“Dead? No. Unfortunately, she isn’t functional, either. Her right side is paralyzed. The doctor says it will be months before she’s able to speak. After that—” Reverend Mother General shrugged. “Jerome is seventy-nine. I suppose we should have let her retire years ago.”
“Jerome is the best Mistress of Novices in the United States. She loses fewer vocations than anybody I’ve ever heard of.”
“I know,” Reverend Mother General said. “And we need those vocations. How are you getting along here, with five nuns?”
“It’s six, Reverend Mother. Counting me. It’s a mess. Tuition is five hundred dollars a year now. It’s going to be six fifty come fell. In another five years, we’re going to be too expensive for the parishioners to afford.”
“Exactly, Sister. And think of it. Most of the schools we run have only four nuns. Some of them have only two. It’s all well and good to talk about lay participation in the Church, but a lay teacher has to be paid like a human being.”
“We don’t get paid much of anything here, Reverend Mother.”
“I know. I know. You’ve been very dedicated. But let’s face it, Sister. If the parochial school system is going to survive, we need nuns. And that means we need girls who want to come into the convent and girls who want to stay in the convent once they get there.”
“Mary Jerome was very good at making us want to stay.”
“I know.” Reverend Mother General brushed snow off her shoulders. Then she looked Scholastica in the eye and said, “So are you.”
“Me?” What this reminded her of, Sister Scholastica thought, was the day she’d realized she had a vocation. First, things were impossibly confusing, all jumbled up and aimless. Then light dawned, and with it came an almost physical excitement. Happiness always made her feel pumped full of a mood-altering drug. “Me,” she repeated.
“You may not realize it, Sister, but your Sisters give you the best reports in the order. They love working under you.”
“That’s very—flattering, Reverend Mother.”
“It’s also very unusual. I’d been thinking about this even before Jerome had her stroke, Sister. I’d intended—well, I’d intended to do a lot of things, but I always do. Now, of course, it’s too late. We’re going to need a new Mistress of Novices this fall.”
“I’ve never even been on a formation team, Reverend Mother. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“We can put Sister Alice Marie in for the next year. You can work under her as Mistress of Postulants. Then, the year after that, Alice Marie can go back to being Mistress of Postulants and you can go on to the novices.”
“Wouldn’t Alice Marie resent that?”
“Alice Marie and I understand each other,” Reverend Mother said. “I know the Church is supposed to be changed, Sister, but I’m an old woman. I’m almost as old as Jerome. And Alice Marie ran off with that boy.”
“But Reverend Mother,” Scholastica said, “she wasn’t even in the convent then. And the way I understood it, she only ran away for a day. That was—that had to be twenty-five years ago.”
“I know, Sister. But even isolated incidents are indications of character. Of the way a Sister will react under stress.”
“I think you’re being very hard, Reverend Mother.”
“I’m simply being practical,” Reverend Mother General said. “The Mistress of Novices is the most important nun in any order, more important than the Mother General. She forms the character of the community. I need to be—assured of the future of that character, Sister.”
“I think Alice Marie would assure it for you.”
“I think you’d assure it better. Do you want to be Mistress of Novices, Sister?”
The snow seemed to be getting heavier. It was piling up all around them, and on top of them, too. Reverend Mother General’s veil had acquired a little conical peak. Scholastica didn’t even want to think of what her own veil looked like. She hadn’t been brushing it off.
“Of course I want to be Mistress of Novices,” she said. “Everybody wants to.”
“That’s not true, Sister. But I’ll admit it. A lot of people do.”
“Won’t there have to be some kind of an election?”
Reverend Mother General smiled. “There’ll have to be a vote among the governing board, of course, but the governing board is my council. We discussed this before I came down. You can have it if you want it, Sister.”
“I think we ought to go inside,” Scholastica said.