Then Came Heaven

  “You mind if I sit down a minute?” he asked.

  She finally looked up, and he detected a blush she could not hide. But she spoke with total composure. “No,” she said quietly.

  He sat down on the first seat of the row of desks right in front of her. It had no writing surface, only the fold-down seat upon which he settled, with his knees poking up like Tinkertoys.

  She finished the cornucopia and began cutting out an orange pumpkin.

  “Sister, have I done something to offend you?” he asked quietly.

  Her head snapped up and her hands drifted down to her desktop, with the scissors still catching the paper.

  “No.”

  “I was just wondering, because you seem to be going out of your way to avoid me.”

  “No, I haven’t, Mr. Olczak.”

  “Yes, you have, Sister Regina. Now what have I done?”

  “You’ve done nothing.” She spoke as reservedly as ever, but her cheeks flared redder than before.

  “I used to come in your room after school and we’d talk about Anne and Lucy and how they were doing, and about Krystyna and all my feelings after I lost her. Now you make sure you’re not here when I come in. I just wondered if I said something or did something that wasn’t proper.”

  “I told you, you’ve done nothing.”

  He let his eyes settle on her and stay until she had no recourse but to look down and get busy with the scissors again.

  “I miss that, you know?” he continued softly. “I suppose I could talk to the other nuns, but... well, they’re different. I mean, I’m not as comfortable talking with them as I am with you. I always say to Romaine, ‘Whenever I talk with Sister Regina I feel better afterwards,’ and it’s true.”

  She kept her eyes on the pumpkin and said, “You may talk to me now, Mr. Olczak.”

  He thought of the women at the dances on Saturday night who could not measure up to Krystyna. He thought of this woman who could. He’d never realized it before, but she was the only one whose company he’d actively sought since Krystyna died. Others only managed to repel him. Now that they were talking again, he didn’t want to cut it short.

  “So how is the sauerkraut?” he inquired conversationally.

  “Delicious, as always.”

  “Yeah, that Krystyna, she knew what she was doing around a batch of sauerkraut.”

  Sister Regina said nothing. She put down the pumpkin and began cutting out a cluster of grapes.

  “I dreamed of her last night,” Eddie said. Still Sister made no remark. Her eyes remained on her work as he continued. “She was standing in the grotto wearing a habit like yours. I don’t know why in the world I’d dream a thing like that.” He hesitated, waiting for a response that never came. “I guess it was because Anne came home one day and asked why nuns can’t be mothers, and I had to explain it to her the best I could. I told her it was because you are married to Christ.”

  “Yes, I am,” she replied, carefully setting down her scissors and grapes on the desktop, then linking her fingers and hiding her hands on her lap beneath the kneehole of the desk. “And that’s why conversations such as this are forbidden to me. Surely you know, Mr. Olczak, that in our Order conversation with seculars is strictly limited to necessity.”

  His spine straightened slightly and he felt a flush of embarrassment begin low and work its way up. “No, I never knew that.”

  She rose with great calm and dignity, and went to stand at the window, looking out, so she need not face him. Tucking her hands into her sleeves she explained, “The life of a nun is one of silence and reflection, which is all part of obedience. And obedience is one of the vows we take. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I have been avoiding you, because I find that when I’m with you it’s easy to forget to observe the rules about ordinary silence, and I talk too much.”

  “But... but what have we done wrong?”

  “By your standards, nothing. But mine order me to confine my conversation to matters of duty, necessity or charity. I could recite you the chapter from our Constitution that states this.”

  “Talking?” he repeated, amazed, studying her straight back and the sheer black veil caught on her shoulders. He rose from the desk but remained near it, a goodly distance from her.

  “You mean, Sister, that every time I come in here and talk to you I cause you to sin?” When she made no reply he insisted, “Do I?”

  “Please, Mr. Olczak,” she whispered. “I’m not allowed—”

  “Well, do I?” He had all he could do to keep from approaching her and forcing her to turn around and face him. How could you read a person when she kept her face turned away like this?

  “Our vows are perpetual, and the obligations they impose bind us under pain of sin, yes.”

  “Sister, would you please turn around?”

  Her erect stature and utter stillness told him she would not.

  “Why didn’t you say something before this?” he asked.

  “Because some of it was necessity, your necessity. I thought you needed someone to talk to, so I decided to be your listener, and since we as nuns are admonished to practice the most cordial charity—and I quote Holy Rule—I thought, when is charity more needed than after a loss like you suffered? You and your girls. These last two months since Krystyna’s death... these last two months have been...” She couldn’t finish. There were tears in her throat.

  “Sister,” he whispered, horrified. “I’ve made you cry.”

  “No, you haven’t.” She dug a handkerchief from her sleeve and tipped her head down as she used it.

  “Then, what is this?” He crossed the room and stood right behind her shoulder, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Please, Sister, turn around.”

  “No, I cannot.” She sniffed once, and righted her head again.

  “But... but, I feel terrible.”

  “It’s me who has made me cry, not you. I’ve... I’ve been going through a personal crisis of sorts and it’s... it’s been a very difficult time for me.” Her voice broke with emotion. “Please, Mr. Olczak, forgive me, but I must go.” She wheeled around, avoiding him, and hurried from the room at a pace that made her veil fill and billow.

  “Sister, wait! I’m sorry, Sister! I wouldn’t...”

  But she was gone, running from him, crying. Left behind in the empty schoolroom, his emotions in turmoil, he didn’t know what to do, think, believe. He’d caused her to sin? And to cry? And to run from him? This nun who had always been so unshakably beatific? Jesus, Mary, Joseph, help me understand what I’ve done to her because she’s the last woman on earth I’d want to upset this way.

  ________

  He lay awake for over three hours that night going over and over that scene in his mind. Standing behind her today while she lost her composure, he had experienced an outpouring of feelings that in his entire lifetime he’d only ever experienced with Krystyna. Oh, how his heart and throat and mind had welled up with remorse for having caused her pain, and more—sin. It had been just plain awful not being able to touch her. He’d wanted to comfort her, to turn her around and hold her as she cried, the way he would any woman in distress. But the mere idea of it was jarring, given that she was a nun.

  Hold her? In his arms?

  You just get that notion out of your head right now, Eddie Olczak! She's a nun, and you treat her with the same respect you ’d treat the Blessed Virgin Mary if she showed up in that schoolroom!

  His whole life long, reverence for the nuns had been drilled into him under pain of punishment. When he was a kid in parochial school he knew that if he ever so much as looked at one sideways he’d get the living shit beat out of him at home. Nuns were representatives of God. They were holy creatures. They were as close to angels as it was possible to be on this earth. There was no man alive who revered nuns more than Eddie Olczak.

  So what was he doing lying here in his bed thinking about holding one? And wondering over and over again what she had meant about going through a
personal crisis since Krystyna had died?

  Was it possible it had something to do with him?

  She's a nun, Olczak! She took a vow of chastity, remember?

  All right, all right. Then how come she blushed and got all flustered when I came close to her? Twice!

  Watch what you think! This is a nun you’re thinking about!

  But she had blushed. He’d seen it. And she had been acting skittish around him.

  You’re getting mighty close to a sin here, Eddie boy. How’d you like to have to go to Confession and tell Father you’ve been thinking unseemly thoughts about a nun ?

  I’m not thinking unseemly thoughts. I’m only trying to figure out what she meant by personal crisis. I mean, suppose, just suppose, that she does find herself feeling... well, you know, feeling something for me... that’d be about the scariest thing that could happen to a nun, don’t you think? Wouldn’t that make her cry that way?

  Confessions, four o’clock Saturday afternoon, Eddie.

  Lying in his bed at one o’clock in the morning with the first snow of the season dulling the streetlamp like a blowing curtain, he dropped a wrist across his forehead and tried to empty his mind.

  He missed Krystyna, that’s all. He missed her, and Sister Regina was the only other woman he felt comfortable with. It’d be a long time before he was over Krystyna. But if he was ever to marry again, it would be somebody like Sister Regina, he was pretty sure.

  He was growing sleepy at last when he had the peculiar thought that he sounded just like Anne: I’d never be a nun, but if I was I'd want to be one just like Sister Regina. Anne was just crazy about Sister Regina. So was Lucy.

  Half asleep, half awake, he pictured his younger daughter, running up to the nun and flinging her arms around her skirts, the way she had around her mother’s.

  Sister Regina... Sister Regina...

  His thoughts were growing too muzzy to capture and hold.

  Oh, Sister, could it be we all love you in a way that’s not allowed?

  When he tumbled into the abyss he wasn’t sure if he’d had the thought or not.

  ________

  The next day was All Souls’ Day, on which a Catholic could get a plenary indulgence by going to Confession and Communion, in addition to saying a number of designated prayers for the poor souls in purgatory, and for the Pope.

  Sister Regina pledged to herself she’d fulfill all the necessary requirements, believing it would bring about a remission of her temporal punishments for the sin she’d committed the previous day by once again talking to Mr.

  Olczak on such a personal level.

  That morning after passing up Communion in chapel, she caught Father Kuzdek as he stopped in the front hall of the convent. “Father, may I have a word with you?”

  The rotund priest lowered his bulk onto the small bench, where the piano students waited for their piano lessons, and pulled on his black rubber overshoes.

  “Certainly, Sister.”

  “I’d like to go to Confession, please.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, Father, if you could spare the time. I don’t want to put it off another day.”

  “Very well. Get your wrap. We’ll go straight to church.” Outside the air smelled like fresh laundry and the sky was still blue-black at six-thirty a.m. Five inches of snow had fallen overnight, and flurries still drifted down in the light of a skinny western moon. Mr. Olczak had already been here and cleared a temporary path only one shovel wide between the rectory and the convent, for Father. There was no escaping the distraction of Mr. Olczak, for even now when Sister moved toward confessing her preoccupation with him, his shovel could be heard from somewhere at the front of the church, scraping away at the wide, tall steps before early Mass.

  Mr. Olczak, Olczak, Olczak! His name was on her mind altogether too much. She knew his routine like a wife knows a husband’s. How was she to get over her attraction to him when he was present in her world nearly every waking hour of the day? Even when she couldn’t see him she could hear him—shoveling, hammering, drilling, whistling, gently teasing the children during recesses and school lunches. Even on her way to confess her excessive familiarity with him, she was thinking of him again.

  Father entered the church through his own private door behind the left sacristy. He switched on some dim lights, found, kissed and donned his stole, and led her through the sanctuary, both of them genuflecting on their way to the confessional. Inside the cubicle it was murky and always seemed to smell of must with overtones of manure from the farmers’ shoes. As Sister Regina stepped into the cramped space, the heavy maroon velvet curtains fell back into place behind her, stirring the two scents together. She knelt, hemmed in by the curtains that could not stop a chilly draft from circling her ankles. She heard Father settle himself in his chair before the partition between them slid back, and she saw the shadow of his hand make a cross in the air.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”

  She made the sign of the cross with him and began by role the words she’d been taught as a child: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. My last Confession was two weeks ago. I’ve come to confess something of grave importance.” She drew a shaky breath.

  He heard it and said, “I’m here, Sister.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and after a pause, “this is very difficult.”

  “Remember that God is all-forgiving,” he said, and waited.

  She fortified herself with another deep breath before going on. “I’ve somehow managed to become friends with a secular, just friends, but in the course of our friendship I’ve allowed myself to speak too freely, and our conversations have sometimes bordered on personal things. I... I find myself tempted to speak to this person about nonreligious matters, because this person is caring and kind and in need of help right now. I know I’m breaking my vow of obedience by speaking to this person, yet it doesn’t feel wrong when I’m doing it. How can this be so, Father?”

  “This person is a man?” Father asked.

  Her heart actually started racing with fear, and she answered meekly, “Yes, Father.”

  “And are you attracted to him?”

  After several long beats she whispered, “Yes.”

  “Have you broken your vow of chastity with him?”

  “In thought only.”

  “Not physically?”

  “No, never, Father. I would not, nor would he. I’m certain. My attraction to him is as much to the pleasure of talking to him as anything else.”

  “Are these talks with him causing you to doubt your vocation?”

  “No, Father. I had begun doubting it before these talks between us began.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  The racing of her heart got worse and she realized tears had sprung into her eyes. It was a terrible, emotional moment, that one in which she admitted for the first time to someone else that her faith in her vocation was shaken. Until the words were actually spoken there was still time to recant, to tell herself she was wrong and these dissatisfactions were temporary and would soon pass. But the words were released, the stepping stone reached, and she recognized the momentousness for what it was.

  Father took his time responding. She could tell he was shaken, and very probably aggrieved. He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair, leaning closer to the screen. “Have you spoken to Mother Superior about this?”

  “N...” Her voice failed and she began again. “No, Father.”

  “Do you feel that you should?”

  “I’m... I’m afraid to.”

  “But Sister Agnes is your spiritual advisor. You must place your trust in her.”

  “I don’t think she’ll believe that this all started a long time ago, way before I ever spoke to this man about anything personal.”

  “What Sister Agnes chooses to believe is a secondary matter. What you know to be true is the primary matter. These are things that should be discussed with your spiritual advisor. They could affect you
all the rest of your life.”

  “Yes, Father. I’ll try. And, Father, there’s something else.”

  “Go on.”

  “You must understand, Father, it’s not just about this man. It’s much bigger than that. I’ve begun finding faults with so much about my life within the religious community—the personal ways of all the sisters, their aggravating habits, and the fact that we are allowed so little freedom. Then there’s Sister Agnes admonishing me not to get too wrapped up in the lives of the children I teach, and this makes me angry, yet I’m not allowed to discuss it with anybody. Holy Rule says my anger itself is a sin. More and more lately I’ve begun to question Holy Rule and our Constitution, how they repress everything natural, how they keep us in line. The very idea makes me angry sometimes.”

  “Anger is human. How we manifest it dictates whether it’s a sin or not. Perhaps, Sister, you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “I don’t think so. Time and again I’ve broken Holy Rule, and every time it happens I do penance, then go on believing I was right. It’s like there are two people inside me, one telling me to stay and be obedient, hold my tongue. The other saying, ‘They are wrong to repress you this way. Speak up.’ It’s been just terrible, Father, what I’ve been going through. It feels very much like purgatory right here on earth.”

  “Do you know what I hear in your voice, Sister?”

  “No, Father.”

  “I hear anguish. That means that there’s a strong, strong spirit moving within you yet, telling you that you are very much where you belong.”

  “Oh, it’s true, Father. Sometimes I’m so at peace here, but those times grow fewer and farther between.”

  “Do you think, Sister, that there isn’t a one of us who’s doubted our vocation at one time or another?” She didn’t answer, so he went on. “Sometimes when we wrestle with doubt and temptation and win out over them, we come through the test stronger than before, and more certain that the vocation we chose is absolutely the right one for us. Pray, Sister. Pray good and hard for the answers, and I know they’ll come to you. Do penance. Meditate as much as possible. Pray to Mary to intercede for you, and to our lord to grant you guidance through this troubled time. And do talk to Sister Agnes. You may be surprised at what you hear.”