The Cloister Door

THE CLOISTER DOOR

by

VICTORIA HUGHES

THE CLOISTER DOOR

My grandmother used to say that people’s souls were like old-fashioned Advent calendars. Made of colorful tin foil and sparkling all over with silver glitter, they had twenty-five little windows, or doors – one for each day leading up to Christmas. “God gives us all many doors,” she would explain as we pried open the tiny flaps, peeking at the various scenes. “But the ones you decide to open create your destiny.”

I never really understood what she meant until I met Father Harry. He told me that if we say no to God’s grand plan – to His first door – that the second door can be much harder to walk through. I was to learn this would be more difficult than I ever could have imagined.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

I found the monastery on a bright November morning when the maple leaves were just drifting from their branches. Still smooth and supple, they lined the roads in careless, airy heaps, transforming Burlington into an autumn wonderland of vivid golds and rich russets. A tinge of crisp, cool air edged the morning sunlight, bringing not only the promise of turning seasons but also an expectant feeling that some wonderful event was about to occur. Maybe I sensed that something mystical and even pre-destined would work itself into my life that day, or maybe all days appear fraught with such possibilities when you’re eighteen and life is spread out in front of you like an intricate patchwork quilt; each colorful square, no matter how implausible, seeming a very real and distinct possibility.

My best friend Genevieve and I were going out, and as usual I had to pick her up. Her father wouldn’t let her drive yet, and I had long since given up trying to get her to stand up to him about that or anything else. And as usual, when I pulled up at her house he was standing out front with her, one hand resting protectively on her shoulder. At first, intimidated as I always was by his almost provocative show of power, I hesitated. But he and I had an elaborate game to play and I knew my part well. Rolling down the window of my old Beetle, I waited while Gen climbed docilely inside and he sauntered over to me. Leaning into the car he said in a tone he really shouldn’t have been using with a girl my age, “Hello there, Maryann. What do you gals have planned for today?”

I knew he thought I was wild. Maybe Gen had told him I wasn’t a virgin, or maybe, because my divorced mother gave me a lot of freedom, he just suspected it. Either way I think that secretly he enjoyed my recklessness and even lived vicariously through me. However, he also trusted me to keep his daughter out of trouble. So when I tossed my long, winged hair back and daringly using his first name, replied, “Who knows, Bill, who knows?” I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t object to my answer. He only winked and, giving the car a light slap, said, “Be sure to finish those college applications; the gap year is not just about goofing off.”

I could have protested – after all, we both had jobs that fit with our career plans. Gen, who was an artist, worked at a framing shop, while I had a hospitality internship at the local hotel. But it was far more gratifying to simply ignore his remark and instead gas my purple bug to the floor. We lurched violently away, barreling down the shallow heights of Burlington’s hill district, my hair flying out behind me in what I hoped was an arc of eye-catching blond. A few dizzying moments later we landed at the top of Main Street and pulled over to catch our favorite view of Lake Champlain. The morning mist was rising from the water’s surface, gathering itself into huge gauzy folds, then rolling layer by layer toward the New York side.

“So what’s today’s adventure?” Gen asked as we gazed at the lake, now visible as a gleaming oval of pewter.

I glanced to my right, to the brick buildings of the University where my mother worked and my sister went to school. Perhaps it was just the primal need of youth to escape from everything familiar, but I found myself saying, “We could go explore Craggy Point. We’ve never been all the way out there.”

Gen said nothing at first; we both knew the Point was private property. But when she gave a little laugh and said, “OK, but my Dad’ll kill me!” I felt proud that I alone had given her this opportunity to rebel. We headed off.

Driving north along the lake, we passed the picnic area and a few miles later cleared the town limits. I took some random turns, and we found ourselves in woods of white birch and poplars, our wheels crunching over drifts of pale green and amber leaves. There were no houses in sight and you could hear the lake lapping gently against the point in the distance. Gaining speed, I hardly noticed when we sailed past a sign saying, “Private Road Ahead.” A moment later the road became more formal and a long colonnade of majestic oaks and maples appeared, marching before us. Then suddenly I saw an unmarked side lane, winding into the forest. Maybe I already felt the presence of the monastery, for without thinking I wrenched the wheel sharply to the right. The lane curved only occasionally at first, but soon it became even more serpentine as the trees, now crouching close together, covered us with a tightly-woven canopy of multicolor.

I screeched to a halt.

A small sign – brown tin with white lettering – hung at a slant from the trunk of an old sugar maple. “Monastery,” it said, with an arrow pointing down a little path into the woods.

Immediately, I thought of the book about nuns my grandmother had given me when I was a little girl. The cover was unforgettable; a weathered stone castle, and standing in front a girl in a flowing black habit, her long white veil casting an alabaster glow over her already pale, yet strangely joyful, face. “It’s called In This House of Brede, dearie,” Grannie had said almost reverently, and I had understood, even then, her reverence. In fact soon I began wishing that I, too, wore a long veil and that I also possessed the heaven-sent happiness of that young nun as I swept down some ancient cloister hall in my own imagined monastery.

Gen, seeing me staring, shook my arm. “Really, Maryann, I know you’ve always had a – I don’t know what to call it – a ‘thing’ for nuns, but isn’t a monastery for monks?”

Gen was right. I had always felt drawn to nuns and I even attended mass regularly, though she was one of the few people who knew this about me. After all, who would understand a girl like me wanting to be a nun? But she wasn’t right about the monks, for somehow – I wasn’t sure how – I knew that what lay beyond that little tin sign was a place like Brede.

“Monasteries can be for nuns, too,” I said. “They’re called cloistered, which means they never leave the monastery. They just pray all the time.”

“Who would want to do that?” Gen grimaced, then looked around. Unrolling her window she said, “Look, there’s another sign over there.”

Sure enough, down the road from the monastery sign was an old metal gate. Though it was tarnished with age and almost hidden by low-hanging branches, two narrow Italian cypress trees, as straight and tall as champagne flutes, could be seen shooting proudly up on either side. An ornate placard tacked to the gate proclaimed, “Grant Gardens.”

I pulled over and we climbed out of the bug. Gen wanted to see the gardens, but I was aware of something – some undercurrent of energy – coming from the little brown tin sign. “Let’s see the monastery first,” I told Gen.

The path started out paved although unkempt; humped mounds of moss grew in the cracks, and in places the leaves lay like a blanket, almost obscuring our way. When the path narrowed to little more than a footpath, a tall pink wall appeared, running alongside us. I felt a shiver of excitement; could this be the boundary of the monastery, beyond which those hidden women would never step? I noticed that the forest, now with fir and birch trees as well, had become denser. Then we were almost under it before I even realized.

A high wrought iron arch. Looking up, I saw inscribed in sweeping letters:

Thy Kingdom Come.

I stopped walking.

I did not want to step through the arch. I felt a strong pull coming from the other side of it, an increase of whatever power I’d sensed up at the road. But though I felt drawn forward, I also had the idea that once I passed under the arch nothing would ever be the same. Maybe it was silly, maybe it was irrational, but I knew I wasn’t ready for this, not now. Backing away I said to Gen, “It might be private or something. Let’s go explore the gardens instead.”

I thought Gen might try to teasingly pull me under the arch. But she was looking up at it, oddly silent. Perhaps she, too, felt something of what I had but didn’t want to admit it, because she only shrugged and, after giving an exaggerated sigh, said, “That’s where I thought we should have gone in the first place!”

So, turning around, we retraced our steps, wending our way back up to the main road.

The gate to Grant Gardens was locked but off to its side was an old-fashioned, full-length turnstile. Eager to show Gen I was my usual bold self again I said, “I don’t know if the monastery owns this place, but there’s visitors’ hours posted, so it must be all right.” We squeezed ourselves into one pronged section, our eyes wide with excitement when a pleasant squeak sounded – would someone hear and try to stop us? But all remained quiet as we emerged onto a bending road of gravel bordered by huge balls of rhododendrons bushes. We began walking, and a moment later we saw the mansion.

It was as if a Moorish castle had leapt out of one of my travel books. Beneath a sprawling red tiled roof, leaded windows of diamond shaped panes glowed like smoky opals from walls of pale cream. Square towers with ornamental ramparts and hidden, recessed balconies looked over stretches of shady gardens. Surrounding it all was a long, low wall with scalloped window cutouts, through which you could glimpse tiled courtyards and mosaic fountains.

Guarding the house’s entrance like sentries stood two giant tree ferns encased in stone urns. “It looks closed,” Gen announced as we studied the thick, studded front door. But I crept up anyway, pressing my face against a mullioned window. The drapes were tied back with heavy tassels, and the gilded, brocaded furniture and Persian carpets told me this was no convent or religious house; tapestries even hung on the walls and a gold harp glowed in one corner. But my mind was still on the monastery next door. When I saw, through the terrace windows at the far end of the room, a sunken garden with the lake gleaming sterling silver beyond, I wondered if the nuns had the same pristine view.

When we turned away from the house we were confronted with an exquisite Italian pool – a long, formal rectangle lined by Magnolia trees. Water lilies clustered on its dark surface, and an emerald lawn, smooth and even as velvet, edged it all around. At the far end was a grotto built of rock with a tiled pool inside. We had to lean in close to see the statue of a maiden balanced delicately on a seashell.

Gen moved closer, inspecting it, but I turned to explore the labyrinth of side gardens. I discovered concealed pagodas of jade and turquoise rising out of shallow pools and steep-sided fishponds behind hedges. I even saw, though it was completely out of season, Grannie’s favorite flower, a lone daffodil in an enameled pot, its ruffled bell glittering crystalline in the sunlight. But it was the words etched on a little stone tablet, placed inconspicuously on the side of one of the paths, which caused me – and I could have sworn the gardens as well – to draw a deep and serene breath. Looking down, I read:

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth

It was just a simple poem, yet it had stilled my world. And in the new stillness, all the things I’d secretly hoarded inside myself were now able to rise up and surge together into a perfect and glorious union. It all made sense; Grannie’s talks about doors, my fascination with the Brede book, the feelings I experienced in church – they all surrounded me in a loving circle. And I imagined that the pink walls of the monastery, barely visible through a thick border of trees, were watching, nodding with quiet approval.

Gen appeared and seeing that I was gazing toward the monastery said with a laugh, “Maryann, you might have your “thing” about nuns, but you’re the last person in the world who would ever become one!”

I looked at her closely. Were her words spoken out of jealousy for my many boyfriends, or did she pity me for this just as I sometimes pitied her for not having it? But her gray eyes under the severe brown bangs were untroubled; she had simply stated what might indeed be fact – maybe I had already closed myself off from the world beyond the pink walls.

When she said, “We have to go. It’s getting late and my Dad will be worried,” I knew if I wanted to be a good friend I should get her home safely, back to that over-protective father of hers who was so very different from my own.

I glanced one last time toward the walls of the monastery – on tiptoe, I could see that there were tiled roofs over there, too – and then we began our retreat out of the gardens that I now knew were not only beautiful, but sacred. Looking up, I saw the day was already shortening, and the sky, previously a pure white, had darkened to an unmarred sheet of grey.

That night I lay in bed wide-awake.

Thy Kingdom Come

That high arch. That silent, secret world. I had to go back to the monastery. I had to see those nuns.