A Veil Removed

by Michelle Cox

  “But, as you say, he will miss his radio show . . . The Shadow? I think is what you called it?”

  “Oh, that’s long over by now,” Elsie shouted again. “He’s probably already in bed.”

  Though his tattered scarf covered his mouth, she could tell by his crinkled eyes that he was smiling. “I am not one to get a man out of his bed. No, we will leave him to his rest. I like to walk,” he said, holding his elbow out to her.

  “So do I,” Elsie said, taking his arm.

  They continued on in silence, bent slightly forward by the piercing wind, until they finally reached the bus stop. Fortunately, they did not have long to wait before a bus came lumbering along.

  “I’m sorry about Ma,” Elsie said, rubbing her gloved hands together, once they were seated back on the bus, this one being blessed with at least some working interior lights. “She doesn’t realize—”

  “I understand this,” Gunther said with a nod, looking down at his hands.

  Elsie meant to use the ride home to ask him about Anna, as, after all, she had already told him everything about herself. Surely he wouldn’t mind her asking now after all they had shared this evening.

  He caught her off guard, however, and before she could say anything, he asked, still looking at his hands, if she were serious about becoming a nun.

  She was taken aback by this, surprised that not only would he bring up such a subject, but that he had apparently remembered all that she had told him that night at the hospital, despite his being in and out of consciousness. Or, if he hadn’t, she quickly reasoned, he had probably overheard her say it to Lloyd just this evening. Either way, it reminded her that she must write to her grandfather immediately—first thing in the morning, actually, before he heard it from some other source. Thinking of it all again, now, she began to feel anxious all over, nervous and trapped. She shifted in her seat.

  “Do you not wish to talk about it?” he asked, looking at her.

  “Oh,” she said, realizing she hadn’t answered his question. “No . . . I don’t mind. But yes, I . . . I am serious, as a matter of fact.”

  “How long have you felt this way?” he asked, still looking at her.

  “Well, not long, really. But I am very determined,” she added quickly.

  “Have you spoken to any of the sisters?”

  “I did speak to Sister Bernard, but she said it was too soon. That I must wait a year and then I can join the novitiate.”

  “Have you told no one else? Your mother, maybe? Or Henrietta?”

  “No, not yet . . .”

  She turned and looked out the window. How had the conversation turned yet again to be about her? She was determined to reclaim it and abruptly turned back toward him. “Who is—” she began, but he again spoke first.

  “Elsie, you are sure?” he asked quietly. “Why is it you wish this life?”

  Elsie remained silent, trying to think of how best to craft her answer. How could she explain it to him?

  “Elsie, it is not my place to say; I know that. But I think this is fehler—mistake.”

  Elsie gave a little groan. Why did everyone always think she was making a mistake, no matter what she did? That she somehow didn’t know her own mind? “I suppose you wouldn’t understand,” she added, after a few silent moments. “Being a Lutheran,” she said quietly, staring at the seat in front of them. She looked over at him, and his face held a puzzled look.

  “This has nothing to do with it.”

  They both sat silent, studying the other.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Elsie asked finally, with a little sigh. “I should think after what I told you just tonight and what you saw unfold with Lloyd that it would be more than evident why I want to be a nun.”

  “Because of two verblendungen—infatuations . . . you wish on love to give up altogether?”

  Elsie was shocked by his cavalier opinion of something that had affected her so deeply, had changed her irrevocably. “They were more than infatuations,” she said stiffly. “At least to me.”

  “Forgive me,” he said, sincerely. “I did not mean it this way. I mean . . . you are very young, Elsie. You will of course meet man you will fall in love with. Someone who is worthy of all this love you have to give.” He looked over at her now.

  Ah, but that was just the thing, Elsie knew, again surprised—but not surprised—at how he had come to the crux of it all, two small tears appearing in the corners of her eyes. She was not worthy of any decent man’s love, and that was the sad truth of it. He obviously must not have caught her meaning before, when she had spoken about her affair with Harrison—which was probably a good thing, actually. Why had she told him so much, anyway?

  “Maybe it is such that you have met him already,” he suggested softly.

  “You’re teasing me,” she said with a small smile. “Surely you don’t mean any of the ‘society’ men I’m thrown together with. They’re all the same basic variant of Lloyd Aston. So, no. I don’t think so.”

  Gunther remained silent and looked at the seat in front of them.

  Elsie wanted to explain that it was more than that. That even if she could find such a man, one whom she loved and somehow loved her back, she would most likely not be allowed to marry him anyway. She looked up at Gunther, the headlight of a passing car suddenly illuminating his face, and she thought he looked sad. Perhaps he felt sorry for her, but she didn’t want him to.

  “Gunther, I don’t think I have many choices in whom I marry, and I have no desire to marry some rich man who only wants me for the increase it will bring to his bank account. I feel like I’m being sold to the highest bidder,” she mumbled in a low, disgusted tone.

  “You would be rich, well cared for,” Gunther pointed out.

  “Yes, in a cage,” she said mournfully. “A golden cage is still a cage.”

  “So you trade one cage for another?” he asked. “The wedding veil for the nun’s?”

  Elsie bit her lip. “The convent is not a cage!” she said, remembering Sr. Bernard’s words about the veil being put on with great love, not donned in haste or fear. “I would love to be a sister!”

  “Why? I do not understand this.”

  “Because . . . because I wish to study. To learn. To read and not be stopped. To learn so many things. Like you.” She chanced a glance at him to gauge his reaction. “I . . . I’d like to be a teacher. For poor children. I want to help them to learn, too. To help them escape, even if for just a little while, between the pages of a book, as I used to. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  Gunther was staring at her with a strange look on his face. Why was he looking at her this way? As if . . .

  “But why can you not be teacher and wife?” he countered. “Why do you have to be nun to make these dreams come true?”

  “Do you really not see?” she asked incredulously, searching his eyes. “I couldn’t possibly be a teacher for poor children and be someone’s North Shore wife. That simply isn’t done!” she said in her best imitation of Aunt Agatha, and he obliged her with a small excuse of a smile. “I’ll be expected to throw elaborate dinner parties and play the hostess to a lot of snobs. Henrietta might be able to do it, but not me,” she said mournfully, leaning her head against the cold glass of the window. “And you heard Lloyd, I’m sure. I’d be expected to produce a brat or two. Does that sound appealing to you?”

  “Do you not wish to have children?” he asked, concerned.

  “Not like that.”

  Gunther looked down at his hands again.

  “I don’t have the strength to keep fighting them all, Gunther. This is the easier way. I’m a very weak person. That should be obvious by now,” she said sadly.

  “You are the least weak person I know, Elsie,” he said and took her hand and squeezed it again. This time he held on to it, though, until the bus came to a stop outside Mundelein.

  Slowly they walked to Philomena, where they finally parted at the bottom of the steps, Gunther still having to walk over
to Piper. Elsie had been mulling over all that she had said on the bus just now, and while she didn’t regret anything, she found it disturbingly incomplete, as if she had missed something important. Gunther did not refer to any of it, though, as they parted, merely thanking her for a nice evening. He turned to leave, but she couldn’t let him go without saying one last thing. She put her hand on his arm to stop him. He looked back at her, curious.

  “It’s not just that,” she said eagerly. “What I said on the bus. I . . . I do feel as though I have a calling. I . . . I want to serve God.”

  “But what of love?” he asked so softly she could barely hear him. “Is this not why we were created? To pass on the love that has been given to us?”

  Elsie felt unexplainably irritated again. “Why do you keep talking about love?” she asked, a hint of exasperation in her voice now. “There are many types of love,” she said hoarsely. “Service is a form of love. Isn’t that what God wants of us?” she asked.

  “‘Mercy is what I require, sayeth the Lord, not obedience.’”

  Elsie bit her lip, his words shaking her to the core. She knew she couldn’t refute the Bible, and, likewise, she was unable to think of something to counter his logic.

  “There are many ways to serve God, Elsie,” he said with a sad smile.

  “I know.”

  “You need to entbinden . . . what is the word? Absolve? . . . yourself. Or you will never be free.”

  Again, they stared at each other. Elsie tried to dislodge whatever feeling was welling up in her.

  “Why do you care so much? Just . . . just leave me be! Weren’t you the one who was telling me to choose my own path? Well, let me!”

  Gunther looked as though she had struck him. “You are right, of course,” he said, taking a step back. “I should not care. I have no right to care. This is not my affair. Forgive me,” he said, bending and giving her a small kiss on the cheek. “Gute nacht.” He turned then and began to walk briskly across the snowy lawn.

  “Gunther!” she called after him, suddenly regretting what she had said, but he did not turn back.

  Elsie barely slept all night, so many things going through her mind, bits and pieces floating up to the forefront in no particular order at all. There was something she was missing, she fretted, but she just couldn’t figure it out. For what seemed like hours, she pondered Gunther’s words about love and service, happiness and mercy. Who was she supposed to have mercy on? she wondered. Him or herself? Or both somehow? But couldn’t his biblical quote mean that she should have mercy on all of God’s people and thus serve them? As a teacher, for example, who would teach them of God’s love and mercy? Didn’t that make the most sense? Why did Gunther always make her feel like she was doing something wrong? And why, as she had asked him last night, did he care? What was she to him? she had asked herself over and over through the night. Perhaps it was the poet in him. But surely, as a poet and probably because of what he had been through in the war, he of all people should understand sacrifice. Weren’t so many of the poems he had copied about love and loss? Love in some form or another seemed to preoccupy him, almost obsess him, she saw. And then a niggling thought, like a ghost or a sort of ethereal specter, came into existence and hovered near her conscious mind, but she shooed it away before it could take hold.

  She tossed and turned, periodically becoming conscious of Melody’s light snoring, and felt her irritation at Gunther rise. He had told her to choose her own path, and when she did, he didn’t approve! She lay there and tried to explain herself to him over and over in her mind. In each scenario, he frustratingly still did not seem to understand—though, to be honest, sometimes she didn’t either. She was starting to not make sense, even to herself. At one point in the night, in desperation, she got up and knelt by her bed to pray, but she kept looking over her shoulder so many times to make sure Melody wasn’t disturbed by her actions that she kept losing her concentration. Eventually, she gave up and crawled back in bed, determined to pray there, but she fell asleep before she could finish.

  Elsie twisted her hands now, thinking about it all again, and began to pace along the pea-graveled pathways of the greenhouse, trying to find solace in this hidden world. She should have brought Beowulf to read here amongst the greenery, she chastised herself, if only to take her mind off her woes.

  “I was thinking I would find you here,” said a voice, and she spun around, startled, to see none other than Gunther himself in the doorway. She felt immediately embarrassed, as if he could somehow know she had just been thinking of him.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked, baffled as to how he had found her here, when she herself barely knew how she’d gotten there.

  “I do not know. It just came to me.”

  “That’s peculiar,” she said, wondering if in truth he had followed her.

  “I . . .” he said, coming toward her. “I am sorry about last night. I said things I should not have. Or it is maybe that I did not say enough.” He paused here as if searching for the right words. “There is something I need to say to you,” he said, his face a mask of anxiety. He looked as though he hadn’t slept well either.

  Not again! She didn’t think she could endure yet another conversation about her misguided desire to join the convent. “Gunther, please. I don’t want to talk about it all again,” she begged, though she had herself been thinking of nothing else, of course.

  “I . . . very well,” he said, then, biting his lip and putting his hands behind his back. He strode about for a few moments before roughly sitting down beside her, his arms resting on his knees as he clenched his hands together.

  Elsie did not look at him. She was relieved that she had succeeded in stopping him talking about her choices in life, but now what was she to say? What should they talk about? Perhaps his injured hand? she wondered, glancing at it out of the corner of her eye.

  “Elsie, why do you think I gave you Family Happiness to read?” he asked softly, not looking at her.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she said, surprised by his sudden choice of conversation. “I . . . I wondered, actually. I couldn’t help but think there was some purpose to it, some sort of theme you wanted me to take note of?” she asked, looking over at him.

  “Yes,” he encouraged, looking over at her now too. “Can you . . . do you know what it is?”

  Elsie shook her head. “Even if I could name the . . . the themes, I can’t imagine what they have to do with me. Poor Masha . . . after the attentions of the prince and . . . and the glittering Russian aristocracy, having to return in the end to her husband, Sergei, and find a sort of happiness in that life . . .” she broke off here, a niggling thought slowly forming on the horizon of her conscious mind. “Is that . . . that what you meant for me to take from it?” she said slowly, her breath catching in her throat. What had he really intended? she wondered.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she continued on.

  “I don’t understand why it is called Family Happiness. It’s not happy at all. It’s sad,” she said, her brow pinched. “Why do you like it?”

  “Because it’s a redemption story,” he answered quietly. “They both get second chance at a deeper sort of happiness,—peace. They find a deeper sort of love.”

  “And you think that I . . . I am in need of redemption?” Elsie asked, the truth of it cutting her to the quick.

  “No, I am,” he said, turning fully toward her. “Or maybe it is that we both are.” He paused. “Elsie, I have not been honest with you, in many ways. I have been a coward. But last night showed me that I must be . . . what is the word? . . . forthright? Honest. To tell you the truth. I had hoped you might guess, but I see now that I must more speak more plainly.”

  Something in the way he was looking at her now, so desperately, the way she had caught him looking at her even for just a few moments on the bus last night, made her stomach quickly clench into a knot. His words, too, from last night came back to her. You will of course meet man you will fa
ll in love with . . . Maybe it is such that you have met him already. How could she have been so stupid? She knew, then, what he was about to say to her and felt herself panic. He couldn’t really be—

  “Elsie,” he said softly, “I think I am in—”

  “No! Don’t say it! Please don’t say it,” she begged.

  Gunther gave her a look as though she had struck him. “Elsie, I . . .” he began again and swallowed hard. “I care for you—very much,” he said hoarsely.

  No! she thought wildly. How could this be? she asked herself, searching his sky-blue eyes even as the guilty truth soaked in—that the longing she recognized in his eyes had a reciprocal feeling in her own heart. How long had it been there? And how could she have not seen it before now? But love—if it was love— wasn’t supposed to happen this way . . .

  “I . . . I thought you were my friend . . .” she said haltingly, feeling betrayed not only by him but by herself.

  “I am your friend.”

  “I . . . I can’t possibly marry you!” she blurted out before she could stop it.

  A wave of something crossed Gunther’s face before he quickly hid it away. “I am not asking you to marry me,” he said gently, looking at her steadily, as if explaining something to a child.

  Elsie blushed to the roots of her hair. “No, of course not,” she said hurriedly, as a sickening recollection of Anna filled her mind, then, and nearly crushed her.

  “I am not speaking of marriage because . . . because you are not ready,” he went on, interrupting her thoughts. “I know this. You are much confused, Elsie. There is much hurt in you. And there are things that you . . . that you do not know about me.”

  “Gunther, I . . .” she began, confusion coursing through her. “I can’t—”

  “I do not wish to make a . . . complication? But I must speak before you make a choice you cannot change,” he said with uncharacteristic hurry. “You must allow me to say that I do care for you. Very much.”

  Elsie felt herself beginning to tremble, to slip, wanting to give way to the flood of emotion that threatened to drown her. She tried desperately to remember and hold on to all of her resolutions, but she felt them melting away, as if they had been made of cheap, thin paper. They were quickly burning up, being consumed, as she realized, horribly, what a small part of her must have always known—that she cared for him too—very probably loved him.