Gossip of the Starlings

by Nina de Gramont

  “You know I won’t.”

  We heard a creak from across the way and turned our heads to see an adult form leaving the dining hall. We dove under the bleachers as the floodlights turned on.

  It was Mrs. Riley, the algebra teacher. A midnight snack? An escape from her gruesome husband? Either way, she was no Ms. Latham or Mr. November. She had been teaching at Esther Percy since Armistice Day and had been one of the strongest opponents of abandoning school uniforms. If she saw us she would not turn her head the other way, but take chase.

  “Hush,” Skye whispered, and we stifled laughter at the unnecessary warning. We crawled away from the field, to where the grass grew deeper. Skye slithered like a snake, but I had to push up on my knees, sidling awkwardly like a fiddler crab. At the Assembly Hall, we pressed our backs against the wall and skulked around the other side.

  Our shirtfronts were covered in mud. Brown streaked across Skye’s face, and little drops hung from her hair. Even in the poor light, I could see my cast had turned soggy and brown.

  We crept along the wall and waited, till Mrs. Riley’s sad steps had receded. Then we clasped hands and ran toward White Cottage. It was easier to run, with Skye’s weight balancing me on the other side. The air felt light and blooming.

  I didn’t need to ride Pippin. I didn’t need ribbons and trophies and the National Horse show. I didn’t need John Paul. I barely even needed Susannah. Not as long as I had this.

  And I don’t know if it occurred to me, that in fact Skye had rendered me exactly as she wanted. Forgiving, unencumbered by loftier goals—my broken arm limiting all concentration to her.

  But I am fairly certain it didn’t occur to Skye. Otherwise, I think, she would have told me.

  BACK IN MY ROOM, I unveiled the coke. We pulled out the toaster oven and found my razor blade. Because of my arm, the work was all Skye’s. She cut and fanned and told me that Eleanor had moved into another dorm, taking over the room of a third-form girl who’d been sent home for cheating on midterms.

  “She won’t even talk to me,” Skye said. “Like it’s my fault that guy was a psycho.”

  She filled me in on Mr. November, whom she’d stopped visiting. “He’s too broken up about his dad’s dying,” she said. “It’s made him crazy. He thinks he’s in love with me, which is the last thing I wanted. And of course he’s still dying to have intercourse. So I blew him off, and now he keeps showing up at my dorm room. He throws rocks at the window, like he thinks he’s Romeo. Sooner or later somebody’s going to hear him.”

  I sat on my bed, tapping my feet in a clear, sweet rhythm.

  “I’m so glad I’m here tonight,” Skye said. “I’ve got to get away from him. He’s really nuts. And I can’t turn him in, because think of where that would leave me. That’s the last thing my dad needs, right?”

  My feet stopped tapping. A droplet of the old chill returned.

  “Mr. November knows about the coke,” I reminded her.

  She held up the toaster oven, offered me another line. I took the straw and inhaled, as if it would make my thinking clearer.

  “He knows about it,” I said, “and Eleanor knows.”

  “Oh, Eleanor. The last thing I’d worry about is that mouse. And let me tell you, Mr. November would get in a lot more trouble than us if anything about this came out.”

  I nodded. We, after all, were the golden treasures—entrusted to Esther Percy’s care and woe to them if any harm befell us, especially at the hands of their faculty. Mr. November would have done better to rob Fort Knox than put his hands on Skye.

  So I swept my trepidation aside. Why think about repercussions? When I felt so purely invincible—the good drugs back in my body, and my friendship with Skye restored.

  17

  MR. NOVEMBER LOOKED on the brink of disintegration. Skye would sit resolutely in her seat, chewing the end of her pencil and staring at the table. She stopped raising her hand, leaving too much silence in the room. The knot of Mr. November’s tie always looked wrinkled at the edges, pulled too small and tight. His face rebelled against shaving with screaming red dots, matching his bloodshot eyes. His hands had acquired a little tremor, and he gave up writing on the board altogether.

  I couldn’t help it. I felt sorry for him. At the same time I felt indignant on behalf of Mrs. November, that he hadn’t exhibited nearly this level of heartbreak on her behalf.

  He would pause in the middle of lectures and stare hopelessly across the table at Skye, his chin quivering like he might start crying. She would frown and tap her pencil, refusing to look up. The other girls couldn’t possibly have missed it.

  “Mr. November,” Laura prodded one morning, when his silence had gone on too long. “You were saying?”

  “Right, right.” He fanned miserably through his text, searching for his lost thought, then slammed the book shut and dismissed us early.

  “Let’s go to town for lunch,” Skye said, closing the door to the English building.

  She had foresworn hitchhiking, but the early dismissal gave us time to walk. After a series of rainstorms, the weather had finally turned fair. Slits of color quivered under blossoms and white flowers opened in clover patches.

  At the foot of Percy Hill Road, I opened the door to the general store, its collection of cowbells clanging.

  “No, no,” Skye said, shaking her head. “Let’s go there.” She pointed across the street, to the Sheepshead Tavern.

  “I don’t think I have enough money,” I said, assuming I’d have to pay for both of us.

  “My treat,” she said. I raised my eyebrows, and Skye laughed. “Seriously,” she said. “Come on. You’re nothing but skin and bones.”

  We ate rare burgers with bleu cheese, and thick cottage fries. I used my sister Claire’s old student ID to order a beer and a shot of vodka. I poured the latter into Skye’s Pepsi.

  “You don’t look anything like her,” Skye said, studying the card. “Does your other sister have blonde hair?”

  “No,” I said. “Nobody but me and my father. He did, anyway, when he was younger.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Old. Sixty something.”

  Skye whistled. She looked at Claire’s picture again. “Is this what your mother looks like?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “A little bit. My mom’s prettier, I think. And older, obviously.”

  “Tell me something about her,” Skye said.

  “I’m her favorite,” I said, surprising myself.

  Skye laughed.

  “No, really,” I said. “Everybody knows. They joke about it all the time.”

  Skye’s only child sensibility was horrified and fascinated.

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t stop there. Tell me something else.”

  “I had another brother,” I said. “He had blond hair, like me. At least when he was little. He died before I was born. He was four.”

  The waitress brought the bill, sliding the faux leather bill holder onto the table. Skye watched me, her hands on either side of her plate.

  “How did he die?” Skye said.

  “He drowned at a birthday party. A pool party. My mother went to pick him up and they were trying to resuscitate him. But he was dead. My sister told me my mom refused to leave or let them move him. They had to sedate her before they could take him away.”

  “God,” Skye said. “That’s very intense. What was his name?”

  “Marc.”

  “And you never even met him,” Skye said. “That’s so weird.”

  I didn’t want to continue. I wished I hadn’t told her. It was too hard to talk about, too personal and complicated. The information was so intrinsic, and yet so strangely unemotional. Pressed for information, I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Does Susannah know?” Skye said.

  “Of course. She’s been in my house a million times. There are pictures, all that.”

  “But you didn’t tell her.”

  “No
t expressly, I guess.”

  “What about John Paul?”

  “I think Susannah told him. He does know. Maybe I told him.”

  I knew that I hadn’t. Susannah always imparted this information for me. And what did it matter? I’d never known Marc. He hardly had anything to do with me. I wished I hadn’t said anything.

  Skye put her hand over mine. “I’m glad you told me,” she said. She picked up the check folder and slipped a credit card inside.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s that?”

  I pulled it toward myself, and Skye slapped her hand down on top of it.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Your father gave you a credit card?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The waitress came by and asked if we were ready. Skye handed her the bill.

  “We better hurry,” Skye said, looking at her watch. “We’re going to be late.”

  I stayed quiet on the walk back up to school, my head foggy as if I’d drunk four beers instead of one—the illuminated pre-hangover glow, from the unaccustomed rush of information. Which had buoyed Skye so much that I myself felt weightless. I wondered why I had told her. Not because I trusted her, necessarily. More because I had wanted to give her a gift. And even though I didn’t particularly like the way she had received it, I felt an odd sort of philanthropy. Like I had given her something she desperately needed at my own expense. I reminded myself to remember this feeling—its pros and cons—if the need to confide, to anyone, ever gripped me again.

  The two of us walked up the hill, past the very spot where I’d broken my arm. If the site still haunted Skye she gave no signs, picking up her pace as the bells tolled class, and we both breathed in the thin and fragrant spring air.

  •••

  SUSANNAH’S LETTERS AND phone calls had tapered off. I imagined her preoccupied with the coming trip to Venezuela, the danger and the excitement, gathering contributions from fellow students. I imagined meals in the dining hall at Waverly: her and Drew, John Paul and his new girlfriend. The four of them laughing and full of secrets. I pictured Susannah and Regan, friends now. The spirit of our foursome retained—one of its members easily replaced. Susannah using Skye to justify her own shift in allegiance.

  My own Easter break loomed dismally, the first school vacation of my life that would not revolve around horses. And then Skye invited me to spend the week on Cape Cod. I knew my father would say no. On the rare occasions he trained his radar on my friends and me, his natural pessimism struck with precision accuracy. He had enough information on Skye to want me far away from her. What I didn’t expect was for my mother to agree with him.

  “Your arm, chérie,” she objected, when I called to ask. “You need to be at home, where we can take care of you. Make sure that you heal properly.”

  I reported the bad news to Skye.

  “I’ll have my father call,” she said. She’d just received a package from L.L. Bean and sat on Eleanor’s stripped bed, cutting open the box with an X-Acto blade. I watched as she sorted through piles of plastic wrapped sweaters and turtlenecks, flannel pajamas and duck boots.

  A few days later, a girl ran up to my room, breathless, pounding on my door.

  “Call for you in the student lounge.”

  I ran down the stairs and across the lawn. While the pay phone’s receiver dangled off its hook, my mother waited patiently—staring through the window at our newly blossoming apple trees.

  I picked up the phone, too breathless to speak. My mother didn’t wait for me to gather my breath before granting permission. “We’ll tell your father you’ve gone on holiday with Susannah and her mother,” she said.

  I waited for her to add some sort of endearment—her usual signal that acting as my accomplice caused her no trouble. Instead I heard her sigh, slightly weary. And then she said, because she knew I was waiting: “Have fun, chérie. I’ll miss you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pushing the discomfort far, far down. So that guilt could in no way interfere with the coming week, its promised adventures necessary as air.

  18

  EASTER WEEK OF 1985, in Sesuit on Cape Cod. That rarity of rarities—early spring in New England.

  I could have had my own room, but that would have kept us too far apart. We slept together in Skye’s wide bed under the eaves, a world away from her parents, whom we saw only in passing—glints of their hands, waving good-bye as we sped through the house on our way into each day’s halcyon light.

  The sun went easy on us. Temperatures that forbade chill, even when we tied a plastic bag around my arm and dove into the frigid water, screaming as we ran back out. We paddled kayaks to Sandy Neck, looking for whales. We smuggled good wine up to Skye’s room, then crept back out, riding our bikes to Maushop Lake. We tried to skinny-dip under a full silver moon, but the still water was nearly as cold as the ocean, and we bundled back into our damp clothes, shivering. We had brought the coke along, and sprinkled it like salt onto the sides of our thumbs, snorting it off damp skin. Then sat on the pier, talking at warp speed, our sentences tumbling out and crashing together, blending. My cast already ruined, fetid and violently itchy.

  We brought our tape player down to the bluff, blasting “Sugar Magnolia” and dancing on the sand in mad, whirling circles.

  “Did you call my name?” she asked. “That night I was missing?”

  “No,” I said. “We didn’t think you’d hear.”

  “Don’t you know how sound carries across the water?”

  She cupped her hands around her mouth and called her own name across the wide, black bay.

  “You see?” she said, turning back to me. “They heard that all the way over in Ireland.”

  We threw off our shoes and ran into the waves—freezing water washing over our knees.

  “Skye,” we shouted, the music blaring behind our voices. “Skye!”

  The word reverberated out into the night, as we waited with illogical expectancy for some manner of reply.

  THE NEXT MORNING I introduced Skye to John Paul’s mushrooms—spreading them into thick peanut butter sandwiches, which we choked down with determined grimaces—before we bicycled all the way to Provincetown.

  The world spun by in threads of gray, blue, green: swirls of tree-tops, cloud formations, and passing cars. We stashed our bikes in the dunes and made our way down Commercial Street. The good weather and Easter weekend had only barely wakened the town from its winter hibernation. A scattered collection of tourists, cross-dressers, and scowling old Yankees made their way down the sidewalk, blinking into the sunlight. We saw three little girls eating ice-cream cones and realized we were starving. Up a flight of warped wooden stairs we found ourselves on a rooftop, eating fried clams and french fries under a green umbrella, the sea assaulting all five senses no matter which way we turned. From across the table, Skye looked as if she’d been spun from seaweed—rippling mermaid hair and eyes the color of algae. As the waiter presented the check we dissolved into uncontrollable laughter, at the preposterous notion of his accepting mere paper in exchange for our fried feast.

  Afterward, we wandered back out to the street and found the source of the ice cream. Skye ordered a strawberry cone, I ordered chocolate. We traded halfway through.

  “Nothing has ever tasted this good,” Skye said. “Nothing will ever taste this good again.”

  “Don’t think like that,” I said, and grasped her hand. She nodded obediently, her chin tilted into the breeze. Her face solemn but entirely open. Eager to drink up whatever moments came next.

  Fewer people now. The sky began to pulse from purple to blue. We walked out to the lighthouse and dared each other to dive off Cape Cod’s fingertips—that easternmost point on the continental United States. With the sun gone, we both shivered slightly, and to my surprise even Skye backed down. At some point boys appeared, also on Easter vacation—presumed handsome because of the way their skin reflected moonlight, but never clearly seen. Our hands held bottles of beer, the world c
almed to thrilling perfection. We each retired to a different length of sand, a different stranger’s cold bare hands beneath our T-shirts. I willed myself not to long for John Paul and lost myself in the salty skin of another tribesman.

  Then Skye tickled my feet, and I rolled the boy off of me. We said our good-byes and made our escape, traveling back to the bicycles, wobbling back over hours and hours, sneaking into the palatial house as dawn crept over the windowsills. Pretending when we woke—the sun high and bright over the ocean—that we’d returned, as promised, before midnight.

  I suppose there’s no way to explain. That all of this—in its own odd and natural way—seemed magical and wholesome as the Hundred Acre Wood.

  THE SAME DAY Susannah and Drew boarded their flight to Venezuela, Skye and I returned to Esther Percy. Letters from colleges had arrived. I got into Amherst, Bryn Mawr, and Middlebury and was wait-listed at Dartmouth and Cornell. I opened the letters one at a time, surprised at my lack of excitement or disappointment. Any future of my own still seemed such an abstraction; I barely considered these choices or imagined myself at any of these schools.

  Skye got into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Oxford. “Merit scholarships,” she said. We stood in line for milk lunch, the graham crackers and boxes of milk served at a dining-hall window every morning at ten. “I wonder if I’ll be allowed to use them. I just want to feel like I’m paying my own way.”

  I understood this. But still it seemed a terrible waste—when tuition to private universities would be such a painless expense for the Butterfields. I hoped Skye’s money would fund someone more financially deserving—someone like John Paul. But I didn’t say anything.

  “It would be nice to go to Oxford,” Skye said. “Somewhere far away where I could start over. Where nobody knows who my father is.”

  “Or who you are,” I said, imagining her exotic status. Even without the preexisting renown, she would become instantly famous: the redheaded American girl who quoted Shakespeare.

  “But Harvard’s a good school, too,” she said, and we laughed.