by Gail Godwin
“This is the ghostly hour
When spirits float up through the fog
If you listen you can hear my song:
Here I have been happiest,
Here let my spirit dwell.
Inside the girlhood fortress
That once ensheltered me
I dreamed a wondrous dream
Of the person I wanted to be
But in Your almighty design
You sealed me in red rock instead.
‘Take this for your cloister, daughter of mine:
Be a fortress for others,’ You said.”
Then she repeated the whole song again, Elaine playing diminuendo this time, because Tildy said people needed to hear a song through twice to take in all the words.
If I do say so myself, Mother Ravenel thought proudly, that little aria has stood up to the test of time.
Marta rose and exited offstage with fully regained ghostly grace. The blue spotlight from above continued to shine on her empty bench, which Mother Ravenel thought was an inspired idea on somebody’s part. But Mark at the lighting board, spellbound by Marta in her lovely dress and veil, had simply forgotten to turn it off.
Out trotted the Funerary Sculptor, Kay Lee Jones, in smock and beret, carrying a chisel and mallet, determined to take advantage of the opportunities provided by her new prop. Tiptoeing around the figure of the Red Nun, creeping up, then backing off, tilting her head this way and that, she acted to the hilt the artist assessing his work in progress and in doing so managed to add several minutes to her part.
Then, continuing to pace about, she recited her speech without flubbing a single line:
“You will find my statuary in parks and cemeteries all over these United States.
I am the one they send for to restore the fallen hero to his horse, to mount stern angels above the graves of children.
I work from photographs and descriptions given to me by the bereaved. But I also have an instinct for feeling my way to the essence of the departed one.
This girl perished before she could realize her desire to take the veil. She was a slim, slight girl in her yearbook pictures. But another side of her is revealing itself through this red marble, which was sent by mistake.
I am not in the prime of life anymore, nor in the pink of health, but I will trust in God to let me complete what I can and make it acceptable in His sight.”
Kay Lee’s mother, the court recorder, went limp with relief. The speech was much too long and concentrated and high-flown for such a short part in a school play, and she had worked for weeks on it with Kay Lee, who had wept and raged and said Tildy and Mother Ravenel ought to have it shoved down their throats. “Listen,” said Ruth Jones to her daughter, “we are not quitters. If I could completely retrain my brain and fingers and thumbs to operate that infernal stenotype machine so I could make a decent living for us after your dad died, you can memorize these lines. And we’ve been over them enough so that you can fudge it if you have to. If you forget the lines, just tell the story in your own words.”
Tildy, who trusted no one but herself with the curtain, brought it down to enthusiastic applause. Well, Kay Lee Jones had certainly milked her part to the fullest, thanks to that ingrate Chloe’s “surprise” horror of a prop, which had almost tripped Marta. But things were going so well, she couldn’t be as mad at Chloe as she felt she had a right to be. Only two more scenes to go! Next: the infirmary scene, to which she had added some very good material from old Finney’s chapbook—and that, to be fair, was thanks to Chloe, who had read it aloud to her so she could listen with her eyes closed and see what flagged her inner vision. Mark and Jovan had reversed the grotto back to the Gothic Revival windows, which would now serve as a wall in the infirmary, and were carrying in the cot and chair for Mother Wallingford’s deathbed scene with Mother Finney. And here was Maud in her granny’s gown, her head wrapped in gauze to simulate a nun’s boudoir cap, slipping beneath the blanket, and Chloe, in the St. Scholastica habit, seating herself in the bedside chair.
The curtain went up on the dying foundress turned away from the audience while Mother Finney silently prayed the rosary.
WALLINGFORD: (Moans.)
FINNEY: How I wish I could do something!
WALLINGFORD: You can.
FINNEY: Tell me what.
WALLINGFORD (making an attempt at humor): You can take half of my pain.
FINNEY: You know I would if I could.
WALLINGFORD (shifting in bed so her face can be seen): Do you remember some of the names we considered for our Order?
FINNEY (laughing): God pity us, I do.
WALLINGFORD: When there she was all along, waiting for us to get past all our Societies of Holy Ghosts and Spirits and our long-winded Communities of This-and-That-Kind of Education and—oh! (Clasps her wrapped head in pain.)
FINNEY (jumping up): Please, tell me, what can I do?
WALLINGFORD: You can sit down and help me relive our amazing adventure while I still have brains enough to give thanks for it.
FINNEY (Sits down and pulls herself together): St. Scholastica. Everything we needed in a name.
WALLINGFORD: A holy woman of intelligence and feeling—the perfect name for an order dedicated to the education of women.
FINNEY: And twin sister of St. Benedict himself. She had put herself under his rule.
WALLINGFORD: For all we know she may have helped him write it. And when he went all priggish and unfeeling when she begged him to stay overnight on a visit, she prayed and God sent a wild storm so he had to stay under her roof.
FINNEY: And glad he was that he did. For she died three days later.
WALLINGFORD (clasping her head again, but forcing herself to go on): And do you remember some of our worst designs for our habit? That awful bonnet!
FINNEY: But, lucky for us, you said, “Not very practical for a teaching order of nuns who need all the side vision they can get.”
WALLINGFORD: No, dear friend, it was you who said that.
So far, I would give this production an A, Mother Ravenel told herself. No, perhaps an A minus: that voice of God on the tape recorder caused inappropriate laughter. However, Tildy was wise to keep the sculptor’s speech exactly as it was. Some things come out right the first time and can’t be improved on. But how glad I am that I urged her and Chloe to consult Mother Finney’s chapbook, which I didn’t have the benefit of, back when I was writing the play. This infirmary scene has benefited considerably from the tone of Mother Finney’s memoir.
Tildy had shed her director’s choir robe before she brought the curtain down on the deathbed scene, and Maud was simultaneously stepping out of her granny’s gown and ripping off her gauze boudoir cap so she would have time to reassemble her hair for the role of Domenica. They had practiced this quick change in the tower, whenever the two of them went up to rehearse the “hidden scene.”
Both of them wore 1930s outfits that Tildy had discovered, along with the trigonometry exam book, stowed under the window seat in Antonia’s old room. Cornelia had helped Tildy choose from the clothes. (“This was our most successful number during our senior year—girls died of envy when Tony and I came to school in those dark green knits with the scarlet trim and gold buttons. What a fool I was not to have held on to mine! Maud as Domenica should wear that one, and then we’ll put you in one of the lesser numbers and make a few alterations to suit the character of Rexanne. Maybe a Peter Pan collar.”)
“I HOPE YOU are enjoying this as much as I am,” Cornelia said to the headmistress as they waited for the curtain to go up on the final scene.
“From what I saw in the rehearsal Tildy invited me to, I had high expectations, but I’ll confess to you, Cornelia, tonight’s performance has exceeded even those.”
“Oh, I’m so glad, Mother.” Cornelia’s new friendly mode bordered on the gushing. She consulted her program and quoted: “‘Two later students/best friends, Rexanne and Domenica. In the grotto.’ Have you any idea what that’s about?
”
“From what Maud tells me, Domenica—that’s Maud’s part—is trying to discern whether or not she has a vocation. It’s a new cameo scene the girls have worked up together. I was dying to know more, but I don’t like to pry. Each class is allowed to contribute new material, that’s the tradition, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“You are perfectly right, Mother,” Cornelia crooned, laying her hand briefly on the headmistress’s sleeve. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I have kept Maud’s secret, Mother Ravenel congratulated herself. Wouldn’t it be exciting, though, if she revealed her decision as “Domenica” in this new cameo scene? It would be a message from her to me, because no one else would know. And what Maud still doesn’t know is that it’s going to be all right for her whether she decides she has a vocation or not. The money will be found—I will see to it—for her to board at Mount St. Gabriel’s: there is always a surplus in the discretionary fund due to the nonrefundable fees and the interest they bring. She is a fine student and will be a credit to the school, whatever she decides. And who knows? Three more years with us may still reveal a vocation. You work according to Your own timetable, Lord.
And now the curtain was going up.
“WITH MY POOR hearing I missed much of it,” old Mother Finney later confessed to Mother Malloy after the infirmary scene, “but I liked the parts I heard. It caught her personality. Your girls have done a fine job. You must be very proud of them.”
“Yes, I am, Mother. I’ve also learned a great deal from them.”
(During the evening, some treasured lines from Hopkins had roused themselves in her and had been spooling through her brain like a precious recovered melody.
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
That is what we will do on Monday, Mother Malloy thought, excited. I will write those lines on the board, saying them aloud as I write, marking where the stresses fall. And then we will go through the verse together, sounding it out, discovering for ourselves what makes it strong and rare. I won’t overload them with the terminology of prosody. We will learn it closer to the method and spirit in which he composed it, walking the English landscape as a young Jesuit. And coaching Tildy has given me this inspiration.)
MAUD AS DOMENICA, in Antonia’s dark green knit with the scarlet trim and gold buttons, sat alone on the bench in the grotto. She was writing slowly and with effort in the back of an exam book.
DOMENICA: “Dear Rexanne …” No … too formal. Best to dispense with any salutation and get right to what I have to say. Or will that be too cruel? Even if it’s true? But I have to say it. It’s true.
Enter Tildy as Rexanne.
REXANNE (accusingly): Domenica! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!
DOMENICA: Well, here I am.
REXANNE: What are you doing?
DOMENICA: I was trying to draft a letter.
REXANNE (jealously): A letter to whom?
DOMENICA: It doesn’t matter since I probably won’t send it.
REXANNE (sitting down close to her friend): I hate it when you go all distant and remote.
DOMENICA: All of us have remote places in ourselves, where we go to be alone with God.
REXANNE (unhappily): I thought God was something we shared.
Where is this going? Mother Ravenel asked herself, puzzled. If “Domenica” is supposed to represent a present-day girl, why is Maud wearing that outfit? It’s in the style of my high school days, twenty years ago. Wait, don’t I remember both twins coming to school in that exact outfit? The clothes Mrs. Tilden sewed for Antonia and Cornelia were so beautiful they could make your heart ache.
DOMENICA: But, Rexy, God isn’t something that can be shared, like a pet.
REXANNE: What are you trying to say? Aren’t we going to take our vows together—to the same God—at the end of the school year?
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 Elga
r’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.”