Then Came Heaven (35 page)

“Amen,” murmured Regina.

She rose and faced Mother Superior, whose watery blue eyes looked a little more watery than usual.

“Remember His words—be not afraid for I am with you all the days of your life. Now, go in peace.”

________

Alone in her cell, when the door closed behind Sister Agnes, Regina could still hear the chanting through the white stucco walls. She opened the butcher paper and found a short-sleeved white cotton blouse with buttons up the front, and a pretty spring skirt of periwinkle blue printed with tiny pink rosebuds. The skirt, she could tell, was homemade. Tears stung her eyes as she realized how much love it had taken for her mother to cut it out and stitch it for this occasion, for Bertha, she knew, remained heartbroken over her decision to leave the sisterhood.

Beneath the skirt she found a pair of white anklets, a very demure full-length cotton slip and a clean but used brassiere of unadorned white. Pinned to it was a note in her mother’s hand: 
I couldn’t guess at your size, so this is one of mine. Hope it’ll do till we can buy you some.

For the very last time, Sister Regina undressed as required by their Constitution, in the reverse order of which she’d dressed that morning. She kissed each piece and laid it aside with a prayer for each—veil, wimple, guimpe, scapular, the cincture with its three knots signifying her three vows, her sleevelets and dress. And, of course, the binding around her breasts.

Undressing felt indecent in broad daylight while the chanting of lauds penetrated the walls. She hurried to don the brassiere, finding it too large, and extremely awkward to hook. The blouse was store-bought, size thirty-four, and fit her fine. The skirt was tight around the waist—how could her mother possibly guess?—but she got it buttoned anyway, and felt a first ripple of enjoyment at the feeling of the air on her legs. The white anklets looked silly with her black Cuban-heeled oxfords, but she had no other shoes, and promised herself they’d be the first things she’d buy, along with a brassiere that fit.

When she was all dressed, she removed from her left ring finger the plain gold band she had donned when she became the bride of Christ. Looking down at it in the palm of her hand she remembered that day, her gown of white, the bridal veil on her head, and the intense sincerity with which she’d vowed her fidelity forever: 
“In toto corde.”
 With
 
a heavy heart, she laid the ring upon her neatly folded garments on the chair.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It simply wasn’t the life for me.”

From her desktop she took the smallest of mirrors and a short black pocket comb and put them to use on her hair. So few times she’d openly studied her hair. It was cider blond, cut haphazardly by her own hand with a paper shears from her schoolroom. As she combed it, it lay in pathetic whorls against her skull, and she had a sudden fear of going out into public this way, unstyled and dumpy.

So much to learn.

But she would. She would.

When she was ready to leave, she paused in the doorway and looked back at her black and white clothing lying neatly folded across the chair and listened to the chanting from down the hall, which was nearing its end. Running her eyes over the barren, narrow room devoid of creature comforts, she felt a sudden craving for color. Wallpaper, curtains, rugs, clothing! Pinks, blues, yellows! She would not miss this austere cell, not a bit.

Downstairs in the music room her parents were waiting.

“Hello, Mother, Dad,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

They sprang from their chairs as if caught in some illicit act.

“Sist—” Her mother shot a sheepish glance at her feet and began again. “Jean, dear. How did the clothes fit?”

“Just fine, Mother.”

“I hope they were okay. I didn’t know what to bring.”

“They’re just fine. So colorful,” she added with a cheery smile. “Thank you for making the skirt.”

“I didn’t make it. Elizabeth did. She insisted, and she also sent a shorty coat for you. She wasn’t sure what you’d have for outside wear.”

“How thoughtful.”

Her father hadn’t said a word yet. He held the coat while she slipped it on, and for a moment she felt his hands squeeze her shoulders through the warm wool and shoulder pads of Elizabeth’s coat.

“I’ll bring your suitcase,” were his first words.

Her mother said, “And I’ll take that coat,” reaching for her heavy black one.

They went out first, and she followed. Not even Mother Superior was waiting in the hall to say goodbye. She had secreted herself away and was chanting with the others, apparently following orders and letting the traitor slink out on her own. She passed the bench in the entry hall where she’d often greeted piano students, sometimes Anne or Lucy, who waited for their lessons with dimes wadded up in their handkerchiefs. From the glassed-in porch that ran across the entire front of the house she paused and looked back along the center hall where the shiny linoleum caught the light of the setting sun from the open music-room doorways, into the kitchen where something oniony and beefy was cooking for supper, and up the stairway where seven nuns were finishing up afternoon prayers with silent meditation.

I have no regrets,
 she thought, and went out into the spring evening.

________

Ah, the wind. The wind in her hair! And on her legs! And in her uncovered ears! It sighed through the deep afternoon while the lowering sun clasped her bare head with warmth. Robins were singing, louder than she ever remembered, so exquisitely audible without a layer of starchy white cloth binding her ears. She caught herself attempting to stick her hands up the sleeves of Elizabeth’s coat, but the opening was too narrow, reminding her she no longer need hide her hands.

Then she was in the backseat of her father’s car and they were pulling away from the curb, and she wondered if Mr.

Olczak was on the opposite side of the school building, cleaning her classroom, or if he’d gone home already, and who would tell him she was gone, and if he would presume she’d gone to her parents’ farm.

Well, at least he knows where it is.

Her mother said, “Did you have supper, Sist... Jean?”

“No, not yet.”

Her father said, “Your mother and I thought we’d stop at long Prairie maybe and eat in a restaurant, sort of... well, celebrate.”

She noted her mother’s abrupt left-face and the glare she shot at her husband that warned she was not ready—might never be ready—for celebrations. Jean understood her father’s attempt to inject some specialness into this milestone, with its mix of bitter and sweet, for eating in restaurants was as rare as missing Sunday Mass.

“I’d like that,” Jean said.

At Hart’s Cafe, they sat on one side of the booth, she on the other. Sometimes she forgot she was allowed to look around at the Coca-Cola sign, and the customers on the counter stools, and the candy bars in the glass case beneath the cash register. A man with a beautiful voice sang “Mona lisa” on the jukebox. The waitress had wavy brunette hair, bloodred lipstick, and called Jean “honey” when she suggested a malt to go with her hamburger. When their food came she folded her hands, bowed her head and said a fairly lengthy grace. When she put the straw to her lips her father asked, “How’s the malt, Jean?” and she beamed and nodded with a mouth full. Then he said, “Oh, is it okay to call you Jean again?” and she smiled and took his rough hand on the tabletop, and took one of her mother’s hands, too, and said, “Of course it is. Everything’s just the way it used to be. I’m your daughter. There’s no need to be uncomfortable with me.”

But they were, and she knew it would take time to adjust.

________

When Anne Olczak walked into her schoolroom the day after Sister Regina became Jean Potlocki again, she balked at the sight of some stooped old nun with a fuzzy face and spotty hands sitting in Sister Regina’s chair.

“Who are you?” she blurted out.

“I’m Sister Clement and I’m going to be your teacher for the rest of the school year.”

“Where’s Sister Regina?”

“Sister Regina was needed elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Jesus called her to another place.”

Shock suffused Anne’s face. “You mean 
she died, too?”

“Oh no, no, no. She’s perfectly fine. Jesus just needed her there more than he needed her here, that’s all.”

“That’s what they told me when my mommy died, but it isn’t true! We still needed my mommy a lot! Why didn’t Sister Regina tell us she was going?”

“Perhaps she didn’t know.”

“Is she coming back?”

“No, child, she isn’t. What’s your name?”

Anne’s mouth pursed. She didn’t want to tell this imposter her name, but she had no choice. “Anne Olczak.”

“Olczak... mmm. The janitor’s girl?”

“One of ’em.”

“Yes, of course. I met your father. And I also have your sister in my third-grade group, I believe.”

“She’s outside waiting for her friend’s bus to get here. We both liked Sister Regina awful much.”

Sister Agnes came into the room then, and Anne used the interruption to make her escape. She went straight outside to broadcast the news to her arriving classmates as they stepped off the bus, that they had a new teacher who was very old and had a moustache.

That morning during Mass and classes, Anne studied Sister Clement with a jaundiced eye. The nun was boring, and lazy, and not a very good teacher at all. Mostly she told the kids to open their books and work on their own. At recess time, she didn’t bother going outside with them, but assigned two kids as monitors and said everybody had to be good or they’d be reported. Recess was horrible. The boys aggravated the girls and took their jump ropes away from them and stole the rocks from their hopscotches, which never happened when Sister Regina was there. Back inside, Sister Clement assigned fourth-graders to team up with third-graders and give them arithmetic quizzes. Then she sat at her desk and just before lunchtime started nodding off and looked as if she’d tip off her chair.

Long before Sister Dora rang the noontime bell, Anne knew what she’d do.

________

It had been a shock to Eddie as well when he walked past Sister Regina’s room that morning and found someone else looking through her desk drawers. He had stepped inside and said, “Good morning.”

The old woman and he exchanged pleasantries, and he found out in no time that she would be there for the rest of the year. However, she knew nothing of the whereabouts of the nun she was replacing. Nobody at either the diocese or the Mother House had informed her.

So she’s out,
 Eddie thought, 
her dispensation must’ve come through.
 All morning while he worked he swallowed his disappointment at not having been told, and he wondered why Sister Regina hadn’t bothered to say 
something.
 
It would only have taken a moment; would that have been so hard for her to do, find him in the hall and say, 
I’m leaving, Mr. Olczak, my dispensation has come through,
 
rather than leave him guessing about it?

It hurt, damn it! It hurt that she hadn’t done that much. It hurt that she would disappear without telling him where she’d be or what she’d be doing.

That afternoon, needing a vent for his frustrations, he sought the heaviest work he could find. He was repairing rock heaves in the grotto with uncharacteristic ferociousness, manually rolling boulders that he should have moved with a pry bar, when Lucy found him.

“Daddy!” she called as she came bounding up the grotto steps. “Daddy, Annie’s gone!”

He sat back on his heels and pulled off his soiled leather gloves. “Gone? What do you mean she’s gone?”

“She didn’t come back after dinner, and Sister Clement sent me to tell you! We don’t know where she is!”

Alarm set his heart pounding.

“Did she say anything to you?”

“No.”

“Did she eat dinner in the cafeteria?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so?”

“I was sitting with my friends. I didn’t pay no attention to her.”

“Well, was she on the playground during recess?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe not. We were playing pump-pump-pull-away.”

“And she wasn’t there, playing with you?”

Lucy shook her head. Her face showed the first signs of fear as she thought she’d done something wrong.

“Okay, dumpling, let’s get you back to your room, and I’ll run home and see if she’s there or at Grandma Gaffke’s.”

He walked her back inside and spoke to Sister Clement, but the nun was old and perhaps a little less than competent, as well as being new to the community. She had no idea where Anne might have gone. From what he gathered, she hadn’t even known who was missing from the empty desk until Lucy had brought it to her attention.

He spoke to Lucy last. “Listen, honey, don’t worry. I’ll go check at home. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well and went there to lie down. Now, you go back to your studies and be good for Sister Clement.” To the nun, he added, “Thank you, Sister. I’ll let you know when I find her.”

________

It took him approximately two minutes to jump in his pickup and drive the block and a half to his house. Why he didn’t check at Grandma Gaffke’s first, he didn’t know. Something told him Anne was at home, and he figured it had a lot to do with Sister Regina’s leaving.

The front door was shut tight, so he passed it and went around back to the kitchen door, and sure enough, it was open. He stepped inside and let the screen door close soundlessly against his overalls. The kitchen was tidy, the spring sun flowing in behind him across the rag rug and the gray-and-yellow linoleum. A few bread crumbs and a buttery knife lay on the cupboard by the sink. From the girls’ bedroom overhead he could hear the murmur of Anne’s voice coming down through the heat register in the ceiling. He crept to the bottom of the stairway and listened. Though she was hovering at the age where she’d half given up playing with dolls, it sounded as if she was talking to one today.