It struck Sister that her mother was doing her best to accept the situation with good heart. It had taken her nearly six weeks to get around to writing this letter, and write it she did, complete with the offer of a roof and board.
But disgrace was still the footnote.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The winter days rolled along, droll and dreary, with little to change the routine save Forty Hours Devotion when the church lights remained ablaze for forty consecutive hours of prayer and adoration. Guest priests came for the closing ceremonies, including a lavish procession.
It was just after Forty Hours that Eddie was uptown in Wroebel and John’s one day buying some flannel for polishing brass. A couple of other local fellows were standing by the counter passing the time of day when John Wroebel remarked, “So we’re going to lose Sister Regina. Too bad, isn’t it?”
Eddie’s entire body snapped alert.
“Lose her? What do you mean?”
“She’s quitting. Didn’t you hear?”
“Quitting what?” one of the others asked.
“Being a nun. Seems she’s started the procedure to get out of it for good.”
John was holding out Eddie’s change, but Eddie failed to reach for it. He couldn’t have shifted a muscle if someone had lit a stick of dynamite under him.
“Who told you that?”
“Father Teddy.” That was John’s brother, Theodore, a priest at St. Mary’s in Alexandria, Minnesota. He had been one of the guest priests here at Forty Hours Devotion.
“Are you sure, John?”
“That’s what Father Teddy said. Here’s your change, Eddie.”
Eddie scarcely felt the coins drop into his palm. “Sweet Jesus,” he breathed as he turned away, not knowing if he uttered a prayer or blasphemy. “Listen, boys, I’ve got to get back to work. Nice talking to you.” He left them behind gossiping about the rare news, and made a beeline for St. Joseph’s, wondering all the way, Is it true, is it true? Is she really quitting? Wasn’t she going to tell me?
The foremost thought on his mind was getting it straight from her. He hurried up the driveway between the two buildings and entered the school building through her cloakroom door. When he peered into her classroom, she was strolling the rows with her back to him while the children bent quietly over their open books. The sight of her, combined with the possibility of her becoming a free woman, created a maelstrom within him.
He hid it as he tapped on the door frame and said, “Excuse me, Sister, could I talk to you a minute?”
She swung around, meeting his eyes across the stuffy classroom. He saw the hint of pleasure she couldn’t quite hide, followed by its quick containment that dimmed the radiance from her eyes.
From their desks Lucy and Anne sent him silent greetings that he returned, then Sister Regina tucked her hands into her sleeves and approached him.
“Yes, Mr. Olczak?” she whispered.
“Could you come into the flower room for a minute, please?”
She couldn’t quite hide her surprise. Her brows lifted as if a tiny insect had bitten her during a recitation on a stage. She gave a quick glance at her students, but they were all quiet and engrossed in their work.
“Please?” he repeated, and walked away from her. Across the cloakroom, he opened the flower-room door and turned, holding it open for her, waiting.
She gave her students a last glance and gave in, keeping her eyes downcast as she passed him and entered the privacy of the flower room.
He shut the door behind them, then crossed the room and closed the hall door too. The flower room was quiet. A murky sun strained at the windows, and nearby Sister Mary Charles’s whipping strap looked incongruous between the pots of blossoming violets.
Turning, Eddie caught Sister Regina adjusting the veil on the tips of her shoulders, then tucking her hands away afterward.
Arming herself.
He returned and stopped smack in front of her. Face to face. Closer than ever before. So close that she raised startled eyes to him.
“Is it true?” he said without preamble. “Are you leaving the Order?”
Once again he’d caught her by surprise. “Wh... where did you hear that?”
“From John Wroebel. Father Teddy told him.”
She averted her head, unwilling to tell a lie, yet compelled to withhold the truth.
He touched her on the stiff white cloth beneath her chin, forcing her to lift it. There his finger remained, on the immaculate starch that he had never touched before and should not be touching now. “Is it true?”
“Wh... what are you doing?” she whispered. “You must not touch me.”
He dropped his hand but refused to step back. “Just tell me if it’s true. Are you quitting?”
Her mouth opened, struggled, found no words as she stared into his eyes, begging, with hers, for mercy. “You’re not supposed to know,” she said at last.
“Why not?” “Please...” She attempted to avert her chin but found it lifted again by his finger.
“Why?” he insisted.
She touched him deliberately for the first time: knocked his hand aside so she could escape. But when she tried to move he moved faster, gripping her thick black sleeves and making her stay.
“Do you know how scared I am right now?” His cheeks were flushed and a vein stood out in his forehead. “Do you think this is easy for me?”
“Don’t!” She gripped his wrists and strained to push them away, but he was so tremendously strong it made no difference.
“Sister, please, talk to me.”
“Don’t!"
“If this has anything to do with me—”
“Don’t!” A whisper this time with her eyes slammed shut. A plea.
“When did you decide to leave?” She refused to answer while the battle continued at his wrists. “When?”
“Please, Mr. Olczak... you’re hurting me.”
He released her as if God himself had happened by. “I’m sorry, Sister,” he whispered, “but I need to know... when are you leaving? And why?”
“I must get back to the children.” She moved toward the door, but with a single step he insinuated himself between it and her, a broad barrier of plaid flannel and striped denim that refused to let her pass.
“They’re quiet in there. Please, just tell me—has this got anything to do with me? Because I think it does.”
“I’m still a nun. This is forbidden.”
“When will you get out?... When?”
“I cannot answer.”
“Where will you go?”
She tried to veer around him, but he caught her by an arm once more, gentler this time.
“What will you do?”
She closed her eyes and began whispering, frantically, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee...”
“I think there are some feelings between us, aren’t there? Just nod, yes or no.”
“... blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...”
“Do you have feelings for me like I do for you?”
“... Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners...”
“Were you going to go without telling me?”
“... now and at the hour of our death...”
“Sister Regina, open your eyes.”
She did. They were wide and terrified.
“Amen,” she whispered weakly. “Please, Mr. Olczak, you must not touch me. It’s... I... please...”
“Just answer me one question then. Just one. When will you be free?”
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Against her wishes, tears shot into her eyes.
“I mean no disrespect, Sister, but I have to know,” he said quietly. “When?”
For one horrifying moment, she thought he might kiss her. The look in his eyes said very clearly that he wanted to. He had both hands on her arms, gently, and one thumb was moving back and forth like a blossom in a breeze. His gaze dropped to her mouth and she k
new if she didn’t do something, temptation would win them both.
“It takes six months,” she whispered. “Now let me go.” He released her carefully and let his hands drop. “And if you have any regard for me, don’t do this again... please.”
“Very well. I’m sorry, Sister.”
Able to avert her gaze at last, she did so, while smoothing and resmoothing her sleeves from elbow to knuckle, trying to rid her flesh of the reminder of the pleasure of his touch.
“I must get back to the children.”
He stepped aside and gave her access to the door. She walked toward it briskly, but before opening it, paused and pressed both hands to her cheeks, found a handkerchief and dried her eyes, then tucked it away and aligned her veil on her shoulders. Without glancing at him again, she went out and returned to her classes.
________
They never mentioned what passed between them. Not he, to his brother and confidant Romaine, or to any of the rest of his family; not she to her confessor, Father Kuzdek, or to Mother Superior or even to her friend Sister Dora. They carried it with them like a burden they could not set down. Its great weight—retained in the form of guilt—brought along its own penance.
They prayed a lot.
He gave up meat for all of Lent.
She said a Novena to Our lady, asking for special help, and sought a plenary indulgence by praying rosaries and fasting. And she was especially nice to Sister Mary Charles, her least favorite, offering it up for the forgiveness of her sins. And he tried to spend a lot of time with his kids.
But the memory of those two or three minutes in the flower room kept them awake nights. Sometimes, in the depths of Grand Silence, she would lie in her austere cell, imagining what it would have been like if he’d kissed her, and if he ever would, and when and where it might happen, and if, when it finally did happen, she’d be able to forget her inhibitions and act like a normal woman, or if she’d been barricaded behind this habit for so long that she’d lost the ability to allow herself any sort of sexual freedom.
Meanwhile, he too lay awake, wondering if he had anything to do with her deciding to quit. He thought about what she must have gone through to start the dispensation, the superiors she’d had to face, and how much mental anguish it must have taken for her to decide to do it. He wondered if they’d allow her to stay on here teaching afterward. He’d never known a nun who got out before, but he didn’t think the higher-ups at the diocese would be that lenient with her. He supposed she’d be forced to go away. And then what? Would he lose track of her? No, he knew where her parents lived and he could go find her there. But people would talk, especially about an ex-nun and a school janitor, probably say there was some hanky-panky going on between the two of them while she was still here. Even after she was out, he had to be careful not to start ugly rumors.
A week passed. Two. It bothered him, how he’d confronted her in the flower room and tried to force her to tell him things she wasn’t ready to tell, or maybe not allowed to tell.
He finally decided to apologize the safest way he knew how.
She discovered his apology one morning when she went into her empty classroom early, sat down at her desk and opened the center drawer, looking for a pencil. Instead, she found a Zagnut candy bar with a note: I’m. Sorry.
Emotions surfaced that she’d never felt before: it was the first love token she’d ever received. No boy, no man had ever had the opportunity to offer her affection, for she’d been too young when she first entered the convent, and afterward, of course, she’d been off-limits. She reached for the candy bar with a full heart, and held it in her hand a long time, tempted to peel the wrapper and eat it. But it was Lent, with fasting and abstinence in force, and more important, she was still a Benedictine nun, and forbidden to accept personal gifts from men.
So she tucked the Zagnut into the very rear of the drawer, promising herself that when she cleaned out her desk for the last time she’d take it with her.
That day at midmorning, as she was bringing her classes in from recess, she encountered Mr. Olczak in the hall.
He nodded and greeted her, low, reserved, “Sister.”
She averted her eyes and said, “Hello, Mr. Olczak.”
Not a word was mentioned about the Zagnut. But they both knew he’d left it, and they both knew she’d found it. So they had yet another secret they kept from the rest of the world.
________
Lent continued, mournful and seemingly endless. In keeping with the somber spirit of the season, Eddie and Sister Regina bore their feelings for each other like penances they could offer up: I will practice patience. I will not succumb to my temptations. I will pray instead, and do good deeds.
So if he had to clean her room after school when she was still there, they’d stumble through that hesitation step when he appeared at her door and came inside. She’d look up from her desk and say nothing. He’d stop inside the doorway and say nothing. Usually, she’d be the first to recover.
“Hello, Mr. Olczak,” she’d say simply and return to work.
“Hello, Sister,” he’d reply, then while he swept and emptied and erased and scrubbed, the two of them pretended an indifference that served only to make them more aware of each other. And if their hearts raced when they encountered each other in the hall, and if their breath shortened, they hid it well.
Passion Sunday arrived and tradition called for the shrouding of all statues and crucifixes in purple. Sister Regina’s charge was once again to act as sacristan. She enlisted the help of two eighth-grade altar boys to help her with the job.
She told Eddie, “If you’ll take the boys into the basement and show them where the purple shrouds are, they’ll carry them up.”
Eddie took the boys downstairs and unearthed the boxes of material—both slipcovers and drapes—plus the wooden curtain rods upon which the panels would be shirred. Though Sister Regina would have struggled through the job with only the help of the two boys, Eddie had no intention of letting her do so. Ladders were required to get the slip-covers over the life-sized statues on their high pedestals, plus a special garden rake that he had rigged with the teeth backward, to place the wooden rods on the wall over the main crucifix.
The church had five altars and it took nearly two hours before all the shrouds were pressed and hung and the ladders put away. Working together all that time, Eddie and Sister were discretion personified. They exchanged not one untoward word or touch, they circumnavigated each other at every turn, keeping plenty of distance between them at all times. But whenever the boys weren’t looking, whenever they could do so without being detected by each other, they stole glimpses.
She had tied a full-length black apron over her habit, rolled her sleeves to the elbow exposing her sleevelets, and had pinned the tips of her veil back between her shoulders. He worked bareheaded, as always in church, his usual striped overalls replaced today by khaki pants and a rough blue cambric shirt.
He imagined her in a housedress and wondered if she had any hair beneath her wimple and what color it might be.
She imagined him in a kitchen, bringing firewood in and asking, “What’s for supper?”
He wondered about the shape of her arms and legs.
She wondered if he ever wanted to have more children.
Once she was up on a ladder, insisting she herself wash the statue of the Blessed Virgin before putting the slipcover on.
“Would you please hand me that wet rag, Mr. Olczak?” she asked.
She bent down. And he climbed up. And though their fingers touched nothing more than a soiled gray cloth, their gazes collided, and all within them willed summertime to hurry.
________
Palm Sunday arrived, beginning a week of the most intense activity to happen all year long in and around the church. If Jesus Christ was going to rise from the dead on Easter morning, he would be doing it in surroundings worthy of Him. The women of the various church sodalities gave the building a thorough cleaning, supervis
ed by Sister Regina. Every altar cloth in the place got starched and ironed, every candle drip scraped, the floors scrubbed and waxed, and every crevice of the ornate plasterwork dusted. Stained-glass windows, radiators, light fixtures, organ pipes, kneelers, pews—all fell under the relentless probing of the cleaning crew. It was a tremendous task that happened, so thoroughly, only this one time a year.
There were other preparations as well. The same canvas that had served as a Christmas crèche was hauled out of the basement and outfitted as a sepulchre with a statue of the dead Christ. The children practiced for Easter Sunday’s procession and the adult choir rehearsed its special music. The confessional was busy as Father heard the mandatory Confession of every member of the congregation. Add to all that the long and frequent ceremonies that took place between Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday and the place was overrun with activity sixteen hours a day.
There was, too, an emotional buildup induced by the religious ceremonies themselves. From Thursday on, all candles were extinguished, no choir sang and no bells rang. Instead, only wooden clappers sounded through the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, through the kissing of the feet of Jesus on a large crucifix that lay on the floor, and through Friday night’s somber procession led by altar boys carrying a cross that was still covered with a purple shroud.
Holy Saturday morning’s ceremonies were long and somber: the blessings of the fire and of the Paschal candle, the reading of the prophecies, the blessing of the water, and of the Easter candle.
The somber mood lifted, however, on Saturday noon. Jesus had risen! Lent was over! Fasting was over! The children of the parish could eat the candy they’d given up for Lent, the adults could eat meat!
And Eddie rang the bells again.
He rang them and rang them, longer than at any other time of year, and with them he felt his spirits lifting.