I can’t bear to tell her I love her. It feels manipulative somehow…and also I’m frightened. I don’t think I’ll survive it if I tell her and she dismisses it. Dismisses me. I can even imagine it, in my worst moments, the way her mouth will soften in pity and her eyes will shine from compassion.
Sean, I’m flattered, she’ll say, and she’ll do something mortifying, like pat my shoulder. But you know I don’t feel the same way. You know I never will.
God, the fucking irony of a sinner loving a nun. It’s agony. I’m dying. And as I’m both alight and aflame with loving her, these splashes of thought keep coming out of nowhere, like raindrops on a sunny day.
Raindrop number one: I’m jealous of Zenny’s relationship with God—not only jealous like a lover watching his beloved with someone else but jealous that she has it. Jealous that she’s mature enough to be angry about all the pain in the world and to accuse God of not doing enough, and then in the same breath, work to change that pain in His name.
Raindrop number two: Zenny reminds me of the things I loved about God. A sense of curiosity, a bravery, a turbulent emotion bundled close with the deepest peace. Things I felt about God once upon a time, and felt about myself.
Raindrop number three: if loving Zenny is even close to the way she loves God, I understand why she’s choosing this life.
I realized being furious with Him was not the same thing as wanting Him out of my life. That’s what my mom said the day I found her with the rosary. What if that were true for me too? Is hating God the same thing as not believing in Him? Can you hate a thing you don’t believe in?
And when I say I hate God, what do I mean? Do I mean that I’m angry about Lizzy, angry that humans who were supposed to serve goodness were actually monsters, and that it’s all His fault? Do I mean I never want to think about Him again? Or do I mean that I want to rage at Him, to howl and pace and scream, and have Him listen? Have Him witness and hear and see my pain?
And one night, in the dark as Zenny sleeps, I send up a thought like a balloon.
I still hate you, I think up to the ceiling. You let us all down and I’ll never forgive you.
Nothing happens. The ceiling remains a ceiling, my room remains quiet save for the soft snores of the little nun at my side. There’s no burning bushes or shimmering prophets poking their heads out of the walls.
Except when I tell Zenny about it the next morning, she gives me a knowing smile and eyes full of compassion.
“Sean,” she says. “That was a prayer. You prayed.”
It’s like looking up and seeing a green sky, this thought.
It haunts me for days.
Chapter 23
Two weeks left.
Chapter 24
I stare at my phone for a minute before I slide it back into my pocket. The property owner is ahead of me, talking in over-bright tones to the Reverend Mother and Zenny, gesturing around to windows and load-bearing beams. I should be up there with them, and I will be.
In just a moment.
It’s another bowel obstruction, Dad had explained. They don’t know if it’s the old site flaring up or something new—new mets in her intestines, maybe. Adhesions from the last surgery. They did a suction on her stomach to relieve the pressure; she’s about to go in for a scan now.
It’s funny how quickly everything can fall apart. Only last week she was putting away dishes and arguing about God…and now we’re back in the hospital, possibly facing another surgery.
I glance at my watch. It’s 4:13 now, and Dad thinks Mom will be done with her scan and back in her room before six. That should give me plenty of time to finish the tour and drop Zenny off at the shelter and the Reverend Mother back at the monastery.
Maintain, you idiot, I chastise myself. Because my hands are shaking, and for a dumb, terrible minute, all I can feel is this kind of stale fear and even staler exhaustion. Because I know once I get to the hospital, it will be the triple duty of comforting Dad and handling the doctors and keeping Mom company. I love my father, but he can barely be strong enough for her—he can’t be strong for himself. Or be counted on to ask hard questions and to chase down nurses and to demand every next step Mom needs.
It has to be me.
I take a breath and catch up with the group.
“And here, we can easily build in an office for you,” the owner is saying.
The prioress is nodding thoughtfully. “And the expense?” she asks.
“Well, ideally…” the owner trails off as the prioress studies him. She’s in her mid-seventies, black, short and stout, with massive glasses and wrinkled, expressive hands. They’re folded over her belly now as she waits for him to finish saying whatever stupid thing he’s going to say.
He wisely reconsiders. “I’d be happy to do the renovations myself.”
“Oh, how kind,” the Reverend Mother says. “That would be a lovely gift.”
She says it in a way that’s genuine, that even I feel, and I think she is warmly grateful. But I also recognize as a businessman that she’s getting exactly what she needs from him, and all it took was a silent look. I wonder if she gives lessons.
And then it’s done. The prioress approves the site, both parties sign a provisional contract I drew up, and then I’m driving the women away from the property. I can’t kiss Zenny goodbye at the shelter with the Reverend Mother waiting in my car by the curb, but I do get out and walk her to the front door and tell her things that have her lashes fluttering until she disappears inside. And then I climb back into the car, preparing to drive the Reverend Mother back to the monastery, which is a sprawling old house in Midtown.
“So you’re the man having sex with Zenobia,” the Reverend Mother says before I can even get my seat belt buckled.
My hand fumbles for a minute on the belt; a thousand awful, awkward scenarios roll through my mind, the worst ones featuring Zenny exiled from this vocation she holds so dear and the least worst involving unwelcome lectures about chastity and propriety.
It occurs to me, in a racing shadow of desperate expediency, that I could lie to her. I could say that I’m simply helping with this shelter move and trying to make up for my part in the Keegan deal. I could say that Zenny’s an old friend, that what I feel for her is nothing more than older-brotherly, and I’m merely looking out for her for Elijah’s sake.
But right after the shadow comes a quick slant of light.
I can’t lie.
Not only would lying to the Reverend Mother be—I suspect—quite futile, as she’d see through it immediately and be understandably unimpressed with my deceit, but I can’t help but feel that Zenny wouldn’t want me to lie. That she’d want me to be honest no matter what the consequences were, because she would do the same in my place. Because she has lived honestly, even when it came at the cost of her identity as the model Iverson daughter, even when it brought her parents’ disapproval down around her ears. Here I am, a thirty-six-year-old millionaire taking courage from a college student, but there you are. When the college student is Zenny, you’d be foolish not to use her as an example.
And—cheeringly—I realize that any lecture can only last as long as the drive to Midtown, which is about fifteen minutes in the afternoon traffic.