“I’d like that,” Alex said in response to the dinner invitation, and looked a little dazed at the prospect of moving into a convent, with a group of women she’d never met.
“Good.” The mother superior stood up and smiled at both of them. “You can leave her with us if you want, Bill. One of the nuns can show her around after dinner and drive her home. You don’t need to stick around.” It was six-thirty by then and the dinner bell had sounded ten minutes earlier.
Bill left them in the hallway and promised to call Alex the next day. Mother MaryMeg led Alex down to the basement to the dining hall. You could hear the nuns’ chatter from the stairs. It wasn’t a silent order, and they sounded like any other large group of women, laughing and talking and catching up on the day’s activities. They stood up respectfully when the superior came into the room, but went on talking and called out greetings to her. Several of them noticed Alex standing beside her, looking shy. Mother MaryMeg walked her over to a table of younger nuns who were chatting animatedly and stood up again when the superior approached, and several of them smiled warmly at Alex and said hello. They slid over on the bench where they were seated and made room for her when told she was staying for dinner, and Alex sat down cautiously with them. She was next to Sister Regina, who beamed at her and handed her a platter of roast chicken a few minutes later. “We have pizza on Tuesdays,” she whispered. “Sister Sofia is Italian. She makes great pasta too. I’m a terrible cook,” she admitted and the others at the table agreed, as Alex smiled at them. It was overwhelming meeting so many of them all at once. A few of the nuns around the room were still in their habits from work, most of them nurses from the Catholic hospital nearby, but the others were wearing street clothes, in most cases jeans, which Alex found reassuring.
They were modern and informal, and were a variety of ages, but many of them looked young to Alex, and nothing like what she’d expected. As she helped herself to chicken, spinach, and French fries, all of the nuns at her table asked her questions about school. A number of them had heard about her visit and wondered if she would come to live with them. They told her about all the activities they engaged in, what their daytime jobs were, and the classes they taught at night. Sister Regina said she was the instructor in the new Pilates class, and two of the others taught the art classes for young children in the neighborhood. They made it sound like fun to live and work there.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” one of them asked her, and she thought it was a trick question as she shook her head. She hadn’t been out with any boys yet. There were one or two boys she liked at school, but the subject of dating had never come up, and her father had wanted her to put that off as long as possible, and she still agreed. “I had two at your age,” the nun who had asked admitted, and the others teased her about it, and she said one of them had since become a priest. He still sent her Christmas cards, and was a missionary in Africa.
All the nuns in the group made her feel welcome, and Mother MaryMeg had Sister Regina show her what could be her room if she came to stay with them. It was tiny, and barely big enough for the bed, desk, and dresser that were in it, which were fairly battered and had been donated to the convent. There was nothing charming about the room, and she wondered where she would put all her things, but at least she could put her typewriter on the desk.
“We might be able to squeeze a small bookcase in here for your schoolbooks,” Sister Regina said thoughtfully. Alex didn’t say it, but she wanted to bring some of her father’s books with her too, especially the ones they had loved reading together. It was going to be a tight fit in the small room. “We don’t spend much time in our rooms,” she explained, as they walked downstairs and ran into the mother superior in the hall.
“Would you drive Alex home for me?” Mother MaryMeg asked Sister Regina, who went to get the car keys. Then the nun in the sweatshirt turned to Alex and she could see that Alex was on overload from all she’d seen. Her whole life had changed in the blink of an eye, and where to live, and with whom, was a big decision for a girl her age. “What do you think, Alex?”
“I’d like to come and live here,” she said politely. “Everyone was really nice to me at dinner.” There were tears in her eyes again as she said it. She missed her father, and she didn’t want to leave their home and Elena, but if she had to, at least the nuns seemed friendly and kind and appealed to her more than boarding school. And she might have time to write here, in the tiny room, more so than in a dormitory she’d share with other kids at a residential school. That colored some of her decision, and how welcoming they’d been to her during the visit.
“Why don’t you move in this weekend? There will be plenty of us around to help you. Just let us know when, and I’ll work out the details with Bill,” Mother MaryMeg said warmly, as Sister Regina appeared with the car keys to one of their four station wagons that were in constant use. Alex followed her outside, got into the front seat, and put on her seatbelt, and Sister Regina chatted easily on the drive back to Alex’s home.
“I’m excited that you’re coming to live with us,” the young nun said, smiling at her, when they reached the house Alex had shared with her father. Alex said they were going to rent it out, and keep it so she could live there one day. “I’m sure you’ll miss it, but we’ll take good care of you in the meantime,” she promised, and Alex nodded and thanked her. Sister Regina watched her walk inside after she opened the door with her key, and she saw Elena greet her and peer out at the car that had brought her home, and then the front door closed and Sister Regina drove back to the convent, while Alex sat on her bed and looked around her familiar room.