She starts to protest and he covers her mouth with his hand.
“Wait, let me finish. There’s nothing I want more than to wake up beside you every morning. But I just can’t do it. Being a priest . . . it’s who I am, damn it.”
“Tom, I know. That last day in Juliaca, I watched you at Mass. You lifted the Host at the consecration, and I wanted to scream at God. He’s got His hooks in you so deep that you’d tear yourself apart if you tried to get free.”
He shakes his head wearily. “Shit, Kate. Sometimes I don’t know if I even believe in God anymore.”
This shocks her. She doesn’t know what to say. Then he stands up and pulls her to her feet.
“I leave tomorrow.”
She feels the blow right in her center. She looks away. He turns her face to his.
“Am I invited to stay the night?” The tone is light, joking, but she sees the trembling of his mouth.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He looks at her for a long time, holding her face in his hands. “You’re a hard woman, Kate O’Neill. Harder than nails.” His hands drop to his side then, and he turns away from her, searching for his keys. In the dark entrance hall he faces her again. His face is in shadows now and he stands very straight. His voice is a whisper. “I love you, Kate O’Neill. Wherever you go, know that I’m somewhere, loving you.”
She nods, unable to stop trembling as if from a chill. Finally, “I love you, too, Tom. Always.” She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him deeply, inhaling his scent, drinking him in. Then she releases him.
Still he lingers. His eyes are in shadow, but she can see the pain.
“Go,” she whispers.
The door opens and he is gone. She hears the click of the lock and leans her face against the door. Come back, please come back. I didn’t mean it; you can stay. For a minute she hears nothing. Then footsteps, a car starts, and lights flash against the stained glass window in the door. She listens for a long time until the only sound is the ticking of the clock in the empty hall.
C
hapter Twenty-One
Friday, July 3, 1964
The colectivo, an old Chevy from the late 1950s, rattles and hisses as they speed south away from Lima along the Pan American Highway. Kate is crowded in the back seat with Señora Molina and her fifteen-year-old daughter. The plump señora is carefully dressed in a red and white polka-dot silk dress, nylons, and shiny patent-leather heels. Her hair is pulled back in a tight chignon, and beads of sweat trickle down her neck into the cleft between her breasts. She sighs often and wipes her face and neck with a lace handkerchief, offering a running commentary on the scenery, her daughter’s willfulness, and the dangers the driver surely hasn’t seen rushing to meet them. From Lima to Nazca she confides in Kate, seeing in the young nun an ally against the folly of youth. She and her husband, who sits stoically with his eyes closed next to the driver, are taking their daughter up to La Paz to study with the Madres de la Presentación in their boarding school.
“This girl is a little fool,” she hisses, as if the girl isn’t sitting next to her, staring at the Saharan-like landscape. “She thinks she has found the great love of her life, a fifteen-year-old delinquent who rides a motorcycle.”
Kate glances at the girl. Her cheek rests on the window, her face hidden by a veil of long black hair. Kate has tried to change the subject several times, but the mother is undeterred. As she tells the story of María Luísa sneaking out of the house, the tricks she played to see the boy, the señora rolls her eyes in the direction of the silent husband in the front seat as if to say how useless he has been in the matter.
Kate pulls out the breviary Sister Domitia has loaned her and excuses herself to pray. Silence settles on the passengers, and she thinks she caught a grateful look from the driver as he nods to her in the rearview mirror. She pages through the book to find the psalms for Sext. It is afternoon, and the sisters in Juliaca will be finishing lunch now. She reads Psalm 8:
O Lord, our sovereign,
how glorious is thy name in all the earth!
Thy majesty is praised high as the heavens. . . .
When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars set in place by thee,
what is man that thou shouldst remember him,
mortal man that thou shouldst care for him?
Yet thou hast made him little less than a god,
crowning him with glory and honor.
Kate looks out the window at fields of cotton. Marigolds are everywhere and their fragrance seeps into the worn car, mingling with the perfume and sweat of Señora Molina. The psalmist had it right. The immensity of the world stretches out before her. She is not the sun. She is only a tiny part of creation. The stars wheel on in spite of her pain. Her heart hurts, a real physical hurt. She tries to sit very still so that she can only feel a dull throb, not the sharp stab of loss. But on top of the pain she is floating free. Her senses sharp, she drinks in the vision of clouds scudding across a blue sky, the waves crashing on the beach, and the mysterious dunes, shifting and scattering in the wind off the sea.
Now they head inland, toward Arequipa. The whole journey to the Altiplano would last almost twenty-four hours, the driver has assured them, and they will stop only to eat or if someone has to go to the bathroom. Kate looks around. The Molinas are asleep. In the front seat the husband snores softly, his mouth open and
