Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin

Author:Gail Godwin [Godwin, Gail]
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-58836-912-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Confessional Cassette, Continued

Dawn, Monday morning

September 10, 2001

Feast of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, confessor (1245-1305)

Mother Ravenel’s room

St. Scholastica Retirement House

I guess you’ve been wondering what happened to me, Beatrix. But no, you didn’t know I’d begun this personal tape to you ten days ago. That was after Mother Frances Galyon had suggested during our evening walk that I turn over the “toxic year” to someone I trusted and cared about, and that certainly describes you, dear Beatrix.

There is nothing like a week’s vacation in the hospital to make a person put her priorities in order and show her where she has been fudging. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly fine now. It was something I have trouble pronouncing in which the intestine knots itself up in little kinks and you have to watch your diet carefully from then on, but it took a while for them to diagnose it and make sure it wasn’t something worse. I spent several days on a painkiller drip, drifting in and out of fugues. At one point I was sure I had already died, and at another, time flattened itself out like an intricate carpet and I saw the episodes of my life woven into their divinely appointed places, and not all of it belongs in a school history. What I came to call the “toxic year,” after I had lived through it, was fallout from things set in motion long before. I must accept responsibility for the role I played throughout, but I must also accept that mine was only one of many roles and, furthermore, that it is insulting God’s mercy to go on flagellating myself as prime blamee, if I may coin such a word.

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