The Guineveres (17 page)

“It's not a stage. It's an altar,” Win said.

“Nobody is there to look at us,” I told her.

“Speak for yourself,” Gwen said. She lifted her chin and smoothed her hair.

When it was time, Sister Fran walked us up the hill to the church. Even today, all these years later, that walk had to have been the single coldest moment I can ever recall. Our uniform skirts hit our numbed knees; our calves turned grayish-purple from the chill. We pressed our sweaters closer to our bodies, but the wind just seemed to zip through our clothes, and our teeth rattled like loose bones.

Sister Fran led us to the rectory door before leaving us with the vague warning, “Remember, girls. God sees all.”

Father James was sitting in the vestry when we arrived, making some notes in a steno pad. He wore a dark purple frock, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened above his lips. He didn't look up at us when we entered, didn't say good morning or offer us pastries this time, so we made our way to the closet, found our robes, and got dressed. We soon heard the shuffle of feet through the closed door, and the low drone of the organ music sounded our cue. Father James stood and handed Gwen the processional candle, Win the large wooden cross, Ginny the Bible, and me the metal incense holder.

We proceeded to the foyer, our shoes clacking on the marble floor. Father James looked straight ahead—his eyes sad, the way some of our parents' eyes had looked when they dropped us off at the convent: guilty and remorseful, but something else, too, some sort of kindness or softness that both confused us and brought us to silence.

Father James opened the door to the main church with a brisk shove of his arm, and suddenly it was like seeing a world of color again. Like Dorothy when she enters Oz, Ginny told us later. The lights were bright, and the prayer candles flickered and danced as we walked down the aisle. The pews were a sea of reds and blues, greens and purples; parishioners packed together in rows so that their clothing blended like a patchwork quilt. I swung the incense, trying my best not to knock it into my shins. When we reached the altar rail, we all bowed simultaneously, and just at that moment, a cloud of incense smoke caught me in the face, and my tears magnified my vision. We took a deep breath as we stepped up onto the altar, and for the first time The Guineveres stood where before there had been only boys.

The church looked so different from this vantage point. We hadn't really anticipated all the people, despite what Father James had told us. Sunday mass was busier than ever these days, he explained, because the pastor of the parish the next county over had been called away as a war chaplain. To us, however, it was a strange feeling to have lived so long in a convent, secluded from the rest of the world, only to find ourselves on a stage—an altar—with a hundred sets of eyes staring at us as though we were on display. We thought that we'd feel powerful, special because we were the only girls allowed up there on the altar, but we didn't. We tried to sit up straight. We tried to stand with our shoulders back, with dignity, with the Lord, but we became suddenly and fully aware of our own self-consciousness, of our awkward, growing bodies hidden beneath our robes.

As Father James read the opening prayer, we could see many of the parishioners sneak glances at us. We scanned the crowd for girls our own age, and we scrutinized them, as much as they scrutinized us. Their eyebrows arched with curiosity; their heads tilted. They wore patterned scarves over their heads, white gloves, pearls, high-waist dresses with butterflied collars. We grew embarrassed of our rough unmanicured hands, of our sackcloth outfits, of our scratchy uniforms beneath. We knew what they must have been thinking. We beat them to it. One of them whispered to another, and we were certain it was about us. Our faces burned, and we wished we could melt away, like Lot's wife or, as Ginny might say, like the Wicked Witch of the West after she'd been doused with water. Win tried everything in her power to keep her arms at her sides and not cross them in front of her chest, a habit of hers, but in doing so she only looked jittery. Gwen gazed directly out over the parishioners at some unknown point in the distance, her face blanker than I'd ever seen it.

For the petitions, a parishioner in a brown suit walked up to the pulpit from the third pew. He adjusted his pencil-thin tie, unfolded a piece of paper from his breast pocket, and began to rattle off the petitions one by one in a low, monotone voice.

“For the Holy Catholic Church. For our pope and bishop, and all priests and deacons, we pray to the Lord,” he said.

Lord Hear Our Prayer,
the congregants refrained.

“That Advent be a time of reflection, that it be filled with prayer, repentance, and love, we pray to the Lord,” he said. Sweat beads patterned his forehead. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

Lord Hear Our Prayer.

“For those who have died, especially David Banyon, William Smith Jr., Johnathan Townsend, Matthew Saunders, George Payton Goodwin III, James McCallihan, and Mark Collins. May we be ever mindful and thankful for their service to God and to country.” The lector looked up and out at the parishioners. The Guineveres eyed one another. This was a list of the local boys who had recently died in the War.

Lord Hear Our Prayer,
refrained the congregation. We heard a few sobs from the pews. A woman in thick-framed glasses nearly collapsed into the arms of her husband, who helped her take a seat.

“For Peter Drexel, currently missing in action. May he be found and safely returned.” Here, the man paused to look toward a couple sitting in the front pew—Peter's parents—agony plastered on their faces in the form of hollow eyes and sleep deprivation. Mr. Drexel swung his arm around Mrs. Drexel's shoulder and pulled her in close. Her mascara was smeared. A single tear streaked down her face. “We pray to the Lord,” the man said.

Lord Hear Our Prayer.

“And for our own needs and intentions that we silently recall in our hearts…” The lector paused for a few moments, and The Guineveres' thoughts immediately returned to Our Boys in the Sick Ward.
Please let them wake up,
we silently begged.
Please let us be there when it happens.
Please let us go home. Please, please, please, please.
“We pray to the Lord.”

Lord Hear Our Prayer,
the congregation boomed, The Guineveres loudest of them all, despite the fact that we thought the refrain was all wrong. We wanted the Lord to do more than just hear our prayer. We wanted Him to answer it.

In the vestry after mass, we neatly hung our cassocks and put away all of the items we'd used in the service. As we did this, we could hear Father James down the hall, talking to Peter Drexel's parents. We caught only snippets.
Missing in action
.
No response to our letters. Nobody can tell us anything,
the Drexels' voices said.
You must keep the faith. You must trust God has a larger plan. Miracles do happen,
we heard Father James respond. Silence followed, which we assumed meant they were praying.

We weren't sure if we should head back to the convent or not, but we were hungry, and it was nearing lunch. When Father James still hadn't shown up in the vestry after what felt like a rosary's worth of time, we walked back to his office and opened the door. He was leaning back in his desk chair with his eyes closed, his collar removed, and his shirt gapping at the top to reveal dark coils of hair on his chest. A bottle of wine sat on his desk, an empty glass, too, still coated with liquid.

“Father?” one of us asked.

Startled, Father James popped his eyes open. He looked down at the bottle, and then toward us, before quickly sliding the wine beneath the desk like a little boy hiding a toad from his mother. It was too late, of course. We'd already seen it.

The Guineveres weren't so na
ï
ve as to be surprised at the sight of an adult drinking alcohol. But Father James wasn't an adult. He was a priest. Sure, we'd seen him tipsy before, but not up close like this. Besides, it was barely past noon on a Sunday.

“Even in God's house, one should knock before entering,” he said. His face was rouged. When he spoke, it sounded like he balanced marbles on his tongue.

“Sorry, Father,” one of us said, and we all hung our heads because that's what he probably expected us to do.

Father James mumbled something, but we couldn't quite make out what, then poured himself another glass of wine, his hands shaking as he did so. We stood there quietly, a wall of schoolgirls in front of his desk, not knowing what to do.

Father James leaned forward, looked up at us like a dog might, which is not to say that he was pleading, but that he seemed so unguarded to us at the moment. Or maybe we'd just caught him by surprise. “Proverbs tells us: ‘Give wine to those who are bitter of heart. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.' We could use that advice, especially these days.” He lifted his glass up in the air, jiggered it a bit, then knocked it back in three heavy swallows.

“Can we try some, then, since the Bible says it's okay?” Gwen asked, and we elbowed her. We didn't want to get into trouble. She stared at him brazenly with those blue eyes of hers, as though communicating to him some secret.

Father James set down his glass and, hesitating, lifted the bottle from his desk. Then he corked it and placed it in his drawer. “Do you need anything else, girls?” he asked.

We shook our heads.

“Then you may be excused.” Father James leaned back in his seat again, which protested his weight with a shrill meow. We could see the beginnings of whiskers beneath his chin, and the way the light bounced off his cheeks made his skin appear to sparkle.

We were just about out the door when Ginny turned and asked in her delicate voice, “Where is Peter Drexel?”

Father James rubbed circles around his eyes, then cradled his face in his hands. “MIA, I'm afraid. Nobody knows,” he said. He buttoned his shirt to the top and began affixing his collar.

“Like the soldiers in the convalescent wing?” I asked.

“No, not quite like them,” he said. “There are a lot of Peter Drexels in the War, I'm afraid. And frankly, I'm not sure whose fate is worse: Peter's or those boys down there.” Here, waved his hand in the direction of the window and downhill, toward the convent. As he did this, he knocked over a carving of a wooden monk. Win bent down to pick it up.

“Well, they were brave to have gone in the first place,” Ginny said. “Peter Drexel willingly sacrificed his life. Some men have been made saints for lesser reasons.”

“Well, we don't know the fate of Peter Drexel yet. But not everyone goes to war willingly. Not all men volunteer. Some are forced to go, you know.” He removed a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and blew his nose.

“Wouldn't that make it more of a sacrifice? If you don't want to do something, but you go ahead and do it because it's right?” one of us said.

“It depends on what's in your heart,” he answered. “But we must always keep the faith, girls. Mustn't we?”

“Yes,” we said. “We must have faith.”

“And, girls,” Father James said as we turned, now halfway out the door. “Excellent job today. I never had a doubt. Not like that old rube Thomas.” His mouth crooked into what we could only assume was a boozy smile.

We took our time walking back to the convent. Sister Fran stood in the foyer when we arrived, awaiting our return. We only nodded when she asked us if the mass went well and if we enjoyed our role as altar servers.

“Very good, girls. Very good,” she said.

We joined the rest of the girls in the cafeteria for lunch. We didn't notice The Specials glowering at us as we filled our trays or The Sads who slumped disconsolately over their bowls or The Poor Girls who had eaten so quickly their trays were already empty. We couldn't be bothered by the rest of the girls, who would have appeared positively jejune had we turned to notice.

“Poor Peter Drexel,” Ginny said. She stirred her steaming bowl filled with a murky brown liquid. She might have begun to cry.

“They know his name, but not where he is. We know where Our Boys are, but not their names.
Our
parents know exactly where
we
are.
And
they know our names. Could the universe play a crueler trick than that?” Win said. She rubbed at the dark shadows beneath her eyes.

“Do you think Our Boys volunteered for the War? Do you think they wanted to go?” I asked. We all blinked, and it felt like we were blinking underwater.

“They volunteered,” Ginny said. “I know it.”

“How are you so sure?” Win asked.

“Because I'd hate to imagine it any other way,” she answered.

“Did you see Mr. and Mrs. Drexel? The grief on their faces?” Gwen said. “I've seen that look before. It's a look of desperation. And you know what desperate people do?”

“What?” one of us asked.

“Anything. Anything at all.” She took a sip of water, smacked her lips, and exhaled loudly. “Maybe we've been going about this in the wrong manner,” she said. “We can't wait around forever for a miracle to happen. It's tedious, and anyhow, there's another way out.”

“What way is that?” the rest of us asked. At that moment, behind us, Reggie “accidentally” dropped her tray, and Sister Fran blew her whistle. This was the second time Reggie had dropped her tray this week, and she'd probably be given a JUG for it. The Guineveres swore she just did it for attention.

After the commotion settled, Gwen went on. “We'll find out Our Boys' identities, their names, who they are. Then we can locate their parents, who'd be so incredibly grateful for our efforts that they'd let us come home with them. Even if they never wake up.”

“They'll wake up,” I said.