The remainder of the year rushed by and tumbled into 1961 with a new President—Patrick and Maggie couldn’t have been happier—a new bakery that was churning out bread and rolls to supply, not only the Wasserman hotels, but more of the markets in Rochester and western New York, and a new secret on Pip’s part.
“You can’t hide this from your family forever,” Sister Ruth had counseled when she handed Pip the latest letter from St. Bridget’s.
“I know.” Pip held the envelope. “But having the letters sent to you, instead of home, saves me daily arguments with my mother.” A sudden thought occurred. “They will let me enter, even if she doesn’t like it, won’t they?”
“Of course.” Sister Ruth sat in a student desk beside Pip. “There’ve been many others who have entered religious life against their family’s wishes. But it does tend to tear at you to enter under those circumstances. I’m sure Sister Veronica explained to you that they normally ask for a certain sum to help cover the costs of feeding and housing postulants and novices until they take their vows. Like a dowry in the old days.”
“Oh, I’ve been setting aside all of my salary,” Pip said quickly. “I’ve got more than enough saved up.”
“And you’re determined to enter with this spring’s class, rather than wait a year?”
“Why wait?” Pip blew out a weary breath. “I feel I’ve been through a trial, just getting to this point.”
Sister Ruth’s mouth twitched. “You certainly did a bit of running. Was it so very scary?”
Pip hesitated. With Toni gone—and no one else attracting her that way—Pip felt safe. It was just a one-time thing. Just her. I’m not… But what she wasn’t, she couldn’t quite put into words, even in her own head.
“It was scary,” Pip admitted, and a troubling thought occurred. “Does that disqualify me? Do they only want ones ready to jump in heart and soul?”
Sister Ruth rocked with her laughter. “If they did, most convents would be empty.”
She sobered. “But you only have a few months. You need to figure out how to tell your family.”
That bit of advice continued to worry and niggle at Pip as time seemed to race by. Besides Sister Ruth, the only other person she’d told had been Celeste.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Celeste had momentarily forgotten she was trying to look sophisticated and airy, holding a cigarette daintily at a café table downtown. She wasn’t allowed to smoke at home. “But all the college girls do,” she’d said to Pip. “Want one?”
“No, thanks. Trying to quit.” Pip smiled. Maybe they were all going through the same thing, college or no.
“But a penguin!” Celeste had stared hard at Pip, obviously having difficulty picturing her friend in a habit. “If you’re going to do it, why not at least do it in an order where you can get out. Teach. Something. Not hide yourself away in a… a monastery.”
Pip had shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to work that way.”
Celeste had stared, her cigarette forgotten. “How does it work?”
“It’s…” Pip had struggled to explain. “When you try to ignore it, it’s kind of like an itch you can’t scratch. No matter how hard you try, and believe me, I tried, it finds ways of nudging you back in the direction you’re supposed to go.”
By the time Celeste had returned to college after the Christmas break, she still didn’t understand, but she’d hugged Pip tightly.
“Don’t forget me,” Pip had suddenly begged, though she felt foolish.
“Never.”
Days and then weeks ticked by, and still, she hadn’t told her family. She was trying to prepare at work, training Sandra to take over payroll. That would be one less thing for her dad and brother to worry about. Mr. Wasserman was another matter.
She’d seen him, of course, at their Yule Ball. Funny to think this all started a year ago, she’d recalled. She’d refused a new gown, scandalizing her mother and Felicia by insisting she could wear the same one from last year.
“But what will people say?” Marie had exclaimed. “What if they think we cannot afford—”
“It would be a waste,” Pip cut in. “Why would I have another dress made that I’m only going to wear once?”
Felicia had insisted on adding some dark green ribboning to the red velvet. “There,” she’d said, though she bit nervously at her nails. “It looks different enough. No one will notice.”
Pip had gone, determined to enjoy herself to the max. I’ll never have the chance to do this again. She’d danced every dance, even one waltz with Mr. Wasserman.
“I need to talk to you,” she’d worked up the courage to say as they twirled around the dance floor.
“You’re going to tell me you have that husband lined up?”
She’d laughed. “Not here. I’ll come see you soon.”
Which was how she found herself nervously approaching the hotel on a frigid February day. When she was shown into his office, he got up from his desk.
“Patricia, it’s good to see you.” He ushered her to the grouping of chairs around the coffee table, taking one adjacent. “You aroused my curiosity. What is it you wish to talk about?”
“Well…” Her mouth was so dry, it was hard to talk. “I’ve made a decision that I need to tell you about.”
“Oh?” He sat back and eyed her. “What kind of decision?”
“I’m going to be a nun. I’ll be leaving the business this spring.” The words tumbled out so fast, he seemed to have trouble making sense of them, based upon his frown and his silence.
“You—” He stood abruptly and went to his desk for a cigar and his lighter. Puffing furiously, he returned to his seat. “A nun.”
She nodded.
“What did your father say to this?”
“I haven’t told him yet.” She clenched her hands.
Mr. Wasserman nearly dropped his cigar. “You’re telling me, but you haven’t told him?”
“You’re only the third person I’ve told,” she confessed. “I don’t know how… I don’t think my mother will be happy.”
“Why? Is she not Catholic?”
“No. I mean, yes, she is. We are. But she has plans for me. Husband, remember?”
His whiskers bristled as his lips and teeth gripped his cigar. With a plume of smoke, he said, “I told you about Teddy. How disappointed I’ve been that he had no interest in this business, one ready-made for him to take over. I’m not sure how I’d have felt if he told me he wanted to be a priest. We’re not religious, though my grandfather was a Lutheran minister in Germany. He wanted my father to go into the ministry, but my father chose to come to America. Is that why you haven’t told them? You don’t want to disappoint them?”
“That’s part of it, I suppose.” Pip closed her eyes. “The whole bakery thing was my idea, and now I’m leaving.”
“But you got it going. It’s up and running. Don’t you think your father and brother can take it from here?”
“I hope so, but my father is still recovering from his heart attack, and… I just thought I’d be there. Forever. This kind of caught me by surprise.”
He tapped his cigar into an ashtray. “Is there anything I can do? Maybe invite him to join me for lunch here or at my club?”
“That would be wonderful, Mr. Wasserman. He might just need another man’s point of view.” Her chin quivered, and she had to lower her eyes. “So he can say how disappointed he is in me.”
Mr. Wasserman leaned forward and took her hand. “I don’t think he could be disappointed in you, my dear.”
She offered a watery smile. “I hope you’re right.”
The next few days were busy. A bakery truck broke down in the middle of a trip to Buffalo, and Pip had to arrange for a tow truck and a second delivery truck. One of their new bakers didn’t show up for work one morning, so she had to jump in and help out.
But by Friday, she knew she’d run out of time. The abbey was asking her to begin putting together a list of required things—the gray and black skirts and sweaters she would need as a postulant, underclothes, with name tags sewn into all her things—items that would immediately raise alarms in her house.
That evening, she stood outside the dining room and braced herself. She waited until everyone else was seated before taking her place.
She placed her napkin in her lap. “I need to speak with all of you. Including you, Maggie,” she added, eyeing the movement of the swinging door into the kitchen.
Maggie pushed the door open and stood there, wide-eyed.
“Where’s Felicia?” Pip asked, ignoring her mother’s demanding stare.
When Felicia followed Maggie into the dining room, Pip took a deep breath.
“There’s something I need to tell all of you.”
The words poured out, her appearance of calm betrayed only by her hands strangling her napkin under the table. When at last she’d finished, a ringing silence filled the room. But the silence only lasted for a moment before her mother burst out in a torrent of French, Garrett began shouting, and Josie ran from the room in tears. Felicia grabbed Maggie in a fierce hug.
Pip caught her father’s eye. Without saying a word, he lifted his glass in a toast.
A foot of wet snow blanketed central New York, courtesy of a March storm. In the storm’s wake, the sun glinted off the dazzling whiteness under a brilliantly blue sky.
Don’t be ridiculous, Pip chided herself from the back seat of the Chrysler. It’s not as if you’re never going to see the sky again.
But it would never be like this.
Josie sat beside her, holding her hand tightly. “You can still change your mind.”
From the front seat, Marie turned her head slightly, listening, hoping to hear Pip say just that.
Pip pulled Josie nearer and wrapped an arm around her. “I don’t think I’ll change my mind. But you can come visit.”
“It won’t be the same,” Josie insisted, her voice warbling with tears.
“No,” Pip agreed. “It won’t.”
She spent the remainder of the drive trying to hold back her own tears. As much as she wanted this—“Want isn’t the right word,” she’d grumbled to Sister Ruth during their farewell. “It doesn’t matter if I want it or not, does it?”—this decision felt more final, more permanent than if she’d left for college. The thought of not being allowed to return home unless she left the abbey for good—which means I failed—that was the hardest part.
Marie had tried non-stop to talk Pip out of entering, using every argument she could think of, every tactic. When nothing worked—not cajoling, not guilt, not anger—she seemed to settle into a kind of shocked resignation.
Even Maggie, as staunch a Catholic as she was, was wary of nuns. “The ones I knew in Ireland,” she’d warned, “were not good people. They were supposed to take care of girls I knew—girls who were in a family way, you know—but they were awful to them. You take care they treat you well. And if they don’t, you come home to us, Miss Patricia.”
Dabbing at her eyes with her apron, she’d pushed a basket of freshly baked bread and rolls and cakes into Pip’s hands that morning. “You eat your fill before you get there. Or they’ll take these away and you’ll not get any.”
“Thank you, Maggie,” Pip had said, giving her a tight hug.
“And you,” she’d said to Felicia. “How can I—”
But her voice had cracked as she tried to say what was in her heart. Felicia had held her, just as she had upstairs that night, and no words were needed.
Garrett, though, had left early that morning before everyone was up. He’s said his good-bye to Pip the night before, standing in the door of her room.
“You left me a mess, you know that.”
She’d bent over the suitcase she was repacking for the tenth time. “I left you with a successful start to something that will help the mill keep going.” She straightened. “But it’s up to you how far you want to take it. You’ll do great. I know it.”
“Damn you.” He’d given her a rough hug before going down the hall and slamming his door.
She had to stop replaying those moments in her mind, or she knew she just might tell her dad to turn the car around. When Patrick pulled up to the doors of St. Bridget’s, Pip helped him to lift her two suitcases of clothes out of the trunk. Fighting back tears, she hugged him and Josie, but Marie stood, stoic until Pip raised her hand to knock, and then she grabbed Pip and clung to her.
“Don’t do this, ma fille,” she pleaded one last time.
“I love you, Mom.” Pip gave her a kiss as the door opened and two nuns stepped out to take everything.
Pip followed them into the abbey’s foyer and got one last look at her family before the oak door swung shut.