After Angie’s first year, we were permitted to see her. The visits — four a year — were held in a small room called the Parlor, and there was a wooden screen between us, almost like the lattice in a garden trellis. I wasn’t able to touch her, and there was no privacy; the room was filled with the equally excited families of the other nuns. I found the visits an exercise in frustration. I couldn’t talk to Angie about anything that mattered, couldn’t reach her in any meaningful way at all, so the garden trellis might as well have been made of concrete. All I could do was watch us grow apart. Over the years, her face thinned out and her demeanor grew subdued. By the time she became a professed sister five years later, I felt I hardly knew her at all. I hugged her then, after the mass, and cried most of the way home.
I speed by farm after farm, and all I see for a long time are cows and billboards. WELCOME TO MARYLAND, says the sign when I cross the border. I wind slowly through Harford County, with its quaint farms and not-so-quaint trailer parks. The sun sets off to my left, behind a Bob’s Big Boy. The car rumbles along quietly; my mind is a blank. The exit for the convent comes up. I twist the car off the highway, into a suburb near the convent. I forget the name of the town, but I recognize the landmarks. A housing development of fake English mews, then a housing development of fake French chateaux.
My anticipation sours slightly. I grow apprehensive. What if they won’t let me stay? What if Angie’s angry at me for coming? A hard ball begins to form in my chest. It seems to calcify as I drive by a diner where Mike and I ate lunch after he met Angie for the first time. I remember that lunch.
“I understand why you miss her so much,” Mike said, fiddling with the top of a red squeeze bottle of ketchup. “It would mean a lot to me if she could be at our wedding.”
“Our wedding?”
“Our wedding.” He grinned and slid the ketchup bottle toward me. On the red cone of its lid hung a small diamond solitaire.
That was Mike’s proposal, and I accepted, but Mike didn’t get his wish. Angie wasn’t allowed out of the cloister to go to his wedding.
They did let her go to his funeral, however.
24
I walk alongside the convent’s high stone wall until I find the front gate. It’s an ancient iron gate, painted in a color impossible to determine in the twilight: forest green, maybe, or black. I can’t see through the gate — it’s opaque and reaches at least ten feet high, culminating in a crucifix. Of course.
Boom! Boom! I bang on the gate. Its bubbled paint flakes off. Boom! Boom! Boom!
Silence.
“Is anybody there? Can anybody let me in?”
More silence.
Boom! “Please, it’s an emergency! Please!”
“Wait a minute,” says a thin female voice on the other side. I hear the metallic clatter of a barrel latch being retracted, and the door opens a crack. One blue eye peers out from behind a rimless spectacle. I catch a glimpse of a white veil — a novitiate — whose face comes happily to life when she sees me. “You look exactly like one of my sisters!”
“Really?”
“Yes! Sister Angela Charles.”
Her sister. I’ll never get used to this. “Angela’s my twin. I’m Mary DiNunzio. I need to see her. It’s a… family emergency.”
The novitiate looks alarmed. “Oh, my. Well. Good thing I was out here. Come in, please.” She yanks on the iron gate, grunting with effort. I push on the gate from the outside, but even with both of us laboring, it’ll only open enough to let me through sideways. “Sorry about that,” she says, with an easy laugh.
“That’s okay. I appreciate your letting me in.”
“No problem. Follow me. I’ll tell Mother you’re here.” She bounces ahead of me, up a flagstone path that winds through the grass to the convent. Over a hundred years old, the convent’s made of Brandywine granite and covered with lush ivy. If it weren’t holding my twin sister captive, I’d say it was beautiful. The roof is terracotta tile, like the rooftops of Florence, and the arched windows are a stained glass that seems to glow with deep colors, radiating light from within on this dusky evening.
As we approach the front door, unmarked except for the Sacred Heart at its keystone, I can hear the nuns singing in the chapel. Their voices, forty in all, carry in the still night, floating over the lawn. One of the voices belongs to Angie. An alto, like me.
“In we go,” says the novitiate, as she opens the carved oak door.
It’s the smell that hits me first, the smell of holy water. It’s a faint and sweet scent, vaguely like rosewater. The novitiate’s breath smells of it too, and I wonder how this is so, or if I’m imagining it. I hear the singing, louder now that I’m inside, and we pass the closed chapel doors, over which is stenciled:
CHAPEL
DEDICATED TO ST. JOSEPH
RECOLLECTION
Angie is inside.
The novitiate leads me to the parlor. Above the door it says:
PARLOR
DEDICATED TO ST. L. GONZAGA
DISCRETION, MODESTY
The novitiate flicks on a lamp, which barely illuminates the room. “Please wait a minute while I tell Mother that you’re here,” she says.
“Thank you.”
She closes the door, leaving me alone. The parlor looks larger now that it’s empty, but it still evokes frustration in me. I sit among the vacant wooden chairs on the civilian side of the trellis, wondering how many twin sisters have sat here in the past century and if any of them felt like I do. The order used to be much more isolated, and Angie says there’s talk of moving to a remote location in the Adirondacks. That’s so far away I’d never get to see her. It makes me feel sick inside.
“Miss DiNunzio?” says the novitiate, back at the threshold. The singing intensifies with the open door. “Come with me. Mother is waiting to see you in her cabinet.”
“Cabinet?”
“Office. Cabinet is the French term, but we still use it.”
“Force of habit, huh?”
She smiles.
“I got a million of ’em.”
I follow her down the bare, narrow hallway. The hardwood floors shine even in the dim light. The novitiate pads ahead softly; I clatter obscenely in my pumps. I look around the pale walls, reading the writing stenciled in black letters at the top. I HAVE A SAVIOR AND I TRUST IN HIM. I KNOW NOTHING SWEETER THAN TO MORTIFY AND CONQUER SELF. WALK BEFORE ME AND BE PERFECT.
The hallway ends in a white door, and the singing stops suddenly. This is the door that encloses the cloistered area. I live on the outside of it; Angie lives on the inside. Over the jamb it says: GIVE GLORY TO THE LORD OF LORDS AND HIS MERCY ENDURETH FOREVER.
It should say: POINT OF NO RETURN.
We pass through the door in silence. I take in everything as we go by, trying to imagine what Angie’s daily life is like. We enter another hallway, also clean and spare, and come to a door on the left, over which is stenciled:
SUPERIORESS’S CABINET
DEDICATED TO OUR HOLY MOTHER
LONGANIMITY
“What does that mean?” I ask the novitiate. “Longan…”
“It’s a toughie, isn’t it? Longanimity. It means forbearance. This is your stop. Mother will be along in a minute. You can have a seat in her office.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure thing,” she says and pads off.
I sit down in a hard mission chair across from a desk so clean it could be for sale. The office is empty and bare, except for a two-tier set of bookshelves and an old black rotary phone. The tinny fixture in the ceiling casts a dim pool of light over the desktop. My chest tightens around the ball at its core. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m back in school, waiting in the principal’s office to answer for some sin. Like an abortion.
Suddenly, with a whoosh of her thick habit, the Mother Superior enters the office. She’s tall, bone-thin, and at least seventy-five years old. There are deep wrinkles etched into her face, which contrast with the starchy smoothness
of her guimpe, the cloth covering her neck and shoulders. A heavy sterling crucifix swings from a pin in her habit. “Ah, yes, Miss DiNunzio,” she says. “You look more like Sister Angela Charles every day.”
I rise and smile. It occurs to me that this is a variant of pop-up-and-grin. “I’m sorry to barge in, but I need to see my sister. It’s a family emergency.”
“So I understand. I have sent for Sister Angela.” The tall nun sits down, very erect, in a wooden chair. “Please, sit.” She waves me into the chair with a bony hand.
There’s a soft rapping at the door. “Come in,” says the Mother Superior. The door opens, and it’s Angie.
“Angie!” I blurt out happily. At the sight of her, the hardness in my chest breaks up, like ice floes on the prow of a tanker.
Angie looks guarded. “Yes, Mother?”
“Sister Angela, I understand there is an emergency.”
Angie’s eyes widen with fear as she turns to me. “Pop? Is it Pop?”
“No, Angie. Not Pop. They’re both fine.”
Her shoulders relax visibly. She steps into the room and closes the door quietly behind her. “What’s the matter?”
I glance at the Mother Superior. “Is it possible for me to speak with my sister alone?”
The Mother Superior purses her lips, which are so thin that they’re merely a vertical wrinkle. I wonder fleetingly if my mother ever noticed them. “As you know, we frown upon interruptions of this sort.”
Suddenly Angie finds her voice, earnest and just a touch defiant. “I’m sure it’s important, Mother, or my sister wouldn’t have come.”
“It’s true.” The story tumbles out, vaguely crazed. “I think someone is stalking me, I’m not sure who. They killed my secretary.”
“Mary, no!” exclaims Angie.
The Mother Superior blinks in surprise; her crow’s feet deepen. “Have you called the police?”
“I think the police are involved somehow. I really need to talk to Angie — and stay the night. Just tonight — please?”
Angie looks nervously from me to the Mother Superior.
“Considering your circumstances, you’re welcome to do so, although I’m not sure it will alleviate your plight in the long run. I will return to Chapel and will expect you in due course, Sister Angela.”
“Thank you, Mother,” says Angie. She bows her head as the Mother Superior passes out through the door.
“Thank you,” I say. As soon as she closes the door, I rush over to Angie. She hugs me back and I cling to her, not wanting to let go. I feel whole again. “I missed you!” I say into a mouthful of lightweight wool.
“What’s going on, Mary?”
I tell her everything, in fits and starts. She listens. She touches my face. She’s worried for me. She loves me still. I feel happy, and so safe. When I’m finished, she leaves and tells me she’ll be right back.
But the next time the door opens, it’s the Mother Superior. “Come with me, please, Miss DiNunzio,” she says. She reaches into the desk for a flashlight. The oak drawer closes with a harsh sliding sound.
“Where’s my sister?”
“She’s completing her prayers. I’m sure you’ll be in them tonight. Please follow me quietly. We have a room for you in the retreatants’ area. The rest of the convent is fast asleep.” She flicks on the flashlight, pointing it toward the floor, and leaves the room.
I follow her into the corridor, feeling like a kid late to a scary movie. The lights seem even dimmer than they were before, but I realize it’s just gotten darker outside. We walk down one bare corridor after the next, past closed door after closed door. Over each is a stenciled description:
WORK ROOM
DEDICATED TO ST. JOSEPH
SILENCE
KITCHEN
DEDICATED TO ST. MARTIN
RECOLLECTION
REFECTORY
DEDICATED TO ST. BERNARD
MORTIFICATION
ASSISTANT’S OFFICE
DEDICATED TO OUR LADY
RETIREMENT
The Mother Superior moves quickly for a woman her age, sweeping from side to side like a whisk broom. I hustle to keep up with her as we climb a creaky staircase and walk past a series of doors that have no descriptions above them. They stretch down a long corridor as it veers off to the left. Beside each door hangs a clothes brush on a hook. “What are these rooms?” I ask.
“The sisters’ cells,” says the Mother Superior, without looking back.
I wonder which one is Angie’s but decide not to ask. At the top of the wall it says, YOU CANNOT BE A SPOUSE OF JESUS CHRIST BUT INASMUCH AS YOU CRUCIFY YOUR INCLINATIONS, YOUR JUDGMENT, AND YOUR WILL TO CONFORM YOURSELVES TO HIS TEACHINGS. I stumble, reading the long inscription.
“Watch your step,” says the Mother Superior.
I gasp. Watch your step, Mary.
She whirls around on her heel. “Are you all right? Did you trip?”
“No. Uh, I’m fine.”
“You’re safe here, dear. You have nothing to worry about tonight.” She strides past a library and an infirmary, both dedicated to saints I’ve never heard of, as well as virtues I have. She stops before a door and opens it. In the half-light I see a single bed and a spindly night table. “It’s not the Sheraton, but it’s not meant to be,” she says, with a slight smile.
“Thank you. I really am grateful.”
“Don’t be too grateful, we rise at five. Sleep well.” She leaves and shuts the door behind her.
It plunges me into pitch blackness. I can’t see the bed in the dark. I wait for my eyes to adjust, but they don’t. I stumble in the darkness, then find the bed’s thin coverlet with my hands. I crawl onto the mattress, feeling safe and exhausted, and drift into sleep.
The next thing I know, my shoulder’s being touched. I look up, blinking in the gloom. There’s a shadow standing over me. Suddenly, a hand covers my mouth.
“It’s me, you idiot.” Angie removes her hand.
“Jesus, you scared me!”
“Shhh! Whisper. I’m supposed to be asleep.” Angie flicks on a flashlight and sets it down like a lamp on the night table. She’s still dressed in her habit, and her silver crucifix catches the light.
“Do you sleep in that getup?” I whisper hoarsely.
“I had Hours.”
“What’s that?”
“Nighttime prayers. I had from three to four o’clock.”
“You mean you wake up in the middle of the night to pray?”
“We pray all night, in shifts.”
“Are you serious?” Something in me snaps at the thought of these poor women — my twin included — praying all night long for a world that doesn’t even know they exist. “What’s the point of that? It makes no sense.”
“Shhh!”
“It’s crazy! It’s just plain crazy, don’t you see that?”
“Mary, whisper!”
“Why should I? You’re an adult and I’m an adult and it’s a free country. Why can’t I talk to my own twin?”
“Mary, please. If you don’t whisper, I’ll leave.” She looks grave, and her mouth puckers slightly. I know that pucker. My mother’s, when she means business.
“All right, I’ll whisper. Just tell me what kind of place this is. They don’t let you talk. They don’t let you out. They barely let you see your family. And these sayings on the walls, it’s like a cult! They cut you off from the world and they brainwash you.”
“Mary, please. Do we have to fight?”
“It’s not a fight, it’s a discussion. Can’t we just discuss it? I’m whispering!”
She sighs. “It’s not a cult, Mary. It’s a different way of life. A contemplative way of life. A religious life. It’s just as valid as the way you live.”
“But it’s a lie. A fiction. They pretend they’re your family, but they’re not. She’s not your mother and they’re not your sisters.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am, I admit it! Mea culpa, sister. Mea
culpa — Sister.”
Angie looks hurt.
“I’m sorry, but this makes me nuts! I’m your sister, your twin. I know you, Angie, like I know myself. And I agree with you. This is a perfectly valid way to live, but not for you.” I search her round brown eyes, identical to mine. We’re mirror images as we face one another in the tight cell.
“I’m here for a reason,” she whispers. “You just can’t accept that.”
“Maybe if I understood it, I could accept it.”
“You won’t try.”
“Give me a chance. I’m smarter than I look. What’s the reason?”
“To serve God. To live a spiritual life.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Angie averts her eyes but doesn’t say anything.
“I believe it from the others, but not from you.”
Still she says nothing.
“Why don’t you talk? You hate silence. You love to talk.”
She lifts her head abruptly. “No, Mary, you love to talk.”
“So do you!”
“No.” She points at me. “I am not you. We look the same. We sound the same. But I am not you.” Her lips tremble.
“I know that, Angie.”
“You do? Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“What makes you so sure? What? How do you know?” She doesn’t pause for my answer but says softly, “As kids, we dressed the same. We wore our hair the same. We had the same favorite sandwich — bologna with mustard on white. We got duplicate presents on our birthday and at Christmas. We went to the same schools. We sat next to each other in the same classes, all our lives.”
“So?”
“So who are you, Mary? And who am I?” Angie’s tone is almost desperate. “Where do you end and I begin?”
My heart fairly breaks with the revelation. “Is that what this is about?”
“I need to think. I need to find out.”