The Finishing School

by Joanna Goodman

  “Going somewhere?”

  “To meet Magnus.”

  “Magnus?”

  “He’s still my boyfriend,” Cressida says, turning away from her beautiful reflection in the mirror. “I still have feelings for him.”

  Kersti bites her lip.

  “Besides,” she rationalizes, “if Charlie doesn’t leave Mrs. F., why should I leave Magnus?”

  Kersti wants to shout: “I actually loved him! I’m the one who deserved him!” But Cressida has long since forgotten that Kersti was the collateral damage in their love story. And although part of her can’t help rejoicing that Magnus is finally getting his comeuppance, it still makes her bristle that Cressida would so easily dump him for someone better. It feels almost personal, slyly vindictive.

  Cressida shoves the yearbook in one of her drawers and runs a hand through her curls. “I love you, Kuusky,” she says sweetly, wrapping her arms around Kersti. “You’re always here for me.”

  Kersti’s muscles tense. “Are you going to bring the yearbook back to the library?” she asks her.

  Cressida looks at her strangely. “Does it matter?” she says. And for some reason, it does.

  Chapter 25

  TORONTO—April 2016

  Kersti lifts her head out of the toilet bowl and lies down on the cold tiles. You asked for this, she reminds herself, loving and hating her morning sickness equally. Loving it because it’s a privilege and a constant physical reminder that she’s carrying two babies inside her, and hating it for obvious reasons. She’s ten weeks pregnant. There were two heartbeats at her eight-week ultrasound; two healthy, normal heartbeats, the sound of which was met with a floodgate of relief and tears. It was the sound of life and hope and possibility itself.

  “We did it,” Jay whispered, his hand on her stomach, tears streaming down his face, the music of those racing heartbeats in the background.

  At the clinic in Colorado, they gave Kersti and Jay a thick binder of instructions on how to tell their children they come from donor eggs, but Kersti is going to tell them in her own way. She’s going to write it. She’s been working on a letter to them since the day she heard those heartbeats. Maybe since the day she knew she would use Cressida’s eggs. She wants them to understand that everything she did was for love; the kind of pure, inflexible maternal love that knows no limitations.

  She reaches for the pack of saltines on the floor beside her and stuffs one in her mouth, her only relief from nausea.

  “You okay in there?” her mother calls out, opening the door and finding her on the floor.

  “When does this end?” Kersti asks.

  “Twelfth week with every one of my pregnancies,” she says. “Do you need help back to bed?”

  “I’m going to stay in here awhile,” Kersti tells her. “I’ll be fine.”

  When the nausea begins to subside in the late morning, Kersti manages to scrape herself off the floor and go downstairs to the kitchen. “At last,” her mother says, looking up from a pot on the stove, with a strand of white hair falling over her face. She’s been here almost every morning for the last two months, feeding Kersti toast and soup and preparing meals for Jay. “Try this,” she says, placing a bowl of soup in front of her, with two pieces of toasted black rye on the side. “Tell me if it’s too sweet.”

  Kersti dunks the toast in the soup and realizes she’s starving. “It’s good,” she says, and finishes everything.

  “Let’s hope it stays down,” her mother says, scooping sour cream into a pot.

  Feeling better, Kersti heads up to her office to write.

  Hello again, Gunnar and Imbi. She types Chapter Three, and stares at her screen, uninspired. It doesn’t take long before an email pops up on her screen.

  Congratulations on twins! How are you feeling? Will you know the sex by June?? My hotel is booked. I arrive the 12th. I’m staying at the Angleterre. I think Raf is staying there too. Where are you staying? It will be like old times . . . without the smoking! (You’d better not be smoking!!) Have you heard from Alison? I can’t wait to see you. Bisous. Noa

  Kersti types back a short note. We’re booked at the Chateau. Can’t wait to catch up in person. I guess I’d better start working on my speech! No word from Alison yet. I’ll keep you posted. KK

  She smiles to herself as she hits send. Now that it’s decided, she can’t wait for the reunion in Lausanne. It will be eighteen years since she last saw Noa and Rafaella in person, or set foot in Switzerland. She’s still waiting to hear back from Alison, whom she found living in Whistler and working as a buyer for a ski apparel company, but she’s not very optimistic about making contact. Deirdre is also going to meet her there, so they can speak to Bueche together.

  “Kersti?” her mother calls out.

  “In here!”

  Anni sticks her head in the room and says, “I’m going now. I left the leivasupp on the stove and there’s supper in the fridge for Jay. Don’t eat it. It’s pirukad. The herring will make you sick. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “Love you.”

  “Yup.”

  Anni disappears, leaving behind a trail of Opium perfume, the same one she’s been wearing for as long as Kersti can remember. For the first time ever, Kersti can actually appreciate how set in their ways her parents are without being offended or taking it personally. Maybe it’s hormones.

  Kersti stares at her notes for the novel and realizes The Jewel of Reval is just not happening. The other book is calling to her—loudly. No matter how many times she sits down in this chair and turns on the computer with the very best of intentions of finishing this one, she just can’t bring herself to write it. She keeps telling herself, Maybe tomorrow. But the truth is she has no inclination.

  She leaves it aside for the moment and settles cross-legged on the floor with her box of mementos from the Lycée. She had Jay bring it upstairs so she could sort through it. She’s going to bring some photographs with her to Lausanne, to share with Raf and Noa. She imagines them in the bathroom of Huber House, exactly as it was back then, their adult selves reminiscing about old times. They’ll surely feel the void of Lille and Cressida—they were very much the nucleus of the group—but they’ll celebrate stoically in their honor anyway.

  She pulls out her yearbook with its faded yellow cover and looks through it with an overwhelming sentiment of nostalgia. There’s a picture of Kersti and Cressida, part of a collage of random snapshots, where they’re arm in arm in the Lycée’s garden. Cressida’s hair is pulled back in dozens of tight, intricate cornrow braids—she must have just gotten back from a trip—and her skin is golden brown, luminescent. She’s wearing a white sundress with the strap slipping off her shoulder, smiling at the camera, statuesque and resplendent.

  And there’s Kersti beside her, eclipsed as usual by that astounding beauty. Paler, shorter, unremarkable in a generic, adolescent way. A bad eighties haircut, the ends crimped and overlightened, a loose gray sweatshirt to hide whatever is beneath it, an apologetic half smile, itself an acknowledgment of her inadequacy. In essence, an average teenager who is achingly unsure of herself, with blackheads and social awkwardness and a painful self-consciousness that leaps off the page.

  Kersti touches her stomach where Cressida’s eggs are transforming themselves into what she’s come to think of as her chance for redemption. She never could compete with Cressida, but now she’s got a part of Cressida inside her.

  Hopefully Kersti’s children will be exceptional, inherently right. Something Kersti never was, or at least never felt.

  There’s nothing like a pregnancy to mark the plodding passage of time. Kersti tracks the babies’ development week to week. Your baby at thirteen weeks is the size of a pea pod. Your baby at sixteen weeks is the size of an avocado. He even has toenails!

  As her mother predicted, the morning sickness disappeared in her twelfth week, just as she entered her second trimester. Her tummy still hasn’t popped, so it just looks like she’s gained about twenty pounds, ev
enly spread. She can already tell she does not have the sort of body that will stay thin everywhere except for a hard basketball at the front. In another month, she’ll find out the sex. She’s secretly hoping for at least one girl. No names have been decided; Jay wants to wait until they know what they’re having. Kersti’s parents are pushing for Estonian names, but Jay isn’t sold. “I’m not having my kids named Jaagup or Ivar or Nuut,” he said, all names of her uncles.

  Kersti snips the stems off a handful of cherry blossoms and drops them into one of the crystal vases she got for her wedding. She sets it on the Venetian mirrored table in the foyer and admires her first flowers of the season. It’s the nesting instinct, her mother says.

  Her phone vibrates with an incoming text while she’s crouched in the dirt. She wipes her hands on her jeans and sees it’s a Vancouver number. She knows immediately that it’s Alison Rumsky.

  Sorry for the late reply. I’m in T.O on biz. I can meet you for coffee/lunch?

  Kersti texts back: Yes!! Where & when?

  They meet at La Carnita, a dark, hipster place on College that Alison suggested. Craving Mexican, she wrote. All the arrangements were made via text.

  When Kersti arrives, she spots Alison at a back booth, looking identical to her teenage self. Astonishingly, she hasn’t changed at all. Her red hair is cut in a practical bob that she’s probably chosen for its convenience and ease, not for its style, and her skin is freckled and unfairly youthful, smooth in the places where Kersti is starting to detect lines. She’s still lanky and fit, wearing a chambray blue button-down shirt and Capri jeans.

  “You haven’t aged!” Kersti cries, staring at her in disbelief. “You look sixteen! How is that possible?”

  “Fresh mountain air?” she says, standing up and hugging Kersti. “You look great, too.”

  “No, I don’t. I’m almost four months pregnant and wearing elastic waistband maternity jeans.”

  “Congratulations,” Alison says, sitting back down. “What number is this?”

  “My first. And second.”

  “Twins?”

  Kersti nods, tenderly rubbing her tummy the way pregnant women do, something that used to annoy the hell out of her. “How about you? Kids?”

  “No,” she says, not seeming the least bit bothered or embarrassed about it. “Andrew and I decided a long time ago children wouldn’t fit into our lifestyle.”

  “Tell me about your lifestyle. Living in Whistler must be awesome.”

  “We love it,” she says, her blue eyes shining. “Obviously, we do a lot of skiing and mountain biking. We’ve got a condo right on Blackcomb. We travel. It’s a good life. What about you? What do you do?”

  “I’m a writer. I’ve had a few novels published.”

  “Very cool,” Alison says, but doesn’t ask where she might be able to pick one up. Maybe she’s not the historical romance type.

  While they’re catching each other up on husbands, weddings, careers, and all other notable events of the past two decades, a tattooed server with long dreadlocks brings them a platter of warm tortilla chips, guacamole, and grilled street corn.

  “Hearing from you was really out of the blue,” Alison says, reaching for a tortilla.

  “I know. And I’m so glad you texted me today. I’ve thought about you so often over the years.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I guess the short version is I was going along in my life, pretending the Lycée didn’t exist, trying never to think about it, and then I got the invitation to the hundredth birthday celebration, followed by a letter from Lille. I figured it must be time to face it and hopefully get some closure.”

  “How is Lille?”

  “She died.”

  Alison’s expression changes instantly. “How?”

  “Breast cancer. Her mom found the letter on her computer and sent it to me.” Kersti reaches into her handbag and pulls it out. “Here.”

  Alison reads the letter and then wordlessly hands it back to Kersti.

  “I went to see Deirdre in Boston,” Kersti says. “It turns out Cressida left a suicide note.”

  She waits for a reaction from Alison, but there’s nothing.

  “Deirdre and I aren’t convinced Cressida is the one who wrote it, though,” Kersti continues. “I went to New York to talk to Magnus—”

  “Foley?”

  “Yes. And then I spoke to Mrs. Fithern—”

  “You’re on quite a mission.”

  “Well, I’m also getting a lot of good material for a new book,” Kersti says. “If I could just connect that missing ledger to what happened to Cressida—”

  “How is Mrs. Fithern?” Alison interrupts.

  “She remarried and has four daughters. She seems happy.”

  “Why did you call her?”

  “To find out what she knew,” Kersti says. “She was at Huber that night. She was housemother, remember?”

  “So?”

  “Magnus went to see her. He told her about the affair.”

  “Did she talk to Cressida?”

  “She says she didn’t,” Kersti says skeptically. “She says she felt sorry for her, that Charles was the predator. She also told me Cressida was pregnant.”

  Kersti lets her bombshell land and then adds, “Mr. Fithern told her after Cressida fell.”

  “What a mess,” Alison says. “I can’t believe she told you all that.”

  “They both think Cressida jumped,” Kersti says. “Which frankly I find rather convenient.”

  Alison dips the corner of a tortilla chip into the guacamole and nibbles on it.

  “I’m going to Lausanne next month,” Kersti says. “I was asked to speak as one of the One Hundred Women of the Lycée.”

  Alison laughs out loud. “What an honor.”

  “Well, I’m also going to be moral support for Cressida’s mother,” Kersti adds, playing down the reunion. “She’s going to talk to Bueche about opening an investigation—”

  “Bueche,” Alison repeats, her tone full of disdain.

  “Why are you so bitter about the Lycée?”

  When Alison doesn’t respond, Kersti says, “You weren’t even friends with Cressida at the end. You seemed pretty happy there. Your whole life revolved around sports, which you love. You were the star of every team—”

  “Thank God for sports,” Alison says, and Kersti isn’t sure if she’s being facetious. “The skiing was good,” she adds offhandedly.

  “Remember Mahler?” Kersti says, rolling up her taco into a tight cigar. “What are you doing, you silly twits? Three hits, you ugly spinsters!”

  “Give the ball to Alison, schwachköpfe!”

  They giggle together at the memory, but Alison’s mood has clearly sunk. There’s a shadow over her eyes, a distance that wasn’t there before. “I don’t see the point of reopening an investigation,” she says. “It’s not like anyone is going to remember anything. Whatever happened to Cressida, only Cressida knows. You’re going to have to make up an ending for your next book.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Kersti says. “Someone knows something.”

  “And you think they’re going to share it with you?”

  “I think Deirdre should reopen an investigation, that’s all. She deserves to know the truth. Something isn’t right and frankly I don’t buy Mrs. Fithern’s story.”

  “Are you hoping to prove Cressida jumped or that someone pushed her?”

  “I’m not hoping to prove one thing or another,” Kersti says. “But I think we can all agree that Cressida didn’t fall off her balcony by accident. I did my part to move on and accept the Lycée’s story, but I know too much now. I want to know what happened to Cressida and I think I can get a hell of a lot closer to it in Lausanne.”

  Alison is staring at her, unmoved. She hasn’t touched her tacos. Kersti has a strange feeling she knows something she’s not saying.

  “Anyway, look,” Kersti says, trying to switch gears. “The main reason I contacted you is because Rafael
la and Noa will be there and I thought it would be fun for us all to reconnect—”

  “I can’t go,” Alison says.

  “Because you have other commitments, or because you can’t?”

  “I just can’t.”

  Kersti decides to leave it alone. Alison is one of those people who look really healthy on the outside—she’s active and robust and outdoorsy—but underneath that rosy-cheeked façade is something starkly different, something dark and moody. That long-ago confession about her compulsive masturbating was no isolated quirk, Kersti thinks. There’s a disconnect between who she presents to the world and who she really is, or whatever it is she’s guarding.

  “You haven’t asked me about Cressida,” Kersti says.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t think she was a good person,” Alison admits. “I still don’t. She was a sociopath, if you ask me.”

  Kersti’s hand instinctively goes to her belly and she wonders with a sickening feeling if Alison is right, and if such things are genetic.

  Chapter 26

  LAUSANNE—May 1998

  “Here,” Cressida says, spritzing Kersti’s modest cleavage with her Chanel No. 5. It’s the night of the spring Charity Ball. Lille, Noa, Raf, and Kersti are getting ready in Cressida’s room. She’s got the best dresses, jewelry, and makeup to choose from, as well as the most space, it being a corner room. Alison is out of their inner circle now. She hangs out with the athletic girls.

  “I think you need a necklace,” Raf says, giving Kersti a once-over.

  Cressida nods and whips a stunning double strand of pearls from her underwear drawer. She puts it around Kersti’s neck, fastens the clasp, and smiles approvingly. “Perfect,” she says, her breath smelling of watermelon bubble gum. Kersti has noticed lately that Cressida is smoking a lot less and chewing gum instead. Mr. Fithern is an outspoken antismoker.