Free Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

and then tries to think what she can say to use up the five minutes until Sext. Were her habit red and she bearded white, Sister Saint-Denis could play Santa Claus. She merrily smiles at Mariette and asks, “Are you still liking our convent?”
    “Oh yes, Sister.”
    “We are like the tides here. We come and go. We don’t hurry; we don’t worry; we try not to wrestle too much with our inner torments and petty irritations.”
    Shutting her textbook on a pencil, Mariette glances up. “Have there been complaints about me?”
    Sister Saint-Denis gives it some thought before saying, “You haven’t been mentioned.” White checks shine in dark eyes rich as plums. “Which is not such a good thing outside, but here in Our Lady of Sorrows is not so very bad.”
    “I have to learn that.”
    Sister Saint-Denis says, “Ever since I have grown older, I have forgotten all my hard penances and fasting and have given particular attention to our Redeemer, in whose presence we live. And I have realized how much simpler it is to pray and keep united with God when I see Him as the source and sum of everything I do. When I walk, I owe it to God that I still can. When I sleep, it is with His permission. My breathing, my happiness, even my being a woman—all are His gifts to me. So it is my prime intention that whenever I do these practical things, they will be contemplative acts of praise and thanksgiving repeated over and over again. Even when it seems impossible to believe that some pain or misery is from God, I try to believe it and thank Him for it. You should try such a prayer, Mariette.”
     
    —And she said she’d try?
    —She said she didn’t have the patience for it.
    —Meaning what?
    —Well, I presume she meant she’s too zealous. She meant she’s still infatuated with our sisterhood. Even our worst penances are too easy for her. Hundreds of postulants have been that way at times.
    —And so, you do not find her fanatical?
    —Christ shines from her. She is Christian perfection. She is lovely in every way.
     
    Mass of Saint Bridget, Widow.
     
    Hard white sunshine heating the frost, and the blue sky high and wide behind iron-gray trees tattered by golden leaves. The hills are tan and rose and magenta. Chimney swifts toss and play in the air. Sister Anne and Sister Agnès heave heavy avalanches of wash onto a gray wool blanket and then go inside for more, and Mariette hangs sweet wet sheets on the clotheslines until she is curtained and roomed by them.
    Sister Agnès slinks through a gap in the whiteness with a straw basket of underthings that they silently pin up in the hidden world inside the tutting, luffing, campaigning sheets.
    Half an hour passes. Wind tears at their work. Sister Agnès aches from reaching. She blows the sting from her reddened fingers. She watches the postulant as the tilting sheets wrap around her and shape her. She watches the girl as she tenderly releases herself, as though tugging a ghost’s hands away.
     
    Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
     
    Mariette goes to the scriptorium with Sister Hermance, Léocadie, and Pauline after Sunday Nones but is intrigued into an hour of talk about mystical theology with Sister Marguerite and cannot get away. She sees the novices try to disappear within the peach sunlight at the great table, reading sixteenth-century books with hard pages that turn with a tearing sound. And underneath that she hears the librarian going on and on about the Desert Fathers.
    And then she abandons herself to God’s will and hears Sister Marguerite teaching her, “When Saint John of the Cross prayed before the crucifix, Our Lord is supposed to have asked Him, ‘Dear John, what will you have from Me in return for the service you have done Me?’ Unhesitatingly, that great saint replied that he wanted ‘naught but suffering and to be despised for Your sake.’”
    “Yes.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I, too, have prayed for that.”
    Sister Marguerite heatedly stares and says