The Finishing School

by Gail Godwin

  “I don’t know about ‘etiquette,’ ” said my mother, “but I have had some recent experience in these matters. Speaking from the receiver’s end, I think a person is more grateful for something solid and simple you can pick at, to keep up your strength—but without feeling you’re pampering yourself with a whole meal. Cakes are more for the company that comes.”

  “I phoned Bill Van Kleek this morning, after I heard,” said Mott. “His daughter took music from DeVane. Mrs. Van Kleek said she was going to take over a tray of cold cuts.”

  “I wonder about fried chicken,” said my aunt. “But she might not like it our Southern way.”

  A distant smile lit my mother’s face. “When my mother died, this woman in her garden club had her maid fry up the most delicious-looking chicken. And after the funeral guests had all gone home, we were sitting down to eat it—just the family—and I had to take a phone call, and when I came back I burst into tears. Rivers jumped up from the table and put his arms around me and said, ‘You’ve worn yourself out with all this grief and company, Louise,’ and took me away to bed. But the real reason I was crying was that, when I came back from that long telephone call, I saw that Rivers was eating the last drumstick, and no one had saved one for me. Of course I couldn’t tell him that. Now I’m so glad I didn’t, and I’m even gladder Rivers had that drumstick.”

  “I think maybe a casserole’s wisest,” said Aunt Mona.

  Julian’s funeral was held on Wednesday. As Wednesday was also the first day of school, there was no serious question of my going. If I had wanted to go, I think my mother would have let me; but I didn’t want to. And yet I thought about the funeral all during the school day. I didn’t want to think about it, but I kept seeing images. I saw the church: the same Dutch Reformed Church where the young Karl, fresh from Germany, had played the organ, and where Becky had been humiliated during her recital; I remembered how Ursula had told me Julian had been haunted by that church, distracted by its memories to the point of bad judgment: how he had thought it would inspire the children when he called in his old pupil from the street just before Becky was supposed to get up and play “Für Elise.”

  And now that gentle, stuttering, melancholy man was dead. One more person in my life was dead. But he was the first one I had known who had wanted to die.

  He had hanged himself from one of those ancient meat hooks upstairs in the oldest part of their house, the part they called “the office.” Using his belt for a rope, he had stood on a chair until he was ready, and then kicked it away. Had his last thought been: This will punish her for betraying me? Or: Now I don’t have to go through with my comeback? I thought it might have been a combination of both: her act’s having given the final push to a decision already brooded upon for years. But nobody had asked for my testimony. “The child” had been upset enough. And what did it matter anyway? It wouldn’t bring him back. She was the one who was left to suffer. Let her choose his motive and broadcast it to the world, even if, as she had told Mott, “it wasn’t going to be as easy on her this way, or on certain other people.”

  Her story—the one she told to Mott and the coroner, and which filtered down to me through my mother and my aunt—was that, after the fiasco, when I was led away in my wet clothes, she and Abel Cristiana had remained for a while at the hut, discussing what they ought to do. Abel thought perhaps he would have a man-to-man word with Mott, and she would talk to “the girl,” and perhaps they could prevent it from spreading all over the village and hurting Abel’s family. Neither of them believed Julian would say anything; he would simply rage inwardly and perhaps “punish” Ursula with silences and looks of disgust; she knew he would never disgrace the family name by telling anyone.

  Then Abel had gone home, and she had sat for a while longer on the threshold of the hut, fully dressed now and wrapped in the blanket because it was chilly, but unwilling just yet to go back up to the house and face her brother’s acrimony. And then, like a miracle, she heard what she thought was her reprieve. Coming across the field and through the trees, carried upon the stillness of the night air, were the unmistakable notes of her favorite piece, the Chopin scherzo. She took it to mean he had forgiven her, was signaling: Let things go on as we planned. She was overcome with gratitude and relief as she listened to the music. When it was over, she sat just a little longer, smiling to herself with embarrassment, thinking of what she was going to say: after all, what she had done was not that awful; and she was proud that she’d had the courage to run out naked like that, when she believed the girl was drowning.

  She walked back to the house across the fields, thinking that maybe they would open a bottle of wine and talk the whole thing through—as they had talked through so many things in the past.

  He was not in the living room waiting for her, as she had expected. She called to him and there was no answer. She saw the empty half gallon of Chianti on the table and concluded that he had gone upstairs and passed out, after playing the music. She went up to his bedroom, but when she turned on the light, she saw that the bed was empty.

  Then she thought he must have gone outside, perhaps down to the terrace, where they often sat together after dark, sipping wine and making plans. But he was not on the terrace. Had he gone back to the pond to look for her? But even in the dark, it was unlikely that she would have missed him. She called out, called his name across the field.

  Could he have driven off? She hurried up the slope and around to the old barn, which they now used for a garage. No, the station wagon was still there.

  Then she looked up and saw that the light was on in “the office.” On the field side, as she was coming home, she would not have been able to see it, because on that side of the wall was only the old “mow” door, sealed now.

  What was he doing in “the office”? Her first thought was: Maybe he’s looking through the file folder I’ve been keeping for his recital, going through the flier samples and the estimates from the recital managers—his way of showing me that bygones are really bygones and he’s more interested in getting on with what matters.

  But then why didn’t he answer me when I called out? When he heard me come upstairs to his room, why didn’t he call through the door of “the office” and say, “Sissie, I’m in here”?

  When she found him, she first tried to hold him up, relieve the pressure. She climbed on the chair he had kicked away and tried with all her strength to support his hanging body with her one-armed embrace, while with her free hand she worked to loosen the belt buckle. Then she abandoned that futile, exhausting method and ran to the sewing room in search of the sharp scissors.

  She managed to cut him down, and slapped his cheeks, and put her mouth down on his and breathed and breathed.

  She told Mott she thought she had felt something, at one point: a breath? a quiver? She couldn’t be sure. Just a hint, the barest promise of life.

  She called the rescue squad, who arrived remarkably fast; but it was simply too late.

  Aunt Mona and my mother and Mott went to the funeral. The church was “respectably full,” Aunt Mona said. All the parents of Julian’s pupils were there, and IBM had sent an impressive casket spray. The talented young musician in tennis clothes who had ruined Becky’s recital was there in a dark suit to play the organ. He played beautifully, although he broke down once. The pallbearers were Mr. Terwiliger from the store and five male members of the Huguenot Society, all of whom, Aunt Mona said Mrs. Van Kleek had told her, were direct descendants of the first patentees of New Paltz.

  “She asked about you,” my mother said, that evening.

  I looked up from my homework, which I was trying to make last as long as possible. I was doing it in Aunt Mona’s living room, a neutral place I had gravitated to since Tuesday. I had been in this room hardly at all since we came here last spring, and so it was antiseptic when it came to memories and associations. She had stood in its doorway and flashed her eyes mirthfully on the prize seafoam-green carpet crisscrossed with its plastic run
ners, but she had not come in, she had not sat down. It was not her kind of room, and that made it easier for me to be in it, rather than upstairs in my room, where the air was still thick with my former feelings. Or downstairs, for that matter, in my mother’s perfume-scented quarters, where Becky lounged at her convenience. I would be welcomed down there, by my mother, at least, with solicitude (“the child” had had a shock), but I hung back in self-conscious reluctance from the scene I knew I was destined sooner or later to play there: the Prodigal Daughter returning, chastened, to her true mother.

  “She wanted to know how you were,” my mother went on. “She asked if you had suffered any ill effects.”

  “And what did you say?” Was that cold, guarded little voice mine?

  “I said you were young and strong and going to be just fine. I thought it was kind of her to be so concerned, when she must be going through the most unimaginable … I mean, I thought I had the copyright on sorrow, but I wouldn’t change places with that woman for anything on earth.”

  “Neither would I,” I said with more feeling.

  “She also said to tell you she hoped you would come and see her. ‘When she’s ready’ was how she put it.”

  I stared down at the colored picture on the first page of my civics textbook: a view of the Washington Monument and cherry trees in blossom.

  “I’m not ready yet,” I said.

  “That’s completely up to you.”

  Giving me the new, solicitous look, my mother wavered in the doorway. Her tact was such that she would not cross into my antiseptic territory and with tearful hugs force acknowledgments … confessions. She would wait; she knew how to wait. That was what her look eloquently said. Then she went back to her own territory, where Becky was no doubt sprawled with her homework and Jem was still giving off hyperactive sparks from his first day of school.

  Be cold. Be guarded. Be polite. Think of it this way: last spring you came here—were dragged here—against your will. There was nothing here. Nothing except school and a roof over your head. The past gone. The future, years ahead; too far ahead to think about. And then you met this person, and this person interested you and made the summer fly by. And now you’re back where you started. School. A roof over your head. The future, someday. Look at it that way.

  Outwardly I was cold, guarded, polite, dutiful—above all, dutiful. Duty is a wonderful time-filler; it makes you feel useful, it makes you like yourself; it keeps unpleasant thoughts at bay. I remembered my grandmother, when she came home from the hospital after her operation: how she got out her yarns and started embroidering pillows and Christmas tree ornaments, even though Christmas was almost a year away. “In case I’m not feeling all that good, later,” she had said. And she had been right to do her Christmas embroidery early.

  I studied. I went for bike rides around the development with Jem. I helped Jem with his reading and his lettering. I set the table. Loaded the dishwasher. Ran Aunt Mona’s vacuum cleaner over the seafoam-green rug, first carefully lifting all the plastic strips. I heard them muttering about me and my “shock.” Aunt Mona, entering into the spirit of my dutifulness, suggested we do a “fall cleaning.” One Saturday afternoon, we took down curtains, ran them in loads through the washer, dried them on “Fluff,” then ironed them in relays and hung them again. “You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking. I really would like to paint my room. I mean, I like the color you painted it for me last spring, but now I’d kind of like a change.” Aunt Mona was beside herself with enthusiasm; her earrings quivered ecstatically as we discussed possible colors.

  How easy it was to deceive people.

  But at moments when my guard was down, just before falling asleep, for instance, I would see pictures. Sometimes I felt she was sending these pictures to me. I saw her eating supper alone in that gloomy kitchen; saw her dusting his room, stopping to look at certain photographs; saw her deciding not to dust “the office” yet; saw her sitting on the old chintz sofa, her feet up, looking out the window at the mountains and the tower. Staring at the piano, with its keys covered; remembering certain music. I would feel a surge of pity, and be glad I could feel it. Wouldn’t I be a monster if I couldn’t?

  But the great fascination with her was gone. Evaporated. And with it, the “love” I had believed would last forever. I could remember feeling it, but that was in the past. It was as though she had died, too. (“You see, she had stopped being the person I knew. She had become another woman.”) She had said that about her mother, the way she had felt about her mother after spying on her in the hut. I was aware, even then, at fourteen, of the ironies and parallels between Ursula’s trauma and mine. I had repeated her history; I had visited upon the adult Ursula her own childish betrayal. Yet I also felt betrayed. I felt … somehow … used by Ursula, made to perform by her as the catalyst-figure in her tragedy. She had led me on with her charms; she had sown her seeds of suggestion; she had done everything but give me cues! She had been a witch, I decided, able to make me perform in her story, robbing me of the chance to be the heroine of my own story. But I was no longer bewitched. I felt sorrow and guilt about Julian, but, I convinced myself, it would have happened sooner or later, probably. I remembered how he had been talking, the night of his death. And hadn’t she told me how he had wanted to die after Karl had gone out of his life? I did, truly, feel pity for her, for the wasted existence she was now doomed to, in that house filled with its terrible history. (With the romantic blindness of the young, it never occurred to me that she could leave the house, go somewhere else and start over. Something in me didn’t even want it.) But the pity I felt for her left me free. I was glad not to be obsessed by her anymore. Glad not to be always wondering what she was doing, wondering if I felt “too much” for her: I felt like someone who had come in close contact with a fatal illness and survived—though others had not been so lucky. I hoped to get on with my own life, even if there were not many exciting prospects in this village. I frankly hoped to avoid meeting her.

  Aunt Mona and I became buddies. She would join me in the living room, put her feet up, and watch her programs, the sound turned low, while I did my homework.

  “You don’t have to keep it that low,” I said one evening.

  “I don’t want to disturb your concentration.”

  “You won’t. I don’t mind the sound.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, maybe I will turn it up just a little.”

  We drifted into a pattern. I would do some homework, watch the programs at the same time, and then we would talk during the commercials. My homework wasn’t very demanding. I envied Joan Dibble her small private school in Kingston They were studying the Etruscans, a mysterious, artistic race of people in Italy who never got anywhere; but Joan said her teacher was going to prove they were better than the Romans. That kind of learning seemed more interesting than Checks and Balances, which I had already learned about last year in Fredericksburg.

  “I know Louise is pleased with herself for being a working girl,” said my aunt during a commercial, “but I think she’s being exploited.”

  My mother had answered an ad in the paper, and now worked from ten to three on weekdays in a boutique that a lady named Barbara Feldman ran out of her own home. Mott had found her a secondhand car she could afford, so she no longer had to depend on Aunt Mona for transportation. Dr. Feldman was a dentist, and Barbara Feldman had told my mother that even if they didn’t make a profit it was all right, because her husband could claim “Barbara’s Boutique” as a tax write-off.

  “She seems happy,” I told Aunt Mona. “I mean, she soaks her feet when she comes home, but I don’t think she feels exploited.”

  “I didn’t say she feels exploited, I said I think she’s being exploited. I know the ways of the world better than Louise, because I’ve been out fighting in it longer. Where else could that woman have found someone who would take that insulting pittance of a wage, and unpack all the stock, and dress the window, and stand on her feet all day, and model the c
lothes? I think it’s an insult to someone of Louise’s background.”

  “But she said she enjoys the modeling. And she likes talking to the women. And the thing she likes most of all is that she can get home about the same time Jem does.”

  “I suppose so,” Aunt Mona conceded. “But if it were me, I wouldn’t put up with it. I just thank my stars I passed my real-estate boards. Now, look out, world, this gal is going to make some money.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Oh, travel a little. See the world. Go claim my share of adventure and romance. I could hardly ask Mott to pay for that, now, could I? Though the dear soul probably would if I asked him.”

  “What about Becky?”

  “Oh, I’ll wait until Beck goes to college. That gives me eight years to make my fortune. I’ve got it all planned. In eight years I’ll only be thirty-nine. I know that seems ancient to you, but there’ll still be plenty of kick left in this old gal. I have a lot to make up for!”

  In eight years, she would be fifty-two. (“You are turning into a woman,” she had said, “and I … I am turning into an old woman.” “You won’t be old at fifty,” I had protested. “Ah, Justin, it’s such an experience just to watch your face.… But you mustn’t fret or be outraged; it’s the law of the world: as one generation comes up, the other goes down. Children bury their parents, and protégées grow wings and take off blithely from the nests of their aging mentors.”)

  One evening during a commercial, Aunt Mona said, “Well, guess what I heard through the grapevine today.”

  “What?”

  “That Adelaide Cristiana has forgiven her husband. No reproaches, no recriminations, complete amnesty. The subject never to be mentioned between them again. On the condition that he never see her again.”

  “That seems fair, I guess.”

  “Yes, it’s probably the best all around. She’s got the new baby now. That makes five kids. You can hardly walk away from a wife and five kids, not to mention all that livestock. Not even for Cleopatra. The town wouldn’t be big enough to hold the two of you if you did.”