Carlos Garcia and Ophelia Viera were both born in Mercy fifty-one years ago, Ophelia in April, Carlos in October. They have been happily married for twenty-four years and have two children: Tito, twenty-two, and Julia, twenty.
Tito is a senior majoring in Horticulture at the University of California Santa Cruz with a minor in French History. After completing his university studies, he wants to work on farms in France for a few years before returning to Mercy to grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers.
Julia lives in a camper van with her husband Jazz Zagorski who is three years older than Julia. They got married in the summer after Julia graduated from high school. Jazz plays stand-up bass and designs web sites for musicians. Julia plays guitar, sings, does the cooking, and paints watercolors Jazz uses on the web sites he designs.
Together with Kate Pinot Noir, a violinist and singer, and Kate’s percussionist husband Max Pinot Noir (the Pinot Noirs live in another camper van), Julia, Jazz, Kate, and Max are the perpetually touring folk moderne band Zagorski Pinot Noir.
*
Carlos, who works for the postal service, and Ophelia, a nurse, also have two dogs: Cha-Cha, a brown pointy-eared Chihuahua mutt, and Pequeño, a big gray and white Malamute.
Cha-Cha, who is eight now, was four-months old when Julia rescued her from the animal shelter and gave her to Carlos for Christmas because Carlos liked having a dog with him as he drove hither and yon delivering mail, and his previous canine companion had recently died.
As fate would have it, Cha-Cha hated riding in the postal jeep, and after a few miserable days of accompanying Carlos on his rounds she was allowed to stay home where she established herself as queen of the household, her throne the living room sofa.
Pequeño, seven-years-old now, was a tiny puppy when Tito found him abandoned at the beach parking lot. Tito begged Carlos and Ophelia to let him keep the puppy, they said he could, and being a busy teenager he bequeathed the care of Pequeño to Ophelia and Carlos who loved the pup so much they didn’t mind.
Cha-Cha, however, was greatly displeased by the arrival of the darling puppy and expressed her displeasure by yapping shrilly whenever people paid attention to Pequeño and not to her. She also growled and snapped at the puppy whenever he came near her.
Thus when Ophelia left in the morning to work at the hospital and Tito and Julia left for Mercy High, Carlos felt he had no choice but to take tiny Pequeño with him in the jeep as he delivered mail to the far reaches of the Mercy zip code.
Much to Carlos’s delight, Pequeño loved riding in the jeep with Carlos, and especially loved all the marvelous people and dogs they met along their way.
*
When Carlos stopped being a rural mail carrier two years ago and started working in the Mercy post office, Pequeño went to work with Carlos a few times but found hanging out in the warehouse a dreadful bore because he was not allowed out front to visit with the customers and their dogs.
So now Pequeño stays home with Cha Cha, and though they are not great pals, they get along okay.
Ophelia works three twelve-hour shifts at Mercy Hospital every week and takes Pequeño for walks on those days when she’s not at the hospital. And every weekend, barring inclement weather, Carlos and Ophelia take Pequeño for a long beach walk or a hike in the forest.
*
Their favorite forest hike is a four-mile loop that begins at a parking area a mile inland from the mouth of the Mercy River. The trail follows the north side of the river inland for another half-mile to the Convent of the Redwoods where the trail veers away from the river and climbs north through a forest of hundred-year-old redwoods to a confluence of trails, one of which they take to lovely Crayfish Falls.
At the falls they have lunch and soak their feet in the soothing water before continuing up the trail to the top of a ridge with a view overlooking the Mercy River, and from here they descend through the redwoods to where they began.
*
Every month or so Ophelia calls the Convent of the Redwoods and invites her dear friend Sister Orla to join them on their hike to Crayfish Falls.
Sister Orla, formerly Orla Jane Gallagher, Irish through and through, was Ophelia’s best friend when they attended Mercy Elementary and Mercy High together, after which Orla went away to college, dropped out after two years, and lived a bohemian life in Berkeley until she became a nun at the age of twenty-six. Then three years ago, at the age of forty-eight, Sister Orla returned to Mercy for the first time in forty years to care for her dying mother.
When Sister Orla’s mother died, the Mother Superior of the Convent of the Redwoods invited Sister Orla to join the twelve other nuns in the convent, and Sister Orla accepted the invitation.
The thirteen nuns who live at the Convent of the Redwoods, a former hunting lodge, are not strictly cloistered, though most of them rarely leave the convent grounds except to walk to the beach and back.
The convent has an apple orchard and a large vegetable garden in which the nuns grow much of the convent’s food from April through October, and they also have a big hoop-house wherein they grow lettuce, chard, kale, potatoes, and green onions year round.
Sister Orla spends most of her daylight hours praying, working in the garden, taking long walks with Sister Jean, helping prepare breakfast and supper, playing the piano during recreation time, and writing poems and drawing pictures she never shows anyone.
*
On a warm day in July, Sister Orla is waiting in front of the convent gate when Ophelia, Carlos, and Pequeño arrive in their little car. Rather than hike in full nun regalia, and with permission from Mother Superior, Orla is wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, long gray skirt, straw sunhat, and walking shoes – her eyes emerald green, her auburn hair showing the first signs of turning gray.
Sister Orla exchanges smiles with Carlos, gives Ophelia’s hand a squeeze, and falls to her knees to embrace Pequeño who she loves dearly and vice-versa.
“I feel positively naked,” she says, with her charming Irish brogue. “What a terrible sinner I am shedding my habit for the carnal pleasure of climbing to the falls with you.”
“If you’re a sinner, Sister Orla,” says Carlos, laughing, “what does that make us?”
“Angels,” she says, kissing Pequeño’s snout and reveling in the caress of his tongue.
*
“I’ve been thinking of little else but going up to the falls with you ever since you called,” says Sister Orla as they begin their ascent through the redwoods. “Such a blessing to go into the forest with you. Sister Jean loves to walk on the beach, but her knees don’t do well on a steep slope, going up or down, and none of the others love the forest as I do, and I’m not permitted to leave the convent alone, so… I’m more than grateful to you.”
“You can always call me,” says Ophelia, smiling at her old friend. “You don’t have to wait for me to call you.”
“That’s a tricky one,” says Sister Orla, sighing. “Desire, you know, is a manifestation of selfishness, and in the convent we’re all about subsuming the self for the good of others, so… it’s a tricky one, asking for things you want.”
*
After their good long climb, they find Crayfish Falls reduced to three slender streams trickling over a smooth granite face and pattering on the surface of a little pool – the paucity of water the result of three years of drought.
They dine on French bread and cheese and olives and Ophelia’s scrumptious mushroom pâté, and Sister Orla opines, “Now wouldn’t a bit of red wine be just the thing with this?” She laughs. “In the secular world, of course, and in my sinful fantasies.”
“Good with water, too,” says Carlos, chuckling. “Or beer.”
“Oh please don’t mention beer,” says Sister Orla, groaning dramatically. “End of the day yesterday, after four hours of sweating in the garden, I could think of nothing but ice cold beer.”
*
When they get back to the convent in the late afternoon, Sister Orla lingers at the gate with them, petting Pequeño.
“I’m having a hard time,” she says, looking at Ophelia and crying. “I want to hug you both but I’m not permitted to hug you, and I’d love to have a dog like Pequeño, but we can’t have dogs here.” She sniffles. “Anyway… thanks so much for asking me to walk with you. You’re always in my prayers, and you’re often in my dreams, too. I hope you don’t mind.”
*
Driving home, Carlos says, “Maybe she’s done being a nun. How long has it been?”
“Twenty-five years,” says Ophelia, remembering when Orla called her from Berkeley to tell her she was taking the vows. “A year longer than we’ve been married.”
“When we were in high school I always thought she was gonna be a movie star,” says Carlos, parking in the driveway of their little house on a street of little houses at the north end of Mercy. “I remember watching her in plays and thinking she was a genius. Remember?”
“I remember,” says Ophelia, getting out of the car and waving to Cha-Cha who is at the living room window watching them intently. “And I always thought she was going to be a writer and a movie director because that’s what she said she was going to be, and there was nothing she couldn’t do, so… but then she went to college and everything changed.”
“You can sniff around for ten minutes, Pequeño,” says Carlos, letting the big dog out of the car. “And then you come in. Okay?”
Pequeño grins at Carlos and trots away to visit his favorite pissing spots.
*
That night Carlos and Ophelia both dream about Sister Orla.
In Ophelia’s dream, she and Sister Orla are trying to escape from a room jam-packed with junk.
“Up there,” says Sister Orla, pointing urgently to a window high above them.
They stack a tall bookshelf on top of a rickety table and climb up the shelves only to find there’s no way to open the window.
“Break it,” says Ophelia, handing Sister Orla a hammer.
“I can’t,” says Sister Orla, bowing her head. “Tis a sin.”
“But they’re going to kill us,” says Ophelia, wresting the hammer from Sister Orla and smashing the window.
*
In Carlos’s dream, he poles a gondola up the river to the convent in the dead of night and finds Sister Orla waiting on the shore wearing her black frock crowned by a huge white headpiece resembling a manta ray.
“I can’t get any closer,” says Carlos, calling to her. “You’ll have to swim out to me.”
“I’ll drown in all this,” she says, shaking her head.
“Then take it off,” says Carlos, laughing.
So Sister Orla throws off her headpiece and sheds her frock and dives naked into the water.
*
The next morning at breakfast Carlos and Ophelia share their dreams, and while doing the dishes Carlos says, “If she decides to leave the convent and needs a place to stay, she could live with us for a while. We’ve got the room and I know you’d like her to be here.”
“Gracias mi amor,” says Ophelia, embracing him. “She might not leave, but if she does…”
Now the phone rings and they both know it’s Orla calling, no longer Sister Orla.
fin
La Entrada piano solo from Todd’s album Nature of Love