The aroma of bacon reached Lauren before she opened the kitchen door. Kyrie trotted through to wind around the legs of the woman standing at the stove.
“Christie, that smells wonderful.” Lauren hung her coat on a hook.
Christie, her salt-and-pepper hair tied back, bent to rub the cat, who arched her back, purring loudly. “Nothing like bacon and eggs on a frosty morning.”
“Hey.” Christie’s wife, Susan, scuffed into the kitchen in thick woolen socks, her flannel pants and fleecy top patterned in snowflakes. “How are things on Mount Sinai?”
Lauren smiled, accustomed by now to Susan’s teasing. “All quiet. No thunder or voices. No stone tablets being tossed at me.”
Christie sniggered. Susan kissed the back of her neck on the way to the coffee maker. She poured for all of them while Lauren got plates down from the cupboard.
“It’s not even light out yet. Why do nuns have to get up so damned early?” Susan grumbled.
“Getting to sleep in till six for a six-thirty Mass is a treat for them,” Lauren reminded her. “Mass is the only thing on their schedule today.”
“And why are we eating now?” Susan ran her hand through her hair, trying to smooth her bedhead, but a stubborn lock still stuck up in back. “Thought we’d have breakfast after the nunnery.”
“This is first breakfast,” Christie corrected. “We’ll have second breakfast afterward.”
“I married a Hobbit. Junior and Jamie got to Virginia okay?”
“Yes,” Lauren replied. “Jennifer texted last night. They got there before dinnertime. Now the grandparents get to spoil the kids for a few days.”
Susan shook her head. “Nothing makes me feel older than watching a kid grow up and then have kids of her own. Junior was always hanging out with us. She adored Mickey. It still catches me off-guard sometimes how much she looks like Alice.”
“Yes.” Lauren smiled into her coffee cup. “I remember Mickey telling me—”
“Hey!” Susan interrupted. “You called her Mickey. Never used to. It was always Michele.”
“That’s how I got to know her,” Lauren said. “But now, with little Michele, Mickey is easier for everyone.”
“Sorry.” Susan waved her coffee cup. “You were saying.”
Lauren frowned, trying to remember what she’d been saying. “Oh. Just that Mickey said how startled she was when Jennifer showed up at the abbey. It was as if Alice had walked in.”
“Is it weird?” Christie asked. “Having such a reminder of your lover’s first partner?”
“I never really thought about it,” Lauren admitted. Nor did she ever think of Mickey as her lover. It was so much deeper than that. She was part of my soul. “I’ve known Jennifer almost as long as I knew Mickey, so for me, they go together.”
“And you’re still not dating anyone?” Susan asked in a forced casual voice.
Lauren knew enough to expect this question by now, so it didn’t startle her as it had the first few times Susan had asked. “No. I like my solitude. I get to visit with the kids when I want company, and then give them back to Jennifer and Jamie. I’ve got my work, my visits to the abbey. My life is full.”
Susan’s eyes reflected her doubt, but before she could argue, Christie laid a hand on her arm and said, “That’s great. We’re glad you’re happy.”
They finished breakfast and quickly cleaned the kitchen before going to shower and dress for Mass. They arrived early, as the abbey’s small public chapel usually filled quickly on the holidays.
“Figured you’d get a reserved pew,” Susan muttered when they entered to find the seats already more than half-full.
“Doesn’t work that way,” Lauren whispered back, shuffling into an empty pew.
All around them, people shuffled or quietly cleared their throats as they waited. Before long, the nuns processed in, taking their places in their choir stalls. Lauren didn’t recognize the woman in her former stall. It was a bit of a shock to realize there were whole cadres of novices and postulants that she didn’t know, had never met.
But you were never interested in getting to know them when you were here.
Harsh, but true. When she was here, she’d used her skill in the vestment room as an excuse to isolate herself from the rest of the community. Except for directing some of the retreats, she’d had little interaction with anyone who didn’t work in the vestment room.
Without even realizing it, she’d put up walls—funny, my walls were made of cloth—to keep everyone at a distance. Until Mickey barged through them, tore huge holes in them. She closed her eyes. Holes as big as the one in my heart now.
When the organ sounded its first note and the nuns began singing, she had to remind herself that that wasn’t her role now, but her lips still moved as she mouthed the words. Father Andrew’s voice sounded stronger, and she thought he looked healthier than she’d seen him, but Mother’s voice warbled a little, causing Lauren to eye her closely as the Mass progressed.
When Mass ended, Lauren, Susan, and Christie stayed seated as the other people left and the nuns filed out on their way to the refectory for breakfast. Mother Theodora approached the grille with a smile.
“A blessed Thanksgiving to you all,” she said, reaching a hand through the bars to grasp theirs.
“And to you, Mother,” Lauren said, her eyes scouring Mother’s face. “How are things here?”
“All is as it should be.” Mother turned to Susan and Christie. “You both look well. It’s so nice you could drive up to spend the holiday here.”
“We’re trying to talk Lauren into coming to Baltimore for Christmas,” Christie said. “We could go to DC. Maybe you can help us gang up on her.”
Mother turned to her. “You should go. I’ve always wanted to see the nation’s capital at Christmas. It looks beautiful in the photos in the paper.”
“Perhaps.”
“She’s a champion at non-committal responses,” Susan said.
“I learned from the best.” Lauren met Mother’s gaze for a few seconds. “I’ll call soon. We can have a longer talk.”
“I look forward to it. Enjoy your visit. God bless you all.”
Lauren stood, watching until Mother had left the Chapel.
“What’s wrong?” Christie asked as they walked to the car.
“I’m not sure.” Lauren frowned, clicking her seatbelt. “She just looks tired.”
“Well, how old is she now?” Susan asked.
Lauren had to think. “Late seventies? Maybe.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility for someone who’s getting on.”
“It is.” She put the car in gear. And I added to it.
A quiet hum of anticipation filled the common room as the nuns gathered on the second Sunday of Advent. The juniors had been rehearsing a little play they’d written about the wives of the three Wise Men, helping their husbands prepare for the upcoming journey.
Mother Theodora had declined the seat that had been saved for her in the front row, nodding toward a chair in the middle where she would be just one of many faces. Sister Josephine sat beside her.
At the front of the room, Sister Rosaria and Sister Sophia were attempting to prop up a papier-mâché camel.
“Do you miss it?” Mother whispered.
“What? Being novice mistress?” When Mother nodded, Sister Josephine snorted and then regained her composure. “It was an… edifying assignment, Mother.”
“I see.” Mother watched the goings on for a moment. “You were very good at it. I was tempted to reassign Sister Rosaria and leave you for this term. I hate to change both postulant and novice mistresses at the same time.”
“Oh, but Sister Rosaria is such a natural.”
Mother couldn’t help but smile at the relief in Sister Josephine’s voice. “She is very maternal. Just what the postulants need.”
The most recent assignment of duties this past summer had been a struggle. It seemed so many nuns were indispensable in their positions: Sister Mary David in the infirmary, Sister Regina at the farm, Sister Cecilia in the kitchen. Some long-term assignments made logical sense. Sister Margaret had a music degree, which made her a natural choice to be precentrix in charge of the abbey choir.
But in monastic life, any claim to uniqueness was a danger. “No one is truly indispensable,” she’d cautioned as she read out the names and assignments. The vestment room was a prime example. When Lauren—Sister Anselma as she’d been then—had gradually assumed the lead in the vestment room, her gift had elevated what the abbey produced. As a result, St. Bridget’s reputation as a producer of exquisite vestments, tapestries, and altar cloths had blossomed. It had seemed inconceivable that they could continue to turn out the same quality of work without her. If Mother were brutally honest, the quality had fallen off a bit in the last few years since Lauren had left the abbey, but “sooner or later, death if nothing else will force us to make changes” she would have argued if she’d had anyone to argue with as she labored over the list of positions and names to fill them.
Her attention was snatched back to the present by a few introductory chords on the piano. The community laughed and clapped as the first Wise Wife emptied her husband’s chest of myrrh and filled it instead with dozens of clean diapers.
Wise Wife number two—“What in the world are they going to do with frankincense?”—replaced the contents of her husband’s chest with soaps and oils for bathing and soothing mother and child.
The third Wise Wife stood with her hands on her hips, staring into her husband’s chest of gold. “Well, it’s heavy, but who knows? They might be traveling.”
A flash of movement caught Mother’s attention. Sister Mary David stood at the side of the room. When Mother looked in her direction, she gave a single nod. Mother rose with a whispered apology to those she had to pass by.
“It’s time,” Sister Mary David said when they exited the common room. “I thought you would want to know.”
“Thank you.”
When they arrived in the infirmary, Sister Jessica was turning and repositioning Sister Scholastica, whose breathing had become more labored. Despite the gentleness of Sister Jessica’s touch, Sister Scholastica couldn’t suppress a moan of pain. Mother and Sister Mary David helped stuff pillows behind Sister Scholastica. Mother was startled at how skeletal she was under her gown and covers.
She took her rosary from the rope girding her habit and knelt beside the bed, praying while the others resumed their rounds of the other elderly sisters. When she had finished the rosary, she got stiffly to her feet.
Sister Jessica saw and hurried over with a chair. “Here, Mother. Sit. Can I get you anything? A cup of hot tea?”
“That would be nice. Thank you, Sister.”
Over the decades, it had become more difficult to remember which postulants and novices had entered together in the same class. But Jessica had entered with Mickey, and she was now the only remaining member of that group. Of course there was Abigail, who had left and re-entered a few years later, but Mother didn’t count her as part of that class.
When Sister Jessica returned with a steaming cup, Mother nodded her thanks. “Can you sit with me for a moment, Sister?”
Jessica glanced back, but Sister Mary David was at her desk, recording the meds they’d just given. She reached for another chair and sat. Together, they watched Sister Scholastica’s chest rise and fall with her shallow breathing.
“I was so surprised when she told me she’d chosen Mickey to do her mastectomy,” Mother murmured.
“I was, too, when I found out just a few weeks ago,” Jessica said. “She always seemed so… antagonistic toward Mickey.”
Mother chuckled softly. “You could say that. I guess Mickey changed many of us.”
Jessica smiled. “I just got a letter from Tanya. We’d been remembering how much fun Mickey was. She was kind of the glue that held us together.”
“How is Tanya?”
“Wonderful. She and her husband have four children now. She’s happy.”
Mother studied her. “And are you happy?”
Jessica turned to her with eyes shining from behind her glasses. “I’m where I’m supposed to be. What could be better than that?”
“What could be better,” Mother echoed.
One of the bedridden nuns called out.
“Go,” Mother said, and Jessica went to her.
Sister Scholastica’s eyes fluttered open. “You don’t need to be here. You have so many more important things to take care of.”
Mother reached for her hand. “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
The funeral was beautiful, simple—as all of the abbey funerals were. Except for the presence of the plain wooden casket lying at the front of the choir and the singing of the requiem, it might have been any Mass. A few of Sister Scholastica’s family—two surviving siblings, three nieces, and one nephew—were able to travel for the funeral.
Death was as natural a part of life as birth—“and it’s not the end, but the beginning,” the nuns would have said. Though some losses were felt more keenly than others—“we are only human,” they also would have said—in a community of fewer than eighty women, the loss of any one of them was still a gap. An empty place. Especially for a presence as large as Sister Scholastica had been.
Not always beloved, she’d nevertheless been a pillar of St. Bridget’s for over sixty years, as Mother Theodora recalled in her brief eulogy. The sixty years part, not the not always beloved part, Mother thought wryly as she prayed silently after. She could almost hear Sister Scholastica harrumph, “Be honest. They know it even if you won’t say it.”
Following Mass, the community processed up to the abbey’s cemetery, with six of the nuns acting as pallbearers. There was no snow, but the ground was hard, the trees stripped of all their leaves save for a few stubborn clingers-on, rattling in the cold breeze.
As it was too cold now for the abbey’s caretaker, Mr. Henderson, to dig a grave, the casket was placed in the small mausoleum dug into the hill for storage until spring. Father Andrew said another prayer, sprinkling the casket with holy water before the door was sealed.
“Why are autumn and winter deaths so much harder than spring or summer?” he asked Mother, taking her arm as they descended the path.
“The beauty is starker, I think.” She paused, turning to take in the naked branches of the trees, the curled, dried-up leaves banked against the fencing. “This is a season of waiting.”
“Fitting, I suppose.” They resumed the trek down the hill. “Construction has begun at St. Dominic’s. They’re hoping to be complete and ready to begin offering retreats by Easter.”
“That is ambitious.”
“That’s what I said.” They were still at a high enough elevation to see across the wide valley to the hills beyond. “But there seems to be such a need. A need out there for something more. More than faux relationships on social media. For something real.”
“And a need of our own for more vocations. It’s a stark reality we’re all grappling with.”
He frowned. “But will vocations come from something like this?”
Mother patted his arm. “You’d be surprised where vocations come from. Sometimes the tiniest seeds take root and won’t let go.”