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      Apprentice House Press

      Loyola University Maryland

      4501 N. Charles Street

      Baltimore, MD 21210

      410.617.5265 • 410.617.2198 (fax)

      www.ApprenticeHouse.com

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      Also by the Author

      What My Father Taught Me

      For JC

      and for JM

      My truths are all foreknown,

      This anguish self-revealed.

      I’m naked to the bone,

      With nakedness my shield…

      —Theodore Roethke

      Contents

      Note to the Reader xv

      Chapter One: The Long Loneliness 1

      Chapter Two: After Mass 29

      Chapter Three: Telling Father 51

      Chapter Four: Courting 71

      Chapter Five: Confessions 95

      Chapter Six: Mystic 115

      Chapter Seven: Nellie 137

      Chapter Eight: Candidacy 151

      Chapter Nine: Novitiate 181

      Chapter Ten: Exit Interviews 215

      Chapter Eleven: Dream 257

      Epilogue 273

      Acknowledgments 285

      About the Author 291

      Note to the Reader

      No one in this memoir asked to be in it. Yet here they are.

      I’ve written only those parts of their lives that directly intersect with my story. I’ve prayed for the wisdom to write them as real as I can and have done my best to acknowledge when I’ve done them wrong. I’ve changed nearly all their names and, where possible, without compromising the emotional truth of the story, some details. I thank each of them in advance, especially my family, for understanding that I had to write this story.

      Vivian Gornick says about memoir that, “It’s not what happened; it’s what you made of what happened.” I think it’s both, but I understand what she means. Perhaps if I had chosen a different life—or it had chosen me—my interpretation of the past, especially my childhood, would be different. Since that’s something I can’t know for sure, I present to you this account, the only one I can.

      Chapter One

      The Long Loneliness

      I first noticed Father Infanzi in the way that matters during his second year at Saint Stephen’s. It’s not that I hadn’t noticed him before. It was impossible not to. He was thirty—four years older than me— tall and lean with black hair parted to the side, and he said beautiful things like God loved us into existence. But it wasn’t until my sister Janine introduced him to my family after Easter Sunday Mass that he really got my attention. It was a cool, sunny day with the fragrance of daffodils in the air as we waited on a long line to greet Father outside the front doors. When it was our turn, we all smiled and said hello, and my step-dad Tom complimented his homily. Father said, “Thank you,” and then, shaking our hands and blushing, said to my sisters and me, “Wow, four girls. You all have the same blue eyes,” but when he got to me he held my eyes a beat longer than he did theirs, and I felt a sharp pulse of attraction. After we walked away, my sister Julie said, without a hint of irony, “He’d be perfect for Maria.” Nellie, the youngest, rolled her eyes, and my mother shot back, “Julie!” but with a smirk. I nearly gasped. He was perfect—smart and handsome and personable but also a touch shy to make him sweet. He made me feel more special in that moment than the men I dated, sometimes slept with, so I wouldn’t have to be alone. After that, whenever he said Mass I thought good but walked out the side door and didn’t greet him. He was a priest. Besides, the last thing I wanted to be reminded of was celibacy. I’d been running from it ever since I was eight and, sitting in St. Bernadette’s one night, I felt God calling me to become a nun.

      It was after five o’clock Mass on a Saturday, and I was headed out the door when something made me pick up The Tablet’s Special Vocations Issue and stay a while. Nestled into hewn rock high above the altar was the Blessed Mother in a beautiful white dress and powder blue sash with fourteen-year-old Bernadette kneeling beside her and gazing into her face. It looked like a giant circle of love surrounded them, but not one that made me feel left out like I had ever since Nellie was born. I walked a few feet down the long aisle, sat down in a pew, and opened The Tablet. There in the centerfold in big bold letters was GIVE YOUR LIFE TO GOD. I stared at it for a while unsure why God would want jealous eight year old me to give my life to Him or what that even meant until I turned the page and saw picture after picture of smiling nuns and priests.

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