Free Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin Page B

Afterrunner
    Sunday, June 24, 2001
Feast of St. John the Baptist
House of Olivia and Gudge Beeler
Mountain City, North Carolina
    THIS IS HER last night in what Olivia Stewart Beeler, class of 1974, refers to as “your very own VIP guest suite, Mother Ravenel.”
    Tomorrow morning Gudge and Olivia will drive her to the airport to check her luggage—Olivia has lent her a second suitcase to carry the tape recorder plus other gifts from the girls—and impress on airline personnel that this legally blind old lady must be conveyed like a precious heirloom to her destination. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights to Boston, so a wheelchair will be waiting at her gate at Dulles to speed her to her connection. It has all been arranged and she is grateful.
    At Logan Airport in Boston, she will be met by Sister Bridget, who will promptly disabuse her of any notions of heirloom status picked up in Mountain City. Sister Bridget, sixty-five, is the “young” superior of all that is left of the Order of St. Scholastica, though there’s not much left for her to be superior to. She is the only one in the house who still has a driver’s license, and will make sure to squeeze in as many errands as possible between the baggage carousel at Logan (“Two suitcases, Sister Suzanne? How can that be when you left with only one?”) and the Order’s retirement house in Milton. Sister Bridget calls all the nuns “Sister,” followed by their given name, even though the old ones have been accustomed to “Mother,” followed by their surname, for most of their professed lives.
    Fortunately, all the young in power are not as mirthless and bullying as Sister Bridget. At Mass at the basilica this morning, Father Thad, the new monsignor, had preached a lively sermon on John the Baptist.
    “It’s not easy to be a forerunner,” Father Thad had said. “But when something larger than life is about to appear in our midst, someone has to go first … you know, like those cars with flashing headlights that precede a truck bearing an oversize load. People have to be prepared. The forerunner has to announce—has, even, to forewarn: ‘Pay attention! Something larger than you’re used to is riding into town.’”
    After Mass, Father Thad, a towering blur clothed in red vestments for the martyr’s feast, greeted his congregation as they filed out through the narthex. When her turn came, he swooped down and gathered her in his arms. His garments smelled of incense; his warm neck exuded a spicy aftershave.
    “Ah, Mother Ravenel, I don’t like this at all! In a month’s Sundays I’ve gone and lost my heart to you, and now you’re leaving us tomorrow. What do you expect me to do?”
    “I expect you to be right here when I come back next year,” she volleyed back in her headmistress tone. “And, Father, your sermon has helped me to see what I may be, in a larger sense. I am just the opposite of a forerunner. I am what comes afterward—an ‘afterrunner,’ if there is such a word.”
    “Well,” he replied, delighted, “there is now.”
    “Yes, Father, you’ve helped me to see that I am to be an afterrunner . My old girls have talked me into writing a history of Mount St. Gabriel’s. I’ve been speaking it into the tape recorder, which I’ll be taking back to Boston with me tomorrow. Please pray that I live to complete my assignment to the glory of God and that I do justice to my material.”
    “You may be sure I will, and I expect to get a personally inscribed copy. Have a safe journey, Mother. May He carry you in the palm of His hand.”
    It is nice to be among people who are aware that you were once in power. It is a blessing, at eighty-five, to lie on these soft sheets in “your very own VIP guest suite,” surrounded by comforts, cherished and picnicked and partied and toasted by those who were actually present during your strongest hours . Yesterday’s final picnic lunch, at the mountaintop aerie of Beatrix De Groot