In This Small Spot (33 page)

“I don’t know,” Sister Anselma said
softly.

Tears sprang to Mickey’s eyes before she
could stop them. Sister Anselma shifted on the bench so that she
could pull Mickey to her. Resting her cheek against the soft fuzz
on Mickey’s head, she whispered, “I love you as I have never loved
anyone, but we can’t go on as we have been.”

Mickey was still crying when Sister Anselma,
steeling herself, left to go find Mother Theodora. All the physical
pain, all the surgeries, all the fear of what the future would
bring in her compromised condition felt as nothing compared to the
despair and anguish she felt at the thought that, when she finally
got back to St. Bridget’s, Sister Anselma might not be there to
come home to.

╬ ╬ ╬

A cold November breeze stirred the few
remaining leaves on the trees as Mickey waited. Ignoring the
curious stares of other patients and visitors, she self-consciously
rubbed the sleeve of her new habit. Sitting beside her chair in the
lobby was a small suitcase, crutches and a lightweight wheelchair.
Father Andrew was due any minute to bring her at long last back to
the abbey.

He had taken to coming to the rehab center
every Saturday for the past three months to visit, occasionally
with Mother or Sister Mary David or Jessica in tow. He brought her
Communion each week and, together, they wandered the grounds in
good weather, Mickey taking her first tentative steps without a
therapist at her side while he pushed the wheelchair until she
dropped into it, exhausted. Week by week, her endurance had
improved – “let’s try to make it to that next tree up there,” he
would encourage as she clopped along clumsily with her crutches. He
brought her updates on the abbey and the nuns, but never any
mention of Sister Anselma – “and I can’t bring myself to ask,”
Mickey said to herself nearly every Saturday evening after he was
gone.

One week, he surprised her by bringing
Sister Linus. “She insisted,” he said with a bemused smile.

“So how are you?” Sister Linus asked, her
sharp eyes probing as she looked Mickey over, taking in every
detail.

“I’m doing all right,” Mickey said
noncommittally.

“No, you’re not,” said Sister Linus. “And
you shouldn’t be. Not yet. Not after what you’ve been through. But
you will get through this.”

Mickey’s eyes hardened. She was getting sick
and tired of everyone telling her it would all be fine, everything
would be okay – her therapists, her doctor, even the rehab center’s
psychologist. “How the hell would you know?” she wanted to rage
because no one knew, no one could know….

Sister Linus looked at her as if she could
read her mind and was almost daring her to say aloud what she was
thinking. When Mickey remained stubbornly silent, Sister Linus held
out her hand. “I wanted to give you this.” She dropped a delicate
white mother-of-pearl rosary into Mickey’s palm. “It was given to
me on my first Communion.”

Mickey stared open-mouthed at the polished
beads puddled in her hand. “I can’t accept this,” she
protested.

“Of course you can,” Sister Linus snapped.
“It’s helped me through some rough times. I expect it can help you
now.”

“Thank you,” Mickey said humbly.

The next week, when Father Andrew came out,
he looked haggard.

“What’s wrong?” Mickey asked.

“I have some news,” he said reluctantly, as
if he dreaded being the bearer of any more bad tidings. “Sister
Linus passed away this week.”

“What?” Mickey asked, startled, reaching
into the pocket of her sweatpants where the rosary was safely
tucked, with her constantly since Sister Linus had given it to
her.

He shook his head. “Her heart just gave out.
She… she must have known.”

Mickey stared at the iridescent white beads,
the engraving on the silver cross nearly worn off from decades of
Sister Linus’s fingers praying with it – “…
ora pro nobis
peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae
…” – but her eyes
remained dry. There had been no more tears since that day with
Sister Anselma. No tears, no happiness, no anything….

When the abbey’s stationwagon pulled up to
the front door, Mickey slipped the cuffs of her crutches around her
forearms inside her sleeves and stood. To her surprise, it was
Mother Theodora who got out of the car. Mother smiled when she
entered and saw Mickey waiting for her, and came over to embrace
her tightly.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Mickey said.

“I thought this would give us some
uninterrupted time to talk,” Mother Theodora responded. “Is this
everything?” She wheeled the chair and suitcase to the tailgate of
the stationwagon and placed them in the back. Mickey noticed
gratefully that Mother allowed her to make her own way to the
passenger seat, not rushing to open doors for her.

“You look thin,” Mother Theodora commented
as they got underway. “Did they not feed you?”

“They fed me as much as I wanted,” Mickey
replied. “I guess it’s all the exercise.”

“You seem to be walking better than the last
time I saw you. How do you feel?”

Mickey glanced at her. “It’s like walking
through mud. Each leg feels as if it weighs a hundred pounds.”

“And your wounds?”

Mickey looked out the car window and didn’t
answer immediately.

“The physical ones, to start with,” Mother
Theodora clarified.

“They’re healing,” Mickey answered. “The
scar tissue tears easily and the grafted skin doesn’t have any
functional oil or sweat glands, so it still requires care. But
because of the location…” Her hand clenched tightly on the door
handle of the car.

“You have to depend on others to do it for
you,” Mother Theodora finished for her. “Yes, Sister Mary David
explained that to me. And what about your spiritual wounds?” When
Mickey didn’t respond, she said, “I don’t know if he said anything
to you, but your doctor called me several times. He was concerned
that you seemed to be depressed. He had noticed that you didn’t
laugh or smile or interact with the staff or other patients, and
wondered if that was typical of you. I assured him it was not, but
felt it was understandable, given the circumstances. He was afraid
your mental state might impede your physical progress. Father
Andrew confirmed that you were quieter than normal, but he felt you
were making good progress from what he could see during his visits
with you.”

Mickey looked back out the car window and
stated in a flat voice, “There wasn’t anything to laugh or smile
at. I was there to accomplish specific physical goals, and I think
I worked toward those to the best of my ability.”

“Have you been able to pray?”

“I’ve done nothing but pray.” Mickey
replied, biting the words off angrily.

There was silence for a few minutes.

“Do you have any regrets?” Mother Theodora
asked at last.

“About going back in to get her?” Their
first reference to Sister Anselma. Mickey had wondered how it would
happen. “Never.” She looked over at Mother Theodora. “Does she
think that I blame her, or that I wish I hadn’t done it?”

“Have the two of you communicated?”

Mickey shook her head. “Not since that day
in August when you both came to see me.”

“She loves you very much,” Mother Theodora
said gently. “That is something I doubted I would ever say about
Sister Anselma.”

Mickey felt her face get hot and said in a
gentler voice, “And I love her. But you already know that. I should
have seen it coming, should have been able to prevent it, but by
the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. We tried
to keep our feelings under control, and for the most part were able
to. But the day of the fire, I would have done anything to get her
out.” She looked down at her hands. “We never meant to deceive you.
And I want you to know that nothing… inappropriate happened.”

“I never questioned that, Mickey. You are
both too honorable for that. Do you remember my telling you on the
day you entered that, in the monastery, the true you would be
magnified?” Mickey nodded. “When you entered, your grief for Alice
was like a shade pulled down over your soul. As you healed, the
light of your presence began to shine more brightly, and it was
inevitable that others would be drawn to you. Like Sister Helen. I
thought it ironic that the one most strongly drawn to you was
Sister Anselma. In an effort to protect herself from anyone else
ever hurting her as her mother had, she erected walls no one had
ever been able to breach. Until you. As stoic and self-possessed as
she has always been, she was completely unprepared for you.”

A few miles rolled by in silence.

“What now?” Mickey finally asked.

“What indeed?” Mother Theodora sighed. She
glanced over at Mickey. “If you have not communicated with Sister
Anselma since August, you probably don’t know that when she came
back from her retreat, she requested a dispensation from her vows.
She has left St. Bridget’s,” she finished quietly.

Mickey closed her eyes. All during the
months at rehab, all the weeks she hadn’t been able to bring
herself to ask Father Andrew, she had clung to the hope that Sister
Anselma would be there when she got back, not wanting to hear
anything to the contrary. When she could talk, she asked, “Do you
know where she is?”

“In San Francisco, dealing with her family.
She writes often. I’ve kept her up to date on your progress.”
Mother glanced over. “She has wanted to write you –”

“She won’t.” Blinking back tears as she
looked out the window again, Mickey said in a strangled voice, “She
told me in August we each had to decide separately where our hearts
lay.”

“And where does your heart lie?”

Mickey’s throat burned. “I’ve agonized over
this. I love her, and I love the abbey.” She looked over at Mother
Theodora. “And I love and revere you.” She squeezed her thighs with
her hands. “This is probably as good as it’s going to get. In the
back of the car is a wheelchair that I have to use when I get too
fatigued. I’m forty-one now, and as I get older, I’ll probably have
to rely on it more and more. My cell is on the third floor. The
vestment room is fifteen steps down. The whole abbey is laid out in
such a way that I don’t know how fully I can contribute.” She
paused. “But it’s safe there. I’m ashamed to admit it, but the
thought of facing the outside world again like this is terrifying,”
she confessed. “All these conflicting thoughts and emotions have
been battling within me for months.” She hesitated again. “It
hasn’t felt like a decision I could really make without having been
at St. Bridget’s for the past six months.”

“I agree that you need to be back at the
abbey for a while before you make that decision,” Mother Theodora
concurred. “But I would have asked you to come back for at least a
few months anyway, Mickey. St. Bridget’s needs you. There has been
a pall hanging over us ever since the fire. The physical damage to
the building felt devastating to many, but more important has been
your absence. The gravity of your injuries, followed by such a
lengthy convalescence, has left many of us feeling almost as if
there had been a death. And with Sister Anselma’s departure… We
need you, at least for a while, so we can heal. As for your
feelings of doubt about being able to contribute, if you decided to
stay, I assure you, you would continue to be an integral member of
the community. We have actually had an elevator installed as part
of the rebuilding process – you are not the only one having
difficulty with the stairs,” she smiled.

“If I decided to stay, how would you feel?
Knowing about Sister Anselma and me…”

“Unlike my predecessors, I do not feel that
situations like this automatically require expulsion or exile to
another abbey. Your situation is already altered by the fact that
Sister Anselma has chosen to leave.” She paused for a few seconds
as she negotiated a sharp curve in the road. “My viewpoint, I’m
sure, is influenced by the fact that I lived through a similar
situation. Except that I have never revealed it to anyone – until
now.”

Humbled by Mother Theodora’s trust in
telling her that, Mickey waited.

“For now, I would ask that you return to
work in the vestment room for one work period a day, and for the
other, I would like for you to go to Sister Mary David to have your
wounds tended and work on your exercises.”

They were getting near the abbey by now. “I
don’t know how to thank you, Mother, for your understanding and
guidance through all this,” Mickey murmured.

Mother Theodora reached over to squeeze
Mickey’s arm. “You can thank me best by promising me that you will
be as open as you can to where God leads you, even if it is not
where you would wish to go.”

Chapter 42

Mickey sat in her choir stall – a new one at
the end so that she didn’t have to clumsily try to climb over
others to get to her old stall in the middle of the row. If she’d
wondered how she would know which was hers, she needn’t have
worried – the stall was layered with cards of welcome, as her cell
had been. When Sister Lucille had greeted her the day she arrived
home with Mother, she carried Mickey’s suitcase and led her to her
cell where nearly her entire bed was festooned with notes and
homemade cards all welcoming her back. In a vase on her desk sat a
small arrangement of holly leaves with a cluster of brilliant red
berries.

“You were missed, my dear,” Sister Lucille
said with a smile, leaving her to rest.

There, on her pillow, was the one note she
had been certain would be there.

My dear Michele,

There are no words to express my gratitude
for your act of unbelievable selflessness and bravery.

Much has happened that I will tell you about
someday, but for now, the most immediate thing is that I have
decided to leave St. Bridget’s. I think you know me well enough to
know what a heartwrenching decision that was for me.