Once again, Alice McDermott kept me up late at night reading. This time it was The Ninth Hour, her newest novel about a widow, her daughter and the nuns who welcome them in. This book is a portrait of a time gone by in Brooklyn when prams, nuns in habits, handwashing laundry, train travel, and Catholicism were a part of the fabric of life. McDermott has a gift for bringing to life this time period and her characters and interweaving the difficulty of believing in a just God with acting with mercy in a sinful world. [spoilers ahead]
The conflict between prudence and mercy strains the conscience in many of the character's (particularly the nuns) actions. Maybe prudence isn't quite the right word for the choices in this book, but justice doesn't seem quite right either. Since I find myself sometimes struggling to moderate prudence that vacillates between vice and virtue and a desire to be a more extravagant Christian, generous with charity and acts of mercy, a generosity that doesn't come naturally, that particular word came to mind as I read McDermott's lovely novel.
The conflict between prudence and mercy strains the conscience in many of the character's (particularly the nuns) actions. Maybe prudence isn't quite the right word for the choices in this book, but justice doesn't seem quite right either. Since I find myself sometimes struggling to moderate prudence that vacillates between vice and virtue and a desire to be a more extravagant Christian, generous with charity and acts of mercy, a generosity that doesn't come naturally, that particular word came to mind as I read McDermott's lovely novel.
The book has a tight focus but spans generations. It follows the relationship between a young Irish immigrant named Annie, the sisters of Little Nursing Sisters of the sick Poor Congregation of Mary before the Cross Stabat Mater (their community's name a source of humor later in the book), and her daughter Sally, who is born after Annie's husband's death (and named St. Savior after the nun who first consoles her mother). In the first part of the book, named for the prayers of the first hour, "Lauds," the sisters come to Annie's aid. One sister, Sister St. Savior, even goes so far as to try to get Annie's husband a Christian burial despite the fact that he has committed suicide and endangered the other members of the tenement by leaving on the gas.
The sisters find Annie a room to rent with the large, cheerfully chaotic Tierney family, and give her a job helping with the convent laundry, which includes not just the sisters' habits, but also linens of the sick and deceased and donated clothing for the poor. In other words, lots of laundry. "With sacred solemnity, Sister Illuminata demonstrated for Annie how a garment should be properly shaken and hung." With lines like these, McDermott displays both the humor and profundity of doing small acts with great love.
While the book is too short to really round out the characters, McDermott gives each of the nuns has a distinct personality. Sister St. Savior is old and proud, but full of mercy; she wants the suicide buried with a funeral on church ground and truly loves the poor. She has a heart "Mad for mercy." Sister Lucy is busy, and a bit rough with her justice, saying things like "You can't pull the wool over God's eyes." But she, too, looks out for the poor, and asks young Mrs. Tierney another young pregnant mother with a stroller and toddler if her husband is good to her. She arranges a friendship between these two young mothers. And though she is judgemental, she is also intent on the good of others.
The most beloved sister, Sr. Jeanne, is tiny and sweet and loves children. I'm not sure why at the end of the book she says she gave up heaven a long time ago. Because she loved Sally so much? Because she turned a blind eye to sin? Because perhaps she offers her salvation as a sacrifice for allowing an illicit relationship between Mr. Costello, the milkman, and Annie to begin and continue? Sister Lucy had warned her that Annie needed a proper husband and was flirting with Mr. Costello, but Sr. Jeanne does or says nothing, although she obviously sees when others act out of desire instead of out of prudence. She "believed with the conviction of an eyewitness that all human loss would be restored. . . . because fairness demanded it. " She believes God gave us the idea of fairness because he meant to give comfort and recompense to the suffering people in Heaven to repay them. She has a ghostly visit one day from Jim, the man who threw away his chance to know and love his bright young wife and adorable baby. This vision haunts her, perhaps also is a warning, of what I'm not sure. But her tenderness and self-sacrifice suggest that she is motivated by an abundance of love for others. Maybe her statement only suggests the depth with which people tend to judge themselves and their sins of thought.
Finally, the laundry sister, Sister Illuminata, is old and grumpy, bothered by aches and pains and old TB. She retells tales of her past, which suggests a break with convent rule, but makes small animals out of soap for baby Sally and is jealous of how her helper loves Sr. Jeanne. In the end, it is this grumpy sister who is revealed to be most understanding of Sally when she is conflicted about her vocation.
The most beloved sister, Sr. Jeanne, is tiny and sweet and loves children. I'm not sure why at the end of the book she says she gave up heaven a long time ago. Because she loved Sally so much? Because she turned a blind eye to sin? Because perhaps she offers her salvation as a sacrifice for allowing an illicit relationship between Mr. Costello, the milkman, and Annie to begin and continue? Sister Lucy had warned her that Annie needed a proper husband and was flirting with Mr. Costello, but Sr. Jeanne does or says nothing, although she obviously sees when others act out of desire instead of out of prudence. She "believed with the conviction of an eyewitness that all human loss would be restored. . . . because fairness demanded it. " She believes God gave us the idea of fairness because he meant to give comfort and recompense to the suffering people in Heaven to repay them. She has a ghostly visit one day from Jim, the man who threw away his chance to know and love his bright young wife and adorable baby. This vision haunts her, perhaps also is a warning, of what I'm not sure. But her tenderness and self-sacrifice suggest that she is motivated by an abundance of love for others. Maybe her statement only suggests the depth with which people tend to judge themselves and their sins of thought.
Finally, the laundry sister, Sister Illuminata, is old and grumpy, bothered by aches and pains and old TB. She retells tales of her past, which suggests a break with convent rule, but makes small animals out of soap for baby Sally and is jealous of how her helper loves Sr. Jeanne. In the end, it is this grumpy sister who is revealed to be most understanding of Sally when she is conflicted about her vocation.
The book is told from the point of view of the children of the young people. "Our Father" and "Our Mother" are Patrick Tierney and Sally, who grow up over the course of the novel. They are babies when they first meet in their strollers, but almost adults before they acknowledge any affection. But the book is not their love story; it is more the story of what formed them into the adults of children of adults who seek out the stories the made their parents who they are. We find out that Sally and Patrick have married and have children, who must be hushed when their mother has to go to her room to sleep off melancholy. The Sisters come to care for the children (and their mother) during these times.
Two other characters flit like ghosts throughout the story: Old Aunt Rose and Red Whelan. They are a part of the Tierney family lore: a maiden aunt who comes to stay for 40 years and a poor man who was paid $300 to substitute in the Civil War for Patrick Tierney's grandfather. Red returns without an arm or a leg and lives upstairs in the Tierney family home, a literal skeleton in the closet. Aunt Rose cares for him with Tierney family support. Patrick's family has been haunted by the specter of Red Whelan, who nurse him in acknowledgment of the debt he paid with his arm and leg. Patrick's father eventually leaves home angry because of family disapproval about his Irish fiancee, but he goes to the funeral with Patrick, who learns the family legends. Patrick eventually, as a married man, takes in the aged spinster aunt who spent her life nursing (loving) Red Whelan. Aunt Rose doesn't stay long, but she presages other sufferings in the future - fidelity and madness. Aunt Rose is sent to die in a nursing home run by other sisters (little Sisters of the Poor, I imagine - the order Sr Jeanne was supposed to join) because Sally is delicate. Maybe also because she reminds Sally of her mother - a woman who for years loved a man who wasn't her husband? These old broken people move in and out of lives reminding the younger generation of their connection to a past that held mysteries of intertwined lives before their time in the world began. The relationships of our ancestors become our inheritance.
Two other characters flit like ghosts throughout the story: Old Aunt Rose and Red Whelan. They are a part of the Tierney family lore: a maiden aunt who comes to stay for 40 years and a poor man who was paid $300 to substitute in the Civil War for Patrick Tierney's grandfather. Red returns without an arm or a leg and lives upstairs in the Tierney family home, a literal skeleton in the closet. Aunt Rose cares for him with Tierney family support. Patrick's family has been haunted by the specter of Red Whelan, who nurse him in acknowledgment of the debt he paid with his arm and leg. Patrick's father eventually leaves home angry because of family disapproval about his Irish fiancee, but he goes to the funeral with Patrick, who learns the family legends. Patrick eventually, as a married man, takes in the aged spinster aunt who spent her life nursing (loving) Red Whelan. Aunt Rose doesn't stay long, but she presages other sufferings in the future - fidelity and madness. Aunt Rose is sent to die in a nursing home run by other sisters (little Sisters of the Poor, I imagine - the order Sr Jeanne was supposed to join) because Sally is delicate. Maybe also because she reminds Sally of her mother - a woman who for years loved a man who wasn't her husband? These old broken people move in and out of lives reminding the younger generation of their connection to a past that held mysteries of intertwined lives before their time in the world began. The relationships of our ancestors become our inheritance.
The title of the book is a reference to afternoon prayers at three pm, "the hour of prayer" in the Old Testament, and the time Christ's death on the cross, a time of sacrifice. Sr. Illuminata would go upstairs for community prayers, but as she ages, she stays in the laundry to pray - like being banished to the dungeon, only a welcome exile. At some point, Sister Jeanne begins coming to the basement to give Annie a chance for a break, to go upstairs for tea with the cook or to go shopping. Eventually, it also gives her time to rendezvous with Mr. Costello, who is married to an unhappy, invalid woman nursed by the sisters.
Sally grows up in the convent, a pet as predicted by Sister Lucy, a bit spoiled and sheltered. She, of course, decides she wants to be a nun. She loves and trusts her mother, shares a bed with her, loves the Tierney's rough and tumble but loving home life, but still decides one day she wants to be a sister despite her mother's opposition. Does Annie oppose because she doesn't want Sally to leave her? Sister Illuminata shares that her own vocation came not from a sense of sacrifice, but as a call to be a "pure, clean antidote to filth, to pain" to which all mortal things tend. The life of a nursing sister is the "antidote to the devil's ambition" to make life stink and discourage people. Sister Illuminata washes and irons the clothes for donations and the other sisters' habits before washing her own. She is the laundress because she had tuberculosis, but she still sees herself as ministering to purity.
Sally is given the opportunity to follow Sister Lucy and Sister Jeanne on their rounds in order to test her vocation. She is exposed to the sick and poor, and first meets Mrs. Costello, the milkman's wife, who is half mad and has only one leg, having lost the other to an infection following a dog bite. Mrs. Costello is needy and grim, but Sally pities her.
Sally also is drawn to the boy Charlie who, it is discovered by the sisters, has tied up and abused his sisters. The conviction that Sally was making eyes at him leads Sister Lucy to say "Marriage might settle her... I say give God what He asks for."
Sister Jeanne, who meditates on the scent of roses at Sister St Savior's death "The beauty of heaven in the scent .. . Just the smallest notion of it -- of what is promised. As much of heaven's beauty ... as we on earth can bear," seems to see what is beautiful in others, even though there is so much ugliness around. She suggests that Sally's vocation is an opportunity for redemption for Annie - Annie thinks she means for Jim's suicide, but Sr Jeanne knows about her relationship with Mr. Costello. So she is willing to allow Sally has a vocation as a sacrifice in retribution for the sins of her parents. (Is that the fairness Jeanne desires?)
Despite her mother's opposition, Sally persists in thinking she has a vocation and heads off on a train to go to the novitiate in Chicago. On the train she meets with the mass of brutish humanity which she was sheltered from in the convent, even though her nursing internship showed her some glimpses. First Sally encounters a woman who talks filth about her last man, and then Sally is cheated by a girl to whom she gives money in an attempt to be virtuously generous. The girl is revealed to be a huckster. Sally had left Brooklyn believing that "love stood before brutality in that moment on Golgotha and love was triumphant. Love applied to suffering. . . like a clean cloth to a seeping wood." But she learns that she can't cure suffering by purity. She wanted to be a "pure antidote to human pain" in her lovely habit .. but not to mocked on fooled, contrast with bums on the train, stumps of cigars, the rude woman, whom Sally finally is provoked into hitting in the face. As soon as she arrives in Chicago, she tells the sister who meets the train, "The truth is ... I've thought better of it." She gets a sleeping car with what is left of the money her mother saved up to go home.
The next chapter is titled "Stabat Mater," which ends up having all sorts of irony when Sally enters her home and discovers her mother making a snack for Mr. Costello in bare feet. Her mother looks at Mr C with the assurance of her love that she used to give to Sally. Sally sees it with her father's eyes, "envious, lonesome, buried, bereft." She departs feeling betrayed and forsaken and goes to live, like her mother once had, with the Tierneys.
At the Tierney's Sally is shown tenderness and the difficulty of relationships with fathers "He could have forgiven you," is a refrain that echoes between the generations. Mrs. Tierney also seems to think Sally should forgive her mother, but welcomes in the daughter who feels rejected. Mrs. Tierney is a model of hospitality; she is open to life, welcoming babies and stragglers into her home, and she loves the chaos they bring. She is "bored" by holiness, but encourages Annie to confess and make peace. Annie, though, does not want to confess what she does not feel sorry for.
The last part of the book drifts between what is true and what is not and the gray area. The frame story - that the narrators of this book are the children of Sally and Patrick - allows for discrepancies in the chronology and in the understanding and misunderstanding of another person's actions and motives. The chapter called "True" begins with the story of Jeane Jugan founding the order Little Sisters of the Poor (the order Sister Jeanne was supposed to join). Her work as foundress was overshadowed by the priest who was involved in the paperwork, and her saintliness was overlooked until 1855, but as McDermott writes in the words of the narrators, "Truth reveals itself. ... God wants us to know the truth in all things, big or small, because that's how we'll know Him. .. In all her simplicity, old Sister Jeanne told us..."
When the truth is revealed about the double life Annie has been leading, the sisters have to decide if she can continue to work in the laundry. They meet to discuss and pray over the matter. Although her daughter refuses to live with her, Annie is allowed to continue working at the laundry, in part because Sr. Illuminata recognizes that Annie had "a hunger to be comforted" that the nuns couldn't fill.
In reparation for her mother's sin and for her own failure to stick with joining the order, Sally continues to help the sisters with their nursing rounds even though she also has begun working at a hotel, where she encounters more rude jokes and complaints (did her years in the laundry make her too sensitive to humanity's dirty side?). She commits to caring for Mrs. Costello, with whom she shared a bond of betrayal, even though Mrs. Costello apparently knew nothing other than she was left alone all day. When he realizes how sick his wife is, Mr. Costello breaks off the affair with Annie to be more attentive to his sick wife.
Sally, perhaps consumed by the same hunger to be comforted as her mother, is inspired by an overheard conversation at the hotel, to make it possible for her mother to live an honest life. She secretly takes some alum from the laundry and is going to give a spoonful of poison to Mrs. Costello in her tea. Just as she is giving Mrs. C the first spoonful, Mrs. Costello is consumed by a coughing fit and dies. It is hard to tell whether Sally had given her the first spoonful or not, but Sister Jeanne whispers to Sally as she is leaving that she had no role in the invalid's death. Apparently Sister Jeanne either guessed what Sally was thinking or saw the alum in the handkerchief in Sally's purse, which was left open in the kitchen. Does Sister Jeanne's later comment about having given up Heaven indicate a role in Mrs. Costello's death, an offering of herself for her friends' sins, or some less active sin?
Overcome by the events of the day, Sally returns to the Tierneys and sits at the table crying when Patrick approaches her. When he takes her hand, the story of their life together begins, although the narrators say he remembers he met her first when they were in their prams.
The years are fast forwarded from this moment of crisis. Annie and Mr. Costello marry and have a baby named Grace. Sally and Patrick marry and have multiple children. Old Aunt Rose comes to live briefly with the family, but Sally's bouts of melancholy (depression) prevent her from taking care of Aunt Rose. Sister Jeanne comes frequently to the Tierney's to help with the children when Sally is ill (related to her conscience for attempting murder or relating to her genetics, a mental illness inherited from her father?) Sister Jeanne delights in the children and tells them about God and heaven and love. "God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, See? He's revealed them only to the little ones." The children recognize her love: "We felt her delight in us, which was familiar as well, delight in our presence, our living and breathing selves... a tonic for all sorrow" But Sister Jeanne also tells them she is unworthy of heaven, although the children see it as humility or holiness: "God knows my heart . . . So I don't ask for his forgivess, see. . . . I gave up my place in heaven a long time ago, she said. out of love for my friends."
Eventually, the convent is taken over by the bishop and sold. The sisters age and die off. The children of Patrick and Sally piece together their parents' history. Sally apparently told Patrick at one point of her misdirected attempt at murder because the narrators know about the incident. Patrick also sees a connection between Red Whelan and Mrs. Costello, "The one-legged among us."
When the truth is revealed about the double life Annie has been leading, the sisters have to decide if she can continue to work in the laundry. They meet to discuss and pray over the matter. Although her daughter refuses to live with her, Annie is allowed to continue working at the laundry, in part because Sr. Illuminata recognizes that Annie had "a hunger to be comforted" that the nuns couldn't fill.
In reparation for her mother's sin and for her own failure to stick with joining the order, Sally continues to help the sisters with their nursing rounds even though she also has begun working at a hotel, where she encounters more rude jokes and complaints (did her years in the laundry make her too sensitive to humanity's dirty side?). She commits to caring for Mrs. Costello, with whom she shared a bond of betrayal, even though Mrs. Costello apparently knew nothing other than she was left alone all day. When he realizes how sick his wife is, Mr. Costello breaks off the affair with Annie to be more attentive to his sick wife.
Sally, perhaps consumed by the same hunger to be comforted as her mother, is inspired by an overheard conversation at the hotel, to make it possible for her mother to live an honest life. She secretly takes some alum from the laundry and is going to give a spoonful of poison to Mrs. Costello in her tea. Just as she is giving Mrs. C the first spoonful, Mrs. Costello is consumed by a coughing fit and dies. It is hard to tell whether Sally had given her the first spoonful or not, but Sister Jeanne whispers to Sally as she is leaving that she had no role in the invalid's death. Apparently Sister Jeanne either guessed what Sally was thinking or saw the alum in the handkerchief in Sally's purse, which was left open in the kitchen. Does Sister Jeanne's later comment about having given up Heaven indicate a role in Mrs. Costello's death, an offering of herself for her friends' sins, or some less active sin?
Overcome by the events of the day, Sally returns to the Tierneys and sits at the table crying when Patrick approaches her. When he takes her hand, the story of their life together begins, although the narrators say he remembers he met her first when they were in their prams.
The years are fast forwarded from this moment of crisis. Annie and Mr. Costello marry and have a baby named Grace. Sally and Patrick marry and have multiple children. Old Aunt Rose comes to live briefly with the family, but Sally's bouts of melancholy (depression) prevent her from taking care of Aunt Rose. Sister Jeanne comes frequently to the Tierney's to help with the children when Sally is ill (related to her conscience for attempting murder or relating to her genetics, a mental illness inherited from her father?) Sister Jeanne delights in the children and tells them about God and heaven and love. "God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, See? He's revealed them only to the little ones." The children recognize her love: "We felt her delight in us, which was familiar as well, delight in our presence, our living and breathing selves... a tonic for all sorrow" But Sister Jeanne also tells them she is unworthy of heaven, although the children see it as humility or holiness: "God knows my heart . . . So I don't ask for his forgivess, see. . . . I gave up my place in heaven a long time ago, she said. out of love for my friends."
Eventually, the convent is taken over by the bishop and sold. The sisters age and die off. The children of Patrick and Sally piece together their parents' history. Sally apparently told Patrick at one point of her misdirected attempt at murder because the narrators know about the incident. Patrick also sees a connection between Red Whelan and Mrs. Costello, "The one-legged among us."
"Growing old ourselves, we indulged him. We listened to the same stories told again and kept silent about the truth: that our mother's midlife melancholy was clinical depression, unspoken in those days. That Great-aunt Rose's happy tremor as we guided her up the stairs was surely the Parkinson's that had visited us as well. That the holy nuns who sailed through the house when we were young were a dying breed even then. The bishop with his eye on their rich man's mansion even then. The call to sanctity and self-sacrifice, the delusion and superstition it required, fading from the world even then. How much would they have paid him -- Red Whelan -"
In the end, even the truth about Jim's suicide comes out, when the children (adults old enough to have Parkinson's) find a newspaper article when they are looking up our much men were paid to substitute for another man in the Civil War. Apparently, even Sally didn't know how her father had died, or if she did, she never told. Is it a mercy to keep the dirtiness of life hidden or a delusion that prevents someone from living in the truth? Does the ugliness of life turn us toward or away from God? Does prudence demand that we have to choose between loving people and loving God or does mercy demand the opposite? Are there people today who still witness to the kind of self-sacrifice and devotion that the sisters lived? Is this a delusion or superstition, as the children say, or holiness? Mc Dermott's novel raises all these questions without answering them directly. As reader like me sees the story of people trying to love other people despite betrayal, poverty, and the dirtiness of life, and in those love stories sees a little glimpse of Heaven, like Sister Jeanne.
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