And I can’t argue with that. In fact, it’s the perfect counterargument to my complaining about the evil hierarchy of the Church—the nuns have carved out a place separate from the bishops and the bullshit and the bureaucracy, a place where they can put their heads down and get on with the work of serving the sick and the poor.
Of course, I understand that it’s not that simple—I’ve heard Tyler talk enough about the troubles between the nuns and the Vatican to know that the men still frequently try to take the women in hand. But the sisters, as the saying goes, persist.
I notice the Reverend Mother shivering the slightest bit and turn down the AC. “So that sorts obedience,” I concede. “But what about chastity?”
“I’ll admit, I’m less strict about it than many Reverend Mothers—as you well know. But we ask chastity of our vowed nuns not only as a trust and sacrifice to God, but also so that they live lives free of other obligations. Our sisters are free to serve the poor completely because they don’t have children and families of their own. Because they don’t have needy men taking up their time.”
Well. Fair.
“It just seems like so much to give up,” I say.
“It is.” The prioress doesn’t argue with me. “It is.”
We turn onto a street of large old houses; the monastery sprawls over a shady corner, marked only with a hand-painted wooden sign by the porch stairs and a Virgin Mary statue in the semi-neglected flower bed.
When I park the car in the driveway, the Reverend Mother turns to me once more. “So you love Zenobia. Are you certain she does not love you back?”
I think of her confession on the day she asked me to do this with her. That she’d always wanted me. And then I think of her laughter at the skating rink when I mentioned marrying her, of her troubled face when I told her she would be the only woman I cared about, of my messy and imperfect reaction the night those people were shitty to her at the gala.
It’s only for a month. It’s not like we have to figure out how to raise children together.
“I’m certain,” I say tiredly.
“Have you told her?”
I shake my head.
“Tell her,” the old nun commands, unwinding her fingers from one another so that she can poke one in my direction. “She deserves to know.”
“Isn’t it…kind of cheap to fling that at her now? She has so much to think about already, and it feels like I’m trying to sabotage her moment.”
“I like your awareness, but in this case, you’re using it as an excuse.” She nods to herself again, the starched fabric of her wimple brushing roughly along her shoulders. “Are all those muscles just for show or are you actually strong, my son?”
And with that, she unbuckles her seat belt. I scramble to help her out of the car, and we don’t say anything else as I walk her to the door, but the look she gives me before she goes inside is very loud with all the things she doesn’t say.
Tell her, the look says above all else, and my heart gives a hopeful and ugly lurch at the very thought.
Mom has a NG tube coming out of her nose, and she hates it. She can be patient about IVs and ports, but the moment there’s something on her face, she gets irritable—and in this case, the thing is in her face, not just on it.
I do my Sean Bell thing when I get there, the Oldest Child thing, all the rituals and little sacrifices made to the Church of Cancer. I see first to Mom, then to Dad, who is, as always, a fraying shell of himself in these circumstances. After Mom is asleep, exhausted from the pain and the procedures, I manage to find the charge nurse and doctor on rotation, and avail myself of every detail of the day.
All that sorted, I send Dad out to get us some real dinner—not cafeteria dinner—and sit in Mom’s room and try to work from my laptop.
Aiden shows up a few minutes later, his suit and hair rumpled, like he spent the day sleeping (which I know for a fact he didn’t because he emailed me no less than three times this morning about a puppy he wants to adopt). He flings himself on the small, hard couch next to me.
“She doing okay?” he asks, running his hand through his messy hair. He’s breathing hard too.
“Yeah. I mean, for now. We don’t know yet what’s causing the blockage, and I guess the suction got messy and difficult, so that’s not great.”
“Oh,” he says.
“I texted like three hours ago. Where were you?”
“I just got your message,” he says vaguely. “I was almost out to the farmhouse. Had to turn back.”
Hmm.
I give him a more careful once-over. His tie has been hastily re-knotted, the laces on his dress shoes are untied, and there’s something about his face, all flushed and swollen-mouthed.
“You were having sex!” I accuse, sitting up.
“Shh!” he hushes me frantically, glancing over at Mom, who’s still deep in a morphine nap.
“Don’t shh me,” I say irritably. “You think Mom doesn’t know you’re a total fuckboy?”
Aiden looks very annoyed at my lack of quiet. “That’s not true.”
I roll my eyes. If Aiden were a Wakefield Saga character, there would be all kinds of words for him. Rakehell, scoundrel, cyprian, cad, libertine, lothario. He’s barely better than Double Condom Mike, and I know a lot of the trouble he’s gotten in because I was right there next to him. In fact, until he started acting weird last month, I would have put good money on him having more sex and with more women than me.
“I don’t care that you were having sex, dummy,” I say. “Mom wouldn’t either. It’s just a dumb reason not to be here.”
He sighs. “I know. I honestly didn’t look at my phone until after though. I came as soon as I saw your text.”
“Fine. Was she good?”
Aiden looks puzzled for a minute, like he can’t quite track this turn in conversation.
“The fuck, Aiden,” I clarify, exasperated. “Was she good?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. And before he can ever make the words come out, Dad is walking in with Indian carryout, and we all fall on the plastic bags like a pack of starving wolves.
The next five or six days pass in a blur. Between Zenny’s life and mine, all we get together are nights and mornings. Sometimes a phone call during the day if we’re lucky.
I never do work up the courage to say what the Reverend Mother wants me to say, but also, it’s so hard to do when our quiet moments of snuggle and talk have been robbed from us, and all we have are stolen, sweaty hours in the dark and the ensuing bleary-eyed mornings.
I’ll vow to do it tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and I vow to do it the next day, and on and on it goes, until I almost feel like telling her is an impossible task, a Holy Grail-style quest that God has set before me and I’ll never be pure and brave enough to complete.
It’s maddening.
Towards the end of the week, Mom starts developing pneumonia. It makes a godawful wheezing when she breathes, and things start to change in the predictable comings and goings of the nurses and doctors. There’s more bustle around the bed, more bags being hung, more tests and X-rays. Conversations start taking a more somber tone. Mom is given a cannula and antibiotics. I finish reading In the Arms of the Disgraced Duke, and we speculate about the next Wakefield novel, which comes out next week. We watch HGTV on the hospital television and make fun of the tiny house people.