The atmosphere inside the Sea Shanty grew strange. Despite the angry sounds outside the cottage, the breathless warmth inside was rare and, somehow, wonderful. Flames from the candles pierced the darkness, and despite her concern for Shelly, Daria felt her body begin to uncoil and relax.
“I’m thinking about leaving my order,” Chloe said suddenly.
Her voice sounded alien and disembodied in the peculiar air of the living room, and Daria didn’t understand.
“You mean… you’d join another order?” she asked.
“No, I wouldn’t go anywhere else,” Chloe said slowly.
“I’m saying, I would no longer be a nun. I’d ask to be dispensed from my vows.” “Chloe.” Daria was stunned. “I thought you loved what you do. I thought you loved being a nun.”
“Oh, I have. I truly have. But…! don’t think I can continue this way.”
“What way?” Daria asked.
Chloe studied the glow of the lantern, as if mesmerized.
“Sean…” She hesitated, then started again.
“Sean took his life in a misguided attempt to try to save me from temptation.”
“I don’t understand.” Daria wasn’t certain she wanted to understand.
“I’ve always had difficulty with my vow of chastity,” Chloe said bluntly.
“Poverty was no problem. Obedience was no problem.” She shook her head.
“But I’ve always had a hard time denying that part of myself. That sensual, sexual part. When I was in the convent, in my early days as a sister, I’d sometimes wake up in the morning and realize that I’d had an orgasm in my sleep, during a dream, perhaps, and I’d berate myself over it. What was wrong with me, I thought, that even though my days were filled with pure thoughts, that wretched… carnal part of me still came out at night, when I couldn’t control it.
I’d beat myself up over it. But then”-Chloe looked at Daria ” —then I began to think that my distress over feeling that way was ridiculous. I had done nothing wrong. What I was feeling stemmed from a normal, natural God-given part of myself, a part I was trying to deny existed. But it did exist. And I couldn’t make myself believe any longer that there was something wrong with that. “
Daria couldn’t speak. She had never heard Chloe talk so openly about sexual feelings. About anyone’s sexual feelings, much less her own.
She’d thought that Chloe simply did not have those longings, that she was above them somehow. She’d been wrong. Chloe was nearly forty, and had denied that part of herself all these years. The realization brought tears to Daria’s eyes, and she could feel her sister’s pain from across the room. “What did you mean when you said that Sean was trying to save you from temptation?” Rory had the courage to ask.
Chloe stared at the lantern. The thunder had receded into the distance, and only her voice filled the darkness.
“He killed himself to save me,” she said.
“No one knows this, but it’s time I said it out loud.” She let out a long sigh. Her hands were folded in her lap.
“Sean and I were lovers,” she said.
“Oh, Chloe,” Daria said.
“It started years ago,” Chloe said.
“I would see him when I came here in the summer, and in those early years, I talked to him about what it was like for me, being a nun. We talked about our vows of celibacy and chastity and how hard it was to honor them. He had as much trouble with them as I did, and that reassured me. But the more we talked about it, the more we were drawn to each other.”
Chloe’s voice suddenly broke, and Daria moved to the sofa and put her hand over her sister’s.
“I’d reached the point where I felt it was not so terrible to break that vow,” Chloe continued.
“I felt angry with the Church for imposing it so rigidly. It was a law made by man, not by God. I was able to rationalize that someone could be devoted to religious life and still be able to give and receive love with a partner at the same time. I still believe that. Completely. And so I felt comfortable about what we were doing. But for Sean, it wasn’t that simple, and so a few years ago, we stopped the physical part of our relationship. He had been in turmoil over it, and I didn’t want him to suffer any longer.”
Chloe’s voice broke again, and this time she withdrew her hands from beneath Daria’s to bury her head in them. Daria stroked her back. She looked across the room at Rory, whose face was somber in the light from the lantern.
Chloe raised her head again. “I was careful not to push him,” she said.
“I tried to be… sexless, around him. And it worked, at least until this summer. I don’t think it was anything I did, in particular, but we were drawn to each other, very strongly, and then the intimacy started up again.” Chloe wept openly now.
“Sean was torturing himself,” she said.
“He called himself a sinner—I hate that word!—and he thought he was tempting me into joining him in that sin.
He thought he was responsible for my downfall. That’s what he called it, although I don’t agree. I tried to dissuade him from thinking that way, but obviously I wasn’t successful. ” Chloe’s shoulders trembled with her tears, and Daria tightened her arm around her.
