Unfinished Desires

by Gail Godwin

  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.

  “No,” said Cornelia, “I want you to come with me to the reception. Tildy may show up there to watch this ‘postlude’ that’s being tacked onto her play. I certainly would, in her place. What has she got to lose now?”

  “What do you mean, Mama?”

  “It doesn’t take a sleuth, Maddy, to see the writing on the wall. Tildy’s career at this place is finished. Maud’s, too, from the sound of it.”

  “Let’s just find Tildy first,” her father suggested, digging in his pocket for car keys.

  “I’ll come with you, Bernard,” said Henry Vick. “I’ll get my flashlight, too.”

  It was a rare occasion, thought Madeline, as the two men set off for the parking lot, when someone called Daddy by his Christian name rather than the nickname Mama had awarded him as an engagement present. Her heart went out to her uncle, who always seemed to know the right thing to do.

  BECAUSE OF HER increasing deafness, Mother Finney avoided school receptions, except for the Feast of Our Lady and graduation, preferring to help Betty replenish the serving trays in the kitchen or get a head start on the washing up, but tonight the old nun moved resolutely through the main parlor, nodding and shaking hands with parents and old students, accepting their congratulations on Chloe Starnes’s fond depiction of her. Chloe was why she had offered herself to this din, where all sounds, from the clatter of a fork to a loud laugh, were rendered equal in volume by her undiscerning new hearing aid. She wanted to thank Agnes’s daughter, and to give her a hug, for taking the trouble to consult Adventures with Our Foundress, and for restoring some of Mother Wallingford’s bold spirit to the play—particularly how Lizzie would tease, or even torment, you to ward off your pity. These girls, God bless them, had banished melodrama from the mortifying deathbed scene, and how delighted she was to have stayed alive long enough to see it gone!

  ACTING ON A hunch of Henry’s, Smoky Stratton and Henry Vick had gone to the grotto, where their two flashlights now played on the spray-painted Red Nun.

  “Kilroy was here, all right,” said Tildy’s father.

  “And ‘Satan’ correctly spelled this time,” Henry wryly noted.

  “Good work, Henry. We’re on the trail. Where to next?”

  “Chloe might know something. Let’s go find her at the reception.”

  “You go, Henry. I’ll stay out here and look a few more places. I’ve about had it with Mount St. Gabriel’s. A good local Catholic education is one thing, but there’s just too much bad history between Cornelia and her old nemesis. Tildy’s benefited a lot from Mother Malloy this year, but next year she’ll be better off with Madeline over at Mountain City High.”

  HAVING SCOUTED FOR Tildy in the academy’s upstairs classrooms and bathrooms, Cornelia hastened them along the trophy corridor to the reception. She was glittery-eyed and overstimulated—dangerously so, Madeline felt. You could all but see the sparks of malice shooting ahead of her.

  “Let’s mingle, until I decide what to do,” Cornelia instructed Madeline when they reached the main parlor. “There’s the archfiend herself being fawned on by Francine Frew. Keep a sharp eye out for Tildy—I think she’ll show up, one way or another.” She gave a malign chuckle.

  “What, Mama?”

  “‘Satin Ravenel.’ I’m afraid I was just fantasizing how Tildy might suddenly creep up behind the headmistress and spray it on her back, right in front of everybody. Spelled properly this time, thanks to our erudite Maud. There’s Rebecca’s mother; I might as well start with her. She might know something I don’t.”

  The last time Madeline had been in the main parlor was on registration day, back in September, when Cornelia was too busy to accompany Tildy. That day Tildy had been shooting sparks herself, after the unhappy confrontation with Maud, who had just returned with “airs” from Palm Beach. Tildy had blazed up at Madeline in the little side room off the main parlor where the new ninth-grade teacher was holding her interviews, and Madeline, seeing that her little sister was about to lose control, had sent her off in search of Henry and Chloe. She’d stayed behind to talk with the beautiful nun from Boston and explain a few things about the bitcheries at Mount St. Gabriel’s, but most of all to put in a few words about Tildy’s intrepid but fragile young soul.

  Now she spotted Mother Malloy speaking to the Dutch parents over by the Infant of Prague, still in his Easter robes. Madeline waited until they were finished and then stepped forward, rewarded to see the nun’s weary countenance brighten.

  “Oh, Madeline, how glad I am to see you.”

  “Oh, Mother, I was just remembering how we met in these rooms last fall, when I brought Tildy to registration.”

  “And you know what I enjoy remembering? That day in the grotto when you told me about that girl’s poem that sent you into hysterics and got you in so much trouble—the one about Elizabeth Wallingford’s ‘pulchritudinous hair’—I don’t think I have laughed so hard since. Madeline, what did you make of tonight’s play?”

  “It was going great, then something went very wrong at the end.”

  “I thought so, too. Have you seen Tildy?”

  “Daddy and Uncle Henry are looking for her outside. She ran off in a rage, Maud said. And Mother Ravenel sent Maud to the dormitory. She has ‘excused’ both of th
em from the reception.”

  “That seems hard.”

  “Yes, well, she was really offended by that last scene with the two girls on the bench.”

  “I couldn’t understand where that was headed. And when Mother Ravenel went up onstage, I was completely at sea.”

  “She thought they were mocking her in that scene. That Domenica was based on my aunt Antonia and that Rexanne was based on herself, Suzanne, back when they were going to enter the Order together.”

  “Was it based on them, Madeline?”

  “From what I’ve been able to gather, it was, Mother. It was supposed to be just a hidden message, addressed to Mother Ravenel alone, but she ran up onstage and stopped it before it could be finished—I mean, accounted for in a symbolic way. Now she’s arranged for some kind of ‘postlude’ during the reception so people won’t go home in confusion.”

  “Ah, confusion,” repeated Mother Malloy, the brightness having drained from her countenance. “But where do you think Tildy is?”

  “EVERYONE! MAY I please have your attention? Thank you. Friends, we have a surprise for you. There is going to be a postlude, a very short one, to the play you have just seen. Some of you may have been puzzled by the ending. I see you nodding. You thought you were missing something, yes? Well, you were. After the School Spirit’s farewell song, there was supposed to be a brief but important coda by the Narrator in which she explained how each scene represented a major thread in the school’s history. But this coda got left out. Yes, it got left out. Tonight’s production of The Red Nun contained some ambitious new experiments, and some of them turned out well, while others did not. But we are not going to send you home baffled. As I said earlier, we are all works in progress, and this play, first performed by the freshman class in 1931, continues to be a work in progress, too. And now I’m going to turn this over to the present ninth grade. Just stand back and make a space for them.”