A Letter from F.

Loosely attached to Notebook #4

 B.,

I know it's been like five years. And I know it's inexcusable for me to not have been in touch since. I reached out to E. and K. sometimes. I've heard through them that you're all doing fine. I know that A. has settled into the life he was always meant to live, and everyone else was scattered to the winds. I think that's how it was always meant to be. We couldn't have stayed in the city. To me, at least, it was always a disappointment. The people who seemed so fascinating in our university years eventually settled for a sixth-floor apartment and an ad agency job, didn't they. Everyone got off on the last stop, with no warning. It's too small a town to live freely in. Those who didn't settle had flaws so deep that they were prevented from catching even the last train to normalcy; or, they stayed behind out of a misguided sense of pride, resigned to a dark and bitter life. You'll notice that the former are always pining for a partner to forgive all their shortcomings, while the latter are always looking to leave.

As for me, I wouldn't say I've been happier since I left town, but I would say I've felt imbued with a greater sense of purpose. Even if I'm not sure what that purpose is. Maybe it's just been all the traveling that's kept me busy. Colonial little islands on the Caribbean, sun-baked towns in North Africa, a season in Manchester as well. I leap at the first employment opportunity that comes with a plane ticket attached. You should see my resume; you couldn't make heads or tails of it. But something always comes up eventually. I'm not naive enough to think that this has nothing to do with the influence of my father; always there, even when it's not. But I'm done carrying that cross. Instead I'm teaching, learning, shooting, editing, sleeping on friends' couches and middle-of-nowhere motels. I hope you get to experience this at some point, too.

I never understood why you chose to stay behind, of all people. I know you don't like to talk about money, but I'm sure you would've been able to leave if you wanted to. I understand A.; he's like a fish in water over there. Why would he leave? I'll always be fond of him, but he's not like us in that sense. You, though, had the most reasons and the best credentials. But you always brushed aside all inquiries, and I think most of the group assumed that you were having family issues, or something of the sort. But I have to be honest with you: I knew it wasn't that. Ever since you told me about your father, the Clan, and the rest, it was easy to put it all together.

I want you to know that you're not bound to that city forever. I worry about you because you seem to think otherwise. The underground galleries, the secret bars, the abandoned housing complexes and anonymous hallways. It doesn't have to be your life. Please, if you need help just tell me. I was so ambivalent about reaching out for years, and today I regret it. I should have sent this letter long ago, but now it's in your hands. Don't let it consume you. You can still do it differently.

Call me,

F.

"Sister Zero"

FROM NOTEBOOK #3

PART III

The first time I entered St. Francis, I was in a daze. The convent was unsurprisingly spare, but welcoming. There was a bit of an improvised gift shop where chocolate truffles slowly melted on the shelves, and an equally haphazard “front desk”. Past a heavy door, which swung on its hinges instead of locking, were the living quarters, and the rest of the building.

It took a lot of convincing for me to allow Tomasa and Giovanna to bring me there, as the proposal seemed ridiculous and embarrassing to me. They had asked a number of times in the past and every time I had politely turned them down with reasonable excuses. As a lapsed Catholic, I had my reservations about the clergy and their constant attempts at conversion. My friends, who had gone to religious schools where nuns and priests governed, had few good things to say about them; about their rigid vigilance, their glowering menace. I could never have considered the nuns my “friends” because our lives and backgrounds were so dramatically different, that I knew our relationship would never develop beyond the very specific circumstances that lead us to meet in that summer. I mentally categorized them as part of a group of kooky acquaintances, which I was secretly kind of proud of having, but would be embarrassed to reveal to others.

But it was Friday, and we were allowed to leave the office early. I could have darted straight home, made plans for the beach, but instead I absentmindedly wandered into the old mall again, telling myself I was going to check out this thing or another. It was hard for me to admit that I wanted to see them, the two people with whom I had built a genuine rapport over the last couple months. I told myself those weren’t my intentions, but it was blindingly obvious.

And conveniently enough, there they were, fanning themselves with the lids of open chocolate boxes, readjusting their coarse and boxy habits, which I could only imagine wearing in such heat. We immediately struck up a conversation with a rehearsed kind of joviality that was so pleasant to me at the time. Tati, if there’s something to be said about nuns it’s that they know how to make people feel welcome without ever overdoing it. This little space felt so refreshing when compared to the air-conditioned nightmare of the firm. We got to talking as usual and, without realizing, I mentioned that I was free for the afternoon. The nuns were delighted, and insisted that I come with them to the convent for tea. At this point I was feeling the kind of weird, warm tingles that sometimes slide down your back when you go to the hairdresser, or when a soft-spoken receptionist tends to your needs. That kind of hypnotic warmth that I associate with, I guess, service and comfort. And it almost made me want to cry. I said yes.

Whether the nuns’ intentions were purely altruistic or whether there was a conversion motive, I don’t know. Maybe they saw potential in me to be like them. Who even becomes a nun in this day and age? I have to assume they’re low on numbers. But I didn’t care about any of this at the time. As soon as I accepted, Tomasa and Giovanna burst into a thrilled chit-chat and beamed with what seemed like genuine joy, as they probably hadn’t entertained a guest in a while. They seemed to be amused by how the sisters would react to their guest, and began to work out the logistics of the operation. I don’t know much about convents, but I’m sure nuns aren’t allowed to simply bring in people off the street. At the same time, it didn’t seem like they were doing this in secret.

It’s not surprising that there was no air conditioning at St. Francis, or any similar amenities. Despite the background hum of comings and goings, errands and small talk, beyond the storefront was a place of monastic contemplation. I think the heat started to get to me at that point. I began to feel childlike, impressionable, far too easy to guide. Tomasa and Giovanna lead me through a back door that opened into a wonderful little corner of the convent’s inner patio, a sunlit place with little more than an iron-legged marble table and a few, thin chairs. The arrangement looked like it had stood there, unperturbed, for a thousand years. It sat in the middle of a walled little corner of the patio that was separated from the main square by a tight hallway, as if built in secret. The side and back walls were covered in greenery that was soothing to just look at. In a moment I became aware that his was, without a doubt, Tomasa and Giovanna’s secret corner, a place where they came to find some privacy, to tend to the plants, to drink tea and eat cake and gossip about the other sisters. I feel weirdly humbled to have been let in. I heard the moving-around of furniture behind me and then the door closed, and immediately I began to hear baby wrens, chirping in the distance. I no longer felt like I was in the city. And I began to relax, to let go in ways I hadn’t allowed myself to do for months.

"Sister Zero"

FROM NOTEBOOK #3

PART II

I had originally intended to spend six months or so in Marianne's firm while I got my certificates and diplomas in line at university. But I hated university, and kept putting it off. It's easier to justify it to yourself when you're working and always exhausted. The idea of doing something productive with the meager free time you're given seems unfeasible and frankly kind of insulting. Nobody wants to write application letters where they grovel before idiotic bureaucrats and sycophantic secretaries, especially not after spending eight-to-ten hours licking the boots of incompetent bosses who owe their position to their illustrious father or uncle. Besides, that summer was miserable: ruthless and sweltering, the first summer I had to spend in pencil skirts and thick, hand-me-down blouses. They worked us from sunrise to sunset. I have a bad habit of simply accepting horrible situations and not speaking out after a while. This was one of them.

Whenever I ran into acquaintances while doing errands or grabbing lunch--especially when I ran into high school classmates--I felt rattled, almost disturbed. Partly because of the ways in which we had changed, but also because school and everything about it now seemed like a mildly twisted dream. The vast and unknowable world of my teens had shrunk into a roughly three-kilometer urban expanse, wherein I knew every corner shop, ATM, and condemned building by heart. Not only had the mystery vanished, but something about working life seemed truly hopeless at the time. To be reminded that things used to be different was disheartening. And I guess that's why I distanced myself from the group after graduation. I told myself that it was the adult thing to do, that only sad people cling to high school memories forever, and that it was high time I got over all the Weird Shit, anyway. Such a dumb thing. All those make-believe adventures, which, even today, I'm a bit embarrassed to recall. But as a consequence of this mindset I became crushingly, comically lonely.

And so I began to spend more and more lunch breaks with Tomasa and Giovanna. It was always casual and almost incidental in my mind. A normal person would've taken advantage of their internship to network with their peers and prove their worth to their superiors, but just the thought of it made me break out in hives. I would much rather wander the halls of a semi-abandoned shopping mall, eating tasteless and questionable salads from a Styrofoam box. At least I was alone with my thoughts. And in this way, my encounters with the nuns occurred naturally. There was nowhere else nearby to hide from the sun during the deadly period between noon and early dusk, when just walking outside felt like being cooked.

Most middle-aged women eventually develop the tendency to divulge their life stories in bite-sized vignettes, and the nuns were no different. I learned that Tomasa grew up poor in the north, but had an honest and happy childhood of chasing after wild fowl, bathing in riverbanks, and crowding around black-and-white television sets with her cousins. Giovanna was quite the opposite: she had been a young promise of her school's soft tennis club, she was very careful not to divulge embarrassing or comical childhood stories, and everything about her suggested that she was highly-bred. Well, not really. I didn't believe most of what she said. For the most part it seemed like she was embarrassed of having a perfectly-normal upbringing and felt the need to put on airs around me. Perhaps she thought I was "that kind of person", simply because I worked with lawyers and executives and politicians' wives. Sometimes I thought I was "that kind of person" as well, but thankfully I snapped out of it after a few months.

It was a strange dynamic between the three of us. It took a while for me to lower my guard and no longer keep an ironic distance between myself and the nuns. It was Tomasa's unbeatable enthusiasm that drew us closer together. Giovanna was reticent to make any personal statements, or move beyond polite conversation. (For her, polite conversation included the weather, non-political current events, and Scripture, the last of which usually drove our talks to a dead end.) We were such an unlikely group, and to be honest, I would have been mortified to have been caught laughing it up with them by a coworker or boss. (Nobody asked where I went for lunch; at this point everyone had correctly assumed that I despised them.) But we grew closer in spite of it all. Eventually they started to bring chocolate truffles especially for me, and I started complaining to them about my cubicle-mates. I found myself unraveling before them sometimes, going on tangents about the uselessness of higher education, the hypocrisy of office hierarchies, the fact that my job didn't seem to exist for any real purpose. In hindsight I can only assume that, gradually, I began to look a little lost to them. Possibly in need of course-correction. Nuns tend to see people that way. It's no surprise that, eventually, they began to find excuses to invite me into the convent. It was right there, after all.