Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt

but he nodded graciously back.
    â€œI don’t think it’s so damn difficult,” she said ornerily. “Just ask me, I’ll tell you what is stupid and not of God.”
    I love Sister Marie-Berthe, thought Lucy. Where were these nuns when I was growing up? My mother might have gotten her way and I might have joined an order if there had been thinking, independent, activist nuns to emulate.
    She let that bit of past history sink in anew.
    Yes, my mother would have loved it if I had followed through. It started with my namesake, my Aunt Lucy, my mother’s sister. I was the middle of the three girls, and I was named after Aunt Lucy and I was ordained to follow Aunt Lucy, Sister Lucy. I was to be the nun in the family since the intended priest-in-the-family, my brother Nicholas, fled for Notre Dame, then left the seminary for advertising and now lives in New York, comfortably, ecstatically far away from the grind of Dantan family life.
    Lucy cringed as a vision returned to her:
    She was six or so. Her mother was having a card party with seven other women, the ones in her Cardinal Newman prayer circle. Lucy came in, right before bedtime, in her little Yogi Bear footed-pajamas, and closed her eyes, got down on her knees, and said the Pater Noster for the nice ladies in perfect Latin and they all gave her a little kiss and made over her so much and told Lucy’s mother what a little saint she was. And from this rush of approval much of her early childhood took shape, modeled on tales of St. Bernadette and St. Faith and suffering little virgins she could pray to, emulate. At least she stopped short of having conversations with Mary!
    (What about Sister Hildegarde?)
    Oh Jesus, thought Lucy, her heart sinking further. There was Sister Hildegarde’s wake. The woman was eighty-five or so and never taught at St. Eulalia’s while Lucy was there, but she had been a presence in that school since its inception. Well, she died. And Sister Miriam, the terror of St. Eulalia’s, made an announcement that there would be a prayer service and vigil for Sister Hildegarde and every student who could make it Saturday afternoon between three and five P.M. should attend. As if any kid would spend a Saturday afternoon that way voluntarily!
    (But you did, My child.)
    Yes. I went. Me and Faith Kopinski, who was more pious than I was. Fourteen years old. I lay in my room for hours, trying to invent a good reason for not going, but I felt God and the Holy Spirit and Mary were watching, and I thought about poor Sister Hildegarde, old and frail and in Heaven now, looking down seeing not one student from the school she’d given her life to, not one willing to do lip service for her. And I went out to play with my sister Cecilia briefly, then I felt bad about it, lied, said I was going to watch TV with a friend, but secretly ran home, got dressed up, and appeared at the chapel where Sister Hildegarde lay. None of the sisters had shown up, though they probably had an earlier service.
    (No, they didn’t.)
    And so I knelt, with Faith who showed up about ten minutes later, and prayed for the soul of Sister Hildegarde, whom I didn’t even know, but I wanted her to be … prayed for. No one should go without some degree of—Lucy didn’t know what word she wanted exactly—ceremony, valediction. Oh please, she thought, coming to, sick at such ripe, uninhibited piety.
    (But there is no earthly good purer than the goodness of children.)
    Lucy looked up, ending her reverie, to see an ancient, white-haired, kindly-looking man rush into the room in his raincoat and hat, ranting voluminously, while the others at the table stopped talking to welcome him.
    â€œJesus, I’ve missed the buckin’ meal,” Father Keegan mourned. “Awww ’tis me last time on that eeirline, I swear! I could’ve swum meself over the Irish Sea in the time that took. Gatwick was close to me vision of