Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell Read online

  September 26, 1964

  Will’s funeral is in the chapel Father built for Becca’s wedding near The Big House in Southampton. Everything is so ghostly, so ghastly, especially Tom’s bowed head, his grotesque reverence in the front row. The chapel is packed with those who would give homage to the O’Kells, to Tom, but you can count Will’s friends on one hand. Will knew too much for Tom to bear, and I can’t bear to be without my baby brother.

  October 2, 1964

  I am thinking of Will as I walk along the water, of how much he loved it here by The Big House. I would give anything to have him back upstairs writing on those long yellow pads, to find a place for his craziness in this crazy world. I wonder what Will could have done with his life if Tom had not been ready to destroy him. Will had a wonderful, crazy way with words, and the “Sins” he wrote about were not of this earth. Is it fair when a younger brother dies and you are still living? I mourn him now, and I will miss him forever.

  October 3, 1964

  Nancy comes to be with me here in The Big House because she didn’t like the way I sounded over the phone. “Like a ghost,” she said. She waits now before saying anything, so that I know I will never be alone. God, how I love her!

  October 5, 1964

  Will is gone and God is dead.

  November 17, 1964

  I tell Mother Superior that I want to run the Order.

  December 7, 1964

  I am now in charge of everything in the Order except religious instruction. “Things of the flesh,” Mother Superior tells me. “No one understands them better than you.” What do you mean? I say. “You’re an O’Kell,” she explains.

  December 25, 1964

  Christmas in the city with Becca and Diana and Luigi and tiny Gino. More wedded bliss and more presents for the baby than I can count. I get the baby a comforter with a hood to keep him warm in winter. Becca gives them a beautiful photograph from the day they all went to pick apples in the fall in Yorktown Heights with little Luigi, now known to one and all as “G.” No one says a word about Will.

  December 26, 1964

  I still dream of Will. He was too alive to ever live in peace.

  December 27, 1964

  Will is dead and buried. Bucky, Tom, and Luigi are the men in my life. No wonder I get the taste of vomit when I think of them, when I think of all men and what all of them want to do to a woman. With Bucky it was the money, with Tom it was brute force. Luigi was just an animal. There was not a single moment of pleasure with any of them. I have never had a moment of true pleasure with a man in my life.

  December 31, 1965

  New Year’s Eve and Nancy and I are alone again the way we like it. We watch the ball drop in Times Square on television and Nancy gives me a New Year’s kiss on the lips.

  January 12, 1965

  Had a revelation today that had to be divine. Nancy was next to me, reading Virginia Woolf, and I realized how beautiful she is, not in the storybook, fairy-princess way, but in the real way that a woman can be beautiful. I know that I love her and that I always will.

  February 25, 1965

  “Well,” Mother Superior says. “We really are coming into the modern age.” She is talking about all that I have done to modernize the Order, my insistence on organization and planning and modern marketing techniques. That’s the easy part, I tell her. “What’s the hard part?” she wants to know. The soul, I say.

  March 1, 1965

  I miss Will at times like these at The Big House, when the night comes down around us, when I half-expect him to come skipping down the stairs, yellow pad in hand, talking too fast about what he has just written or is about to write. He had the soul of a boy. I can never forgive Tom for what he did.

  March 2, 1965

  So much guilt about Will. Someone had to stop Tom from killing him, and it had to be me. I could have been a better sister. I could have done more to help him. I could have done something. But I was too slow, too late. Now he’s dead even though I know I could have saved him.

  April 21, 1965

  Tom tells Diana we are much richer than ever. “How can you tell?” Diana says.

  May 3, 1965

  If Wall Street loved us any more it would be obscene. I take Nancy with me to meet our investment bankers and they are more bullish than ever about the business of God, especially the unusually sober and unusually quiet Charles Evans. Since I took over the finances of the Order, we’ve grown from a dozen hospitals to more than forty. “Why not 400?” I say. “You boys have the money, and we have God.”

  May 31, 1965

  Memorial Day weekend and I stay with Diana and Luigi at the home they have just built next to The Big House. They have horses and a lawn that looks like it was cut with a razor. Luigi spends today on the beach in his tennis whites, fighting the naked homosexuals who sunbathe north of The Big House. He shakes his racket and screams at them in Italian, as if his mother tongue might drive them back to their mothers. Not even Diana can calm him down. Baby G screams gibberish just like his father.

  June 1, 1965

  We all go to the beach together again, Diana and G and me, Luigi with his racket ready to do battle. “Luigi can’t talk now,” Luigi says. He walks down the beach to where the homosexuals wait for him without a stitch of clothes. “Luigi can scream all he wants,” Diana says to me. “The beaches in Southampton are public beaches. There’s nothing he can do.”

  June 2, 1965

  Luigi puffs out his chest in victory on the way to the beach this morning, but once we come over the dunes we see his campaign of extermination has backfired. To the north it looks as if the entire homosexual population of Southampton has shown up naked just to teach him a lesson. Luigi retreats from the beach without another word.

  June 3, 1965

  Luigi gives a haircut to every hedge on their property.

  June 6, 1965

  “We have more Sisters coming in than ever before,” Mother Superior tells me. “I am so pleased. And the expansion?” Two each month starting in September, I tell her, eight new hospitals by the end of the year, all of them in the big Southern cities. “I do love it so when things go South,” Mother Superior says.

  July 5, 1965

  “He won’t touch me,” Diana says. She has no idea what’s wrong with Luigi, but in the last two months he has wanted nothing to do with her. Diana says it must be because she just went back to work at Imagine and Luigi has nowhere to go.

  July 13, 1965

  Charles Evans finally calls me to apologize, apologizing first for the fact that he may have already apologized. “I’m a horse’s ass when I drink,” he says. I see no reason to contradict him.

  August 3, 1965

  Luigi goes down to the beach every day now, Diana tells me, sometimes all day. “He won’t touch me any more,” Diana says. “I don’t know what’s wrong.” I think I do.

  August 30, 1965

  Luigi asks to meet me, alone, at the Stork Club. “There is something Luigi needs to ask you,” he says. “For a man to love a man is a sin, yes?” I ask him why he’s asking me. “You are a woman of God,” he says. “You know what it is to live with only women, without man.” What does that have to do with it? I say. “Luigi needs to know if it is a sin for a man to love a man.” You mean to love him the way a man loves a women? Of course it’s a sin, I tell him. “Of course,” Luigi says.

  September 3, 1965

  Diana has baby G in the most adorable plaid shorts and a darling blue shirt. It’s enough to make a nun want to have children.

  September 4, 1965

  Diana can’t get Luigi to come out of the stable for dinner.

  September 6, 1965

  The new girls arrive in force and for the first time in my life I think I must be getting old. They look like children to me now, not just their baby faces, but in the innocence they bring to their worship, to the world. I give my speech about the work of God being very hard work. I tell them to guard the quiet place in their hearts where God begin
s. I love the sound of that without quite knowing what it means.

  September 12, 1965

  I lose myself in the latest batch of recruits. Today I tell them about sin and temptation, two subjects I know something about. “Is it a sin to just think about sinning?” a recruit called Sister Jane asks me. Of course, I tell her, but it’s far worse to commit the sin itself. “What’s the worst sin you ever committed?” she asks me. I don’t even want to think about it, I say.

  September 14, 1965

  Jane is sobbing in her room over sins unspoken. I comfort her, rubbing her back, then I move my hands down along her hips all the way to her toes, moving back up again to the outside of her thighs on both sides and to the small of her small back. She sighs and rolls over onto her side and puts her hands between her legs to comfort herself. She sounds like she is in pain until I touch her, and then, like a child, she slowly falls off to sleep. I decide to keep her at the Convent, working with Nancy, to make sure she makes it through.

  September 25, 1965

  Mother Superior and I fly south from LaGuardia for the hospital opening. There are balloons and clean sheets and chrome and carts on wheels and nurses with their skirts ironed to a crisp. Mother Superior cuts the ribbon, and we are both treated like foreign dignitaries, which I suppose we are. All we need now are sick people and penicillin.

  October 6, 1965

  Diana tells me Luigi won’t even come to the table any more.

  October 9, 1965

  Mother Superior puts me in charge of religious instruction on top of everything else. She says: “How could you ever doubt yourself, Eleanor?” I don’t any more, I say. “All that silly talk about sin!” she says. You were right, I say, sin is hardly worth talking about. Nancy and I go out to celebrate together. We drink wine out of the bottle and sing “Reach Out” all the way back to the Convent.

  November 6, 1965

  At the Stork Club alone with Luigi again at Luigi’s request. “Luigi, he has to confess,” Luigi says. That’s why God made priests, I say. “No,” Luigi says. “Luigi, he cannot confess to a priest. He must confess to you. Luigi is a bad man. Luigi is a fag.” You are not a bad man, Luigi, I tell him. Just a man who loves men. I know of women who love women, I say, and they are not bad women. “The Church, she says it is a sin,” Luigi says. “A mortal sin.” He grabs at his heart. “So Luigi he goes to hell, yes?” I ask him what the Church knows of love. “Love of God,” Luigi says. That’s a horse of a different color, I say.

  November 21, 1965

  Mother Superior sits me down in her office but she is afraid to say a word. “Nothing’s wrong,” she says. “It’s just that we, the Order, well, we’re rich now. There’s no other way to put it.” I know, I say. We’ve been rich for some time. “We’re not just an Order any more,” Mother Superior says. “We really are the Sisters of Currency now, a well-run business. You deserve the credit and the congratulations for that. Thank God for your God-given instincts for money. Thank God that you’re an O’Kell, a gift from God.”

  December 16, 1965

  It’s as if everyone is confessing to me now, all at once. Charles Evans took me to “21” (again) to apologize (again). Now he’s got religion, of all things, and he bores me for the better part of two hours with a litany of sins committed, like he’s got a patent on adultery. I ask if his wife knows. “Hell no!” he says.

  November 28, 1965

  Nancy and I cook Thanksgiving dinner together and the quiet of it is wonderful. We drink far too much wine and we watch the Million Dollar Movie on TV with the lights off. Nancy puts her head on my leg and after the first commercial she starts to drop off. I let her sleep there for the whole movie and most of the night on my lap. I love to look at her face when she’s dreaming.

  December 25, 1965

  Christmas at Diana’s with Luigi, G, Becca, and Nancy. G is a plump cherub with the curls to match. Luigi stays to himself, even when we open presents, like he is a guest with no manners who can’t wait to leave.

  January 7, 1966

  “He’s queer,” Diana says. We are having a drink at The Plaza. I know, I say. “How do you know?” she says. I tell her I just know, and that I’ve known for a while. “You mean everyone knows except me?” Diana says. Not everyone, I say. “We can still stay married, can’t we?” Diana wonders. “In the eyes of the Church, I mean.” I tell her she can do whatever she wants.

  February 3, 1966

  Becca’s first book is a beauty. “All God’s Children,” is the title, and inside there are pictures of the most beautiful children you could ever want to see. Imagine is running some of the pictures with a picture of Becca, and so Diana makes sure the magazine puts on a big party. Becca looks beautiful in a black pants suit with bell bottoms and big lapels, the kind Diana says women should wear now.

  March 17, 1966

  No drinking for me today, the day I always think of Will, of how I miss him, crazy as he was, of how I hate Tom for doing what he did to him. St. Patrick’s Day is my day for love and for hate.

  April 1, 1966

  “You are running the show now,” Mother Superior says. “Have you noticed?” I haven’t really thought about it, I say. “Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about it, my dear,” she says. “I am not a young woman.” You could run the Order for another twenty years, I say. “Over my dead body,” she says.

  April 14, 1966

  Nancy and I know everything there is to know about each other. But I am afraid of what I now know about myself.

  April 15, 1966

  Spring here at the Convent is miraculous, the light magnificent, the birds symphonic. We walk for hours through the woods. I want to hold Nancy’s hand. I want to stop and press myself up against her against a tree with my lips against hers. I want to have something to confess. But I’m too afraid. I don’t want to ruin the perfect friendship for something less than perfect.

  April 17, 1966

  I can’t sleep, thinking of Nancy, and when I do drop off it is to dream of her. We are always together in my dreams, but we are never ever at the Convent. We are never even nuns when I dream, just two souls made one forever.

  April 27, 1966

  I find reasons to be with her, to touch her for no reason. I try to leave my hand on her shoulder as I stand behind her. I help her on with her coat. I hope for rain so that I can hook my hand around her elbow beneath the umbrella that is too small for the both of us.

  May 2, 1966

  I don’t know if I can keep on living like this, without having the one I love.

  May 12, 1966

  Hot as a summer’s day today, so we go swimming in the pond deep in the woods. I feel big and white as a great white whale, but Nancy is a dream in her one-piece, her skin dark and sparkly. She slides through the water like a seal, her black hair behind her, a being free of gravity and need.

  June 20, 1966

  “You better sit down,” Mother Superior says. “I have made a decision,” she says. “Perhaps my last important decision.” Oh? I say. “These,” Mother Superior holds up a sleeve and pulls at her habit. “I am not going to go down in the history of the Order as the Mother Superior who kept us in these.” The habits? I say. “I’ve always hated them,” she says. “They are so hot and awful, and they put a distance between us and the people we are supposed to serve.” But don’t they keep away temptation? I ask. Mother Superior looks at me for a long time. “You tell me,” she says.

  June 21, 1966

  In her habit, with just her eyes and her nose and her mouth showing, Nancy is angelic, a messenger straight from Heaven. I tell her the news and she refuses to believe me. God’s truth, I say. She tries to throw the habit up off over her head but it gets stuck until she can sidearm it halfway across the room. She stands there in her skivvies and I can see every beautiful curve. “Ding dong!” Nancy laughs. “The witch is dead!”

  June 29, 1966

  “Brown cow,” Nancy says. We have our new uniforms, the brown dresses that are even
uglier than our old habits. Moo! I say.

  July 3, 1966

  Nancy comes with me to Southampton. We live on the beach today in our bathing suits, and no one would know we are nuns in love. We take a walk along the ocean past the homosexuals and there is Luigi, asleep without a stitch on a blanket with two of his closest friends.

  July 4, 1966

  Fireworks snap off above us on the public beach and we say Oooh! and Aaah! and Dud! Little G is so excited he starts to clap his hands and shout Dad? Dud! no matter what goes on above us. Luigi has come with Diana, but he looks out to sea while the rest of us bend our necks back to catch every Boom! and Pop! In the darkness, I pull a big beach towel over our legs. I slide in next to Nancy under the towel until our legs are touching. She leans her shoulder into mine and rests her right hand under the towel on the top of my thigh, where no one can see. She slides her hand under the towel to the highest, softest part of my thigh. In the dark, in the celebration, only Nancy can see that I am crying.