True Believers(164)
When the courtyard outside was dark enough so that she could no longer see the grass, Sister Scholastica got up and put on her cloak. Somebody else might have called it a cape, which it was, technically. It was black and had a rounded collar like a raincoat’s, with slits at the sides near the slash pocket openings for her hands to come through. She buttoned the top four buttons and let it go at that. The cloak had buttons going all the way down, but she had never seen anybody use all of them. She left her room and went down the convent stairs, listening for the sounds of Sisters in the parlor or the kitchen. She heard nothing, which possibly made sense. It was likely to be much earlier than she thought it was. They were probably all over at the chapel for Office, or maybe even in the cafeteria.
When she got to the convent’s front door she went out, and then across the courtyard and around the side of the church to the street. St. Anselm’s was lit up for the evening, its front doors propped open so that the homeless men and women Father Healy had been so meticulous about admitting would be admitted still. There was no way to know if the new priest, brought in from God only knew where, would maintain the practice. When they released the body from the medical examiner’s office, it would lie in its plain pine casket in front of this altar. Father Healy’s family would come in from wherever they lived in suburban Philadelphia. She thought about going in and looking at the attar—why?—and then she passed by down the street on the St. Anselm’s side. St. Stephen’s was lit up, too, but, as usual, it looked far more deserted than St. Anselm’s ever did. Far more deserted and far less chaotic. There was something concrete she could hold on to. In a church whose parishioners were mostly gay men, life was far less chaotic.
She thought she was going all the way down the two-block stretch to Roy Phipps’s church, although she had no idea why, but when she was halfway there, she found herself stopping in front of Edith Lawton’s house. It was dark, except for a light way in the back on the first floor that Scholastica assumed must be the kitchen, or a room just off the kitchen. All the town houses in this neighborhood were alike. She looked at the door and the steps in front of it, but they were no different than the doors and steps in front of any of the other houses on the street. She looked at the narrow driveway to her left and saw that it was empty of cars. Either everybody was out, or whoever was in didn’t drive. Then she wondered what it was she was looking for. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that Edith Lawton made a profession of being an atheist. Were there symbols that atheists hung on their doors, the way Christians hung crosses? Scholastica shook her head slightly and backed away from the door. The cloak was heavy but not as effective against the cold as she wished it could be.
She intended to turn around and go back up the street to St. Anselm’s, or, if she were still feeling restless, down a little farther to look at Roy Phipps’s place once and for all. Instead, she went down the short drive and around to the side of Edith Lawton’s house. From there, she could see even more light. It looked as if whatever was lit was some kind of sunroom. She went farther to the back and pushed against the door of the high wooden fence. It slid open without protest. If it were meant to be some kind of security, it was woefully underused. She stepped through the fence and into the backyard and looked around. The ground was mostly taken up with paving bricks. At the far end of it, there was a brick barbecue that looked blackened and worn in the light that spilled out of the back windows. The overhead security light was not on. Past the wooden fence at the back, the nearest neighbor’s house was absolutely dark.
I should turn around and go home, Scholastica thought. What am I doing here?
She went farther around to the back again. The windows were indeed to some kind of sunroom. It jutted off the kitchen like a wooden rendition of a sugar cube, and there was enough light coming from inside it to have served adequately as illumination for major surgery. There was light in the kitchen beyond, too, but with both the overhead and the desk lamp lit to full in the sunroom that hadn’t been immediately apparent. Scholastica pulled her arms inside her cloak and held them against her body, hesitating. She most certainly ought to go home. She just didn’t want to.
She went to the door of the sunroom and tried it, telling herself that if it didn’t open she would take it as a sign from God that she ought to turn around and go straight back to her convent. It opened easily and without complaint. She stepped into the sunroom and looked around. The computer was on and set to a word processing program and a file entitled “The Evils of Public Piety.” Behind the computer, there were piles of papers that looked like manuscripts and another pile that seemed to be copies of a single magazine. That pile had a huge black glass cat sitting on top of it as a paperweight, so that all Scholastica could read of the title was Free Think.