The New Pantagruel The New Pantagruel

Margaret opened the front door and looked into the living room. She readied a pleasant smile. But it was only Kathleen in the room, wedged into the corner of the window seat, hiding, Margaret decided, behind the faded olive-colored drape. Kathleen pointed a TV Guide in the direction of the back yard.

That was a good idea. Lisa was closer to the girl’s age and was, of course, the one who’d invited her. The day was gorgeous, perfect for sitting outdoors, a cool breeze from some other blessed land relieving Washington of an August oppression. Margaret had walked from the Metro station, enjoying it, despite the risk to her hair. She checked the small mirror on the wall next to the door. Still intact and unwilted. Still too gray, too. Next time, would she dare ask to have it colored?

She sat down on the other end of the window seat and briskly pushed the curtain back.

“No. I made chicken salad. It’s ready to go.” Kathleen noticed Margaret’s look. “What?”

Kathleen waved Margaret’s mother and aunt away with the fat little magazine. The Fall Preview. She peered around the curtain. “She’s laughing.”

Margaret looked. Lisa and the girl were sitting in folding lawn chairs under the ancient magnolia tree in a corner of the yard. The girl held one of the enormous ivory blossoms, occasionally lifting it from her lap to her nose. She stroked the petals against her cheek and chin. Lisa was sitting forward in her chair, talking intensely, as usual. Her dark hair was drawn back into a brisk ponytail, deepening the impression that she was tightly wound and ready to spring. She tapped the girl’s knee, she moved her hands in the air as if she were pulling taffy, she evidently made a point related to the magnolia blossom. The girl nodded. But she didn’t laugh.

“Your hair looks nice.” Kathleen was looking at Margaret, hopefully. But today, Margaret could tell, Kathleen was especially keen on hope. “Who does it again?”

Margaret nodded. “You’re unbuttoned,” she observed, turning back to the yard. “You must need a larger size.”

Kathleen gasped a tiny “oh” and tossed the TV Guide on the window seat. She worked the button on the blouse, the light blue blouse that was embroidered with images of the Eiffel Tower and various French words. The button popped completely off.

In an instant, Margaret could see Kathleen’s hope collapse. It never takes much, she reflected. Kathleen’s green eyes filled.

“I thought I was one size, then another, and now this doesn’t fit. I wish I could keep my sizes straight. All of this—these things—it’s so much harder than I thought.”

Margaret handed her the button. “You’d better go change. They’re coming in.”

“Oh, and I don’t know what else I have—do you—no, I’m so much more bosomy than either of you. Mercy.”

Doors opened and closed all around Margaret. She stood and held out her hand to the young woman being introduced to her as Jennifer Harper from Ohio. Down the hall, drawers slammed.

She was about Lisa’s height—in fact, Margaret considered, she could be Lisa’s younger sister. Dark hair, cut in a bob like that skater from the last Olympics—Dorothy something. Curious, bright eyes and even similar, distressingly pale skin, skin that had prompted Margaret to ask Lisa, when she first met her years ago, at a time when she still worried about things, “Are you ill, my dear?” For a time, it was a joke between them.

“Welcome.” She pressed Jennifer’s hand quickly and let it go. “You’ve come a long way. Did you have a good trip?”

“It’s not so far. My friend has a friend here, and we had some time before school started back again. We’d never been to Washington before. So we counted up our pennies and drove out.”

“Jennifer’s got one more year as an undergraduate.” Lisa slid into Kathleen’s place on the window seat and briefly tilted her head to study the cover of the TV Guide. “She’s got quite a keen mind. She’ll flourish in grad school, where ever she goes.”

There were two reclining chairs and a large yellow ottoman in the living room, but Margaret moved over to the dining area and sat. She tapped her long fingers on the peach vinyl tablecloth and noted her veins. She turned the band on her wedding ring finger and it seemed looser today even than yesterday. She asked Jennifer about her studies.

“I’m a religious studies major. But it’s a state school, and I really, really think graduate work in theology at a Catholic university would be wonderful, and I want to work in the Church, I’m positive, and when Lisa told me that you all are the—”

“—female Jesuits,” Margaret interrupted. “Yes, that’s what they say. We’re the female Jesuits.”

Kathleen burst into the room breathing apologies. She was wearing the same blouse. A safety pin glinted between her breasts.

“We’ve been talking theology out there,” Lisa said, ignoring Kathleen. “We never got around to practical questions. What do you want to know? What are you curious about? You know you can ask us anything, Jennifer.”

The three women watched as Jennifer studied the room, taking in the large Salvadoran cross on the wall, painted full of brightly colored images of squat peasants doing Biblical things, Kathleen’s macramé hanging, which she said was the Holy Spirit, the ceramic pig collection on top of the console television, the magnolia blossom spray in a vase on the table. She raised her eyes from the blossoms to Margaret’s face.

“So what do the rest of you do?” she asked quickly, folding her arms around her knees. She was sitting on the ottoman.

Kathleen thrust herself into a reclining position with a loud snap. “Well, Margaret teaches third grade over at St. Aloysius, our order’s school,” she said, hope revived, “and I’m a secretary over at the Bishops’ Conference.”

“Administrative assistant? Maybe that sounds better. I used to teach school, too, but when we pulled out of Holy Name, I decided to get off my feet and take a desk job—you know, coffee breaks, pastries in the morning, nice music on the radio. It’s wonderful over there. I love it.” Kathleen smiled at Jennifer, a generous, confident smile.

Lisa studied the floor. Margaret decided it would be unkind not to help. She leaned forward conspiratorially and stage-whispered across the room.

“You know, Jennifer, I’ve been known to request more crayons than I really need at the moment. Some might say that’s rather … Jesuitical of me.”

Kathleen was still laughing—loudly—as she pushed her lounger back to its full extension.

“I don’t know about Jesuits, hon, but I do know it’s not The Sound of Music. I hope you didn’t come here thinking that it would be The Sound of Music.”

“Kathleen, I’m sure that Jennifer doesn’t labor under such a silly notion.” Lisa was sitting up, her arms folded.

“Well, some of them do, and you know it. They see that movie and think it would be lovely to live like that—the nun part—and they come here and think that’s what this is all about. And it’s not.”

Kathleen nodded energetically. “Oh, it is, Lisa. I’m not saying it isn’t. It’s not so strict.” She snapped her chair upright, leaned forward and put a plump hand on Lisa’s knee. “Jen, we’re just a bunch of gals living for the Lord.”

“Women.” Lisa spoke quickly to Jennifer, who visibly flinched at the contraction of her name—or was it the “gals,” Margeret wondered.

“Religious women living in community,” Lisa continued forcefully. “The life has taken numerous forms through history—you know that. There’s no one way, or best way. Especially a way that was established three centuries ago. Times … change.”

Jennifer studied the pigs. “There’s just a lot of options out there. You know?” She glanced at Lisa. “I never knew any nuns—sisters—I mean, religious women growing up. Lisa was the first I ever saw when she came to the student center and preached. I mean, I think I want to give my life to God somehow, and she made it sound like something really wonderful.” She turned again to face the pigs and squeezed her knees—even harder, Margaret noted.

Lisa leaned forward and started talking gently, assuredly, about God’s call. She said it was hard to discern, especially in a world in which women had so many choices. She said they would all share their own stories of God’s call and what had brought them to this place.

Margaret shared her story with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, especially knowing how this had turned out in the past, knowing that they had come over here from the other side of the convent to live out their little experiment with five, now they were three, and sharing stories didn’t seem to be helping. She half listened to the others, and half remembered. She thought of plump—always plump—Kathleen, so loved by her first-graders, regaling the other sisters, all of them in their awful hot black habits, with stories of mispronounced prayers and shockingly wise questions. She remembered Lisa in her first week at the convent and the quiet sobs that curtains between beds in the dormitory could only muffle, not conceal. But the tears ended and Lisa seemed to fall in love with them all, with the whole life, with God, as she bounced around the convent, back and forth from classes at Catholic U. Singing.

And when the word came down—no more delay—decide how the order will reform as the Council said it should—there were more tears and arguments and silence as questions of prayers and habits and even trips to the grocery store came up and became battlegrounds instead of opportunities for the Spirit to move, as they all had been told it would. And then Lisa led some of them over here. To try something new.

Kathleen had been talking, still stretched out in the recliner. She paused and glared at Margaret. Lisa fought a smile and lost.

“That was Lisa’s name,” Margaret continued. “Benedicta. Her religious name.”

“In between Lisas,” added Kathleen, no longer annoyed. She patted the top of Lisa’s head. “In between hairdos.”

“Benedicta,” Jennifer repeated softly. She looked at Lisa almost questioningly. “It’s lovely.”

Margaret nodded and shifted in her seat, feeling the stiffness of her new blue jeans. “We were so glad to have her. Sister Scholastica’s best music student, with us.”

Lisa raised her hand, warding off Margaret’s memories and Jennifer’s quizzical look. “I don’t sing much any more. Ontology’s my thing now.”

She didn’t know why—perhaps to ward off ontology—Margaret was seized with a desire to hum, first softly. Kathleen rested her cheek in her hand and hummed, too, a bit louder. Lisa pursed her lips and stayed silent.

“Salve Mater misericordia,” Margaret murmured, finding a tune by the end. Kathleen joined as if she were telling a joke, but then her voice settled alongside Margaret’s, where it seemed to know it belonged.

“Mater Dei, at Mater veniae, Mater spei, et Mater gratiae, Mater Plena sanctae laetitiae … “

Jennifer closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. The women’s voices blended, surrounding her with a single pure tone.

Kathleen let go first, and then Margaret, and even then her last note hung there above them in the air for just a moment before it vanished. Jennifer looked up, as if to watch a bird fly away. When the silence fell, she turned back to pigs once again and pursed her lips.

Pulling herself out of her chair, Kathleen walked over to the television. “But just imagine having to sing all that old Latin every day, so many times.” Her voice was loud. Margaret winced. “You’re not missing anything. This one’s my favorite. Isn’t she cute?”

Kathleen kissed the figure and put it down. “And oh, that silence! It was murder, wasn’t it, ladies?”

She stood directly in front of Jennifer, who pursed her lips and studied the writing on the blouse inches from her nose. Fromage. Bonjour!

Lisa was still sitting cross-legged on the window seat, gaily striped socks flowing under her jeans legs into thick-strapped leather sandals. She reached out and gave a gentle nudge to Kathleen’s hip, moving her aside so she could look directly at Jennifer, holding her gaze intently.

“Jennifer, we are all here in response to various calls from the same Spirit. What do you feel drawing you to this life? Do you feel comfortable sharing?”

Jennifer breathed deeply and looked around the room again. Again, her eyes stopped with Margaret, this time on the wedding band. Margaret put her hands on her lap.

Jennifer spoke softly and quickly. She told them she’d wanted to work in the Church, and being a nun seemed the logical choice. She’d heard of a nun in India—Mother Theresa?—doing great things. She’d gone on a mission trip last summer—with Baptists, she said apologetically—to a distant, terribly poor corner of southeastern Kentucky. Serving the Church, serving the poor, studying theology, praying. She could see herself doing things like that.

Lisa nodded, encouraging. Margaret nodded. She could help Lisa with this one. “Service to the poor is part of our charism, certainly. My school serves a largely lower-class population. One of our sisters—one of our original little group here—does advocacy on Capitol Hill.”

“Oh,” Margaret shrugged. “Caroline moved into an apartment closer to the Hill last year.”

“She’s a great gal. So smart. Like your Jesuits!” Kathleen called brightly from the kitchen

In the kitchen, dishes and cutlery were being pulled loudly from their places. Use the plain ones, Margaret wanted to say, but something about the way Jennifer was huddled on the ottoman and staring—at those silly pigs that Margaret now wanted to smash even more than usual—made her hesitant to interrupt.

“That’s it,” Jennifer finally murmured. “That’s really all there is to it right now.”

They all stood in response to Kathleen’s command to get ready to eat. After she gave Jennifer a hug, and with one arm still around her waist, Lisa held up the TV Guide. “Isn’t this a silly business?” she chuckled.

Kathleen emerged from the kitchen, holding a tomato and a knife. “It may be silly, but it’s sure got me hooked. I can’t wait for it to come back on. I’m counting the days!” She held the knife like a gun and pointed it at Margaret. “Who shot J. R.?” she said dramatically, then motioned for Margaret to come into the kitchen.

She wanted to serve the chicken salad inside the tomatoes, and Margaret stood for slices or quarters on the plates. She could see Lisa in the other room, holding another urgent, murmured conversation with Jennifer. Kathleen was bustling back and forth.

“Isn’t this marvelous?” Margaret saw Kathleen place a basket of rolls between the women, and then lay a plump hand—flesh puffed up around her ring, almost engulfing it—on Jennifer’s shoulder. Jennifer looked up at her expectantly.

And she bustled back into the kitchen. Before the door shut, Margaret heard Lisa say something about a new book being used by the new feminist theology course at CU. Urgency had returned to her voice. She was almost out of breath, Margaret thought.

Margaret eventually won the battle of the tomatoes, which she was fighting only out of habit, as well as the plates. She’d pulled out the plain white restaurant ware they’d brought over from the other side, convincing Kathleen to return the daisy china to the cupboard. But when they brought it all out, Lisa sat alone in the dining area, rubbing her forehead.

“She left. She said she couldn’t remember if she said she was going to meet her friend at 1:30 or 2:00, so she thought she’d be safe.”

Margaret glanced at the sunburst clock on the wall. It was 1:25. She peered through the tall, thin window next to the door. Jennifer was two blocks away, walking very quickly. Running, almost.

Kathleen pulled a chair next to Lisa and gave her a squeeze. “It’s okay, hon. She was a lovely girl. I have a feeling about that one. She liked us.”

Margaret moved to the window seat and sat down. Her hands were cold. She rubbed them together and traced a finger along knotty veins, then easily slid her thinning band up and down her finger, feeling the distance between the gold and her flesh.

She looked across the room. Lisa was nodding, but clearly not listening to Kathleen, who was chatting about the tomatoes. They were homegrown, from one of the other secretaries in the office.

“Lisa, they’re lovely, aren’t they? You can even taste the sun in them.” She held out a red wedge, its flesh and cluster of tiny seeds looking, even from a distance, as if they glistened with an interior light.

She held the tomato closer, almost touching Lisa’s lips which were clamped in a painful, tight line. A rivulet of juice began to crawl slowly down Kathleen’s hand. Lisa opened her mouth, took a tiny bite, then pushed the hand roughly away.

Kathleen shrugged and popped the rest of the tomato wedge into her own mouth. She walked back into the kitchen, licking juice off her wrist. A door slammed.

Margaret turned and looked out the window at the empty chairs under the magnolia tree. A blossom lay beside one of them, petals collapsed into the ground. One of us should bring the chairs in, she thought. Everyone was saying that rain was on the way.

Shooting J. R.

by Amy Welborn