Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (3 page)

“Wait!” Mrs. Joyce called after Gilda. “Don’t you need to comb your hair first?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t you want to make a good impression on the headmistress?”

Gilda had already disappeared around the corner. Her mother followed behind, wobbling a bit in the high heels she rarely wore.

B
ecause she was used to schools where institutional lockers lined drab hallways and ancient drinking fountains dribbled rusty water, Gilda was particularly thrilled to discover that the interior of Our Lady of Sorrows was just as imaginative as its castlelike exterior promised. She wandered past a vacant receptionist’s desk into a room filled with ornate furniture drenched in shades of maroon, green, and gold. Whimsical images of animals and magical creatures were everywhere: pheasants and peacocks covered the silk wallpaper; a trio of mermaids supported a marble coffee table; gilded cherubs perched at the edges of mirrors; plaster dragons and ogres with scowling faces hovered at the tops of walls, as if holding up the complicated molding of the ceiling. Gilda walked slowly through the room, touching objects here and there. She paused at a bookshelf to pick up a book with the intriguing title
Tales of Woe
.

“Oh, there you are, Gilda. Can you believe this place?” Mrs. Joyce appeared, dabbing perspiration from her forehead with a tissue.

At the same moment, a strikingly thin young woman with
long, black hair emerged from an adjacent office. “Are you Gilda Joyce?”

Gilda shoved
Tales of Woe
back into the bookshelf and struggled to control her surprise as she turned to meet the gaze of the thin woman, whose obviously dyed black hair hung past her waist in long, uneven locks. Gilda couldn’t help noticing her striking resemblance to a vampire.

“My name is Velma Underhill.” The woman spoke with a nasal voice, extending a limp, pale hand and revealing a mouthful of small, pointy teeth shaped like little fangs. “I’m the headmistress’s assistant.”

Gilda shook Velma’s hand. “I’ve never met anyone named Velma before,” she blurted, noting that Velma’s hand felt unpleasantly damp and slippery. Her mother shot her a familiar look that meant
Please censor yourself
.

“You may call me Miss Underhill.” Velma turned to Mrs. Joyce and extended her clammy hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Joyce. Mrs. McCracken will see both of you in her luncheon room.”

“Is this a lunch meeting?” Gilda asked.

“No, but Mrs. McCracken
always
wants guests to see her luncheon room.” Velma turned to give Gilda a wry look. “Maybe she’ll give you a muffin or something.”

Gilda was about to explain that she wasn’t hungry, but she was silenced by the sight of Mrs. McCracken’s luncheon room as she followed Velma through the next doorway.

If an enormous, pink wedding cake could turn itself into a room, Mrs. McCracken’s luncheon room would be the likely
result. Everything in the room—furniture, walls, draperies—radiated a soft shade of pink. Gilda gazed up at the creamy plaster decorations on the ceiling—a pattern of pink feathers, leaves, birds, mermaids, cherubs, and fish.

“It’s breathtaking,” said Mrs. Joyce. “Isn’t this just amazing, Gilda?”

Gilda nodded, but couldn’t help thinking that it also looked as if the mermaids and cherubs had puked after eating too much cotton candy.

“Absolutely stunning, isn’t it?” A stout, energetic woman appeared from behind and shook Mrs. Joyce’s hand with a firm, businesslike grip. “I’m Shirley McCracken, the headmistress.” She spoke with a bright, twangy voice that hinted of a Southern drawl.

Mrs. McCracken was the exact opposite of her assistant, Miss Underhill. Whereas Miss Underhill was tall and rail-thin with long, stringy hair and not so much as a dab of makeup, Mrs. McCracken was short, broad, and plump with yellow hair that towered above her head in an outdated beehive. Her skin was caked with bronzing powder and bold, coral pink lipstick that looked as if it might glow in the dark.

“You must be Gilda.” Mrs. McCracken grabbed Gilda’s hand and mashed it between two chubby palms. “I’m so very glad to meet you, sweetie. Such a pleasure. Help yourself to some tea and muffins, darlin’.”

Gilda noticed that Mrs. McCracken wore a bejeweled cross around her neck and a chunky diamond on her finger. Her nails were long, pink claws, painted to match her lips.

Gilda and her mother followed Mrs. McCracken to a sideboard where they assembled cups of tea in china teacups, then sat across from the headmistress at a small table decorated with a fluffy pink tablecloth.

Mrs. McCracken gazed at Gilda with a fierce expression that seemed simultaneously admiring and skeptical. “Gilda, our English department was very interested in your application essay.”

Gilda had completed the personal essay section of her application hastily and in a begrudging frame of mind, but she remembered that she had said something about “remaining steadfastly brave” despite the trauma of her father’s death from cancer a few years ago. She also remembered the bold and possibly overblown statement that she constituted a “triple threat” as a “novelist, psychic, and crime fighter.”

“They said to me, ‘Shirley, this girl has a flare for writing and a gift for satire. Bring her on board!’”

“Gilda is always writing something,” Mrs. Joyce interjected. “She’s written whole novels already!”

“You must be darn proud.” The headmistress beamed at Gilda.

“Gilda’s only problem is that she works on just about every project under the sun except her homework!” The headmistress raised her eyebrows, and Mrs. Joyce grimaced, realizing that her last statement had cast her daughter in an unfavorable light. “I mean, she does her homework, mostly, but she always has her own projects to work on, too.”

“We like self-motivated students here at Our Lady of Sorrows. Lots of the girls tell me they feel real inspired here.”

“That sounds good,” said Mrs. Joyce, glancing at Gilda hopefully.

Gilda looked away, irritated with her mother’s eagerness. True, the surroundings were spectacular, and both Miss Underhill and Mrs. McCracken struck Gilda as intriguingly odd characters. On the other hand, something about the ornate formality of Mrs. McCracken’s luncheon room made her feel claustrophobic. Did she
want
to attend this school? Gilda remembered reading that prisons sometimes use the color pink to calm the inmates. What if Our Lady of Sorrows was simply a gilded prison?

“Gilda, honey, you must have a whole heap of questions you want to ask me.” The headmistress fixed Gilda with another intense stare.

Gilda really wanted to ask Mrs. McCracken how she managed to get her hair piled up so high on her head. She also wondered about the headmistress’s personal life. Did she eat lunch in her luncheon room every day by herself? And what about Miss Underbill? Did her resemblance to a vampire have any basis in fact? Gilda knew that her mother would disapprove of each of these questions. She thought for a moment and came up with a more educationally relevant query. “How severe is the corporal punishment here?”

Mrs. McCracken guffawed. “Honey, nobody’s going to spank you here. No corporal punishment whatsoever.”

“I just figured that the nuns probably can’t resist a little knuckle rapping here and there, at the very least. Maybe a good sound thrashing for bad behavior?”

The headmistress let out another cackle. “My gosh, you are a live wire! Are you pulling my leg?”

“That was just Gilda’s idea of a joke,” said Mrs. Joyce nervously.

“I’ve heard that some of these schools are going back to the old ways,” said Gilda, ignoring her mother’s discomfort.

Mrs. McCracken regarded Gilda steadily, as if she were trying to determine how much trouble this girl would actually be, and whether the advice of her English department had led her astray. “Gilda, you might be interested in the fact that only three of our teachers are actually nuns. I myself grew up Methodist, so as much as I’d like to, I can hardly expect every member of our faculty to be a nun! Same thing goes for the girls. Nobody’s perfect, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, if you have no more questions, I’ll ask Miss Underbill to give you a little tour of the grounds, and then you can think about whether or not you want to accept our invitation. Normally girls from our sophomore or junior class are the tour guides, but you’ll be stuck with Miss Underhill today, if that’s okay.”

“Thanks so much, Mrs. McCracken,” said Mrs. Joyce. “Gilda is so honored to have this opportunity.”

“You’re very welcome. And Gilda, I’m sure you’ll absolutely love it here.”

Miss Underhill led Gilda and her mother through a dining hall filled with oil paintings of church officials, a gilded ballroom that was now used as the school’s theater, a second parlor, and
a chapel where the stained glass and soaring ceilings were reminiscent of a European cathedral.

Throughout the tour, Miss Underhill couldn’t have been a more sullen guide. She made no attempt at conversation and provided only the most cursory introduction to each room. As Gilda and her mother looked around, she sulked and picked her cuticles or stared at her watch.

“
What’s eating Morticia
?” Gilda whispered to her mother.

Mrs. Joyce suppressed a giggle.

“That’s about it,” said Miss Underhill, sounding bored. “I can show you some of the grounds outside, if you want.”

“But what about the classrooms and teachers’ offices?” Mrs. Joyce asked.

“That’s not part of the tour,” Miss Underhill replied un-apologetically “I’m supposed to focus on the selling points.”

Mrs. Joyce was taken aback by this response, but Gilda was intrigued. “What’s wrong with the rest of the school?” she asked.

“Nothing’s
wrong
with it, exactly. It takes a ton of money to maintain all the historical detail, and after a while, things start going downhill.”

Gilda wondered what Mrs. McCracken would say if she had been around to hear this last comment.

“Plus, there were a few infestations this summer.”

“
Infestations
?” Mrs. Joyce’s mouth fell open in disbelief.

“Just some baby raccoons and a few bats.”

Gilda imagined herself taking a geometry test only to be interrupted by a litter of infant raccoons rolling around on the floor like furry kittens. “I caught one!” she would yell as the
teacher threw up her hands and declared the test pointless. She would take the baby raccoon home and keep it as a pet.

“Raccoons and bats?” Mrs. Joyce still seemed shaken.

“Don’t worry about it, Mom,” said Gilda, who viewed this bit of information as a selling point in favor of the school.

Miss Underhill led Gilda and her mother outside. “Will you both be okay in those shoes?” She peered down at their high heels. Gilda noticed that Miss Underhill herself wore flat loafers with her black pantsuit.

“I guess,” said Mrs. Joyce reluctantly.

“We’ll be fine.” Gilda was used to wearing costumes that included uncomfortable shoes of all types. She couldn’t help feeling a moment of sadistic satisfaction; her mother obviously regretted insisting on high heels.

Outside, Miss Underhill led Gilda and her mother down a shady path where pine needles carpeted the forest floor. They reached a garden with a stream that flowed into several tiny waterfalls, filling the air with the happy sound of rushing water. Next to the stream, a maze of neatly trimmed hedges grew around a small sculpture of the Virgin Mary.

“This is our Garden of Contemplation,” said Miss Underhill, leading Gilda and Mrs. Joyce over a miniature wooden bridge that arched across the stream.

“Oh!” The heel of Mrs. Joyce’s shoe stuck in a crack in the wood, and she waved her arms, struggling to avoid a spill into the shallow water below. “That’s it; I’m taking these things off!”

“Mine aren’t bothering me at all.” Gilda skipped past her mother and followed Miss Underhill up a small incline. She
suddenly found herself gazing across a sizable body of water.
There really is a surprise at every turn in this place
, Gilda thought.

“This is Mermaid Lake,” said Miss Underhill. “You probably can’t see it from this angle, but it’s actually shaped like a mermaid.”

Gilda felt a drop of sweat trickling down her back and wished she could hurl herself into the water, clothes and all.

“Do people ever go swimming here?”

“No swimming allowed.”

“Why not?”

Instead of replying, Miss Underhill turrned to walk briskly along the edge of the lake.

“Wait!” Carrying her pumps in one hand, Mrs. Joyce struggled up the path, trying to catch up with Gilda and Miss Underhill. “Listen, you two go on with the rest of the tour; I think I’m going to sit down in that Garden of Contemplation for a minute.”

“We can turn back if you want.”

“No, you two go on. My blisters have blisters!”

Miss Underhill shrugged and turned to continue with the tour.

“We’ll hurry,” said Gilda, feeling that Miss Underhill should have offered at least a polite word of sympathy for her mother’s blisters even though she herself had been unsympathetic. As she walked next to her glum tour guide, Gilda tried to think of something to say. “Have you worked here long?” she asked.