The Finishing School

by Joanna Goodman

  “Stop AIDS,” Cressida answers.

  “It’s an epidemic here,” Deirdre murmurs, nibbling her potato and avoiding the cheese. “It’s because of all the heroin addicts in Zurich.”

  “They just closed one of those needle parks in Zurich to try to stop the spread of HIV.”

  “Our French teacher is worried he’s got it,” Magnus says. “He thinks he contracted it from a mosquito when he was in Africa last year.”

  “Is that possible?” Deirdre asks, turning white.

  “Anything is possible,” Armand says. “We still know so little about it.”

  “People are still so ignorant,” Cressida mutters.

  “Maybe you could make a musical parody about AIDS,” Magnus says.

  Later, after her parents go back to their hotel, Cressida, Magnus, and Kersti head down to Ouchy with a bottle of vodka. They climb the Molecular Structure—their name for what’s supposed to be some sort of art sculpture, but is really just a massive 3-D metal star—and settle in for a few more hours of drinking in the bitter cold, looking out over the black lake.

  “Is it just me or are my parents assholes?” Cressida asks them.

  “They’re assholes,” Magnus agrees.

  “They’re so pretentious. I can’t stand them.”

  “I love that the word grandiloquence was dropped into the conversation,” Magnus says. “Well done, Armand. You obnoxious fuck.”

  “What’s the point of Parents Weekend anyway?” Kersti says.

  “Maybe spending two days a year with us alleviates their guilt?”

  “The alternative is they don’t come at all,” Magnus says. “Which is just as bad. Isn’t it, Kuusk?”

  “Are you sad your parents didn’t come?” Cressida asks him.

  “My father’s doing an album,” he says, sounding a little defensive.

  He takes a swig from his bottle and crawls over to Cressida. “It’s with the Edge,” he brags. “He can get you an autograph if you like.”

  Cressida snorts in response. Then they start kissing and Kersti stares up at the starless sky, feeling unwanted. She peels off a stop sida sticker and wonders why she keeps subjecting herself to this new arrangement, a threesome in which she is the extraneous third. “I’m going,” she announces. “I’m freezing.”

  “Don’t go, Kerst!”

  “Let us at least drive you,” Magnus says, slurring his words so it sounds like less least drivoo. Vodka is dripping out of the Rikaloff bottle, which is tipped sideways in his hands.

  “I’ll get a taxi,” Kersti says.

  “He’s fine to drive,” Cressida assures her, climbing down from the top of the Molecular Structure.

  “He’s not fine,” Kersti argues. “He’s wasted. You can kill yourself if you want.”

  “It’s just straight up the hill,” Magnus says. “I’ll drive slow.”

  They jump down, all three of them stumbling as they land. Magnus throws the vodka bottle out toward the lake but it doesn’t reach and instead smashes on the concrete.

  “Gotta work on my throw,” he says, draping his arm around Cressida’s shoulder and leaning on her for support. They stagger over to his uncle’s Mercedes, and against Kersti’s better judgment—which is now highly impaired—she slides into the backseat.

  He starts the car. One hill, straight up to the school. All he has to do is not kill them.

  Cressida turns back to look at Kersti. She’s typically a happy drunk. Or she’s happy drunk, if there’s any difference. Kersti thinks there probably is. Magnus pulls onto the street with an abrupt jerk and a loud screech of the tires. Kersti reaches for her seat belt and buckles up, instantly regretting her decision not to get a taxi. She looks back wistfully at the lineup of them at the taxi stand. As Magnus swerves around the corner, Cressida flops sideways and slams against the door. Both girls cry out, half-exhilarated, half-terrified.

  “Put your seat belt on!” Kersti shouts. Cressida doesn’t listen.

  Magnus cranks up the radio. It’s an angry Alanis Morissette song that throbs in sync with Kersti’s pounding heart. She’s got her eye on the speedometer and it’s climbing fast. Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety kilometers per hour on the curvy cobblestone streets. “Slow down!” she cries. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  Magnus ignores her, taking the corners like a Formula 1 driver, recklessly pressing down on the gas, relishing the girls’ terror. “Stop the car!” Kersti yells, gripping the seat in front of her. “Stop the fucking car! I want to get out!”

  Without any warning, Magnus abruptly stops. Kersti flies forward but the seat belt jerks her back, probably saving her life. Cressida, unbuckled in the front, instinctively throws up her leg to protect herself. There’s a terrible smashing sound, a loud scream—possibly Kersti—and then silence.

  Kersti opens her eyes, looks around to assess the damage. See who’s still alive. They haven’t crashed into anything.

  “Holy fuck,” Magnus mutters. “Look what you did, Cress.”

  That’s when Kersti notices the windshield. The glass is cracked in a spiderweb pattern. It looks like a bullet hole, but it’s Cressida’s boot heel that did it.

  “Look what I’ve done?” Cressida says, incredulous. “That would have been my head if I hadn’t put up my leg!”

  “Fuck,” he moans. “Fuck. My uncle’s car.”

  “Serves you right,” Cressida admonishes.

  “Are you okay?” Kersti asks her. Her voice is a tremor, her whole body shaking.

  “Yes, thank you for asking. What about you?”

  “I’m okay,” Kersti responds, too shaken to move.

  “You should go, Kerst,” Cressida says. “Or you’ll get in trouble. It’s almost curfew.”

  Kersti leaves them sitting in Magnus’s car, battered and fighting, with their shared death wish and extraordinary sense of entitlement. When she gets back to school, Mme. Hamidou knocks on her door.

  “Where’s Cressida?” she asks. “It’s past curfew.” She has her usual nighttime smell of toothpaste and cigarettes. She’s wearing a green velour robe with running shoes.

  “She was in a car accident,” Kersti says.

  “A car accident? With her parents? Why hasn’t anyone called the school?”

  “Not with her parents.”

  “With who? Is she all right?” The panic on Hamidou’s face is as genuine as if Cressida were her own daughter. She more or less is.

  “She’s with Magnus Foley. Her foot went through the windshield—”

  “Mon Dieu . . .”

  “I walked back alone.”

  Mme. Hamidou sits down on Kersti’s bed. She’s very pale. “Are they waiting for the police? Does she have to go to the hospital?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  Kersti doesn’t answer.

  “Les idiots,” she mutters, shaking her head. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess.”

  Hamidou shuts the door and Kersti lies down, her head sinking slowly into the feather pillow. She’s mad at herself, not just for getting into Magnus’s car, but also for allowing herself to be their third wheel. Did they have to make out in front of her at Ouchy? Were they punishing her for having tagged along, even though they begged her to come?

  She tosses and turns late into the night, ruminating over what happened, her chest burning with self-righteousness. And yet no matter how angry she is, her feelings inevitably wind up circling back to jealousy. She deplores this about herself. It makes her feel weak and petty. What kind of person is she? After almost getting killed tonight, her biggest grievance is that she wasn’t the one chosen by Magnus, and her most significant lingering emotion is envy.

  But there it is. She still occasionally lulls herself to sleep at night replaying her first and only date with Magnus, picking apart their conversations, analyzing his every gesture, reliving how she’d felt when he was inside her. She sometimes argues the case in her head as though she’s a lawyer. Your honor, w
hen you look objectively at all the evidence leading up to and including the night in question, there is no way Magnus Foley could have been faking it! Therefore, we must conclude that he had real feelings for the plaintiff. . . .

  Kersti feels something warm under the duvet.

  “Kerst?” It’s Cressida, cuddling up to her, folding herself into a spoon position against her back. Kersti can smell cigarette and alcohol on her breath. It’s sour and uncharacteristically repellent.

  Cressida flings an arm over Kersti’s waist and presses her face into the space between her shoulder blades. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, her words muffled by Kersti’s T-shirt.

  Kersti says nothing. She pretends to sleep.

  “I know I get out of control when I drink,” Cressida goes on. “My parents put me in a bad mood tonight and I drank too much and I was reckless. I wanted to punish them—”

  “Well, you punished me instead,” Kersti says, sitting up. “You almost got us both killed.”

  “I’m sorry, Kuusky. I’m going to stop drinking for a while.”

  “And I hate it when you and Magnus make out in front of me,” Kersti adds, unable to hold back. “It’s so rude. What do you think? I’m fucking invisible?”

  “I’m sorry. I know I’m a terrible friend. But I love you, I really do. I love you so much.”

  Kersti sighs and lies back down. Cressida slips right back into the spoon position and within seconds, she’s snoring softly in Kersti’s ear.

  Chapter 17

  NEW YORK—October 2015

  In a dark booth at Le Singe Vert in Chelsea, Magnus orders a bottle of Sancerre, hands the wine menu back to the waiter, and turns his full attention to Kersti. “I looked up your books on Amazon,” he tells her. “I’m impressed.”

  “The first one is kind of embarrassing—”

  “Don’t do that,” he stops her. “I know all about the awards—”

  “Nominations.”

  The waiter sets down two wineglasses and returns a moment later with their bottle. He opens it, pours a splash into Magnus’s glass, and waits. Magnus sniffs it and has a sip. “Fine,” he says, dismissing the waiter. “So, are you working on a new novel?”

  “I’m always working on a novel,” she says. “This one isn’t really going anywhere, though.”

  Magnus is suddenly full of questions. How long has she been married, where did they meet, does she dedicate her books to him. He doesn’t mention anything about his own marriage. She doesn’t ask.

  Finally, he puts his glass down, fixes that clear blue gaze on her, and says, “So why are you here, Kuusk?”

  “I told you,” she says, her tone slightly defensive. “I want to ask you some questions about the night Cressida fell.”

  “Now?”

  “I know it was a long time ago,” she says. “But I’ve always wondered. I guess Lille reaching out to me kind of propelled me out of my inertia.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “People don’t just fall off balconies, Magnus. No matter how drunk they are. The railing was too high, for one thing.”

  “She might have been sitting on it,” Magnus says. “And toppled backwards.”

  “I guess,” Kersti concedes, deciding not to mention the suicide note just yet. “You said you weren’t the last person to see her that night. Who was?”

  He’s swishing the wine around his glass, fidgeting with his hands. Tapping his fork like a drumstick, buttering bread and not eating it. Same old nervous Magnus. “You know who it was,” he says. “After she ‘dumped’ me, she went to his place.”

  “So you knew?”

  “She told me she was in love with someone else and that we were over. I knew who it was.” Kersti can feel the vibration of his knee bouncing under the table, like a subway passing below them. “I’d heard the rumors.”

  “Then what?”

  “She left my apartment to go meet him.”

  “She told you that’s where she was going?”

  “Not in so many words. But I knew.”

  “How did you take it?” she asks him. “What did you do?”

  “What could I do?” he says, and the way his face collapses as he remembers makes him alluringly vulnerable, reminding Kersti that the memory of Cressida—the perfect enduring mythology of her—cannot be diminished by time, neither for him nor for her, as she’d hoped it would be.

  “So you just let her go?”

  “Let her?” He laughs. “When did Cressida ever not do what she wanted? I had no choice but to let her go.”

  She watches him carefully—the bouncing knee, the chewed nails, the way he’s staring morosely into his wine rather than squarely at her—and she doesn’t believe him.

  “Did you follow her?” she asks him quietly. “After she left your place?”

  He lets out a noise—something between a sigh and a grunt, possibly even a laugh.

  “You mean did I chase after her?”

  “You must have been pissed off—”

  “No. I mean, yes. I was pissed off. No I didn’t chase after her.”

  “You went to the Lycée to wait for her.”

  Magnus reaches for the bottle of wine in the ice bucket and refills his glass, not even noticing that Kersti’s is also empty. “I did go to Huber House,” he says.

  “Why?”

  He places his hand lightly on top of hers, startling her. She shivers, withdraws it quickly.

  “You don’t think I pushed her, do you, Kuusk?”

  “No, of course not,” she answers quickly. The truth is, she isn’t sure what to think. She’s not even sure what she was expecting from this reunion; she really just wanted to see him.

  The food arrives precisely at that moment, silencing both of them. The waiter sets down the plates, wishes them “bon appétit,” and vanishes.

  “Smells good,” Kersti says, attempting to lighten the mood.

  “To Cressida,” he says, raising his glass.

  “I went to see her before I came here,” she says.

  “You mentioned that.”

  When he doesn’t say anything else, she continues. “I really went to see Deirdre.”

  “Looking for that ledger?”

  “I asked her about it,” Kersti says, pressing her fork down on a small mound of mushroom risotto.

  “And?”

  “She says she doesn’t have it, which I’m still not sure I believe. But she did tell me something interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Cressida left a note.”

  “A suicide note?”

  Kersti nods and his mouth falls opens slightly, as though to ask a question that never comes. “Shit,” he manages. “I thought they never found one—”

  “Deirdre says Bueche sent it to her later with the rest of Cressida’s stuff. Supposedly Armand found it when he went to pack up her things, after the dust had settled, coincidentally.”

  “No doubt,” he says. “They wouldn’t have wanted a suicide on school grounds getting out. That’s all they cared about. Their reputation.”

  “That’s what Deirdre said.”

  He’s shaking his head, looking pale and discombobulated. “Shit,” he says again.

  “You’re surprised.”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Why?” Kersti asks him, leaning forward. “I know you said she was wasted, but how did she seem to you that night?”

  “You mean was she suicidal?”

  “Depressed? Acting weird? Anything . . .”

  “She was the same Cressida as usual. Infuriating, aloof. She didn’t seem depressed at all. In fact—”

  “What?”

  “She was . . . I think she was really happy. She was kind of . . . I don’t know. I guess she was in love.” His tone is conciliatory, defeated. They both know she was never really in love with him.

  He reaches for the wine and this time he refills Kersti’s as well. “So this whole time we’ve been talking, you knew she jumped?” he asks
her.

  “That’s the thing,” Kersti says. “I don’t necessarily think she did.”

  “A suicide note is pretty cut-and-dried, isn’t it?”

  “I read her note and something about it isn’t right.”

  He rests his elbows on the table, his face drawing nearer to hers. For a second she imagines them as a couple, him leaning close to tell her she looks beautiful tonight, that he’s in love with her. . . .

  “Doesn’t feel right how?” he wants to know.

  “It just wasn’t her.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I’m sorry I’ll miss you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much. Not her style at all. She would have quoted Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. There would have been more drama and flair. Nothing about this fits.”

  They stare at each other for a few moments, both of their plates untouched. Finally, Magnus says, “Does it matter anymore, though?”

  “We both loved her,” Kersti responds. “No matter what she did, we loved her. Don’t you want to know how she fell? And why?”

  “To what end?”

  “Curiosity. Closure. Justice?”

  “Justice,” he repeats, scoffing.

  “I’m not doing this to be noble—”

  “Maybe it was Colonel Mustard in the library.”

  “Maybe it was you,” Kersti teases, emboldened by the wine. She says it almost flirtatiously. “A crime of passion?”

  “Or maybe it was you, Kuusk.”

  At this, Kersti draws back.

  “Weren’t you always jealous of her?” he goes on. “Weren’t you in love with me? Maybe you guys fought about it. She didn’t really want me, but she wouldn’t let you have me, either, would she?”

  Kersti’s face heats up. “Do you even remember having sex with me?” she blurts, finally getting it off her chest. “That day in the woods?”

  Magnus’s face turns deep red. “Of course,” he says. “You were a virgin.”

  “You remember.”

  “Of course I remember.”

  She waits for him to say something else, but nothing comes.

  “It hurt,” she tells him.

  “Well, it’s supposed to the first time—”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean afterwards. How you never really spoke to me again once Cressida decided she wanted you back. You never acknowledged what happened between us. It was like it never happened. I was crushed.”