By four o’clock they were heading west into the setting sun. Tom shouted back to her that they would make a rest stop and eat the picnic dinner Marta had packed for them. Kate could see nothing except stony fields and the lake shimmering in the distance off to their left. Suddenly Tom pulled the jeep off the road, and he disappeared behind some rocks.
Jeanne looked at Kate and laughed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to die if I don’t go to the bathroom soon.” They got out of the jeep, and as Tom reappeared, announced that they would be back as soon as they found a suitable private place.
The wind had picked up, and the setting sun’s rays had weakened. Kate pulled her cloak tightly around her and then used it for a curtain when they found a good spot to relieve themselves. Suddenly Jeanne Marie laughed. “What would the mistress of novices say to us now, do you think? I don’t remember that this situation was covered in the Custom Book.”
Kate laughed, too, and, as the two of them took turns guarding each other, they would burst into laughter at intervals, thinking of the stern face of the elderly drill sergeant.
Tom was waiting for them by the jeep and looked up in surprise as the two nuns broke into a run and raced each other to the jeep. Kate’s heart hammered in her chest. She had forgotten about the altitude, but her sudden gasps for breath reminded her that she was still in a different world.
They ate their meal inside the cramped jeep away from the wind, devouring the chicken sandwiches and candy bars and apples. Then the three of them sat quietly for a while. Tom handed a soda to Kate, letting his hand linger for an instant against hers. The look he gave her filled her with a rush of joy.
“Did I ever tell you I was in a gang?” Tom was stretched out in the front seat, smoking. When they laughed, he looked injured. “Sure and I was,” he protested, “You know, when I was born in ’32, the Troubles hadn’t been over that long. So when we were about ten or so, then the middle of the War, some of the lads and I formed the Michael Collins Gang, with secret meetings and rituals. We spent many a night sneaking out of our houses to gather on the quays of Galway, looking for the enemy.” He laughed, “The trouble was we weren’t too sure who the hell the enemy was—the Germans or the British.” He flicked his cigarette out the window, and asked Kate to drive for a while.
Jeanne curled up in the back seat and soon dozed off. Kate was nervous with Tom’s eyes on her. Now in the dark, Kate felt as if the two of them were hurtling through a vast lunar landscape where no one else existed. They did not speak much, but once in a while Tom would point out a strange rock formation near the road or the way the moonlight was falling on the lake. After a while he put his head back and slept. Kate could look her fill, and seeing his unguarded profile, his head thrown back, his mouth slack, filled her with a strangely maternal tenderness.
When they had gone through the immigration control in Desaguadero, Jeanne took her turn at the wheel, and Kate climbed into the back seat again over Tom’s protests.
“I’ll sit in back,” he said. “You two can pray your office together or something.”
“Your legs are too long,” laughed Kate. “You’d die of lack of circulation before we got to La Paz.” Kate wrapped herself in a blanket and dozed fitfully through the night. Every time she woke up, Tom’s face was the first thing she would look for. She felt warm and safe, safer than she had ever been before.
They spent the night in La Paz, Jeanne and Kate staying again with the Precious Blood Sisters while Tom went to the Maryknoll house. He was at the front door by nine o’clock the next morning, smiling and cheerful in light khaki pants and a short-sleeved red shirt. Kate had never seen him in anything but dark colors. He was usually bundled up against the unforgiving cold of the plains. Now she noticed that his arms were covered with fine black hair, and she had to stop herself from stroking it.
Jeanne laughed when she saw him. “You look more like a tourist going to Hawaii than a priest on his way to say Mass for some cloistered nuns,” she teased.
“Yes, and you two are going to suffocate in those medieval robes when we hit the Yungas.”
Kate knew that Tom thought their habits were ridiculous. He was always telling them about the many communities of nuns in the States that were beginning to discard the old-fashioned habit. Soon nuns would dress like anyone else, he predicted. Sister Josepha argued with him, saying the habit was a witness to the world of the consecrated life. Tom said their lives ought to be the witness, not what they wore.
Kate didn’t know what to think. She hated the fact that she could always see both sides of a question. Since she was a girl she had loved the elegance and grace of the habit. But sometimes, she knew, the habit was a disguise or a costume, for it could cover up women who were selfish and catty, hard to live with. Lately she had felt the weight of its falseness on her. To the world, her habit spoke of
