When she walked across the stage in her cap and gown to receive her diploma, Alex was beaming and the nuns sent up an embarrassing cheer in unison. They were all thrilled and so proud of her, and Sister Tommy said she felt as though her seventh child was graduating. Sister Xavier was crying, Mother MaryMeg looked on proudly, and Sister Regina gave Alex an enormous hug when they joined her after the ceremony. It was hard to believe that she’d been with them for four years and they’d watched her grow up from a young girl to a beautiful young woman, and she was off to college now.
Mother MaryMeg had convinced her to live in the dorms, although Alex was nervous about it, but she’d agreed. Five of the nuns went to settle her in her new room at the end of August. It reminded them all of the day she’d moved into the convent, but this was an exciting, happy event. She had two roommates, and the nuns unpacked for her, made her bed with the sheets and bedspread she’d bought, and helped her put up posters on her side of the room. One of her roommates asked if they were her aunts, and she didn’t answer. She set out a photograph of her father on her desk. She had brought her typewriter with her, and a laptop for her schoolwork, and had bought her books a few days before. She was all set, and all of the nuns who’d come with her had damp eyes when they left her in the dorm with her new roommates, and they cried openly in the car on the way back to the convent, already missing her.
“I feel as though my baby just left home,” Sister Xavier said, blowing her nose in a tissue, as Sister Tommy wiped the tears off her cheeks and agreed. Sister Regina was quiet, and was going to miss Alex acutely. And although she was thirty-one, and Alex eighteen now, their friendship had deepened, and she had confessed to Alex a few weeks before that she was having doubts about her vocation for the first time in sixteen years, and she was no longer sure she had made the right decision. Alex was shocked to hear it, and had promised not to tell anyone.
“What are you going to do about it?” Alex had asked her, as they whispered in her room late at night, while Alex was starting to pack for school.
“Nothing for now. I can’t leave. I don’t want to. But I’m not sure I can stay either. All of a sudden I can’t imagine never having children, and not being married. I don’t know what’s happening to me. And what if I regret it forever if I leave…or if I don’t?” She was seriously confused and going through a personal crisis, and Alex had urged her to think about it and not do anything hasty, which was wise advice. Her words were still ringing in Sister Regina’s ears as they drove back to the convent, and she felt intensely lonely without Alex in her little room right down the hall from her own, clacking away on her typewriter in every spare moment. Her stories had matured and were more complicated, but just as violent, and Sister Xavier said she couldn’t read them anymore, but the magazines loved them and couldn’t get enough.
Dinner at the convent was a mournful event that night, without Alex. Mother MaryMeg began the meal with a prayer for her that she would find joy and growth, knowledge, and wonderful friends in her new life, and there were tears in many of the sisters’ eyes as they prayed for her. And a few miles away at Boston College, Alex was getting to know her roommates.
They all went out for pizza, and met boys from the neighboring dorm. There were a dozen young people at dinner together, boys checking her out, girls chattering around her, pitchers of beer passed around, and for a moment Alex missed the sisters at St. Dominic’s, and then started talking in earnest to her roommates. There was no stopping it now. A new time in her life was beginning. She had grown up, and she felt as though she was spreading her wings and taking flight, awkwardly at first, and then she could feel herself soaring. It was exciting and exhilarating, and terrifying all at once. Here she was, starting college. She just sat there for a minute, watching all of them, and as she did, she had an idea for a story about a murder in a college dorm. She could hardly wait to write it that night. And when the others went out after dinner to explore the campus, Alex rushed back to her room to write.
Chapter 7
Alex had taken on a heavy load of six classes for her first semester. She wanted to get her required classes out of the way as quickly as possible, so she could take more that she would enjoy. But she found that she liked the ones she had signed up for, including an eighteenth-century English literature class, which required writing. She knew it was good for her to write more than crime stories and mysteries. She took history and a math class, and a women’s studies class. She had a lot of reading to do at night, and loved being challenged by the work. Most of her high school classes had been easy for her, and it was exciting to be taking more challenging courses, taught by professors she admired. She noticed that one of her roommates studied as much as she did and they went to the library together. She was from Hong Kong and a physics major. She’d wanted to go to MIT and didn’t get in, but was hoping to try again and transfer for sophomore year. They never saw their other roommate, who was out all the time and had met a boy she was crazy about the first week.
At the end of her first month, Alex went home to the convent, delighted to see the nuns and have a weekend with them, although she had brought home a lot of reading to do, and had a paper to write for her English lit class. She hadn’t had time to write any of her own stories for a month, and was frustrated about it.
Sister Regina came to her room after dinner on her first night back, and they talked late into the night. Regina was as troubled as ever about her vocation qualms, and she was debating about talking to Mother MaryMeg about it. She had seen other nuns leave over the years, and told Alex she didn’t want to be one of them, but staying in the life she had chosen was becoming harder and harder. She had been depressed for months thinking about it, and Alex was worried about her.
“You should talk to Mother MaryMeg,” Alex encouraged her. She didn’t know what else to advise, and the choice that women made who wanted to be nuns was still a mystery to Alex, even after living with them for four years. She believed in God, but her religious convictions were not strong enough to make her want to give up the world. She had never been in love and had dated only a few times, for proms, or gone to the movies in groups, but the idea of never marrying and never having kids still seemed strange to her, and an unnatural choice, so she sympathized with Sister Regina’s confusion. Regina had started writing, inspired by Alex, but it was more of a distraction, or an outlet of some kind, not a burning desire like what drove Alex, who was compelled to write. But she thought that Regina’s short stories were good.
“What kind of work would you do if you left?” Alex asked her.
“Teach, like I do here.” But leaving the convent would be like leaving the womb, and the thought of it frightened her enough to keep her there for the time being. But she wasn’t happy, and Alex could see it. She didn’t know what the right answer was for her, and didn’t feel she had the experience to advise her.