Catherine House

by Elisabeth Thomas

  Viktória held a notebook open on her lap, but she hadn’t written anything down. She didn’t move at all. Only her eyes followed the girl as she took her seat.

  Theo was walking up to the stage. He flipped through his transparencies. He fitted one onto the projector.

  “Please introduce yourself,” M. David said as he scribbled something on his clipboard.

  “My name is Theo Williams,” he said. “I’m a new materials concentrator.”

  Theo stood motionless beside the projector. His face was empty.

  “And the topic of your tutorial?” M. David said.

  “I plan to perform a research study on plasm development in moss architecture from seed to bloom,” he said.

  “Excellent.” M. David jotted down another note.

  Theo clicked on the projector.

  Theo flipped through moss photographs as he outlined what we already knew about plasm and flowerless plant growth. He presented a list of the available literature, most of which was already on site in the library, and the mosses that were available here in the garden and elsewhere around Catherine. He gave a list of specialists he might reach out to and critical texts he would order in. The paper would be theoretical in scope. It would be about one hundred pages long.

  Yaya yawned. “Pinch me when it’s my turn,” she mumbled, slumping lower in her seat.

  What was this? Where was Theo’s real project? What was he doing?

  Theo’s advisor said nothing. Neither did M. Neptune, who sat still and firm, hands folded over his stomach.

  Viktória tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her emerald ring flashed.

  “Thanks,” M. Neptune said as Theo removed the last transparency. “Sounds great. You can take your seat.”

  *

  In the morning room, I watched Theo pile his plate with wheat crackers and hard-boiled eggs, frowning as he tried to balance it all together. The slippery eggs kept sliding around the plate. He must have felt me watching him, though, because he looked up.

  He stared back at me. Neither of us smiled.

  I put down my yogurt spoon and started to stand, but he was already turning to walk out of the room.

  I sat back down. I picked up my spoon.

  *

  When I arrived at our next session, I felt like something was different.

  I glanced around the hall. Yes, something had changed. The hall was emptier than usual. There were no first-or third-years in the hall, only second-years. We were spread around the room, as we usually were during session, but we were alone. We eyed each other in uneasy silence.

  I folded my hands tightly together. My heart beat against my pressed palms.

  Viktória stood with lowered eyes in her usual place by the window, her hair neatly brushed over her shoulder. I wished I were sitting close enough to see her face. But unlike our usual sessions, she wasn’t the only administrator here; M. Neptune was sitting on the dais, a notebook and pen on the table in front of him.

  It was the weird, in-between time of day when afternoon became evening, the light in the hall turning gray and oblique. I felt like I couldn’t see anyone’s face clearly.

  Viktória took a sip of water. Then she set down the glass and straightened.

  “Welcome,” she said, “to today.”

  She gestured in, toward her heart. “Come in closer,” she said.

  We looked around blankly at each other, then moved to sit at tables closer to her, by the windows. As we gathered, I had the sudden impression that I was at our coming in again, and didn’t yet know anyone around me. That wasn’t true, of course; a girl from one of my German classes was sitting on my right, and Anna was right there across the table, not meeting my eye. But somehow we all felt like strangers again, in some new place.

  “My precious ones.” Viktória smiled. “It’s been a long time since it’s been only us, together. And I know this time has not been easy. This school—this experience—is not right for everyone. Some of the students who first walked into this house two years ago are not here today. But all of you, everyone in this room, you have each spent these past years in total devotion to your studies, to one another, and to Catherine. You are all here now. And you are here magnificently.”

  Aides and a few new materials concentrators, M. Neptune’s students, filed in from the kitchen with trays in their hands. I peered to get a better look as they set the trays on the edges of the tables. They were the same trays from our coming in, laden with the same cakes, clay cups of wine, and plasm pins.

  “How wonderful this is,” Viktória was saying. “How wonderful.”

  But we weren’t really listening to her anymore. We were watching the concentrators. There was Burt, the girl with the braid, and the pretty blond one—all of M. Neptune’s students except for Sandy, the one who never seemed to speak.

  They had begun fitting the pins to our skulls. They approached us one by one, told us to lean forward, then lifted our shirts so they could fit the pins to our stomachs and backs. They pressed them into place.

  We looked from one to another, then back at Viktória. It was all happening so quickly, I couldn’t read anyone’s expression. I could just make out Diego, on the other side of Viktória, sitting straight-backed and stone-faced, hands pressed together so tightly his knuckles had turned white. I tried to meet his eye; he wouldn’t look at me. Theo was sitting far from me, on the opposite side of the table. I could feel him there. But I couldn’t see his face.

  M. Neptune peered down at us from the dais. His arms were folded and eyes narrowed.

  Fine, I thought. You can study us. But I’m studying you, too.

  Someone had come up behind me. A pair of cool hands touched my neck. It was my turn.

  I let the concentrator fit the pins to my skull and belly one by one. The pressure against my body felt both familiar and strange. Soon the warm milk smell overcame me. I shivered.

  Where was Gerald the mouse right now? Was he sleeping, curled with his tail around his fragile body, the pins still linking him to his teddy bear and mirror? Was he breathing deeply, calm and content, because he was fine, he was good, and he wasn’t alone—never alone—but here, pinned into some infinite network?

  I rested my hands on the table.

  My hands were on the table. The table was in the house. I was in the house. I was in the house.

  Viktória said, “Let us be quiet together.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Some time passed in silence. I didn’t know how long. I waited to feel something. I paid attention.

  Clouds moved over the sinking sun. I breathed slowly, in and out, for minutes, maybe hours.

  I opened my eyes. I closed my eyes.

  Someone coughed.

  I touched my scalp tentatively. The pins hadn’t moved, of course.

  I didn’t feel anything. Did I?

  The sun had set. The room grew colder.

  Then we were chanting. I am in the house, I said. The house is in the woods. The woods …

  We were quiet again.

  It was true, I realized. I was here, in the house. My feet were on the stones. The stones were in the hall. The hall was filled with glass, and the glass was touched by light. I was filled with light. I was filled with everything. Everything.

  Something bright rose up my throat.

  Oh, I thought, oh. Then the thought was gone.

  “You are here,” Viktória was saying. Outside, the trees moved. “You’ve done well so far. But I want to touch you. I want to bring you further inside. I want you to feel it.”

  I opened my eyes.

  It was nighttime in the great hall now. I couldn’t make out anyone’s faces in the dark. We were strangers again, but family, too, close and damp, like a litter of animals.

  Viktória was sitting on the edge of a table. Cold moonlight crowned her head.

  She said something, but I couldn’t hear her.

  A girl stood, then slowly walked to Viktória, who took the girl’s han
ds in her own.

  Viktória whispered something to the girl. The girl nodded, her face glistening with tears.

  The girl returned to her seat.

  A red-haired boy went up next. Then a girl from my Critical Theory class. One by one, every student walked to Viktória and sat down again.

  I glanced toward the dais. It was too dark for me to see M. Neptune anymore, but I still felt him there, watching, like a god.

  I see you, I said. I see what you’re doing.

  I didn’t know if I was speaking aloud or just thinking it, awake or asleep. I didn’t know if I was surrounded by my friends or all alone. I didn’t know who or where I was.

  Yes, I did. I was here. In the woods. I was the house. I was the stairs. I was the curtains in the parlor brushing against the floor on a Tuesday morning. I was the smell of raspberry bread baking in the kitchen, inside.

  My mouth was open, but no sound came out.

  I was walking up to Viktória. I looked down at my feet. They were bare.

  She took my hands in her own. She smiled. Her skin was white and cool.

  “Ines,” she said. “My precious girl.”

  “I’m precious for you,” I said.

  She squeezed my hands.

  “Mother,” I whispered, without knowing why.

  She touched my cheek. I breathed.

  “We are together,” Viktória was saying, when I was sitting again. “We are here. In the house.”

  “In the house,” we said.

  “In the house,” she said. “Inside, in the woods. We are not alive. We are not people. We are more than people. We are the infinite person. We are forever figures. We are an eternal moment, on an eternal surface, together with every other eternal object—everything here, inside this house.”

  Inside the house, I whispered.

  I lifted up my hands. I closed my eyes.

  *

  “So,” Viktória said.

  I opened my eyes.

  Viktória was smiling on us. A tiny rainbow refracted through the windows and flashed over her face.

  “Let us eat,” she said.

  It was morning. A new day beamed through the great hall’s windows. I felt as if I were seeing everyone for the first time after a long trip. There was Anna, dazed and blinking, and Yaya, who looked almost insulted as she cleared her throat and straightened in her seat, though I couldn’t think why. The girl on my left was smiling shyly and eyeing everyone around her in girlish, embarrassed pleasure.

  I didn’t know how many hours—or how many days?—we had been sitting in the great hall. But I did know that I loved that girl, the one beside me. I loved her, and I loved Yaya, and I loved us all. I loved that we were all together, in our beautiful jeans and Tshirts, in the beautiful hall, by these beautiful golden windows, so beautiful, here.

  I touched my head. The pins had been removed, but I could feel where they had been. The spots were tender. I pulled up my T-shirt. Yes, I could see the spots there, too. They had left funny orange bruises. I poked one. I hadn’t noticed any after the coming in.

  Aides filed in from the kitchen again, carrying trays. Not austere ceremonial trays this time, but gleaming silver platters filled with food. We cheered and stomped as they placed the platters on the tables, presenting us with our feast of sausage links and steaming baked oysters, grapes and olives and butter and breads, emerald glass carafes full of sweet wine.

  Viktória poured herself a glass of wine as we continued to cheer. She raised it up.

  “To today,” she said over our noise, “the future forever.”

  We ate and drank. We laughed a lot. The girl next to me wouldn’t stop babbling on about her pet cat. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but I rubbed her knee as I mopped up cream sauce with a hunk of bread. I was drunk. The room was pounding. The food kept coming. Meat cakes, fatty lamb chops, savory rice pudding by the bowl, and for dessert, ladyfingers, and snowy piles of vanilla cream, and plums, apricots, frosty black grapes.

  When I reached for the grapes, I saw Theo.

  Theo wasn’t eating with us. He was up on the dais. He was with M. Neptune, watching.

  I tried to stand, but I couldn’t. The girl beside me was holding my elbow. I was too drunk. I couldn’t move.

  But I knew what I saw. Theo was there, whispering something in M. Neptune’s ear. Then M. Neptune nodded, clasped Theo’s arm, and whispered something back.

  *

  The afternoon after I completed my last final, I walked out onto the yard. The atmosphere was dense and dark. I could smell nervous electricity in the air. An August storm was coming. No one else was out on the yard. I was alone.

  Our class had passed the two last weeks of the semester, the weeks after the experiment, in a kind of trance. We didn’t talk at breakfast or lunch and took long, drunken naps in our bathtubs. We went to bed early. We studied alone, if we studied at all. We skipped class and showed up late to our finals.

  Now finals were over.

  Lightning flashed, but I didn’t hear any thunder.

  I didn’t know what had happened to me during the experiment. Some part of the night had slipped out of my memory and beyond my comprehension. I wasn’t even sure how many hours I’d lost.

  I didn’t understand. But I wanted to.

  I walked across the yard, over the paths to the west, through the garden wall. I walked through the rosebushes and over the bluebell hill, into the clearing by the fountain.

  Theo was sitting there by the fountain, staring into the water.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He looked up. “Hi.”

  I sat down next to him.

  “It’s going to rain,” I said.

  “I know.”

  The water in the fountain was calm and clear. I could smell the stone’s mineral wetness.

  “Theo,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked up at me.

  I said, “You can trust me.”

  He shook his head.

  I sniffled.

  I’m your nice, sweet girl, I thought. You like me. You will let me in.

  “I like the rain,” I said.

  I wiped my nose.

  I said, “It reminds me of when I was a very little girl.”

  I shifted onto my hands.

  “Before we moved here, back in the country,” I said, “we had a house with a garden, and in the garden was a shed. A normal shed, you know, with garden tools and dark hiding places. I would play in that shed for hours, alone, and stare at it while I was going to sleep. I liked the shed. I thought that monsters lived there, big, big monsters. I thought the monsters were my real family.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway. The rain—it smells like the shed.”

  Theo was breathing harder.

  I sniffled again. I wiped the tears from my cheek.

  “I’ve always felt,” I said, “like I’m not here. Not in the shed, not in the country, not in the condo, after we moved. Not here, either. Like I’m floating, somewhere far away. Like your kite, remember? The sailboat kite. I’m bobbing somewhere up in the sky. I can see everyone else down below, all the little people. I can see their faces, I can see them smiling and laughing, I can see their mouths moving—but I can’t hear what they’re saying, and I don’t get why they’re laughing. Everyone is too far away.”

  I wiped my nose again.

  Theo said, “Do you feel like that now?”

  I turned to him. “No,” I said.

  He rubbed my jaw. When I kissed him, he tasted like the humidity, warm and electric.

  *

  The next morning, I woke to the noise of birds chattering in the courtyard. I blinked my eyes open.

  I’d already woken up several times in the strange, hot, shifting night, but made myself stay in bed. That was the nice thing to do. Now the light in Theo’s bedroom was soft morning gray and I could see the fig tree branches pressed against his window, their leaves still wet from last night
’s rain.

  I turned in the bed.

  Theo lay facing the wall. His back rose and fell with each breath. He had a cluster of moles on his shoulder blade. I’d never seen them before.

  What was I doing?

  I took a deep breath, then slipped out of bed.

  I stood naked in the middle of the room, considering.

  I decided to start by looking behind the radiator, where he had kept the photograph of his grandmother. There was nothing there; even the picture was gone.

  I looked through his bag, the one he carried to class each day. It only held two chemistry textbooks, three condoms, two stubby pencils, and a blue notebook. The notebook was filled with his tiny, neat handwriting and a lot of diagrams I didn’t understand.

  His handwriting reminded me of Baby’s. I closed the notebook quickly.

  I slid open Theo’s desk drawers, but inside were only more pencils, condoms, lab notes, old graded reports, and erasers arranged in neat little rows. I flipped through the reports. None of them looked particularly interesting.

  Theo shifted in bed and sighed. I froze. But his eyes were still shut, his mouth open and slack. I closed the desk drawers quietly.

  I opened his dresser drawers next. But my hands hesitated over his clothes. His Tshirts were soft and human against my touch. When I pressed them to my nose, they didn’t just smell like Catherine, but a little warm and lemony, too. Like Theo.

  I started to put the shirts back. But as I did, my fingers brushed against something hard, there in the back of the drawer. I pulled it out.

  A white keycard.

  I held it up to the dim sunlight. The card was blank, completely unmarked. But I knew what it was.

  I slipped it back into the drawer. I placed Theo’s shirts over it.

  I crawled back into the bed. Theo stirred sleepily, mumbled something, then reached for me. I slipped into his arms. I let him hold me.

  Year Three

  The Wedding

  “This,” Diego said, “is our last September.”

  The two of us were bundled up in blankets on the Ashley terrace. We were supposed to be diagramming poetry for our Modern American Poetry class, but mostly we’d passed the time drinking pear cider, eating bananas, and watching the evening fall. Amber sunlight flashed through the pines and a brittle breeze tousled Diego’s hair. The muss made him look younger than usual.