Catherine House

by Elisabeth Thomas

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He closed the file. “Well, I can tell you, at this rate you won’t make it to three years. In case it’s not obvious, dear, if you don’t do any work, you won’t be staying here. In fact, if you fail two more classes, you’ll be asked to leave the school.”

  My throat squeezed.

  “Ines,” he was saying.

  “What?” I breathed.

  “I was saying, Ines, if you don’t want to be here—”

  “I can’t leave,” I said.

  He stopped talking. He was staring at me again. I couldn’t read his expression.

  “I can’t,” I said again.

  He leaned forward.

  “All right,” he said, lower now. “This is what you’re going to do. For the rest of the semester, show up to your classes. That is all you have to do: show up. And show up to finals, too. Write something in the test packet. Anything. You’ve no great mind, but it’s enough. If you are there, just there, you will pass. I promise. And next semester, with a fresh start, we will work on changing your attitude in a meaningful way. But for now, please, show up. Can you do that for me?”

  “For you, M. Owens? Anything.”

  He leaned back again. “I like you, Ines.”

  “I like you, too, M. Owens.”

  He was watching me closely.

  “Everyone likes you, I bet,” he said. “Everyone likes bored, pretty girls. Your classmates and your teachers, I’m sure they all look at you and see”—he waved a hand, smiling a little—“whichever fearless hero used to drive them wild. The new girl who ignored them, the most gorgeous golden boy. You are attractive because you can be anyone or anything … because you are nothing. You are empty. Or at least, you want to be empty.” He touched the paper again. “That’s what this transcript says. You are trying to disappear, whish, into smoke. And if you’re not careful, you will succeed.”

  I was picking at my fingernail.

  “I want to see you become something, Ines,” he said. “I want to see you graduate.”

  I had never really considered graduating. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  “Ines,” he whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re a good girl,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re fine.”

  I nodded. I nodded again. I rubbed at my eye.

  M. Owens looked down at the transcript. “Now, concentration. In your application, you showed promise in physics and chemistry, but you aren’t taking any now. Do you have any interest in plasm?”

  “No.”

  “History?” He raised an eyebrow. “Literature?”

  Literature was M. Owens’s specialty. He was teaching a seminar on the Victorian Romantics this semester. “I tried to register for your seminar but didn’t make the lottery,” I said, which was true. “I was heartbroken.”

  He smiled. “I’ll make sure you get in next semester. I’ll discuss it with your grade dean. Which is who?”

  “M. David.”

  “Ah yes. All right. But for concentration? What do you want to do?”

  I kept picking at my fingernail.

  Empty. That’s what M. Owens had called me.

  In my art history class, we were studying Old Masters still-life paintings. Woven baskets crowded with pears, peaches, and duck eggs, shadowed memento mori, crystal vases with grayish glows and luminescent beads of condensation. Those vases weren’t empty, but full, wildly full, of peonies and roses, tulips and bluebells. The flowers reminded me of the fairy bride’s bouquet from my book.

  “I liked the art history survey,” I said. I didn’t recognize my voice; it sounded almost shy.

  “History of art. A beautiful discipline.” He closed the folder and pulled out a concentration application form. “You won’t be officially accepted until next summer, but it shouldn’t be a problem.” He started filling out the form. “Isn’t your coming in soon?”

  “Next week, I think. That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “Are you excited?”

  “No.”

  “Scared?”

  “No. Why, should I be? Is it scary?”

  He shrugged. “There are worse things.” He signed the application with a flourish.

  *

  I opened my eyes to a harsh February morning. Wind shuddered the windows. I crawled out of bed and pulled a sweater off the floor.

  Something was different about the tea tray today. I stared at it as I dragged the scratchy knit over my ribs. There was the kettle, the coffee, the packets of tea. But there were no snacks, no cookies. Had Baby eaten them all?

  It didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t even go to lunch that day, or tea. I only went to Ancient Philosophy class, then to Calculus II. I even tried taking notes, though I didn’t recognize half the symbols on the board. Since meeting with M. Owens, I was trying to be good.

  But as I walked into the great hall for dinner that evening, a third-year student aide touched my elbow.

  “Hey,” she said, “you’re not getting dinner tonight.”

  Her lips were set in a stubborn frown. She had a hole in her eyebrow where a ring must have been once.

  “Yes, I am eating dinner,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  I looked over her shoulder. Students sat around the Molina table, hunched over their pale salads—was that endive?—but, I realized, none of them were first-years. In fact, I didn’t see any first-years here at all.

  “But I’m hungry,” I said.

  Her hand hadn’t left my elbow. She squeezed it now.

  “It’s going to be fine,” she whispered.

  Her eyes, staring at me, were wide and watery pink. Was she about to cry?

  “You’ll see,” she said. “It’s going to be so great.”

  I turned. I walked back through the halls to our bedroom.

  It couldn’t have been past six o’clock, but our room was full of shadows. I turned on my bedside lamp, then turned it off again. I got under the covers. I hugged my empty stomach.

  The great hall had been serving flounder last night. It wasn’t very good, but I would’ve eaten more if I had known it would be my last meal.

  I slipped in and out of dreams. Baby came into the room eventually. There she was, swaying in front of me. Was she sleepwalking? Was she a ghost?

  No, she was in her bed. I was asleep. We were both asleep.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  I sat up. Baby sat up, too. We stared at each other.

  I opened the door to M. David, our grade dean, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking back and forth on his heels. He looked neat, tailored, and alert.

  “Please,” he said, “get dressed and join us in the parlor.”

  “I’m already dressed.”

  He glanced down at the jeans I had slept in.

  “Just meet us in the parlor,” he said. “In ten minutes.”

  The parlor, when we shuffled into it, was filled with Molina first-years. They leaned on walls and lounged over chairs, stifling yawns with the backs of their hands. No one was talking.

  “What time is it?” a boy mumbled. He stood with his hands tucked into his armpits, eyes sleepy and dark.

  We glanced at one another, but no one answered. The parlor didn’t have a clock and M. David had disappeared. It was still black night outside.

  “Man, I would murder for a big bowl of real Texas chili,” Yaya said. She was perched on the arm of a sofa. “Real good chili, hot, with cornbread and butter. Or, no—a cheeseburger.”

  “Oh,” a girl said, laying a hand on Yaya’s arm. “Yes.”

  M. David appeared again. Then he led us in a drowsy, shuffling mass down one hall and up another, down a stairway, and then farther, down another. We must have been in some Harrington sub-basement when we arrived at a long, dim hallway wallpapered in cerulean faux-silk. The hallway led to two white doors with golden handles.

  Most of the rooms at Catherine didn’t have locks. But t
his one had not just a lock, but a black box—a keycard reader—that beamed a steady red light.

  Baby slipped her hand into mine as M. David drew an ID from his breast pocket. He waved it in front of the lock.

  The doors opened onto a ballroom. Oak parquet flooring, warped and pocked by the years, swept up to a stage framed by olive-brown velvet curtains. The walls recessed into alcoves decorated with flaking plaster sculptures of dolphins, lobsters, and crabs. Three chandeliers dripped from the ceiling, buzzing with electric light.

  The Harrington and Ashley first-years had already arrived and were pulling green exercise mats from piles in the center of the room. Apparently by some instruction, they were arranging them in a giant circle.

  The room had no windows. We were underground.

  “Please,” said a voice rising over the noise of our shuffling, “try not to sit next to your roommates or closest friends. We want you all to get to know each other better.”

  The voice was Viktória’s. She stood with balletic grace in a raw silk dress, legs crossed at the ankles. Her eyes drifted over the crowd of students.

  She murmured something to M. Neptune, the director of the new materials concentration. He, too, watched us curiously, a notebook and pen folded in his hands. He nodded at what Viktória said, then waved and winked at someone he recognized across the room. M. Neptune was shorter than Viktória, and he was not a handsome man; his eyes were too small, his hairline receding into a witchy peak. But there was something charismatic about his face. It was hard to look away from him.

  Baby turned to me with panic in her eyes.

  “Don’t listen to them,” I said as I grabbed a mat. “Sit next to me.”

  Baby and I sat cross-legged on our mats. Altogether, our class must have been around a hundred people. We couldn’t manage a perfect circle, but we tried. We made a lot of mumbling and squeaking noise as we settled. Then we were silent.

  I glanced around. Now that we were seated, I could see that it wasn’t only first-years here in the ballroom. A few upperclassmen waited by the stage, along with a handful of aides. I counted seven upperclassmen in total. And they weren’t just any upperclassmen; they were all new materials concentrators.

  They were watching us. I couldn’t read their expressions, but I recognized the cool comfort of their bodies as they lounged against the stage. They didn’t seem bothered by all of the first-years staring at them. They were relaxed. They were waiting.

  Baby didn’t even try to hide her ogling. Her eyes on the concentrators were wide and bright with desire.

  Viktória walked to the middle of the circle.

  “Welcome,” she said, “to Catherine.” She gave a little smile. “I know you’ve all been through a lot to come here. To come inside.”

  She turned to look around the circle. Her eyes were soft.

  “The path into Catherine is not an easy one,” Viktória continued. “You’ve had to be intelligent. You’ve had to be creative. You’ve had to work hard—very hard. But you’ve done it. You are here.”

  M. Neptune was seated in one of the alcoves now, notebook closed in his lap. He was watching her.

  Viktória folded her arms behind her back.

  “I respect you enough to be honest,” she said. “These three years will not be easy. You will need to be more intelligent, more creative, and harder-working than ever before. There will be times when you will question whether you truly belong here, in this house. You will wonder, Am I strong enough? Am I good enough?” She turned. “There’s no way to predict when these questions might come to you. It could happen while taking a particularly difficult test, or during your forums, or at a party with friends. Or it could come to you in this room, tonight.”

  She turned.

  “Because this is the truth: To be unsure here is to belong. To be unsure but present and eager and open to a heroic new past, future, and today—this is the Catherine project. This is how we research the most profound relationships between our bodies, minds, and worlds. The unsure place is where you are now and where you are meant to be.” She smiled. “This is your new home. And I am happy—so happy—to be here with you, at the end of one stage of your life and the beginning of a wonderful new one.”

  The boy next to me was crying.

  “You have suffered to come to this point. Suffered through high school”—a few small giggles—“and through teachers, friends, and family who weren’t supportive of all the things you are. People who hurt you. And you have suffered through your own selves—your own critical eyes, your own standards, your own minds. Your spirits are beautiful, but they are not easy.

  “But tonight,” she said, “we will say goodbye to your pasts and enter into a new house. The house of your eternal future.”

  By the end of the sentence, she spoke so softly it was almost a whisper.

  I coughed.

  “So,” she said. “Let us begin.”

  The aides over by the stage had arranged trays of plates and cups. At Viktória’s nod, they began circulating among us. When one arrived at where Baby and I sat, I saw that the plates held little round white cakes and green clay cups filled with wine.

  I took two cakes and swallowed them whole, even though I didn’t feel hungry anymore. The cakes didn’t taste like anything except almost sweet, like honey. The wine was even sweeter.

  I was in the middle of swallowing when Baby whispered, “Ines.”

  I turned, wiping my mouth.

  One of the new materials concentrators, a willowy girl with a long black braid, had appeared at the side of the boy next to me. She also held a tray, like the others. But instead of cakes or wine, her tray held a set of plasm pins.

  I had never seen the pins this close before. And something about how slender they were, and how dark, made me feel like I still couldn’t see them clearly. I only saw that they were lined up in order of size, and that the digital readers on their ends were all unlit at the moment. At the other end of each pin was a tiny flat pad.

  I bent toward the tray for a closer look. I wished I remembered more from that special about the Shiner report, but it was so long ago. I’d been too young to understand the science. I’d thought it was a hoax.

  The boy waited, cross-legged and blank-faced, as the concentrator ran her hands over the pins and selected one. She fitted the flat pad to the boy’s skull, then curved the body against his head. I hadn’t realized the metal was flexible.

  The concentrator did something to the pin I couldn’t see. The pin beeped as its reader lit up.

  I had been watching her so closely I didn’t realize a different concentrator stood behind me until he tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up into a face full of fervid acne.

  “Turn,” the boy said.

  I did. I could see Baby watching me out of the corner of her eye.

  Wasn’t Catherine supposed to have stopped experimenting? Should this be happening? Did the pins even do anything, really? The doctor hadn’t answered me when I’d asked.

  I looked all around, but no one was objecting.

  “Lie down,” the concentrator said.

  I did. He lifted up my shirt. I could feel him fit the pins on either side of my belly button. I had braced myself for some kind of cold pricking sensation, but they were the same temperature as my skin. As he pressed them into place, I felt something warm shift beneath my skin, and then a hazy sense of relief. The feeling sparked a sudden and specific young memory of peeing in the ocean.

  I started to smell something faint, warm, and animal, almost like milk.

  “Turn,” he said again.

  I turned.

  He pushed through my hair to touch my skull. He fit a pin to the skin there. One pin, then another, and another.

  I closed my eyes.

  When the concentrator was gone, I opened my eyes again. All the other students were lying, like I was, with the pins buried along their hair and beneath their clothes. We looked like little aliens.

  I touched Baby’s han
d. “Hey,” I said.

  She turned to me. The pins flashed.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This’ll be fun.”

  She nodded. Her eyes were blank, her lips set anxiously tight.

  The chandeliers had been turned down, almost off.

  Many minutes passed before Viktória said, “Breathe in.”

  I breathed in.

  “Out.”

  I breathed out.

  As the minutes passed, any curiosity I had sank into boredom. I breathed, in and out, until I wished I weren’t breathing. I wished I were up in the library reading my Betty and Veronica comics.

  But then, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to stand and leave the ballroom. It seemed I might never leave. Something was weighing me down.

  “In,” Viktória said, “and out.”

  Darkness moved behind my eyelids. My breath rose through my stomach, through my throat, out, then back in. Pressure squeezed my skull.

  In, and out.

  I don’t know if I slept, or if my eyes were open or closed, or how much time passed. It could have been minutes, hours, or years. My body floated away from me but I was still here. We were all here.

  That’s what Viktória was saying. “You are in the house.”

  Her voice was low, so low it almost felt like it was coming from my own mind.

  “You are in the house and the house is in the woods. The woods are in the house. The stairs are in the house. Down the stairs is the hallway, and at the end of the hallway is the ballroom. You are in the ballroom. The ballroom is in the house. You are in the house and the house is in you.”

  Her voice was slow and rhythmic as a prayer.

  How had I ever felt sleepy? Every part of my body was turned on to everyone and anyone, all of us here together, in the ballroom. This ballroom in the house.

  I could feel myself. Yes—really feel myself, like I hadn’t in a long time.

  I was here.

  I blinked.

  I lifted my hands and put them down again. I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t.

  How could M. Owens have said nothing was wrong with me? How could I have almost believed him?

  The walls of the ballroom were closing around my head. The room was growing dark. I was thrusting forward—