Angelology

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
Evangeline walked to the far end of the fourth floor, beyond the television room to a rickety iron door that opened upon a set of mildewed steps. Mindful of the softness of the wood, she followed the steps up, moving with the curvature of the damp stone wall until she stood in a narrow, circular turret high above the convent’s grounds. The tower was the only piece of the original structure remaining in the upper floors. It grew from the Adoration Chapel itself, rose in a twist of spiraled stairs past the second and third floors and opened up on the fourth floor, giving the sisters access from their bedroom chambers straight to the chapel. Although the turret had been designed to offer the sisters a direct path to their midnight devotionals, it had long been abandoned for the main staircase, which had the benefit of heat and electricity. Although the fire of 1944 had not reached the turret, Evangeline sensed smoke lingering in the rafters, as if the room had inhaled the sticky tar of the fumes and stopped breathing. Electrical wiring had never been installed, and the only light came from a series of lancet windows with heavy, handmade leaded glass that spanned the east curve of the tower. Even now, at midday, the room was consumed by an icy darkness as the relentless north wind rattled against the glass.
Evangeline pressed her hands upon the chilled windowpane. In the distance, anemic winter sunshine fell over a rise of rolling hills. Even the sunniest of December days cast a pall over the landscape, as if light passed through an unfocused lens. In the summer months, an abundance of brightness collected upon the trees each afternoon, giving the leaves an iridescent hue that winter light, no matter how bright, could not match. A month before, perhaps five weeks, the leaves had been brilliant umber, red, orange, yellow, a quiltwork of color reflected in the brown glass of river water. Evangeline imagined day-trippers from New York City taking the passenger train along the east side of the Hudson, gazing at the lovely foliage on their way to pick apples or pumpkins. Now the trees were bare, the hills covered with snow.
Evangeline took refuge in the tower only rarely, at best once or twice a year, when her thoughts drew her away from the community at large and sent her in search of a quiet place to think. It was not the usual order of things for one of the sisters to steal away from the group for contemplation, and Evangeline would often feel remorse for her actions for days after. And yet she could not stay away from the turret completely. Upon each visit she noticed how her mind attenuated, how her thoughts became clear and sharp as she ascended the steps, and even clearer as she peered over the landscape of the convent.
Standing at the window, she recalled the dream that had woken her that morning. Her mother had appeared to her, speaking softly in a language Evangeline could not comprehend. The ache she’d felt when she tried to hear her mother’s voice again had remained with her all morning, and yet she did not remonstrate with herself for thinking of her mother. It was only natural. Today, the twenty-third of December, was Angela’s birthday.
Evangeline remembered only fragments of her mother—Angela’s long blond hair; the sound of her rapid, mellifluous French as she spoke on the telephone; her habit of leaving a cigarette in a glass ashtray, the air filling with nets of smoke that dissolved before Evangeline’s eyes. She recalled the incredible height of her mother’s shadow, a diaphanous darkness moving upon the wall of their fourteenth arrondissement apartment.
On the day her mother died, Evangeline’s father picked her up from school in their red Citro?n DS. He was alone, and this was unusual in itself. Her parents had the same line of work, a calling Evangeline knew now to be extremely dangerous, and they rarely went anywhere without each other. Evangeline saw at once that her father had been crying—his eyes were swollen and his skin ashen. After she climbed into the backseat of the car, arranging her coat and dropping her bookbag on her lap, her father told her that her mother was no longer with them. “She has left?” Evangeline asked, feeling a desperate confusion fill her as she tried to understand what he meant. “Where has she gone?”
Her father shook his head, as if the answer were incomprehensible. He said, “She has been taken from us.”
Later, when Evangeline understood fully that Angela had been abducted and killed, she could not quite understand why her father had chosen the words he had. Her mother had not simply been taken: Her mother had been murdered, extinguished from the world as thoroughly as light leaves the sky when the sun sinks behind the horizon.
As a girl, Evangeline had not had the ability to understand how young her mother had been when she’d died. With time, however, she began to measure her own age in relation to Angela’s life, holding each year as a precious reenactment. At eighteen, her mother had met Evangeline’s father. At eighteen, Evangeline had taken vows as a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. At twenty-three, the age Evangeline had reached at present, her mother had married her father. At thirty-nine, her mother had been killed. In comparing the timelines of their lives, Evangeline wove her existence around her mother as if she were wisteria clinging to a trellis. No matter how she tried to convince herself that she had been fine without her mother and that her father had managed the best he could, she knew that in every minute of every day Angela’s absence lived in her heart.
Evangeline was born in Paris. They lived together—her father and mother and Evangeline—in an apartment in Montparnasse. The rooms of the apartment were burned upon her memory so vividly that she felt as if she’d lived there yesterday. The apartment rambled, each room connecting to the next, with high, coffered ceilings and immense windows that filled the space with a granular gray light. The bathroom was abnormally large—as big as the communal lavatory at St. Rose, at least. Evangeline remembered her mother’s clothes hooked upon the bathroom wall—a lightweight spring dress and a brilliant red silk scarf knotted about the hanger’s neck and a pair of patent-leather sandals placed below them, arranged as if worn by an invisible woman. A porcelain bathtub crouched at the center of the bathroom, compact and heavy as a living thing, its lip glistening with water, its clawed feet curled.
Another memory Evangeline held close, playing and replaying it in her mind as if it were a film, was of a walk she had taken with her mother the year of her death. Hand in hand they went along the sidewalks and cobblestone streets, moving so fast that Evangeline had to jog to keep up with Angela’s stride. It was spring, or so she guessed from the colorful abundance of flowers in the window boxes hanging from the apartment blocks.
Angela had been anxious that afternoon. Holding Evangeline’s hand tightly, she led her through the courtyard of a university—at least Evangeline had believed it to be a university, with its great stone portico and the abundance of people lounging in the courtyard. The building appeared exceptionally old, but everything in Paris seemed ancient compared to America, especially in Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter. Of one thing, however, she was certain: Angela was searching for someone in the masses of people. She dragged Evangeline through the crowd, squeezing her hand until it tingled, signaling that she should hurry to keep up. Finally a middle-aged woman greeted them, stepping close and kissing her mother on both cheeks. The woman had black hair and her mother’s lovely, chiseled features, softened only slightly by age. Evangeline recognized her grandmother, Gabriella, but knew that she was not allowed to speak to her. Angela and Gabriella had quarreled, as they often did, and Evangeline knew not to put herself between them. Many years later, when both she and her grandmother lived in the United States, Evangeline began to learn more about Gabriella. It was only then that she came to understand her grandmother with some clarity.
Although so many years had passed, it still upset Evangeline that the one thing she recalled from the walk with her mother with extreme precision struck her as bizarrely mundane—the gleaming leather of her mother’s brown knee-high boots worn over a pair of faded blue jeans. For some reason Evangeline could recall everything about the boots—the stacked heels, the zippers that tracked from ankle to calf, the sound the soles made upon brick and stone—but she could not for the life of her recall the shape of her mother’s hand, the curve of her shoulders. Through the haze of time, she had lost the essence of her mother.
What tortured Evangeline perhaps most of all was that she had lost the ability to recall her mother’s face. From photographs she knew that Angela had been tall and thin and fair, her hair often tucked up in a cap in a way that Evangeline associated with gamine French actresses of the 1960s. But in each picture, Angela’s face appeared so different that Evangeline had difficulty creating a composite image. In profile her nose seemed sharp and her lips thin. At three-quarters her cheeks were full and high, almost Asian. When looking directly at the camera, her big blue eyes overwhelmed all else. It seemed to Evangeline that the structure of her mother’s face shifted with the light and position of the camera, leaving nothing solid behind.
Evangeline’s father had not wished to discuss Angela after her death. If Evangeline inquired about her, he would often simply turn away, as if he had not heard her speak. Other times, if he had opened a bottle of wine with their dinner, he might relate a tantalizing piece of information about her—the way Angela would spend all night at her laboratory and return to the apartment at sunrise. How she would become so engrossed in her work that she would leave books and papers wherever they fell; how she wished to live near the ocean, away from Paris; the happiness Evangeline had brought her. In all the years they lived together, he had discouraged any substantial discussion of her. And yet when Evangeline asked about her mother, something in his demeanor opened, as if welcoming a spirit that brought pain and comfort in equal measure. Hating and loving the past, her father seemed both to welcome Angela’s ghost and to persuade himself that it did not exist at all. Evangeline was certain that he had never stopped loving her. He had never remarried and had few friends in the United States. For many years he made a weekly call to Paris, talking for hours in a language that Evangeline found so gorgeous and musical that she would sit in the kitchen and simply listen to his voice.
Her father had brought her to St. Rose when she was twelve, entrusting her to the women who would become her mentors, encouraging her to believe in their world when, if she were honest with herself, faith seemed like a precious but unattainable substance, one possessed by many but denied to her. Over time Evangeline came to understand that her father valued obedience above faith, training above creativity, and restraint above emotion. Over time she had fallen into routine and duty. Over time she had lost sight of her mother, her grandmother, herself.
Her father visited her often at St. Rose. He sat with her in the community room, frozen upon the couch, watching her with great interest, as if she were an experiment whose outcome he wished to observe. Her father would stare intently into her face as if it were a telescope through which, if he strained his vision, he might view the features of his beloved wife. But, in truth, Evangeline looked nothing at all like her mother. Instead her features had captured the likeness of her grandmother, Gabriella. It was a likeness her father chose to ignore. He had died three years before, but while he had lived, he held steadfastly to the conviction that his only child resembled a ghost.
Evangeline squeezed the necklace in her hand until the sharp point of the lyre drove deep into the skin of her palm. She knew she must hurry—she was needed in the library, and the sisters might wonder where she had gone—and so she let thoughts of her parents recede and focused upon the task at hand.
Bending to the floor, she slid her fingers over the rough brickwork of the turret wall until she felt the slightest movement in the third row from the floor. Inserting the flat of a fingernail into a groove, she levered the loose brick and pulled it from the wall. From the space Evangeline removed a narrow steel box. The very act of touching the cold metal relieved her mind, as if its solidity contradicted the insubstantial quality of memory.
Evangeline set the box before her and lifted the top. Inside was a small diary bound with a leather strap and fastened with a golden clasp molded in the shape of an angel, its body long and thin. A blue sapphire marked the angel’s eye, and the wings, when pressed, released the latch so that the pages fell open upon her lap. The leather was worn and scuffed and the binding flexible. On the first page, the word ANGELOLOGY had been stamped in gold. As she flipped through the pages, Evangeline’s eye skimmed over hand-drawn maps, notes scribbled in colored inks, sketches of angels and musical instruments drawn in the margins. A musical score filled a page at the center of the notebook. Historical analysis and biblical lore filled many pages, and in the last quarter of the notebook there grew a mass of numbers and calculations that Evangeline did not understand. The diary had belonged to her grandmother. Now it belonged to Evangeline. She ran her hand over the leather cover, wishing she could understand the secrets inside.
Evangeline withdrew a photograph tucked in the back of the diary, a snapshot of her mother and grandmother, arms wrapped around each other. The picture had been taken the year of Evangeline’s birth—she had compared the date stamped upon the border of the photograph with her own birthday and had come to the conclusion that her mother had been three months pregnant at the time, although her condition wasn’t at all apparent. Evangeline gazed upon it, her heart aching. Angela and Gabriella were happy in the photo. She would give anything, trade everything she had, to be with them again.

Evangeline took care to return to the library with a cheerful expression, hiding her thoughts as best she could. The fire had gone out, and a draft of cold air swept from the stone fireplace at the center of the room and tickled the edges of her skirt. She retrieved a black cardigan from her worktable and wrapped it about her shoulders before going to the center of the rectangular library to investigate. The fireplace was well used in the long, cold winter months, and one of the sisters must have left the flue open. Rather than close the flue, Evangeline opened it fully. She took a piece of the knotty pine stacked in the log rack, placed it in the middle of an iron grating, and lit kindling paper around it. Clasping the brass handles of the bellows, she blew a few subtle gusts of air until the fire, encouraged, caught.
Evangeline had spent very little time studying the angelic texts that had brought St. Rose Convent such renown in theological circles. Some of these texts, such as histories of angelic representation in art and works of serious angelology, including modern copies of medieval angelological schema and studies of Thomas Aquinas’s and St. Augustine’s views on the role of the angels in the universe, had been in the collection from the 1809 founding. A number of studies on angelmorphism could also be found among the stacks, although these were quite academic and did not catch the interest of many of the sisters, especially the younger generation, who (truth be told) did not spend much time on angels at all. The softer side of angelology was also represented, despite the cold eye the community cast upon the New Agers: There were books on the various cults of angel veneration in the ancient and modern world as well as the phenomenon of guardian angels. There were also a number of art books filled with plates, including an exceptional volume of Edward Burne-Jones’s angels that Evangeline loved in particular.
On the opposite wall from the fireplace there stood a rostrum for the library ledger. Here the sisters wrote the titles of books they removed from the stacks, taking as many as they wished to their cells and returning them at will. It was a haphazard system that somehow worked perfectly well, with the same intuitive matriarchal organization that marked the convent. It was not always thus. In the nineteenth century—before the ledger—books had come and gone without systemization, piling up on whatever shelf space was available. The mundane task of finding a work of nonfiction was as much a matter of luck as an impromptu miracle. The library was given over to such chaos until Sister Lucrezia (1851—1923) imposed alphabetization at the turn of the twentieth century. When a later librarian, Sister Drusilla (1890—1985), suggested the Dewey decimal system, there was a general outcry. Rather than succumb to gross systemization, the sisters agreed to the ledger, writing each book’s title in blue ink on the thick paper.
Evangeline’s interests were more practical, and she would rather pore over the lists of local charities run by the sisters—the food bank in Poughkeepsie, the Spirit of World Peace Study Group in Milton, and the St. Rose-Salvation Army Annual Clothes Drive that had drop-off locations from Woodstock to Red Hook. But like all the other nuns who took vows at St. Rose, Evangeline had learned the basic facts about angels. She knew that angels were created before the earth formed, their voices ringing through the void as God molded heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1—5). Evangeline knew that angels were immaterial, ethereal, filled with luminosity, and yet they spoke in human language—Hebrew according to Jewish scholars, Latin or Greek according to Christian. Although the Bible had only a handful of instances of angelophony—Jacob wrestling an angel (Genesis 32:24—30); Ezekiel’s vision (1:1—14); the Annunciation (Luke 1:26—38)—these moments were wondrous and divine, instances when the gossamer curtain between heaven and earth ripped and all of humanity witnessed the marvel of ethereal beings. Evangeline often wondered at this meeting of man and angel, the material and immaterial brushing against each other like wind against the skin. In the end she concluded that trying to capture an angel in the mind was a bit like scooping water with a sieve. And yet the sisters of St. Rose had not given up the effort. Hundreds and hundreds of books about angels lined the shelves of their library.
To Evangeline’s surprise, Sister Philomena joined her at the fire. Philomena’s body was as round and dappled as a pear, her height reduced by osteoporosis. Recently Evangeline had become concerned about Sister Philomena’s health when she began to forget meetings and misplace her keys. The nuns of Philomena’s generation—known by the younger generation as the Elder Sisters—were not able to retire from their duties until much later in life, so dramatically had the order’s numbers decreased in the years after the Vatican II reforms. Sister Philomena in particular always appeared overworked and agitated. In some ways Vatican II had robbed the older generation of retirement.
Evangeline herself believed the reforms beneficial for the most part—she had been free to choose a comfortable uniform over the old-fashioned Franciscan habit and had participated in modern educational opportunities, taking a degree in history from nearby Bard College. The opinions of the Elder Sisters, by contrast, seemed frozen in time. Yet, strange as it seemed, Evangeline held views that were often similar to those of the Elder Sisters, whose opinions had been formed during the Roosevelt era and the Depression and World War II. Evangeline found she admired the opinions of Sister Ludovica, their oldest sister at 104, who would command Evangeline to sit at her side and listen to stories of the old days. “There was none of this laissez-faire, do-what-you-want-to-with-your-time nonsense,” Sister Ludovica would say, leaning over in her wheelchair, her thin hands shaking slightly on her lap. “We were sent to orphanages and parochial schools to teach before we knew the subject! We worked all day and prayed all night! There was no heat in our cells! We bathed in cold water and ate cooked oats and potatoes for supper! When there were no books, I memorized all of John Milton’s Paradise Lost so that I could recite his lovely, lovely words to my class: ‘Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile, / Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived / The mother of mankind, / What time his pride / Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host / Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring / To sethimselfin glory above his peers, / He trusted to have equalled the Most High, / If he opposed, and with ambitious aim /Against the throne and monarchy of God, / Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, / With vain attempt.’ Did the children memorize Milton, too? Yes! Now, I am sad to say, education is all fun and games.”
Still, despite their vast differences in opinion about the changes, the sisters lived as a harmonious family. They were protected from the vicissitudes of the outside world in ways that seculars were not. The St. Rose land and buildings had been bought outright in the late nineteenth century, and despite the temptation to modernize their quarters, they did not borrow on the property. They produced fruits and vegetables on the grounds, their henhouse gave four dozen eggs a day, and their pantries were filled with preserves. The convent was so secure, so abundantly stocked with food and medicine, so well equipped for their intellectual and spiritual needs, that the sisters sometimes joked that if a second Flood were to encompass the Hudson River Valley, it would be possible for the women of St. Rose Convent simply to bolt the heavy iron doors at the front and back entrances, seal the windows tight, and pray on as usual for many years to come in their own self-sustaining ark.
Sister Philomena took Evangeline by the arm and led her to her office, where, stooping over her work area, the dolman sleeves of her habit brushing the keys of the typewriter, she searched through the papers for something. Such hunting about her office was not unusual. Philomena was nearly blind, with thick glasses that occupied a disproportionate portion of her face, and Evangeline often helped her to locate objects that were hidden in plain sight. “Perhaps you can help me,” Sister Philomena said at last.
“I am happy to assist,” Evangeline said, “if you tell me what to look for.”
“I believe we received a letter regarding our angelic collection. Mother Perpetua had a telephone call from a young man in New York City—a researcher or consultant or something of that nature. He claims to have written a letter. Has such a letter come across your desk? I know I would not have missed it had I found such an inquiry. Mother Perpetua wants to be sure we are consistent with St. Rose policy. She would very much like a response sent at once.”
“The letter came today,” Evangeline said.
Sister Philomena peered through the lenses of her glasses, her eyes large and watery as she strained to see Evangeline. “You have read it, then?”
“Of course,” Evangeline said. “I open all mail the instant it arrives.”
“It was a request for information?”
Evangeline was not used to being questioned so directly about her work. “Actually,” she said, “it was a request to visit our archives in search of specific information about Mother Innocenta.”
A dark look passed over Philomena’s face. “You’ve replied to the letter?”
“With our standard response,” Evangeline said, leaving out the fact that she had destroyed the letter before mailing it, an act of duplicity that felt deeply foreign. It was unsettling—her ability to lie to Philomena with such ease. Nevertheless, Evangeline continued, “I am aware that we do not allow amateur research in the archives,” she said. “I wrote that it is our standard policy to refuse such requests. Of course, I was polite.”
“Fine,” Philomena said, examining Evangeline with particular interest. “We must be very careful when we open our home to outsiders. Mother Perpetua gave specific orders to block all inquiries.”
Evangeline was not at all surprised that Mother Perpetua took such a personal interest in their collection. She was a gruff and distant figure at the convent, one whom Evangeline did not see often, a woman with strong opinions and a heady management style whom the Elder Sisters admired for frugality and faulted for modern vision. Indeed, Mother Perpetua had pushed for the Elder Sisters to implement the more benign Vatican II changes, urging them to discard their cumbersome woolen habits for those of lighter fabrics, a suggestion they did not take.
As Evangeline turned to leave the office, Sister Philomena cleared her throat, a sign that she had not finished quite yet and that Evangeline should stay just a moment longer. Philomena said, “I have worked in the archives for many years, my child, and have weighed each request with great care. I have turned away many pesky researchers and writers and pseudo religious. It is a great responsibility to be the guardian at the gate. I would like you to report all unusual correspondence to me.”
“Of course,” Evangeline said, confused by the zeal in Philomena’s voice. Her curiosity getting the better of her, Evangeline added, “There is one thing I was wondering, Sister.”
“Yes?” Philomena responded.
“Was there anything unusual about Mother Innocenta?”
“Unusual?”
“Something that would inspire interest in a private research consultant whose specialty is art history?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion what might interest such people, my dear,” Sister Philomena said, clucking her tongue as she walked to the door. “I would hope that the history of art is filled with enough paintings and sculptures to occupy an art historian indefinitely. Yet, apparently, our collection of angelic images is irresistible. One can never be too careful, child. You will inform me if there are any new requests?”
“Of course,” Evangeline said, feeling her heart beat unnaturally fast.
Sister Philomena must have taken note of her young assistant’s distress and, stepping closer, so that Evangeline could smell something vaguely mineral about her—talcum powder, perhaps, or arthritis cream—she took Evangeline’s hands, warming them between her chubby palms. “Now, there is no reason for worry. We won’t let them in. Try as they might, we will hold the door closed.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Sister,” Evangeline said, smiling despite her bewilderment. “Thank you for your concern.”
“You’re welcome, child,” Philomena said, yawning. “If something more should come up, I’ll be on the fourth floor the remainder of the afternoon. It is nearly time for my nap.”
The instant Sister Philomena had left, Evangeline was thrown into a morass of guilt and speculation over what had just occurred between them. She regretted that she had misled her superior in such a manner, but she also wondered at Philomena’s strange reaction to the letter and the intensity of her desire to keep visitors away from St. Rose’s holdings. Of course Evangeline understood the necessity of protecting the environment of contemplative calm they all worked hard to create. Sister Philomena’s reaction to the letter had seemed excessive, but what had inspired Evangeline to lie in such a bold and unjustifiable fashion? Yet, there it was, a fact: She had lied to an Elder Sister. Even this breach had not assuaged her curiosity. What was the nature of the relationship between Mother Innocenta and Mrs. Rockefeller? What had Sister Philomena meant when she said that they would not “open our home to outsiders”? What harm could possibly come from sharing their beautiful collection of books and images? What did they have to hide? In the years Evangeline had spent at St. Rose—nearly half her life—there had been nothing at all out of the ordinary. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration led exemplary lives.
Evangeline slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the thin, weathered onionskin letter. The writing was florid and slick—her eyes slid across the arches and dips of the cursive with ease. “Your guidance has helped the progress of the expedition enormously, and I daresay my own contributions have been useful as well. Celestine Clochette will be arriving in New York early February. More news will reach you soon. Until then, I am sincerely yours, A. A. Rockefeller.”
Evangeline reread the letter, trying to understand its meaning. She folded the thin paper carefully, securing it in her pocket, knowing that she could not continue her work until she understood the significance of Abigail Rockefeller’s letter.