The Guineveres (31 page)

Soon we heard Sister Fran's whistle, which signaled it was almost Lights Out. Lent, Sister Fran had explained to us during Morning Instruction, was a time for sacrifice. But The Guineveres already felt we'd sacrificed plenty. During Lent we would not be allowed to wear our hair in braids or watch filmstrips or spend time in the courtyard, not even for constitutional walks. The Adoring Sisters would fast every Friday, and, thus, so would we. Our Rec Time would be revoked, and we'd be required to go to bed early so we could meditate in prayer. All the other girls complained in whispers, but not The Guineveres. When the other girls slept, we'd find our way to the third floor, then down to the first. By now we knew to prop the door open with a folded pillowcase so we wouldn't get locked out again. Our Boys always waited for us there, silent as the color white.

Did we feel guilty about our indiscretions, about our deceit, about our lies? We did. I did. We knew Sister Fran would have lectured to us about the sins of the Flesh, about dignity, about the virtues of good girls. So we told ourselves it was what God wanted. Our Boys were scared; they were lonely; they were far from home. We wondered about their favorite song or their favorite meal. We wondered if they drank coffee in the morning, and if so, if they took it black. We wondered what they'd seen in the War; what they'd been thinking the moment they were injured. Had they been afraid? Because we were afraid sometimes. Had they believed in what they were fighting for? We believed in them, and we believed they'd come for us. They were our only hope. So, guilt, did we feel it? Yes. But we were willing to bear it.

True to his word, Father James sent Sister Fran a note, requesting The Guineveres' attendance for an in-service at the church. He told her we'd need a bit more training for the Lenten masses. For good measure, he claimed that a deacon was coming in from a nearby county with another set of altar servers so they could combine efforts. He'd even asked for Ginny's punishment to be commuted, and Sister Fran agreed. Then, on Wednesday, after Lights Out, we snuck down to the Sick Ward again, and we crept into the storage room. There, we double-checked the numbers on Our Boys' duffels, we gathered essential items from their personal effects, and we kissed their foreheads, believing that the next time we saw them we'd know their names and everything would change.

When we walked up the hill on Thursday morning, air slipped beneath our skirts. We felt alive. Ginny windmilled her arms. Win rolled her head in circles around her neck. Gwen stopped to do a few deep knee bends. “We must keep our physiques for Our Boys,” she said. “These are supposed to be the best days of our lives.” It was not yet Lent. Our bodies felt like our bodies still. We were happy to use them.

Later in life, Ginny would claim that walking up the hill on that afternoon was akin to walking down the aisle when she eventually married. She knew that at the end of it an entirely different life awaited her. Her first marriage ended in divorce, and she always claimed the best part of that marriage was walking down the aisle toward her groom. In those few moments, she felt the possibility of happiness; her hopes had not yet winnowed into solitude, even if it was just a lie.

The Guineveres all believed our lives would change once Father James took us to the VA office. We believed that the path we trudged up that hill was leading us to our futures far away from the convent that loomed behind us, had we cared to look. But we didn't look. We swung our arms as we imagined Our Boys did on their marches overseas. Ginny played the role of drill sergeant. “Onward!” she cried. We focused on the church at the top of the hill, on our destiny, on Father James's car parked in the grassy lot that was just beginning to green after a long winter.

“I get to sit up in the front,” Gwen said.

“Why you?” Win asked.

“Because I called it.”

“This was my idea,” Ginny said.

“You can have it on the way back.”

This sounded fair to everyone.

When we reached the top, we caught our breath. “Ready?” Win said. She held open the door.

This would be our first time leaving the convent in years. And even if we knew we'd be gone only for the day, the moment felt profound to us. Ginny rubbed her palms; Gwen ran her fingers over her brows to smooth them down. Our minds were far away, on thoughts of our new lives, but our legs carried us through the rectory to Father James's office, where we found the lights on but the room empty.

“He's probably gone to the bathroom,” I offered.

“Why does nobody ever pee in the Bible when there's so much water and wine?” Win joked.

We took seats and we waited, crossing our legs first in one direction, then another. We stood and straightened our uniforms. We wished it were closer to Wash Day. Win had braided our hair for the occasion, then pinned the braid to the side of our heads. The Guineveres had wanted to look sophisticated.

“How long does it take to drive there?” Ginny asked. Nobody answered. Everywhere seemed far away.

“I hope he has a radio,” Gwen said. “Otherwise it will be a long drive.” She picked up a letter opener shaped like a pointed cross from Father James's desk and pretended to stab herself with it.

We double-triple checked to be sure we had everything. I had written down the long string of numbers from Our Boys' duffel bags, along with their date of arrival, and each of The Guineveres had hidden on her body the personal effects of Her Boy. Ginny couldn't find a way to hide Her Boy's wooden box, so she'd drawn a sketch of the Ouroboros on a piece of notebook paper. Her pencil marks were decisive and thick. She really did have talent as an artist.

After some time had passed, we decided to hunt for Father James in the vestry. No sign of him there, either. We grew concerned, but Father James was not known for his punctuality, not like Sister Fran. We made our way through the hallway to the main church. Inside, some prayer candles were lit, wax melting to nubs. You're supposed to donate money to light one of the candles, but The Guineveres didn't have a penny to our names. We hoped God would forgive us.
Please help us figure out who they are,
we prayed, each lighting a candle in honor of Our Boys.
Please help us find a way out, find a way home. Hear the silent intentions in our hearts. Hear our prayers. Hear our prayers.
The candle flames bounced and flicked. They shrank and grew and shrank again, and it struck us that the flames were contained by their wick, but reliant on it all the same. Bound to a candle, fire was a thing of beauty; unrestrained, a destructive force.

We were thinking this very thought when we heard something crash in one of the confessional booths. “Hello,” Win said. She slid open the slatted door. There was Father James, face down, passed out on the bench, his feet dangling over the ledge. His bottle of Sunny Brook lay smashed beneath him, the shards shaped like puzzle pieces.

“Get up,” Win said, and she kicked the underside of the bench with a force so heavy that Father James's head popped up, then met the wood with a thud. “Get up!” she yelled, her voice echoing off the sacred walls of the church, so it sounded like all four of us had said it.

“Is he alive?” I asked.

“Of course he's alive,” Ginny said.

“He's too much of a coward to be dead,” Gwen added.

We looked to each other, from Guinevere to Guinevere, trying to decide what to do. And, as though someone had counted to three, soon we were all on top of him, vultures on prey. We pecked with fingers, pinched with nails, burrowed into his back with quick jabs of our elbows. We even drew blood. Win took the dish of holy water from outside the booth and splashed it on his face. We slapped him. We kicked him. We tried to roll him over, but the dead weight was too much for us. Father James was limp-limbed. Out cold.

We couldn't go on forever with our battering. It was as useful as waking Our Boys. Our hands were tired. Our arms were sore. Father James began to snore. Despondent, we took a seat in the first pew. We wanted to tell someone, but there was nobody to tell, not a soul in the world we could trust with our secrets, except Our Boys. But if they were capable of helping, if they were awake, we wouldn't need Father James in the first place.

We screamed through clenched teeth. Our throats went raw. The sound bounced off the ceiling, as if a hundred girls were wailing. We were a hundred Guineveres now. An army. We kicked our legs. Win batted the back of the pew with a hymnal until its spine broke. Ginny pulled at her hair. Gwen cursed. And soon we all cursed there, in that church. Sent every blasphemous phrase we could think of up to the rafters. I won't repeat them here. That would do no good, and I'd hate to be remembered for that.

“We can take his car,” Ginny suggested after we'd calmed down some. “We can go on our own.”

None of us had driven a car before. “We don't even know how to drive. Or where it is,” Win said. She wrapped her arm around Ginny and begged her not to cry.

Ginny obeyed this command. She was too stunned anyway. Her face was oddly composed. Her eyes beheld the altar with a look of tragic disappointment. “Then we can visit my dad. I've been there once. We can stop and ask for directions,” she said. At this, she stood up, and we followed her as she marched back to Father James's office. We watched as she scoured the room, sliding out every drawer and upturning every stack of paper. “I know the keys are here somewhere,” she said. She opened the cabinets on his bureau, even dug through the pockets of Father James's jacket hanging on the coat rack. “They're here somewhere. They're here somewhere.”

“Ginny, they're not here,” one of us said after a while.

“Well, I'm not going to give up!” she yelled. Her braid had come undone, and she ran her fingers through her hair. The other Guineveres would later admit, there in Father James's office, Ginny's skirt twisted halfway around her waist, her palms held out as though they actually dripped blood, she already looked unhinged.

“Ginny, we'll try again. He'll take us again. Another time.” I think these words came from Win. In fact, I'm certain they did.

“They're here. I know they're here,” she repeated. Then she sat down atop Father James's desk while she scrawled out a note in big bubbly letters.
You can't hide forever,
it read. But even if Father James could have responded, it'd be too late for Ginny, too late for her happy ending.

We didn't return to the convent immediately. I'm not sure why. I suppose a small part of us held out hope that Father James might wake up and come get us, but he never did. Besides, going back to the convent meant creating a new set of questions—Why had we returned so early? What did we learn?—and we didn't have the energy to answer them. The Guineveres weren't liars. Win stretched out on Father James's couch and took a nap. Ginny found some paper and drew somber sketches. Gwen went through Father James's desk drawers for booze but couldn't find any, and then she spun and spun in Father James's chair. We found some stale cookies in his bureau, and we ate them. We opened the window, and took off our shoes. We tried to hold on to the freedom of the afternoon, but we should have known that we couldn't.

We never learned what became of Father James, if he awoke himself from his stupor, or if someone found him passed out in the confessional booth. Either way, he went on a mysterious hiatus. A substitute priest filled in for him at Sunday's mass. He was the one who smelled like fish, and he didn't seem to take kindly to girls on his altar. When we asked him, he brusquely explained that Father James had been called away, and then he turned his back to us as we dressed for mass in silence.

The official start of Lent, and still no sign of Father James. During Ash Wednesday's service in the Sick Ward, a different priest presided over the service, this time the old one who stood with the help of a walker, much like some of the old folks in the Sick Ward. “Remember thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return,” he repeated again and again. He gripped his walker with one hand, and with the other he smudged the silky black ash onto the foreheads of the convalescents, fat, finger-painted crosses that made the old folks resemble chimney sweeps. When Mr. Macker received his ashes, he touched his forehead and looked at his hand in confusion as though he had discovered blood on his fingertips. We helped the priest administer ashes to those old folks strong enough to sit in the Front Room, then made our way to the Back Room to greet the bedridden. Immediately our eyes found Our Boys. Mine's lips were parted; his hands were folded on his chest, as though in prayer, and I could see his fingernails needed clipping. He'd lost some weight since he'd been here, but it brought out the shape of his face, his strong jawbone. He looked lovelier somehow, lighter, too. If there is a God, I thought to myself, then hear my prayers and bring him back to me.
Hear my prayers. Hear my prayers,
I'd chant in my head.

I was so busy praying that I hadn't realized Ginny was crying, or rather, unsuccessfully attempting to restrain the tears that formed in her eyes. When I turned, I realized why: Her Boy's bed was empty, stripped down to the bare mattress that was sunken in the middle, imprinted with the weight of a ghost. We assumed the worst. After mass, we huddled with her in the bathroom. Ginny let her tears flow this time and buried her face in her hands. She looked up at us; her ashes had smeared across her forehead, so that she looked dirty, almost feral. We didn't know how to comfort her—didn't know what to say. She was weeping so loudly, then gasping for breath so long, so deep, I thought she might pass out.

“It's not your fault,” we told her. Sometimes miracles don't happen, and God never has to offer up an explanation. That's the benefit of being God, I suppose.

“I loved him,” Ginny said, taking in a series of quick breaths.

“We know you did,” we told her. “You loved him as best you could.”