“Do you mean they’d turn you away at the door?” Bennis asked. “If you got held up by your bus breaking down in Philadelphia and didn’t make it until an hour later, they’d just make you wait some more?”
“Sister Justin Martyr spent two days straight without any sitting with Sister Dymphna because Sister Dymphna was dying, and after Sister Dymphna was dead and Justin Martyr stumbled in practically dead herself they turned her away from the seven-thirty over at the dining hall because she was supposed to be at the six-thirty. And the seven-thirty at the dining hall is undersubscribed. Reverend Mother General had to intervene.”
“If it was some sort of subscription, you’d think your Sister Joan Esther would have known better,” Bennis said. “She should have found out which sitting in which place Sister Mary Bellarmine was signing up for, and signed up for something different.”
“She wouldn’t have known,” Sister Angelus said. “It was all done by mail. Everybody signed up to sit with their friends from formation. Of course, Sister Scholastica is Sister Joan Esther’s closest friend in the Order, even though Joan Esther was a couple of years ahead or something, maybe I’ve got that wrong, but Scholastica would have to be at the sitting she was at which is the same sitting Mother Mary Bellarmine is at because that’s when all the administrators eat. Together. You know. And us. They like to keep an eye on us.” She tapped her white veil.
“Back to what Mother Mary Bellarmine did,” Gregor said.
“She did what she always does whenever Joan Esther’s in earshot,” Sister Angelus said promptly. “She started talking in this really loud voice about loyalty and commitment and religious obedience, and about how some people these days don’t understand what it really means to be a nun. Well, Joan Esther had heard all that before. Mother Mary Bellarmine is supposed to be incredibly furious that Joan Esther requested a transfer out of her province and up to Alaska. So Joan Esther didn’t react at all. She just went on eating and at least pretending to talk to the other Sisters at her table.”
“That seems calm enough,” Bennis put in.
“Oh, it was,” Sister Angelus agreed. “It was all par for the course. Mother Mary Bellarmine had pulled the same sort of thing half a dozen times during the week at recreation or just around where she and Joan Esther happened to be together. It’s what happened next that got everybody talking.”
“What happened next?” This was Gregor.
“Well, Mother Mary Bellarmine started to say how they had just started their five-year audit out on the coast, except that she wasn’t letting it rest in the hands of the accountants anymore because she didn’t trust them. She knew more about fraud and flimflam than any second assistant bookkeeper from Deloitte ever would, so she was going over the books just as soon as Deloitte got finished with them. And that it had already paid off, because she’d caught two pieces of petty fraud the accountants hadn’t noticed. And of course there would be more to come.”
“And?” Bennis asked.
“And she went on and on like that for a long while, and then Joan Esther raised her voice so loud her people back in Alaska could probably have heard her and said, ‘People shouldn’t go searching under rocks if they don’t want to be bitten by snakes.’ And then everybody in the entire place shut up.”
“I’ll bet they did,” Bennis said. “What happened next?”
“What happened next was that Mother Mary Bellarmine lost it,” Sister Angelus said. “She rose right up out of her chair, looked straight at Joan Esther and said, ‘If I go searching under rocks, the only snake I’m going to get bitten by is you.’ And then Joan Esther stood up and said, ‘You can bet it’s going to be me.’ And then Reverend Mother General stood up and made us all observe silence for the rest of the meal.”
“Whoosh,” Bennis said. “What do you suppose all that was about?”
“Oh, we all know what it was about,” Sister Angelus said. “Mother Mary Bellarmine thinks Joan Esther made her look bad when she requested the transfer, and now she’s doing anything she can to make Joan Esther look even worse. And of course Joan Esther did make Mother Mary Bellarmine look bad. She told Reverend Mother General that Mother Mary Bellarmine was such an impossible woman to work for, she’d rather show religious obedience to a squirrel. And that got around.”
“There is also another possibility,” Gregor said carefully. There is the possibility that Mother Mary Bellarmine, unpleasant though she may be on a personal level, may have a point. There may be something wrong with the books. And Sister Joan Esther may be the one who made that wrong.”