Free Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin Page A

Mary Tilden, or do you prefer Tildy?” Mother Malloy asked the younger girl. She was not a beauty like her sister, though appealing in a sweet, stalwart way. Her face was so sunburned you had to look closely for the expressions. But they were there.
    “I almost think— ” the girl began haughtily. Then she seemed about to cry, but switched to anger. “I might change my name to—”
    “Don’t make any sudden decisions,” her sister advised. To Mother Malloy, she said, “She’s just had the strangest little contretemps in the drive way with her best friend, Maud—”
    “You shut up!”
    “Sorry , little one. I’m always overstepping, aren’t I? I guess I’m not used to being motherly. I was once in ninth grade myself, Mother Malloy, and interview day at Mount St. Gabriel’s makes everyone cross. Listen, Tildy, run ahead and stop Henry Vick before he drives away with Chloe and ask if they’d like to come by our house for cocktails or tea or anything at all.”
    Thus Tildy’s dignity was salvaged before any tears fell, and Madeline stayed behind for a word with Mother Malloy. “I guess you don’t think much of me, Mother, but I love my baby sister, and, oh, this place is such a hotbed of bitchery. Generations of bitchery and intrigue! I can say it now, I can say anything I want. I can even say you are beautiful and I hope you enjoy being a nun. I had a beautiful aunt, my mother’s twin sister, who also had a vocation, but something went wrong and then later she married Henry Vick and was killed on their honeymoon. They were in Rome and she was knocked down by a van. I want Tildy to keep her intrepid little soul—I have half a mind to coach her in how to get expelled so I can keep better watch over her over at Mountain City High, only you can’t go there till tenth grade.”
    “On the contrary, Madeline, I think I like you very much,” said Mother Malloy. “I hope you’ll come and see me again. In the meantime, I promise to do my best to watch over your sister’s intrepid soul.”
    The last were the two Dutch girls: Hansje Van Kleek and Beatrix Wynkoop, from Enka Village, the rayon plant. The largest in the world, Mother Ravenel had informed her. (“When the Dutch set out to do something, they do it right.”) The mothers of the two girls, looking hardly older than their offspring, paid their cheerful respects to the new teacher and then went off to visit Mother Finney. “We could smell her oatmeal cookies all the way from the parking lot!”
    Both Hansje and Beatrix spoke excellent, unaccented English, from which word-swallowing Ashley Nettle would surely profit as they rode to and from the school together. Mother Malloy made every effort to distinguish Hansje from Beatrix, both tall blond girls with perfect manners, both returning for their third year at Mount St. Gabriel’s. She noted, like a possibly significant punctuation mark, the down-turned left corner of Hansje’s mouth, as though she had a reservation about life even as she smiled, and Beatrix’s seemingly unconscious gesture of twirling a lock of hair around her finger as she attended to you expectantly, as if you were on the verge of saying something wonderful.
    Before Compline tonight, I will sit at the little desk in my room, open my roll book, and go down this list of girls. And I will say each name aloud, followed by a short prayer: “Help me to see what I need to see about this young human soul.”
    Mother Malloy’s Ninth Grade, 1951
    Marta Andreu
    Lidia Caballos (last-minute cancellation)
    Lora Jean Cramer
    Elaine Barfoot Frew (mother, Francine Barfoot, ‘34)
    Josephine (Josie) Teresa Galvin
    Gilda Gomez
    Kay Lee Jones
    Mikell Maria Lunsford
    Rebecca Meyer
    Ashley Nettle
    Maud Norton
    Chloe Vick Starnes (mother, Agnes Vick, ‘34; aunt by marriage, Antonia Tilden, ‘34)
    Mary Tilden (Tildy) Stratton (mother, Cornelia Tilden, ‘34; aunt, Antonia Tilden, ‘34)
    Hansje Van Kleek
    Beatrix Wynkoop
    Dorothy Yount

CHAPTER 6
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