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I swore to all present that I would guard her until my last breath. I told the brother, I will kill to keep her safe.

But he said to me, No, you must not kill.

And then I swore I would die to keep her safe. But within I promised that if the need arose I would gladly kill to keep her secret. It is the least I can do.

I do not fear killing. I have killed before, slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife. And I fear not damnation. Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.

--from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

EIGHT

Manhattan

As Sister Carolyn Ferris reached behind the scratched and dented dresser in her room at the Convent of St. Ann, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall behind it.

You’re twenty-eight, she thought, and you still look like a child. When are you going to get wrinkled so men won’t stare at you?

Maybe if she’d spent her teenage years worshipping the sun instead of God, she’d have at least a few wrinkles to show. But she’d entered the convent at fourteen, and as a result her skin was pale and flawlessly smooth. She kept her thick, dark, hair cut in a bob—straight, functional, easy to care for. She wore no make-up—never a trace of mascara or shadow for her large blue eyes, never even a touch of color to her thin lips, and when out in public she tried to look as serious as possible. Yet despite

her shapeless clothing and carefully cultured Plain Jane look, men still approached her. Even in habit!

Maybe I should put on forty or fifty pounds. That would stop them. Or would it?

But no matter how much she ate, her body burned it off. She seemed doomed to remain 120 pounds forever.

She removed the compact-like case from under the rear lip of the bureau top and opened it. Inside was a foil and plastic card with twenty-one clear bubbles, one for each of the contraceptive pills the pack contained. The label inside the lid read Yasmin and gave the patient’s name as Margaret Jones. Half the pills were gone. Quickly, Carrie pushed the next light-peach tablet in line through the foil and popped it into her mouth, dry swallowing it as she shut the case and returned it to its hiding place.

Good. The daily risk of taking her pill was out of the way. With no locks on the doors within the Convent of the Blessed Virgin, someone could pop in at any time.

Carrie had noted she had two refills left on her pills. After that, the fictitious Margaret Jones would need another appointment at the West Side Planned Parenthood clinic. She shuddered at the thought. She hated pelvic exams and lived in fear of the chance that someone in the waiting room might recognize her as Sister Carrie. But she put up with the indignities and the fear to avoid the greater terror of pregnancy.

Since she’d be traveling alone, she’d leave her habit behind. She adjusted the collar of her starched white blouse and straightened the jacket of her black gabardine suit. “Sensible” shoes—black pumps with one-inch heels—completed the picture.

She checked the rest of her room to make sure it was neat. A bed, a night stand with a hand-painted statue of the Blessed Virgin, a reading lamp, a dresser, a crucifix, and a closet—not much to take care of. Everything in place. One last thing to do...

She knelt by her nightstand and gazed at her Virgin Mary statuette. She repeated the same prayer she said every time she was about to sin:

Forgive me, Mother Mary. I wish I could have been like you, but I was never given the choice. And though I sin with full knowledge and forethought, please know that I am devoted to you and always shall be. Yet despite all my devotion, I know I’m still a sinner. But in just this one thing. In everything else I gladly deny myself to do your work, do your bidding. Yet a small part of my heart remains unruly. I hope, I trust, I pray that in your own heart you will find room to forgive this sinner.

Sister Carrie crossed herself, rose, and headed for the first floor.

On the way out she checked in with Mother Superior to let her know she was leaving and told her when to expect her back.

The older woman smiled and looked up at her over the tops of her reading glasses. “Tell your father our prayers are with him.”

“Thank you, sister. I’m sure that will give him comfort.”

If you knew that monster as I do, Carrie thought, you’d withhold your prayers. Or perhaps you wouldn’t She stared a moment at Mother Superior’s kindly face. Perhaps you’d pray for even the most ungodly sinner.

Not me, Carrie thought, turning and heading for the street. Not for that man. Not even an “Amen.”

Supposedly she was visiting him at the nursing home. Usually the sisters traveled in pairs or more if shopping or making house calls to the sick or shut-ins, but since this was a parental nursing home visit, Carrie was allowed to travel alone.

She’d never been to the nursing home. Not once. The very thought of being in the same room with that man sickened her.

Brad took care of the visits. Her brother saw to all that man’s needs. The cost of keeping him in the Concordia, which its director described as “the Mercedes Benz of nursing homes,” was no burden for Brad. Her investment banker brother’s Christmas bonus alone last year had come to over a million dollars.

Brad traveled a lot to earn that kind of money. Many of his clients were headquartered on the West Coast and he spent almost as much time in California as he did here in Manhattan. So whenever he headed west he’d call and leave word that he’d be out of town. That meant his condo was hers to use whenever she wanted a change from the convent. Carrie availed herself of that offer by saying that her brother’s absence made it necessary for her to attend to her father more often at the nursing home.

And when she visited the condo, she did not visit it alone.

Poverty, chastity, and obedience, she thought as a cab pulled up outside the convent. This afternoon I’m breaking all my vows at once.

A tsunami of self-loathing rose from her belly into her chest, reaching for her throat, momentarily suffocating her. But it receded as quickly as it had come. She had hated herself for so long that she barely noticed those waves anymore. They felt like ripples now.

She descended the convent steps and slipped into the cab.

‡

As the taxi rounded Columbus Circle and headed up Central Park West, Carrie gazed through the side window at the newborn leaves erupting from the trees in the park, pale, pale green in the fading light. Spring. The city’s charms became most apparent in spring. Nice to live up here, far from the squalor of downtown.

She spotted a homeless man, trudging uptown on the park side, wheeling all his worldly possessions ahead of him in a shopping cart.

Well, not too far. You couldn’t escape the homeless in New York. They were everywhere.

You can run but you can’t hide.

Brad had run to the Upper West Side, to Yuppy-ville. Or Dinc-ville, as some folks were calling it these days. But Brad wasn’t a dinc. Wasn’t married, lived alone. Carrie guessed that made him a sinc: single income, no children. He could have lived anywhere—Westchester, the Gold Coast, Greenwich—but he seemed to like the ambiance of the gentrified neighborhoods, and often spoke of the friends he’d made in the building.

The cabby hung a mid-block U-turn on Central Park West and let her off in front of the building. Carrie counted up five floors and saw a light in one of Brad’s windows. Had to be one of Brad’s windows—his condo took up the entire fifth floor. She smiled as desire began to spark within her. She was the latecomer this time. Usually it was the other way around.

Good. She wouldn’t have to wait.

The doorman tipped his cap as he ushered her through to the lobby. “Beautiful evening, isn’t it, Sister.”

“Yes, it is, Ricardo. A wonderful evening.”

Carrie had to use her key to make the elevator stop on the fifth floor. The sparks from groundlevel had ignited a flame of desire by the time she stepped out into a small atrium and unlocked the condo door. Slowly she swung it open and slipped through as silently as possible. Light leaked down the hall from the dining room. She removed her shoes and padded toward it in her stockinged feet.

On an angle to her right she spotted him, hunched at Brad’s long dining room table, his back to her, his sandy-haired head bowed over half a sheaf of typewritten sheets, so engrossed in them she had no trouble entering the room unnoticed.

Desire grew to a molten heat as she crept up behind him.

Closer now, she noticed the waves in his hair as it edged over his collar and ears, the broad set of the shoulders under his shirt. She loved this man, loved the scent of him, the feel of him, the sound of his voice, the touch of his fingers and palms on her. She wanted him. Now. Every day. Forever. The times they could sneak away to be together were too, too few. So she made these times count, every minute, every second, every racing, pounding heartbeat they were together.

She laid her hands on his shoulders and gently squeezed.

“Hi there.”

He jumped. Through the fabric of his shirt she felt his shoulder muscles harden to rock then relax. He turned in the chair and looked up at her.

“God, don’t do that! My heart almost stopped.”

Carrie tilted his head back and kissed him on the lips. His skin carried a trace of Old Spice. She nodded toward the papers on the table.

“What’s so interesting?”

“The translation of an old scroll. It’s—”

“More interesting than me?”

She kissed the tip of his nose, then each eye in turn.

“Are you kidding?” Father Daniel Fitzpatrick rose, lifted her in his arms, and carried her toward the guest bedroom. “Not even close.”

‡

Dan was dozing. He often nodded off as they snuggled after their lovemaking. Carrie rose up on an elbow and stared at his peaceful features.

I love you, Danny boy.

They first met about five years ago when he stepped in as the new associate pastor at St. Joe’s, ran into each other occasionally at parish affairs, and for the past three years or so had been working side by side at Loaves and Fishes. They’d come to know each other well during those years, discovering that they shared the ecclesiastically incorrect notion that the Church should expend at least as much effort in nurturing minds and bodies as saving souls, that the well-being of the last was dependent to a large extent on the health of the first two.

Last year they became lovers.

Precipitously.

A strange courtship—long, slow, and tentative, never kissing or even holding hands. An occasional bump of the shoulders, a brush of a hand against an arm, long looks, slow smiles, growing warmth. Carrie doubted it would have progressed beyond that stage if she hadn’t taken the initiative last summer.

Up to that time she had used Brad’s condo as a vacation spa—her private retreat from the soup kitchen, from the convent, from the world in general. She’d soak for hours in his whirlpool bath while watching old movies from his film library. She’d return to the convent physically and mentally refreshed. But last summer she asked Dan to drop her off on his way to the Museum of Natural History to see a new exhibit. When he pulled up in front, she asked him to come inside and see how the other half lived.

And hour later, one of them was no longer a virgin.

It wasn’t me. Oh, no...not by a long shot.

After the first time they both went through a period of terrible guilt—Dan’s much deeper and more wracking than hers—and for awhile Carrie feared he might never speak to her again. Then their paths crossed in a deserted hallway and he took her hand and said they had to talk. The only place to do that was Brad’s apartment. So they met there on the condition that they would talk and nothing more.

And talk they did. Dan poured out his feelings for her, his doubts about his calling, about the priorities of the priesthood and the Church itself. Carrie told him that she had none of those doubts: Sister Carolyn Ferris was all she ever wanted to be, all she ever would be. But she knew she loved him and she couldn’t change that.

Despite their good intentions, they wound up in the guest room bed again. And when they were together like that, neither could find any wrong in it.

They made love here as often as timing and circumstance permitted, which wasn’t nearly often enough. And after they loved they talked. Dan opened up to her as she was sure he opened to no one else.

And finally, Carrie opened to Dan. She hadn’t intended to, but one afternoon the story burst from her in a rush and she told Dan about that man...her father...and how he’d started sneaking into her bedroom at night when she was twelve...

Mom had been sick for a while, almost helpless. Her multiple sclerosis had accelerated to the point where the only time she spent out of bed was in her wheelchair. That man had said his dear Carrie had to do what Mom couldn’t, that it was her duty as a good daughter. And when it was over, and she’d cry, he’d tell her it was her fault for tempting him and making him want to do what he’d done, and if she told Mom he’d tell everyone what she’d done...everyone.

For two years it went on, Mom becoming increasingly disoriented, growing weaker and weaker, fading into the sheets of her bed, and that man sneaking into Carrie’s room with increasing boldness and frequency until Mom died. She’d been so terrified of what would happen with Mom gone that she ran away immediately after her funeral.

Ran to the Convent of the Blessed Virgin. Virgin... something young Carrie Ferris was not. But the sisters had accepted her and she’d been one of them ever since. She’d devoted her life to God, and to Mary, but she’d never felt worthy of her calling.

Dan had been stiff and silent as she’d wept on his shoulder. She’d never told anyone—anyone—until then, and it had felt so good to get it out. Yet she was so afraid, as she’d been afraid all her life, that anyone who knew the truth would hate her and shun her. But Dan had held her close and absorbed her wracking sobs, and the secret became a bond that welded them even closer.

Carrie kissed Dan’s cheek and slipped from his side. She found a terry cloth robe in the bathroom and wrapped it around her as she wandered through the silence of the huge apartment.

She almost wished she smoked. As much as she hated the smell, a cigarette would have given her something to do with her hands. She liked to keep busy and she always felt at loose ends here in Brad’s. She couldn’t do any cleaning because his housekeeper kept the place immaculate; she couldn’t rearrange things because none of it was hers. So she stuck her idle hands—those Devil’s workshops—into the pockets of the robe and continued to wander aimlessly.

As she meandered through the dining room she spotted the typed sheets Dan had been so intent on when she’d entered. She sifted through until she found the face sheet. The title caught her interest.

Translation: the Glass scroll

The Glass scroll . . . what was that?

She glanced at the first paragraph and her interest was piqued. She scanned the second, then the third. Captured, she sat down and began to read.