Kersti is wearing one of Cressida’s dresses, a royal blue raw-silk strapless with a bell skirt that makes her feel a bit like Joan Collins. Noa says it’s good with her eyes and Kersti has to admit, it does match them perfectly. It fits well, too.
She likes what she sees, until Cressida slides up behind her and dwarfs her. She’s wearing a black strapless dress that pushes her breasts up and cinches her waist to the size of a wrist, with a ruffle at the bottom that barely covers her behind. She wears no jewelry, but doesn’t need it. Her hair is wild, its springy coils bouncing on the slope of her pale shoulders. She’s spectacular.
She scrunches her hair and shakes it out, smacks her lips twice, turns this way and that, thrusts out her breasts. “I hope Charlie likes my dress,” she murmurs, uncharacteristically insecure.
“Isn’t Magnus your date?” Kersti reminds her, and Cressida gives her a look.
Arndt Schultz invited Kersti to be his date, but she turned him down. He’s popular at school but ugly; she didn’t want to have to spend the night fending him off or being responsible for his good time. They decided as a group—Lille, Noa, Raf, and Kersti—not to go with dates, and to enjoy their last Charity Ball together.
Only Cressida is going with Magnus; he insisted. She’s a bit peeved about it, complaining she just wants to hang out with the girls, but Kersti knows Mr. Fithern is the one Cressida wants to be with.
“You look gorgeous, Kersti,” Lille says. “You’re a Scandinavian goddess.”
“Baltic,” Kersti corrects, already starting to evaporate next to Cressida.
The ball is in the banquet hall of the sprawling Chateau D’Ouchy hotel, a turreted castle with a gray stone façade and orange-shingled tower on the banks of Lake Geneva. It’s black-tie and open bar, even for the students. Cressida hands Kersti a vodka and orange juice. They’re outside on the Lakeside Terrace, where it’s easier to spike their drinks. They each have their own flasks to make the notoriously weak drinks stronger.
“Doesn’t he look hot tonight?” Cressida says, admiring Mr. Fithern from a distance.
He’s standing at the bar with Mrs. Fithern, talking to two other English teachers. He does look good in his tux, with his dark hair gelled and spiked out, edgier than he usually wears it. He glances over at Cressida a couple of times and holds her in his gaze.
Lille stumbles over, already drunk. Her bleached white hair is piled on top of her head in a frothy Marie Antoinette bun with loose wisps curling around her powdered face. She looks like an old-fashioned, sad-eyed doll. “Hello,” she says, curtseying.
The sun hasn’t even set behind the Alps and Lille is clearly not long for consciousness. She’s never been able to hold her liquor well. Vodka nights usually end with her puking and blacking out. Tonight will be no different.
“Go easy, Grasshopper,” Cressida says.
“I can’t look Mrs. Fithern in the eyes,” Lille slurs. “She called me over and Mr. F. was beside her and I had to bolt—”
“Don’t say anything stupid,” Cressida warns, her eyes flashing.
“I’m trying not to, but it’s awkward. Aren’t you uncomfortable?”
“No,” Cressida responds. “Why should I be?”
“You could be a little more compassionate,” Lille says, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s her wife.”
“His wife,” Kersti says.
“Lille, you need to slow down,” Cressida tells her, taking the drink out of her hand. “Take a break.”
Lille snatches it back, spilling most of it on the front of her doll’s dress. “Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking,” she huffs, and walks off.
“You know how much she loves Mrs. Fithern,” Kersti reminds Cressida.
“So do I,” Cressida says. “But I love him more.”
She opens her clutch and retrieves her pack of cigarettes. She hands one to Kersti, lights both, and exhales over the railing. It’s dusk and the sky is the color of salmon. The lake is dotted with rainbow-hued catamarans, behind which, east toward Vevey, the hilly vineyards of Lavaux stretch forever.
“I’m going to miss it here,” Cressida says, her wistfulness catching Kersti off guard. “I’ve grown up here.”
Kersti will miss it, too, she realizes, gazing out at the shoreline of Lac Léman. Will she even remember it in ten years? Or twenty? Will this picture of the Swiss Riviera, with the Alps rising in the distance out of its crystal blue bath, remain as bright and vivid in her memory as it does today? She tries to hold on to it, to impress each detail into her mind, but it’s starting to sink in that what has turned out to be the happiest time of her life is coming to an end. She’s going home soon. They all are.
She can’t even imagine life without her best friends available to her at any moment, Hamidou’s ubiquitous guidance, speaking French every day, traveling, mountains, Huber House and its decrepit third-floor bathroom. She can already feel the dread of having to be wrenched away from here and sent back to the place where she never felt right, or enough.
“At least you can stay here if you want to,” Kersti tells Cressida, as a gentle breeze brings a layer of goose bumps to her bare shoulders. “You could live anywhere in the world. I’m the one who has to go back to Toronto.”
Cressida turns, about to say something, but her gaze is hijacked, settling somewhere off in the direction of the ballroom. “That’s her,” she breathes, grabbing Kersti’s arm. Her nails press into Kersti’s skin and Kersti lets out a yelp. “In the pink Chanel suit. Oh my God. It’s her.”
“Who?”
“Amoryn Lashwood.”
“Who?”
“Remember the old yearbook? She was in the picture with the two girls who got expelled. The one who bequeathed the ledger?”
As Kersti spots the woman in the pink suit talking to M. Bueche, she suddenly remembers. “Are you sure?” she says. “How can you tell?”
“She looks the same, only with shorter hair. I can’t believe she’s here. Let’s go.”
“Let’s go?”
“Talk to her.”
“About what?”
“About what happened,” Cressida says impatiently. “Don’t you want to know why her friends were expelled? And what was in that ledger?”
“You’re going to accost a perfect stranger at the Charity Ball and ask her about a ledger from almost twenty years ago?”
“Why not?”
“Well, the better question is why.”
“Something went down that year,” Cressida says, her eyes shining with excitement. “I want to know what happened.”
Kersti can tell that Cressida is drunk. She has that crazed look, which usually precedes some reckless, outrageous, and/or dangerous act, such as driving drunk or stealing a yearbook from the new library. She has another swig from her flask and pulls Kersti by the arm toward the ballroom, where Amoryn Lashwood is caught in Bueche’s snare. They wait until he finally drifts away, schmoozing and hustling other helpless alumni for more donations.
Up close, Amoryn Lashwood is still very pretty. Kersti does a quick calculation and figures she must be in her early forties. Her skin is still relatively unlined, except for two deep vertical lines between her eyebrows, which make her look concerned or displeased. The pink suit is Chanel, Kersti can tell by the large gold buttons, which are the iconic C’s, and she’s extremely thin. Her hair is bobbed and so well sculpted even the lake winds don’t move a strand.
They approach her and Cressida lightly touches her arm to get her attention. “Ms. Lashwood?”
The woman looks startled. “It’s El-Bahz,” she says, trying to place Cressida. “Mrs. El-Bahz. I haven’t been Lashwood in years.”
“I’m Cressida Strauss. This is Kersti. Class of ’98.”
Amoryn holds out her hand. A diamond ring the size of a cupcake gleams on her wedding finger. “Amoryn El-Bahz,” she says. “As you already know.”
“Class of ’74,” Cressida fills in.
“Yes. Correct.” She seems even more confused
by how much Cressida knows about her.
“Lashwood House is named after your grandfather, isn’t it?” Cressida asks her, snatching a glass of champagne from one of the floating trays.
“He was a student in the late twenties, when they first started admitting boys,” Amoryn says. “My father and his brothers also went. My uncle was a good friend of Monsieur Bueche. We have a very long history with the Lycée.”
“Your year was the last year of the Helvetia Society,” Cressida says. “And you were the president, right?”
The glowing petal pink of Amoryn’s cheeks fades and she looks momentarily flustered. “That’s true,” she says, recovering her poise. “The last president, in fact. Tell me how you know so much about me. Certainly, there are more famous Lycée graduates than myself.”
Kersti looks over at Cressida, wondering how she’s going to proceed.
“Harzenmoser told us about your friends getting expelled for vandalizing the statue—”
“Harzenmoser?” she murmurs, her voice a thin leaf, floating in the air. “I’ve never known her to talk to the students.”
“She doesn’t usually,” Kersti says, her eyes bouncing back and forth between Cressida and Amoryn.
“And did she tell you what they wrote?”
“Of course not,” Cressida says, with an exaggerated eye roll. “But you must know.”
“Why are you so interested in all this?” Amoryn asks her, resting a pink tweed arm on one of her jutting hip bones.
Kersti shrinks back, embarrassed, as the conversation takes a turn for the awkward. Even she has no idea why Cressida is so obsessed with whatever it was those girls wrote on the statue and their resulting expulsions.
“I just can’t imagine what could get two students expelled from the Lycée,” Cressida says. “No one else has ever been expelled that I know of. Bueche would never willingly give up two tuitions, not over some spray paint on a statue. And Madame Hamidou was against it—”
“Madame Hamidou,” Amoryn repeats, her tone ambiguous. “How is she? I don’t see her here tonight.”
“She hates these things,” Cressida tells her. “She calls it the ‘groveling for money’ ball.”
Amoryn laughs and then her smile quickly goes away. “I don’t know what they wrote,” she says. “It was gone by morning.”
“It must have been pretty offensive,” Cressida perseveres. “Or incriminating?”
Their eyes lock then and Kersti is sure something passes between them. Some understanding, some transmuted secret that requires no spoken acknowledgment. Kersti is baffled, lost.
“You bequeathed a ledger in the yearbook,” Cressida goes on, holding Amoryn’s gaze. “All your friends did. One of them mentioned the secrets in the ledger—”
“Usually students bequeath funny memories and inside jokes,” Kersti interjects.
“Usually, yes,” Amoryn agrees. “But we didn’t.” She no longer seems upset or offended by the ambush. If anything, she seems roused, perhaps a little intrigued by Cressida’s curiosity and brazenness. “Our memories weren’t very funny,” she says, and then she holds up her champagne flute to signal the conversation is over. “Have a nice time at the ball, girls.”
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Cressida says, “Something happened that year.”
“Maybe one of them was sleeping with a teacher,” Kersti mutters, as Magnus appears before them, glassy-eyed and beautiful.
“Hello, my love,” he says to Cressida, pulling her into his arms.
She lets him sway her side to side in a silent slow dance, but her back is stiff and her face turns away from him, no doubt searching for Mr. Fithern.
Chapter 27
HERTFORDSHIRE—June 2016
The train glides swiftly through Edgware, North London, where the suburban landscape suddenly turns to woodlands at the border of Hertfordshire.
“Fifteen minutes to St. Alden’s,” Jay says, studying the app on his phone.
They boarded a Thameslink train at St. Pancras station, after having spent two days in London. They stayed at the Soho, a stylish boutique hotel on Richmond Mews, between the Tottenham Court and Leicester Square tube stations. The location was perfect, central enough to allow for as much sightseeing as they could cram into forty-eight hours. They took a double-decker bus ride, waved hello to Big Ben, made pit stops at Trafalgar Square, Kensington Palace, and Hyde Park. They went to Harrods and bought two Harrods of London onesies and two Burberry playsuits. Jay was thrilled Kersti was too pregnant to shop for clothes for herself; he couldn’t stop converting the cost of everything to Canadian dollars. This burger is thirty-five Canadian dollars! This latte is $15! This onesie is $120! Wi-Fi is $40 a night!
They had dinner at a tourist trap pub in Covent Garden where the food was horrible and overpriced—(my fish and chips were $40!!)—and then they enjoyed a rain-soaked walk through Leicester Square and down Shaftesbury Avenue to Piccadilly Circus. When they got back to the room, their hands were black from the soot in the air. The tap water turned gray as they scrubbed their hands, and neither of them could get clean in the shower. “Even my snot is black,” Jay complained.
After managing to also cram in a brief visit to the National Portrait Gallery, see a play in the West End, and gorge on curry at Masala’s in Earl’s Court—which left her chest aflame for hours—Kersti was ready to move on.
She gazes out the window as the English countryside flies by, with her hand resting comfortably on her belly. She’s nineteen weeks pregnant with twin boys, a revelation that still has her reeling.
The first Kuusk boys of their generation. Kersti saw them at her eighteen-week ultrasound. At first, they were adorably curled up against each other, sleeping head-to-toe in an upside-down spoon; and then they got restless and moved, and there they were: two distinct and irrefutable penises.
Kersti was more shocked than anything else. She was certain she was having girls. Jay wept with joy, staring dumbfounded at the screen. “My sons. My sons,” he kept repeating.
Kersti’s first reaction was that her parents would be disappointed. The Kuusk women breed girls. They have daughters. She knew as she lay there watching those beautiful little kidney beans in her belly that she was being irrational, crazy; but the yearning to fit in with her family, to feel accepted by them, is a relentless thing, its choke hold seemingly indestructible. It robbed her of being able to fully experience that moment in the ultrasound room.
But then something happened that shocked her even more. When she told her parents, they were ecstatic. Her father actually cried. Her mother danced her around the living room.
“Finally!” Paavo thundered. “One of my children is giving me a grandson!”
“Two,” Kersti said.
“Two grandsons!” he cheered. “Palju õnne!”
They pulled out the vodka and toasted the good news in filmy water glasses. Her father slapped Jay on the back and kissed Kersti three times on her cheeks. “Terviseks!”
“Grandsons,” Paavo whispered, his eyes watery and his cheeks flushed. “I had given up. Turns out Jay’s Jew sperm is good for something!”
Kersti glanced over at Jay and laughed nervously. For the first time ever, not following that narrow Kuusk path has given her some value within the family.
“You’re too happy they’re happy,” Jay said in the car on the way home. “You weren’t this happy when we found out the sex.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But you know how my dad makes me feel. It’s just . . . for once I’ve done something he’s proud of. For once.”
Jay sighed. “I’m glad my Jew sperm could help,” he said, and then dropped it.
It’s a thirty minute-ride to St. Alden’s, where the St. Alden’s School for Boys is cozily nestled beside one of the oldest abbeys in England. Kersti’s been doing research and, as it turns out, Mr. Fithern hasn’t done too badly for himself. St. Alden’s School has one of the best reputations in the country. Their website’s wordy “Ethos” promi
ses to “provide an excellent education whereby young men will achieve the highest standard of academic success and develop character and self-discipline.”
They must not have known when they hired Mr. Fithern that he was fleeing a scandal in Switzerland, and that he was completely devoid of both character and self-discipline. He obviously fooled them, just like he fooled everyone at the Lycée.
As the train moves deeper into Hertfordshire, Kersti stares out the window at the rolling green hills, with its hamlets of Tudor cottages, weeping willows, and patches of purple anemones. A lovely brook shimmers alongside their train, as though rushing valiantly to keep up with it. The sun is shining for the first time since they landed at Heathrow, transforming the scenery from the wet gray blur of London into a bright, colorful postcard.
“You know,” Jay says. “We could just spend our time chilling and exploring. We don’t have to visit that teacher—”
“Yes, we do.”
“Why?”
She looks at him as though he’s gone mad. “Because Cressida is literally a part of me now,” she says. “I have to do this for her, Jay. I have to do this for all of us.”
When they arrive at the Inn at London Colney, a restored redbrick coach house next to the Colne River, Kersti wanders the grounds while the sun is still shining, figuring it might be her only opportunity to take in the view before the sky turns dark and opens up and the damp chill returns to the air.
The inn faces a Tudor-style public house across the river, accessible only by a honey-colored stone footbridge canopied by willow trees and oaks blooming with catkins. Kersti heads off toward the bridge while Jay goes inside to check them in. She stands there for a little while, staring down at the rippling water, listening to the orchestra of birds. She notices a small owl staring at her from the branch of an oak tree, his round eyes fixed on her intently, his body perfectly still.
She peers down into the river, which is a significant drop. She thinks about Cressida tumbling from her balcony onto concrete and a wave of nausea pushes its way up into her throat. She’s so close to Lausanne now. In another two days, she’ll be pulling into the Gare, just as she did a little over twenty years ago. Only this time she’ll be with Jay, not her mother. Now she’s a grown woman, a success on all fronts, no one’s shadow anymore. The babies move inside her and it feels like flapping butterflies. It still surprises her, the force of their sudden movements, how strong they already are.
The Finishing School Page 18