Unfinished Desires (16 page)

“How nice for her. I didn’t know.”

“Yes, they dote on her, according to Lily Norton. Lily phoned to ask if I would let Maud miss the last day of school. They want her down there early for some Christmas cotillion dance.”

Tactically, Mother Malloy proceeded. (The headmistress was a person who made you appreciate tactics.) “I don’t see a nucleus of main girls, either, Mother. And lately there has been a feeling of class unity. Chloe Starnes did a wonderful drawing for our bulletin board. She stayed after school every day for a week. She asked permission to sit at my desk on the platform and drew the girls’ desks, looking out on them as I do. Fifteen empty desks. With the windows behind, and the view through the windows. You must come and look at it. It is beautifully executed and the perspective is so skillful—”

“She has the blood of two gifted architects in her. It wouldn’t surprise me if Henry takes her into the firm one day. It would be the natural thing. And women are getting to do more exciting jobs nowadays. But I interrupted you, Mother. You were saying—”

“Just that the girls love that drawing. Before class, there are always girls looking at it. Kay Lee Jones will point to her desk and say, ‘There I am,’ and Ashley Nettle will point to hers and say, ‘There
I
am.’”

“Chloe does seem to be holding her own,” mused the headmistress, “despite having been chosen by Tildy.”

“Speaking of Tildy again, Mother, I have had some thoughts, since I’ve been working with her, that might be helpful.”

“Oh, please, Mother Malloy, out with them. Make my Christmas a happy one. I believe I worry more over that child than I do all the rest of your brood. Of course, it’s understandable, given my entangled history with the family. Poor Antonia, and then having to send Madeline away at the end of her freshman year. By the way, how did your conference with Cornelia Stratton go, when she finally found time for you? I asked her to stop in and chat afterward, but as usual she had to rush off. I’ve never been a favorite of Cornelia’s, but she tolerates me because she knows Tildy will get more attention here than in the city schools. Madeline is boring herself to death over at the public high school; she calls it ‘Mountain City
Low
School.’”

“Tildy’s mother was in a hurry with me, too, Mother,” Mother Malloy hastened to assure the headmistress, who seemed to measure herself competitively against the other teachers. “Mrs. Stratton is very busy with her photography studio. But she was pleased that Tildy was making progress, and I think she was happy that I had recognized Tildy’s special qualities.”

“Which are?”

“I believe Tildy has leadership qualities that haven’t found large enough outlets yet. She likes to think up things for others to do. She was the one who talked Chloe into doing a class portrait for the bulletin board. She told me so. She even admitted that her first idea—of Chloe drawing portraits of the actual girls standing in rows—hadn’t worked out. Some girls might not like how they were portrayed. Next Chloe abandoned a portrait of the school building swathed in mists, and after that asked me if she could sit by herself in the empty classroom until she came up with something. And out of that came this drawing. All from a process that Tildy set in motion.”

“I will definitely step into your classroom and look at this wonderful drawing. Tell me, Mother Malloy, before we go off to Compline: How are you finding us?”

Mother Malloy was unprepared for such a question. Her soul revolted. How should she answer?
I am not supposed to have a voice. Whatever you send me, I accept
. Which, to Mother Ravenel’s worldly ear, might sound sanctimonious.

Or what if she should say: I am trying to accept it as good discipline for my soul, being sent to Mount St. Gabriel’s, when what I really wanted was—well, first I regretted not being a boy so I could enter the Jesuits. But, failing that, I wanted to continue earning my doctorate and teaching Greek drama and English studies to college freshmen. I like teaching young college men and women together. I like standing before a classroom and engaging with hungry minds, many of whom have never read a Shakespeare play, many of whom work night jobs to go to college. Between myself and these girls of fourteen, here at Mount St. Gabriel’s, I am missing some vital link. I have been a girl, but not a girl like any of them. For the most part, give or take a struggling Tildy, they seem to be arrested by their fortunate boundaries.

What was it Madeline said to me that day in the grotto? (“It’s the whole life of
school
. I feel I’ve been held back to repeat what I already know how to do. It’s like you’ve learned to swim really well, and now you’re ready to cross a huge body of water and see what’s on the other side, and then someone tells you, No, no, dear, you have to stay in this pool and tread water until—until I don’t know what. Whatever comes next. I wish I could get to it!”)

I sometimes feel I am watching over fifteen young girls who are proficiently and patiently treading water in a fenced-in pool, Mother.

What Mother Malloy finally did answer came out sounding feeble and somewhat insincere: “Everyone has been very good to me here, Mother Ravenel. Sometimes I regret not having more stamina. How I envy yours! I often fall asleep before finishing my daily examen. My daily meditations are not worthy of God, but I offer up this shortcoming and hope it is a passing thing.”

AFTER MOTHER MALLOY
excused herself to go early to chapel, Mother Ravenel reviewed the day in the company of her cherished lares and penates. Having been galvanized by Mother Malloy’s confessed envy of her stamina, she felt unusually vigorous. Why did it act as a stimulant when someone admitted to having less of something than you did? Perhaps because God made us to be competitive.

Mother Ravenel had noticed that Mother Malloy was always one of the first in the choir stalls for the final office of the day. After the younger nun’s disclosure about tending to fall asleep, Mother Ravenel suspected that she might use Compline to get a head start on her examen.

As was her custom, the headmistress dispensed first with the institutional loose ends.

For the third time since the opening of school, the toilet in stall number two of the dormitory bathroom was clogged. George from Lombardo’s Plumbing would have to be summoned back at his hefty hourly rate to swivel his snake contraption down through the pipes until he brought up the dripping obstruction and, this time, whether he thought it seemly of her or not, she intended to stand right beside him wearing rubber gloves and examine the evidence herself. She felt certain the culprit was either Marta or Gilda. The Cuban girls had to have it drummed into them over and over again, with threat of punishment, what must not be thrown where when there was not a battery of servants to clean up the mess without a peep. Moreover, she was fairly sure she would be able to tell by the condition of the sanitary pad whether it had been Marta’s or Gilda’s. Gilda was the bleeder, she did everything in a big way; Marta was the withholder, and she had plenty to withhold.

Mother Ravenel knew Marta’s secret, though the girls did not know she knew it, and this had its leverage. Marta’s story had been tacitly conveyed by her father with his diplomat’s gift for imparting things best left unspoken. Consul Andreu had flown down to Mountain City from New York last spring to look over the school and take Mother Ravenel’s measure. During their confidential stroll around the grounds, the consul and the headmistress quickly assessed each other. The daughter of his best friend, Jorge Gomez, seemed to be flourishing at Mount St. Gabriel’s, Consul Andreu said, and he thought it might be just the place for his daughter, who had known Gilda since childhood. The two families knew everything worth knowing about each other. The girls might room together. Marta trusted Gilda, and Gilda could help Marta’s English—which, the consul confessed to Mother Ravenel, was very poor. Marta was two years older than Gilda, but they would both be going into the ninth grade.

His daughter, the consul explained, had been held back in school in Havana for not applying herself, and during her year of shame at having to repeat a grade had formed an unsuitable attachment. Subsequently she had been sent off to Spain to spend a year with a great-aunt in Andalusia. Meanwhile, he and his wife had been surprised late in life by a baby, a little girl, whom Marta adored and had insisted on naming Angel. Perhaps if the school were agreeable to Marta, the child, who would be ready for first grade in a few years, might follow her big sister to Mount St. Gabriel’s.

If it were left to Marta, he told Mother Ravenel, she would prefer to stay in Havana, living with her mother, and being “a little mother” to Angel. But there were priorities here, and Marta must finish her education first.

Mother Ravenel explained her policy about not letting foreign students from the same country room together; contrary to what the consul might think, their English would
not
improve as rapidly, because they would always be whispering in their native language as soon as the door was shut.

“Ah, now, that is too bad,” the consul had countered sadly with a forewarning side glance, which the headmistress turned to meet eye to eye. By then they had reached the new athletic field, where the lower-grade girls were practicing for field day. “Because, you see, Mother Ravenel, our families are very close. Marta trusts Gilda. Trust is very important to Marta at this time. And to Señora Andreu and myself. We want Marta to—to—
empezar de nuevo—
how shall I put it, Mother? We feel it is important for our daughter to begin on a completely fresh page.”

Before they reached the leafy embrace of the grotto, she had decided to risk it. He was a man with influence who would send other wellborn Cuban daughters her way. Nothing really had been said; that was the beauty, and they both knew it. Sweeping ahead of him up the steep stone steps, she lightly tossed back her concession: “Consul, you went straight to my heart. I can never resist the promise of a new beginning for a girl. I began on a fresh page myself when I came to Mount St. Gabriel’s as a seventh-grade boarder. But the girls have to understand that if your daughter’s English doesn’t improve, I will have to separate them and put Marta in with an American boarder. Our little arrangement must be regarded as an experiment.”

It had taken the out-of-shape father a few moments to reply. Having regained his breath, he stood beside the Red Nun, whose story he would shortly be told, and thanked Mother Ravenel for her generosity and great understanding. He assured her that he and his friend Jorge Gomez would impress upon both girls the importance of making this experiment a success: “Because Marta would not feel comfortable sharing intimate quarters with a strange girl. I will urge Jorge to emphasize this proviso of yours to Gilda.”

Before leaving the grounds, Consul Andreu wrote a check for Marta’s full first-year tuition plus the nonrefundable boarding fee.

Whoever’s sanitary pad it was would be assigned to wipe down the bathroom stalls and fixtures with Pine-Sol every evening for a week. (Not the toilet bowls themselves; that would insult the dignity of a Cuban father.)

And—
Elated, Mother Ravenel committed a further inspiration to her yellow pad: that girl would have to thoroughly research and make a legible diagram of the inner workings of a modern toilet.

Now for the day’s larger loose ends beyond the institutional ones: those young souls in formation, the “works in progress” under her care.

It was Tildy who waited for her, Tildy’s struggles that were uppermost in her mind. “She is not an easy girl,” she had told Mother Malloy. “They are not an easy family.” By which she had meant, of course, the women in the family: first her own classmates, the Tilden twins, Cornelia and Antonia; and then the Stratton girls, Madeline and, now, Tildy.

It galled her, the way Cornelia continued to rebuff her, after all this time. (“Won’t you stop by my office for a little chat, Cornelia, after you’ve had your conference with Tildy’s teacher?” She wished she had not chosen the word “chat.” Even as it had passed her lips she’d seen Cornelia snatch at it for the centerpiece of her acid turndown. “Oh,
Mother
, how sweet. But running a business all by myself excludes such cozy treats as chats. And here I’m already tardy for the remarkable Mother Malloy.”)

Cornelia’s “Mother” had “Suzanne” oozing around its edges; and “cozy treats” was just flagrantly patronizing. Yes, I, too, am running a business, she might have replied, with the wry assurance of a headmistress in charge of a first-rate school in which Cornelia’s younger daughter was barely making it. But Antonia’s unforgiving sister was clicking down the hallway in her pumps, already “tardy” for Tildy’s “remarkable” teacher, whom Cornelia had the respect to call by her proper name.

“Tildy’s mother was in a hurry with me, too,” Mother Malloy had reported. But she had gone on to add that Cornelia had been pleased that Tildy was making progress, pleased that Mother Malloy had recognized Tildy’s special qualities.

And what were these special qualities?