Downtown by Anne Rivers Siddons Page B

city so far to the north of everything I knew? Why had I known so surely that I was coming to Camelot? I could not remember. I had only been to Atlanta twice before: once to a Beta Club Convention when I was in the eleventh grade at Saint Zita’s, when I and another girl had slept in the same room with the chaperoning nun and never left the anonymous downtown hotel; and once to visit my father’s younger brother Gerald in his little house in Kirkwood, when I was perhaps nine.
    We had only stayed two nights before my father and my uncle got into a fight over some fancied slight to Ireland and we left and drove back to Savannah. I had thought of Atlanta, before I came here this time, as a place much ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 46
    like Corkie, except that it had yards and did not smell of ships and shrimp and sulphur and the sea. Indeed, except for a trip to Ponce de Leon Park to see the Atlanta Crackers play and one to the great, dark brick Sears Roebuck on Ponce de Leon, I had done nothing here that we did not do at home in Corkie.
    But it was different; somehow I had always known that it was. It was Camelot, the Camelot of the wonderful stage play, the movie. Splendor, glamour, it was all here. If I could only find the key.
    In that dark twilight, I knew for the first time that perhaps I would not.
    When I got back to Our Lady, I went straight to the dining room, for I felt a great, whistling hollowness inside, and thought that part of it, at least, might be hunger. But the room was bare and dark. Sister Mary James, putting her head out of her quarters, told me that there was no dinner served on Sunday nights.
    “So many of our girls have a heavy Sunday meal with their families. I thought you would have seen that we do not serve, in the pamphlet. In any case, I supposed you would have a meal somewhere with Rachel. She is usually out on Sunday evenings.”
    “I’m not really hungry,” I said.
    “Did you enjoy Mass?” she said. “I believe Father Diehl takes the eleven o’clock.”
    “It was very interesting,” I said. “Well, I think I’ll go and write a few letters, and meet some of the others—”
    “I believe most of them have retired for the night,” Sister Mary James said. “I was up a few minutes ago and all of their doors were closed. You’ll be without a roommate for one more night; Ansonia’s mother called to say that Ansonia has another of her sinus infections, and will not be coming back until tomorrow or the next day. Poor child, she suffers terribly in weather like this.

    47 / DOWNTOWN
    Remember breakfast is at six, in case you want to go to early Mass. You’ll hear the bell.”
    “Thank you, sister. Goodnight,” I said, and went up the stairs and down the silent hall to my room. Sister Mary James was right. None of the doors was open.
    Much later, after I had set out my clothes for the next day and written a brief, determinedly cheerful postcard home, and taken a quick, uneasy bath in the chilly, too-big bathroom, I turned out my light and crawled into bed. This time I did not lift the shade that Sister Mary James had let down over the window. I lay in the thick, airless darkness and listened to the thumping, pinging radiator and thought, Well, I can call them in the morning and tell them it was a mistake and I want to come home. It’s not a disgrace. At least I would know my way, know how to live there. It may be all I do know, but I know it well. I could be somebody there, a big fish, a kind of queen….
    No, I can’t, I thought then. Whatever happens to me here, that is not an option. This may turn out to be the worst mistake I ever made, but going back is not an option.
    For the first time I could remember I had not said my prayers, and I started to get out of bed and kneel on the floor beside it, but then I did not. The thought came, ridiculous but powerful, that I would simply be too exposed there. I closed my eyes and said, rapidly, “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”
    The words crashed