Excerpt of The Night We Met by Tara Taylor Quinn

January, 1968 San Francisco, California

Life started the night we met. Everything before this was
merely preparation for what was yet to come. It was a
Saturday evening and I'd gone to a local pub just down the
street from St. Catherine's Convent. I'd been living in a
private dormitory at the convent for a couple of years,
studying education at the small elite women's college a
block away—and was just two weeks from becoming a St.
Catherine's postulant and beginning my life of poverty,
chastity and obedience. The San Francisco pub wasn't a
place I frequented often, but that January night I needed
the noise, the distraction, as much as I wanted the beer
that I would drink only until it got me past the unexpected
tension I felt that night.

After all, I had prayers and then Mass with the sisters
early the next morning, followed by religious study.

At a little table some distance from the shiny mahogany
wood bar, I sipped my beer, watched merrymakers and pool-
players, and contemplated the fact that I didn't belong
anywhere.

Not on a date. Or at home watching television with my
family. Not out with friends, not in a library studying and
certainly not on the completely empty dance f loor in front
of me.

I was an in-between, having left behind the person my
parents, siblings and friends, knew me to be. And yet I
hadn't arrived at who I was going to become. The friends
I'd known were getting married, having babies, exploring
the world and its opportunities while I was living on the
outskirts of a society I was on the verge of joining. I had
three years of religious study ahead of me before I'd be
allowed to take my final vows and become one of the sisters
with whom I'd soon be living.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sitting there feeling sorry
for myself. I'm far too practical and stubborn and
determined to waste my time on such a defeatist emotion. I
was simply taking my life into my own hands even as I gave
it to God. Trying to understand the reasons for my
decisions. Testing them. Making sure. Soul-searching, some
folks might call it.

For that hour or two, I'd left my dormitory room at the
convent and all that was now familiar to me, left the
sisters and their gentle care, to enter a harsher world of
sin and merriment and ordinary social living to seek the
truth about me.

Was my choice to wed myself to God, to serve him for the
rest of my days, the right one for me, Eliza Crowley,
nineteen-year-old youngest child of James and Viola Crowley?

A woman's laugh distracted me from my thoughts. A young
blond beauty settled at the recently vacated table next to
me with a man good-looking enough to star in cigarette
commercials. They held hands as they sat, leaning in to
kiss each other, not once but twice. Open-mouthed kisses.
The girl wasn't much older than me, but she had a diamond
on her finger whose karat weight was probably triple that
in my mother's thirtieth-anniversary band.

I couldn't imagine any of that for myself. Not the hand-
holding. The kissing. And certainly not the diamond. They
were all fine and good and valid for some lives. Just too
far removed from me to seem real.

As I drank my beer, I saw an older woman sitting at the
bar. I had no idea when she'd come in. The place was
crowded, the seats at my table the only free ones on the f
loor, but I'd pretty much noticed everyone coming and
going. Except for this woman.

Had she appeared from the back room? Was she working there?
Maybe a cook? She held her cigarette with her left hand.
There was no ring.

Judging by the wrinkles and spots on that hand, I figured
she had to be at least sixty.

Had she always lived alone?

Could I?

I pictured the house I might have—a single woman by myself.
It would be white with aluminum siding, and a picket fence
and f lowers. I was inside, having dinner, I thought. A
salad, maybe. I'd worked that day. I'm not sure where, but
I assumed I'd be a teacher. I was patient enough. And I
liked kids.

And the whole vision felt as f lat as the tile f loor
beneath my feet. There was nothing wrong with that life. It
just wasn't mine.

I imagined being my sister, my mother. I loved them,
admired them—and experienced no excitement, no sense of
connection, when I considered their choices for myself. I
pictured myself as Gloria Steinem. I had courage and
determination. Perhaps there was some contribution I was
supposed to make to the world, some discovery or mission.

But I didn't think so. There was no fire, no zeal at the
thought. Rather than change the world, I felt compelled to
care for those who lived in it.

What about that woman over there at the bar, surrounded by
people yet talking to no one, lighting up another
cigarette. Was there something I could do to help her?
Comfort her?

I didn't know, but if she asked for help I'd give it.
Regardless of any discomfort. I was here to serve.

I wanted to be God's servant, ready for Him to send where
He needed, when He needed.

Joan of Arc wasn't my heroine. Mother Theresa was. I'd made
the right choice.

Satisfied, relaxed, I reveled in my quieted mind and a few
minutes later I was ready to leave the half mug of beer on
the table and head back to St. Catherine's. I planned to
write about tonight in my journal, chronicling for later
years these moments of ref lection and self-revelation. I
was mentally titling the page The night I knew for sure.

I just had to find the waitress so I could pay my bill.
Good luck doing that, since the bar was so crowded. I
couldn't even catch a glimpse of her. How much did a beer
cost in this place? Surely fifty cents would do it, plus
tip. I'd shoved a few bills in the front pocket of my blue
jeans.

"Hey, don't I know you?"

I started to tell the blond guy standing at my table that
the line was wasted on me, but then I recognized him.

"you're Patricia Ingalls's older brother, Arnold." My reply
was pretty friendly to make up for thinking he was hitting
on me.

"Right," he said, smiling. "And you're that friend of hers
who decided to become a nun."

Not quite how I would've said it, but—okay. He was, after
all, correct. "Yep."

"My friends and I just drove in from skiing at Tahoe—and
this is the only table left with seats. Mind if we join
you?"

I fully intended to tell him he could have the table. I was
leaving, anyway. And then I noticed the guy who'd joined
the group, pocketing a set of keys. Arnold was older than
Patricia and me by four years. This guy was even older.

It wasn't his age that froze my tongue, though. I'm not
really sure what it was. He looked at me and I couldn't
move.

And somehow, five minutes later, I found myself sitting at
a table sipping beer with five athletic-looking older men.

And buzzing with nervousness because of the man right next
to me—Nate Grady, Arnold had said, adding that Nate was
staying sober so he could drive, which explained the keys.

Was I drawn toward him as a woman is to a man? I didn't
think so. Not that I knew much about such things. It was
just that he was so—vital.

I couldn't understand my reaction so, really, had no
explanation for it.

"When'd you quit the convent?, Arnold asked after the beer
had been served.

"I didn't." My eyes shied away from any contact with Nate
as I replied—and my entire body suffused with guilty heat.
For a second there, I'd wanted to deny my association with
the church. With my calling.

Like Peter? Who later redeemed himself ?

Or Judas—who never did?"

"No kidding!" Nate's deep voice was distinctive, his words
clear in the room's din. "you're a nun?"

he'd been a minute or two behind, parking the car, when
Arnold had mentioned it earlier.

"Not yet," I assured him as though there was still time to
stop the course of my life if need be—and at the same time
shrinking inside, preparing to be struck down for my heresy.

"I've been living at St. Catherine's dormitory for the past
couple of years, but in two weeks I move into the convent
itself and start my formal training," I added to appease
any anger I might have instilled in God, directing my
comment to Nate without actually looking at him. "It takes
three years to get through the novitiate."

"You live with the nuns?, That voice came again, touching
me deep inside.

"I live in a dormitory on the grounds, yes."

"Dressed like that?"

"Not around the convent, no." I didn't describe the plain
brown dress I usually wore. Not understanding why his
presence was like a magnet to me, I wasn't going to engage
in conversation with him at all if I could help it. I tried
to focus on Arnold and the other guys as they relived, with
exaggerated detail I was sure, antics from their day, each
trying to top the other with tales of daring attempts or
perilous danger survived.

But frankly, I found their accounts boring. I kept thinking
about paying my bill and excusing myself. Our waitress
passed, laden with drinks and I told myself I'd f lag her
down next time.

"Do you spend your days with the nuns?"

I shook my head, alternating between wishing I'd bothered
with makeup or a hairstyle and feeling glad that I hadn't.
Men liked blond bobs, not the straight brown wash-and-wear
stuff that was cut just above my shoulders.

There was safety in mousy.

And in another six months when, God willing, I became a
novice and received the Holy Habit, minus the wimple I'd be
honored with when I took my final vows, my hair would be
cut as short as my father's.

"What kind of order is St. Catherine's?"

Why wasn't he joining in the boasting with his friends?

"Teaching. Other than those who run the household, the
sisters hold teaching positions, either at the private
college I attend or at Eastside Catholic High School right
next to it."

I didn't see how he could possibly be interested in this.
And wasn't even sure he'd be able to hear me above the
crowd.

"So that's what you want to do? Teach?"

"I want to serve God. Since the Second Vatican Council
there's been a surge of energy directed toward education.
And I love kids. So, yes, I do hope to spend my life
teaching." Instinctively I turned to face him as I spoke.
And couldn't look away. He had the bluest eyes I'd ever
seen. And possibly the warmest.

"How old are you? If you don't mind me asking."

"Nineteen."

He leaned a bit closer, not disrespectfully, I somehow
knew, but simply to ease conversation. "Do you have any
idea how lucky you are to know your calling in life at such
a young age?"

The question reminded me of my reason for being in the pub
at all—potentially the last time I'd enter such an
establishment. "Yes," I told him, remembering the
conclusions I'd drawn only a half hour before. And the
resulting peace that had settled over me.