Grief Street

understood than another: how was it that Sister Roberta Lowther had not changed in appearance in all these years?
    Many nuns I have known, Sister Roberta included, simply do not age. If they are young when we first come to know them, they remain forever so; if old, then they looked that way their whole lives. Sister Roberta was a nun of the first category.
    Back when I was wearing short pants in her classroom, her face was oval and fair, as unlined as a dish of sweet cream. She was remarkably pretty for a nun so capable of unpretty tales calculated to terrify us boys.
    Every day, of course, she wore the same ensemble: ankle-length black habit, purple rosary dangling down her hip, mannish steel-frame convent glasses, black shoes with chunky heels, a plain gold band denoting that she was a bride of Christ. Sister Roberta was the first nun I mocked by calling her Mrs. Christ behind her back. She was never without the veil, which concealed any hair that might be graying on Sister’s head, and which also gentled her face in soft shadows. My own mother, Mairead, might look like this, were she a nun. To this day I have no idea what color Sister’s hair is, though I imagine it to be as darkly red as Mother’s own when she herself was young and strong.
    Sister wore all of this today, with one addition. She and many others—the young priest celebrating communion, old Father Declan waiting to deliver the Easter homily, the altar boys, the singers in the choir—wore black armbands, symbol of interfaith mourning for the victims of the Yom Hashoah and Good Friday murders.
    “Peace be with you, Sister,” I whispered to her. Our group had finished its wafers and wine, and had cleared the altar. We were now on our way back to pews, walking slowly to the stiff cadence of liturgical organ music, hands locked in front of us to preserve the blessings—to keep them from slipping out from our fingers and accidentally falling into hell, this according to Creepy Morrison, though I thought at the time he was only having a joke during a bad mood. “Have you ever met my wife?”
    “Why, yes—that lovely McKelvey girl. A Franciscan novitiate, wasn’t she? My own order.”
    “No, Sister. I mean—yes, she was a novitiate. But that and our marriage, it was all some time ago...”
    The formerly lovely Judy McKelvey and I had the usual Wedding ceremony at Holy Cross. I remember thinking at the time that the processional music seemed very much the same as the sound of soldiers going to war.
    “I’m afraid neither of these things worked out.”
    “Dear God!” Sister said. Her hand flew to her throat when she realized the full horror of my meaning. “I’m so sorry!”
    Sister Roberta turned, faced the altar, and crossed herself, then took her place in a pew near the back of the sanctuary. Ruby was waiting for me in the one just behind, as she is much more just-in-case about religious matters than myself. Also because she was tending a shopping bag full of wrapped bread. Before turning into my own pew, I leaned down and spoke to Sister. “I’ll look for you after the mass. I want you to meet Ruby. We’re expecting, you know.”
    “Expecting? A baby you mean? You?”
    “Yes.”
    “Dear God!”
    Sister turned and watched as I sidled through my row, bumping over a line of knees and padded kneelers. When I sat down next to Ruby, she grabbed my thigh and squeezed. I caught Sister’s sternly amused look, and wondered what to make of it.
    Ruby put her lips to my ear. “Who is that?” I told her, and then she asked, “The one who runs the shelter?” Yes, I said. “Should we give the bread to her?” A good idea, I agreed.
    I looked up toward the altar, past communion celebrants crowding the aisle, flocking back to their seats. Father Declan had a few more hosts to drop on sinners’ tongues. As he finished up his priestly task, I stared at his tired face, and reflected on the Easter homily he had earlier delivered.
    Ordinarily, Father Declan owns the darkly complexioned type of Irish face, carrying in it a hint of the Spanish Armada and its aftermath of breeding. But today he was ashen; I saw this all the way from the back of the church, as I had seen moments earlier while taking communion. His weariness looked like Slattery’s own of yesterday, as if Father Declan, too, had been up all night writing—in his case a homily. Ordinarily, Father Declan’s homilies are notoriously restful; many a wife’s elbow has thumped the ribs