Conceived Without Sin (25 page)

"I want you to tell me everything you know," Mark heard himself say. For the first time all day, he pulled his cop's notepad out of his pocket, and twisted open his golden Cross pen.

I'm taking notes.

3

Donna drove downtown to go to Mass and confession on a Saturday afternoon,
and found herself heading east afterwards. Soon, without any planning, she watched herself take the exit for the Lourdes Shrine.

I guess I want to talk to Sister Elizabeth.

She found the nun locking the doors to the gift shop. Sister Elizabeth was only a bit taller than Donna, and the smile she gave the girl from Rocky River was on the level.

"Hi Donna. I'm just closing up. Do you want to take
a walk? I have about twenty minutes before dinner begins."

"I guess so," Donna said unenthusiastically, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"I see. Guy trouble?"

"I wish. That's just the problem. There is no trouble. It's hopeless," Donna said.

They began to walk. They crossed behind the benches at the grotto and climbed the path up a hill where there was a station of the cross every fifty feet.

"Jesus falls," Sister Elizabeth said wistfully.

"I don't know what to say. My job is dull. The guy I like just got engaged. And he isn't even a Catholic. The other guy, Buzz, is not interested. I'm not interested in him, either. It's just…" she trailed off.

"Just what?"

"It's just that I feel like there's no meaning to my life. I love my parents, but living at home is like, well, like being a kid.
I fall into the old patterns. Dinner. Rosary. Watch television or read. Go to bed. Go to work. There's no, well, no
weight
in my life. Sometimes I think I'll never get married. Is there something wrong with not being happy or unhappy, but just being in between? My parents, they have weight; their kids; things to worry about. People to worry about…"

Donna looked away. She was frustrated.

They stopped
briefly before the next station. Jesus falls for the second time.

"I know what you mean," Sister said after a moment.

You do?
Donna asked her with a look.

"I used to feel that way–before the convent. I'm almost ten years older than you. There's something about being single that lacks, as you say, weight. I'm not going to go into details, but in my old life, I tried to fill the hole with men and
material things. That never worked. Sometimes I think that people think they're pursuing happiness with all the worldly things, but what they're really after is meaning. Weight, as you say."

Donna bent over to pick up a twig. "I don't want to sound so, well, like some girl complaining about how bad her life is on Oprah." Donna pursed her lips. "I'm not a crybaby. I guess my life could be much
worse. So, how did
you
solve
your
'weight' problem?"

The phrase struck Sister as funny. Donna smiled when she got it herself.

"It wasn't complicated, Donna. I answered the call. I'm here. I'm married now. This life has weight. The common life with the other nuns has meaning. We pray for the world. We're helping my spouse save the world. That has weight."

The two women walked in silence for a moment.
A spring breeze kicked last fall's leaves across their path.

"So what did make you decide to become a nun?" Donna finally asked. This was her fifth conversation with Sister since they first met. Donna had been avoiding the question. She did not want to sound like she was doing research.

"I had a great advantage over most Catholics nowadays, even though I was living a typically worldly life by
the time I was in high school, and throughout college. I, uh, did all the usual bad things.

"But my great advantage was that my parents and most of my brothers and sisters were the real thing. Good Catholics. When I fell away, I knew what I was falling away from. So I knew the way back. I suspect you have never fallen away like I did, and you have the same kind of parents.

"You know, during my
novitiate, I was told that most vocations come from large families with more than five or six kids. The religious life is like a big family. I'm rambling now. But my point is, I knew the way back. I don't think one in ten Catholics knows the way back. They fell away from nothing. You live in their world, a world without meaning, and you want more meaning.

"Maybe you can find it with me. Here."

There,
Sister Elizabeth thought.
I said it. And not very well, either.

The younger woman didn't say a word. She looked Sister Elizabeth in the eye.

"No way," Donna said finally. "I don't have a vocation. I've never felt the call. I wouldn't know what it was if I did have a call. I mean, do you hear something inside?"

"Not exactly. It's less like a calling from a voice, and more like a surgical
implant. It's just in there, in your heart. You can ignore it, but you can't get rid of it."

"Oh," was all Donna could say.

"Look, Donna, I didn't mean to push you," Sister Elizabeth said apologetically.

"Don't worry about it. I was expecting it. My mother told me I was going to be a nun since I was a baby. 'That's easy for you to say,' I used to tell her in grade school, before she quit bugging
me. 'You're already married.'"

"I always wanted to get married," Sister Elizabeth said. "It still gets to me when I see little children with their parents when they come here. It aches."

"It does?" Donna asked, genuinely surprised.

Sister Elizabeth laughed. "I forgot. There are so many misconceptions about the religious life. Well, maybe ache is too strong a word. I've never regretted my vows.
It's more like being a young man in college who had a choice between going pre-med or pre-law, and chose to become a doctor. He can still love being a doctor, still be perfectly happy with his choice. I'm more than happy with my choice. I'm thrilled. Now I can be a mother to all, rather than just a few. People who haven't lived the religious life just don't understand.

"You don't know how many
times I've gotten funny looks from people when they see my face, and they think or even say–"

"What is a pretty girl like you doing wasting your life in a convent?" Donna finished for her. "I get the reverse. I can practically hear Mom thinking, 'You're plain, Donna. The convent's a good place to hide out till you die.'"

"You don't really think that about your mom, do you?" Sister asked.

"I'm
afraid so. Look, I love my mom. I just made her sound mean, but she isn't. She and I have always been close; always had a special relationship. I can tell her just about anything. But lately, living at home, I feel like, well, it's hard to describe…"

"You feel like she relates to you as a daughter, not as an adult?" Sister guessed.

"How did you know?" Donna asked.

"It's pretty common. I felt the
same way. A hundred years ago, most kids were out of the house by age seventeen. Now it's thirty-two. That's just not normal. Or better, it's more normal to get out, to get on your own.

"That's what I mean about misconceptions about religious life. It's natural, perfectly normal, to want to get married. It's normal for me to have, let's say, motherly instincts, when I see little kids. Motherhood
is in a woman's bones–if she's a normal woman.

"The religious life is supernatural. It's beyond the normal, and doesn't negate the normal. My spiritual director told me some time ago that if there wasn't Original Sin, and therefore wasn't a need for Jesus to die and rise, then there wouldn't be any religious orders."

That gave Donna pause for thought.

"Religious life," Sister Elizabeth continued,
speaking as much to herself as to Donna, "is not for broken people or misfits. It's for the strong. It's not for people who want to run away. That's why I asked you if you've ever considered it. You're strong, Donna. But being strong is also an asset for getting married."

"I know. Strength also repels men," Donna replied quickly.

"Maybe strength in a woman repels a
weak
man. Maybe you just haven't
met your match, Donna."

Donna stopped walking. Sister didn't notice her stop, and walked a few paces before realizing this, and turned back. She saw Donna behind her, looking up at a station.

The Crucifixion.

"What is it?" the nun asked her friend.

"Oh, nothing," Donna said, lying. She quickly caught up to Sister Elizabeth.

But it is something,
Donna's little voice insisted.

Because as Sister
Elizabeth had made her last remark about Donna not yet meeting her match, Donna had looked up to the cross, and the Man on it.

He's strong,
Donna had thought, shaken.
He's my match.

4

Mark wrote "couch time" down on his notepad. He looked at the Kemp's couch itself. It had a dark-brown, light-brown, checkerboard pattern, and a few tears here and there. On the cushion to Mary Kemp's right, there
was a large, five-inch-diameter stain from what Mark guessed to be grape juice.

Maybe it's wine…

"Listen, Mark," Joe Kemp said, following Mark's gaze, glancing to the stain. "There's a lot of marriage-counseling talk about communication, and how important communication is for marriages. Heck, they don't even use the word
marriage.
They usually talk about
relationships."

All three men made a slightly
disgusted face.
Relationship
was a euphemism for
shacking up.

"I don't think that communication is the key," Joe continued. "It's just one of many key things. That's not what Couch Time means to me. Mary and I communicated all the time when we were having our problems. I won't speak for Mary. But here is what Couch Time means to me: Mary has an emotional tank. It gets filled mostly by what I put
into it. What I say to her can fill the tank–or empty it."

He saw the confused look on both Mark and Bill's faces.

"Maybe I can explain," Mary suggested. Her husband nodded. "I heard this radio program once, about four years ago; there was this so-called 'love expert' lady on it, and she was saying that most people fall into three categories for communication. She said that communication is like
trying to get a message to the other side of a fence. The fence is around the person's heart.

"She went on to say that you could slip a note through the slats, or tie it to a rock and throw it over the fence, or even dig a hole and pass the message under the fence. Okay?"

All three men nodded. Bill took a sip of wine.

"Now with people, this lady's theory was that there are three ways to get messages
across to other people. One was with words, another way was with touches, and the last way is with actions. She called it verbal, tactile, and visual. She said most people are wired to prefer one way over the others.

"Some people respond to what is said to them. That's not me. When Joe tells me he loves me, well, I hear it, but it's like the message was slipped through the crack in the fence,
and I need to have him throw a rock over the fence. I need to feel it. If he gives me a hug–" she turned to look at her husband as he took her hand, "–and tells me he loves me by whispering in my ear, the message goes into my heart. I 'hear' it if it's physical.

"Now Joe is different. Talk is cheap with him. And, while he can be very affectionate, what matters to him is order. I can tell him I
love him by making his bed, or keeping the house tidy, or putting his tools from the garage back in their proper place after I borrow them. He's a general contractor, after all, and the way things look, the way they're put together is how his mind works.

"Are you following me?" she asked.

"I wonder what I am?" Bill mused.

"Definitely verbal," Mark said. "Just look at how you make your living;
you talk to people all day long and you design ad campaigns around words and their meanings."

"Very true," Bill agreed. "But ad campaigns also require a lot of visual input. There's an old saw that the best radio commercials are the ones that paint a mental picture.

"Maybe that's why advertising has so many mediums; there are billboards, television commercials, radio, print, etcetera. I've always
told clients that people respond to different mediums depending on the person."

"Right," Joe Kemp said, leaning forward. "Couch Time is a medium–a place where different kinds of messages can go through the fence. I might be talking to my wife verbally, and I'm picking up verbal messages, but what's really filling
her
tank is the physical–uh, tactile–message of my holding her hand, or putting my
arm around her shoulder."

"Sometimes," Mary added, "it's not what Joe says to me. It's just the fact that he's listening to me, that he's not talking to me while he's in the middle of something else. I don't like to talk to him while he's working on a project. Sure, he listens to me then, but I feel like I'm playing second fiddle to a piece of wood."

"I don't think you're second fiddle to wood,"
Joe said, feigning hurt. "But it was Couch Time where I figured out that it doesn't necessarily matter what I think. What matters is the message that is being received on her end."

"This must sound confusing to you, Mark," Mary said sympathetically.

The wheels in Mark's head were turning furiously. He was confused. He was trying to process what he was being told and compare it to his communication
with Maggie at the same time.

"Keep talking, don't worry about me," he said softly. "I'm listening. I do have a question."

There was a long pause.

"How do you avoid arguing on the couch?" Mark asked, embarrassed, but not knowing why he was embarrassed.

Every couple argues,
he told himself.
You're separated, for heaven's sake! They know you've argued with Maggie.

"And how do you keep from losing
your temper?" the big man added.

Mary and Joe exchanged looks. Mary nodded this time.

"Listen, Mark," Joe said. "I don't know you that well; what I'm going to say might sound, well, kinda strange, to a guy like you. I'm sure you're a great guy, from what Bill's told me–"