Changing Habits

  “Shortly after that, I walked into the Army recruiter’s office and enlisted. It was the best decision I could’ve made at the time.”

  “I suppose it gave you a new kind of life.”

  “Yes,” Jimmy agreed, “it did. Over the years I kept in contact with Jerry, Corinne’s older brother. Her parents went through a rough stretch for a couple of years, too, but like me, they eventually learned to cope with their loss in their own way. Her mother got real active in a pregnancy hotline. Her father retired about fifteen years ago, and they moved almost right after that. Jerry says they seem happy and that they’ve made a lot of friends in Arizona.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it.”

  “Me, too,” Jimmy said.

  They’d ended the conversation a short while later, and Angie had been fighting back tears ever since. Although it was early, she drove to the convent house and sat in her car, letting the memories wash over her.

  A car was parked out front, but she wasn’t sure whether it belonged to Joanna or to someone visiting the church. Outwardly, the convent house hadn’t changed much. She’d been saddened to learn that it was sold and being torn down. There was no reason for the motherhouse to hold on to the building, which had apparently sat empty for a number of years.

  So many memories. Her gaze drifted toward what had once been the high school. That, too, had closed. Years and years of students had walked through those now-vacant halls. Girls like Corinne and Morgan, and boys like Jimmy Durango. Teenagers who were adults now, with grown families of their own.

  Angie could only hope that the skills she’d taught there had served her students well throughout the years.

  Looking back at the convent, Angie saw two figures step out of the building and walk across the street toward her. She squinted against the bright sun, but instantly recognized Sister Kathleen. How could she miss her with that mass of red hair? And—oh, my goodness—was that Sister Joanna?

  Not waiting to find out, Angie climbed out of the car and with outstretched arms, approached the two women.

  “Joanna? Kathleen?”

  “Angelina?”

  Soon she was enveloped in a three-way hug.

  “Most people call me Angie now,” she said, laughing as they stood apart to study each other and the changes thirty years had brought. She brushed at the fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

  “I’m so happy you decided to join us,” Joanna said, slipping her arm around Angie’s ample waist. She was forty pounds heavier since leaving the convent.

  “I’m happy to be here, too.” She sincerely meant that.

  As soon as she was inside the old convent, Angie was introduced to both their husbands.

  “I never got married,” Angie told them with a tinge of regret. “I always thought I would. Always wanted to, but it just never happened.”

  “You have a restaurant?”

  She nodded. “The one my father started over fifty years ago.” Given the choice, though, Angie would have preferred a husband and children. As she’d told her friends, it just hadn’t happened, but not for lack of wishing. Or trying. Twice she’d met and seriously dated men she was interested in; both times the relationships had looked promising. But then, for reasons she’d never really understood, both men had ended the relationships.

  As the years passed, she’d come to think the problem might be hers rather than theirs. One of her theories was that having entered the convent at eighteen, her social and emotional development had remained that of an adolescent. She cringed whenever she thought of it, and wondered if it could be true. There was no one she trusted to be honest enough to tell her the truth.

  Both men had been married previously; Mark was a widower and Kenneth divorced. Each had been eager to marry again, but after a while, she’d found herself withdrawing. Despite her own desire for a family, she could never make a complete commitment to either man.

  However, she’d remained good friends with Mark’s two daughters. Angie kept in touch with them and they often turned to her for advice. Although Mark had eventually remarried, neither Janice nor Nikki was close to his second wife.

  Their fondness for Angie had been a sweet balm through these last few years. Childless years. When Mark’s daughters learned of the reunion, they’d urged Angie to attend. Janice had driven her to the airport and stayed with her until it was time to go to her gate.

  Angie liked to think she would’ve remained friends with Corinne had the teenager lived.

  The foyer, with its dark carpet and straight-backed chairs, looked exactly the way Angie remembered, except that the statue of Mary was missing from its alcove.

  Joanna and Kathleen stood behind a long table, and while Joanna had Angie sign the guest book, Kathleen sorted through the name tags until she found the one that read Angelina Marcello.

  “Sister Martha’s coming and Julia, too,” Kathleen announced cheerfully. “And Sister Joan, Sister Dorothy, Sister Anne—oh, it’ll be so good to see everyone again.”

  “Would it be all right if I wandered around for a bit before the others arrive?” Angie asked.

  “Oh, sure, but there’s not much left to see.”

  “The chapel’s still there, but the altar’s been stripped,” Kathleen told her.

  Angie stopped at the chapel first. She stood in the entrance and closed her eyes, listening with her heart as the echoed prayers of the sisters seemed to reverberate around her. So much devotion and love had been sent to God from this room. It was as if Angie could hear those prayers now. She hadn’t expected to feel such strong emotion. Perhaps a vague sense of loss and regret, but not these intense feelings that transported her to that most innocent time in her life.

  She turned to leave and nearly walked into a young man.

  “Oh, hi,” he said, balancing a large deli tray. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the kitchen is, would you?”

  “Right this way.”

  “Mom thought it’d be a good idea to keep these meat trays refrigerated until we need them.”

  “Mom is Joanna or Kathleen?”

  “Joanna. You were a nun too?” He looked at her in a way that said he found it hard to believe.

  “Many years ago,” she said smiling to herself.

  “Did you know my mom when she was a nun?”

  “I did,” Angie told him.

  “What was she like? I mean, I only see her as my mother.”

  “I don’t imagine she’s any different.” Angie didn’t know the woman Joanna had become, but she could well remember the nun she’d once been. “What did she tell you?”

  “Not much, but she’s talked about this reunion for months. She’s been filling us in—my dad, my brother and me—on where some of the other sisters ended up. I’m sure you’ll hear all of that soon enough.”

  And she did. Angie stayed in the kitchen for much of the reunion. It was where she felt most comfortable. But nuns and former nuns frequently sought her out to exchange stories. It became obvious that the adjustment for her had been relatively easy compared to some of the others.

  She carried out deli trays and brewed several pots of coffee. Between trips in and out of the kitchen, she caught snippets of conversation.

  “I married the first man I ever kissed. Our marriage didn’t last six months. I was devastated,” one woman said sadly. “I failed as a nun and then my marriage ended in divorce. I went from being a highly exalted Catholic to an outcast in two fast lessons.”

  Angie understood. She, too, had fallen from grace.

  “I used to drive down to the convent at nights,” she heard Sister Martha—now plain Martha Shaw—confess to Joanna. “I missed my life here so much and yet I knew I could never go back. It was months before I stopped doing that. I’m so happy to have this opportunity to say goodbye to our old building.”

  Angie felt the same way herself. Attending the reunion had been the right decision; she was glad she’d come.

  “For me it was a hurting and healing process at the
same time,” Angie heard Kathleen tell the former Sister Loretta. “I lived in Seattle in the House of Peace and talked about my feelings with a counselor. But just when I was sure everything was going to be all right, something would happen and I’d stumble into a depression. The convent was a safe haven. Here I had community, liturgy, theology and love. The world can be a cruel place when you’re alone.”

  Angie had been saved from that by her father. He’d always been there for her, from the beginning until the end. She felt his love even now, years after his death from a massive stroke.

  Once inside the kitchen again, she refilled the coffeepot with water and spooned the grounds in the container before turning it on.

  “You should be mingling with the others,” Joanna said, stepping into the room.

  She smiled. “I will later.”

  “I never intended for you to take on this task.”

  “Why not? I saw a need and I filled it. Isn’t that what we were taught in the convent?”

  Joanna laughed. “You have me there. Kathleen and her husband are coming to my house afterward. Could you join us? I don’t feel we’ve had near enough time to catch up.”

  “I’d enjoy that very much,” Angie said.

  47

  JOANNA’S HOUSE

  Joanna sat on the large sofa in her spacious living room as Tim opened the wine. The reunion had been exhausting but well worth the months of effort that had gone into the planning. Gathering the community of nuns and former nuns one last time had been everything she’d prayed it would be. Now with Kathleen and Angie, Joanna could unwind after a hectic afternoon.

  “I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” Kathleen said, sitting next to her husband. The sky was only beginning to darken, the last rays of the sun casting a warm glow over the lake that was visible from the large living room windows.

  Brian Doyle placed his arm around his wife. “It was smart to do this while the convent was still intact. I only wish something like this could be arranged for priests and former priests—the guys I went to seminary with, for instance.”

  “I didn’t know how I’d feel about this weekend,” Angie said, accepting a glass of merlot from Tim Murray. She sat in the recliner and leaned back, her gaze focused on the setting sun. “Even after the plane landed, I wasn’t sure coming here was the right thing.” She raised her glass. “Now I know it was.”

  Joanna remembered how Angie had spent much of the reunion secluded in the kitchen. She’d worried about it at first but then realized this was where Angie felt most comfortable. Not only that, she was grateful for the extra help.

  “Did you get to visit with everyone?” she asked, fearing Angie had been so busy with details she’d missed out on the most important aspect of the reunion.

  “I had a wonderful time. I talked to Sister Julia and Martha and a number of others. Oh, and Sister Colleen.”

  “I don’t remember Sister Colleen,” Kathleen said, frowning. She glanced from Angie to Joanna.

  “She taught ninth-grade French,” Angie explained.

  “Oh, yes,” Kathleen said. “She must have left the community after we did.”

  “No,” Joanna said. “Sister Colleen’s still a member of the order, although she no longer wears a habit.”

  “Surely she’s retired from teaching by now?” Kathleen murmured.

  Angie crossed her legs. “I believe so—quite a while ago, I’d say. She didn’t mention exactly when, but she did tell me she shares an apartment in the city with two other nuns. All three of them work with the homeless.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said. “I’ve visited the sisters at their place. And I’ve seen Sister Colleen at parish events.”

  “Did she tell you why she stayed?” Kathleen asked Angie. “There must’ve been tremendous pressure to leave when so many other women did.”

  Angie shook her head. “We didn’t get around to discussing that, but I have the feeling Colleen’s been completely content with her life. As I remember it, she always was. She felt then as she does now, that she was doing God’s work.” Angie paused and sipped her wine. “It did come as a shock to her that I’m no longer a Catholic.”

  “You mean you don’t attend Mass?” Tim asked, moving to the edge of the cushion, openly curious.

  Joanna smiled to herself. Her husband was a strong Catholic, and a Eucharistic minister in their church. No one who knew him would believe that at one time he’d rejected God and Church.

  “I attend a Protestant church in Buffalo now,” Angie explained.

  “In our day, that was like joining ranks with the enemy,” Joanna said with a laugh. “We didn’t dare so much as walk on the same side of the street as one of those other churches.”

  “I talked to two or three women today who’ve left the Church,” Kathleen said. “In fact, not one of them wants anything to do with the Catholic Church. Remember Sister Janet? She’s dropped out, and so has Sister Ruth.”

  Joanna had been so busy acting as hostess that she hadn’t had the opportunity for more than brief conversations with any of the visitors. She was hoping her friends would enlighten her.

  “I had the most wonderful afternoon,” Kathleen murmured. “It was such a validation of the decisions I made, and it was so great to talk to women who understand everything I went through when I first left the convent.”

  Everyone looked to Kathleen, nodding in sympathy. “That time wasn’t easy for me,” she said softly. “But I was fortunate in that I had a supportive older brother and a place to go.”

  “I’ve heard of nuns who were given little or no support by their communities,” Angie added.

  “Can you imagine,” Kathleen said, “coming out of the convent after twenty or more years with no retirement funds, no savings and sometimes no skills?”

  Tim frowned and shook his head. “That didn’t happen to any of you, though, did it?”

  “No,” Kathleen was quick to respond, “but we were relatively young when we left.” She gave a slight shrug. “We all went our own ways for different reasons—but there were similarities in each case, too.”

  Joanna agreed. “I left because I’d grown into a completely different woman from the nineteen-year-old girl who’d entered the convent with a broken heart. I was so certain I had a vocation. I wasn’t prepared six years later to find myself feeling restless and uncertain.”

  Tim loudly cleared his throat. “You mean to say I didn’t have anything to do with your decision?”

  Everyone laughed, including Joanna. “Yes, dear,” she said, playing along. “I was in love and longing for a family, too.” But it was more than that. In her pain over the broken engagement, Joanna had turned to God for comfort, convincing herself that He was calling her into His service. Her vocation hadn’t been genuine, although no one could have convinced her of that in 1967. If it had been, she’d still be a nun to this day, the same as Sister Colleen.

  “I was one of the lucky ones,” Angie said. “I had a home and a career waiting for me. Never once did I feel displaced or a burden to my father. According to his friends, the minute I was back, my dad was happier than he’d been since I left.”

  “A lot of the women I talked to mentioned feeling guilty,” Kathleen said.

  To Joanna, that made sense. For a time, soon after she’d come home, she too had experienced the burden of guilt.

  “I think a lot of us felt lost and displaced,” Kathleen said. “For myself, I went from Grand Silence to my brother’s house with two preschool children. Emma and Paul had no appreciation for silence.”

  That comment produced smiles all around.

  “I talked with one former nun—I don’t think she was part of the community when we were—who spoke of that feeling of displacement,” Kathleen continued. “She couldn’t go back to live with her parents, nor could she afford to rent a place of her own.”

  “What about friends?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “She didn’t say, but I sort of had the feeling that she’s been d
rifting for years, no roots, no real home or family.”

  “That’s sad,” Angie murmured.

  “I was surprised how many of us have married and divorced,” Joanna said. She’d talked to four former nuns who’d married quickly after leaving the convent; after a child or two, their marriages had fallen apart. It made her feel all the more blessed to have Tim in her life.

  “A lot of the women I spoke to had problems with relationships,” Kathleen added. “Especially relationships with men.”

  One of the most telling conversations of the afternoon had been with a woman who’d come out of the novitiate at the same time as Joanna. “Sister Joan’s been married three times in the last twenty-five years. She said she’d failed God as a nun and then was divorced within a year of her first marriage.”

  “Talk about going from respected to rejected in two short steps,” Tim said, and sipped his wine. He reached for Joanna’s hand and they entwined their fingers.

  “I want to go back to this issue of relationships with men,” Brian said. “Was it a recurring theme?”

  “It was,” his wife confirmed.

  “It must have something to do with how submissive we were taught to be,” Angie said thoughtfully. “Remember Custody of the Eyes?” She rolled her own eyes now, mocking the custom of always lowering one’s gaze while in the presence of a man.

  “I think that submissiveness set many of us up for exploitation by men,” Kathleen muttered.

  Joanna noted the way Brian’s arm tightened around his wife’s shoulders, as if offering her love and reassurance. “My biggest problem was money,” she said.

  “Not enough?” Angie asked.

  “No—managing it. Before I entered the convent, as well as when I left, I lived with my parents. As soon as I could, I got my own apartment but I had no idea how to budget my paycheck.”

  “She still has problems with budgeting.” Tim winked, then went around with the wine bottle and refreshed everyone’s glass.