Unfinished Desires (39 page)

If “Domenica” isn’t Maud, then who is she? And who is this “Rexanne” played by Tildy, also wearing clothes from my era—I had a Peter Pan collar like that, which I wore with many outfits. I used to soak it in bleaching powder to keep it nice and white—I didn’t have a mother who made me stylish clothes, so I had to make do with what I had
.

DOMENICA:
Oh, Rexy. That was what I was trying to write to you in my letter, only it wasn’t coming out very well.

REXANNE:
Your letter was to me? Domenica, I don’t understand. Are you telling me something has changed about our plans to enter the Order together? The way our foundress and
her
best friend did?

DOMENICA:
We are not
them
, Rexy. Look, Rexy, perhaps you had better read this.
(She hands the exam book to Rexanne.)

REXANNE
(slowly reading aloud):
“Since that evening at the Swag, Rexy, I have been wondering whether we should go on with our plans. Something tells me it would be wrong in a way I can’t find words for. Only that there is a good reason for things, but when you know there ought to be a better reason, then the good can turn bad …”

At the word “Swag,” Mother Ravenel’s mind began moving very fast, and even before she turned and confronted the gleeful side glance Cornelia had trained on her, she was calculating just what she had to do to minimize the damage and in just what order and style she had to do it.

I have been set up
, she acknowledged,
but now is not the time to analyze it. With the exception of Cornelia, these are just ninth graders. Their brains have not finished developing yet. I can still outmaneuver them
.

And even as Domenica, on stage, was telling her best friend that she, Rexy, had come between her and God and “diluted her vocation,” Mother Ravenel, program in hand, was mounting the stairs to the stage.

She entered the play.

“Yes, here I am,” she addressed the audience in her authoritative stage voice, standing behind the seated girls transfixed in shock.

“As we all know from Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
, there are ghosts from the future as well as the past.”

She gestured to Chloe’s polystyrene prop. “This unfinished statue that we call our Red Nun memorializes a girl who died before she could take vows. She is a ghost from these girls’ past, and I am a ghost from their future. These two girls you see here, Domenica and Rexanne, whoever they were, did not take vows together. One of them had a vocation; the other discerned that she did not. Discernment is all: each of us is required to discern, to the best of our ability, God’s plan for our life. That is what we strive to teach at Mount St. Gabriel’s. But what we always have to remember is—” Here she paused and magnanimously stretched out her arms like an angel guarding the two stunned girls on the bench and embracing the audience as well. “We are, each of us, a work in progress. Every one of us in this auditorium tonight is a work in progress—and will be until our very last breath.”

Another pause for effect. (You could have heard a pin drop!)

“And now, we will bring down the curtain on tonight’s performance and”—consulting her program—“the Spirit of the School will sing her Farewell Song, after which our pianist will play the school song as a recessional. Please withhold any applause, but do sing along with us if you know the words. After that, everyone is invited to a reception in the main parlor.”

Then still in the guise of “speaking her lines,” she instructed ashenfaced Tildy and Maud to remain frozen in place on the bench “like a
tableau vivant
, girls,” after which she marched off to close the curtain herself, sending out Jiggsie Judd to sing the farewell.

“I burn for you with sacred fire
Of my faithful commission I never tire
My pitiless light routs out dark schemes
My passionate flame rekindles dreams …”

After Jiggsie vanished through the slit between the curtains, a disobedient flutter of enthusiastic applause was quickly drowned out by Elaine Frew’s fortissimo segue into the school song: words by Mother Elizabeth Wallingford to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

“Hail to thee, bright angel, guardian of our school …”

CHAPTER 33
Aftermath

Friday night, April 25, 1952
Mount St. Gabriel’s buildings and grounds

“
THIS SURE WASN’T
the way it ended in Mikell’s script!” Mrs. Lunsford protested to Mrs. Cramer beside her.

“Nor in Lora Jean’s, either,” said Mrs. Cramer. “The Narrator was supposed to sum up how each scene represented something in the school’s history and then announce each girl by the name of her part, and that girl was supposed to come out and either bow or curtsy. Lora Jean’s dad worked with her on her bow. She said she didn’t feel confident enough to curtsy in front of a crowd.”

“Who ever did? Oh, well, it was probably another of Tildy Stratton’s last-minute additions. Mikell says she’s in thick with the headmistress.”

“That figures. Lora Jean said Mother Ravenel and Tildy’s mother were classmates.”

“You think maybe it was planned, then?
Her
rushing up on stage like that at the end?”

“I really couldn’t say. But still. It was supposed to be the
ninth-graders’
play.”

“THAT BITCH—THAT DEVIL
—” Cornelia Stratton did not bother to lower her voice. Nobody could hear her anyway, what with Elgar’s grandiose march being thumped out by Francine Frew’s self-important daughter and the audience in complete disarray, some standing, some singing, others talking and making their way to exits, uncertain of what was required of them.

“Mama, what
is
it? What has happened?”

“Isn’t it obvious, Madeline? That controlling fiend has sabotaged my child’s play.”

“But how? I don’t understand—”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You were with Cynthia’s family at Myrtle Beach over Easter break while I was working with her every night, no matter how exhausted I was from my day at the studio. I knew every line—every change in that script. All we meant to do was plant a hidden little reminder, shake her out of her complacency. All
she
had to do was sit still and let them say
all
their lines and then let Becky reiterate what everything stood for in the summation, which I helped Tildy with myself. Nothing was going to embarrass her publicly; I had seen to that. I just wanted her to know that
we
knew her dirty little secret. But her guilty heart couldn’t stand it. She commandeered a school play and robbed Tildy of her rightful ending.”

Madeline realized from this outburst that her mother was very much implicated in tonight’s mischief. But meanwhile, what about Tildy?

“Shouldn’t we go and see about Tildy?”

“Dear Maddy, always concerned for others. But you’re right. Let’s go.”

WHILE THE ROUSING
Elgar tune still exerted some binding power upon the dispersing audience, Mother Ravenel was starting damage control behind the closed curtain. She summoned the full cast to the stage.

“Girls, tonight some things did not go according to plan. My entrance into your play was a surprise to everyone, including myself. I had to think very fast. I had to make a quick decision in order to prevent worse harm. How many of you, besides the two actors involved, knew about the scene between Domenica and Rexanne? If you were aware of it, raise your hand.”

Girls exchanged nervous glances. No one raised a hand. It was Becky Meyer who finally spoke: “We knew there was going to be a scene about two friends, Mother, but since the director was working on it till the last minute, it was blocked in, but not rehearsed. All we knew was that it came after the infirmary scene and would last about seven minutes, and then after that was Jiggsie’s farewell song and then the Narrator was to sum up how the scenes represented major threads in the school’s history.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to make that summation, Rebecca. Do you have it with you?”

“Yes, Mother.” The Narrator pulled a much-folded paper from the pocket of her dress and handed it over to the headmistress, who efficiently skimmed it, nodding as she went along, then returned it to Becky.

“Now, I’ll tell you what we are going to do, girls. When the reception in the main parlor is in full swing, I am going to ring my little bell for silence and announce to our guests that we have a postlude to the play. And then, Rebecca, you will step forward and do your summation, after which you’ll call each girl by the name of her role—the Auctioneer, the Sculptor, and so on; I see from your script that had been the plan—and each will come forward and take her bow. That is what we are going to do.”

“We will stay in our costumes, Mother?” Squire Wallingford asked.

“Thank you for reminding me, Gilda. Yes, everyone will stay in costume.” The headmistress allowed her cool glance to take in Domenica and Rexanne, still frozen in place on the bench in their 1930s outfits. “And now, girls, go downstairs to the dressing room and freshen up—staying in costume, of course—and then go right along to the reception. Tell everyone you mingle with that we have the postlude still to come, but meanwhile to enjoy the refreshments. Tildy and Maud—remain here with me.”

Having checked that nobody was lingering backstage to eavesdrop, Mother Ravenel addressed her prey.

“What was it you girls were hoping to convey to the audience in your highly secret little scene?”

“We didn’t—” Maud shakily began.

“The scene was interrupted,” cut in Tildy, “so
nothing
got conveyed.”

“You are divaricating, Tildy, and I think you know it. I’ll ask another way: who are Domenica and Rexanne meant to represent?”

“They represent nobody,” Tildy declared with a set jaw. “They’re made-up characters. Two best friends. One will turn out to have a vocation, and one won’t. It was a scene about”—triumphantly she snatched a word from the air—
“discernment
. Which is a very important thing we learn at Mount St. Gabriel’s. You said so yourself when you—”

But the headmistress’s attention had shifted to the exam booklet on Tildy’s lap. “Let me see that.”

“You can’t take it!” protested Tildy. “It belongs to our family. I found it in Aunt Tony’s old things.”

But Mother Ravenel, having noted the name and the date on its blue cover, was leafing through the booklet. When she came to the handwritten message inside the back cover, her brows slightly lifted. She read it through, then rolled up the booklet and thrust it into the pocket of her habit.

“That is all we have time for now,” she said. “You are both excused from the reception. Maud, you may go straight to the dormitory. We will talk in the morning.”

“But—couldn’t I—stop off at the chapel first, Mother?”

The nun cast a cold eye on the beseeching girl wearing Antonia’s beautifully sewn dress with the scarlet trim and gold buttons. The stockings and the shoes were also of that era. Possibly they, too, had been Antonia’s. What a devilish lot of work must have gone on in the Stratton household to perfect this aborted little treachery. But why had Maud lent herself to something so detrimental to her own interests?

“I think not, Maud. Your chapel time doesn’t seem to have profited you very much.” She saw from the girl’s shattered expression that Maud was realizing exactly what had been lost.

Mother Ravenel suddenly felt both very tired and very young, as if she were going to have to live through everything over again in order to understand why she had made certain decisions when she was their age. And she still had to get through tonight’s reception and make sure that the postlude was properly executed.

She turned on her heel and left the disgraced pair huddled on the bench.

Tildy was the first to rise. She paced back and forth a few times, then made a rush at Chloe’s stage prop of the Red Nun and began kicking it savagely. Her foot striking the polystyrene made a raspy crumbling sound.

“Putrid old prop! Never,
ever
share power with anyone. They’ll stab you in the back every time. That’s when this whole damn evening started going wrong, when she sprang that abomination. And then acting like the
artiste
, whipping out her little can of spray paint to ‘highlight’ it. Ha! I wonder if—?” Tildy bolted offstage and returned waving the can of spray paint.

“What are you going to do?” cried Maud.

“Wait and see.” Tildy shook the can violently and began spraying wobbly white letters across the chest of Chloe’s prop:

s-a-t-i-n
r-a-v-e-n-e-l

She spun around, exultant. “Pretty damn accurate, no?”

“I don’t get it. Why the ‘satin’?”

“It’s not
satin
, you stupid ass. It’s
Satan.”

“Oh, Tildy.”

“Oh, Tildy,
what?”

“Oh, Tildy—dear Tildy—”

Moments ago, Maud had been far from finding anything funny, but now she was released into laughter.

“Well,
what?”
demanded Tildy.

“Oh, Tiddle-dy—‘Satan’ is with two
as.”

Tildy’s face was a thundercloud. “I told you never to call me that again. It’s nasty and condescending. But I guess you need to get some of your own back after having to knuckle under me as your director all these weeks.”

“Oh, Tildy! I didn’t mean anything nasty—and I was laughing because the whole thing is just so—you.”

“My awful spelling, you mean. Well, I promise you that’s one word I’ll never misspell again.”

CORNELIA AND MADELINE
went below to the dressing room, where agitated girls consulted in small groups or checked themselves in the mirror.

“Has anyone seen Tildy?” asked Madeline.

Chloe, in her nun’s habit from playing Mother Finney, came over to them. “They’re still up there—on the stage. Mother Ravenel wanted to see Tildy and Maud alone.”

“Let’s go,” Cornelia snapped, not bothering to acknowledge Chloe. She dragged Madeline back up the stairs, but as soon as they reached the top they were waylaid by parents and acquaintances leaving the auditorium.

“Cornelia! you must be so proud!”

“I thought it was extremely accomplished for their age, didn’t you?”

“They must have worked awfully hard!”

“But please, Cornelia, enlighten me so I won’t make a fool of myself at the reception—what was that last scene all about?”

Cornelia pushed through the cordon of chatter, her hand locked around Madeline’s wrist. “Why not ask Mother Ravenel?” she called back.

ONSTAGE BEHIND THE
curtain, they found only Maud in Antonia’s clothes, slumped disconsolately on the bench. “Where is my daughter?” demanded Cornelia.

“Mrs. Stratton, I don’t know. She sprayed that—prop, and then she ran off in a rage. She was mad at me because I told her ‘Satan’ was spelled with two
as.”

“Listen, Maud,” Madeline gently coaxed; she could see the girl was trying not to cry. “What happened with Mother Ravenel? Chloe said she kept you two behind.”

“She was very put out—really cold. It was scary how cold she was. She asked Tildy who the girls in the scene were meant to represent and when Tildy said nobody real, they were just representative of—you know—discernment—she accused her of divaricating.”

“A pet skewering word of hers,” Madeline couldn’t help interjecting. “Then what?”

“Then—then she—took the booklet and looked through it and—and confiscated it. She told us we were excused from the reception. She told the rest of the cast to keep on their costumes. They’re going to do a postlude at the reception to clear up any confusion about the play. And—” Here Maud’s voice broke. “She forbade me even to go to the chapel. When I leave here, I am to go straight to my room in the dormitory. I think I am going to be sent away.”

SMOKY STRATTON AND
Henry Vick awaited Cornelia and Madeline outside in the balmy darkness, romantically lit by the former hotel’s Victorian gas lamps—now electrified—along the drive.

“Well, how are our girls?” Smoky asked.

“Mother Ravenel kept Tildy and Maud onstage by themselves for an inquisition,” Cornelia reported. “And now Maud is alone onstage in tears and Tildy has sprayed ‘Satan Ravenel’ on that prop of the Red Nun, only she spelled it ‘Satin’ and when Maud corrected her she ran off in a rage.”

“Oh, me,” said Henry. “Did you see Chloe?”

“Chloe is still in her Mother Finney nun costume downstairs. Mother Ravenel, it seems, has arranged a little ‘postlude,’ to be presented by the cast during the reception. To clear up any confusion anyone may have about the play. But she has excused Tildy and Maud from the reception.”

“In that case, what do we want to do now?” Smoky asked his wife.

“What
I
want to do is slap that woman’s face—in front of everybody—or come up with a satisfactory equivalent.”

“In that case, darling, I’ll wait for you outside.”

“That might be best,” said Cornelia. “Just don’t take too many nips from the glove compartment because I am far too mad to drive us home.”

“I was planning to get
the flashlight
out of the glove compartment,” her husband mildly reproached her, “and start looking for Tildy.”

“I’ll go with you, Daddy,” said Madeline.