Amazing Grace

Chapter 2

The schedule was running late because it took longer for people to get into the ballroom and take their seats at their tables than Sarah had anticipated. The emcee for the evening was a Hollywood star who had had a talk show for years on late-night TV and had just retired, and he was terrific. He urged everyone to take their seats while he introduced the celebrities who had come up from L.A. for the evening, and of course the mayor, and local stars. The evening was going according to plan.
Sarah had promised to keep speeches and acknowledgments to a minimum. After a brief speech by the doctor in charge of the neonatal unit, they ran a short film about the miracles they performed. Sarah then talked about her own personal experience with Molly. And from there, they went right into the auction. The action was hot. A diamond necklace from Tiffany went for a hundred thousand dollars. The celebrity meet-and-greets went for an astonishing amount of money. An adorable miniature Yorkshire terrier puppy went for ten thousand. And the Range Rover went for a hundred and ten. Seth was the underbidder and finally lowered his paddle and gave up. Sarah whispered to him that it was all right, she was happy with the car she owned. He smiled at her but looked distracted. She noticed again how stressed he seemed, and assumed he'd had a tough day at the office.
She caught a glimpse of Everett Carson a couple of times during the evening. She had given him the table numbers of the important socialites. W was there, Town and Country, Entertainment Weekly, and Entertainment Tonight. There were TV cameras waiting for Melanie to go on. The evening was turning out to be a huge success. They made over four hundred thousand in the auction, thanks to a very aggressive auctioneer. Two very expensive paintings from a local art gallery had helped, and there had been some great cruises and trips. Added to the price of the seats, the funds raised so far had exceeded expectations, and checks always came in for days afterward, with random donations.
Sarah made the rounds of the tables, thanking people for coming, and saying hello to friends. There were several tables at the back of the room that had been donated to charitable organizations, the local Red Cross Chapter, a foundation committed to suicide prevention, and a table that had been filled with priests and nuns, purchased by Catholic Charities, who were affiliated with the hospital that housed the neonatal unit. Sarah saw the priests in their Roman collars, and several women with them in dark, simple navy or black suits. There was only one nun in a habit at the table, a tiny woman who looked like a pixie, with red hair and electric blue eyes. Sarah had recognized her immediately. Her name was Sister Mary Magdalen Kent, and she was the city's version of Mother Teresa. She was well known for her work on the streets with the homeless, and her position against city government for not doing more for them was very controversial. Sarah would have loved to talk to her tonight, but she was too busy with the thousand details she had to keep an eye on to ensure the success of the event. She whisked by the table with a nod and smile to the priests and nuns sitting there, obviously enjoying the evening. They were talking and laughing and drinking wine, and Sarah was pleased to see they were having a good time.
“I didn't think I'd see you here tonight, Maggie,” the priest who ran the city's free dining room for the poor commented, grinning. He knew her well. Sister Mary Magdalen was a lioness in the streets, defending the people she cared for, but a mouse when out socially. He couldn't remember ever seeing her at a benefit before. One of the other nuns, in a trim-looking blue suit, with a gold cross on her lapel and short, well-cut hair, was the head of the nursing school at USF. The other nuns looked almost fashionable and worldly, sitting at the table, enjoying the elegant meal. Sister Mary Magdalen, or Maggie as her friends called her, had appeared uncomfortable for most of the evening, and embarrassed to be there, with her coif slightly askew, as it slipped around on her short bright red hair. She seemed more like an elf dressed up as a nun.
“You almost didn't,” she said in an undertone to Father O'Casey. “Don't ask me why, but someone gave me a ticket. A social worker I work with. She had to go to a rosary tonight. I told her to give the seat to someone else, but I didn't want to seem ungrateful.” She was apologetic about being there, and thought she should be on the streets. An event like this one was definitely not her style.
“Give yourself a break, Maggie. You work harder than anyone I know,” Father O'Casey said generously. He and Sister Mary Magdalen had known each other for years, and he admired her for her radically benevolent ideas, and hard work in the field. “I'm surprised to see you in a habit though,” he chuckled to himself, pouring her a glass of wine she didn't touch. Even before she went into the convent at twentyone, she never drank or smoked.
She laughed in answer to what he'd said about what she wore. “It's the only dress I have. I work in jeans and sweatshirts every day. I don't need fancy clothes for what I do.” She glanced at the other three nuns at the table, who looked like housewives or college professors more than nuns, except for the small gold crosses on their lapels.
“It does you good to get out.” They started talking about church politics then, a controversial stand the archbishop had taken recently about ordaining priests, and the latest pronouncement from Rome. She was particularly interested in a currently proposed city law being evaluated by the board of supervisors, which would affect the people she worked with on the streets. She thought the law was limited and unfair and would hurt her people. She was very bright, and after a few minutes, two of the other priests and one of the nuns entered the discussion. They were interested in what she had to say, as she knew more about the subject than they.
“Maggie, you're too tough,” Sister Dominica, who headed up the nursing school, said. “We can't solve everyone's problems all at once.”
“I try to do it one by one,” Sister Mary Magdalen said humbly. The two women had something in common, as Sister Maggie had graduated as a nurse right before entering the convent. She found her skills useful for those she tried to help. And as they continued their heated discussion, the room went dark. The auction was over, dessert had been served, and Melanie was about to go on. The emcee had just announced her, and slowly the room fell into silence, alive with anticipation. “Who is she?” Sister Mary Magdalen whispered, and the rest of the table smiled.
“The hottest young singer in the world. She just won a Grammy,” Father Joe whispered, and Sister Maggie nodded. The evening was definitely way out of her league. She was tired, and ready for it to be over, as the music started up. Melanie's signature song was being started by the band, and then in an explosion of sound, light, and color, Melanie came on. She drifted onto the stage like an exquisite waif, singing her opening song.
Sister Mary Magdalen watched her, fascinated, as did everyone in the room. They were mesmerized by her beauty, and the stunning power of her voice. There was no sound in the room except hers.
“Wow!” Seth said as he looked at her from a front-row seat, and patted his wife's hand. She had done a fantastic job. He had been distracted and worried earlier, but now he was loving and attentive to her. “Holy shit! She's fantastic!” Seth added, as Sarah noticed Everett Carson crouched just below the stage, taking shots of Melanie while she performed. She was breathtakingly beautiful in the nearly invisible costume. The dress she wore was mostly illusion and looked like glitter on her skin. Sarah had gone backstage to see her before she went on. Her mother was running interference for her, and Jake was half smashed, drinking straight gin.
The songs Melanie sang mesmerized the audience. She sat down at the edge of the stage for the last one, reaching out to them, singing to them, ripping their hearts out. Every man in the room was in love with her by then, and every woman wanted to be her. Melanie was a thousand times more beautiful than she had seemed to Sarah when she hung out in her suite. She had a stage presence that was electrifying and a voice that no one would ever forget. She had made the evening for everyone, and Sarah sat back in her chair with a smile of total satisfaction. It had been an absolutely perfect night. The food had been excellent, the room looked gorgeous, the press was there in full force, the auction had made a fortune, and Melanie was the big hit of the night. The event had been a total success, and would sell out even faster the following year as a result, maybe even at higher prices. Sarah knew that she had done her job, and done it well. Seth had said he was proud of her, and she was even proud of herself.
She saw Everett Carson get even closer to Melanie, as he took more shots. Sarah felt giddy at the thrill of it all, and as she did, she felt the room sway gently. For an instant, she thought she was dizzy. And then, instinctively, she looked up and saw the chandeliers swinging overhead. It made no sense to her, and at the moment she looked up, she heard a low rumble, like a terrifying groan all around them. For a minute, everything seemed to stop, as the lights flickered, and the room swayed. Someone near her stood up and shouted, “Earthquake!” The music stopped, as tables fell and china clattered, just as the lights went out and people started to scream. The room was in total darkness, the groaning sound grew louder, people were shouting and screaming over it, and the rolling movement of the room turned into a terrifying shudder as it went from side to side. Sarah and Seth were on the floor by then, he had pulled her under their table before it overturned.
“Oh my God,” she said to him, clutching him as he put his arms around her and held her tight. All she could think of were her babies at home with Parmani. She was crying, terrified for them, and desperate to get back to them, if they all lived through what was happening to them now. The undulating of the room and the crashing sounds seemed to go on forever. It was several minutes before it stopped. There were more crashing sounds after that, and people shouting and pushing and shoving as the exit signs came back on. They had gone out, but a generator somewhere in the hotel had gotten them going again. There was a sense of chaos all around them.
“Don't move for a few minutes,” Seth told her from where they lay. She could feel him, but no longer see him in the total darkness. “You'll get trampled by the crowd.”
“What if the building falls in on us?” She was shaking and still crying.
“If it does, we're f*cked,” he said bluntly.
They, and everyone else in the room, were well aware that they were three floors underground. They had no idea how to get out, or by what route. The noise in the room was deafening as people shouted to each other, and then hotel employees with powerful flashlights appeared beneath the exit signs. Someone with a bullhorn was telling them to stay calm and proceed with caution toward the exits and not to panic. There were dim lights in the hall beyond, while the ballroom remained totally dark. It had been the most terrifying experience of Sarah's life. Seth grabbed her arm, and pulled her to her feet, as five hundred and sixty people pushed their way toward the exits. There were sounds of people crying, others groaning in pain, some shouting for help, saying that someone next to them was hurt.
Sister Maggie was already on her feet, moving into the crowd rather than out of the room. “What are you doing?” Father Joe shouted after her—they could see dimly now in the light from the hall beyond. The enormous urns of roses had fallen over, and the scene in the ballroom was one of total chaos and disorder. Father Joe thought Maggie was confused as she made her way deeper into the room.
“I'll meet you outside!” she shouted, as she disappeared into the crowd, and within minutes was on her knees next to a man who said he thought he'd had a heart attack, but had nitroglycerin in his pocket. She reached in unceremoniously and helped him find it, took out a pill, and put it in his mouth, and then told him not to move. She was sure help would come soon to assist the injured.
She left him with his frightened wife, and moved along a littered path wishing she was wearing her workboots and not the flat pumps she had worn. The ballroom floor was an obstacle course of tables lying on their sides or even upside down, with food, dishes, and broken glass everywhere, and some people lying amid the debris. Sister Maggie made her way systematically toward them, as did several other people who said they were doctors. There had been many of them in the room, but only a few had stayed to help the wounded. A crying woman with an injured arm said she thought she was going into labor. Sister Maggie told her not to even think about it until she got out of the hotel, and the pregnant woman smiled as Maggie helped her stand up and start moving out of the ballroom holding tightly to her husband's arm. Everyone was terrified of an aftershock, which might be even worse than the first quake. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that it had been greater than seven on the Richter scale, maybe even eight, and there were groaning sounds in the room all around them as the earth settled again, which was anything but reassuring.
At the front of the room, Everett Carson had been next to Melanie when the quake hit. As the room tilted crazily, she had slid right off the stage into his arms, and they both fell to the floor. He helped her up when the shaking stopped.
“Are you okay? That was a great performance, by the way,” he said lightly. Once they opened the ballroom doors and light filtered in from the hall he noticed that her costume had torn, and one of her breasts was exposed. He slipped his tuxedo jacket on her to cover her up.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding dazed. “What happened?”
“About a sevenor eight-point quake, I believe,” Everett said.
“Shit, now what do we do?” Melanie looked scared, but not panicked.
“We do what they're telling us, and we get our asses out of here and try not to get trampled.” He had been through earthquakes, tsunamis, and similar disasters in Southeast Asia over the years. But there was no question, this had been a big one. It had been exactly a hundred years since the last big San Francisco earthquake in 1906.
“I should find my mom,” Melanie said, looking around. There was no sign of her or Jake, and no way to recognize people easily in the room. It was too dark. And so many people were shouting, and there was such pandemonium going on around them that you couldn't hear anyone except the person standing next to you.
“You'd better look for her outside,” Everett warned her, as she started to make her way to where the stage had been. It had collapsed, and all the band's equipment had slid off. The grand piano was teetering at a crazy angle, and fortunately hadn't fallen on anyone. “Are you okay?” Melanie looked a little stunned.
“Yeah…I am…” He headed her toward the exits then, and told her he was staying for a few more minutes. He wanted to see if there was anything he could do to help the people in the ballroom.
A few minutes later, he stumbled over a woman helping a man who said he'd had a heart attack. The woman moved away to help someone else, and Everett helped get the man outside. He and a man who said he was a doctor put him on a chair and lifted him up. They had to carry him up three flights of stairs. There were paramedics, ambulances, and fire trucks outside, helping people pouring out of the hotel with minor injuries and reporting on others who were hurt inside. A battalion of firemen rushed in. There was no evidence of fires around them, but electric lines were down, and there were sparks shooting into the air as firemen with bullhorns shouted at them to stay clear, and set up barricades. Everett noticed quickly that the city all around them was dark. And then by instinct more than design, he reached for the camera still slung around his neck, and started taking pictures of the scene, without intruding on the gravely injured. Everyone around him looked dazed. The man who had the heart attack was already on the way to the hospital in an ambulance, along with another man who had a broken leg. There were injured people lying on the street, most of whom had come out of the hotel, and others who hadn't. The stoplights were no longer functioning, and traffic had stopped. A cable car at the corner had jumped the tracks, and at least forty people were injured, as paramedics and firemen ministered to them. One woman was dead and had been covered by a tarp. It was a grisly scene, and Everett didn't even notice till he got outside and saw blood on his shirt that he had a cut on his cheek. He had no idea how it had happened. It appeared to be superficial and he wasn't worried about it. He took a towel when a hotel employee handed it to him and wiped his face. There were dozens of them handing out towels, blankets, and bottles of water for the shocked people all around them. No one could figure out what to do next. They just stood there, staring at each other, and talking about what had happened. There were several thousand people crowded into the street as the hotel was emptied. Half an hour later the firemen said that the ballroom was clear now. It was then that Everett noticed Sarah Sloane standing near him with her husband. Her dress was torn and covered with wine and the remains of dessert that had been on their table when it tipped over.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. It was the same question everyone was asking each other again and again. She was crying, and her husband looked distressed. So was everyone else. People were crying all around them, in shock, fear, and relief, and worried about their families at home. Sarah had been frantically calling on her cell phone, which didn't work. Seth had tried his too, and looked grim.
“I'm worried about my babies,” she explained. “They're at home with a babysitter. I don't even know how we'll get there. I guess we'll have to walk.” Someone had said that the garage where all their cars were parked had collapsed, and there were people trapped inside. There was no way to access their cars, and everyone whose car had been in it was now stranded. There were no cabs. San Francisco had become a ghost town in a matter of minutes. It was after midnight, and the quake had hit an hour before. The Ritz-Carlton employees were being wonderful, wandering through the crowd, asking people what they could do to help. There wasn't much anyone could do right now, except the paramedics and firemen trying to triage those who had been hurt.
A few minutes later, the firemen announced that there was an emergency earthquake shelter two blocks away, and gave them directions. They urged people to get off the street and go there. Power lines were down, and there were live wires on the street. They were warned to steer a wide berth around them, and to go to the shelter rather than try to go home. The possibility of an aftershock was still frightening everyone. As the firemen told the crowd what to do, Everett continued taking pictures. This was the kind of work he loved. He wasn't preying on people's miseries, he was discreet, capturing this extraordinary moment in time that he already knew was a historical event.
There was finally a shift in movement in the crowd, as they walked on shaking legs toward the earthquake shelter down the hill. People kept talking to each other about what had happened, what they had thought at first, and where they'd been. One man had been in the shower in his room at the hotel, and said he thought it was some kind of vibrating feature in the tub for the first seconds. He was wearing a terrycloth robe and nothing else, and his feet were bare. One of them was cut, from glass lying in the street, but there was nothing anyone could do. And another woman said she thought she had broken the bed as she slid toward the floor, and then the whole room rock-and-rolled like a carnival game. But this was no game. It was the second-biggest disaster the city had ever known.
Everett took a bottle of water from a bellman handing them out. He opened it, took a long swig, and realized how dry his mouth was. There were clouds of dust coming out of the hotel from structures inside that had broken, and things that had collapsed. No bodies had been brought out. The firemen were covering those who had died with tarps in the lobby as a central location. There were about twenty so far, and there were rumors that people were trapped inside, which made everyone panic. Here and there, people were crying, unable to find the friends or relatives they had been staying with in the hotel, or still hadn't located in the group from the benefit. They were easy to identify from their torn and soiled evening clothes. They looked like survivors of the Titanic. It was then that Everett spotted Melanie and her mother. Her mother was crying hysterically. Melanie looked alert and calm, and was still wearing his rented tuxedo jacket.
“Are you okay?” he asked the familiar question, and she smiled and nodded.
“Yeah. My mom is pretty freaked out. She thinks there will be a bigger one in a few minutes. Do you want your jacket back?” She would have been nearly naked if she'd given it back to him, and he shook his head. “I can put on a blanket.”
“Keep it. It looks good on you. Everyone accounted for in your group?” He knew she'd had a large entourage with her, and he saw only her mother.
“My friend Ashley hurt her ankle, and the paramedics are taking care of her. My boyfriend was pretty drunk, and the guys in my band had to carry him out. He's throwing up somewhere over there.” She gestured vaguely. “Everyone else is okay.” She looked like a teenager again now that she was off the stage, but he remembered her performance and how remarkable it was. So would everyone else after tonight.
“You should go to the shelter. It's safer there,” Everett said to both of them, and Janet Hastings started pulling on her daughter. She agreed with Everett and wanted to get off the street before the next quake came.
“I think I might stay here for a while,” Melanie said softly, and told her mother to go on without her, which only made her cry harder. Melanie said she wanted to stay and help, which Everett thought was admirable. And then for the first time, he wondered if he wanted a drink, and was pleased to realize that he didn't. This was a first. Even with the excuse of a major earthquake, he had no desire to get drunk. He broke into a broad grin as he thought it, while Janet headed toward the shelter, and Melanie disappeared into the crowd as her mother panicked.
“She'll be okay,” Everett reassured Janet. “When I see her again, I'll send her to you at the shelter. You go on with the others.” Janet looked uncertain, but the movement of the crowd heading toward the shelter and her own desire to get there swept her away. Everett figured that whether or not he found her, Melanie would be fine. She was young and resourceful, the members of her band were near at hand, and if she wanted to help the injured in the crowd, that didn't seem like such a bad idea to him. There were a lot of people around them who needed assistance of some kind, more than the paramedics could provide.
He was taking pictures again when he came across the small redheaded woman he'd seen help the man with the heart attack and then move on. He saw her assist a child, and turn her over to a fireman to try and help her find her mother. Everett took several photographs of the woman, and then dropped his camera again as she moved away from the little girl.
“Are you a doctor?” he asked with interest. She had seemed very confident in her treatment of the man with the heart attack.
“No, I'm a nurse,” she said simply, her brilliant blue eyes locking into his briefly, and then she smiled. There was something both funny and touching about her. She had the most magnetic eyes he'd ever seen.
“That's a good thing to be tonight.” Many people had gotten hurt, not all of them severely. But there were a multitude of cuts and minor injuries, as well as bigger ones, and several people had gone into shock. He knew he'd seen the woman at the benefit, but there was something incongruous about her plain black dress and flat shoes. Her coif had vanished in the aftermath of the quake, and it never occurred to him what she was, other than a nurse. She had an ageless, timeless face, and it would have been difficult to guess her age. He figured her for late thirties, early forties, and in fact she was fortytwo. She stopped to talk to someone as he followed her, and then she paused for a bottle of water herself. They were all feeling the effects of the dust still billowing from the hotel.
“Are you going to the shelter? They probably need help there too,” he commented. He had thrown his bow tie away by then, and there was blood on his shirt from the cut on his cheek. But she shook her head.
“I'm going to head out when I've done all I can here. I figure the people in my neighborhood can use some help too.”
“Where do you live?” he asked with interest, although he didn't know the city well. But there was something about this woman that intrigued him. And maybe there was a story in it somewhere, you never knew. His journalistic instincts came alive just looking at her.
She smiled at his question. “I live in the Tenderloin, not far from here.” But where she lived was worlds apart from all this. In that neighborhood, a few blocks made a huge difference.
“That's a pretty rough neighborhood, isn't it?” He was increasingly intrigued. He had heard of the Tenderloin, with its drug addicts, prostitutes, and derelicts.
“Yes, it is,” she said honestly. But she was happy there.
“And that's where you live?” He looked startled and confused.
“Yes.” She smiled at him, her red hair and face streaked with dirt, and the electric blue eyes grinning impishly at him. “I like it there.” He had a sixth sense about a story then, and knew intuitively that she was going to turn out to be one of the heroes of the night. When she went back to the Tenderloin, he wanted to be with her. For sure, there was going to be a story in it for him.
“My name is Everett. Can I come with you?” he asked her simply, as she hesitated for a minute and then nodded.
“It might be dicey getting there, because of all the live wires on the street. And they're not going to rush to help people in that neighborhood. All the rescue teams will be here, or in other parts of the city. Just call me Maggie, by the way.”
It was another hour before they left the scene outside the Ritz. It was nearly three in the morning by then. Most people had either gone to the shelter or decided to go home. He never saw Melanie again, but wasn't worried about her. The ambulances had left with the critically injured, and the firemen seemed to have things in good control. They could hear sirens in the distance, and Everett assumed fires had broken out, and water mains had broken, so they were going to have a tough time fighting the fires. He followed the little woman doggedly as he accompanied her home. They walked up California Street, then down Nob Hill, heading south. They passed Union Square, and eventually turned right and headed west on O'Farrell. They were both shocked to see that almost all the windows in the department stores on Union Square had popped out and broken on the street. And there was a similar scene outside the St. Francis Hotel to the one they had just left at the Ritz. The hotels had been emptied, and people had been directed to shelters. It took them half an hour to reach where she lived.
People were standing around on the street, and looked markedly different here. They were shabbily dressed, some were still high on drugs, others looked scared. Store windows had shattered, drunks were lying in the street, and a cluster of prostitutes were huddling close together. Everett was intrigued to note that almost everyone seemed to know Maggie. She stopped and talked to them, inquiring how everyone was doing, if people had gotten hurt, if help had come, and how the neighborhood was faring. They chatted animatedly with her, and eventually she and Everett sat down in a doorway on a stoop. It was nearly five A.M. by then, and Maggie didn't even look tired.
“Who are you?” he asked, fascinated by her. “I feel like I'm in some kind of strange movie, with an angel who came to earth, and maybe no one can see you but me.” She laughed at his description of her and reminded him that no one else was having a problem seeing her. She was real, human, and entirely visible, as any of the hookers on the street would have agreed.
“Maybe the answer to your question is a what, not a who,” she said comfortably, wishing she could get out of her habit. It was just a plain, ugly black dress, but she was missing her jeans. From what she could see, her building had been shaken up but not damaged dangerously, and there was nothing to stop her from going in. Firemen and police were not directing people to shelters here.
“What does that mean?” Everett asked, looking puzzled. He was tired. It had been a long night for both of them, but she looked fresh as a rose, and a lot livelier than she had at the benefit.
“I'm a nun,” she said simply. “These are the people I work with and take care of. I do most of my work on the streets. All of it, in fact. I've lived here for nearly ten years.”
“You're a nun?” he asked her with a look of amazement. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“I don't know.” She shrugged comfortably, perfectly at ease talking to him, particularly here on the street. This was the world she knew best, far better than any ballroom. “I didn't think about it. Does it make a difference?”
“Hell, yes …I mean no,” he corrected himself, and then thought about it further. “I mean yes … of course it makes a difference. That's a really important detail about you. You're a very interesting person, particularly if you live here. Don't you live in a convent, or something?”
“No, mine disbanded years ago. There weren't enough nuns here in my order to justify keeping the convent going. They turned it into a school. The diocese gives all of us an allowance, and we live in apartments. Some of the nuns live in twos or threes, but no one wanted to live here with me.” She grinned at him. “They wanted to live in better neighborhoods. My work is here. This is my mission.”
“What's your real name?” he asked, totally intrigued now. “I mean your nun name.”
“Sister Mary Magdalen,” she said gently.
“I'm utterly blown away,” he admitted, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. It was the first one he'd smoked all night, and she didn't seem to disapprove. She seemed to be totally at ease in the real world, in spite of the fact that she was a nun. She was the first nun he'd talked to in years, and never as freely as this. They felt like combat buddies after what they'd just been through, and in some ways they were. “Do you like being a nun?” he asked her, and she nodded, thinking about it for a minute, and then she turned to him.
“I love it. Going into the convent was the best thing I ever did. I always knew it was what I wanted to do, ever since I was a kid. Like being a doctor or a lawyer or a ballet dancer. They call it an early vocation. This has always been it for me.”
“Have you ever been sorry you did it?”
“No.” She smiled happily at him. “Never. It's been the perfect life for me. I went in right after I finished nursing school. I grew up in Chicago, the eldest of seven children. I always knew this would be right for me.”
“Did you ever have a boyfriend?” He was intrigued by what she said.
“One,” she confessed easily, with no embarrassment about it. She hadn't thought about him in years. “When I was in nursing school.”
“What happened?” He was sure some romantic tragedy had driven her into the convent. He couldn't imagine doing that for any other reason. The concept was totally foreign to him. He had grown up Lutheran, and had never even seen a nun until he left home. The whole idea of it had never made much sense to him. But here was this happy, contented little woman who talked about her life among hookers and drug addicts with such serenity, joy, and peace. It utterly amazed him.
“He died in a car accident in my second year of nursing school. But even if he'd lived, it wouldn't have made a difference. I told him right from the beginning that I wanted to be a nun, although I'm not sure he believed me. I never went out with anyone else after that, because by then I was sure. I probably would have stopped going out with him too. But we were both young, and it was all very innocent and harmless. By today's standards, for sure.” In other words, Everett understood, she had been a virgin when she entered the convent, and still was. The whole idea seemed unbelievable to him. And a waste of a very pretty woman. She seemed so alive and vibrant to him.
“That's amazing.”
“Not really. It's just what some people do.” She accepted it as normal, although it seemed anything but to him. “What about you? Married? Divorced? Kids?” She could sense he had a story, and he felt comfortable sharing it with her. She was easy to talk to, and he enjoyed her company. He realized now that the plain black dress was her habit. It explained why she hadn't been in evening clothes like everyone else at the benefit.
“I got a girl pregnant when I was eighteen, married her because her father said I had to or he'd kill me, and we split up the following year. Marriage wasn't for me, not at that age at least. She filed for divorce eventually, and got remarried, I think. I only saw my boy again once after we divorced, when he was about three. I just wasn't ready for fatherhood right then. I felt bad about it when I left, but it was so overwhelming for a kid the age I was then. So I left. I didn't know what else to do. I've spent his whole life and most of mine running around the world covering war zones and catastrophes for the AP ever since. It's been a crazy life, but it suited me. I loved it. And by now, I've grown up, and so has he. He doesn't need me anymore, and his mother was so furious with me, she had our marriage annulled by the church later, so she could remarry. So officially, I never existed,” Everett said quietly as she watched him.
“We always need our parents,” she said softly and they were both quiet for a minute as he thought about what she'd said. “The AP will be happy with the pictures you took tonight,” she said encouragingly. He didn't tell her about his Pulitzer. He never talked about it.
“I don't work for them anymore,” he said simply. “I picked up some bad habits on the road. They got out of hand about a year ago, when I damn near died of alcohol poisoning in Bangkok and a hooker saved me. She got me to a hospital, and eventually I came back and dried out. I went into rehab after the AP fired me, and they were justified doing that. I've been sober for a year. It feels pretty good. I just started the job at the magazine I was covering the benefit for. It's not my kind of thing. It's celebrity gossip. I'd rather be getting my ass shot off somewhere uncivilized than in a ballroom like tonight, wearing a tuxedo.”
“So would I,” she said, laughing. “It's not my thing either.” She explained that she was at a donated table and a friend had given her the ticket, even though she didn't want to attend, and she had gone so as not to waste it. “I'd much rather be working on the streets with these people than doing anything else. What about your son? Do you ever wonder about him or want to see him? How old is he now?” She was curious about Everett too, and brought up his boy again. She was a great believer in the importance of family in people's lives. And it was rare for her to have a chance to talk to someone like him. And even odder for him to be talking to a nun.
“He'll be thirty in a few weeks. I think about him sometimes, but it's a little late for that. Or a lot late. You don't walk back into someone's life when they're thirty and ask them how they've been. He probably hates my guts for running out on him.”
“Do you hate your guts for it?” she asked succinctly.
“Sometimes. Not often. I thought about it when I was in rehab. But you just don't spring up in someone's life after they're all grown up.”
“Maybe you do,” she said softly. “Maybe he'd like to hear from you. Do you know where he is?”
“I used to. I could try to find out. I don't think I should. What could I say to him?”
“Maybe there are things he'd want to ask you. It might be a nice thing to do for him, to let him know that your moving on had nothing to do with him.” She was a smart woman, and Everett nodded as he looked at her.
They walked around the neighborhood for a little while after that, and everything seemed to be in surprisingly good order. Some people had gone to shelters. A few had gotten hurt, and been taken to hospitals. The rest seemed to be doing okay, although everybody was talking about the force of the quake. It had been a huge one.
At six-thirty that morning Maggie said she was going to try and get some sleep and then go back out on the street in a few hours to check on her people. Everett said he was probably going to try and get a bus, train, or plane back to L.A. as soon as he could, or rent a car if he could find one. He had taken plenty of pictures. For his own purposes, he wanted to cruise around the city a little and see if there was anything else he wanted to shoot before he went back. He didn't want to miss a story, and he was taking some great material back with him. He was actually tempted to stay a few more days, but he wasn't sure how his editor would react. And for San Francisco and the surrounding areas, there was no phone communication with the outside world at the moment so he couldn't check out his reaction.
“I got some nice shots of you tonight,” Everett told Maggie as he left her on her doorstep. She lived in an ancient-looking building that looked as disreputable as it did old, but it didn't seem to worry her. She said she had lived there for years and was a fixture in the neighborhood. He jotted down her address and told her he'd send prints of the photographs to her. He asked her for her phone number, in case he ever came back to the city. “If I do, I'll take you to dinner,” he promised. “I had a nice time talking to you.”
“So did I,” she said, smiling up at him. “It's going to take a long time to clean up the city. I hope too many people weren't killed tonight.” She looked worried. They had no way of getting news. They were cut off from the world, without electricity or cell phones. It was a strange feeling.
The sun was coming up as he said goodbye to her, and he wondered if he'd ever see her again. It seemed unlikely. It had been an odd and unforgettable night for all of them.
“Goodbye, Maggie,” he said as she let herself into the building. There were bits of broken plaster lying all over the hallway, but she commented with a smile that it hardly looked worse than usual. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” she said as she waved at him and closed the door. An evil smell had drifted toward them as she opened the door into the hallway, and he couldn't imagine how she could live there. She was truly a saintly woman, he realized as he walked away, and then laughed softly. He had spent the night of the San Francisco earthquake with a nun. He thought she was a hero. He could hardly wait to see the pictures of her. And then oddly, as he walked away from her building, back through the Tenderloin, he found himself thinking about his son, and the way Chad had looked when he was three, and for the first time in the twenty-seven years since he'd last seen him, he missed him. Maybe he would look him up one day, if he ever got back to Montana, and if Chad was still living there. It was something to think about. Some of what Maggie had said had gotten under his skin, and he forced it out of his head again. He didn't want to feel guilty about his son. It was too late for that, and would do neither of them any good. He strode off then in his lucky boots, past the drunks and the hookers on Maggie's street. The sun was coming up, as he walked back into the heart of the city to see what stories of the earthquake he would find there. There were endless opportunities to shoot. And for him, who knew, maybe even another Pulitzer one day. Even after the shocking events of the previous night, he felt better than he had in years. He was back in the saddle as a journalist, and felt more confident and in control of his life than ever before.