****
Halloween was still a day away. My parents wouldn’t stay over, arriving early the next morning. I felt myself growing tense. They really had no clue about Katie and me, but would I seem different now? Now that Katie and I were intimate, could it show?
Well, they liked Katie; they had decided she and her dad were good for me. That would do for now. I would just have to be careful.
I managed to fall asleep despite my concerns. Better still, I managed not to dream. I was up and dressed when Katie knocked. She admired my somewhat feminine white pleated-front shirt and flared wool skirt. I knew my mother would appreciate my outfit.
We met my folks in the formal parlor, the main one with Persian rugs, an old baby grand piano, and the Van Hals in the corner, a version of his clown-like character.
Out of their element, my parents were a bit stiff. They presented me with a soft, lamb’s wool sweater in heather mustard, my favorite. I could tell it was a good brand on sale because of the cut label.
Kind of lost in the fingering of this luxurious sweater, I started to appreciate just how normal and wholesome this was. I heard my mother say, “Honey, don’t you like it?”
“What? Oh sorry, Mommy, I love it. I was just picturing it with my brown tweed skirt.”
Katie piped in, “Wow! Mrs. Mazzini, that’s gorgeous.” She winked at both of us, saying, “It might just disappear.”
“Oh Katie, dear, if you like it, I know a shop.”
“Mrs. Mazzini, you’re swell.” Katie planted a sweet kiss on my mother’s cheek.
My father fingered leather-bound books on the shelf, pulling a volume of Coleridge. He called over to me, holding the Coleridge. “You know, I read a good deal of Coleridge and Poe in college. Still have that leather-bound volume of Poe at home.”
“I love that one, Daddy,” I answered. I looked up to see him smiling at me. I could only describe the look as pride.
My mother was eyeing a plate of shortbread cookies greedily. I couldn’t help but say, “Mommy, wait till we go to eat. Those are kind of stale. I know.”
“Just one, honey. They look so good.” She finished by eating two.
She started to stroke a Belgian lace runner. We spoke of more food and Mothers’ weekend in a few months, and more food. I chatted about things I didn’t care about. Would the snooty girls see my parents? Hmph. Would the snooty girls see me?
My father invited Katie to join us for a lunch at the Olde Andover Inn. There were tourists of all sorts here; they’d fit in. I heard myself let out a big sigh, and realized I had worked up a ravenous appetite, what with all my worries. Our early afternoon turned homey with warm barley soup, pones, and baked apples with cream for dessert.
My mom cried a bit when she spoke of the empty house back home. Her tears brought me relief. Both Katie and I were reverting back to younger kids in a simpler world. I hardly thought of Craney, Alda, or Dorotea. My parents wouldn’t have known what to do with any of them.
As they drove away, Katie and I reminded each other that tomorrow would be Halloween. I told Katie I was going to return Craney’s gown, just folding it and leaving it on the cane chair outside her office door. She nodded in agreement and asked if she should come with me.
The parent’s visits brought me a sharp clarity. Getting rid of Craney’s gown would be clean. I would go by myself to her office at a time when she would be busy with chapel service. I would leave the gown, with no note, no explanation, leave unseen immediately.
Clear as the crisp, star-studded sky, promising frolics for the eve of all Hallows! I felt the brief kiss of Katie’s fingertips against mine as we separated for the evening.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Halloween
Heavy early morning rain pelted the windows, announcing a soggy All Hallows Eve. Even the black crepe paper streamers Alda had hung while I was with my folks sagged with a crippling fatigue. Alda was up early, already seated at her desk. She looked equally depressed.
I whistled and said, “good morning.” She answered a slow “yeah” and turned to face me.
“You don’t trust me, do you?” she said.
My mind was scrambling. I functioned on slow in the morning. “Why?” was all I could muster while rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“You’ve hardly said a word to me the last two days. I don’t even know what you’re going to do about the gown.”
“Well, our parents—”
“No. Listen. I get it. I’ve pulled some weird stuff, and I mean, the scar…give me a chance.”
“Stop,” I said. I really didn’t want to get into the scar business now. I didn’t trust her, but I did have to tell her about the academic gown since it was in her closet. “No, I don’t think you put the gown in my bed. And I, I am finally going to put it back. Let’s get it out of your closet.”
I filled Alda in on the details of my plan to deposit it outside Craney’s office as soon as possible. She handed me the gown and continued to pull out other bundles.
“Costumes for later. I mean, if you and I are okay.” Her eyes softened.
“Costumes? Sure.” I scratched my head. All I could think about was getting rid of this black shroud. I could juggle costumes, masks, and conflicting friendships later. Katie would know what to do about Alda and Dorotea.
I bagged the academic gown and exited the room after a thorough hall check.
The hall was quiet: religious girls were already at chapel, others still sleeping or eating pancakes in town. I slipped out the security door to the outside and clung to the edge of the privet hedge. I peeked in the backdoor to Damper Hall. Not a sound.
I only had to make it one-third of the way down the darkened hallway. The long Persian runners padded my footsteps and the high walls with their large canvases cushioned any stray rustling of the paper bag.
There was the chair. In my relief at seeing it, I accidentally scraped its back leg onto the exposed marble floor. A sound of shattering glass and nail on chalkboard resounded back at me. My mind envisioned the dead rising up from graves and the gown floating out of the bag. I gathered my wits, left the bag, and sprinted off.
One last ten-foot section of carpet to go. I had counted them once, the last time I was here with Craney: fifty feet between Craney’s office and the door, five sections of ten-foot Persian runners. Then, home free.
I could already see a single ray of light stealing in from behind the last panels of brocade drapes lining the hall. I reached for the sculpted brass doorknob with my right hand. I could already taste freedom in the crisp October air.
A bony hand, Craney’s bony hand, grasped my shoulder. She spun me around away from the door. She ushered me into the heavily draped alcove, the one I missed when I counted off steps and niches.
“Come.” She pulled me deeper into the alcove and seemed to collapse back against the massive oak doors hidden by the drapes. “You will come to my chambers tonight at eight.”
In the dim light, I saw her jerk her head away with a snort. An ether-like odor began to permeate the enclosed space. I was struggling to hold my breath when Craney’s long arm thrust me back out through the velvet drape.
My legs could hardly carry me. I flung open the leaden door and ran to my room as best I could. I made it to the trashcan. I held the rolled metal edge and vomited bile. Resting my chin against the cold metal, I welcomed the cool washcloth Alda offered.
With a gentle tap on my shoulder, she whispered she’d get Katie. Katie came running in, followed by Alda, who hung back and allowed Katie to take over. She wiped my forehead and smoothed my hair. She even got Alda’s astringent towelettes to freshen me up. I let myself go in her maternal care while the Platters’ Twilight Time played on the radio.
The chamomile tea and a few Social Tea cookies made up for my lack of breakfast and fortified me. I actually heard myself say I could deal with this when Alda and Katie gaped at me. Yeah, we all wondered what this was. What would Craney do that evening?
Kati
e volunteered to come, but we all thought that it would be too risky for Craney to see us together again. Alda was quiet for a good five minutes, scratching her forehead and pulling on her thick, black hair.
“You’ve got to trust me. I’ll go,” said Alda.
For some reason, that seemed to make sense. Besides, the two of them, Alda and Craney, couldn’t gang up on me. I looked quickly at both Alda and Katie. I wasn’t sure if I had said that out loud. I imagined the theme music from the Twilight Zone.
“Menthol!” I shouted
Now, both of them looked at me as if I was truly crazy, not just paranoid, but hallucinating. Katie patted my shoulder and merely raised her eyebrows.
“Craney smelled of menthol. Like, what’s that vapor rub called?”
Each of them had ideas about getting help. Each spoke of her dad, Alda choosing her words about her father with extreme care. I pooh-poohed their ideas. Craney hadn’t done anything, really.
I joked maybe we needed a Sicilian curse. Alda opened her eyes wide. I had to repeat several times that I was joking.
“But,” Katie interrupted. “Your grandmother dream, remember. She said ‘the wicked witch is dead.’”
We all laughed as much as we could. It was better than crying. When the radio played “I Put a Spell on You,” we really roared.
Alda said, “You guys, know, maybe it’s not a bad idea.”
We did homework while the radio played its usual blend of music. We giggled occasionally when the lyrics of a song were particularly fitting. “It’s Just a Matter of Time” by Brook Benton was the final straw. I raced to switch off the radio.
It was seven forty-five. Katie held me and told me she’d wait for us there. Alda and I walked in step down the hall, Alda telling jokes on a Halloween theme.
The fifty-foot walk to Craney’s office felt interminable. In our silence, the dimensions of the hallway seemed to grow longer and higher. The walk had become a never-ending plank.
Outside Craney’s office, Alda sat on the cane chair. I needed to continue walking off the tightness in my every joint and muscle. I had paced back and forth the extent of the fifty feet at least three more times when I heard the creak of Craney’s door. Alda shuffled to her feet only to have Craney push her back down in the chair.
“It’s time. Pina. Come.” Craney had spoken.
I sat only after Craney had repeated her command for the third time. I kept my trench coat on. She motioned to the chair, mumbling, “Please do” in a voice that was neither pleasing nor welcoming.
She thanked me for the return of her academic gown. Someone had stolen it, she said. Between sniffles, she explained the tailoring of her gown, holding it up for me to admire. As she stretched out the gown’s arm for me, my eyes started to water. Garlic.
Craney was on her feet now. Great. She was dismissing me. No. She was holding the gown out to me, throwing a knife-like stare at me over her frameless half-glasses.
“Unique, isn’t it? Here.” She reached for one of my hands. “Feel the ermine.”
With that, she thrust the gown into my hands and commanded, “Dress me.”
I couldn’t protest; her closeness paralyzed me. I obeyed, draping the gown over her suit. I stepped back as if to get a better look. The reek of rotting garlic hit my face head-on.
She sniffled again. “No damage. See.” She changed her tone. Her eyes twinkled.
“You didn’t take it, did you?” She turned the side of my chin towards her with the prod of her arthritic index finger.
“No. No.” I had cotton candy for saliva. I had to keep it brief. “Ah, no. I, uh, found it.” I had to rob my face of the conviction she had snuck into my room to put it there herself.
She patted my shoulder. “Good.”
It was then I realized she was sniveling when a drop fell on the sleeve of my London Fog.
She coughed and braced herself with one wrinkled arm on the desk. She took off her glasses and looked up at me from under her lids. “Well, good night to you, my dear. It is Halloween. Oh. And do you know the lament by Byron, ‘We’ll go no more a roving so late into the night?’ A good one for Halloween.”
I couldn’t answer. She clasped me to her, then thrust me towards the door. She stood erect, reciting the poem.
“Damn!” was all I said to Alda once outside.
“What?” Alda’s eyes seemed to check me all over for visible or invisible wounds.
“Just creepy. Weird and creepy.”
“But…did she…uh touch you?”
“Yeah, but not like you’re thinking.”
She threw her head back and mumbled, “Grazie, Dio.” Thank God.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Halloween Continued
Alda was doing her best to zoom us back to the room through the moaning wind and torrential downpour. How could I have thought Alda would hurt me?
Dropping our shoes and sodden trench coats on the mats at the dorm doors, we caught our breath and continued down the hall, arms around each other’s shoulders. There was no longer any come-on, sexual or otherwise. She felt solid; I felt safe.
Alda reached for the doorknob and nudged the door as she yawned. I leaned my weight into it. Glowing in the dark was a black, silver, and white skeleton creeping towards us. Alda and I both tumbled forward in a screaming fit and in frantic attempts to escape through the now closed door.
Katie, our misguided skeleton, was on the floor with us, attempting to scrape us up. She pleaded, cried, and begged for forgiveness. She had started to worry that we were gone so long. As a distraction, she dressed herself for her worst fears—that I was dead meat.
“Dangit, Katie. You were like a repeat of Craney in her gown just now. Get that frigging thing off.”
“I didn’t expect…I started to lose track of time.” Katie threw off the costume and stroked me over and over. Her eyes were moist. She grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
I recounted the short version of my visit with Craney, filling in more details about my emotional state. “I just knew she would touch me. I was afraid I’d pass out right there.”
I admitted that my mind had also been fantasizing weird things. Like the smell of garlic and menthol. I flashed on death camps. I panicked that Craney was gassing me.
Alda was on her feet. She offered to make me some chamomile tea. Katie petted and fussed over me, but then she asked what Alda and I had been talking about when we were at the door.
“You were saying something like, ‘We’ll go no more a roving.’ You and Alda?”
“Oh right. No, sweetie. We’ve got to look up this poem Craney recited to me. Gross, something about love.”
Alda handed me my tea, and the two of them searched in our English Lit text for Lord Byron. They read it out loud, gagging especially over the line “Though the heart be still as loving…” and the beginning of the next one “Though the night was made for loving…”
Katie shrieked, “Yuck. It’s like this old decrepit person is lusting over you.”
“Let me see.” I grabbed the book and let the words sink in. “Gross. It sounds like she’s got to have me.”
“Putana!” Katie and I turned to stare at Alda. She had used a really strong Italian curse both Katie and I recognized.
“Let me think,” she said. “What did you say about Sicilian curses and spells, Pina? Do you really know any?’
“C’mon, Alda. It was a dream.”
Alda had definitely gone some place in her head. Her eyes were travelling back and forth while she wrung her hands. Her eyes became slits; her lips pursed. “I’m going to call my father tomorrow. You do know he could help.”
“Uh,” was the only response from Katie and me. I realized there was something important in Alda’s statement, but I was too numb to pick up on it.
Katie nudged me awake, saying, “I’m out of it too. Do you guys think I could sleep here tonight? Just sleep?”
Alda and I both agreed. Under other circumstances, I would have been whooping and ho
llering, “Yeah!” We wondered about room check, but Katie said Mademoiselle had already been by. Katie had told her she was borrowing a book while Alda and I were with Craney. Dorotea was away visiting her aunt.
If Halloween had anything left in store for us, we would all protect one another. We threw the mattresses and covers on the floor and felt like we were having a fourth grade sleepover.
****
Before crawling onto the mattresses, the three of us built an arsenal of potato chips and brownies just off to the side. Memories of earlier birthday parties and sleepovers floated in my mind’s eye. Our twistings and turnings over one another to reach for goodies created a true bed of crumbs. With each shift, we created dry crunchings and laughed, spewing still more crumbs under ourselves and down our nightshirts. All we needed was grape soda running out our noses to complete our return to childhood.
“Really.” Katie crunched “We’ve gotta sleep.”
I sputtered, “Yuck! You spat on me.”
“Ladies, ladies.” Alda was choking and giggling. “We’ve got to clean off the sheet.”
We tumbled off the mattresses and flapped the sheet several times to balloon over us and hover and finally settle. After threatening to lick the last crumbs off each other’s faces, we nestled into comfy sleeping positions.
Sandwiched between Katie and Alda, I closed my eyes and started to drool. My last semi-lucid memory was Mademoiselle’s usual nighttime wish, “dormez bien,” sleep well, and the French figure of speech, “fall into the arms of Morpheus,” meaning to dream.
There were pumpkins, apples, and Morpheus, the god, in my early dreams. And morphine, of course an association with Morpheus.
The next episode involved sleeping pills, menthol, and garlic. There was my grandmother, not Morpheus, with garlic again. She was mumbling that her father, the Doctor Daidone, could lift curses and spells that “stregas,” witches, had cast.
Love and Lechery at Albert Academy Page 9