any part where she could do it. Doris swayed desperately back and forth, her long golden hair fanning out. “I'm tired, I'm sick, I haven't eaten in over a week.”

Teddy looked at Lucy; Lucy nodded. Queen Dragnetta bowed. “Let's get her,” said Weasel. Renard went out and Gold came in. “Gold. Are you ready?”

“I'm ready.”

“Wh-what are you going to do to me this time?” whimpered Doris.

“You'll see,” said Gold. He approached her with the broom and whacked her over the head. “Take that! Take that! And that!”

Doris Day screamed. “No no no! I'm only a poor servant girl. Help me, someone!”

Caroline stuck her head in the door of the bedroom. “Could you be just a
little
quieter? I'm trying to read. I can hear you all the way downstairs.”

“Sorry.”

“What do you want for lunch?”

“Peanut butter.”

“Chicken noodle. Do we have any cookies?”

“I'll see. Be careful with those pebbles. Don't leave any on the rug when you're done.”

“We won't.”

“What on earth are you doing with them?”

“Stoning Doris Day,” said Teddy.

“We're
about
to stone Doris Day,” Lucy corrected him.

“Good Lord.”

“Don't worry, Mom.”

“I'm not sure you should be playing on the floor with those colds. How do you feel?”