Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell Read Online Free PDF Page A

and shameful, but when I leave I am no longer going to hell. That has to pass for heaven for now.
     
January 12, 1960
    I go to Tom’s office. I’m here because of the bomb, I say. “I remember Bimini quite well, actually,” he says. “You and I had a bird’s eye view of the whole proceeding.” No, I say. We were down below, and you were raping me. Tom sits in his big black leather chair without moving, without saying anything, his fingers touching his mouth at the tips to make a steeple. “You just remembered now?” he says. I kept having dreams, I say. “ Ahhh ,” Tom says. “Dreams are a horse of a different color. You may have been dreaming about what you wanted to happen, rather than what actually happened. It may have been a fantasy.” It was no fantasy, I say, it was as real as anything in my life. He stands up. “I’m glad you came,” Tom says. Why? I ask. “Because you’ve never come before,” Tom says, “and now there’s no reason for you to ever come again.” He is the one with horns, and we both know it.
     
February 1, 1960
    Diana and Luigi are back from the Australian Open, where Luigi won the mixed doubles. He is happy, they are celebrating, and I am in darkness. Diana goes to the powder room at the Stork Club and Luigi and I are alone. “I know what you want to say,” he says. “You want to say you can no longer see Luigi, that you have been to Confession to confess all of your sins, and that you and Luigi must no longer be in sin against your sister. Yes?” Yes, I say. “But Luigi has committed no sin because nobody has been hurt by Luigi’s sin, and nobody will be hurt by Luigi’s sin unless somebody tells Luigi’s wife.” I can’t tell her, I say. “No.” Luigi slides his finger along his throat. “Because if you do, I will kill you.” I am white as a ghost when Diana comes back from the powder room. “What’s wrong?” she says. I tell her the shrimp went down the wrong pipe.
     
March 17, 1960
    St. Patrick’s Day. Will comes to visit and we drink and drink. He is writing a family saga called “Sins of the Flesh,” a make-believe history of the real story, he calls it, and he babbles on like he has to keep talking or the idea will go away forever. I am too ashamed to tell him what happened between Tom and me, between me and Luigi. He’s still my little brother. Even when I’m drunk I don’t want him to know the whole truth.
     
June 19, 1960
    I have confessed my sins. I have done my penance. I feel like I am going to hell.
     
July 8, 1960
    Tom is everywhere in the newspapers with the scare about the Communists and Sputnik. Everyone is afraid the Communists will bomb us with their rockets. But not Atomic Tom. He says all we need is more money for nuclear weapons, that everyone and their brother should build a bomb shelter, that we can bomb the Commies back to the Stone Age any time we want if we vote for Kennedy. Whenever I think of him, I want to explode.
     
    October 1, 1960
    Wall Street absolutely loves us. They love Mother Superior like a mother and me like a pet. We now have another successful bond offering and Mother Superior won’t let me forget it. “The Order is all about money,” she tells me, “about having the money to do God’s work.” God’s work can’t be done by someone who is in sin, I tell her. “Have you been to Confession?” she asks. She knows that I have, a hundred times. “Then that’s that,” Mother Superior says. It’s not that kind of sin, I tell her.
     
November 11, 1960
    Becca finally comes to visit here at the Convent. Her face is bloated, her eyes a blur, like it takes all of her concentration just to say hello. I want to pinch her to see if she’ll say “ Owww !” Instead I ask her how she’s feeling to see if she’s feeling anything at all. “I’m better,” she says. What are they giving you? I say. “Something to take the edge off,” Becca says. Do you have them with you? I say. Becca takes out a bottle