“Anybody home?” Lenore said.
As if in answer to her question, the phone rang. For privacy, the dorm extension was tucked into a sort of closet off the common room, and Lenore hesitated a moment, a second ring pealing off now, the sound muted because the door to the phone closet was closed. Among the residents of Thornton Hall, it was a point of honor that the phone should never go unanswered, so Lenore turned and hustled over.
“Hello?” she said, but all she heard was static. “Hello?”
The phone was mounted on the wall, an old, decommissioned pay phone that no longer required money to make a call. There was no chair, and the cord was too short to sit on the floor, the idea being that if the girls couldn’t get comfortable they’d keep their conversations brief. All around her, the walls were scribbled with phone numbers and doodles and cryptic epigrams. Someone had written Colin McRose has genital warts, someone else Dear God help me please. Lenore hung up and started for the stairs, but the phone rang again when she reached the landing. She let it ring three times before dashing back to pick it up. “Hello?” she said, but there was just more static on the line, the sound like wind or whispers. She banged the phone onto its cradle and hurried to the second floor.
A marker board on Grace and Bunny’s door counted down the days until spring break. Only fifteen left. Most of the girls were headed off to Kiawah or Nags Head or Tybee Island, family homes at the beach, but a few of the girls had more exotic plans—Bermuda, Antibes. Lenore had told her mother she’d been invited to spend spring break in DC with the Chens. Her mother loved Melissa. So polite, so studious. Lenore’s father had relocated to Boston with his new wife, Willow, and their twin boys, Matt and Sam. He wasn’t interested in her spring break plans. She’d made an appointment at a clinic on E Street. She would check into a hotel, show up for the procedure, spend the rest of the week watching pay-per-view and ordering room service. Her grandmother, her father’s mother, had opened a savings account for her the year she was born, and nobody ever bothered to check the balance except Lenore. She would withdraw enough to cover her expenses but not enough to call attention to the transaction, and she would pay for everything in cash, like in the movies. She planned to phone home every couple of days to keep her mother at ease. If she got caught, all she had to do was cook up another lie, maybe something about a Georgetown boy, something punishment-worthy but less complicated than the truth.
She checked the bathroom. Peeked into showers, toilet stalls. Somebody had left her retainer on the ledge above the sink. The fluorescents flickered and hummed. The phone rang again as Lenore stepped into the hall. She held her breath and counted the rings. Six rings, seven. After eleven, the phone went quiet and she exhaled. She stood at the door of her room, shaking her arms loose at her sides, the way she did when she was waiting for the ref to pass her the ball before a free throw.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
She knelt to fish the Ouija board from under Juliet’s bed.
“Oh spirits,” she moaned, but the campfire solemnity of her voice made her wince. She decided to dispense with the spooky rigmarole. She cleared her throat and began again. “It’s me. It’s Lenore Littlefield. Sorry to bother you. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do. Or maybe you don’t. Now that I’m thinking about it, being dead is probably pretty boring.”
Elizabeth Archer wasn’t the only ghost allegedly haunting the school. Briarwood Manor was supposed to be vexed by the one-legged phantom of a Union colonel who’d died on an operating table in the dining room. And Norma Blackford, for whom the freshman and sophomore dorm was named, was rumored to appear to students on occasion, especially when they were engaged in unladylike behavior such as gossip or masturbation. And Pal, a former headmaster’s beloved springer spaniel, was reputed to roam the grounds at night, though she didn’t suppose you could contact a ghost dog with a Ouija board, assuming you could contact anything with a Ouija board besides your inner dork.
“I’ve only done this once before, so give me a break if I do something wrong. The last time I did this you—one of you?—somebody spelled the word baby. Like you knew I was pregnant. Nobody else knows. I haven’t told anyone, not even the father. Especially not the father. And I was super careful with the test strips and everything. No way Juliet knows. It couldn’t have been her. Maybe I should ask if there are any spirits in the room?”
The phone started ringing again downstairs. Lenore kept talking. She didn’t know what else to do.
“This has been a weird week,” she said. “Day before yesterday, Coach Fink booted Thessaly from Jenny March and gave me the part, and now Juliet’s not speaking to me anymore. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care. It’s not like we had much to say before. And Juliet can be a pretty big chafe. I guess you know that as well as anyone, the way she’s bugging you all the time. Elizabeth, are you there? I need to know if what happened the other night was real. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know the deal. It’s like a trick you play on yourself, right. It was really me spelling the word without realizing it or whatever, but it didn’t feel like that. I was scared at first, but then I wasn’t anymore. I was sort of glad somebody knew. Is that crazy? Am I talking to myself? It would just be nice to know somebody’s listening.” She drummed her fingers on the planchette. “Hello?” Lenore said. “Is this thing on?” The phone stopped ringing. Lenore closed her eyes and held herself very still for a moment before returning the Ouija board to its box and shoving the box under the bed.
Outside, snow glittered on the bare branches of the oaks and crusted the roofs of buildings like icing on a display of day-old cakes. The ground was pocked with footprints, thousands and thousands of them, charting the progress of all the girls on campus from the dorms to the dining hall and from the dining hall to class and from class back to the dining hall for lunch. Lenore added her footprints to the multitude, the snow just deep enough to crumble into her saddle oxfords and wet her socks. She was halfway to the dining hall when Mr. Bishop’s dog came bounding up beside her. The dog shimmied and wagged, a tennis ball in his mouth. She heard Mr. Bishop’s voice from up the hill. “Pickett,” he was shouting. “Here, boy.” Pickett did not heed his call. Instead, he sat on his haunches and dropped the ball at her feet.
Mr. Bishop trotted over, his breath misting in the cold.
“Sorry about that.”
“No worries,” Lenore said. “I like dogs.”
She tried to hand him the ball, but he waved her off.
“He wants you to throw it.”
Pickett was swiping the ground with his tail, eyes fixed on Lenore. So she cocked her arm and let it fly. The ball sailed through the air, and Pickett bolted after it, his black coat a perfect contrast with the snow. He fetched it up and brought it back, clearly pleased with himself.
“I’ve got a break after fourth period,” Mr. Bishop said. “I usually let him run around a little.”
Pickett dropped the ball at her feet again.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Bishop?”
She could feel him staring at her, wondering about her. The thing about Mr. Bishop was, he wanted to teach you something. That wasn’t always the case. Some teachers wanted to entertain or impress you, some wanted you to like them, some just wanted you to behave for an hour and move along. But Mr. Bishop believed what he said in class. He was almost too earnest. Even now, he was giving her question more consideration that it deserved.
“I believe a place can be haunted,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. By the past or history or whatever. And people, too. People can be haunted. But if you mean actual spirits from the other side, then no, I don’t guess I do.”
Lenore wiggled her toes inside her shoes.
“Why do you ask?” he said.
“Oh, you know the stories about Thornton Hall.”
Mr. Bishop smiled. “Does this mean you’ve had a run-in with Elizabeth Archer?”
“I’m pregnant,” Lenore said.
She hadn’t meant
to tell him. She felt as startled by her revelation as Mr. Bishop looked, and she had the strange sensation that she might suddenly float up off the ground, her heels lifting out of the snow and then her toes, and she imagined gazing down on Mr. Bishop and his dog, a hovering ghost of herself.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said. “You have to promise.”
“Lenore,” he said.
“I’m serious, Mr. Bishop.”
She heard him say, “Lenore, wait. Lenore? We’re not finished talking about this, Lenore,” repeating her name like an incantation, like it had some power over her, but she was already leaving him behind. The dog padded after her for a few steps, but Mr. Bishop called him back, and this time he obeyed.
VIII
Most mornings, Pickett woke Bishop by panting in his face and thumping his tail against the nightstand, letting him know it was time to go outside. The following morning was no different. There passed a few dreamy minutes, as Bishop prepped the coffee maker and buttoned up his coat, when his mind remained empty but for the prospects of the day. He had a test to give in class—World War I through the Great Depression. And he wanted to get his hair cut before the barber closed. And he needed to swing by the liquor store in Manassas. And then he opened the door, and Pickett went tearing out into the snow, bounding and snuffling and high-stepping like a show horse, and Lenore’s secret came back to Bishop, his gaze sweeping over campus like he’d never seen this place before.
He went back inside to shower but realized, mid-shampoo, that he’d forgotten to bring Pickett inside with him. He wrapped himself in a towel and hurried out to collect Pickett, then dried and dressed, and he was tying his shoes when it occurred to him that he hadn’t rinsed the shampoo out of his hair. He had to start all over again, and he was running late by the time he made his way down to the quad. If not for the test, the morning might have been a disaster, but all he had to do was pace the aisles while his students scribbled in their blue books. He stewed in his discombobulation until fourth period, but Lenore finished her test early and bolted for lunch before Bishop had a chance to get her alone.
So he descended the stairs to the faculty lounge still bogged down in haziness and uncertainty. From the hive of cubbies on the wall he collected his mail—a catalogue from a textbook publisher, a flyer promoting campus movie night, an offer from a credit card company, and a memo from the office of the headmistress—then dumped the lot of it onto a pile of similar material in the trash. The memo from the office of the headmistress settled on top, and on second thought, Bishop picked it out and looked at it again.
To: Faculty, Staff, and Students
From: Office of the Headmistress
Date: March 4, 1994
Subject: Guest Speaker
All members of the Briarwood community are invited to an assembly at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 4, in the Beatrix Garvey Memorial Auditorium to hear remarks from Vernon Plank, Assistant Vice President, Disney Company, regarding the planned construction of the Disney’s America theme park. Refreshments will be served.
The faculty lounge was tucked down in the basement of Everett Hall, low-ceilinged and musty, ground-level windows leaking a shabby brown light regardless of the weather or the season, a quality of light in no way improved by three inches of snow heaped against the glass. Most of Bishop’s colleagues joined the students in the dining hall for lunch, but there was always a squad of brown baggers lurking in the basement. At a conference table littered with Tupperware and wads of cling wrap were Ida Hornbogen (Speech and Debate), Gay Lambert (Studio Art), Helena Griner (Music), and Pamela Sharp (Latin and Greek). Lionel Higgins (Art History) was slumped in a wingback chair reading the Washington Post, previously examined sections discarded on the coffee table. Nearest to Mr. Higgins, peppering a hard-boiled egg, was Angela Finch (Freshman English), her white bun pinned into place by what looked like a knitting needle. The vending machines, the copier, the coat rack, the coffee urn. That shabby brown light washed over everything and everyone, imbuing the scene before Bishop’s eyes with the permanence of a sepia-tinted photograph.
“Does anybody know what this is all about?” he said.
Angela Finch glanced up from her egg, her face webbed with fine lines like the insides of an antique vase.
“I believe it says we’re having a guest speaker, Lucas.”
“I can see that,” he said, “but it’s this afternoon. That’s not a lot of notice.”
From behind his newspaper, Lionel Higgins said, “I’ll wager this has to do with Eugenia Marsh. She’s caused quite a stir in the editorial pages. I’ll give her credit. That letter was articulate, if a hair melodramatic.”
Lionel Higgins was Bishop’s next-door neighbor. He was even older than Angela Finch. It was well known that he taught with his back to the class, facing a projector screen on which slides of famous works of art appeared and disappeared with a click of his thumb. Because of his ruined knees, he was always assigned a classroom on the first floor, and once in a while, when the weather was nice, his more daring students would quietly collect their backpacks and bail out through the open windows. Bishop supposed he couldn’t blame them, but the idea of old Mr. Higgins turning to face a half-empty room after his lecture made Bishop’s joints go weak.
“She was my student, you know,” said Angela Finch.
At the conference table, Ida Hornbogen swiveled in her chair, bunching the loose flesh under her chin. “One of many reasons I’d have thought you a more logical choice to direct the play, Angie. Not only is drama in your field but you taught the girl, for heaven’s sake. You knew her personally.”
Ida Hornbogen hailed from Marlborough, one of those small English towns that exported pride of place. She’d married a Virginia lawyer twenty years ago, had been teaching at Briarwood almost that long, but her accent remained unsullied. She dressed like an Englishwoman from the movies, especially this time of year—tweed skirts, cable-knit sweaters, thick wool tights. When she drank, she always told the same story about the writer Samuel Pepys, how he’d once stopped in Marlborough and enjoyed its hospitality so well he missed all the carriages to Bath.
Angela Finch held up a finger while she chewed, swallowed, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “She was quite good even then. She used to give me poems to read.”
“Easily distracted, though,” said Lionel Higgins. “Don’t forget, Angie, I taught her too. You don’t get all the credit. She had a fine eye, but she was prone to unproductive tangents in discussion.”
“That was just her creative spirit.”
Then Pamela Sharp chimed in, and Gay Lambert had an opinion about the play, and not one of them knew what Bishop knew. Not one of them could he turn to for advice about Lenore. He felt a stab of anger at Lenore for telling him, then an ooze of guilt for feeling angry. He scowled at the memo in his hand. Vernon Plank. The name sounded made up to Bishop—the gruff but lovable neighbor in one of Disney’s movies or, in this case, the slick corporate huckster come to sell them happy lies.
“I hear Coach Fink makes the cast stretch before rehearsal,” said Ida Hornbogen in her sly, British schoolmarm’s voice. “Perhaps they’ll perform in matching tracksuits.”
Laughter all around. Except from Bishop. He bought a Snickers from the machine and headed for the door. “Good-bye, Lucas,” Angela Finch called to his back. A poster requesting submissions for an essay contest in the Thorn, the student newspaper, hung along the wall in the stairwell. The deadline, Bishop noticed, had passed the week before.
Though he would have been unwilling to admit it, the news about Vernon Plank provided a welcome distraction for Bishop. He felt unstuck, the gears of his mind turning again in more familiar ways. He had a difficult time believing that Lionel Higgins was right about the reasons for Plank’s visit. An angry letter from a washed-up playwright, no matter how articulate or melodramatic, was unlikely to sound alarm bells down in Orlando or out in Pasadena or wherever Disney had its corporate headquarters, but the more he thought
about it, the more Bishop began to see why Disney might want to make its case at Briarwood. Beyond anonymous historians like himself and sad idealists like Eugenia Marsh, neither of whom presented much of a threat, the most likely opponents to a theme park in Prince William County were not the locals but the owners of the grand old houses in more affluent neighboring counties, the gentleman squires and fox-hunters and plantation dilettantes who’d bought up all the history in the first place. Those people wouldn’t want their property values in the tank or third-rate motels popping up all over the place or minivans clogging up the highways en route from God knows where. And did those landowners and weekend steeplechasers enroll their daughters in the nearby public schools? No indeed. They ponied up and shipped them off to places like Briarwood. Though he hadn’t heard much rumbling from his colleagues, it seemed to Bishop that Briarwood had a more immediate stake in this debate as well. No question a theme park would impact the region—massively, permanently—but it was hard to predict the long-term consequences of that impact for the school.
The hours until the final bell sludged by, the whisper of pens on blue books punctuated only by sporadic coughs and sniffles. Bishop tried to take advantage of the time by grading tests from previous classes. Eventually he forced himself to fish Lenore’s blue book from the stack. She missed a multiple-choice question about the Black Hand and another about the TVA. There were three essay topics to choose from. Lenore had written about the New Deal. “Leading up to the Great Depression, there were many problems in this country. The stock market crash was a primary cause but bank failures and drought also played a part. With the election of 1932, President Roosevelt set out to fix all that …,” and so on to the end, leaving her with a grade of 92. He should have been pleased. He read her essay a second time and then a third, not sure what he hoped to find.
At Briarwood School for Girls Page 5