The Whore's Child

she led me into a small parlor off the main hall. “We must be very still,” she said softly. “Sister Patrice has fallen ill. I am her nurse, you see. I am nurse to all of them.”
    In the little room we took seats opposite each other across a small gateleg table. I must have looked uncomfortable, because Sister Ursula said, “You have always been very nervous of me, and you should not. What harm was in me has wasted away with my flesh.”
    â€œIt’s just that I was bitten by a nun as a child,” I explained.
    Sister Ursula, who’d said so many horrible things about nuns, looked momentarily shocked. Then she smiled. “Oh, I understand that you made a joke,” she said. “I thought that you might be . . . what was that word the boy in our class used to describe those like me?”
    I had to think a minute. “Oh, a misogynist?”
    â€œYes, that. Would you tell me the truth if I asked you do you like women?”
    â€œYes, I do. Very much.”
    â€œAnd I men, so we are the same. We each like the opposite from us.”
    Which made me smile. And perhaps because she had confided so much about herself, I felt a sudden, irrational urge to confide something in return. Something terrible, perhaps. Something I believed to be true. That my wife had left because she had discovered my involvement with a woman I did not love, who I had taken up with, I now realized, because I felt cheated when the book I’d published in the spring had not done well, cheated because my publisher had been irresponsibly optimistic, claiming the book would make me rich and famous, and because I’d been irresponsibly willing to believe it, so that when it provided neither fame nor fortune, I began to look around for a consolation prize and found her. I am not a good man, I might have told Sister Ursula. I have not only failed but also betrayed those I love. If I said such things to Sister Ursula, maybe she would find some inconsistency in my tale, some flaw. Maybe she’d conclude that I was judging myself too harshly and find it in her heart to say, “You don’t mean that.”
    But I kept my truths to myself, because she was right. I
was
“nervous of her.”
    After an awkward moment of silence, she said, “I would like to show you something, if you would like to see it?”
    Sister Ursula struggled heavily to her feet and left the room, returning almost immediately. The old photograph was pretty much as described—brown and curled at its scalloped edges, the womanly image at its center faded nearly into white. But still beautiful. It might have been the photo of a young Sister Ursula, but of course it wasn’t. Since there was nothing to say, I said nothing, merely put it down on the small table between us.
    â€œYou? You had loving parents?”
    I nodded. “Yes.”
    â€œYou are kind. This visit is to make sure that I am all right, I understand. But I am wondering for a long time. You also knew the meaning of my story?”
    I nodded.
    â€œFrom the beginning?”
    â€œNo, not from the beginning.”
    â€œBut the young woman was correct? Based on the things that I wrote, there could be no other . . . interpretation?”
    â€œNot that I could see.”
    â€œAnd yet
I
could not see.”
    There was a sound then, a small, dull thud from directly overhead. “Sister Patrice,” Sister Ursula informed me, and we got to our feet. “I am needed. Even a hateful nun is sometimes needed.”
    At the front door, I decided to ask. “One thing,” I said. “The fire . . . that destroyed the school?”
    Sister Ursula smiled and took my hand. “No,” she assured me. “All I did was pray.”
    She looked off across the years, though, remembering. “Ah, but the flames,” she said, her old eyes bright with a young woman’s fire. “They reached almost to heaven.”

Monhegan Light
    Well, he’d been wrong, Martin had to admit as Monhegan began to take shape on the horizon. Wrong about the island, about the ferry. Maybe even wrong to make this journey in the first place. Joyce, Laura’s sister, had implied as much, not that he’d paid much attention to her, cunt that she was. Imagine, still trying to make him feel guilty so long after the fact of Laura’s death, as if
he
was the one who’d been living a lie for twenty-five years. He could still see her smirking