Unfinished Desires

by Gail Godwin

  —from Mount St. Gabriel’s Remembered: A Historical

  Memoir, by Mother Suzanne Ravenel

  CHAPTER 15

  Tildy Struggles

  Monday afternoon, December 10, 1951

  Second week of Advent

  Mother Malloy’s office

  Mount St. Gabriel’s

  THIS ROOM IS a far cry from Mother Ravenel’s office, with its view of the western ranges and every shelf and wall crammed with trophies of school accomplishments and framed photographs of pet students and dignitaries posing with the headmistress, with and without her sunglasses.

  Mother Malloy’s office looks out on the gloomy cedar grove surrounding the nuns’ cemetery and down on a portion of the shale driveway where young Mark, Jovan’s grandson, is taking advantage of the last of the day’s sunshine to simonize the school station wagon for its trips to the train station and the airport, Mark and Jovan spelling each other to get all the boarders embarked on their Christmas vacations.

  Except for the textbooks on the shelves and several piles of papers arranged neatly on the office desk just now basking in the last sad burst of seasonal light from the corner window, there is no evidence, other than her accepting presence on the dreary horsehair sofa, of the room’s current mistress. The pictures on the walls, old brownish photographs of Mount St. Gabriel’s when the trees and shrubberies were younger and sparser, seem so settled in their places as to acquiesce in being overlooked. But Tildy would a million times rather be in this unprepossessing office than in Ravenel’s dazzling and dreaded shrine to herself.

  “Ah, Tildy, come,” says Mother Malloy, smiling and patting a place on the sofa. There is a loved and trusted old book, with pictures carefully colored by Tildy’s first-grade self, on Mother Malloy’s lap, and a block of lined notepaper. Tildy, sitting down beside the nun, knows what is coming and therefore feels no apprehension and shame clumping in her chest.

  “Votre père, Tildy, est-il à la maison?” The remembered drill sounds childish on Mother Malloy’s elegant lips as she improvises from the first-grade French book, and Tildy has to suppress a giggle at the Boston nun’s awful pronunciation.

  “Non, ma mère. Mon père est dans la campagne avec son chauffeur, John.”

  “Et votre soeur, Madeline? Est-elle à la maison?”

  “Non, ma mère, Madeline est à l’école.”

  “Et votre mère, est-elle à la maison?”

  “Non, ma mère, Mama est à son atelier de photographe.”

  “Tildy, you speak like a Frenchwoman. I am in awe.”

  “That’s because in first grade Mother Hubert—she was French on her father’s side—made us look at her mouth and not at the book when she was saying the words. When we said them right, she’d write them on the board, and after we’d copied them into our book, we could color that page.”

  “What a great plan.” Mother Malloy passes the notepad to Tildy. “Now, will you write some French words as I say them?”

  “Sure, which ones?”

  “Oh, let’s start with dans la campagne.”

  Tildy has to repeat the words aloud slowly, correcting Mother Malloy’s un-French sounds, before she can start properly forming the letters on the pad.

  “Good idea, repeating them after me,” the nun says, with a grimace of self-reproach. “Perhaps you’ll improve my accent. I didn’t have a Mother Hubert. My French was learned out of a book and taught by a nun from Ireland whose pronunciation was as bad as mine, if not worse.”

  They went on like this until the sun had gone from the room. Mother Malloy switched on a lamp. “How are you getting on with David Copperfield, Tildy?”

  “I’m keeping up, Mother, with Madeline’s help. We’ve just met Uriah Heep. At first you don’t realize how creepy he is. I mean, blowing in a horse’s nostril might be a good thing. But his creepiness grows on you. What Madeline and I do, we lie on her bed and read like we used to, only now it’s my bed. She thought I needed a new start, so she gave me her room.”

  “And how is it going?”

  “We’re trying something different. We take turns reading and putting feeling into it, like in a play, but whenever I come to a difficult word, I tap her on the arm and she supplies it, so we won’t ruin our momentum. Before, I would be dreading the bad words so much I would have to stop.”

  “Ah, Tildy, you were fortunate in your Mother Hubert and you are blessed indeed to have a sister like Madeline.”

  Monday evening, December 10, 1951

  Mother Ravenel’s office

  Mount St. Gabriel’s

  “AND HOW ARE you feeling, Mother Malloy?”

  “Well, Mother. And you?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I have to be. Miss Mendoza’s lost her voice and can’t do Spanish conversation, and Jovan’s at home for the second time with a fever of one hundred and two, though Betty tends to exaggerate when protecting her menfolk, and Mother Arbuckle has three boarders in the infirmary tonight.”

  “Is it—some kind of epidemic, do you think?”

  “No, it’s about par for this time of year. Seasonal colds combined with Christmas nerves. Please, Mother Malloy, take Mother Wallingford’s wing chair. You look as if you could use a bit of propping up. You had one of your after-school tutorials with Tildy. I saw Madeline waiting outside in her little roadster.”

  Mother Ravenel was seated behind her English flat-top desk, flanked by her tributes and trophies. The thick velvet curtains were closed, and pools of lamplight broke up imposing shadows. Above the Victorian prie-dieu, a votive candle in blue glass flickered before a little wooden figure of Our Lady of Solitude in her brightly painted and gilded niche, a gift from a Mexican roommate on the occasion of Mother Ravenel’s first vows. Mother Malloy, over the course of her visits to this room, had been apprised by the headmistress of its significant items. The desk with its three pedestal drawers on each side had belonged to Mother Ravenel’s father, who had died in a quail-shooting accident two days after the Crash of 1929. The handsome silvery-blue Queen Anne wing chair propping up Mother Malloy’s back had been one of the foundress’s great finds. Mother Wallingford, with her sharp eye for furniture, had bought the disgraced chair for twenty-five cents from a Mountain City junk dealer and she and Mother Finney had spent weeks removing grease and layers of kitchen paint, then reupholstering it in some leftover brocade from an altar frontal.

  This room had brought home for the first time to Kate Malloy, a foster child raised among indifferent furnishings, that a person could surround herself with things that reassured her of her own history.

  “I gather from Tildy’s second six weeks’ report,” began Mother Ravenel, her left hand playing with a pencil poised above the ubiquitous yellow pad on which she jotted thoughts as they arose, “that your afternoon labors with her have borne some fruit. I offer my congratulations, Mother. She is not an easy girl. They are not an easy family. That’s why I had my chastening session with her first, before turning her over to your remedial care. Reading the riot act is best done by the headmistress, don’t you think?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Mother Ravenel plunged on: “Have you got to the root of the problem yet? The grades have come up, but they need to come up more. As I told Tildy in our little heart-to-heart, she isn’t fulfilling her potential.”

  “The problem is the reading, Mother. Tildy has difficulty seeing words as they actually appear on the page. She transposes letters, sees ‘on’ for ‘no,’ for instance; or she partially misreads words. She’ll read ‘marker’ as ‘market,’ or ‘climbing’ as ‘clinging.’ She hears her mistake as soon as she reads the sentence aloud, but it takes time. You have to wait while she sounds it out and hears it. She is a speaking-and-hearing person; her vocabulary is extremely sophisticated for her age, and she breezes along in Spanish conversation class. Her spoken French puts mine to shame. That’s what we’ve been doing. I ask her something in French; she hears and responds orally. Then I have her write phrases we’ve been using, soundin
g them out as she goes. She seems to operate best when she can use multiple functions at the same time. French is something she learned through the ear and through watching her teacher’s mouth. She told me her first-grade teacher, Mother Hubert—”

  “I’ve often said that if we could only find a way to make carbon copies of that precious nun and scatter them up through the grades, all our girls would be bilingual without ever opening a book. Mother Hubert’s teaching secrets are phonics and patient love. Not that she would think of herself as having any secrets. Mother Hubert just is phonics and love. But since we have only one of her, the place for her is at the start of their education. What I don’t understand is why it has taken until ninth grade for us to realize that Tildy can’t read properly.”

  While scribbling something on her yellow pad, Mother Ravenel proceeded to answer her own question: “I have concluded it’s Maud Norton. Or, rather, the lack of Maud Norton. They’re not friends this year, and Tildy no longer has Maud to help her with her homework. Which brings me to something else I’ve been mulling over, Mother Malloy. What I’m seeing in your ninth grade is several clusters of girls, each with its sphere of interests. I don’t see a nucleus of main girls anymore. I wonder whether, if a Mrs. Prince situation arose today, this class as it is now constituted could drive her off. What I think is, the breakup of Tildy and Maud and the influx of new girls has created new patterns and diluted old forces. That’s how I see it. What do you think?”

  Mother Ravenel in dialogue with her doodles seemed to have provided herself with all the information she needed about the ninth-grade girls.

  What insights could Mother Malloy add? There was animosity between Tildy and Maud, but also a continued attraction. They couldn’t stop being aware of each other. Maud was a passionate student with a questing mind. Her home life, from what Mother Malloy could gather, was an embarrassment to her ideals. The girl who had been Kate Malloy could certainly identify with Maud’s desire to transcend her origins. Herself parentless, she could also ache for the orphaned Chloe; although Chloe, to a remarkable degree, kept her own counsel—she even maintained a quiet distance from being Tildy Stratton’s best friend. Chloe’s artistic talent absorbed her, and she seemed to draw sustenance from the memory of her mother. It must help to have a mother to remember.

  But it was Tildy who tugged at Mother Malloy’s heart. During their reading sessions, she struggled along with this bright, haughty, mercurial girl who could be brought to tears by an unruly procession of black letters across a white page.

  There was no doubt in Mother Malloy’s mind that Tildy could have been the organizer of the sixth-grade ousting of Mrs. Prince and the three elections of Maud Norton to the office of class president. Tildy was an instigator. She could be “the main girl” all by herself. Her imagination craved drama, and she liked to form the flow of life that went on around her into distinctive scenes. She liked to make things happen.

  But how much, if any, of this would it be wise to share with Mother Ravenel? Having heard Madeline’s family story of the aunt left dangling by Suzanne Ravenel’s precipitate entry into the postulancy, and having been privy to Mother Ravenel’s animus regarding those “difficult” Stratton women, Mother Malloy was reluctant to jeopardize Tildy’s progress by revealing more problematic traits. It would only add fuel to the flames. On the other hand, what sort of information might she offer to the headmistress to help Tildy escape probation while the girl stuggled to improve her reading?

  She said, “I think you’re right, Mother, about there being several clusters of girls, each with its own interests. I’m impressed with Maud Norton’s work. She’s come up with a very promising idea for her Dickens paper. And I agree with you that she seems to be less concerned with friendships than with her studies.”

  “If she continues like this, she should have her pick of colleges,” said Mother Ravenel. “And with the recent patronage of her father and his wealthy wife, things look even rosier for her. Maud will be spending Christmas with them in Palm Beach. They’re flying her down.”

  “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.