Read Online Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin - Free Book Online

plaintive “—the beach.”
    “Oh, I can’t complain, Tildy,” said Lily Norton in the affected Yankee accent she had brought back from New Jersey. “Too busy, as always. The lodge was filled to capacity all summer. Mother and I were even forced to turn some old clients away. Well, Henry Vick, how’s life treating you these days?” This was said familiarly, as though to recall former intimacies. As a widower, Henry had dated Maud’s mother for a while, then withdrawn. (“She threw herself at him” was Cornelia Stratton’s take on it. “She succeeded in scaring him off local women completely and, I sometimes think, women in general.”)
    “Hello, Lily. Hello there, Maud,” said Henry with a little bow to each. “Actually, Lily, I’d have to say I’m about the same as you. Too busy, but I can’t complain. You know Madeline, of course, and this is my—”
    “Oh, Madeline and I are old buddies,” Lily pertly acknowledged, though she had totally forgotten to include Madeline in her greeting. That was the trouble, thought Tildy, with underbred people: they never could keep track of all the amenities you had to get through first.
    “And this is my niece Chloe Starnes, who has come to live with me. She’s going into the ninth grade, too.”
    “Oh, yes,” said Lily Norton, looking Chloe meaningfully up and down. She seemed on the verge of saying something particular to Chloe when Tildy sprang her coup.
    “Chloe is the nearest thing I have to a cousin,” she told Maud. “Uncle Henry, you know, was married to my aunt Antonia, and I’ve always wished I had a cousin. I think ninth grade is going to be a really interesting year, don’t you?”
    “Oh, that’s for sure,” said Maud, with a fakey new laugh. She offered Chloe a blasé handshake. So far she had not even looked at Tildy. “Just wait till you all go inside that parlor and meet her.”
    “Her, who?” Tildy irritably demanded.
    “Our teacher. Mother Malloy, from Boston. She’s a knockout. We won’t be wanting to get rid of her anytime soon. Well, we have to run—Mother and I have some shopping to do. By the way, Tiddle-dy, I loved all your letters. I’m sorry I didn’t write back more, but Daddy and Anabel kept me on the go from morning till night.”
    Tiddle-dy! The added syllable seemed like a mockery. Maud would be punished for that, too.
    “Maud’s father and his new wife just fell in love with her,” said Lily Norton. “My daughter was a complete success in Palm Beach.”
    “That’s not very hard to imagine,” Henry gallantly replied as mother and daughter set themselves in motion to mince off to their next expedition. “Though I know you must be happy to have her home again.”

CHAPTER 5
Mother Malloy’s Ninth Grade, 1951
    The morning interviews
    SEVEN GIRLS—SURNAMES A through L—from nine-thirty until the noon Angelus bell, followed by chapel and lunch. Day students accompanied by mothers, except for one father, Dr. Galvin, whose wife was in the hospital, about to give birth to their sixth child. Galvin, a general practitioner, also doctored the nuns. He brought his two high-school-age daughters, Josie for ninth grade and Sally for twelfth. He had been to Mount St. Gabriel’s the day before, he told Mother Malloy, to register his two younger daughters in the prep. There was, so far, one Galvin boy-child, who would be ready for first grade at Newman Hall when it opened next year. Josie Galvin, a small brunette with sly eyes, seemed sure of herself and of her father’s regard. Was Josie, perhaps, one of the ringleaders in Mother Malloy’s new ninth grade?
    The two ninth-grade Cuban boarders presented themselves as a pair for their interview, as the new girl had so little English; Marta Andreu and Gilda Gomez had come down on yesterday’s train from New York, where their fathers were diplomats. Outgoing Gilda, whose heavily accented English rolled off her tongue in impulsive dashes and tumbles, was returning for her