Kate walked her to the door and peered out into the night for a moment as she watched the nun cross the dark yard.
Maybe Tom would stop by to see her on his way back to the priests’ house. She realized that she had been hoping for this all day. What would happen? They would be alone in the tropical night, not a soul around. She stopped herself there, unwilling to admit what she was thinking. Once again she picked up the Chekhov. He would help her to pass the slow-moving time.
Finally she heard the crunch of footsteps on the twigs and branches outside her window. Then a pounding on the door, followed by Tom’s voice. “Good night, Kate. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When she flung open the door he was already heading down the path toward the gate. “Tom,” she whispered.
He turned and said nothing, just stood there looking at her in the doorway.
Flushing, she asked in a low voice, “Won’t you come in for a little while?”
He came into the light then, and she could see his face. It was somber as he spoke quietly, “I don’t think that would be a good idea now, do you, Kate?”
She flinched a little but recovered enough to say, “I never thought of you as a timid man, Father Lynch.” She knew she was being childish, but by now she felt as though she were watching a play in which someone else was playing her role.
He stared at her for a long moment. When he spoke at last his voice was patient as though he were speaking to a child. “Kate, I’m going over to the priests’ house now to turn in. I’m dead. I’ll see you in the morning after Mass and we’ll have time to do a little sightseeing before we head back. Okay?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice to remain steady. Then she slammed the door. She listened until she heard his footsteps on the path and the creak of the gate as he swung it open to leave the convent grounds. From somewhere in the nuns’ garden, she heard the full, deep throb of a mourning dove’s call and the sound echoed in the hollow place inside her.
She was furious with him. At the same time she was ashamed of herself, her pleading. She undressed quickly, her cheeks burning. She slipped the long white nightgown over her head, and threw herself down on the bed.
In the darkness she trembled. If he were here now, he would lie down beside her in this narrow bed. His hands would move up under her gown, and she would feel his body, strange and unfamiliar, stretched out beside her. Yes, oh yes, she would give herself to him. She kissed the pillow, pretending it was Tom.
Where were all those high resolutions now? They had been fooling themselves, or she had at least. She hated him for his virtuous distance.
Kate was sleeping soundly the next morning when the deep gong signaling the beginning of morning prayer wakened her. It was too late now; she had missed Lauds. She dressed slowly and walked outside for a few moments into the garden, still drenched with dew. The sky was gray and rose, and a low mist hung over the mountains in the distance. Her long habit brushed against the grass and she could feel its dampness in her shoes. Someone had planted a small rose garden with six thriving bushes, and she bent to smell a golden rose tipped with scarlet, a few drops of water in its center. Everywhere insects were busy. Lines of ants wound around piles of dirt and beetles scurried in the grass. She smelled the dark rich earth, and the scent took her back to her mother years ago, tall and slim in her old jeans, digging up the dirt for a vegetable garden. She and her brother and sister had been shorter than the hoes they carried, and she remembered their shock at all the worms they kept digging up. Dan had run inside for a jar, claiming that they would be good bait for fishing, and for days Kate watched the jar on the porch until all the worms had died.
She walked over to the chapel for Mass. The church smelled like spring, for the sisters had placed tall branches of white flowering bushes in vases before the altar. Tom came out in a white and gold vestment and began the Mass of the day. It was the week between the feast of the Ascension and Pentecost, and as he read out the words of St. John’s letter, Kate looked down at her hands. “Beloved, since God loved us so much we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. . . . God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.”
Kate had heard the words so many times before. Now they were life and death to her. She loved God; she had given herself to Him. She also loved Tom with everything she possessed. Kate rubbed her forehead. By loving Tom did she love God less? But a dry, Jesuitical voice inside her kept insisting, “Define your terms. Just what do you mean by love? If you really loved Tom, you would stay away from him, let him live out the difficult life he had chosen. You are fooling yourself, Kate. You want him for yourself; you are jealous of the time and attention he spends on everyone else.”
She gazed up at the crucifix over the altar. It was not the dead, half-naked Christ but
