“Some folks think you’re dating a stripper who’s only available late at night. That gets my vote.”
Aaron shrugged, giving nothing away. His first exposure to the nutcase nuns at a strip joint would take too long to explain.
“Others think you’re stripping yourself.”
“I don’t dance that well.”
“Still others speculate that you’re running drugs.”
“You know better than that.”
“How about our neighbor, Delilah? You been shagging the alligator farmer?”
“Nah. She smells kinda swampy, dontcha think?”
Dan arched his brows at him, as if a little eau de swamp would matter when the heat was on. Besides, Delilah was a beautiful woman, even if she did wrestle gators on occasion. Every red-blooded male who met her had to wonder how she would be wrestling . . . well, bed partners. Naked, of course.
But that was beside the point.
“What is it then, Aaron? You know how it is with us twins. Sometimes we sense what our other half is experiencing.”
“What? You’re not getting your rocks off, secondhand-like?” he tried to joke.
“Not even firsthand,” Dan quipped. “With Samantha lumbering around like a grumpy hippo, all I have to do is glance at her with sexual intent and she gives me The Look. You know, the one that says, ‘Touch me and you are dead meat.’ Why do women always blame men for getting them pregnant? Like they had nothing to do with it!”
Dan and Samantha had been married more than a year now, and their twins—gender not identified—were due in a few weeks. Aaron, almost as excited as Dan about the impending births, hoped he would be around at the time.
He and Dan, along with everyone else in the family, amused themselves by making baby name suggestions to Samantha: Adam and Eve. Mutt and Jeff. Abbott and Costello. Tom and Jerry. Ben and Jerry. Bert and Ernie. Bonnie and Clyde (his favorite). Hansel and Gretel. Thelma and Louise. Scarlett and Rhett. Tarzan and Jane.
To these proposed names, Samantha usually just shook her head at them and pronounced, “Dumb and Dumber.”
But to Dan’s question about women blaming men for pregnancy, Aaron answered, “You’re asking me? I’m the single guy here. One bit of advice, though. You better not let Samantha hear you refer to her as a hippo if you want sex again in this lifetime.”
“That’s for sure. Actually, Aaron, I love my wife’s hippo shape. You should see how she looks when she’s naked with all those freckles covering her belly. When she’s in a good mood, she lets me connect the dots with washable markers. I draw a great anatomically correct teddy bear.”
Samantha was one of those redheads—auburn hair, she was always quick to correct—whose creamy skin was covered with freckles, head to toe. Some folks, including Samantha, thought they were unattractive. Not his brother. From the get-go, Dan had considered her freckles sexy. Go figure!
“TMI, brother. Way too much information,” Aaron remarked at his brother’s description of a naked and very pregnant Samantha.
They grinned at each other, and clinked bottles.
But then, Dan turned serious. “Cut the crap, Aaron. No more diversions. No more evading my questions. What have you gotten into?”
Aaron set his bottle down carefully and turned to his brother. The time had come for him to reveal all. In fact, it might very well blow up in the news media any time now. “I’m working for a group of monks . . . on a mission.”
The shocked expression on his brother’s face was priceless. “A mission? Monks? You’ve become a missionary?”
Hmm. A person who works on a mission . . . that person could be called a missionary, I suppose. Although I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell a group of rowdy SEALs on a mission over in Iraq that they’re doing God’s work, instead of Uncle Sam’s. Whatever. It’s all semantics. He chose the easy answer. “Sort of.”
Dan burst out with laughter. “What? You? A missionary. Next you’ll be telling me you want to join the priesthood.”
Aaron shrugged, as if that wasn’t totally out of the question. Which was a stretch. He wasn’t that sinless or noble. Just a sucker.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. You could say I’ve got a good news/bad news situation here.”
“This ought to be good.”
Aaron sighed. “Bottom line . . . the good news is I’ve become practically a saint with all my extracurricular work lately.”
“And the bad news?”
“I’m probably going to prison.”
“Oh. My. God!”
“And I’m halfway, maybe sixty percent, in love with a nun, who considers me an effin’ moron.”
Take this job and love it . . . or leave it . . .
“I’m being dumped from nunhood?” Fleur asked incredulously as she saved the computer document she’d been working on and gave her full attention to her superior, who stood in the open doorway of her much larger, adjoining office.
“No,” Mother Jacinta said, her lips twitching at Fleur’s choice of words. “I merely suggested that after this upcoming mission with the street monks, you take a break. Live in the real world. Perhaps go back to your roots, the place where all your . . . um, problems began. Seriously, Fleur, you need to find out what you really want.”
“But, Mother, I know what I want.”
Mother arched her brows, which was a feat with the stiff, white linen wimple which pressed against her forehead, around her face, and under her jaw, giving her a double chin. When back in the convent in the remote Mexican hills, many of the Magda nuns reverted, by choice, to the old-time religious habits . . . full-length black gowns, scapulars and white half-circle breast cloths, wimples and veils.
Fleur wore religious garb, too, but as an aspiring nun, hers was knee-length and minus the torturous wimple. Plus, it was white to denote her place in the hierarchy of the order: aspirant, postulant, novitiate, sister/white, light brown, light blue, black.
The older nuns, and even some of the younger ones, claimed that the “uniform” gave them a sense of identity and a peacefulness after returning from their lay work outside the church. Especially after such sordid forays as they’d experienced last year in New Orleans.
“You’ve been with our community for ten years now, and have yet to take your final vows. Not even novice vows.” Mother held up a halting hand before Fleur could protest and added, “That is not a criticism, my child. Merely an observation.”
Calling Fleur “child” was one of Mother Jacinta’s quirks, a form of endearment. She was only ten or so years older than Fleur, who was almost thirty. In fact, Mother had been known to reference some of the elderly nuns back at the motherhouse in Spain the same way.
Panic was beginning to set in with Fleur, though. Child or no child “endearment,” what would she do out in the “real world”? No, that could not happen. “I feel safe here.”
Mother shook her head sadly. “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for.”
“Some ships are,” Fleur argued. “I’ll take the postulant vows tomorrow, if you want. In fact, I’d take final vows right now, if I could skip all the steps.”
“A vocation cannot be forced. Come,” she said then, motioning toward the open French doors which led out into the gardens. “Let’s get some air.”
Mother was about the same height as Fleur but very thin, giving the appearance of being taller. While surprisingly well versed in the modern world, she claimed to have wanted to be a nun since she was five years old and so became a postulant by age twelve.
Whereas Fleur had been running wild in the bayous at that young age. Her only religious calling had been to attend Sunday Mass, and the calling had come from her mother, who threatened a switch on the back of her skinny legs if she didn’t put on her church dress (the only dress she owned, two sizes too big, a hand-me-down from her older sister Gloria) and stop dawdling.
Happy times! Not! With eight siblings, two parents, and a half-demented grandmother all living
in a three-bedroom cottage (shack) along the bayou, it was no wonder Fleur had rebelled.
At first, Fleur and Mother Jacinta just walked in silence. Mother was probably praying the large wooden beads that hung from her cloth belt.
It was a lovely setting with well-worn slate pathways among the flowers and trees. The warm air was redolent of rich floral scents, as well as citrus from the orange and lemon trees, and pungent herbs.
Sister Mary Michael, one of the twenty-two sisters, three postulants, and two novices who resided here, was on her hands and knees working the soil around a rose bush. Not an easy position for a woman who was six feet tall and big-boned. Amazon Nun, she sometimes laughingly called herself.
The gardens had been laid out long ago by some famed landscape architect, a woman who’d entered the convent after her husband and four children had been killed in a fire. Some of the rose bushes here were more than a hundred years old and still flourishing. Sister Mary Michael claimed the secret was donkey dung. Try buying that from the Home Depot garden department. Or the Internet.
Another nun, who wore an apron over her habit, was sitting on a bench outside the kitchen where she’d just baked the morning bread. Sister Seraphina was reading from a ragged cloth Bible, probably in Spanish.
Sister Carlotta sat on a grassy patch, talking softly with three young girls, no more than fourteen years old, recent rescues from a Tijuana brothel. Wounded birds, that’s what the Magdas called them, these victims of sex trafficking.
The motherhouse of the Sisters of Magdalene was in Spain, where it had first been established almost two hundred years ago, but there were eight satellite convents, like this one, in various countries throughout the world. At one time, pre-Vatican II, there had been twenty. They had always been an active ministry, working outside with the poor and oppressed, as compared to more contemplative religious orders that spent all their time cloistered to pray and meditate. The Magdas followed Saint Paul’s directive to “pray without ceasing,” but they believed that prayer could take many forms, including rescue and rehabilitation of “wounded birds.”
Like Fleur had been.
Mother Jacinta’s mind must have been traveling the same path because she said, “That dark-haired one reminds me of you when you first came here. See how she sets herself apart. The others weep or cringe, but she is stiff as a board, holding in all her pain.”
Fleur studied the girl in question. She was a plump little thing who barely spoke, but her chin was raised stubbornly. Taken from a French village—in fact, sold by her parents into sexual slavery—the girl had to have been only eleven or twelve when first introduced to the dark side of life.
Fleur had been fourteen.
“But I wasn’t a child when I was rescued. I was twenty. I had already been a prostitute for six years . . . a lifetime.”
Mother nodded and took Fleur’s hand, holding tight as they walked. “You stayed with us for two years before you broke down and began to heal. Then you became an aspirant. The whole process of becoming a nun usually takes no more than three years.” She turned her head to stare at Fleur. “Not ten years.”
Fleur felt her face heat with embarrassment but still she argued, “I work hard. I am not dead weight here.” Fleur was an expert computer programmer, self-trained, handling all of the convent’s outside communication and organization. And she was active in the rescue operations. In fact, the sex traffickers who’d kidnapped her off the streets of New Orleans were still in operation, except bigger and in more countries. She had a dog in this fight, so to speak.
Mother squeezed the hand she still held. “Oh, child! You are invaluable to us, but I’m not sure we are what’s best for you. I suspect that while the convent is a refuge for you, it has also become a crutch. You need to walk on your own before deciding that this is the life for you.”
“But—”
“Even your resistance now is a sign that you are not ready for the life of a nun. Total obedience to the will of God sometimes means doing that which is distasteful, or uncomfortable. Yes, you enjoy working for us, but can you honestly say that you enjoy sitting quietly and praying for extended periods of time, as we do sometimes?”
That was true, unfortunately. But Fleur could learn to be more patient. To fit in better. She could!
“Besides, my child, you can always come back when you are sure.”
Tears filled Fleur’s eyes. “But what can I do?”
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
Fleur wasn’t so sure about that. “Where would I go?”
“Louisiana,” Mother answered. “You already know Louise Rivard from when you were a child. She is a great benefactress of our work. She has offered to help you.”
“Oh no! Tante Lulu! That old busybody!” She immediately regretted her words, but it was too late.
Mother tsked her opinion.
Fleur should have known that Tante Lulu had something to do with this. Fleur might not have lived on the bayou for sixteen years now, but she heard things. Usually it was the old lady’s extended LeDeux family that reaped the “benefits” of her meddlesome ways. Something occurred to Fleur then. “Does this have anything to do with Aaron LeDeux? I swear, that man is driving me crazy.”
Mother just smiled.
“What?” It was probably her language. As hard as she tried, she often reverted to street vernacular. At least she hadn’t said “bat-shit crazy,” which she would have in her former life.
“Well, this man—Aaron LeDeux—seems to prompt such a strong response in you. Perhaps that is another reason why a religious calling is not for you.”
It took Fleur a moment to understand. “Mother! I have no interest in men that way. After my experience with sex? No way!” And that was the truth. Any sexual desires Fleur might have had as a promiscuous teen had been hammered out of her as a prostitute. “And least of all that Aaron LeDeux, who thinks he’s God’s gift to the female race,” she added.
“Your very vehemence is telling, my child.”
“It is not!” She inhaled and exhaled for patience.
“Maybe. But I think you judge him too harshly. He has done much to help our mission this past year, you have to admit.”
“He only agreed as a way to help his friend, Brother Brian, while he recuperated.”
Mother shrugged. “Perhaps at first.”
“How is Brother Brian, by the way?”
“Better, but he’s not yet fully recovered.”
“I still think that Aaron LeDeux has ulterior motives for being involved in our missions.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t trust him.”
They passed a grotto that held statues of Mary, the mother of God, along with Mary Magdalene. Two nuns were scrubbing the marble kneelers there and saying the “Hail Mary” aloud as they worked.
“Do you still harbor a hatred for all men?”
“No. I realize that all men are not as evil as those I experienced in my early years, or those we witness these days in the sex trade.” Fleur saw that she wasn’t making any headway and asked, “What does Tante Lulu have to do with all this?”
“She has agreed to have you come live with her for a while. A temporary arrangement.”
At that little cottage on Bayou Black? Less than a mile from where I once lived? And probably not so far from where Aaron LeDeux lives, too. Oh no! Oh no, no, no! She started to refuse, but saw the look of determination on Mother Jacinta’s face. So, a decision had already been made regarding her fate. Fleur sighed with surrender. “What would I do there? Get a job? I have no formal education. And I would need a car. The old lady lives on the bayou, far from town. And clothes. I would need at least a minimal wardrobe, I suppose. Oh, Mother, wouldn’t it be easier to just have me take vows and stay here?”
“Ms. Rivard has a car you can use.”
Fleur had seen that vehicle, if it was still the same one. An oversize, vintage lavender convertible. In a milli
on years, she couldn’t imagine herself—a nun, or almost-nun, or ex-nun—tooling down the highway in such an eye-catcher.
“As for work, there are many possibilities. You could even go to college.”
“At my age?”
“Child, there are many returning adult students in college today. But, actually, Ms. Rivard has a job for you, initially. Take a laptop with you. She wants to organize all her folk remedies. And she’s thinking about writing her memoir.”
“Are you sure this isn’t some penance for past misdeeds?”
“More like a new beginning.”
The beginning of what, Fleur had to wonder.
She wondered even more the next week when she was sitting next to Aaron in a small Piper Aztec plane as he flew toward a private airfield in Houma, Louisiana.
He wore his usual T-shirt and jeans with cowboy boots. Okay, she had to admit, he was a handsome man with overlong, dark brown hair and whiskey-colored eyes. Even wearing those denims and cowboy boots which enhanced his tall, lean frame. The man oozed sex appeal.
Good thing she was impervious.
“Stop grinning,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing to grin about.”
“Can’t a guy just be happy, chère?”
“Chère? I heard you were born and raised in Alaska. Suddenly you’re getting all Cajuny?” She paused at his raised eyebrows, then admitted, “That was snarky and uncalled for. Sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” he said. “I’ve always been Cajun. Cajun isn’t a matter of address. My mother was born right here on Bayou Black. Of course, I didn’t know I was Cajun until after her death.” He glanced her way and grinned some more. “It’s just taken me a while to develop the accent.”
“Why bother?”
“Because Cajun men are irresistible, dontcha know?” He winked at her.
Which caused a tiny flutter in her belly. Probably disgust-induced nausea. “Says who?”
“All my LeDeux half brothers.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Hey, a few years back when the oil riggers were streaming into Louisiana from Texas and Canada, they noticed how the Cajun men seemed to get all the women. When asked, they admitted that their virility came from eating so much mudbug fat. Those dumb outsiders began scarfing up that orange crap in the heads and tails of the crawfish, like it was some kind of Viagra caviar. Yuck! Meanwhile, the Cajun men just laughed their asses off. They knew that bayou men are just born with that irresistibility gene.”