The Guineveres (34 page)

We continued to worry about Ginny the next day, as The Guineveres stood at the altar, donned in robes for the Easter celebration. Father James had returned from his mysterious leave of absence, and he'd greeted us in the processional line with a nod. We wouldn't look at him. Years later he'd admit to me what he felt in this moment was guilt. He'd had no intention of further defying the rules of the convent. But it was more than that: He was ashamed.

During the mass, the sea of vibrant pastels, pinks and greens and yellows and oranges, looked surreal to us somehow, as if spring had sprouted inside after a long, slate-colored winter. In the fourth pew, we spotted a soldier in his uniform: blue coat with pins and stripes, with big brass buttons that looked recently polished. We liked to imagine Our Boys in a uniform like this one, or like those uniforms stuffed inside their duffels, which they'd wear again someday on the day we married, their fathers giving us away, their mothers weeping tears of joy. But the soldier in the fourth pew didn't look joyful; his church face was wooden. When the congregation refrained “Thanks be to God” after the second reading, his lips didn't move.

Father James's homily praised rebirth, renewal. He said we were all given second chances. He said today was a day to begin anew. His hair looked freshly colored again to cover his grays; we could see a dark line of dye and smell chemicals, still astringent, when he bent to kiss the Bible before reading the Gospel. Ginny used to be the one assigned to hold the Bible, but this time it was Gwen. She looked past him when he bowed, refusing to accept his apologetic glances. The organ blasted upbeat melodies, so different from the somber dirges of Lent, but even the music did little to lift our hearts, sagging with worry for Ginny.

When the petitions were read, the lector rattled off another list of soldiers taken by the War. Walter Lawson. Raleigh Tucker. Larry Miller. Colin Whiting. Martin McDonald. Jerry Scott. Nicolas Gardner. Billy Gibson. Ronnie Buchanan. Alvin Silva.
Lord Hear Our Prayer.
Another petition was lifted up for Peter Drexel, poor missing Peter Drexel, and his parents appeared as sickly apparitions in the first pew.
Lord Hear Our Prayer.
Mr. Drexel had gone completely gray, even in the beard. Mrs. Drexel's clothes hung off her body. She was barely a body at all.

In the vestry after mass, Father James greeted us for the first time in weeks. We didn't speak, not even when he handed each of us a pile of egg-shaped chocolates. We unwrapped them from their colored foils. We popped them in our mouths without a sound. We became stone statues as we savored the way the chocolate melted on our tongues, the sugar immediately rushing to our heads.

“I'm sorry, girls,” Father James said. “I'm truly sorry. Even I have flaws. Especially so, perhaps. But I cannot take you off the grounds. That's a violation of—”

“Where's Ginny?” Gwen interrupted. We had more pressing concerns than the Veterans Administration at the moment. The Guineveres stood motionless, save for our tongues in our mouths, slithering over chocolate. We couldn't help ourselves.

Father James stood with his back to us, looking out the window. He withdrew a flask from his jacket, took a quick swig, then tucked it back into his coat pocket and turned around to face us. “If there were something more I could do, I would,” he said. Here, he examined Gwen with guilt, his eyes cast downward as though he lacked for distance vision.

“We can see you drinking,” Gwen said. “You're not hiding it very well.”

Father James sat down on the couch, removed the flask from his pocket again, and took a long draw, looking directly at Gwen as he did this. “Better to keep one's sins in plain sight?” he said to her.

“I thought drinking wasn't a sin, Father,” she said.

“Where is she?” Win asked. Her face contained a challenge; her sharp nose pointed toward Father James.

“She's in the Penance Room,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. I always seemed to be the one asking why.

“Because they found her in the middle of the night, sleeping in the convalescent ward, in the empty bed of one of the soldiers who'd been there. The one who died,” Father James explained. He blushed a little when he told us how Ginny had been naked, her nightgown slung over the edge of the bed. Her arms were outstretched and her legs touched at the ankle, a human cross. When Sisters Connie and Magda tried to wake her, Ginny became violent, scratching at their skin like an angry cat, ranting madly about loving Her Boy, cursing them for taking poor care of him. She clung to the mattress and kicked her legs like pistons, and then, finally, after several attempts to calm her down, Sister Connie sedated her with drugs. “They thought she must be under the influence of drink again,” he said. “Or emotionally disturbed. She's been through a lot in her life, you know,” Father James said.

“We know,” The Guineveres said defensively. We knew everything about each other. Of course we knew, and we resented his even mentioning it.

“Poor boy,” Father James said, and his voice trailed off, probably because he was thinking of his dead brother at this point.

Poor Ginny.

“Was she?” he asked. “Was she drunk again?”

“No,” Gwen said, then sat down beside Father James, removed the flask from his hand, and took a drink from it.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“We only drink with you, Father,” she said. She moved closer to him until their legs were touching; her skirt rested just above her knees. I noticed a scar the shape of a snake on it. One end came to a point.

“I don't think that's wise,” he said, reaching for the flask. “I've taken some regrettable liberties.”

“I won't tell. Will you?” she asked, glancing in our direction before taking another sip.

“No,” we said.

“It's the least you could do, Father,” Gwen said.

“Just a sip.”

“A sip
each,
” Gwen replied, then handed Win the flask. When she was finished she passed it to me, and even though I didn't want to drink, I thought I should, to show my solidarity.

“What will happen to her?” I asked, noticing the flask circling the room once more, eyeing it until it returned to me, and I reluctantly drank again.

“She'll probably stay there for a penance period, I imagine,” he said. “They are worried about her mental state.” He took a long drink himself, then wiped the mouth of the flask with a handkerchief the way he wiped the communion chalice during mass. “That soldier. He was comatose. Dead, for all intents and purposes. What on earth would make her believe…”

We stopped him from finishing his sentence. We became balls of fire, fury, seething with emotions we didn't know how to name, with passions we didn't know where to place. Of course we believed in Our Boys. What else could we believe?

“Are you a doctor now?” Gwen shouted, startling even us. She pushed herself away from Father James and stood. Her nose twitched, and she glowered at him without moving her head. “Did you go to medical school to be extra sure to avoid the War? Is that where you've been? Hiding? Some people are braver than that, those soldiers included.”

“You can love someone you can't see,” Win said, picking up steam. She stood now, too. Her arms became rods at her sides, her fists little balls. “Isn't that what we're taught? Isn't this what your golden book says? Unfortunately there is no commandment for hypocrites.”

“Or for people who break their promises.” I said. At this, I rose. My jaw tensed. My mouth watered. My head felt filled with cement, my heart, too. “If Ginny loved that soldier, she loved that soldier. Who are you to tell us what love is? How do you know what it looks like? We happen to know it isn't leaving, just up and leaving, when someone needs you the most.” What did Father James know about Our Boys? At least they were here. They'd never disappointed us. If the Sisters taught us about miracles and faith, about the rewards of dedication and hope, about overcoming doubt, then we had to believe we'd go home with them. We
did
believe it.

“Girls, girls. Calm down. I'm sorry. For everything. You must believe me.” Father James stood, tucked the flask back in his pocket. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn't look at us. “Like it or not, you are wards of Sister Fran, and I cannot take you to the Veterans Administration without her consent, not even for the sake of those poor soldiers.”

It was too late for apologies. We were beyond that point. We'd begin our own letter-writing campaign to the Veterans Administration if we had to. We'd get Reggie's father to do the same. Maybe he really was a general in the War. And if not, we'd find another way. The Guineveres were enterprising. The Guineveres always had a plan. The Guineveres linked arms and rotated ourselves like a herky-jerky chorus line. We exited the room.

We walked back down the hill, seething in silence, each of us dwelling in her imagination, where Our Boys were shrouded in the day's golden light, pulling us close to their chests. When we heard birds chirp, it was Our Boys laughing. The day's warmth was their breath on our faces as they leaned in to kiss us. Gwen plucked Her Boy's ring from her bra, and she placed it on her hand, the gold glinting in the sunlight. “Marjorie P. has nothing on me,” she muttered.

We didn't see Ginny until she stepped out of the shadow of the convent's recessed entrance, where she'd been hiding. Her hair was in tangles, and dark crescents hung beneath her eyes. She wasn't wearing her uniform, and she looked like a wild woodland creature in her overly large gown from which her arms hung like atrophied paws.

“What happened to you?” the three of us asked, our voices indistinguishable, our mouths still warm from alcohol.

Ginny stumbled forward, looked around nervously, then motioned toward some high hedges. “We're running away,” Ginny said. “Today. Right now.” Salty white trails ran down her face; her eyes were red, puffy. “I mean it.” We knew she did.

We moved toward her in a half circle, watching our balance as we stepped. Father James's whiskey made daylight settle heavy on our eyes. We steadied ourselves on Ginny and embraced her, clasping her hands with our own, smoothing down her hair, petting her face until she told us to stop it.

“I've thought about it,” she said, pulling away. “It's Easter. Plenty of people out, plenty of cars on the road. We'll tell them we've been visiting family,” she said. “We'll tell them Our Boys are soldiers. There's a war—they'll help us. They'll help us if they know about Our Boys. We're part of the War Effort.” We stepped closer to her again, and she instinctively stepped back. Her twiggy legs looked so fragile beneath her gown, and we could tell she felt tired by the way she leaned herself against the gray stone of the convent.

“Ginny,” we said, “we tried that already.”

“We tried once,” she said. “Only once.” She growled, balled her fists, then slowly opened them like an Easter lily blooming. “I'm not going back,” she said. And here she gritted her teeth, bared them, and made feral noises, shaking her head back and forth as if a bee were trapped inside. She dropped to her knees and in frenzied motions yanked at the shrubs, trying to dislodge them from their roots. When she realized she couldn't, that she wasn't strong enough, tiny Ginny, she dug up a handful of dirt and began smearing it into her face, like one of those beautiful saints trying to mar her beauty with lye. We didn't do anything, just stood there and watched her do it, watched her rub and scrub as if she were cleaning herself. When she looked up at us, her face streaked with dirt, her eyebrows furrowed in pain, her body bent in an unnatural position, we felt helpless. We loved Ginny, but we knew we couldn't save her.

Years later, when we would recall this scene together during one of our phone calls, Ginny would laugh at her brazenness, calling it a relic of her youth. She's long since settled down, married and remarried, borne three girls and a boy. She likes to joke that they are just like we were then, foolhardy and sensitive, in control of everything and nothing, full of wonder and fear. I know she's a good mother. She never went to art school, but in some ways, I guess, you could say her family is her art. She's created something, a life for herself, even if it is different from her girlhood dreams.

But in that moment, as Ginny stood slowly in that gown, like one of the convalescents, her face contorted in a recognizable sadness, she couldn't have been further from laughter. She propped herself against the wall, rested her forehead there, and said, “We can leave now, during the chapel service.”

None of us spoke, hoping some other voice would sculpt the air into words. We wanted to leave, we did. But we didn't. We couldn't. We wouldn't. We didn't have homes to return to, didn't have families who would stand in the doorway with arms open toward us, welcoming us in. We didn't have parents who would give us advice, or who wanted to see us off into our futures. We had nobody. Maybe our answer would have been different if we hadn't been drinking, but the drinking made us pine for Our Boys in a way that felt like a rush of madness might escape our chests. They were all that we had, and we couldn't leave them, even if we wanted to.

“We're not going,” we said. We were looking sideways, all of us. We didn't dare meet Ginny's eyes.

“They're practically dead,” she said, her voice wavering. She was trying to keep quiet, still worried about getting caught. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They're practically dead, and you pretend like they're not. You pretend like they care. Well, I've got news for you: They don't.” Her faced winced as she said this; she grabbed her hair at its roots and pulled, wanting to inflict more pain on her body so it wouldn't hurt so much on the inside. “They don't even know we're there,” she said. “And if they did…” She stopped. She cried soundlessly, cinched her face and widened her mouth so it looked like she was choking on air.