She wonders if Harzenmoser is alive. What became of their beloved Mme. Hamidou? Mostly she wonders how Magnus Foley will look tomorrow. Will they reminisce about the night she lost her virginity? The beer fondue, the fighting raccoons? Cressida’s momentous fall?
By the time she arrives at his office on Thirty-Fourth, breathless from having walked too fast, she’s conjured him in her mind a dozen different ways—overweight and bald; silver-haired and debonair; openly gay with two earrings and a flamboyant lisp. She’s still got this dogged need to prove herself to him, so it would be a relief if he’s let himself go.
He’s got his own graphic design firm on the thirty-fourth floor, overlooking Gramercy Park. Kersti announces herself to the receptionist and is instructed to sit and wait on an uncomfortable orange couch—one of those pretentious, contemporary pieces that look more like a sculpture than furniture—and given a bottle of water with the orange and gray MAFD logo on it.
She waits about ten minutes before Magnus shows up, striding toward her with that cocky smile she’d almost forgotten. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a snug black T-shirt that looks like it would have to be peeled off. She realizes instantly that everything she imagined he would look like was wrong. He’s still gorgeous and youthful, a reminder that they’re still only in their thirties, even though most days she feels so much older. Or maybe weary is the better word. The truth is, there may still be plenty of time before thinning hair and paunchy middle sections, sagging body parts and reluctant surrender. Magnus’s skin is smooth and vibrant, he’s in good shape, and he has the same thick blond brush cut of two decades ago, which is somehow both a relief and demoralizing.
“Kuusk,” he says, still grinning, giving her an approving once-over.
“It’s Wax now.”
“How are you? Shit, it’s been, what? Like seventeen, eighteen years?” He hugs her and she smells soap in his skin, probably from a recent hand wash. “What the hell brings you here after all this time?”
“A couple of things, actually.”
“I get so many notes on Facebook from people from my past . . . I never expect anyone to actually show up.”
People from my past. Strange to realize that’s what she is, that they are this. He once fucked her on a rock in the woods and told her she was authentic and real. You sweet virgin.
“Anyway, you look great, Kuusk.”
She’s wearing skinny jeans with knee-high boots and a fitted leather jacket. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, which also acts as a de facto facelift. She hopes she looks good. “You, too,” she says, trying not to stare at him for too long.
She’s fourteen again, seeing him for the first time. Her pulse is thumping, her palms are clammy. What is it about him? What was it back then about both of them—Magnus and Cressida—that so powerfully attracted her, beyond their obvious good looks? Some intangible magnetism or special charisma that she wanted to attach herself to and absorb by association? Or, more disturbing, was it closer to a sadomasochistic instinct, knowing on some unconscious level that they were both dangerous for her and she would get hurt over and over again and still not be able to walk away? She suddenly feels compelled to resolve that for herself.
“You still haven’t said why you’re here,” he says, and she wonders if he even remembers having sex with her. Devirginizing her. If he does, he isn’t acting the least bit sheepish or embarrassed about how he handled things afterward.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” she asks him, glancing over at the receptionist. “I can come back—”
“Not necessary,” he says, leading her out of the office and back to the elevators. “Let’s grab coffee.”
He calls for the elevator and they wait for it in awkward silence. When it finally arrives, they look at each other with relief. “So how have you been?” he asks her, as soon as the doors close, trapping them inside together. “You’re still living in . . . ?”
“Toronto.”
“Right. What do you do there?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?” Most people assume when she says she’s a writer that she’s a copywriter, a dabbler in poetry, or someone who sits in Starbucks all day working on a screenplay that will never be finished.
“Novels,” she tells him. “Historical women’s fiction. Nothing you’d know.”
“Published?”
“Three so far.”
“Wow. Very cool.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well,” she returns, thinking of his view of Gramercy Park.
“I’m good at design,” he says, not elaborating.
Between uncomfortable stabs at small talk, they both stare up at the floor numbers as they descend to the lobby. She notices he’s not wearing a ring on his wedding finger. His status isn’t posted on Facebook, so she isn’t sure if there’s a Mrs. Foley.
“Kids?” he asks her.
“Not yet,” she says, avoiding the longer version of that answer. “You?”
“Divorced. No kids.”
Her eyes are still fixed on those numbers. Nine, eight, seven. Why is she so happy to hear he’s divorced? When they reach the lobby, he extends his arm to let her out first. “Madame,” he says.
The coffee shop is one of those standard New York institutions you always find in the lobby of these art deco buildings—a long counter with stools, straight-up coffee percolating in glass pots—no lattes and cappuccinos here—and a queue of suits out the door.
“The usual, Jahmir,” Magnus says. Kersti orders a black coffee. Magnus treats.
They settle side by side on a lone bench by the elevators. “Did you get your invitation to the Lycée’s hundredth anniversary celebration?” she asks him, as per the speech she rehearsed all night.
“They don’t know where to find me,” he says, fiddling with the sleeve of his cup.
“I found you.”
“The Lycée probably hasn’t figured out Facebook yet. You going?”
Kersti shrugs. “I don’t know.” She doesn’t mention that she’s been chosen one of their Hundred Women. “I’m still debating.”
“It’s too hard to go back there,” he says, and she figures he means it both literally and figuratively.
“Remember Lille Robertson?” she says, lifting the lid off her cup to let the coffee cool.
“The little weirdo with the white hair and the black nose?”
“She died.”
“How?”
“Breast cancer.”
“Shit. That’s too bad.”
“Have you kept in touch with anyone?” she asks him.
“Me? No. No one.” He’s staring into his tea, distant. “You?”
“Noa and Rafaella. Mostly on Facebook. Noa and I Skype sometimes.”
“What are they up to?”
“Raf lives in Paris. She’s divorced. As far as I know, she doesn’t work. Noa’s still in Rotterdam. She’s got a lot of kids. She’s an environmentalist. She posts a lot of anti–Royal Dutch Shell messages. That’s about it. Well, and Cressida.”
“Cressida?”
“Yes. I was just in Boston visiting her. She’s living with her mother.”
He nods, his expression clouded. She wonders what he’s thinking. He doesn’t ask how she is.
“Anyway, Lille wrote me a letter before she died,” Kersti continues. “And it . . . I brought it, actually. If you want to read it.”
He looks at her as though to say: “What the hell has this got to do with me?”
She hands him the letter. “Her mother sent it to me. She found it unfinished on Lille’s computer.”
“You never spoke to Lille after graduation?” he says. “Weren’t the three of you best friends?”
“I didn’t even graduate. I left right after . . .” She leaves it unspoken. The accident. The fall. “Lille sort of vanished. I was never able to find her on any of the usual social media.”
Magnus unfolds the letter and reads it. When he’s done, he hands it
back to Kersti without saying a word.
“Lille didn’t think Cressida fell by accident,” Kersti says.
“I see that.”
“I didn’t know you were there that night.”
“Why would you?” he says. “I snuck in.”
“Why?”
“Does it really matter anymore?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“You were the last person to see Cressida that night.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Weren’t you?” A thick man in an overcoat bumps Kersti as he brushes past. “I just want to find out what really happened to her,” she says. “What she was like before she fell—”
“Why? Why now?”
“Timing, I guess,” she tells him. “First I got the invitation from the Lycée, then the letter from Lille. I figured the universe was trying to tell me something, like maybe I need some closure on this. Or maybe I didn’t do enough when it first happened.”
“We were kids,” he says. “What could any of us have done?”
“I know, but now I feel like I can at least ask some questions,” she says, thinking about her conversation with Deirdre the other day. “And frankly, the more I do the more my curiosity is snowballing. I may even write about it for my next book.”
“Cressida was an alcoholic, Kersti. We both know that. You want to know what she was like the last time I saw her? She was wasted.”
“I know she dumped you.”
Magnus looks at her for a moment and breaks into a smile. “This isn’t the place for a real conversation,” he says, checking his watch. “Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant but secretly feeling like he’s just invited her to the school dance. Do you remember fucking me? She has to bite her tongue in order not to ask him.
“To be continued,” he says, getting up and disappearing inside the elevator.
Chapter 16
LAUSANNE—February 1996
Cressida’s father, Armand, rips a piece of his crusty bread in half and stuffs a hunk in his mouth. It’s Parents Weekend and Cressida invited Kersti to join her and her parents for dinner at the Maison de Raclette. Kersti’s parents didn’t come for Parents Weekend. They couldn’t afford the trip. Kersti was disappointed when she received the apologetic letter from her mother. She realized after reading it that she missed her parents. Her visit with them over the holiday was short. She spent Christmas eve and morning with them—most of it at the Estonian House, surrounded by all her parents’ friends, which was essentially the entire Estonian community—and then she boarded a plane to Telluride to spend the rest of the holiday with Cressida at her family’s log cabin.
They had a wonderful time, just as Cressida planned. The cabin was more of a log mansion, with picture windows overlooking the Rockies and a back door that opened onto the mountain. They skied, made chocolate chip pancakes in the middle of the night, dyed each other’s hair, and watched a lot of movies in their pajamas, sprawled on an L-shaped couch the size of Kersti’s entire main floor. Mostly, they reconnected. It was a lot like the first year of their friendship. Just the two of them, rediscovering one another. Kersti didn’t have to fight for Cressida’s attention, or feel threatened by anyone else encroaching on their time together. As the week went on, Kersti remembered with a softly swelling heart what she loved so much about Cressida—her irreverence, her wit, that feeling she gave Kersti of being completely adored and special.
On New Year’s Eve, they sat in front of the TV and watched the ball drop in Times Square, drinking Baileys in chocolate milk. Cressida’s parents had gone out and they had the house to themselves. At midnight they opened a bottle of champagne that Armand had left for them. They drank from the bottle and danced to ABBA and Grease—the anthems of their childhoods—and got so drunk, Cressida fell in the bathroom and split the porcelain toilet lid in half. They rolled on the floor laughing about that for a while, and then Cressida got in a cold shower so she wouldn’t pass out.
When she was done, she gazed at her perfect, naked self in the medicine cabinet mirror and then covered up in a white terry robe with the initials DSP monogrammed on the pocket. Kersti still could not imagine Cressida ever being pregnant. Her body was obviously never meant to be disfigured or desecrated in any way. The thought of her smooth, flat stomach distended over elastic band maternity pants, or her milky skin vandalized by blue stretch marks, was utterly incongruous.
“What was it like being pregnant?” Kersti asked her.
Cressida sat down on the ledge of the tub and lit a cigarette from the pack she’d left on the soap dish. “Horrid,” she answered. “I was so nauseous I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t read. All I could do was sleep and puke into a garbage can next to my bed. It was a nightmare.”
“Weren’t you afraid to tell Hamidou? Couldn’t she have expelled you?”
“She would never,” Cressida said, giving her a funny look.
“Did it hurt? The abortion?”
“No.”
“Do you and Magnus ever talk about it?”
“Never,” she said, standing up. “You’re the only person I’ve ever talked to about it, Kuusky. You’re my soul mate.”
That week in Telluride, Kersti was reminded why being Cressida’s best friend was a privilege. So she resigned herself, once they were back in Lausanne, to be diplomatic and share her with Magnus as best she could. She was still bruised over the way he’d used her, but what choice did she have other than to accept what they were offering?
Armand looks at his watch and frowns. Magnus is meeting Cressida’s parents for the first time and he’s late. “I wouldn’t have showed up late to meet your mother’s father when we were dating,” he states, crumbs flying like sawdust from his mouth. “It’s disrespectful.”
“Let’s just order the raclette,” Deirdre suggests, trying to placate her husband. “I’m famished.”
“He’s not earning any points with us,” Armand says, ignoring his wife.
Armand Strauss is an intimidating man. Broad-shouldered, immaculately dressed, with a neatly trimmed silver mustache and gelled silver hair that shimmers like diamonds beneath the light of the chandeliers. Being a world-famous composer and musical theater producer—he created the decade-long running play And Then There Was One—he demands respect from everyone who crosses his path, or as Cressida likes to put it, he sucks the blood out of them.
Cressida gives Kersti an amused, conspiratorial look. She’s working her way through a bottle of red wine and her cheeks are gorgeously flushed. “So he’s late, ” she says. “Big deal. He’s not one of your stagehands, Armand.”
“Cressida,” Deirdre says sharply, her British accent more pronounced. “It’s a matter of courtesy. It’s got nothing to do with who your father is.”
“Everything has to do with who my father is.”
“He should want to impress me if he cares about you,” Armand adds, holding up his hand, gold rings glinting. A waiter appears and Armand orders in French. Raclette for five and another bottle of Pinot Noir.
The waiter nods and scurries off, almost colliding with Magnus. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “The bus from Verbier broke down.”
He unzips his ski jacket, the lift tickets jangling like keys. His cheeks are red from the cold, his usual spiky hair somewhat flat from his hat. He’s wearing a white shirt and a tie, dark dress pants.
Cressida looks over at her father with a satisfied expression. Armand says contritely, “Glad you could make it, Magnus.”
Magnus sits in the chair between Cressida and Kersti. He looks at Cressida adoringly, kisses her cheek, and completely ignores Kersti.
“How was the skiing today?” Armand asks him, stabbing a tomato slice on his salad plate.
“A little icy,” Magnus says, lighting up a Philip Morris. “I’m going to try Chamonix next weekend.”
“I wish we had more time for skiing this tr
ip,” Armand says, turning to Deirdre. It’s the first thing he’s said to her all night.
“You look gorgeous,” Magnus whispers to Cressida, as though they’re the only two people at the table. She’s wearing a lavender cashmere sweater and has her hair straightened. It looks like mink.
“She doesn’t know how beautiful she is,” Deirdre comments, and it’s unclear whether she’s proud or jealous.
“I think she does,” Armand says, observing his daughter. “I suspect she knows exactly how beautiful she is.”
“Maybe she’ll follow in my footsteps and be an actress,” Deirdre says.
“She’s way too smart to be an actress,” Armand counters.
Deirdre flinches and looks down at her plate. Cressida hardly seems interested in what everyone is saying about her. She’s used to it. She’s effortlessly dazzling, always the centerpiece. Kersti is starting to feel invisible again.
“I’m thinking of producing a play about the Gulf War,” Armand announces. “Enough time has passed since it ended. I think we have some perspective now.”
“Will it be, like, a ten-minute play?” Cressida jokes.
“It’s a parody,” Armand explains. “It captures our American grandiloquence.”
“I used to love watching Desert Storm on TV,” Magnus remarks, refreshing his wine.
“That’s rather cavalier,” Armand tells him. “Which is exactly what this play is about. It was a war, not just a TV show to garner good ratings.”
“I think it was for ratings.”
“You say that because, like most Americans, you think it was a victory for us,” Armand lectures. “But we’ve yet to see how many of our returning soldiers will die from the chemical and biological warfare you never heard much about. CNN didn’t feature that aspect in its nightly war broadcasts.”
“But I’m not American,” Magnus says.
The waiter shows up with their raclette and expertly shaves globs of melted cheese onto their plates. They eat in silence for a few minutes, stretching melted Gruyère from their plates to their lips.
“What’s with all those SIDA stickers everywhere?” Armand says, changing the subject.
The Finishing School Page 10