The Finishing School

by Gail Godwin

  “Yeah, and it’s a good thing,” he said. “Look what happened to me last night.” He opened the door of the truck and stuck out a foot with a cast on it.

  “You broke your foot!”

  “Ankle,” he said. “But the foot’s fractured, too,” he added importantly. “The doctor said I was lucky to get off as light as I did.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, Turk went crazy and tried to kick his way out of his stall. Dad was off taking one of his after-supper walks and nobody could find him. So I had to go over and talk to Turk. I rubbed him down some, and he got calmer, but then, when I tried to leave the stall, he shouldered me into a corner and kicked hell out of me.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “No, I was just mad at myself for getting into that corner. It’s one of his favorite tricks and I should’ve known better.”

  “I would have been mad at him.”

  “Oh, Turk can’t really help himself. He’s driven by his hormones, Dad says. All stallions are.” He said this proudly, as though it were a good thing to be driven by your hormones and go around kicking people.

  “Well, I sure hope it heals soon.” I was trying to decide whether Ed had grown more manly-looking over the summer, or if it was just his deep tan from working outdoors and his interesting injury.

  “Oh, it’ll heal, but not in time for football training. I’ll have to sit on the bench this fall.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said, trying to think of some upbeat consolation to finish with. But nothing came to mind. Why was it so hard to talk to a simple country boy outside a grocery store, when I had spent hours in the company of a sophisticated woman like Ursula? “Well,” I said, drifting backward toward my bike, “they’re expecting me at home.” I was eager to put an end to this awkward exchange, yet I felt I had failed in the use of my female charms.

  “We never did go to that movie,” he blurted out. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I could pick you up around quarter to seven, if you want. I’ll have to get somebody to drive us.” He stuck out his injured foot again, as if that, and not the fact that he was under sixteen, was now the reason for needing a driver.

  “That’ll be fine,” I said. “See you then.”

  As I rode away on my bike, I had the feeling that he was just as relieved as I that our conversation was over. Well, at least we wouldn’t have to talk in the movies. Nevertheless, I rode home elated with my victory. It was the outward aspect of it that pleased me most: I was being taken on a date by a boy, and that was a sign to all the world that I was a normal girl and wanted what normal girls want.

  “I remember my first date,” said Aunt Mona. “It was a catastrophe. As we were walking out to the car, I felt something funny happen to the ruffle around the bottom of my skirt. When I got in the car and had a chance to examine things, I saw that my aunt had only basted the ruffle to the skirt and then forgotten to stitch it on the machine. I knew I was sunk if we got out of the car and walked even a few steps: my ruffle would fall off and I’d be humiliated. So I told my date, ‘You know, what I really feel like doing is just driving around some. I’m so tired I don’t even want to get out of the car.’ He gave me a funny look, but then he said okay and we drove out into the country, and I was just congratulating myself on how smart I’d been, when he pulls into this dirt road beside a lake and starts to maul me. ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’ I said, and pushed him away. His name was Bobby Mayfield—they called him Rapid Robert at school, but I thought it had something to do with sports. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted,’ he says, not in a very nice tone. ‘I thought that’s what you meant when you said you didn’t want to get out of the car.’ And then we had a fight and he drove me home without a word, and he must have told all his friends, because it was a long time before anybody asked me out again. What’s that old saying, ‘For want of a shoe, the horse was lost’? Well, for want of a hem, my reputation was lost. Of course, my poor aunt did her best. She was overworked with all her clients, and had taken time to run up a skirt for me in time for my date. But I’ve often wondered where I might be today if she had remembered to stitch in that ruffle.”

  “Married to Rapid Robert?” suggested Becky with a sneer. “Then you’d have to let him maul you all he wanted.” She stuck out her tongue and twirled her purple Tootsie Pop around and around against the insolent pointy tip.

  “What are you going to wear?” my mother asked me.

  “Not a skirt with a ruffle on it,” shrieked Jem, cackling hilariously at his joke.

  “He’s here!” called Aunt Mona, stationed downstairs at her picture window. “He’s coming up the front walk on crutches!”

  I was dressed and sitting on the edge of my bed, waiting for my cue. The rows of milkmaids smiled at me from the curtains and dust ruffles: they approved of what I was doing tonight. The doorbell chimed; the door opened; the feminine voices of my mother and my aunt spun a welcoming net around Ed’s monosyllabic replies. “Justin!” Aunt Mona called coyly. “Someone down here to see you!”

  I walked slowly beside Ed, swinging along on his crutches, to the car, where Mrs. Cristiana, now large in her pregnancy, waited behind the steering wheel. Ed opened the back door for me, then went around and got in on the other side next to me. Although his mother had given me a friendly smile, it would have made it less awkward if she had bantered, like Mrs. Dibble, about her role as chauffeur as she drove us silently into the small village of Clove and stopped in front of the movie house. But Mrs. Cristiana either had other matters on her mind or was not one for making small talk.

  I don’t remember the movie at all, though a look into “My Personal Life” shows me that I carefully recorded it under “This Year’s Movie Record.” It was The Eddie Duchin Story, with Tyrone Power and Kim Novak. Ed Christiana’s name is printed in capital letters in the “Went With” column, and I had drawn up an extra column, on my own initiative, where I “rated” each movie with an E, G, F, S, or B, for Excellent, Good, Fair, Stinks, or Best of the Year. The Eddie Duchin Story got a G, which may have meant that I really thought it was good, or that I thought it deserved at least a “good” rating because it was my first movie with a boy.

  It’s not surprising that I don’t remember a single scene from the movie, because I was encased, the whole time we spent in the dark theater, in an impenetrable cocoon of self-consciousness. What was Ed Cristiana thinking of me? Would he try to hold my hand? Should I let him if he tried? Would I be his girlfriend at school this year? Would that be advantageous to the impression I would make on others at the school? Would it please Ursula to know that I was “going with” the son of her favorite childhood companion? I decided that, on the whole, it would be a good thing. I ticked off his assets: he was tall; my aunt and mother would be pleased; he already liked me, so I wouldn’t have to work to “get” him; and it might amuse Ursula: we could talk about it, and she would tease me a little, but at the same time we would both know I enjoyed her company the most. And also, it would reassure her that I was not going to give her the kind of trouble Kitty had. In every sense, it would be good for my status and self-esteem.

  About halfway through the movie, Ed reached over resolutely and laced his fingers through mine. Then he guided our entwined hands to his knee and rested them there gingerly, as if they comprised a sort of clenched beast that needed to be restrained. We sat balancing the beast until our palms sweated and—if my arm was any indication—the blood drained from our respective arms. I suppose I would have become his girlfriend if what happened two nights later had not happened. Of course, after it happened, he avoided me. I don’t blame him. If I had been in his place, I would have avoided me too.

  We found Mrs. Cristiana waiting for us in the lobby afterward, instead of outside in the car. She told us, slightly embarrassed, that she had been about to drive home and then had changed her mind and decided to stay and watch the movie herself. As she made
her confession, she looked incongruously girlish despite her huge stomach and shapeless maternity smock.

  “But won’t Dad be worried that you didn’t go home?” Ed wanted to know.

  “I called him from the pay phone in the drugstore,” she said. “But he wasn’t back from his evening walk. So I told Ann to tell him.” She gazed thoughtfully into space for a moment, then added, “I hope you two don’t think I was spying on you. I didn’t even see where you sat. But it has done me good to get out of the house.”

  Mott felt it was his duty to take us to church on Sundays, since Aunt Mona had stopped going. “Now that I’m a working girl, I owe myself one lazy morning a week, and Sunday is it,” she said. “Besides, Mott, now that we’re separated, it won’t hurt you with IBM that your wife doesn’t go to church. I have nothing against religion, but as far back as I can remember, church has seemed to me more of a social thing than a religious thing. People don’t go to church to worship the Lord; they go to see who else is there and what they’re wearing. I don’t think the Lord minds one bit if I take my cup of coffee back to bed on Sunday morning and lie there thanking Him for a day of rest. It’s the one morning in the week I don’t have to get up and put on high heels and stockings.”

  So every Sunday Mott and Becky would drive back to Clove from his houseboat in Kingston, and then drive Mother and Jem and me all the way back to Kingston, to the Episcopal church there, since there wasn’t one in Clove. Mott was a Methodist, having been raised in a Methodist orphanage, but he said the Episcopal church would suit him just as well. The most important thing, he said, was for us to have something we had known back home. I think Mott was the only one who enjoyed these Sunday mornings when he would proudly accompany us all to St. John’s. We took up a whole pew, the five of us. I was afraid everyone would think Mott was my father and he was married to my mother and we were their children; people probably did think that. During the service, Jem would fidget; Becky would sigh loudly and roll her eyes every time she had to stand up or kneel for the responses; my mother and I shared a hymnal and I could hear how she sang in a faraway, off-key voice. I knew and she knew that she was not an avid churchgoer. In our family, church had been my grandmother’s province. My grandfather had been an agnostic; my father had liked to sleep late on Sundays, and my mother often stayed in bed with him while my grandmother and I went off to church. I missed my grandmother beside me. She had sung in a sure, clear voice, enunciating the words firmly, as though she believed every one of them equally. I missed her perfume—a subtle scent that reminded me of many small flowers not everyone would know the name of—and I missed the elegant little crosses she made with her thumbnail on her forehead and chest after the Gospel had been read. Nobody did that in this church. As I knelt between Mother and Becky in this building of dark gray stone where we knew nobody, and listened to the congregation muttering the General Confession in rough, clipped accents, I could scarcely believe I was hearing the same words. “The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable”: with her rich, soft-consonanted voice, my grandmother had made them sound like a very old poem that still had its magic in it. I realized that, for me, my grandmother had been church.

  During the sermon, I daydreamed. Almost all my mental images concerned Ursula’s tales of the past, things Ursula had said, or might say in the future, to me, things I had saved up to tell Ursula, and possible interpretations she might invest them with. When the sermon was over and the congregation’s voices swelled into the final hymn, I was listening to music I had never heard: I was hearing Karl sing “Der Doppelgänger” in his sinister bass baritone, and imagining the entire DeVane family—whose lives would be changed by this person—succumbing to the power of Art.

  She is the most interesting person in my life, I thought, as we filed out of church and Becky tugged at Mott’s jacket and said, “Well, after we take them home, can we go out to eat?” Even her old memories are more interesting than anything that has happened to me, or anything that is likely to happen to me in this place, I thought, and asked myself what harm there would be in riding over to the pond this afternoon. She did not know about my silly resolution to wait a whole week. Why had I made such a resolution anyway? It seemed pointless. It even seemed heartless. Why, maybe she thought I was tired of her. Maybe she was feeling hurt by my neglect.

  It was after lunch, and I was loading the dishwasher. Mother and Aunt Mona sat with the Help Wanted section of the Kingston Freeman spread open before them on the kitchen table.

  “Here’s one,” said my mother. “ ‘Saleslady. Paid vacation and hospitalization. Schumann’s, North Front Street.’ ”

  “Louise, you wouldn’t be able to stand Schumann’s. Their clothes are sleazy.”

  “I wouldn’t have to wear their clothes, would I? It would just be a job. And they might hire me.”

  “Louise, your attitude is wrong. You’re too humble. Of course they would hire you. But the job’s not good enough for you.”

  “Mona, dear, I’m not very good. I’ve been practicing my typing faithfully and look at the mistakes I still make. Nobody in their right mind would hire me to type their letters.”

  “Well, what else have we got?”

  “Here’s a possibility. ‘Excellent opportunity for intelligent woman with pleasant voice for part-time telephone survey work from your own home.’ Except I was hoping for something full-time. But doing it at home would be good for Jem. Then I could be here when he gets out of school.”

  “You don’t need to be, Louise. Beck and Jimbo will ride the same bus home from elementary school. We’ve already gone over that. You just worry about finding the right job for yourself.”

  “ ‘Middle-aged woman, to keep house for lady living alone. Hours flexible.’ I wonder if I qualify for ‘middle-aged’?”

  “Are you just trying to make me mad, Louise? You? Cleaning somebody’s house?”

  “Well, if it’s an honest living and it pays well … If I were alone in the world, I wouldn’t mind being somebody’s live-in housekeeper. I’d take care of their house and they’d take care of me.”

  “That’s just ridiculous, Louise. That’s just irresponsible. I can’t understand your attitude. I can’t understand a person not wanting to be in charge of her own life.”

  My mother smiled ruefully.

  “Shall I turn on the dishwasher,” I asked, “or will it be too noisy?”

  “Oh, turn it on, Justin,” Aunt Mona said. “We’re getting noplace fast over here.”

  “I think I’ll go for a bike ride,” I said.

  “I was wondering when you were going to remember your friend Ursula DeVane,” said my know-it-all aunt. “Or maybe you want to see someone else on Old Clove Road today. A certain gentleman on crutches who just might be sitting on the porch.”

  “I do not,” I said, angrily turning on the dishwasher.

  “Come and kiss me,” said my mother as I started off in a huff. Her hand lingered on my hair after we had kissed. I saw from the way she glanced at me that she believed Ed Cristiana had displaced Ursula in my affections and that was why I had snapped at Aunt Mona: for guessing the truth. Although I was glad she was relieved of one of her worries, her mistake made me feel lonelier than ever.

  There was no one sitting on the Cristiana porch. There was no one at the pond, either.

  But it was still early. It was not even two. After my disappointment at not finding her there, I reasoned that this was the earliest I had ever come. I sat down on the crumbling doorstep of The Finishing School to wait. From my position I would be able to see where she would emerge from the pines. “Hi,” I’d say. “Boy, are you still sore from Tuesday’s hike?” “Well, hello there, Miss Independent,” she’d say, quickening her stride, “I was beginning to think you were angry at me.” “Why should I be angry at you?” “Ah, why indeed! For walking you like a soldier. For getting you drunk and making you cry. For telling you all those terrible stories about my family.” “No,” I’d
say, “it’s just that I’ve been kind of busy. I had to go spend some time with my friend Joan, and then last night I went to the movies with Ed Cristiana.”

  Time passed. It was so quiet I could hear the whish of the wind in the tops of the pines and the tiny drones of insects around the pond. Periodically, a katydid would dominate everything with its insistent announcement that winter was coming. School began next week. Where was she?

  I got up to stretch my legs and walked around the pond. I imagined that I had brought my bathing suit and that I changed into it and went for a swim and she found me in the pond. Or maybe I would even dive under and hold my breath and scare her, as she had done to me that time. But I knew I was too cowardly to go into that pond.

  I went inside the hut and walked around, picturing how it must have looked when the roof was whole and there was furniture in it. Karl’s bed. Yet they had done it on the floor, she said, “her skirts pushed up and crushed … those clothes she was so careful about! And there were his bony knees and elbows, sticking out from more angles than I had thought possible.… They had put down the covers from his bed onto the floor.”

  To have more room, I supposed. His bed was probably too narrow. A “tutor’s” bed. When the father had that bed moved in, he naturally assumed only the tutor would want to lie in it.

  Ursula’s blanket—or, rather, Julian’s old Army blanket—was folded, palletlike, in the corner of the hut, just as it had been when I first surprised her lying on it, trying to read her book. That corner of the hut had been in sunshine when I first crossed its threshold, but now it was in shadow. “There I was, trying to reread Proust,” she had said when she was thanking me, ironically, for my dramatic entry into her day, “but he is all wrong for this year. I have reached a time in my life when I need to be refreshed by the unexpected.”

  Had I, then, fulfilled my role for the summer as her “unexpected”? Maybe by now there was nothing unexpected left about me. Maybe I was a known quantity to her, and she was no longer “refreshed” by me. She knew when I was likely to come to the hut, and what I would say when I came; she also knew when I was likely to stay away. Probably she had driven away from Lucas Meadows on Tuesday afternoon, after our hike, smiling to herself and thinking: Poor Justin. I really overdid things today. I’ll bet anything she is resolving right this minute to stay away from me for a whole week. She’ll almost make it, too. She won’t break down until … let’s see … next Sunday afternoon.