The floor-to-ceiling, white marble altar looked like an overfrosted wedding cake. In the central niche stood the statue of St. Anthony, the saint to whom you prayed to find what was lost, while Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John upheld gospel truth from the four overfrosted outer reaches. In the front pew, Vivian Tiamet nervously shifted her weight. She was a slender, small-boned woman with angular features in her mid-forties. She felt hot and heady with her navy blue woolen coat over her gray woolen suit. Though PTA mothers teased her about her virgin-blue eyes and her graceful gestures, in this moment she felt no grace. Father Rupert had given yet another homily on: In marriage avoid the sins of sex. Irritated, anxious to exit, Vivian edged toward the aisle. The scent of stale incense made it hard to breathe. The priest turned to the congregation, raised his hand and blessed them, making the sign of the cross, saying, “Go in peace.”
Vivian moved into the aisle, nodded a token bow toward the altar, and hurried toward the door. She felt nauseous. She reached up and pushed back the right side of her blunt-cut hair, should never have agreed to a cut that hid some of her view, even if the style suggested that her gray streak belonged there.
Whatever did Father mean when he said, “Purity of intention renders the conception of a child holier”? She gripped and squeezed the figure of Christ on the pectoral cross hanging between her breasts. Not once did he mention pleasure. Not once. Caught up among others now, she moved slower. Surely the priest knew that kind of sermon put struggles in the minds of wives and mothers. They brought them to Vivian’s principal’s office and expected her to come up with solutions. He had actually encouraged couples to deny sexual pleasure in marriage. Lest anyone ask her opinion of the homily and she betray her disdain, Vivian kept custody of the eyes, kept her eyes downcast.
Outside it was predawn, still dark. She stepped gingerly over a thinly iced puddle and off the curb into the street. Behind her, a woman screamed. Brakes screeched. A car horn blared. Vivian found herself illuminated in the beam of headlights, hands clutching her ears. What on earth? The car’s radiator blasted heat and looked like a confessional grill.
Rankled—she could have been killed—Vivian chopped a hand behind her at those watching, to say, “I’m all right,” and waved the driver on. Once safe and shuddering on the other side of the street, she drew her lips into a thin, pinched line, and strode, determined to hold her own against the priest’s ignorance. She trembled at her near miss as she passed the school, moving toward the house that was their convent. Despite tremors, her thoughts invaded. Imagine a wife saying to her husband in that most intimate of moments, “Darling, remember, self-denial!” If sexual pleasure doesn’t compensate for all those wakeful nights with a colicky baby, for all those times when a mother sets a child firmly on the moral path, what does?
How convenient for Father Rupert if she had landed in the hospital or ... worse. Her heart pounded. As she approached the back door of the convent, she realized how much it would upset Sister Dominic to see her this way, and turned and paced on the asphalt playground between the convent and the school. From day one Rupert had scotched every visionary plan she proposed until his dumb decisions brought them to the brink of their current financial troubles. He meddled, couldn’t seem to remember that she answered to him only in parish matters, that the other three sisters answered to her, and she to Reverend Mother Philip Neri, who lived in SIHM’s motherhouse, in Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary headquarters in Brandenburg, Indiana. Mother’s lack of support disappointed her. Men believed in control; priests were men. That was the nub of it. Why in the world had Mother ever sent her here to Sleeder, Illinois to save St. Anthony School if it couldn’t be done?
Damn. Sometimes couples marry to avoid the sin of sex. They do.
If Vivian had known her life would become as spiritually and financially bankrupt as the lives of the women who confided in her, never would she have entered the convent in the first place, not that she had felt she had much choice back then. She fumbled in her pocket for her key, drew a deep breath of cold air, and opened their back door.

* * *

The kitchen’s bright fluorescence always reminded Vivian of the transfiguration. Sister Dominic looked up from the batter she was mixing in the stainless steel bowl and smiled. Vivian nodded and hung her coat on the coat tree beside the sewing machine in the corner. Like many sisters after Vatican II in the late sixties urged religious orders to modernize, their housekeeper chose to keep wearing her black habit, and to keep her sister title. Sister Dominic just said, “There will be no ankle showing or jewelry wearing for me.”
“What was the commotion I heard?” the old woman asked, pushing her trifocals higher from the bridge of her nose. Before her shoulders bent, Sister Dominic stood a shy five feet. The corners of her mouth perpetually turned upward as if she had just grasped some delightful cosmic joke. People said they experienced awe in her presence.
Vivian touched the spot in her chin where her old starched guimpe had dented it so deeply she thought it would never go away, but it had. Unnerved, not wanting to admit her own stupidity, Vivian said, “Someone didn’t look before entering the street. The fool could have been killed,” she muttered. “Thankfully, the car stopped in time.”
She entered the ill-placed bathroom they had added near the back door after climbing stairs had become too difficult for Sister Dominic’s arthritic knees. Though inconvenient, the plumber claimed it was the most economical location. For modesty the bathroom had two doors. When the second one closed, the vacuum between the two sounded a grand phuff, calling attention to you when you least wanted it. By the time Vivian came out she had breathed herself into some calm. The red light on the waffle iron glowed.
“You have a visitor.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Suges and her daughter.”
“Jennifer? Jennifer Suges?”
The girl had graduated from Vivian’s eighth grade class two years earlier. “I wonder what she wants. That priest,” Vivian said, seeking comfort. “Picking up his psychological litter makes me feel like a wife picking up a husband’s dirty socks.” They exchanged conspiratorial smiles. Vivian sighed. She loved this dear woman whom she could count on for comfort, wisdom, balance.
Sister Dominic pushed her trifocals higher at the bridge of her nose, said, “Kimberly’s staying in church a bit.”
“Well,” Vivian smiled suggesting Kimberly could use a bit of extra prayer. She tugged the hem of her jacket and straightened her cross, wanted to say, I love you, but, of course, couldn’t; tradition discouraged any show of affection. “I’ll see what the Sugeses want. Thanks for the waffles. My spirit could use a lift.”
“I can tell.”
Vivian moved through the hall, past the small telephone table, past the closed door of the reception room they had turned into a bedroom for Sister Dominic, and arrived in the entry hall. Behind the closed music room door, Mary Ruth was playing the piano, Bach. The room had been a formal dining room before they sealed off the archway to the kitchen and turned it into the piano lesson room. If only Kimberly were as malleable as Mary Ruth. Her task of coaching this only child of a doctor and his socialite wife into manners and behavior becoming to a religious would be easier. Vivian lightly tapped her plain gold wedding band on the parlor door and opened it.
Mrs. Suges rose. “Sister, I hope you don’t mind us dropping by.” Mrs. Suges was one of few parishioners who refused to drop the sister title. “Sister, I been threatening to bring Jennifer for some time. You’re the only one Jennifer ever listened to.”
“No. No. Of course not.” Vivian said, closing the door, not liking the idea of being used as a threat. Tension between the mother and daughter was palpable. The woman’s pudgy knuckles whitened on her clutch purse. Dark puffy crescents under Mrs. Suges’ eyes suggested the woman carried germs of worry there. The problem was serious.
The girl wore a yellow sweatshirt with rhinestones on it and her hair had been died a brassy strawberry color. Dark eyeliner exaggerated her eyes like a doll’s. Underneath all that eyeliner Vivian could tell Jennifer’s eyes were red and swollen from crying.
Vivian said, “It’s nice to see you, Jennifer,” and offered a warm smile.
The girl turned her gaze away.
“Please sit down. What can I do for you?”
“She don’t come home, won’t listen, won’t mind, stays out too late.” The woman sat on the edge of one of the two Queen Anne chairs, drumming her fingers on her purse.
Vivian wanted to help. Humbled by their confidence, needing to pull out the problem, she turned to Jennifer and tried a tactic that worked in the classroom. “That doesn’t sound like you, Jennifer, not like the young woman who stayed home and cooked for farmhands when your mother had pneumonia, and then worked doubly hard to make up lessons. Not the Jennifer who nursed the new calf for nearly fifty hours after everyone else had given up on it.”
The girl peeked at her mother, seeking approval. Not receiving it, she slid one soiled sneaker over the other and stared at her toes.
Vivian wanted to reach out and squeeze the girl’s hand, say something reassuring, but she dared not take sides. She waited. When the girl said nothing more Vivian turned to Mrs. Suges and said, kindly, “Maybe Jennifer doesn’t want my assistance.”
“She doesn’t listen! Somebody’s got to help!”
“My brothers stay out all night.”
“They’re not girls!”
Trying to persuade Mr. Suges would be like going up against the old Soviet Union—a cold war. Vivian’s own family had settled squabbles by not acknowledging them. At least Mrs. Suges was trying to confront whatever it was. What would possibly make Jennifer so inconsolable? Vivian experienced a sudden visceral dread followed by a drain of energy. Her heart dissolved into fear. That problem still ruined a girl’s life. Her hand moved to her abdomen. She swallowed.
Jennifer muttered, “S’ster, my dad’s mad ’cause of geometry. That’s all.”
Vivian wanted to reach out and hug Jennifer. She softly signaled the girl with her hand to say, Save this conversation until we’re alone. She could hold her. The girl blinked understanding. This pact happened so instantly that Vivian questioned whether it had even occurred. She became aware of eyes in the portrait of the founder of their order, the eyes of Mother Mary Gertrude, watching, and felt the weight of authority. Jennifer doesn’t need self-righteousness, her mind protested, Jennifer needs compassion. Vivian fairly brimmed with it.
She drew in a quivering breath, turned, and addressed Mrs. Suges in an overly light tone. “Mrs. Suges—Clara—Jennifer wouldn’t be the first student stumped by geometry. If you like, if she likes,” she said, smiling, then addressing the girl, “I’ll tutor you.”
Jennifer peered into Vivian’s eyes, then away. She shrank into what looked like shame, pulled her mouth to one side, bit on her lower lip.
In a small farming town of twenty-five thousand like Sleeder, Protestants outnumbered Catholics two-to-one. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Protestants never failed to point it out when a Catholic teenager got pregnant. It would be difficult for Jennifer; she wanted so much to be popular. Maybe I’m wrong, Vivian told herself. Please, God, let me be wrong.
Mrs. Suges raised her purse and set it firmly on her lap as if sealing some agreement.
“It’s a start. A start,” she said.
Vivian experienced the same kind of betrayal she had felt when her mother acted as if Sister Rosella, her eighth grade teacher, were all knowing and she no-count. Jennifer’s toe traced the blue geometric border of the rug.
Vivian rested her hand on the girl’s and said, “If that’s what you want. Only if that’s what you want.”
“Okay,” Jennifer breathed. “Okay.”
Mrs. Suges stood. Vivian and Jennifer followed suit. The woman said, “You’re too good to the children, Sister. Too good. We wish you could be here forever. We, my husband and me, we want you to know we are grateful.”
The decision was made. Vivian tried to smile and extended her hand.
Mrs. Suges held on and patted it.
“You’re welcome,” Vivian said, feeling a tinge of guilt for her complicity with the girl against her mother. As they walked to the door, Vivian put her arm around Jennifer’s shoulders and tried to draw her close, but Jennifer tensed and resisted. Vivian knew full well the girl’s awful anxiety.
“Dear, when would be a good time?” Vivian asked.
Without looking at her, Jennifer said, “I have to check my schedule. I’ll phone,” and shrugged free.
Will you? “I hope you will.” Don’t let the problem grow.” Terrible choice of words. “I mean, it’s better to deal early with any problem.”
Jennifer looked into Vivian’s eyes. Vivian sensed Jennifer knew that she knew.
Now shame engulfed Vivian. How will I ever keep my own guilt and shame out of this?
She took the girl firmly by the shoulders, and said, “Trust me. It’ll be okay, Jennifer. It will.” Mary Ruth was playing “Clair de Lune.” Vivian turned to Mrs. Suges and said, “We’ll do whatever Jennifer needs, whatever she wants. That’s a promise,” she said, turning to Jennifer. To both of them, she said, “Thank you for your confidence.”
Through the shaved head of St. Anthony in the stained glass panel in the door, Vivian watched them get into their rusty green station wagon and drive away. “Call. Please, call,” she said to the empty parking space. When Sister Dominic rang the breakfast bell, Vivian was still standing there with her hand on her abdomen, praying, St. Jude, patron of the impossible, help me here.