In This Small Spot (26 page)

“I think,” Sister Anselma said, turning back
to her loom, “that we need to set up another embroidery
station.”

They bent more needles and experimented with
different stitches and techniques. Mickey showed the other nuns
surgical knots and stitches, and they showed her more traditional
stitches; by combining them, they improved the level of detail
considerably, although it slowed the work somewhat.

Sister Anselma called Mickey over one day to
begin teaching her how to weave. They spent an hour setting a loom
for a small practice piece for Mickey to learn on. She sat next to
Sister Anselma, transfixed at the speed and delicacy of her work.
Her hands were beautiful – long-fingered and deft. Alice had always
laughed at Mickey’s obsession with hands, but Mickey stubbornly
insisted hands said as much about someone as their eyes.
“Concentrate, you idiot,” Mickey chided herself when she realized
she hadn’t been listening to a word Sister Anselma was saying to
her. It was embarrassing and humbling to try and work the loom and
the shuttle herself; she felt so clumsy and awkward in comparison
to Sister Anselma’s grace.

“How did you learn this?” Mickey asked in
awe after Sister Anselma patiently pulled out the third mistake
Mickey had made in the pattern.

Sister Anselma smiled. “When I was newly
professed, I was sent here to work under old Sister Basil. She
taught me everything she knew, gave me a wonderful foundation.”

Mickey watched her face as she spoke. “But
you’re miles beyond what Sister Basil taught you, aren’t you?”

Sister Anselma blushed and kept her eyes on
her work. “I discovered what I have a gift for. This is my
prayer.”

“Sister Anselma?”

They turned to find tiny Sister Lucille
standing in the doorway at the top of the steps.

“Yes, Sister?”

“You have visitors.”

Sister Anselma frowned a little at the
interruption. “I’m not expecting anyone and we don’t have any
deliveries ready to go out. Did you get a name?”

“I asked, but they wouldn’t say,” Sister
Lucille sniffed, clearly not impressed with the visitors’ manners.
“They would only say they were here to see Lauren Thackeray.”

Sister Anselma’s face turned to stone, and
she closed her eyes. “Keep going with this pattern,” she said to
Mickey as she rose.

Everyone else resumed their work, but Mickey
found it difficult to concentrate, which was unfortunate as she
ended up pulling more threads out than she actually wove. Lauren
Thackeray. She could never admit it to anyone, especially Sister
Anselma, but in her brief fantasies of what it would be like to
live with her outside the abbey, one awkward point had been her
name. Being named for a rather obscure Italian saint was fine in
here, but plain “Anselma” just didn’t sound the same. Lauren suited
her.

When the bell rang for Vespers, Sister
Anselma had not returned to the vestment room. As Mickey took her
seat in Chapel, she saw that Sister Anselma was already in her
choir stall, her eyes downcast and her face almost as white as her
wimple.

Mickey’s weaving lessons did not resume.
Sister Anselma was quite distant with everyone, remaining at her
loom most of the time, working on an intricate pattern for several
days. Mickey assisted Sister Catherine with an ornate altar cloth,
glancing frequently in Sister Anselma’s direction, hoping to catch
her eye, but Sister Anselma concentrated only on her work.

Leaving the refectory after lunch one
afternoon, Mickey was caught by Sister Lucille who asked her if she
would take a bolt of cloth to the vestment room. “They brought it
to the front door by mistake again,” Sister Lucille explained
apologetically, trying to hold the bulky roll.

Mickey gathered the large paper-wrapped
bundle in her arms and made her way through the corridors,
remembering the first time she did this – the day she had met
Sister Anselma and caused such havoc in the vestment room.
Chuckling, she thought,
now I know why she was so pissed. If
someone did that to me now...
She backed through the door to
the vestment room, and as she started down the wooden steps, she
was startled to realize Sister Anselma was there, working at her
loom.

“Didn’t you eat lunch?” she asked as she set
her bundle down on a worktable.

“I wasn’t hungry,” Sister Anselma answered,
not interrupting her rhythm.

Mickey wavered a few seconds, then went to
sit next to Sister Anselma at the loom. “Won’t you tell me what’s
troubling you?”

Sister Anselma stopped the action of the
loom, but her hands maintained a tight hold on the shuttle wound
with the deep purple thread she’d been weaving. “My visitors the
other day were my sister and two of my mother’s attorneys,” she
said. She shook her head. “Even from her grave, my mother is still
finding ways to manipulate us all.”

She looked at Mickey with eyes the color of
steel. “In her will, she divided her estate in half – one half to
my sister, and the other half to me.”

Mickey frowned. “I thought you had other
family – your father and a brother?”

Sister Anselma laughed bitterly. “Oh, I do.
That’s the beauty of my mother’s plan. I can only claim my half if
I renounce my vows and leave the abbey. If I don’t, everything goes
to my sister. She’s crueler than my mother, if that’s possible. If
she’s in charge of the entire estate, my father will be lucky if
she lets him stay in the house. As for my brother, well… he’s an
alcoholic. He’s burned a lot of bridges. My sister would like
nothing better than to see him cut off completely.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

Sister Anselma hesitated as if it were
distasteful to even say it out loud. “Something like twenty
million.”

Mickey choked out a half laugh. “Your half
is twenty million dollars?” she asked weakly.

Sister Anselma nodded.

Mickey thought for a minute. “What did you
say?”

Sister Anselma shrugged. “I didn’t know what
to say. The will stipulates that if I haven’t left and claimed my
portion within five years of my mother’s death, it all goes to my
sister anyway.”

Mickey stared at her. “But that means two
years have already gone by. I don’t understand why you’re just now
hearing about this.”

“I guess my sister has been trying to see if
there was any way to break the will. Apparently there isn’t, or she
wouldn’t have come.” She looked at Mickey again, but this time the
hardness was gone from her eyes. Instead, there was only doubt and
vulnerability. “Can you believe the irony of her timing? Before
you, I would have said no without a second thought. But now…” she
looked down again, “I can’t help but think about the possibility of
leaving.”

Without thinking, Mickey reached out and
took her hand. Sister Anselma’s fingers wrapped tightly around
hers. “I can’t deny I’ve thought about it, too,” Mickey said in a
soft voice, “but whatever we decide has to be based on… on other
things. I wouldn’t want one cent of your mother’s money to taint
our lives. You are all –” She stopped and withdrew her hand.

Sister Anselma lifted her face. “What were
you going to say?”

Mickey met her eyes, frightened at where
they were going. “You are all that I would need.”

They stared at one another for several
seconds. Sister Anselma’s eyes filled with tears. “God help me, I
love you so much, sometimes it is physically painful.”

Mickey stood abruptly. “I am so sorry,” she
whispered. “I never meant for this to happen.” She spent the
remainder of Recreation in her choir stall, praying, “Oh, God, you
brought us together, probably the only other woman I could love
this much. Please, please help us through this.”

╬ ╬ ╬

By unspoken agreement, Mickey and Sister
Anselma avoided any situation which might have left them alone
together. The other nuns in the vestment room were unwitting
buffers in this dance. Despite her efforts at self-control, Mickey
felt like anyone who really looked at her would see the truth. She
felt raw and chafed, beat up by the tumult of emotions churning
within her. Her only balm was the Divine Office. For brief moments,
the beauty of the chant and the ancient Latin words would transport
her to a place of calm, a place where “I could remember why I had
chosen this life,” she would explain to Jamie much later. But ever
since Sister Anselma had admitted to thinking about leaving, that
possibility had been gnawing at her. Images would pop into her head
of their life together, although she often had to smile as she had
difficulty picturing Sister Anselma in anything other than a
habit.

The nuns in the vestment room were startled
one afternoon by the arrival of Mother Theodora, Sister Scholastica
and the rest of the Council. Sister Anselma and the others all
ceased their work and looked questioningly at one another.

“May we speak to all of you, please?” Mother
Theodora asked. They gathered round and Mother continued, “As I’m
sure you know, we have received a proposal from the Mannheim Museum
to do some of their restoration work on tapestries, vestments and
other cloth art they acquire. This has been initiated by a very
persistent young woman who is an old friend of Sister Michele’s.”
She looked at Mickey with a droll smile.

Mother Theodora glanced around at the
excited faces of the nuns. “The idea holds tremendous promise for
the financial security of the abbey, however, our ability to take
on this work is based almost completely on Sister Anselma’s
expertise. Despite the fact that all of you contribute to our
finished product, it is under her direction and artistic guidance
that the abbey’s work has become so well-known. If we are to
consider taking on the additional work, it would mean assigning
more sisters to the vestment room, and it would necessitate more
training for all of you. In addition, we would have to update the
physical layout of this area to meet the museum’s insurance
requirements. Our old knob and tube electrical wiring would all
have to be replaced, and the air-conditioning would have to be
upgraded to control the environment more precisely.”

Sister Scholastica spoke up. “Our concern is
that we will spend so much money in renovating this space and
become so preoccupied with productivity in here that we might
become a tapestry factory instead of an abbey.” She glanced at
Mother Theodora with what Mickey thought was a disapproving look.
“If we agree to take on this… project,” – Mickey had the distinct
impression “travesty” might have been her preferred word – “it must
be with the firm understanding that the Divine Office is our
highest priority, and the restoration work may take longer than
they would like.”

“So,” Mother Theodora said, looking around
at all of them, “our questions to you: is it feasible to take on
more work, and are you willing to undertake the additional training
and study it would require, not only for you, but for the extra
sisters I would assume would be needed to meet the demand?”

Sister Anselma frowned a little as she
considered. “I don’t think we could take on any additional work
now, with just the five of us. I think we would need to bring other
sisters in and train them first, then we could decide who would
continue with our current work and who would do the restoration
work. A small team would probably be best for the museum work. I
assume the museum will assign a curator to work with us?”

Mother Theodora nodded. “Jennifer
Worthington would work closely with us.”

“Do we have enough sisters to assign more
here without compromising other areas within the monastery?” Mickey
asked.

Sister Bernice responded, “We have averaged
two to three new entrants a year for the past several years, so,
yes, we could assign five to ten sisters to the vestment room
without leaving other parts of the abbey short-staffed.”

There was a long pause as the five current
vestment workers considered the impact of this change.

“Mother,” Sister Anselma said, glancing at
the others, “I believe I speak for all of us – we are willing to
take on this new challenge. Realistically, we’re going to need at
least six months to train new workers in here and to study enough
to be ready for the restoration work.”

The Council members looked pleased, with the
exception of Sister Scholastica.

“My only other concern,” Sister Anselma
added with some hesitation, “is that this assignment may be looked
upon as more desirable or prestigious than other work within the
abbey. But the training is so intense that it really isn’t
practical to rotate these positions on a regular basis.”

Mother Theodora looked at Sister Anselma
appraisingly. “I appreciate your sensitivity to that issue, Sister.
I agree, this has the potential to turn into a competition, and we
must handle it carefully so that those who are not chosen do not
feel slighted. After all, entering religious life does not mean
that we checked our egos at the door.”

Chapter 32

“Am I interrupting?”

Mickey looked up from the table in her
office where she was poring over medical references, researching a
rare cancer which had been newly diagnosed in one of her patients.
“No… well, yes, but it’s a welcome interruption,” she said, rubbing
her eyes tiredly. “What can I do for you, Kara?”

Kara Anderson was one of the best surgical
residents Mickey had ever worked with. She would never say this to
anyone else, but Kara reminded her of herself, “professionally,”
she would have clarified if she had said it out loud to someone.
She was extremely intelligent, learned quickly and exhibited
tremendous skill in the OR. Physically, Kara was slender and blond
and gorgeous. In the women’s locker room, she was not shy at all
about walking around naked after showering, showing off her
triathlete’s body. Mickey, to her embarrassment, had been caught
looking a few times.