Unfinished Desires (36 page)

“Yes, Mother. She’s a girl from later on in the school’s history. It’s just a sort of cameo scene. Domenica has a vocation, or believes she does.”

“I see.” The headmistress settled back in her swivel chair. “That’s very well put, Maud. Has a vocation. Or believes she does. Sometimes the belief grows into the reality. And sometimes it doesn’t. The interim period is what we in the religious life call ‘discernment.’”

“Discernment,” repeated Maud, not at all sure where this was going.

“But I didn’t call you in to talk about the play, though Tildy is very fired up about it. She’s made me promise to attend a rehearsal as soon as everyone knows their lines. She says she’s put in new bits of material, here and there, which makes it more of a living thing. Even though I wrote it, I’ve come to regard the play as a work in progress in service to the ongoing history of the school. I called you in, Maud, because I wanted to hear how you are doing. How are you finding life as a boarder?”

“I love it more as a boarder, Mother Ravenel.”

“Would you care to elaborate on that?”

“It’s so peaceful here. You always know what’s coming next. I get to do more of what I want here.”

“Not many of our boarders would say that, I can assure you. I guess it depends on what a girl wants. What do you want, Maud?”

“To get on with my studies. To get on with being myself, without—without—”

“Without—?”

“Without worrying that it will all be taken away. That I will have to—have to—” She lowered her eyes.

“Downgrade your dreams?” the headmistress triumphantly supplied. “Yes, you see I have been talking with Mother Malloy. She did right to come to me. And I have read your paper on the ordeal of young David Copperfield—and, by extension, the early ordeal of his creator. I found it very spiritually acute for someone of your age. But let’s explore this a bit further, Maud. What is it you are afraid will be taken away from you? How would it be taken away?”

“If I have to leave here and start over somewhere else. And with—my mother’s—”

“With her new husband, Mr. Foley, you mean?”

“With Mr. Foley, yes.”

“Do you not get along with Mr. Foley?”

“He’s all right. I just don’t want to make a family with him and my mother. I’ll be fifteen soon, and I wish I had some other choice.”

“Do you have any idea what you would choose?”

“Well,
yes
, Mother, but it doesn’t count, does it, because I’m still a minor and I don’t have any money of my own.”

“Well, let’s hear it anyway. You know what our foundress said. She had it from her great friend Father Maturin in England, who led her to her vocation. Don’t be afraid to be specific with God. God likes for us to spell out what we want in detail. The more detail we give Him, the more He has to work with, and the better we understand what we are asking Him for.”

“For a start, Mother, I would like to go on boarding at Mount St. Gabriel’s. You know, I won the eighth-grade scholarship to the academy—”

“Yes. And you’re in good standing to continue with it next year. Your grades are very good.”

“But it’s just a day scholarship. Oh, it would have been perfect if Granny had lived, even if Mother had gone away with Mr. Foley. I could have taken over the housekeeping and helped Granny run things. But my mother says she can’t afford to pay for me to board after this term. Tildy says I could live with them, but I’m not sure Mrs. Stratton likes me all that much. And besides, I don’t want to be—”

“You don’t want to be beholden.”

“Yes.” Having caught the flicker of approval when she voiced her reservations about Tildy’s mother, Maud continued on in this vein. “Mrs. Stratton can be very—she has this way of making you feel unsure.”

“You and Tildy were on the outs until recently.”

“Yes, Mother. We had grown away from each other when I came back from spending last summer in Palm Beach. And then Tildy and Chloe Starnes became best friends.”

“Were you hurt by this?”

“Oh, no. I felt freed from being—what you said—beholden. I could just be myself—or find out what ‘myself was like. I was tired of being part of this thing called ‘TildyandMaud.’

Mother Ravenel laughed. “But now you two are obviously close again if she’s suggesting you might board with them.”

“I wouldn’t say we’re exactly close—Chloe is still her best friend. But I’m really enjoying working with her on the play.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. I got this little bee in my bonnet that she was capable of it, and I decided to take the chance. So, Maud, are you saying it would be your choice to board if means could be found?”

“Oh, yes, Mother! I’d be willing to work. I could—I don’t know—coach the younger girls or work in the kitchen—”

“I think we’d better leave the kitchen to Betty. Your mother told me things weren’t going well between your father and the second Mrs. Norton, or I would have suggested that you sound them out. She’s an affluent woman, isn’t she?”

“My father has—a drinking illness. I think they’re separating. She’s going to make him an allowance so he can stay at a private place, but I don’t think she’s in the mood to make
me
an allowance.”

“You’ve heard from her, then?”

“No, Mother. After my Christmas visit, Anabel wrote to my mother about the trouble with my father. And she said she wouldn’t be asking me down there anymore.”

“But she was so fond of you, I thought. Did you do anything to displease her?”

“Well, there was a misunderstanding about—What happened was, this boy, Duddy Weatherby, he’s the son of Anabel’s friend—the Weatherbys invited me to be his date at his dance.”

“The dance you had to leave early for. You didn’t go with him after all?”

“Oh, I went. I went. But … there was this misunderstanding about who I was supposed to dance with—there was a dance card with all these names filled in and I got mixed up and I guess some boys’ feelings were hurt. Mrs. Weatherby was really put out and disinvited Anabel and me to her Christmas party. It was a blow to Anabel, because Mrs. Weatherby was supposed to get her into Palm Beach society.”

“Was your date one of the boys whose feelings got hurt?”

“Oh no, Duddy was okay. I hadn’t missed any dances with him, and we had the last dance together. But I knew I hadn’t come up to Mrs. Weatherby’s standards. Mr. Weatherby had brought us in his vintage Rolls, but Mrs. Weatherby made two brothers drive me home in their old car.”

“Just you? Without your date?”

“Oh no, he was still with me. We sat in the backseat of the—brothers’ old car and Duddy walked me to the door and shook my hand. But I knew it was over for poor Anabel. Because the last thing Mrs. Weatherby said to me as we left the dance was to be sure and tell Anabel she would see her ‘after the first of the year,’ which was her way of saying ‘Don’t show up at my party tomorrow.’”

“Hmm, it sounds like a drastic overreaction on Mrs. Weatherby’s part.” The headmistress’s indignant tone indicated to Maud that her self-protecting revision of the event had been swallowed. But now it was high time to get off the subject of the dance, before Mother Ravenel could come up with more questions.

“Yes, well, it’s all over and I’m glad. I just want to be here where I am and concentrate on what I’m doing.”

“Life is not all studying, though, Maud. Or perhaps you meant more than just studying.”

“Yes, I meant more—I meant the whole thing. To get on with being myself—no, that’s not totally it, either. I want to be all I can be. But I don’t know completely what that is yet.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re only fourteen. Have you prayed about it?”

“Oh well, I—not in so many words, not like the way I’ve been talking to you. I guess my prayers are on a pretty childish level.”

“How so?”

“Oh, I ask for things like ‘Please let Granny be at peace,’ or ‘Please let me do my best on the exam,’ or ‘Please don’t let me be forced to leave Mount St. Gabriel’s.’”

Mother Ravenel was regarding her closely. “Mother Malloy told me you had been asking her about vows.”

“Vows?”

“That you wished your church offered the same commitments as ours. Or am I not quoting her accurately?”

“I said I wished the Methodists had something like that. Where you could set yourself on a path and not have to worry about your education. But they don’t. I’m not sure I even am a Methodist. I mean, I was baptized in that church when Mother brought us back to Mountain City—but I’ve been more times to chapel here than I have been to the Methodist church in my whole life.”

“You know our own foundress started her life as a Protestant, Maud. She discovered the Catholic faith all on her own; she sought it out and researched it thoroughly before deciding it was for her. She knew she wanted to put all her gifts to God’s use, and she wanted to figure out the best way she could do this, step by step. Talk about someone wanting to be all she could be! She kept on setting herself greater and greater challenges. I was very fortunate to know her in her last days, when she was on her deathbed. I was in a desperate situation myself. I was a boarder, in the seventh grade, but my father had died suddenly and they didn’t want me at home, only there was no money for me to stay on here. Until Mother Wallingford found a way.”

“What was—the way?”

“There was a trust that had been set up for emergencies. And I was a beneficiary of it. Mother Wallingford arranged a full boarding scholarship for me, renewable from year to year, as long as I proved worthy of it.”

“Is there—still—that trust?”

“Oh no, it has long since been liquidated.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask, dear?”

“Only that—well, I wish I could be like her. I mean, I do want to put my gifts to God’s use, but I need to go step by step, like she did, until I figure things out. And I feel I could do it better if I stayed here.”

“You feel Mount St. Gabriel’s provides the best atmosphere for you to do that.”

“Yes, Mother, I do.”

Nothing direct had been said, but Maud felt she had crossed a line.

Mother Ravenel was intently studying her. “I’ll tell you what, Maud. I’m going to offer a suggestion. I want you to go to the chapel now and pray about this talk we have had. Don’t try to figure anything out; now is not the time for figuring. Just make an offering of it to God and leave it there with Him. Then go on with your usual activities and trust Him to start working on it. Then go back to the chapel before you go to bed and stay there until the nuns’ Compline at nine. You may be excused from evening study hall.”

“And—what do I do in chapel the second time?”

“Just kneel in an attitude of prayer, and listen. See what comes. Prayer is not always talk, talk, talk. I want you to get used to being alone with God. This is an ideal time, the middle of Holy Week. The whole communion of Christ is in mourning, but we’re preparing for his Resurrection. I will be praying over this, too. Let’s call it your intention. And we’ll keep it between ourselves, shall we, Maud?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I will just say one further thing. If we both conclude that God wants you to stay at Mount St. Gabriel’s, a way will be found.”

CHAPTER 31
The Play

Friday, April 25, 1952
Mount St. Gabriel’s auditorium

TILDY’S MOTHER AND
father accepted the nicely printed programs from girls stationed on both sides of the auditorium entrance.

“Let’s go to the front row,” Cornelia said. “I don’t want waggly heads distracting my attention.”

“There’s some on the left,” her husband said. “Unless they have Reserved signs on the seats.”

“We’ll just dispose of them. Nobody is going to unseat the director’s immediate family.”

“And that we are,” said Smoky Stratton, with a fond chuckle. He was feeling mellow after an early light supper of shrimp Creole on rice, washed down with several iced-tea glasses of bourbon and water.

The left front row was free, except for a single Reserved sign on the seat nearest the center aisle. “It might be for the prompter,” Cornelia said. “We used to have two girls in the wings with scripts, and someone posted out front to mouth things as a last resort. We’ll save seats for Madeline and Henry. Put Henry next to the Reserved seat, in case it’s someone odious.”

BACKSTAGE, HENRY VICK
, flanked by Chloe and a keyed-up Mother Ravenel, had been making some final adjustments to the flexible joining flats constructed by himself and Chloe, painted by Chloe, and delivered by truck this afternoon. Uncle and niece had come out early, to set up things.

“Henry, these exceed my expectations,” said the headmistress.
“Reversible
flats! The economy of it! I didn’t even know there were such things. Why, it’s like a giant reversible triptych. How tall is it?”

“Just under twelve feet. More than twelve would need heavier reinforcement.”

“You have been very generous, Henry. It would take an architect to come up with this.”

“Oh, no, it’s simply a matter of measurements and hinges. And deciding to cover both sides of the frames. Chloe did every inch of the artwork. I had no hand in that. I tried not to be one of those parents who do their child’s homework.”

“The time these will save! Instead of Mark and Jovan having to drag off the grotto and drag in the classroom, they simply walk onstage, turn this one around, and walk off again. And you haven’t overstepped in the parental role. Parents have always contributed to the plays. Mothers who could sew made costumes; fathers provided masculine touches like swords and antlers and old uniforms. Remember, your father lent that handsome Sheraton sideboard from his office when our class did
Charley’s Aunt
our senior year.”

“So he did. For Jack Chesney’s college room; Agnes was Jack. Father even provided the whiskey bottles for the sideboard. And you were the hilarious fellow they dressed up as the aunt. You had people rolling in the aisles.”

“Lord Fancourt Babberly. ‘Babbs.’ What a great role that was. I always loved doing characters in disguise. But, Chloe, I thought you told me you were painting the Red Nun on this grotto flat.”

“I did, Mother, but it didn’t look three-dimensional enough, so I put in trees instead. Then Uncle Henry suggested we try some poly—poly—”

“We went to the building supply place,” said Henry, “and got a block of polystyrene. The Red Nun is under that tarpaulin. Chloe wanted to surprise you. She’d like it to be our gift to the school for future productions of the play. Chloe, why don’t you unveil it?”

Chloe, already costumed in jodhpurs and Mother Finney’s riding boots, stepped over and removed the tarpaulin. Henry was moved and slightly embarrassed by the headmistress’s girlish ecstasies when she saw the life-size reproduction of the Red Nun.

“It was real easy to carve, Mother,” Chloe said, “and you can sand it and make it look just like marble sculpture. But, Uncle Henry, don’t you think it needs a highlight or two?” She whipped out a little spray can and touched the hulking shoulders with creamy white. “Don’t worry, it dries really fast. And it’s really, really
light.”
She nudged it with a Finney riding boot and it inched forward as though on wheels.

Tildy suddenly loomed in her director’s choir robe. “Holy J—!” She cut off her oath on a dime when she saw the headmistress. “What is that
thing
, Chloe?”

“Well, it’s the Red Nun, Tildy. The painted one looked so flat—I thought you’d be so pleased. I wanted it to be a surprise. Don’t you like it?”

“Well, isn’t it a bit
big?
Where do you think we’re going to put her?”

“Just where the painted one would have gone. In front of the trees. You can move her very easily.”

“Then where do we put Marta’s
bench?”
Tildy almost shrieked.

“Just where it always goes. All this does is give a three-dimensional effect. And we agreed she should be larger, at my house, remember?”

“That was when I thought you were going to
paint
her on the flat! This is just—a great big obstruction.”

“Well, I, for one, am very impressed and very grateful to you girls,” Mother Ravenel diplomatically intervened. “You have put your hearts into it, and I am sure this production is going to be one of the best ever in the annals of the school. And now Mr. Vick and I are going to go down into the audience, where we belong, and just enjoy the show.”

She took Henry’s elbow and they exited stage right. Henry’s heart had been softening toward Mother Ravenel during the past weeks, when he had dropped by the school a number of times to measure stage spaces and calculate sight lines. He always phoned ahead—–he knew how she disliked anyone “going around” her—and she always accompanied him to the auditorium, letting him in with her keys to the building Malcolm Vick had designed and keeping up a running commentary about the provenance of significant items backstage: the sky cyclorama, gift of the class of ‘36 (“This was a huge step forward because now we could do outdoor scenes …”), and then the great windfall of not just one but three professionally painted canvas drops left at the school in ‘42 by a touring company whose members were enlisting (“I was in charge of the girls’ drama club then, and when the young men asked me if they might store these drops with us until after the war, I said, ‘They will be here waiting for you when you get back, and in the meantime just think what the girls will be able to do with a forest, an ocean,
and
a drawing room!’ That was the last I heard from those young men—I hope they survived—I still pray for them regularly—but what a godsend their drops have been in dozens of Mount St. Gabriel’s performances!”).

Henry’s perception of her had undergone a shift. Always before, he had been used to regarding her, whether as his sister’s classmate, his wife’s best friend, or the headmistress of the academy, as a controlling person, jealous of her territory. This school was her life. She was, more and more as the years passed, its custodian, its legend keeper, its repository, its very chronology. (He had completely forgotten about his father’s sideboard being a prop in
Charley’s Aunt
.) He could hear her, years from now, proudly pointing out the polystyrene Red Nun to someone: “This was created and given to us in ‘52 by one of our girls, a very fine artist, and her uncle, the architect Henry Vick, whose father designed our auditorium …”

Now he saw—and this was what had softened his heart toward her—that this school was her fortress.

And, in the sense that all her plans and authority were invested within its borders, it was also her prison.

Twenty minutes before curtain time, the dressing room beneath the stage was a quivering hive of nerves, excited outbursts followed by shushes, and last-minute adjustments and vanities. Gilda Gomez decided Squire Wallingford needed a mustache and had drawn one on herself with an eyebrow pencil, incurring the wrath of the director, already in a snit over a monstrous prop sprung on her by her best friend without Tildy’s knowledge or consent. Tildy told Gilda that her mustache lowered the play to a grammar school farce and ordered her to wash it off. Beatrix Wynkoop and Hansje Van Kleek, satisfied with their carefully prepared costumes for Father Maturin (cassock borrowed from Father Lohan, the resident priest) and Elizabeth’s Thwarted Suitor (Mr. Van Kleek’s dress suit and a Victorian clergyman’s neckcloth fashioned from a linen napkin), were pinning a bow tie of crepe paper on Ashley Nettle’s father’s baseball umpire shirt to make their protégée look more like a gentleman auctioneer. Josie Galvin, in a St. Scholastica habit, was quietly going over her lines, even though she would be sitting behind a desk and could have the script in front of her when she “told the story of the Red Nun” to two 1920s students, Lora Jean Cramer and Mikell Lunsford, both of whom wore authentic dresses from that decade refurbished by their mothers. Kay Lee Jones, in her sculptor’s smock, retilted her black beret to a cheekier angle; when she saw she was being observed by friends, she kissed her mirror image.

Dorothy Yount and Jiggsie Judd had stepped out to the garage where the Mount St. Gabriel’s station wagon was kept to warm up their voices.

In the auditorium’s basement lunch cafeteria for the day students, Madeline Stratton was doing her utmost to calm the director. Round and round the room they paced, Tildy in a full-blown snit.

“Take deep breaths, baby.”

“I
can’t
breathe!”

“Maybe you should sit down, then.”

“I have to keep walking! If I sit down my legs will shake.
You
sit down if you’re so tired.”

“Of course I’m not tired. I came early with you to keep you company and be of help if I could, but tell me if you’d rather I go. It’ll soon be curtain time anyway.”

“I don’t care whether you go or stay. No, stay! Oh jumping Jesus Christ, Maddy, you can’t trust anybody!”

“This play is going to be wonderful, honey. You’ve just got stage nerves, which everyone says means good luck.”

“How dare she! How
dare
she drag in that clumsy old piece of garbage! And act like she’s Michelangelo or something, stretching to ‘touch it up’ with her professional little can of paint. Wearing old Finney’s everlasting riding boots that Holy Agnes once wore when
she
played Fiona Finney. ‘But Tildy, I thought you’d be so pleeeeased.’ And old Ravenel flapping and gloating, as if she’d ordered the thing herself. What the damn hell business did
she
have backstage anyway? This is the ninth-grade play. You don’t see Mother Malloy backstage, and she’s our teacher. And you don’t bring in props at the last minute that the actors haven’t prepared for. Any moron knows that. We’d planned for it to be painted on the flat. Then she went behind my back at the last minute and purposely deceived me. I hate surprises! It’s not her place to surprise me. Every time you try to share power with someone they stab you in the back!”

“But Marta is still going to be sitting on the bench as planned, you said. So nothing is changed except”—Madeline selected her words with extreme caution—“except that instead of the
painted
Red Nun on the grotto flat, there is now—uh, a
sculpted
one in front of it. And you alerted the girl who’s playing the Sculptor—”

“Kay Lee Jones—oh,
she
was tickled pink. It draws more attention to her as the Sculptor to have something that actually looks like a sculpture.”

“Well, then, see?”

“You don’t
understand
! It throws things off! It throws
me
off! It’s supposed to be my production, but now—practically at curtain time!—it’s being taken away from me!”

“Nobody can take it away from you, honey. It’s yours. You have put your stamp all over it, Mama says. Now let me kiss you and go upstairs. Trust me, it’s going to be wonderful.”

“Hmmmf!” snorted Tildy, going limp and letting herself be kissed. “I just may have a few surprises to spring, myself.”

MAUD, WRAPPED IN
the foundress’s long cloak, whose heft and swing she had become as familiar with as those of her own coat, walked among the marble crosses in the nuns’ cemetery. She felt—she was not sure what she felt. It wasn’t nerves: she knew her lines. She had more lines than anyone else in the play, but she had assimilated them into herself. “The Holy Ghost will be blowing us onward …” and “It would be wrong in a way I can’t find words for …” and “But, Rexy, God isn’t something that can be shared, like a pet.”

And though you could know your lines perfectly and still blank out due to stage fright, that wasn’t a thing Maud feared, either, because she had become curiously removed from the ninth-grade play. She felt—oh, how Tildy would hate this!—that she was participating because her presence was required, but in her soul she was already somewhere else, even though she wasn’t sure where that somewhere else was.

She was going into her fifth week as a boarder at Mount St. Gabriel’s, with another full month to go after that. She’d had more confidential sessions with Mother Ravenel, who watched her avidly, as though waiting for some new part to sprout. She had spent much time alone with God, but, if anything, her chapel stints had rendered God less of a presence than ever. She knelt in silence and waited for Him to reveal His plan for her life, but so far He had seemed to feel Himself as remote from her drama as she felt remote from the urgencies of Tildy’s play.