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than me.” I have done terrible things, I say, things I am scared to even tell you about. Mother Superior says God’s mansion has so many rooms it might as well be a motel.
     
March 14, 1963
    I don’t know what to do about Charles Evans. He keeps calling and calling. First he’s apologizing for the way he’s acted, over and over, then he’s starting to act that way again. He calls me when he’s sober, and he calls me when he’s drunk. He calls to tell me he still loves his wife, and he calls to tell me he can’t stand her. First I tell him to go to Confession. Then I tell him to go to hell.
     
August 1, 1963
    Becca is so much better since she started taking pictures, as if she has a new pair of glasses and can finally see the world. And the pictures! Like she has a microscope that looks inside of you! She has been taking pictures of Nancy and me here at the Convent, with our habits and without. In our habits we look like creatures from outer space. Without we don’t look like much of anything.
     
September 3, 1963
    A new group of recruits comes in today, the largest class ever. Mother Superior is beside herself with joy, telling me that I deserve all the credit. I tell her the Order has to market itself every day, like we’re a bar of soap. We have to turn every Sister into a recruit willing to promote our way of life. We have to portray the Order as a group of selfless heroines willing to sally  forth wherever we are needed. It’s a kind of brainwashing, I tell her. If we do all of those things, in another year we will be turning girls away.
     
September 30, 1963
    Will comes to the Convent again, this time under his own steam. He is sober as a judge but talking like a crazy man. Now everything is a conspiracy, life is a conspiracy, and Tom is part of what he calls the “military industrial complex” plotting to take over the world. He tells me Tom is in bed with some of the most powerful generals in the country, that he’s gone power-mad like they have, and if I don’t believe him to just wait until we bomb Vietnam, a country I’ve never even heard of. He keeps on with his wild talk, and I worry that he’s going to go crazy again, that his mind is whipping around fast enough to break his neck. I try to slow him down, to listen to him, but there’s no stopping Will now. He’s writing two books, not just “Sins of the Flesh” but something called “Plot Against The People.” The good thing is Will seems to have no time to drink.
     
October 4, 1963
    Mother Superior says she is going to start “grooming” me. “I know you’re going to change your mind about running the Order,” Mother Superior says. Why do you say that? I ask. “The power of prayer,” she says. “And the love of power.”
     
November 23, 1963
    Kennedy is shot dead and even Tom is in shock.
     
    November 27, 1963
    Nancy and I are alone here for Thanksgiving at the Convent. We wanted it that way, to be together without any family, just the two of us. We know each other so well by now, like an old married couple, though we’re not so old. Nancy seems to know everything about living, about being alive. She is bringing back to life those things that had been dying in me, the way only a true friend can.
     
December 6, 1963
    Will is back here with a new conspiracy theory that also happens to be true. He has been talking to Rebecca and to Diana, and now he knows almost everything, that Tom was raping us while we were growing up, and that we were all too ashamed to ever admit it. “How does he get away with it?” Will asks me. I tell him that I wish I knew. “It’s true then?” Will says. As true as true can be, I tell him.
     
January 12, 1964
    Big flakes of snow. Diana and Luigi bring baby Gino for a visit and I’ve never seen them happier. Luigi has cut back on everything but mixed doubles, and he loves to be with his boy and his bride, as if the arrival of a son opened up his soul for eternity. Diana is already talking