her mind, telling her that maybe it was already Too Late. The one that filled her every quiet moment – the one that ate at her before she fell asleep, while she sat on the toilet, while she untangled extension cords. The one that suggested she might be beyond salvation.
Sister Mary fetched the ladder from the garage and leaned it against the roof. She shook it once to make sure it was secure and then she climbed up and stepped onto the shingles. Carefully, she made her way to the short brick chimney where the DirecTV dish was attached and began looking for the problem. And there it was. Three of the brackets securing the coaxial cable had been torn out and downward pressure had caused the connector to become unseated in its receptacle.
Sister Mary did not like television, but St. Clare was the patron saint of television and she was a Poor Clare and so it made sense that they had a set. And recently they had been compelled to purchase a complete DirecTV package after Sister Helen lost the use of her legs. While laid up in bed, barely able to move, Sister Helen had grown quite addicted to the wide variety of channels and new movie selections on DirecTV and now she felt that she could never return to basic cable. Sister Mary tried to find tolerance in her heart for Sister Helen’s dependency and, as usual, after a reflective moment, she did. She re-seated the cable and then tidily installed four new brackets.
Chores completed, a day of quiet contemplation and private prayer stretched ahead of Sister Mary. Previously, she had spent her time ministering to the sick and needy until about a year ago when Sister Barbara and Sister Helen came to her and pointed out that there were fewer and fewer sick and needy people all the time in this part of Minnesota and thus they needed less and less ministering. That made sense and so Sister Mary had devoted herself to doing odd jobs around their monastery, a split-level ranch-style home located way out in one of the remote subdivisions surrounding Minnetonka. In the past year, the single-story, four-bedroom house had become the first Northwestern monastery to receive LEED certification and be designated 100% “green.” It had also received th. “Teeny Tiny Carbon Footprint” Award, the “Low Impact I Heart Trees and Badgers” Certificate and the “Stewardship of the Earth” Medal. All of these awards were actually very easy to win since the monastery only housed three nuns. The population of the order of the Poor Clares of Minnesota had declined dramatically in the past decade and these days only Sister Mary, Sister Helen and Sister Barbara were left. And the way Sister Helen’s health was going, soon it would just be Sister Mary and Sister Barbara.
“Sister Mary,” Sister Barbara called up from the front yard. “May I speak with you?”
Sister Mary descended the ladder.
“Good morning, sister,” she said.
“Have you been praying for Sister Helen again?” Sister Barbara asked.
“Why, sister?”
“Because she’s gotten worse.”
“Then I must remember her in my prayers today.”
“Stop praying for Sister Helen,” Sister Barbara hissed, dropped all pretense of civility. “You’re killing her.”
“That is not true,” Sister Mary said.
“Listen, sister,” Sister Barbara said. “You prayed for Father Malony and he passed.”
“Father Malony had just had a triple bypass.”
“You prayed for my mother and she passed.”
“She was eighty-six years old and protesting the use of land mines in Cambodia. It was hardly an unexpected accident.”
“You prayed for Sister Pat and Sister Colleen and they both passed.”
“They died in a car accident.”
“They were having lunch at Wendy’s and a car drove through the front window.”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“What about when you worked at Shadow Grove? Was that an accident, too?”
Sister Mary couldn’t speak. She’d heard what had been whispered about her during those dreadful six months at Shadow Grove Retirement Village. The orderlies had renamed it “Shallow Grave” after thirteen of the fifteen residents passed away during the brief time she spent doing prayer visitations there. If there had been a local paper it would have had a field day reporting o. “The Nun with the Death Touch Prayers.” As it was, Big Bob’s Pre-Owned Vehicles had run a full-page ad in the local PennySaver demanding the removal of Sister Mary from Shadow Grove. Big Bob’s mother, Little Tina, lived in Shadow Grove and he didn’t want his mama to die at the hands of the poisoned nun.
It was after Big Bob’s ad,