“But then he said, ‘Next time you see your dad, give him my best.’ ”
“I’LL TRY TO TELL YOU,” Lucy said, “but I’ve tried before and when I hear myself, well, it’s never exactly what I want to say. I guess because it’s a gut feeling that brings you to the point of doing it. You make a choice. If you don’t do it, you can list reasons why, all kinds of reasons. Or you can say, ‘What, do you think I’m crazy?’ But if you go ahead with it, if you do it… that’s something else.”
They were in the sun parlor of Lucy’s mother’s house, the banana-tree room in dim afternoon light, rain coming down outside. Lucy came away from the gray windows to sit down facing Jack and Cullen, both of them on the sofa.
“I became a nun because of a love story that took place eight centuries ago. Because of a man who was in love with love and because of a seventeen-year-old girl named Clare who, I’m convinced, was in love with the man. And I fell in love with the whole idea. I was nineteen, at a time when I could empathize with her, the poor little rich girl, not happy but not sure why. Her mother and dad arranging her marriage, planning her life. I was, well, I got caught up in what I believed was a mystical experience. I even thought, if I’d been around in the year 1210 I could have been that girl. I attend mass at the cathedral of San Rufino and hear a man named Francis speak quietly but with great passion about God’s love and my life is changed. I put myself there. I could smell the candles, the incense, and imagine falling in love with the man in the brown Franciscan robe.”
Cullen sat hunched on the edge of the sofa, hands folded on his knees. Jack could hear him breathing through his nose, both of them held by the mood, the quiet tone of Lucy’s voice, Lucy sitting in sweater and jeans, gray light behind her, telling about a mystical experience.
“Five or six years earlier I might’ve left to join a commune.” She looked right at Jack. “But by the time I was ready to make my run the flower children had gone home. I’m thankful for that, because I would have been running from rather than to something. What Clare did, under the influence of Francis and a wild, I mean extraordinary, combination of romantic and universal love, ran away and started an order of nuns, the Poor Clares. And it was Francis who performed the tonsure, cut off all her blond hair. He had spoken to her before, advised her, but never alone. I think because Clare was stunning, they say incredibly beautiful, and I really believe he saw more than just love of God in her eyes. His biographers say, oh, no, he was never tempted. But he had another friend in Rome, Jacqueline de Settesoli, he used to visit whenever he went to see the pope and there was never a hint of scandal with Jackie. Because I think she was mannish if not unattractive, so there was no problem. He even called her Brother Jacqueline. But Clare was something else. I have a feeling they would look at each other and there it was, in their eyes, without a word spoken.”
It had begun with Cullen meeting Lucy and making casual conversation with a former nun, saying he’d thought about entering the seminary when he was fourteen, the one up on Carrollton Avenue, and Jack saying he did enter it; they were living across the street and he went over there with his mother and sister during a hurricane alert when he was two years old. Then Cullen had come right out and asked her, “Why would a good-looking girl like you…”
“You know that before he acquired that gentle Saint Francis image, with the birds flocking around him, he was from a fairly wealthy family and ran with the swingers. But when he gave it up he went all the way. Stripped himself naked in the town square, in Assisi, and gave all his clothes to beggars. Everyone thought he was crazy; they called him pazzo, madman, and threw rocks at him. But he got their attention. Maybe he was in a state of metaphysical delirium, divine intoxication, I don’t think it matters. He preached unconditional love, love of God through love of man, love without limits, without the language of theology, and he touched people… He kissed the sores on a leper’s face.”
Cullen said, “Jesus Christ.”
“That’s right, in his name,” Lucy said and looked at Jack and, for a moment, seemed to smile. “He took money out of his dad’s business, you might even say he stole it, because a voice said to him, ‘Francis, repair my house.’ He offered the money to a priest, to rebuild his church that was falling down, but the priest wouldn’t take it. Maybe because he was afraid of the dad. So Francis returned the money. But the church, San Damiano, became the first convent of the Poor Clares.”
Cullen said, “He really kissed a leper?”
“He bathed a leper who cursed God, blamed him for his condition, and the man was healed.”
Jack said, “You believe that?”
Lucy looked at him. “Why not? He said he couldn’t stand the sight of lepers, but that God led him among them. ‘And what had seemed bitter turned to sweetness. ‘ “ She paused. “ ‘And then, soon after, I left the world.’ ”
There was a silence in the room.
Jack felt the back of his neck tingle. He watched her cross her legs and saw the sandal hanging loose on her toe. She didn’t seem to be the least bit self-conscious. She could sit here in her mother’s house and talk about a mystical experience, about going back eight centuries and feeling herself there, knowing what it was like… He saw her look at Cullen.
“He washed a leper. But do you know what the Saint Francis experts argue about? Whether he did it before or after he received the stigmata. It would seem to have happened after. But if it did, how could he wash the leper and pick clean the man’s scabs with his bloody hands bandaged?”
Cullen said, “You lost me.”
“That’s what happens,” Lucy said. “We lose sight of the act of love in what he did and get carried away questioning details. They say he had the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, that he bled from his hands, his feet and his side. But whether he had the stigmata or not, would it change who he was? He didn’t need his hands to touch people.”
Cullen said, “He touched you and you joined the nuns.”
“I got out of myself, the role I was playing as the little rich girl, to find myself. It comes with being touched and then touching others.”
Jack said, “That’s good,” narrowing his eyes and nodding, wanting her to know he understood. Maybe he did. There was this Jack Delaney and there was Jack Delaney the fashion model, the poser… He stopped there, surprised by the clarity of this inward look, and brought up something he’d been thinking about. “You mentioned the other day he did time.”
That straightened Cullen. “He did?”
“When he was still in his teens,” Lucy said, “Assisi was at war with another city. There was a battle-well, a skirmish, and Francis was taken prisoner and spent a year in a dungeon.”
“The hole,” Jack said. “I’ve seen more than one come out in their white coveralls saved, born again.”
“So not much has changed,” Lucy said. “He was ill the rest of his life. Tuberculosis of the bone, malaria, conjunctivitis, dropsy. They don’t call it that anymore. What is it?… But his poor health didn’t seem to matter because he was never in himself.”
She paused and Jack could see her concentrating, wanting to tell about this man who’d changed her life in a way they would understand.
“He was childlike. He attracted young people especially because he was never pretentious, theologically preachy. He accepted people the way they were, even the rich, and never criticized… which is something I have to work on. What he was saying is, if you need nothing, you have everything…”
Cullen stirred, moved his hand over his face.
“The first step in finding yourself is not to be hung up on things. And when I was nineteen it all seemed very simple.”