Page 4 of Salt in the Wound
Have any crumbs for me, little mouse?he used to ask, and I would give him any crumbs he wished for, my smiling uncle who carried me on his shoulders and taught me how to pray so that God would listen. As I got older, the crumbs became larger, gathering them more dangerous. And so he’d schooled me over the years, and it had become second nature to gather the information he wanted, to sneak into places I wasn’t meant to be, and to hide in plain sight in the places Iwassupposed to be.
“What were you talking about?” Mortimer was the one person other than Bryn and my confessor that I was entirely candid with, and he’d encouraged my curiosity from the moment I could talk. When other adults ignored my questions or batted them away with canned answers, Mortimer listened to them, took them seriously. And whenever I asked something that he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer, he apologized sincerely.
In a perfect world, we know all things, Isolde. Alas that this isn’t a perfect world—yet.
From the way he smiled at my question, I knew I wasn’t getting an answer tonight.
“I wish I could tell you, but your father has asked me not to.”
Alarm, cold and tight, pulled at my stomach for a moment. I ignored it. “So it’s about me.”
Mortimer nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“Is it about my future? About my vocation?”
Mortimer didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
I looked down at the book in my hands, St. Ignatius’sSpiritual Exercises.“I’m not changing my plans. I want to take vows. I want to work for God. I want to work for the Church.”
“My child, so you shall,” my uncle said kindly. “You were marked for God from the moment you were born, and marked for increasing His glory here on Earth. You have exactly the gifts the Church needs.”
“Father doesn’t understand that,” I said. I closed the book, smoothing the battered cover and setting it on my desk. “He wants me for the glory of the Laurence family.”
It had been an ongoing argument since I’d told him the day after my mother’s funeral that I wanted to become a nun. He wanted me to join the ranks of Laurence Bank, the financial empire his great-great-grandfather had founded in 1901, and the idea that his only child would throw her future away on intentional poverty had infuriated him. I’d informed him he could always have more children.
The conversation hadn’t much improved from there.
“I imagine the compromise you’ve struck still holds,” Mortimer assured me. “You’ll go to university before you do anything else, and so you have time. We have time.”
If only my father didn’t also want me to major in something I didn’t care about in the meantime. He was hoping an education in finance would help me see the value in Laurence Bank.
“I know what I’m meant to do,” I said. “I’m meant to be God’s hands.”
“And so you shall be,” Mortimer said. “I will never steer you away from what God needs you to do.”
I hadn’t raised the next subject for the last few months, but Mortimer’s assurances made me hopeful. And, I supposed, it would be a nice Christmas present, if an unusual one.
“Have you…” I forced the words out, even though speaking one of my deepest spiritual needs aloud was like spreading my ribs apart and allowing someone to look at the bloody machinery underneath. I hated vulnerability, even with the one adult I trusted above all others.
Mortimer took pity on me. “I know what you’re asking, Isolde, and yes, I have given it more thought. And my answer hasn’t changed. Corporal penance is something that’s rarely permissible in the eyes of the Church.”
I wanted to push my ribs back together, I wanted to sew myself back up and pretend I hadn’t bled in front of this man I idolized so much, but I couldn’t help myself. “I wouldn’t be irresponsible with it, I promise. I would do it under the direction of my confessor. I would only use it as needed—”
“The gift God is giving you now,” my uncle suggested softly, “is one of deprivation. You must offer up that lack, that yearning, to him. You must live without this thing you crave to better serve him. There is no more valuable suffering or penance than that.”
I swallowed. “But—”
“Isolde, you wish to be God’s hands here on Earth. That requires sacrifice. You cannot creep through rooms with a cinched thigh, you cannot listen for me unnoticed at your father’s galas and parties if everyone is noticing the flagellation marks on your shoulders. If you are to be God’s creature as I have molded you to be, your body must be whole and strong and unmarked. You must not fast from nourishment, because it will make you weaker. You must not keep yourself awake, because it will make you slower.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I would not score a blade or throw it carelessly into a fire. Neither will I allow you to damage yourself when you are already consecrated to the cause.”
three
The rest of the year passed quickly.
I went back to Manhattan and my Upper East Side prep school. I turned eighteen. I lived my days as if I were already under vows.
I prayed; I studied the Bible; I studied Greek and Latin and Hebrew. And I trained. I woke early to run, to lift, to move through my katas. After school, I sparred and punched and kicked. I used the knife until it became an extension of my own hand.
I thought often of that suited stranger and how easily he moved, how easily he’d held the knife. I aspired to that ease, and I told myself that was why I thought of him so much. And if the evocative smell of him and those midnight eyes lingered in my mind, it was only because I was preoccupied with his competence and skill.
