Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  Cady nodded frantically, willing him to just leave. “Go, please.”

  “All right then.” Nikos awkwardly backed out of the room, clicking the door shut behind him, leaving the three of them standing in a triangle, stunned silent. Tension permeated the air in the hospital room like the scent of disinfectant, and the beeping of Cady’s machines was the only sound in the room, counting off each awkward second.

  52

  After Cady was released from UHS, her mother insisted she come rest in her hotel room at the Charles instead of her dorm room, at which Cady had to stifle her delight. It was essential that she keep her parents far away from her roommates, and Cady herself wasn’t keen on seeing them anyway. It wasn’t until her parents pressed different buttons in the hotel elevator that Cady realized they were staying in separate rooms. Her father’s floor came up first; her mother held the elevator door with her arm while he hugged Cady goodbye. Now that he had seen she was all right, he was going back to the partners’ retreat, reluctantly. The doors tried to close twice before he let go of her. He did not say goodbye to her mother. It was the first time their separation felt real to Cady, even if no one was acknowledging it.

  Cady remembered how much her parents had fought during Eric’s illness. Even when Eric was away at school, he was the unending source of tension in their home. Her parents’ differing views on his treatment crystallized the incompatibility in their personalities, and each felt the stakes were too high to compromise. Eventually, they coexisted in the house by inhabiting separate areas, like neighborhood cats with distinct territories; her father had the upstairs office, and sometimes he’d watch TV in their bedroom after dinner, while her mother would sit at the kitchen island late into the night with her reading glasses on her head, squinting at her laptop where she invariably had multiple tabs open of online support forums for schizophrenia. If her father so much as came downstairs to get a glass of water, an argument could break out. They took turns starting it. Cady’s mind replayed one she had overheard from the living room:

  “Amateur MD.com, again?” her father started in.

  Her mother didn’t so much as look up. “The Respiridone is bothering him. I’m seeing if anyone else had similar reactions and can recommend alternatives.”

  “Please remember they’re online commenters, Internet access doesn’t confer a medical degree.”

  “People on here share insights based on experience. Someone just shared a link to a scientific study that shows nutritional supplements like omega-3—”

  “Nutritional supplements? He’s battling schizophrenia, not the freshman fifteen.”

  “Don’t belittle what you know nothing about. You have no idea the time it takes to research every medication, cross-check drug interactions, but somebody has to do it. How many of the articles that I sent have you actually read? You don’t get to criticize me when you do nothing to help.”

  “A doctor cross-checks drug interactions, and no, I won’t help you undermine his professional treatment with holistic mumbo-jumbo. Modern medicine is not the enemy, Kare, it’s our son’s only chance at a normal life. Good medicine can have bad side effects. If he had cancer, would you have him opt out of chemo because he didn’t like losing his hair?”

  “This isn’t cancer. Treatment for mental illness is not so black-and-white. We have to be his advocate.”

  “Your ‘advocacy’ is enabling him to stay sick.”

  “How can you say that to me? I’m fighting for his life. If he’s miserable on the meds, he’ll stop taking them, we’ve seen that again and again.”

  “Then we show him there are consequences. If he doesn’t take the meds, we threaten to stop paying for school.”

  “School is the only positive in his life. ‘Find the wellness within the illness,’ remember? It’s his sole motivation.”

  “All the more reason to use that as leverage.”

  “Leverage? He’s not an asset, he’s our son. And he’s not nine years old, we can’t ground him if he disobeys. Bottom line, if he views us as the enemy, he’ll cut us out of his life. He’ll hate us.”

  “He can hate me if it keeps him healthy. That’s called being a parent. I swear sometimes I think you just don’t want him to be mad at you. You don’t like when he pushes you away.”

  “Because then I can’t reach him!”

  Ding. The elevator doors opened. Both Cady and her mother took a beat to exit.

  Their hotel room was air-conditioned like a meat locker. Her mother rushed to the thermostat and pushed it up to eighty. “We can lower it once it warms up.” Cady, still headachy, sat on the crisply made bed as her mother puttered around the room, turning the TV on to Cady’s favorite channel and hunting down the room service menu so they could order something to eat. Instead of the usual hotel art of landscapes or abstracts, their room featured a mock blackboard with complicated mathematical calculations. It reminded her of the earlier calculations in Eric’s notebook. Cady was all but discouraged from believing the coordinates would yield any meaningful insight into Eric’s psyche. The more likely scenario seemed to be that his notes would be one more wild goose chase. But the last remaining breadcrumb beckoning her onward was that the fact the final coordinate location was the only one on the list without a check mark beside it. If she was correct that the check marks meant the exchange had been completed, she held out hope that whatever Eric had left in the final spot had never been retrieved and remained there. But if she wanted to go and find it, she’d need to overcome a greater challenge: her mother.

  “Did you decide what you want?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Cady said, glancing at the menu for the first time. One thing was for certain, her mother wasn’t going to relax until she ate something. “Can I get a wedge salad and a side of fries?”

  While her mother was ordering for them, Cady checked her cellphone. She was expecting to have some confused or angry texts from Nikos, but there were none—that was worse. She felt terrible for how humiliated he must have been when her father had accused him, falsely, of having unprotected sex with her. Cady fired off an email to Nikos from her phone, apologizing for involving him in her lie. She didn’t explain what had really landed her in the hospital, only that she was “caught in a bind” and “had to tell them something,” but that she had never meant to hurt or embarrass him. It was short and woefully inadequate, but she hoped taking responsibility could be a Band-Aid until they had a chance to talk in person, and until she had time to think of a better lie.

  Her mother hung up the room phone. “They said thirty minutes, which means forty-five. Can you wait that long? We could look in the minibar—”

  “I’m fine.” Cady picked at the adhesive that remained on her arm from the IV. “I think I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Make it a bath, will you? You could still be lightheaded from whatever made you sick this morning, and the steam will only make it worse. I don’t want you to have two concussions in twelve hours.”

  Sometimes mothers were right.

  Cady got into the tub as it filled and lay limp, watching the water slowly rise and swallow her toes first, then her kneecaps, until the hot water enveloped her. She thought of her mother’s words: ‘whatever made you sick.’ She was sick. She was an Archer, after all, and it wasn’t psychic powers that ran in her bloodline, it was self-destruction. But self-destruction is a misnomer; it leaves too much collateral damage in its wake. She turned the water off with her foot and looked around the sterile, white tile of the hotel bathroom. A small hair-dryer hung on the wall in its holster like a loaded gun. She slipped her head underwater and listened to the sound of her beating heart. She thought of Whit in the ocean and imagined what it felt like to drown. She wondered if it hurt more or less than it did to lose your child. Or to burn alive. Or to be betrayed. Or any of the horrors meted out on those around her while she stood by and watched.

  Yet her lungs
bucked. Her body wanted to breathe, to fight, to live. She came up for air.

  She lacked the nerve.

  Cady washed her body and gingerly shampooed and conditioned her sore head. She dipped her head underwater again, this time to rinse, when she heard murmuring sounds in the shape of her name.

  Her head broke the surface of the water. “Mom, in here,” she called out, wiping the water from her eyes.

  Her mother was already in the bathroom, her eyes wide with alarm. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” She immediately regretted the bath for what it must have looked like.

  “I called, you didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t hear you, I’m fine.”

  Her mother nodded, her smile fragile. “The food’s here.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right out.”

  “Let me help you, I’m worried you’ll slip.” Her mother held open a clean towel.

  Cady obliged, holding her mother’s hand as she stepped out of the tub and letting her wrap her in the oversized bath sheet.

  Her mother rubbed her shoulders through the towel. “This reminds me of when you were little. You loved the bath.”

  “I did?”

  She nodded. “Eric was a handful, he would not leave the faucet knobs alone. I was so afraid he’d scald himself, I had to practically hold his arms down while I bathed him. But you would play quietly, sing yourself little songs. I could barely get you out of there when you were all pruny. You were such a good baby.”

  “Mom.” Cady lowered her head, she couldn’t look her mother in the eye. “I’m so sorry. I know how scary it must have been to get another emergency call from Harvard, that was the last thing I wanted.”

  “Shh, shh,” her mother said, brushing Cady’s hair out of her eyes the way she had since Cady was a child. “Look at me.” Her blue eyes matched Cady’s own. “You’re all right, and that’s all that matters. I’ll drive here every day for good news.”

  Cady shook her head. “I messed up.”

  “Please, messing up with boys? Finally, a problem I know something about.” Her mother laughed. “So what’s the story with Nikos? He is handsome. Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No, but I like him.” Cady wrung out her hair.

  “Well, that was more tepid than this bathwater. I’m old, not stupid.”

  “I’m not sure. He’s smart and funny. And he cared about Eric, and that didn’t scare him off from caring about me. But … I liked someone else more.”

  “Aw, baby.” Her mother rubbed her shoulders again. “Then forget him. Who’s the one you like?”

  Cady shook her head, fighting a lump in her throat. “He’s gone.”

  “Nobody’s gone. You have to fight for your man.” Her mother helped her into one of the hotel bathrobes. “Your father was dating a horrible woman when I first met him. I didn’t let him cheat with me, but believe me, I did everything but to show him what he was missing. I had to save him from himself.”

  “And what about now?” Cady said softly. “Dad got an apartment?”

  Her mother waved her off. “Now, it’s not so simple. I don’t want to live with me anymore. I don’t know how he lasted this long.” She gave a tired smile. “Let’s eat. We’ve had enough drama for one weekend, and I only just arrived.”

  Cady dug into the fries while her mother flipped through the TV movie options to find one that Cady would like. Her mother had never been so solicitous or tender with her, and as much as Cady had longed for it, she couldn’t enjoy it knowing it came from such a painful place. As much as she wanted to let her mom be there for her, she felt like she was exploiting her mother’s trauma. Being at Harvard reminded her mother of losing Eric, that was why this version of her mother—attentive, focused, doting—came out. It was for him. Not for her.

  “What?” her mom asked. “You’re staring at me.”

  “You look so different with the red hair.”

  “Different good?” Her mom fluffed her bangs.

  “Really good. But you’ve been a blonde for so long, I have to get used to it. What made you change it?”

  “I knew Parents’ Weekend was coming up, and I want everyone to know who my baby is.” She smiled. “Do you know what events they have planned?”

  Cady shook her head, still unable to speak for the emotion welling up inside her.

  “Maybe there’s some talk of it in here.” Her mother reached for the copy of The Crimson, the Harvard newspaper. The paper was ubiquitous throughout the hotel, set outside each door along with USA Today and The New York Times. Her mother peered down at the bottom of the front page and rummaged in her purse for her reading glasses. With them on, she looked at the paper again. “They’re presenting the Bauer Award tomorrow?”

  Cady watched her mother’s face as if it was a spinning coin. She cleared her throat. “Don’t read it if it’s going to upset you.”

  But her mother went on reading it anyway. “Nikos is here.”

  “Yeah, he’s probably going to win it.”

  “And you said he was friends with Eric?”

  “Best friends, other than Matt.”

  “I don’t really remember Eric talking about him.”

  “I think there were a lot of things Eric wasn’t telling us about.” Like the coordinates she so desperately wanted to check out. She checked the time on her phone. It would be dark soon.

  Her mom folded up the paper and touched Cady’s hand. “I hope you feel like you can talk to me.”

  “There is something.” Cady hated doing what she was about to do, especially at this moment, but she didn’t see another way. “I have been seeing a therapist on campus, a nice guy named Greg. Not because of anything bad, don’t worry, just to deal with my grief. He’s been really helpful. And with everything that happened today, and this news about you and Dad, I think I need to talk to him. I emailed him from the hospital, and he said he’s free. Is that okay with you if I go do that? I’ll only be gone an hour or so, and I’ll come right back.”

  Her mother looked shocked, but she recovered quickly. “Of course, of course. I support that one hundred percent. Do you need me to drive you to his office?”

  “Nope, it’s only a few blocks. I think the fresh air would do me good.”

  To Cady’s surprise and relief, she agreed. Cady got dressed, got her schoolbag, and said goodbye to her mother. Her mom hugged her one last time and watched her leave from the hotel room door. When Cady was halfway down the hallway, her mother called out her name. Cady looked back.

  “I’m proud of you.”

  Cady had to bite her lip until the elevator doors closed.

  53

  “Eric, you’re kidding me.” Cady had followed the map to within two hundred feet of the final coordinate location and realized he wasn’t sending her to First Parish Church after all. Instead, she found herself outside the wrought-iron fence of a dilapidated cemetery she had somehow never noticed before at the corner of Mass Ave and Garden Street. Gray headstones, chipped and stained by time, jutted from the ground like loose teeth, and the interred were guarded by ancient pine trees and a skeletal canopy of barren oaks. The destination dot on her locator app blinked cheerfully from somewhere among the graves. The perimeter fence bore two signs, a pretty blue one from the Cambridge Historical Commission that read:

  old burying ground

  burial place of early settlers

  tory landowners and slaves

  soldiers—presidents of harvard

  and prominent men of cambridge

  1635

  and a dingy aluminum one with graffiti only half cleaned off:

  no loitering

  no trespassing

  between

  dusk

  &

  dawn

  In other words, don’t enter after dark. And it was dusk now
. But they hadn’t locked the gate yet, the cemetery was deserted, and none of the people hurrying past her on the sidewalk seemed to be looking up from their phones. The destination dot wasn’t far; if she didn’t hesitate, maybe she could be in and out quickly. She imagined Eric got a kick out of this sign, and this place. She tried to channel his enjoyment of all things peculiar instead of letting it unnerve her.

  Cady gave a heavy sigh to exhale her anxiety. She had no ghosts to keep her company this time. She would have to make this final leg of the journey on her own.

  She slipped through the iron gate and followed the narrow, overgrown footpath sharply to the right, farther from view of the adjacent church. Eric must have had the same idea; the dot blinked toward the far end of the cemetery, among the denser foliage near Garden Street. If she hugged the perimeter of the fence, in a passing glance, it might look as if she was on the sidewalk outside it. She kept a swift pace and didn’t slow down until she was less than fifty feet from her destination.

  While the GPS recalibrated to her new position, Cady observed her surroundings. The smallest headstones seemed to be the colonial ones, although she had to guess for many of them, as time had worn down the tombstone so much that any engraving was completely erased. She passed two tall headstones side by side marked only with the stark titles mother and father. But the eighteenth-century ones were engraved with elaborate designs that were in equal measure beautiful and disquieting. One tombstone that looked delicate with scalloped edges and a floral border nevertheless featured a winged skull with empty eyes and a toothy grimace. She squatted down to read the epitaph below the skull:

  in memory of mrs. elizabeth barrett.

  wife of mr. thomas barrett who departed this life

  april 17th 1785 aged 41 years.

  April, Cady thought, fucking April. Then she saw a small line added to the bottom:

  also john barrett their son died november 7th 1784

  aged 11 months.

  So her baby died first. Perhaps she died of grief. Cady said a little prayer for Bilhah.