Read Unfinished Desires for Free Online
Authors: Gail Godwin
on the path of true self-development.”
Ironically, Elizabeth had heard about “the spellbinding Father Maturin” from a former suitor who was now a vicar in the Church of England. He had accompanied her on the retreat, perhaps thinking he might induce her to reconsider his proposal of marriage. But for Elizabeth Wallingford, God had more far-reaching plans in store. “Discontent,” Father Maturin said, enunciating the word with a strange vigor and looking straight at Elizabeth, “may be God’s catapult, His way of saying: ‘Go and try yourself now .’ ”
—from Mount St. Gabriel’s Remembered: A Historical
Memoir , by Mother Suzanne Ravenel
CHAPTER 3
Drawing the Dead
Third Saturday in August 1951
Henry Vick’s house
Mountain City, North Carolina
“ IT’S AS THOUGH you were back in my girlhood, watching over me like a guardian angel …”
The girlhood room of Chloe’s mother, from the days when she was still Agnes Vick, looked down over a gently rolling back lawn surrounded by mature boxwoods. The window seat, nestled beneath the slant of the roof, was at present awash in the fiery brilliance of the late-summer afternoon.
In drawing his plans for this room in 1927, Agnes’s architect father, Malcolm Vick, had included a sketch of his daughter fitted into this space, her long legs doubled to form a prop for her book. Already, by age ten, Agnes had reached the height of five feet six and, though it would throw the house design slightly out of proportion, her father had added a second window to increase the length of the seat and provide for her teenage extensions. It was his hope that Agnes would grace this new house for at least nine or ten years before a husband carried her off to another.
Chloe had never seen those plans for the Vick house at the corner of Montgomery Avenue and Riverside Drive, but from her mother’s descriptions she had conjured up her own vision of Malcolm Vick’s sketch of his daughter in the proposed window seat.
And when Chloe herself began drawing in earnest, in the months after her father died, she felt compelled to reproduce that long-legged girl in the window seat again and again. “How do you do this, darling?” her mother would ask. “I know draftsmanship runs in our family, but this is something more. It’s as though you are watching over my girlhood like a guardian angel.” And then her mother had wept, saying, “If I didn’t have you, I might think my whole marriage with Merry was a dream.” And Chloe had said, “Yes, and we can remember him together.”
The drawings got more interesting as Chloe’s skills improved. She experimented with angles: the girl Agnes as seen from above, from across the room, from outside the window.
If my mother could observe this window seat from wherever she is now, with me in it, how could I send her the message that I am all right and that I know that we will go on taking care of each other? After all, we spent one night together in this very room, before Rex showed up early in his new plane and cut short our weekend visit with Uncle Henry.
Chloe could not swallow the notion, put forward too often in recent weeks by people wishing to console her, that Agnes was up in heaven with her adored first husband and her mother and father and all the company of saints as well as Jesus and the Blessed Mother and God Himself. This seemed too simplistic an elevation: the newly dead getting lifted up on their death day (“Going up, folks!”) to eternal life. Where they would then do what? Roam around like they were at a big party, recognizing old friends (and surely some enemies, too)?
Whereas Chloe could accommodate the existence of purgatory—in which her mother had firmly believed. It was an extension of life’s imperfections, Agnes had said. You stopped in purgatory because you weren’t yet prepared for perfection. Rushing off to heaven before you were ready would make you feel soiled and uncomfortable in the presence
Ironically, Elizabeth had heard about “the spellbinding Father Maturin” from a former suitor who was now a vicar in the Church of England. He had accompanied her on the retreat, perhaps thinking he might induce her to reconsider his proposal of marriage. But for Elizabeth Wallingford, God had more far-reaching plans in store. “Discontent,” Father Maturin said, enunciating the word with a strange vigor and looking straight at Elizabeth, “may be God’s catapult, His way of saying: ‘Go and try yourself now .’ ”
—from Mount St. Gabriel’s Remembered: A Historical
Memoir , by Mother Suzanne Ravenel
CHAPTER 3
Drawing the Dead
Third Saturday in August 1951
Henry Vick’s house
Mountain City, North Carolina
“ IT’S AS THOUGH you were back in my girlhood, watching over me like a guardian angel …”
The girlhood room of Chloe’s mother, from the days when she was still Agnes Vick, looked down over a gently rolling back lawn surrounded by mature boxwoods. The window seat, nestled beneath the slant of the roof, was at present awash in the fiery brilliance of the late-summer afternoon.
In drawing his plans for this room in 1927, Agnes’s architect father, Malcolm Vick, had included a sketch of his daughter fitted into this space, her long legs doubled to form a prop for her book. Already, by age ten, Agnes had reached the height of five feet six and, though it would throw the house design slightly out of proportion, her father had added a second window to increase the length of the seat and provide for her teenage extensions. It was his hope that Agnes would grace this new house for at least nine or ten years before a husband carried her off to another.
Chloe had never seen those plans for the Vick house at the corner of Montgomery Avenue and Riverside Drive, but from her mother’s descriptions she had conjured up her own vision of Malcolm Vick’s sketch of his daughter in the proposed window seat.
And when Chloe herself began drawing in earnest, in the months after her father died, she felt compelled to reproduce that long-legged girl in the window seat again and again. “How do you do this, darling?” her mother would ask. “I know draftsmanship runs in our family, but this is something more. It’s as though you are watching over my girlhood like a guardian angel.” And then her mother had wept, saying, “If I didn’t have you, I might think my whole marriage with Merry was a dream.” And Chloe had said, “Yes, and we can remember him together.”
The drawings got more interesting as Chloe’s skills improved. She experimented with angles: the girl Agnes as seen from above, from across the room, from outside the window.
If my mother could observe this window seat from wherever she is now, with me in it, how could I send her the message that I am all right and that I know that we will go on taking care of each other? After all, we spent one night together in this very room, before Rex showed up early in his new plane and cut short our weekend visit with Uncle Henry.
Chloe could not swallow the notion, put forward too often in recent weeks by people wishing to console her, that Agnes was up in heaven with her adored first husband and her mother and father and all the company of saints as well as Jesus and the Blessed Mother and God Himself. This seemed too simplistic an elevation: the newly dead getting lifted up on their death day (“Going up, folks!”) to eternal life. Where they would then do what? Roam around like they were at a big party, recognizing old friends (and surely some enemies, too)?
Whereas Chloe could accommodate the existence of purgatory—in which her mother had firmly believed. It was an extension of life’s imperfections, Agnes had said. You stopped in purgatory because you weren’t yet prepared for perfection. Rushing off to heaven before you were ready would make you feel soiled and uncomfortable in the presence
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