Jillian Abbott's - Queens Noir

Then, according to her diary, total blackout. When she awoke in the predawn, she was sitting on a bus stop bench down the road from her Novitiate House. She was groggy and very sore between her legs.

Years later, after an exhaustive Internet search, Nikki had found the old police report and Eileen Lavin’s Family Court records. She had tracked down Eileen’s father, a broken old man who still lived in Bayside. She told him who she was, and he had let her read his daughter’s diaries. Eileen’s mother had since died, never really recovering from the scandal, shame, and sorrow her daughter had brought upon the family with the out-of-wedlock pregnancy, expulsion from the convent, withdrawal from St. John’s, and then her suicide.

The diary entry recounting Nikki’s boat trip with George Sheridan said that she had bled most of the next day. She didn’t want to believe that she had been drugged and raped by the kindly schoolmate. She had no memory of any such monstrous thing happening and she had woken up fully clothed. She was not beaten or bruised. She had no memory of seeing any puppies. She called Sheridan, but he didn’t return her calls. She had no proof that she had ever been with him, in his car, his house, or on his boat. Never mind his bed.

Afraid she would be punished, or asked to leave the Novitiate, she kept her dark fears of having been raped to herself. She did not go to a hospital or to the police right away. Instead, she prayed. She did a Novena and the Stations of the Cross. She lit votive candles. She worked with orphan children who had more problems that she could ever know. She went to confession in Manhattan where no one would recognize her. She kept a diary for her and God’s eyes only.

The diaries revealed that after the night on Sheridan’s boat, Eileen missed a menstrual cycle. Then a second. After three and a half months without a period, she confided in her Mother Superior that she feared she was pregnant. That she’d been raped. The stern, skeptical, no-nonsense head sister who’d seen many a young novice surrender over the years to the weakness of the flesh before taking final vows asked why Eileen hadn’t told anyone till then. Eileen said she’d been afraid.

“You were afraid of going to hell,” Mother Superior said.

“I wasn’t sure I was raped. Or even pregnant. Until now.”

“The alternative being that you are the second coming of the Blessed Virgin?”

“I was afraid! Afraid of you. Afraid of the shame to my parents. Afraid of God.”

“And so now, three months later, you blame a young man, a good Catholic boy from St. John’s studying to be a veterinarian? You aren’t even sure he ever laid a hand on you. You have no memory of any such thing. No evidence. Yet you accuse him and bring shame on him, upon a great Catholic university, to make up for your own weakness? Your own mortal sin?”

“You have it all wrong. I was a virgin when I stepped on his boat!”

“You’ve violated your vows,” Mother Superior said. “You’ve committed the sin of fornication. You are bringing a child out of wedlock into the world. Stop pointing fingers at others. Go home and point the finger at the dirty girl in the mirror.”

When she was four months pregnant, Eileen Lavin was told she could not take her vows of sisterhood. She had not kept her temporary vow of chastity. She’d sinned, covered up that sin, compounded the sin by lying about the original sin, and now she was carrying a bastard child. “There is no room for untruthful, unwed mothers in the sisterhood,” Mother Superior said.

The diaries revealed that when Eileen finally contacted the police, they asked why she’d waited four months to report a rape. They asked why she hadn’t gone to a hospital. Why she hadn’t contacted police right away. They asked why any woman would give birth to a rapist’s baby. She explained that she was a devout Catholic, and could never abort any baby. The skeptical detectives from the 111th Precinct made a cursory call on Sheridan. He denied ever having Eileen Lavin aboard his boat or in his house. He invited them to dust for fingerprints. He said the woman was delusional. That her nickname was Sister Psycho.

The cops believed Sheridan. They apologized for bothering him. “We cannot indict a man on the word of a defrocked nun with no memory of the alleged crime,” said the Queens District Attorney’s office who investigated the case in 1982. “There’s no proof the baby is Sheridan’s. A blood test could only eliminate him, not identify him.” There was no definitive DNA test in 1982.

Eileen’s devout, old-world, immigrant Irish Catholic parents ostracized her. They had been shamed by a whispering campaign in their Bayside parish where they had previously bragged about their pious daughter going into the convent. Eileen had become just another unwed, knocked-up college slut. Gossip swirled. Neighbors snickered. Friends didn’t return her calls. Because of the pregnancy, she lost her swimming scholarship. She was forced to drop out of her last year of St. John’s and had the baby shortly after she turned twenty. Her mother refused to have anything to do with the child. Or Eileen. After the baptism, Eileen reluctantly gave the baby up for adoption.

Then, the diaries showed, Eileen went into a period of deep and prolonged depression. She reapplied for the Novitiate a year later, but Mother Superior said she was psychologically, morally, and spiritually unfit for the sisterhood. She had no family to turn to. Her religious dreams were shattered. She tried in vain to retrieve her baby from the adoption agency. The Queens Family Court refused to restore custody of her child because she was too emotionally and financially unstable. In thorough despair, Eileen ventured out onto the Throgs Neck Bridge one summer night and jumped 120 feet into the inky waters where she had lost her virginity on George Sheridan’s boat.

On a Friday morning in the second week of June, a quarter-century later, Nikki spied Dr. George Sheridan through her telescope as he left his house in Douglaston for his morning run. She timed it so that she ran into him twenty-two minutes later while descending from the Crocheron overpass of the Cross Island. He undressed her with his eyes so blatantly that she feared he’d leave a stain. Then he sidled up and ran alongside her toward the Bayside Marina.

“What are you doing on Sunday night, doc?” she asked.

“I’m free.”

“Thought I might take you up on that moonlight cruise.”

“Fabulous. Want to eat somewhere first?”

“I’ll pack dinner.”

“I’ll pour you champagne. Where do I pick you up?”

She told him she’d be waiting at 8 p.m. sharp at the little fishing dock alongside the Cross Island between Bayside Marina and Fort Totten.

“Date,” he said.

She promptly jogged up the ramp of the next overpass and he headed on toward the Throgs Neck Bridge.

On Sunday night, Dr. Sheridan showed Nikki how to start, stop, and steer The Dog’s Life as they cruised back to Little Neck Bay from their tour of New York Harbor. Nikki wore black Spandex clam-diggers, a black halter top, a black Mets jacket, and a black Mets cap, which she tilted up when they sailed under the chilly shadow of the Throgs Neck. Sheridan cut the engines and suggested they go down on deck to “eat, drink, and be silly.”

“Okay,” Nikki said.

He dropped anchor under the bridge as Nikki opened the picnic basket and served chicken and broccoli tossed in a cold penne with olive oil and thinly sliced red bell peppers, seeded Italian bread, and a tomato and basil salad. He walked into the salon and she watched as he poured a flute of champagne from an already opened bottle of Roederer Cristal chilling in a silver ice bucket. He made himself a Grey Goose and tonic. They headed back out of the salon and he handed her the champagne as The Dog’s Life lolled on the night tide.