Unfinished Desires (17 page)

Leadership qualities, according to Mother Malloy, that hadn’t found proper outlets yet. Tildy liked to think up things for others to do, “the remarkable” Mother Malloy had said.

The wall clock gave seven minutes until Compline, for which no bell was rung, because the younger boarders were supposed to be asleep.

Well, who better than I can identify with those qualities, thought Mother Ravenel, rising from her father’s old desk and shaking out her skirts prior to making the rounds to shut down her sanctum. (She blew out the votive candle in front of Our Lady of Solitude and clipped the wick.) I was that way myself. I liked to think up things for others to do. When I was Tildy’s age, I started writing a play during study hall for our freshman class to perform.
The Red Nun
just poured out of me. I heard the voices and already knew who was going to play all the parts. God’s voice speaking the prologue was as easy as taking dictation. I knew exactly the kind of eerie music I wanted Francine Barfoot to compose on her flute for the opening ghost chorus.

The most recent production of
The Red Nun
had been in 1947, staged by last year’s graduating class when they were freshmen. That class was notable for its school spirit. The girls came to me as a delegation and asked for the honor of doing it; there hadn’t been a performance since 1940. It was a very respectful production. Nothing new was added. In some ways, it had the mood of a memorial service. The whole thing needed a bonfire set under it, I privately thought, but it was very well received. The newspaper covered it and there was a little sidebar on me, how my school play from 1931 had turned into a tradition at Mount St. Gabriel’s. People just were so glad to be doing normal, traditional things after the war. How can five years have gone by already? Or, it will be five if I decide to let this ninth grade do it in the spring.

Now (turning off the green-shaded study lamp on Father’s desk), where do I find a relatively clean script? They get so marked up over the years. Maybe I’ll type out a new one, with some carbons.

First I will sound Tildy out. Ask her if she thinks she is director material. And, of course, she must realize this would be a gift and a privilege as well as a challenge.

I just hope (feeling a fresh surge of stamina as she clicked off the floor lamp behind the Queen Anne wing chair where the ninth-grade teacher had propped her weary bones)—I just hope Mother Malloy won’t think I am out to compete with her or triumph over her in the shaping of Tildy, or anything like that.

PART TWO

Inside the girlhood fortress
That once ensheltered me
I dreamed a wondrous dream
Of the person I wanted to be.
But in Your almighty design
You sealed me in red rock instead.
“Take this for your cloister, daughter of mine:
Be a fortress for others,” You said.

—Caroline DuPree’s ghost aria in Suzanne Ravenel’s
The Red Nun

CHAPTER 16
The Christmas Critic

First Saturday of Christmas break 1951
Downtown Mountain City

MADELINE, WEARING HER
father’s raccoon cap atop a silk scarf loosely draped about her shoulders, Arab kaffiyeh–style, to conceal her rag curlers for the club’s Christmas dance that night, was chauffeuring her mother and her mother’s cameras through a loaded afternoon of shootings. Tildy was at the Ice Capades matinee, with Chloe and that patient paragon of unclehood, Henry Vick. Daddy and John were out at the cabin, hosting Daddy’s open house for those families who had trucks and liked to drive out to the Swag and cut their own free Christmas trees from Daddy’s woods. John went along and pointed out the five- to ten-foot firs ready for harvesting, while back at the cabin Flavia stirred the mulled cider and set out the plates of hot sausages and fresh-baked cookies and Daddy stoked the fire and sampled his latest batch of eggnog.

Cornelia Stratton, having just uttered the closing bars of her working woman’s lament (“Nobody in this town understands my schedule and nobody
wants
to understand it. …”) was now dealing a few mortal slashes to the modern concept of “Christmas,” with all its bad taste and impositions.

Madeline was enjoying herself. She liked being behind the wheel of Cornelia’s stealthy, powerful automobile, with its roomy leather interior—Daddy traded in his and Mama’s Packards every other year, so Mama’s cars always smelled new, signed with whiffs of Ma Griffe in summer and Jicky in winter. Daddy’s new cars, which Madeline seldom rode in anymore, soon reeked of gun rags and tobacco smoke and the little nips from the bottle in the bag that John kept for him in the glove compartment.

“It gets worse every year. Buy, buy, buy—guilt, guilt, guilt—please come and take a picture of me giving something to the widows and orphans. And why all these shoppers choose to dress up in Santa red to go out and buy further Santa-red articles of clothing for one another that nobody will wear after the New Year is beyond me.” Cornelia glared out the passenger window at a family in Santa-red parkas heading on foot toward Sears. Her next shoot was the Christmas party for orphans at the Shriners’ temple. “Who’s being honored here? To my knowledge, Santa red wasn’t even a color back in Our Lord’s day. Their reds were more of a clayey or winey red. You’re coming in with me to the Shriners, aren’t you?”

“If you aren’t embarrassed by this getup.”

“Maddy, you could wear a washtub on your head and look exotic and smashing. Tell me again how Creighton Rivers happens to be taking you to the club dance. His parents aren’t members.”

“I don’t think you asked me before, Mama, but I invited him.”

“You wrote him at college?”

“No, I called his dorm and asked him if he would be my date.”

“And this was when?”

“Back in September. I wanted to have it settled so I could turn down other invitations.”

Cornelia whipped out her compact, freshened her lipstick, uttered a stern “hmff” of approval, and dropped the items back in her purse. “I take it those other invitations were forthcoming. From your”—she mirthfully snorted—“Hershey’s Kisses brigade.”

“Yes, and I was able to reply truthfully, ‘Oh, thank you, Hershey One, Two, and Three, but I already promised someone back in September.’”

“Three! Oh, Madeline. And you don’t even care. You’re not in love with Creighton or anything, are you?”

“He’s tall, good-looking, ambitious, and poor. He’s premed at Emory and a fabulous dancer. And he’s sweet and patient with children—he taught Tildy to dive beautifully. Also, I prefer older men. But no, I’m not in love with him, and he knows I’m not. That’s why I could pick up the phone and ask him.”

“But he must have been surprised.”

“He laughed. He said he’d be honored to escort me but he didn’t own a tux. I said, Is that a ‘Yes, but I’ll rent one’ answer or an excuse for a ‘No’? He said, ‘Yes, but I’ll rent one,’ and then he asked how his best girl was, the Tantalizing Tildy, and I came close to loving him for
that.”

“I do worry about Tildy, and we haven’t even gotten her to the Hershey-brigade stage yet. Will even
one
boy invite her to the dance?, that’s what worries me. She’s not easy and above it all, like you.”

“I’m not above it all, Mama. I want things as badly as everybody else. Though lately I do seem to be going through a stage where there’s just not very much on my horizon to want.”

“She’s just such a strange little person,” Cornelia went on about Tildy, either ignoring or choosing to pass over Madeline’s slender plea for some motherly wisdom. Cornelia preferred her older daughter to stay in the role of “sisterly” backup and mainstay: a sort of extension of the lost Antonia. “The child is such an enigma. First this reading thing—I refuse to believe she’s been faking it all these years. If you want to know my opinion, though nobody has bothered to
ask
my opinion, she was just sitting back and letting Maud play chauffeur—like your father sits back and lets John get them where they’re going, even though your father could drive himself if he wished to. But then Maud comes back from Palm Beach all hoity-toity with her new connections, and poor little Chloe is anointed Tildy’s new favorite, and all of a sudden my child’s grades go through the floor. What am I to make of this? I’ll tell you, though it may sound unreasonable and a tad malicious: I think Maud enjoyed her power over Tildy and encouraged her to lapse—now, Madeline, hear me out—”

“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting, Mama.” When Cornelia warned you she was about to sound unreasonable and a tad malicious, it was admittedly titillating to give her free rein and see how far she’d go.

“Yes, I think Maud encouraged her to
let slide
, so she could have the upper hand and feel superior. That Pine Cone Lodge ménage gives Maud plenty to feel inferior about. Lily Norton, if she ever really was Norton, was recently spotted cuddling at the movies with that fancy-foods salesman who boards with them. What I think is, it gave Maud power to watch Tildy grow dependent on her and deterioriate. It would be like—not that John would ever think of such a thing—if John were to say, Now, Mr. Stratton, you don’t need to bother your head about renewing your driver’s license. I’m here to take you wherever you need to go. You just sit back and look out the window and enjoy your bounty. What I’m saying, Maddy, is Maud knew that this reading thing was a way to equal things out and revenge herself on our bounty. Just look at this disgusting traffic in front of the Shriners’ temple. But we’re supposed to pull around in back and use the potentate’s parking slot. Well, a mother is entitled to her opinion, though perhaps I go too far.”

Though deploring Cornelia’s ascribing of such invidious motives to a fourteen-year-old girl, Madeline hastened to reassure her. “Well, Mama, whatever it was, the cloud is lifting. Tildy has a true champion in Mother Malloy. They’re working on Tildy’s Dickens paper in
French
. Just one simple sentence after another.
‘Uriah Heep, c’est un homme de grande humilité. Il est très humble. Mais qu’est-ce que c’est que cette humilité?’
Tildy spouts out the words and Mother Malloy, God love her, ‘takes dictation.’ Then Tildy brings Mother Malloy’s dictation home and copies it, and the next session they translate it into English, Tildy speaking the words and Mother Malloy writing it down, and then Tildy copies
that
. Isn’t that an inspired way to get someone to write a paper? Next time I get stuck, I plan to try it.”

“I like Mother Malloy,” said Cornelia, admiring her narrow snake-skin pumps as she stepped out of the car. “She’s reserved and modest and acts like a proper nun. She’s quite lovely to look at behind that veil. When I was with her, I kept thinking of Antonia. Antonia would have looked beautiful in that same habit.”

Madeline lugged the cameras and the canvas bag with film from the trunk. The two women walked together across the parking lot. From inside the temple rose the jovial baritones of the Shriners leading the high timid voices of the orphans: “Dashing through the snow …”

“And then, you know, Mama, just before school let out yesterday, Mother Ravenel told Tildy she was thinking about letting her direct the next production of
The Red Nun
. Tildy is supposed to pray over it during the holidays. Mother Ravenel told her she has leadership qualities that need to be put to use.”

Cornelia stopped dead in her tracks. “No, I
didn’t
know, Maddy. When I get home from the studio, nobody bothers to fill me in on anything.”

“Well, it just happened yesterday, Mama. Tildy told me when we were having our little reading session last night. She wasn’t even supposed to tell me. You know how the Ravenel likes to say, ‘Now this is just between ourselves. … ‘”

“I wonder what that woman has up her sleeve to inflict on our family now,” Cornelia burst out savagely.

But then she switched back into her soignée social persona as the potentate, a burly, red-faced man in a red fez and a Santa-red cardigan, came tripping toward them with the light gait of an upright bear. When introduced to Madeline, he complimented her lavishly on her fetching hat.

THEIR LAST AFTERNOON
shoot was the Women’s Preservation Society’s Christmas sale at the newly restored Miles-Rutherford House, the oldest brick building in the county.

“Which means I’ll have to be civil to Eloise Niles, the president,” Cornelia said to Madeline as they climbed the freshly painted steps leading to the double-tiered porch. A uniformed maid took their wraps at the entrance; then they pushed slowly forward into the crowded neoclassical rotunda, through a dense cloud of cigarette smoke and conflicting perfumes and the eerie acoustics of dozens of high-pitched voices reverberating off the domed ceiling. Well-turned-out preservationists broke apart from their huddles to make a passage for the equally well-turned-out Mrs. Stratton followed by the camera-laden beauty wearing the Davy Crockett cap with seductive veil. Some called to Cornelia by name. “Oh, what a darling hat your assistant has on,” cried someone else. “No, that’s the daughter,” said another. “And she has a twin, doesn’t she?” “No, that was the—” (inaudible).

Finally they reached the Greek Revival semicircular sunroom sparkling with reflections from the river and a ceiling-high Christmas tree loaded with handmade ornaments for sale. Arranged on trestle tables covered in green felt were crocheted lap robes, sequined evening purses, knitted socks and mittens and scarves (a great many, alas, contaminated by the Santa-red color), embroidered napkins, needlepoint eyeglass cases, painted wood serving trays, silver jewelry, hand-carved soapstone angels, “and just about every other last thing on earth nobody needs,” Cornelia muttered to Madeline over her shoulder as she stooped behind her flash camera to get eye-level close-ups of the laid-out goodies. “It’s a wonder, though, that there’s so much of it left at the end of the day.”

“Oh, most of them have already been sold,” confided a voice behind her that was not Madeline’s. “But I explained that they had to remain on the tables until you got here, Cornelia.”

“Ah,” said Cornelia, straightening up to confront the eavesdropper. “Well, that makes sense.” She saw that Madeline had been detained by some women stroking her hat.

“I’m Sally Goodall, vice president of the preservationists. Eloise Niles has a bad case of the flu, but she asked me to send you her warmest regards, Cornelia, and thank you for fitting us into your day.”

“How very kind of her. Tell her from me to get well quickly. Listen, er—Sally, could I trouble you to stand over there by the tree, with the river view as your background?”

“Don’t you want me to get some of the others, Cornelia?”

“The others can wait. Right now the light is perfect. And you look so—well,
representative
of this whole gathering.” Cornelia reserved a special corner in hell for people who repeated your name over and over, as this vice president person was intent on doing.

“Well, thank you, Cornelia. That is,” the woman tittered nervously, “if you meant it as a compliment.”