Unfinished Desires Read Online Free PDF

eat something?” he asked.
    “Mother Finney had iced tea and a chicken salad sandwich waiting for her when she arrived,” the headmistress answered for her.
    “Really, I’m better now. It’s very cool—” She was aware that her cheek lay against the red marble and hastened to pull herself upright. “Is this a sculpture I’m seated on?”
    “Why, you’ve gone straight for the protection of our Red Nun,” Mother Ravenel said. “Now you’re truly one of us. Henry, I’m going to presume on you to tell Mother Malloy the story of our guardian spirit. I have been bending her ear until I am weary of the sound of my voice. Meanwhile, Mother Malloy, you take it easy. I’ll be back in a flash with some ice water.”
    Off she dashed, fringed sash flying.
    “Are you subject to fainting spells, Mother Malloy?” Fiddling with his pipe, Henry Vick stood a little apart: a lanky man in his mid- to late thirties; soft voice, furrowed brow, graying brown hair receding at the temples; rumpled seersucker suit. His kind, abstracted manner put her at her ease.
    “I’ve never fainted before. If that was what it was.”
    “My sister, Agnes, was a champion fainter. Always at the dentist’s and sometimes just before an exam. Anytime she was tense or uncertain, you could see the blood leave her face. Then she had to put her head between her knees or she was out cold. The first time she fainted was right after her first communion. She was walking back to her seat with her hands clasped properly in front of her and then suddenly she hit the floor with a thud.”
    “It was the fasting, of course,” Mother Malloy said. “Now children are allowed to drink a glass of juice before.”
    “The monsignor told her afterward that it was a sign of grace; it meant she was taking the sacrament seriously. But she was furious with herself. ‘Everyone saw my panties,’ she told us when we got home.”
    They both laughed. In his telling, she felt the personality of his lost sister. In his laughter, she saw that Henry Vick gained relief in bringing her back through anecdotes like this.
    “Do you have sisters or brothers, Mother Malloy?”
    “I was in a foster home, but there were certain of the children that I felt sisterly toward.”
    “I see. Would it make you queasy if I relit my pipe?”
    “No, I like the smell of a pipe. If I were a man, I would probably smoke one. Please do tell me about the Red Nun.”
    “It’s an unfinished memorial to a young woman who was a student here in the early years of the school. Malaria carried her off the summer before she was to enter the novitiate. Her people were rich Charlestonians; they ordered the marble from Italy and commissioned a famous funerary sculptor. But from the start, things took on a life of their own. White marble was ordered; red was delivered. Then came 1914, war broke out in Europe, and there was no more Italian marble to be had. The sculptor said he was delighted to work with the red—it was Veronese red, more than a hundred million years old. He said he could make something distinctive, really fine. The plan was to have a life-scale young nun in all her particulars, even down to her rosary, seated in front of that Della Robbia Annunciation across from you.”
    Both transferred their attention to the glazed terra-cotta bas-relief of the Virgin looking up, startled, from the open book on her lap to the kneeling Gabriel. The white dove hovered in the blue-enameled air between them. A Grecian vase crammed with lilies was placed equidistantly between Virgin and angel.
    “The young woman—her name was Caroline DuPree—had prayed rosaries here in the grotto, asking Our Lady to persuade her parents to let her be a nun. But the sculptor died while the piece was in its half-finished form. There was talk of the family finding another sculptor, but nothing ever came of it. I’ve always been glad in a way. There is a certain power in her rough form.”
    “Like Michelangelo’s