Virgins

by Caryl Rivers

  “Shut up, Peggy,” Mollie said, “we’re saving your life.”

  They finally got me back up on the roof again. My legs buckled under me and I had to sit still to collect my wits. Meanwhile, Con and Mollie pulled up the banner and untied the ropes that fastened it. Then we all rolled the banner up, and half-pushed, half-pulled, half-dropped it down the fire escape. We got it down to the second floor and Con said, “Enough of this. Let’s drop it down.”

  “O.K.,” I said, “You get down on the ground and I’ll drop it over.” Con climbed on down and I shoved the rolled-up banner over the edge of the fire escape. “Bombs away!” I said, wondering how blasphemous it was to drop Christ like a cluster of incendiaries over the Mitsubishi plant. After we had dropped him, we picked him up and carried him on our shoulders to the Ford. We put the banner on top of the car and tied it with the ropes that were still fastened to its edges.

  “We did it!” Coo exulted. “We did it!”

  “Now what do we do with him?” Mollie asked.

  We looked at each other. We hadn’t thought about that.

  “We have to bring him someplace where people can see him,” I said. “That’s the whole point.”

  “I’m not climbing on any more buildings tonight!” Con said. “And that’s that!”

  “We could leave him spread out somewhere,” Mollie suggested. “Like in the park.”

  “What!” Con said. “Leave Christ in the park? Dogs would pee on him.”

  “Yeah, we have to be respectful,” I said. Then I had an idea. “Let’s get Sean. He has good ideas on things like this, and he’s a good climber. too.”

  We drove to Sean’s house and he came out and looked at the black Ford, quizzically. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Actually, it’s Christ,” Con said.

  “What?”

  “The banner. From Sacred Heart. We stole it,” I said. He looked at us with what can only be described as awe.

  “Holy shit! Off the building?”

  “Yep.”

  “You kidnapped Christ!”

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said.

  “You’ve heard of grand theft auto,” Con said. “This is grand theft God.”

  “The question is,” I said, “what do we do with him?”

  “It has to be respectful,” Mollie said. Sean looked at the rolled-up Christ lied to the top of the car.

  “This is respect? He looks like a rug.”

  “We could put him on Immaculate Heart,” I said

  “Are you kidding?” Con snorted. “We’d be the first ones they’d catch.

  “Round up the usual suspects.”

  “The Baptist Church,” Sean said. We looked at each other. Of course. Why hadn’t we thought of it?

  There was bad blood between St. Malachy’s and the First Baptist Church. The Baptist Church stood at the far end of St. Malachy’s parking lot. Many Sundays, Catholics coming to Mass could not get a spot because they had been usurped by Baptists. Not only did the lot belong to St. Malachy’s, but the parish had just coughed up 1,200 dollars to blacktop it—which brought in even more Baptists, since now they didn’t have to worry about getting a muffler ripped off by a rock. Father Ryan had done his utmost to keep the parking lot safe for Catholicism; he’d put up signs saying CATHOLICS ONLY and he’d put sawhorses at the entrance. But the Baptists ignored the signs and removed the sawhorses. Tensions were running high.

  We drove the Ford over to First Baptist, and we found it was much easier getting Christ onto the Baptist Church than off of Sacred Heart. The Church had a low roof overhang, so Sean and I climbed up on the roof, and Con and Mollie handed Christ up to us, and we tied him to a pair of stanchions on the steeple. The first thing Father Ryan was going to see in the morning, when he came in to say six o’clock Mass, was the Sacred Heart, proudly draped over enemy headquarters. We stood back, looked at our handiwork, and broke out a six-pack.

  Mollie raised a can. “To us!”

  “To the Greatest Messenger Staff in history!” I said.

  “To immortality!” Con said.

  Sean raised his beer. “To not getting thrown in the can for the next twenty years. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  We were still feeling euphoric when Con dropped me and Sean off in front of my house.

  “What a night!” I said to Sean.

  “Wanna go park?”

  “It’s pretty late.”

  “You’re right. I have a test tomorrow.”

  “I have to study too.”

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  “Right.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s go park.”

  And so, a little while later—how much later I wasn’t exactly sure—I lay in Sean’s arms in the back of the Caddy and sighed, a contented sigh. The Illuminated Map of Sin had been junked, permanently, since the night of the Lenin ball. We were lying there, naked as jaybirds.

  We hadn’t meant to get that way, not really. It was just with all the unbuttoning here and there, it just ended up like that. I was glad it did. I loved the feel of Sean’s body against me, loved the way it looked in the faint glow that drifted in from a distant street light. I was delighted by its feel, its textures, the hard and soft parts that trembled under my fingers like some finely tuned musical instrument. We weren’t Doing It really, just coming as close as we possibly could without technically losing our respective virginities. Sean’s conscience was bothering him, of course.

  He put his lips against my hair and said, not very convincingly, “I guess we shouldn’t be doing this.”

  And I sighed and said, “I guess not,” as I ran my finger down his bare chest.

  “But we’re really not doing IT, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So maybe it’s only a venial sin.”

  “Right,” I said, not really worrying about sin, just thinking how much I liked the lean hardness of his body against mine. Sean’s definition of venial sin had grown as elastic as a rubber band lately. I was certain that all the huffing and puffing and panting and moaning we’d been doing a few minutes ago felt much too good to be venial I was on the verge of a major revision of my ideas about sin, anyhow. The things that Sean and I did together were lovely and loving; they brought us closer together than we’d ever been before. Touching his body, giving him pleasure, and taking my own didn’t feel like a sin. I mean, when I did something wrong, I knew it. Nobody had to give me a written report.

  He put his hand against my face and said, “I wish I could stop time and we’d just be here like this, forever and ever.”

  “So do I.”

  We didn’t talk about the fact that he was going away in a few weeks. I tried not to think about it, because I simply couldn’t bear to. He was so precious to me—all of him, his face, his body, that gentle and loving soul—that to think of losing him was like thinking of ripping off my right arm. So I just lived in the present, relegating the future to the far recesses of my peripheral vision. I felt like a woman in wartime, pretending that only the present was real, that tomorrow simply didn’t exist. He felt the same way, I think.

  Sometimes, we just lay in each other’s arms, feeling our heartbeats, and time drifted out of sight; I didn’t know whether an hour had passed or five or twelve—and I didn’t care.

  Run slowly, slowly.

  The Sacred Heart Caper (that’s what Con called it in her journal) raised even more of a ruckus than we expected, as it turned out. Father Ryan and Reverend Mackie practically got into a slugging match in front of First Baptist the next day. Father Ryan accused the Baptist minister of engineering the heist because, deep down, he wanted to persecute Catholics.

  Reverend Mackie replied heatedly that somebody who had a degree in theology from Yale would not go around stealing pictures of Christ off of Catholic schools. Especially ugly ones.


  “Ugly?” Father Ryan bristled.

  “He has teeth that look like they came from a Colgate ad and a chartreuse robe,” the Reverend snapped. “This is art?”

  Father Ryan intimated that Reverend Mackie’s taste was somewhat lacking and the Baptist minister said he’d never buy a painting for his church that looked as though it belonged on a cigar box.

  That’s when Father Ryan tried to slug Reverend Mackie.

  Only the intervention of a couple of Baptist deacons and of Father Mulloy, the assistant pastor, saved the day. The police were called in, and promised a thorough investigation. But they couldn’t find the culprits, wrote it off as a prank, and we had a perfect record.

  Con, however, had other things to worry about besides getting arrested for grand theft God. She hadn’t heard from Lee Masters in nearly two weeks.

  “One week, four days, he hasn’t called.”

  “He will.”

  “He won’t. He won’t call. Ever.”

  “He really likes you, Con.”

  “I blew it. I should have stayed a virgin. He thinks I’m a slut.”

  “If he only likes you when you’re a virgin, then you don’t want him. He’s a crud.”

  “I do,” Con said, “I want him. Even if he’s a crud. Even if he’s a murderer. Even if he’s”—she threw her hands into the air—“a Nazi war criminal.”

  “Con, you’re getting carried away.”

  “O.K., scratch the war criminal.”

  “Maybe he’s real busy, with finals or something.”

  “No wonder he doesn’t call. He thinks if he makes love to me he’s got to bring along a combat surgical team.”

  “Oh, Con.”

  “You think it doesn’t cramp your love life, having three medics and a nurse standing at the foot of the bed with fifty units of plasma?”

  For a minute I thought if Lee Masters didn’t call, then I’d be sure Con would go to New York with me and we’d do all the things we’d dreamed about. But Con’s round face was so miserable that I immediately took back the thought.

  When the three o’clock bell rang, Con and I walked out of school together. Sean met us at the end of the front walk.

  “I can’t walk home today,” he said. “I’ve got to go to the dentist.”

  “O.K. I’ll see you later,” I said.

  He took both my hands in his and just looked at me. “I wish I didn’t have to go to the dentist.”

  “Me too.”

  We just stood there a minute, gazing into each other’s eyes, and then he leaned over and kissed me, as if he were going off to D-Day, not to the dentist. I watched him as he trotted off in the direction of downtown Crystal Springs, and I guess what I was feeling as I watched that familiar lope must have leaked out of my heart and into my eyes.

  Con looked at me. “Shit,” she said, “you’re in love with him!”

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Is he still going to be a priest?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “We should just become nuns,” Con said. “Just be fucking nuns and not have to worry about this shit.”

  The thought of Con as a nun made me laugh. “Where’d you put your lovers, Sister Constance?”

  “Who the hell knows? In the chapel, maybe. Let them pray while they wait. Want to get a soda at People’s? Why the hell should I diet?”

  “You’re on,” I said.

  St. Leon Redux

  I LOOKED at St. Theresa wistfully. I’d grown accustomed to her face—the sour ball expression, the eyes cast to the ceiling—and to her borrowed body in girdle and bra.

  “I wonder if I should take her?” I said. “The new staff is never going to keep her up there. A bunch of nerds. Not like us.”

  We were saying farewell to the Messenger room. We had packed boxes of our old stories, our memos, our blasphemous sayings about the saints, and were moving out. The new staff had been selected, and the last issue of the Messenger would be in their hands, not ours. I picked up a copy of the lead editorial for the next issue. It was about how Catholic girls should be more devoted to Mary and pray for the conversion of Russia.

  “Look at this garbage,” I said. “Tripe!”

  The glory days were over; gone, like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, as Omar put it. The new editors were docile, well-behaved, nice. The nuns were certainly breathing a sigh of relief to see us go; we fought about everything—the rotten food in the lunchroom, the rotten books in the library, the speakers at assemblies, the ban on sleeveless dresses. Maybe part of it was just your standard adolescent rebellion, but I learned a valuable lesson from being part of the Messenger—that people in power, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter how much they believed themselves to be the guardians of your best interests, could do arbitrary, unjust, and simply stupid things. “Who shall guard the guardians?” asked the Roman poet Juvenal, and Con and Mollie and I answered, with an arrogance uncharacteristic of nice Catholic young ladies, “We will!”

  I took the Little Flower down from the wall. I simply couldn’t bear to think of her crumpled up and unceremoniously dumped in a trash can; she’d been the witness to the plots, the plans, the tragedies, and the triumphs. She’d been there in the days that would pass into legend, witnessed the greatness, the glory of the Greatest Messenger Staff in History. The Little Flower, bra and all, was truly our patron saint.

  “I’ll take her and put her in my room in college,” I said to Con. “Unless you want her. ‘Course, if we get to room together, we could share her.”

  Con looked up at me as if she hadn’t heard. Her eyes still looked a little bleary; she hadn’t gotten back from Annapolis until after 2:00 A.M. Lee, it turned out, had been on a training cruise for two weeks, and that’s why he hadn’t called her. He had written her a letter, but the postman delivered it next door by mistake, and the neighbors were away.

  As soon as he got back, he ran for a phone, so Con’s Annapolis shuttle was back in business. While he was away, Con and I had both gotten our acceptances to Maryland, on the same day.

  “Diamondback, here we come!” I crowed.

  “The greatest!” Con whooped. “The greatest Diamondback staff ever. We’ll be immortal!” But now Con’s eyes were glazed.

  “Con,” I said, “I asked if you wanted the Little Flower.”

  “What?” she said. “I’m sorry, Peg.”

  “Never mind, I’ll take her. Hey, I wonder how early we have to let them know at Maryland that we want to room together. We could get assigned to room with some real jerks instead of with each other.”

  “Well.”

  “We shouldn’t put that off. You know how schools are; they screw things up so easy.”

  “Peggy,” Con said very seriously, “close the door.”

  I did, and looked at her, curiously. She reached down the front of her uniform dress and pulled out something that was hanging by a gold chain around her neck. I stared at it, flabbergasted. It was a small miniature of the Naval Academy ring, and in the center of it sparkled a lone, gorgeous diamond.

  “A miniature,” I said. “You have a miniature!”

  “Lee gave it to me Saturday,” Con said.

  “But that means, that means—”

  “Yeah. I’m engaged.”

  I tried to grasp the enormity of it. “You’re going to marry him! Lee Masters!”

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Con,” I said, “I can’t believe it. You’re engaged! And you’ll be getting married one of these days.”

  “June twenty-second,” she said.

  My jaw dropped. “June twenty-second! But, Con, that’s so soon!”

  “Yeah, it is. But Lee wants us to get married right after he graduates, so we can go to his first post together.”

  “His first post? But what about college? What about Maryland?”

  “Well, if he gets Patuxent—he’s put in for it—then
I could still go to Maryland.”

  “But you—I mean, we can’t room together.”

  “Not unless you’re up for another ménage a trois,” she said with a grin.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess that would make it a little tough to study.” I sat down, trying to let the whole thing sink in. “You’re getting married!”

  “In the chapel at the Naval Academy,” she said.

  “Con, you’ll be the first girl in the class to get married. Trish Kennedy’s wedding isn’t until June thirtieth.”

  I thought of how, in September, Con used to make fun of the two girls who were getting married in June, who were planning their weddings down to the last detail, and who wore their engagement rings on chains around their necks. The nuns wouldn’t allow Immaculate Heart girls to be officially engaged before graduation, or to wear their diamonds. Con declared that being a June bride, walking down the aisle in a long white dress, was disgustingly bourgeois. She was going to be married, she said, in a red, low-cut cocktail dress in an intimate little ceremony at the St. Regis, and no damn finger sandwiches and little cookies. It was going to be Dom Perignon and pâté, and people were going to drink the champagne out of dancing slippers and get so drunk they’d throw chairs out the windows. Somehow, I couldn’t see Lee Masters tossing an armchair out of the seventeenth floor of the St. Regis.

  Con slipped the miniature back down inside her dress. “Peg,” she said, “would you be my maid of honor? I’d really like you to.”

  “Of course I would, Con. I’d be very happy to. Thank you for asking me.”

  I stood up and walked to the window. I could see that the new spring grass had by now completely replaced the blackened, burned area of the field we’d set aflame with Mother Marie. Just a few days ago, it seemed, there was no grass there. Things happened so quickly when you were almost grown up. Somehow, I’d always counted on Con being there, at least at Maryland. Her certainty about us, about how good we were, was one of the things that would make my dreams happen. Now, I’d have to do it all alone. I turned around to face her.

  “Maybe you ought to take the Little Flower, Con.”

  She shook her head. “Can you see some admiral’s face if he got a load of old Theresa with her boobs hanging out? He’d croak.”