Bradstreet Gate: A Novel

by Robin Kirman

  Like most of her classmates, Alice already knew who Georgia was: her second day in the Boylston dorm, when she’d met the boys who shared her floor, she’d seen a photo of Georgia, torn from the freshman directory and tacked up to the wall—dappled sunlight highlighting her smile, brightening her curls. The photo looked professional, something torn from a magazine, leading Alice to assume the girl must be an actress or a model—as it turned out, Georgia was a model, though only for her father, a well-known photographer. About a month into the school year, someone among Georgia’s male admirers came upon a book of Jethro Calvin nudes, including photographs of his only daughter. That book made its way around the Yard, and Georgia became a kind of campus celebrity, while other freshmen still had to remind one another of their names.

  Over the next months, Alice picked up several more bits of gossip about Georgia: that she’d never lived in any place more than a year or so, that she hardly knew her own mother, that she’d lost her virginity to a high school classmate’s father. Alice was familiar enough with the workings of rumor to greet these claims with skepticism. Georgia Calvin was the rare girl in possession of a potent beauty, the kind that guaranteed her a place in people’s fantasies, whatever those fantasies might be.

  For Alice, her desire was clear: to share in that attention which Georgia inspired, to harness that power. This was the wish she’d formed while observing Georgia from a distance: studying in the reading room of the Fine Arts Library, or jogging on the path along the Charles, decked out in tiny red retro shorts, an outfit hardly appropriate for the routes Georgia took through urban streets, sometimes after dark.

  Almost always, Alice noticed, Georgia was alone. She appeared to have trouble finding her social niche; she’d quit the swim team after only one season, and, following a few weeks of volunteering the next fall, she quit that too. Though she kept a few friendships going with some swimmers, by sophomore year Georgia’s only truly close friend seemed to be an awkward, skinny kid whom Alice recognized from UC election posters. For an entire month, his picture grinned from every campus kiosk—bow tie, slicked hair, and crooked teeth—Charles Flournoy, running his campaign like he ran after Georgia, blind to his own clownishness.

  Unlike Charlie, Alice wasn’t one to make a show of her pursuit. The first time she spoke to Georgia was in an official capacity, as a reporter for the Crimson, when she’d invited her to appear among the “15 hottest freshmen” in her story. Georgia had refused to participate—I’m not really into drawing attention to myself—and Alice hadn’t pressed the matter. If this wasn’t to be the occasion for their meeting, another would present itself; so patiently she’d waited until sophomore year for her path to cross again with Georgia’s—as classmates in the Monday/Wednesday section of The Female Icon in Contemporary Art.

  Every other Wednesday their class paid visits to the Fogg Art Museum, and there, Alice imagined, she and Georgia were bound to find themselves drawn together, finally, attracted by the same object, standing close until conversation was inevitable. But at the first visit, she’d waited in vain for Georgia to appear. The second visit was the same—nor did Georgia show up for the third or fourth.

  One afternoon as the semester was drawing to a close, Georgia strolled up to Alice’s desk beside the window; she wanted Alice’s opinion, she said, on a collection of photographs, works by a Balkan artist, that were to be the subject for her final paper. Lambert, their section TA, had suggested she speak with Alice, “as a woman of Serbian descent.”

  Later that night, after dinner, Alice stopped by Georgia’s room. Georgia was living in Mather House, in a single that shared a door and bathroom with a blunt-featured, muscled girl from the swim team: Gillian went by Gill—“a swimming joke,” Georgia explained, introducing Alice to the girl doing crunches on her floor.

  Georgia’s bedroom was up a flight of stairs; it smelled of chlorine and lavender. A bra was dangling from the beams of her bed, bottles of lotion sat on a shelf below a mirror. Georgia took one bottle down, rubbing lotion on her legs and neck; then she reached behind Alice to lift a folder from her bedside table. As she laid the photographs out across her bed, she explained how they’d come to be in her possession.

  She’d been twelve, traveling with her father for the Venice Biennale, when they’d paid a visit to a local art dealer. The dealer had led them into a back office, where twenty or so photographs were strewn across one corner of the floor. While the men discussed their business, Georgia had studied the pictures, all portraits of the same young woman (the artist, it turned out), dressed in shiny clothes and a ridiculous blond wig. Each frame contained a picture of Marilyn Monroe somewhere in the background; the woman in the foreground was made up and posed in precise imitation of that picture.

  By then Georgia was modeling frequently for her father, though she hadn’t yet begun to think about what her image meant, nor could she appreciate yet the political dimension of these self-portraits: “the artist’s critique of the West’s proprietary power over the feminine ideal.” Still, she’d been affected enough by the work for the dealer to take notice; in an effort to coax her father into doing business with him, he’d offered the photographs to Georgia as a gift. The only extant copies, as far as Georgia knew. Recently she’d thought to examine them again and still held them to be an extraordinary find, however little the Venice dealer had esteemed them. She was curious to hear if Alice found them as powerful as she did.

  The photographs, black and white, the size of Polaroids, crowded the length of Georgia’s comforter. Each displayed an intelligent-looking young woman posed inside the same gloomy room; taken together, especially, the mood was claustrophobic, monotonous, hopeless. Alice thought of those snapshots kept by her mother, those of her and Vasily, from a time when Senka Kovac had been a charming creature, not yet deformed by loneliness and disappointment.

  Georgia went on, rearranging the pictures, filling the gap left by Alice’s silence: “I’m thinking of showing these to some gallerists. My father has a good friend with a small place in New York—the son and I used to play together, and now I hear he’s curating. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were an exhibition? Twenty years ago a woman in a slum of Sarajevo picks up a camera, not believing anyone will care. I wonder what she’d think to see us taking interest now?”

  Alice looked from the photographs to Georgia—this pretty, happy creature so very pleased with herself for her discovery—and was seized with irritation. As if the artist should be grateful, Alice thought, as if it were her fucking dream, as she sweated under that cheap blond wig, to end up splayed across the bedspread of some spoiled, honey-haired American. “I guess before you make your plans, you might want to ask the artist what she wants.”

  “Yes, of course.” Georgia’s reverie was ended; she let go of the pictures and crossed her arms over her chest. “Obviously I would try to contact her, ask permission. Though I can’t imagine she’d object.”

  “I can.” The anger behind her outburst took even Alice by surprise.

  A small flush brightened Georgia’s cheeks: she pulled her hair up over her neck. “I may not know this particular artist, but I’ve met my share, okay. No one ever stands in the way of having work shown.”

  “Well, probably the issue’s moot in any case. With what’s been going on in Sarajevo, with any luck the woman’s dead.”

  Georgia stared across at her, refusing to be shocked. “Frankly, since you bring it up, the political situation only makes this work more urgent. Sorry if that sounds crass, but the way I see it, good art should have an audience, regardless of what the artist thinks, or even, believe it or not, what you think.” She let her hair fall again at her shoulders and stepped away to open the bedroom door. “Anyway, I appreciate your coming over; and I really didn’t mean to piss you off.”

  In fact Alice wasn’t angry any longer: her annoyance had dissipated as quickly as it came, replaced by a reluctant admiration. Georgia had shown mettle.

  Leaving the door open, Geo
rgia stepped away to gather the photographs into a folder. Alice remained beside her; she had no desire to leave, nor, she sensed, did Georgia really wish for her to go. Their argument had left them both less embittered than enlivened, curious where the encounter might lead next. Alice suggested they head out for a drink.

  There were several bars around the campus, noisy ones frequented by undergrads, but Alice escorted Georgia past these, to the upstairs room at Charlie’s Kitchen. A dive with colored lighting, a dartboard, and a decent jukebox, the spot was frequented by young professors and grad students mostly, since the staff there made a point of checking each ID. On their way in, Alice simply nodded to the bouncer, who waved her on; upstairs, she paused to order two vodka cranberries at the bar, then coaxed Georgia into one of the brown Naugahyde booths.

  “They don’t even card you,” Georgia marveled.

  Looking old was one of her talents, Alice said. “On the first day of our section, two students came to me with questions; they thought I was the TA.”

  “I thought you were his girlfriend, maybe.”

  “And I thought the same of you.” She hadn’t, not really; pretentious Lambert, with his goatee and turtlenecks, wasn’t up to Georgia. Still, Alice took the opportunity to address a question that had been bugging her these last weeks. “You skipped out on all the Fogg trips; I figured without sex he’d have flunked you.”

  “No, it’s not like that. Actually, I’m not allowed inside Fogg anymore.” An embarrassing story, Georgia claimed, which made Alice urge her the more forcefully to tell it.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Georgia began, a finger raised to her lips, “I was only trying to do good.”

  “Doing good,” meant volunteering, Georgia went on to explain: that fall, she’d signed on with a campus-run program called Inspire Youth. Each Saturday, volunteers would pair off and escort groups of troubled teens to various university attractions: usually a play or musical performance. The group leaders organized these trips according to their interests; Georgia’s first proposal was a tour of the major works at the Fogg Art Museum.

  From the start, she’d feared her choice was a poor one: the kids were rowdy, their voices echoing through the hushed halls and disturbing the other visitors. Complaints were made, and a guard warned that if she and her partner couldn’t control their group, they’d need to leave. As a compromise, Georgia moved the kids down to the central courtyard, where she purchased a poster of Van Gogh’s self-portrait from the gift shop and offered up the story of his severed ear.

  The kids perked up: They got the ear stashed here? Let’s see it. Ear. Ear. Ear.

  Laughing, horsing around, the kids were all moving much too fast for Georgia to notice that one of them had pulled out a switchblade. A girl shouted; the kid with the knife was holding it to the side of her head. Before Georgia knew what was happening, a security guard was upon the boy, seizing the knife, pushing him up against the wall. The boy was taken to the police station; the others were sent home, forbidden, along with Georgia, from returning to the museum. A week later, Georgia was called in to speak with the head of Inspire Youth, a fellow sophomore named Julie Patel, who suggested Georgia was better suited to working with the elderly or blind, anyone other than children with impulse disorders: “Apparently I was responsible for the incident; I’d been sending provocative signals.”

  “So now,” Alice observed, “you’re trying to make yourself sound exciting, is that it?”

  “To you?” Georgia let out a laugh, pleased, it seemed to Alice, to be spoken to so boldly. “I wouldn’t presume.”

  Georgia leaned toward her, tipsy and languid; her hair tickled Alice’s arm. Others in the bar were watching them, a dozen pairs of eyes turning their way. Alice and Georgia, a beautiful pair, united, newly inseparable—the pleasure in that arrangement was enough to induce Alice to keep Georgia’s company from here on, even if she hadn’t found Georgia more interesting than she’d imagined. Behavior that Alice had before ascribed to naiveté—running through dark streets in skimpy outfits, volunteering with delinquents—she’d come to see, that night, another way. Here was a girl, thought Alice, who was looking to be shaken, seeking out some misadventure, and that—the warped, irrational core in the smooth, harmonious package—Alice did find exciting.

  5

  She didn’t know who he was, but a man had entered Georgia’s life: Alice was sure. Just as their college years were drawing to an end, years in which Georgia had enjoyed only rare and furtive flings and shown no sustained interest in any of the campus guys but Charlie (and then, strictly a platonic one), Georgia was finally involved in an affair. At least this would explain her weekend visits to Manhattan, trips that Georgia claimed were for an internship in Soho. It was to work at a gallery, supposedly, that she rode four hours each way by train, toting lingerie inside her duffel—Alice had searched the bag once, back at Georgia’s place after a run, while Georgia, in the shower, shaved her legs and washed her hair with her swanky Parisian lavender shampoo.

  From what Alice could tell, the affair had started sometime after Christmas; Georgia must have met the man in New York over winter break. At first Alice suspected the gallery owner’s son, Gabe, whom Georgia claimed she stayed with each Saturday night—only that wouldn’t account for Georgia’s secrecy. No, whomever she was seeing had to be married or famous—someone so desperate to keep their relationship hidden that Georgia hadn’t dared to share the news even with her, her closest friend.

  One Sunday night, after Georgia had returned from Manhattan, she and Alice were hanging out in Alice’s new place on Inman Square. Draped across Alice’s bed, Georgia pulled a joint from her jeans pocket; Alice rarely smoked—pot made her paranoid—but that night she’d joined in, feeling bored and craving new sensations. Later, she’d promised to drop in on a party at Gerry’s. Gerry was the only friend Alice had made in Adams House during her year there; since then, he had also moved off campus, where he could throw better parties with better drugs and an edgier crowd than could normally be found around the Yard. Still, tonight the prospect of a night at Gerry’s didn’t tempt her; even the most outrageous displays had grown old: the same meltdowns and hook-ups, the same ecstasy-fueled fumblings, observed by her and Gerry with the same wry commentary, before she returned home with the same cigarette stink in her clothes, to climb into bed alone. As always. Meanwhile, Georgia was off enjoying some wild, forbidden, alternative existence.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked Georgia, out of the blue, it must have seemed, that cold February night. “I should have met you in New York. We should be at a club right now, making out with indie actors, fleecing brokers.” Why were they spending these—their most fuckable years—lying on Georgia’s bed and staring at the ceiling?

  “I’m perfectly satisfied,” said Georgia lightly.

  Alice propped herself up on her elbow: there were no marks of sex on Georgia’s body that she could see; no dark patches on her neck; no rashy skin around her mouth left behind by a man’s stubble. Her lips were puffy, though, and curled into a slight smile. She looked like somebody savoring a secret.

  “And how are you so satisfied? By this sexless marriage you’ve got going with Charlie?” They’d been over it a dozen times—the stultifying effect of Georgia’s friendship with Charlie, her fear of hurting him by letting down his hopes, or by demonstrating an attraction to any other man—not that Alice wished to concern herself so very much with Georgia’s sex life. The only reason she’d brought the subject up again this evening was to provoke Georgia into making a confession; if Georgia was hiding an affair, Alice meant to let her know she understood her motive.

  In any case, Georgia wasn’t lured into the trap; she chose to steer the conversation in a different direction.

  “I’m not denying there’s some sexual component there with Charlie. But so what? Attraction is the basis of all friendship.”

  “You would think that.”

  Georgia was lying on her back, her hair fanned
out around her on the covers; her legs were dropped toward Alice, brushing her side. “And what do you think?”

  Alice peered down at her: Georgia with that dewy skin that never had a blemish and those curves which would have made almost any girl feel mannish, even one who didn’t stand six feet tall with shoulders wider than her hips.

  Georgia began to laugh her throaty laugh—and a thought struck Alice with the force of a revelation: Georgia was purposely keeping her affair from her—not out of concern that Charlie would find out and be jealous, but that she would. She was the one who couldn’t bear to know her friend was loved by some man unattainable to her. She, even more than Charlie, was the frustrated one. Wasn’t that why Georgia was laughing at her now? What else could it be? Why else would Georgia lounge across her bed that way unless she was trying to taunt her?

  Rising from the bed, Alice crossed to the chair where she’d left her coat. “Gerry’s expecting me.”

  “It’s cozy here. Why not stay a little longer?”

  “Let yourself out then. I’ll go alone.”

  Georgia sat up, dazed, and brushed a curl from her eyes. “Are you upset or something?”

  Alice buttoned her coat and stood at the wall mirror to fix her hair. In the reflection she caught Georgia looking at her, her pretty face contorted with confusion. But Alice was feeling sharp, taken over by a fierce and clarifying anger. She strolled out the bedroom door, leaving Georgia kneeling on the mattress and calling after her: “You’re just leaving? Alice, stop. Come back here! What the fuck just happened?”

  —

  Gerry’s place was on the other side of Inman Square, a three-bedroom shared with two local kids who ran a music store. Despite the distance from the main campus and the falling snow, the apartment was packed. Bodies crowded the entrance: standing, seated, sprawled. On her way in, Alice stepped over a pair of giant feet, laces untied. The man attached to them was large, with a round face and brown hair starting to go gray. Alice couldn’t decide if he was handsome; he had bulbous features that could be considered either sensuous or barbarous.