“You are too feeble.” Sneja glanced at the glass of scotch. “And drunk. Let Otterley and your father
handle this. You and I will stay here.”
Sneja tucked The Book of Generations under her arm and, kissing Percival on the cheek, left the
billiard room.
The thought of being trapped in New York City during one of the most important moments of his
life enraged him. Taking his cane, he walked to the telephone and dialed Otterley’s number once
more. As he waited for her to answer, he assured himself that his strength would soon return. He
would be beautiful and powerful once more. With the restoration of his wings, all the suffering and
humiliation he had endured would be transformed to glory.
St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York
Making her way past the crowd—sisters on their way to work and sisters on their way to prayer—
Evangeline tried to maintain equilibrium under the scrutinizing eyes of her superiors. There was little
tolerance for public displays of emotion at St. Rose—not pleasure, fear, pain, or remorse. Yet hiding
anything at all in the convent proved virtually impossible. Day after day the sisters ate, prayed,
cleaned, and rested together, so that even the smallest change in the happiness or anxiety of one sister
transmitted itself throughout the group, as if conducted by an invisible wire. Evangeline knew, for
example, when Sister Carla was annoyed—three tension lines appeared about her mouth. She knew
when Sister Wilhelmina had slept through her morning walk along the river—a restrained glassiness
weighed upon her gaze during Mass. Privacy did not exist. One could only wear a mask and hope that
the others were too busy to notice.
The enormous oak door that connected the convent to the church stood open night and day, big as a
mouth waiting to be fed. Sisters traveled between the two buildings at will, transposing themselves
from the gloomy convent to the glorious luminescence of the chapel. To Evangeline, returning to
Maria Angelorum throughout the day always felt like going home, as if the spirit were released just
slightly from the constraints of the body.
Trying to ease her panic at what had occurred in the library, Evangeline paused at the bulletin
board that hung beside the church door. One of her responsibilities in addition to her library duties
was the preparation of the Adoration Prayer Schedule, or APS for short. Each week she wrote down
the sisters’ regular time slots, careful to mark variations or substitutions, and posted the APS on the
large corkboard listing the roster of alternate Prayer Partners in case of illness. Sister Philomena
always said, “Never underestimate our reliance upon the APS!”—a statement Evangeline found to be
quite correct. Often the sisters scheduled for adoration at night would walk the hallway between the
convent and the church in pajamas and slippers, white hair tied up in plain cotton scarves. They
would check the APS, glance at their wristwatches, and hurry on to prayer, assured in the soundness
of the schedule that had kept perpetual prayer alive for two hundred years.
Taking solace in the exactitude of her work, Evangeline left the APS, dipped a finger in holy water,
and genuflected. Walking through the church, she felt calmed by the regularity of her actions, and by
the time she approached the chapel, she felt a sense of renewed serenity. Inside, Sisters Divinia and
Davida knelt at the altar, prayer partners from three to four. Sitting at the back, careful not to disturb
Divinia and Davida, Evangeline took her rosary from her pocket and began to count the beads. Soon
her prayer took rhythm.
For Evangeline—who had always endeavored to assess her thoughts with a clinical, incisive eye
—prayer was an opportunity for self-examination. In her childhood years at St. Rose, long before she
had taken vows and with them the responsibility of her five o’clock prayer shift, she would visit the
Adoration Chapel many times a day for the sole purpose of trying to understand the anatomy of her
memories-stark, frightening recollections she often wished to leave behind. For many years the ritual
had helped her to forget.
But this afternoon’s encounter with Verlaine had shaken her profoundly. His inquiries had brought
Evangeline’s thoughts, for the second time that day, back to an event she wished to forget.
After her mother’s death, Evangeline and her father had moved to the United States from France,
renting a narrow railroad apartment in Brooklyn. Some weekends they would take the train to
Manhattan for the day, arriving early in the morning. Pushing through turnstiles, they followed the
crowded tunnel walkways and emerged into the bright street aboveground. Once in the city, they
never took taxis or the subway. Instead they walked. For blocks and blocks across the avenues they