CHAPTER 3
THE COMMISSION
POV: NOEMI
"Sixty thousand dollars," Sister Perpetua whispers over the oatmeal. "Out of the cemetery fund. And his poor wife in Destin, not even knowing."
"Whose wife?"
"Mr. Price's. The diocese lawyer." She leans across the refectory table, pink with it, the way she only gets for scandal and the feasts of martyrs. "Cleaned out his desk in the middle of the night and drove off. Mother's been on the phone with the chancery since five."
My spoon stops halfway to my mouth.
Monday. The chancery bench. A hand on the back of my neck, under the edge of my veil, and a thumb that moved while he told me about the room in his house I could have. I counted floor tiles until Mother came out. Fourteen across, nine down. I've spent two days trying to forget the numbers.
Now he's gone.
"Noemi? You look peaky."
"I didn't sleep."
That part is true.
What I don't tell her is that I woke at five with a key so warm in my fist it felt alive, and I went down to six o'clock mass with my heart knocking against it, and for the first time in thirty days, the last pew was empty.
No black coat. No weight on my neck.
I knelt through the whole Confiteor waiting for it. I struck my chest three times and felt nothing but my own hand.
I have never felt so abandoned by someone I've never met.
"God has His ways," Sister Perpetua says, satisfied, and goes back to her oatmeal.
I think about a thumb on the back of my neck.
I think about a man who knows how I peel fruit.
I think God doesn't need to clean out anybody's desk in the middle of the night, and then I stop thinking, because the next thought is already warm, and I don't let it finish.
***
Mother Agathe calls me to her office after lauds.
It smells like liniment and old paper. The foundress of the order glares down from her portrait over the desk, and the desk drawer, the one with the lock, is shut.
"Sit, child."
I sit. Mother Agathe has never once called me child. She calls me Delacroix, or Sister, or nothing.
"A benefactor of this house has made an offer." She says it to her blotter. "He has a private chapel in the Garden District. Water damage to the altarpiece. The gilding needs restoring. He's seen your work."
"Seen it where?"
"Here." A pause. "He is a friend to Saint Veronica's. The roof, last year. That was him."
"What's his name?"
"He prefers discretion."
"Mother—"
"The commission is four thousand dollars." For the first time, she looks at me. "Paid to you. Not to the house."
I stop breathing.
In three years, Mother Agathe has never said the word dollars to me. She says the house, and providence, and holy poverty. When the diocese paid eight hundred for the bishop's altar, she told me my reward was stored up in heaven and put the check in that locked drawer.
Four thousand dollars.
My mind does the sum before I can stop it. Forty thousand. One part in ten.
A tithe.
"You'd stay at the house on weekdays," she goes on. "Your own room. Meals. A car brings you back Saturday for the Sabbath. You'd begin Friday."
"A single man's house."
Her mouth goes thin. "There is a housekeeper."
"I haven't finished the bishop's altar."
"The bishop," she says, very quietly, "will wait."
I look at her hands. Her rosary is wound so tightly around her fingers that the tips have gone white.
She's afraid.
Mother Agathe wasn't afraid of the hurricane, or the diocesan auditors, or the man who broke into the poor box two Easters ago. She chased him halfway down Dauphine Street with a candlestick. She's afraid now, and she's sending me anyway.
"Is it him?" I ask. "The man in the last pew?"
She doesn't answer.
That's the answer.
"It's providence, Noemi," she says instead. "Take the night. Pray on it."
***
I don't pray on it. I sweep the Dauphine walk and think about it with every stroke.
Four thousand dollars. A room with a door of my own. A man who put a lock on my cell and kept a key and sat in the last pew for twenty-nine days without letting me see his face.
A man who wasn't there this morning.
"Afternoon, Sister."
The broom stops.
Tee-Jean is leaning on the iron gate, gold tooth catching the light. It's Wednesday. He has never once come on a Wednesday.
"You're early."
"Mr. Boudreaux's feeling less patient this week." He grins. "Heard a rumor you got yourself a rich friend."
The broom handle goes slick under my palm.
"I don't have friends."
"Everybody's got friends. Yours drives a real nice car. Sat out on this curb half of last month, engine running." He taps the bars with his ring. Tink. Tink. "Black. Windows you can't see through. Mr. Boudreaux'd like to talk to you about him."
Half of last month.
Twenty-nine days wasn't the beginning. It was only the part he let me feel.
"Sunday," Tee-Jean says. "After mass. You come out this gate and take a ride with me."
"And if I don't?"
"Then Mr. Boudreaux comes in." He tips his head back and counts up the windows. "Cell nine, ain't it? Over the kitchen?"
The cold starts at the broom handle and climbs my arm.
"Forty thousand, Sister. Your daddy signed. That paper don't die just 'cause he did."
"I have thirty-seven dollars."
He laughs. It's a friendly sound. That's the worst thing about Tee-Jean, how friendly he is.
"Then I guess you got something else to trade."
He pushes off the gate and strolls away down Dauphine, whistling.
I stand there until the whistling is gone. Then I finish the walk, every inch of it, because that's what my hands know how to do when the rest of me doesn't.
***
After compline, I take the long way to the stairs, past Mother's office.
Her door is open a hand's width. The lamp is on. She's on the telephone, sitting very straight, the way she sits for the bishop.
"Yes," she's saying. "Yes. I understand."
I stop in the dark of the hall.
"Friday at seven. She'll be ready." A pause. Her free hand is flat on the desk, over the locked drawer. "No. No, I haven't told her that. I told her to pray on it."
Another pause, longer. Whatever he says makes her close her eyes.
"Yes, Mr. Valcourt," she says. "God bless you."
She hangs up and sits there with her hand still on the receiver, not moving, an old woman in a pool of lamplight, and I back away down the hall before she can look up and see me.
Mr. Valcourt.
The name everyone below Canal Street says quietly.
I climb the stairs to cell nine with my hand over the key, and by the time I reach the top, I've understood the part she didn't say.
She told me to pray on it.
She never needed my answer.
***
That night, I turn the crucifix to face the wall.
I've never done it before. It feels like slapping someone. But I can't write what I need to write with Him watching, and I can't write it anywhere else.
The pew was empty this morning. I hated you for it.
Mother says a benefactor. Tee-Jean says a black car, half of last month. You've been here longer than I knew.
If I go to your house, you'll touch me.
If I don't go, Boudreaux will.
I stare at those two lines until the ink blurs. Then I write the one that's true.
I'm not going for the money.
***
I dream I'm on the scaffold.
The chapel is dark except for one candle, and I'm laying gold on the throat of a saint, and I'm not alone on the plank. The scaffold should sway under a man's weight. It doesn't. He's that careful.
A gloved hand closes over mine on the brush.
Keep going, he says.
I've never heard his voice, so my dream gives him one. Low. Unhurried. A voice that has never once had to repeat itself.
I keep going.
His other hand finds the hem of my habit and gathers it, slowly, up the back of my thigh. Leather on bare skin. The leaf trembles on the saint's throat, and he doesn't let me stop, and I don't want to, and I push back against him on that narrow plank with nothing but air on either side.
Good, he says.
I wake with a sound in my mouth.
Three-twelve by the clock. The sheet is knotted around my legs. The chain is wound around my fingers so tightly that when I open my fist, the key has printed itself into my palm, a small red shape like a brand.
I'm wet. I'm shaking. The room smells, or I imagine it does, like figs.
I don't touch myself.
I lie there in the dark with my palm open on my stomach and let the ache stay. I think I deserve it. I think I want to see how long I can carry it.
I carry it until morning.
***
He's back.
I feel him at the Confiteor, a weight settling onto the back of my neck like it never left, and my whole body goes loose with relief. I have to grip the pew in front of me.
At the sign of peace, I do the thing novices don't do.
I turn around.
The chapel doors are open. Morning pours in white off Dauphine Street, and he's standing in it at the end of the last pew. Tall. Black coat. I can't see his face. The light is behind him, and he's only a shape cut out of it.
He lifts one gloved hand.
Two fingers raised, the way a priest gives a blessing.
Then the doors swing shut and he's gone, and Sister Perpetua is holding out her hand, saying peace be with you, peace be with you, and I shake it without feeling it.
***
Mother Agathe is waiting in her office after lauds, rosary wound around her fingers again.
"Well, child? Have you prayed on the—"
"Yes."
It's the only prayer I've said all week.