The Company of Women [antikvár]

Felicitas Maria Taylor was called after the one virgin martyr whose name contained somé hope for ordinary humán happiness. This joke was made for the first time at Felicitas' baptism in May of 1949Jby one of her three sodmothers. There were three because Felicitas' mother coulJlwTdfecide among her friends. So great an honor did Charíotte Taylor consider it that she could not bear to deprive any of the three women she deeply loved of the privilege of being godmother to her child. The pastor would permit only one female sponsor's name on the baptismal certificate, so Charíotte made the women draw straws. Clare, who drew the longest straw, signed her name to the certificate. But Father Cyprian Leonard, who performed the actual ceremony, allowed Elizabeth and Mary Rose and Clare to stand together at the font with Charlotte's brother Jack and make the responses. Which was Cyp all over, Charíotte said. It was because of Father Cyprian that Charíotte, Clare, Elizabeth and Mary Rose had met, in 1932, when he had inaugurated the first of his series of weekend retreats for working women. One Friday evening a month, these women came from their jobs to the silent convent of Our Lady of Sorrows to pray in silence, to be served by silent nuns and to listen to the sermons and confessional advice of Father Cyprian. Charíotte took the train from Brooklyn, where she worked as a secretary in the insurance firm of Tom O'Brien; Elizabeth, who had been genteelly raised in New Orleans, but whose husband had lost all his money because of drink, walked from whatever elementary school she was, at the time, teaching at: she could not bear buses or trains. Clare took a taxi from Madison Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, where she now man-