Arcadia Falls

by Carol Goodman

  “I am content with my fairy tales,” I told her, “and my drawings of my make-believe places.” It was true: I was happy.

  Until the day I learned about Ivy.

  Of course I had thought about her. Sister Margaret had been right about that. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t wonder where she was, what sort of family had taken her, what she looked like. But I knew that the rules of St. Lucy’s strictly forbade any of the mothers to make inquiries concerning the babies they gave up. I knew, too, that it was a foolish wish. What if she wasn’t happy? Or worse, what if she had gotten sick and died? So many children did in those years. Gertrude was always talking about the dangers of polio, meningitis, measles, and a host of other illnesses that could carry off a child if a mother didn’t enforce the most stringent sanitary practices in her household. I wasn’t sure if I wished my child a mother like Gertrude, who kept her daughter physically safe but turned her into a fretful neurotic, or a more loving, but relaxed mother who might not anticipate every ailment. However, once I had the thought in my head that Ivy could have died, I had to know.

  In the summer of 1944 Vera received a commission to paint a mural for a women’s college in northeastern Pennsylvania. When we arrived there I saw that the college was not far from St. Lucy’s. I told her one day that I wanted to visit the convent to see the mural that Mimi and I had done to see how it was holding up. “I’d like to get some good photographs,” I told her. I was afraid she’d offer to go with me, but I made sure that I picked a day when the models for the frieze she was working on were there so she couldn’t leave. Vera was clearly annoyed that I wouldn’t be there to mix her paints, but I’d found a replacement.

  “But no one knows how to get the colors right but you,” she complained.

  I assured her that I’d left the precise formulas with my replacement (an art student at the college who seemed levelheaded) and left before Vera could think of any other objections. As I traveled east on the same train line I had taken in the other direction sixteen years before, I thought about how dependent on me Vera had grown over the years. It was not that I minded doing things for her—I would have gladly laid down my life for her—but it saddened me to see a woman of her strengths grown petulant and demanding. She ought to have some other outlet for her domineering spirit.

  It was then that I began to conceive in my mind the idea of a prepatory school for the arts. We had long attracted young artists who came for the summer to study with our more experienced artists, but it was a haphazard arrangement that occupied only a few months of the year. There was no consistency of instruction, no organized course of study, no philosophy. After a summer or two, many of the most talented young women drifted away, married, had children, and gave up their art, or treated it as a hobby to fill an idle hour instead of their vocation. I felt that we—Vera and I and Arcadia—could do better. If we formed ourselves into a school we could really prepare young artists—especially young women, I couldn’t help but think—to support themselves. We would teach the fine arts, of course, but also illustration, graphic design, textiles, printing, bookbinding … the decorative arts that could provide a practical income while also making the world a more beautiful place. By the time I arrived at Easton, I had mapped out a plan for the Arcadia School of the Arts. I had already decided that there would be a scholarship program for poor girls who exhibited remarkable talents in the arts.

  The town of Easton felt oddly deserted when I alighted at the train station. A driver met me at the station and drove me up to St. Lucy’s in a rattling and rusted old Buick instead of Johnnie’s pony cart. He told me the town had been given its death sentence.

  “The buildings are all to be razed and burned down to make way for the new reservoir,” he said. “They’d have started on it already if not for the war, but it’s only a matter of time now. This whole valley will be underwater in another ten years.”

  “What about St. Lucy’s?” I asked, thinking of the girls who found their way here from the city. Where would they go if St. Lucy’s was gone? What would happen to the orphans?

  “St. Lu’s is right on top of the taking line, but it’s not likely the city will want a bunch of nuns perched over their water supply. There’s talk of moving it to the other side of the mountain, but Sister Margaret, the old nun who runs the place, don’t like the idea. She says the place was chosen because it was like the spot in Ireland where the original St. Lucy put her baby in the river. She says that if St. Lucy could entrust her only child to the waters, she can entrust the convent to these waters. She refuses to make plans to move. Frankly, I think the old bird—no disrespect meant,” he said, crossing himself, “has gone a bit touched in the head.”

  I was alarmed at the driver’s description of Sister Margaret. I had hoped that she would be able to tell me what had become of my baby. But then, maybe it was better if she didn’t remember me too well, since it was not permitted for the unwed mothers of St. Lucy’s to ask after their lost babies.

  By the time I arrived at St. Lucy’s I had devised a plan. I would tell Sister Margaret that my benefactor, Vera Beecher, had decided that her new school would save a spot for any child born at St. Lucy’s. I would need a list of children born there from, say, 1927 to 1930, with their birthdates and present addresses. I should be able to figure out from her birthdate the present location of my daughter.

  When I came to stand on the threshold of the convent door, though, I found that I was frightened. I was afraid of what I might learn about my child’s fate. As the driver carried my suitcase inside, I went instead into the little chapel of St. Lucy’s, the one that Mimi and I had painted. I remembered that Sister Margaret had said that many of the girls went into the chapel first to collect themselves before entering the convent. That was why she’d thought it was so important that the paintings there should be inspirational and comforting.

  There was one person in the chapel when I entered it. I thought at first that she must be one of the pregnant girls, praying to the saint for guidance, but then I saw that she was only a child and that she wasn’t praying. She was drawing.

  She was an ugly little thing in a threadbare flannel jumper that hung loosely to her bare and scabby knees, worn over a starched white shirt buttoned high around her thin neck. Her short black hair looked like it had been hacked into the shape of a bowl. She was hunched over her sketchpad and I thought at first that she might be deformed—a hunchback, perhaps, or a polio survivor. I walked up behind her quietly so as not to startle her. When I looked over her shoulder at her drawing, though, all of her imperfections faded into nothingness. The scene she had chosen to sketch was of St. Lucy giving her child to the River Clare. Not only had she captured the likeness of what I had painted years ago, but she had made it into something new—something better. She’d managed, as I had not, to imbue the face of the saint with a combination of love, despair, and hope. The mother’s and baby’s eyes were locked on each other with a force that seemed unbreakable.

  “You’ve done that beautifully,” I said. “You have a wonderful way of capturing gesture and expression.”

  The girl did not seem to register that I’d spoken. She went on drawing, meticulously cross-hatching the shadow of St. Lucy as she knelt by the river. Perhaps she was deaf, I thought, or simple-minded. But when she finished shading in St. Lucy’s shadow, she looked up at me with dark eyes as black and sharp as the point of her pencil.

  “I’ve had my whole life to get this bit right,” she said in a high-pitched, slightly nasal, voice. “I should hope I’d gotten it down by now.”

  “You need other models,” I said, smiling. “And better paper and pencils.” I noted that the paper she drew on was coarse and her pencils sharpened down to tiny nubs. “I think I can help.”

  I held out my hand to her. “I’m Lily Eberhardt, and my friend Vera Beecher and I are starting a school for girls like you.”

  The girl tucked her pencil behind her ear and put her cold and grimy hand in mine
without smiling. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Eberhardt. My name’s Ivy St. Clare, and I think you’ll find that there aren’t too many girls like me.”

  I left Ivy in the chapel sketching another scene—she informed me she sketched three a day and spent the afternoons teaching drawing to the younger children. I went to find Sister Margaret, trying to calm myself as I walked through the long stone hall to her office. “She spends her mornings in there ‘working,’ but really I think she just stares out her window,” Ivy had said. “She hasn’t been right in the head since they told her the convent has to be moved. Good luck getting anything out of her.”

  I tried to persuade myself that if Sister Margaret really had gone senile I couldn’t blame her for not telling me about Ivy. At any rate, there was little to gain in chastising an old woman. After all, I had left my child in her care and clearly she had been cared for. In the short conversation I had with Ivy, I sensed that she was the pet of the nunnery. She had her own room, she told me, disdainfully dismissing the notion that she would share quarters with the babies; she ate with the nuns, and she had her mornings free to draw. When I asked if she wouldn’t prefer to live with a family, she sniffed and said she wasn’t the family kind. “I prefer to be on my own.”

  Perhaps I should have been glad for her self-sufficiency, but I felt chilled by it.

  I knocked on Sister Margaret’s door, but when there was no answer I opened it myself. Ivy had been right. The old nun was turned away from her desk so that she could look out her window. It was a lovely view, just as I remembered it from the day I had told Sister Margaret that I was pregnant. You could see the East Branch rolling through green hills, past the white steeple of Easton’s church, and toward the blue mountains beyond. Was she imagining, I wondered, the valley flooded and turned into a lake? When she turned to me at the sound of my footstep I was startled to see that her once-sharp blue eyes were covered with a milky film, as though her eyes had been flooded as her beloved valley soon would be. She couldn’t see the view at all.

  “Sister Margaret,” I said gently, all my anger dissolving, “you probably don’t remember me. I’m Lily Eberhardt. I came here sixteen years ago—”

  “Lily Eberhardt,” she said, her face creasing into a web of lines as she smiled. “Of course, I remember you.” She reached out her hands and I realized she meant me to put my hands in hers. That must be her way of “seeing” people, I thought, stepping closer. As I laid my hands in hers, though, I had a strange and sudden fear that she would place her hands on my belly as she had the time I told her I was pregnant. But of course she didn’t. She gripped my hands in hers and crooned, “Such talented hands! They gave us St. Lucy. I told the man from the water company that they couldn’t possibly think of putting such beautiful paintings under the water. He had no answer for me.” She smiled slyly. “So you see, your pictures have saved us. I knew it was a good day that you came here. You brought us such beauty!”

  I sank down to my knees in front of Sister Margaret, still clasping her hands. “I brought something else here,” I said. “Do you remember? I had a child here—a baby girl.”

  The old woman raised her hand, index finger pointing to the sky. I thought for a moment she was pointing to heaven, admonishing me to God for my sins, but then she touched her finger to her pursed lips and said, “Shhh. It’s a secret. The baby girl that the painter took. She’s a secret.”

  “You mean the baby girl that the painter had,” I said, but Sister Margaret waved my correction away, her crabbed arthritic fingers trembling in the air. “Yes, I did tell you to keep her a secret. But when no one came to take her—”

  “Such a beautiful baby, of course someone wanted her.”

  “But she came back, didn’t she?”

  Sister Margaret tilted her head to one side and then placed her trembling hands on either side of my face. “You came back. I thought you would.”

  I sighed with exasperation. What difference did it make? “Yes, I came back. I’d like to take Ivy back with me now.”

  “Ivy?”

  “Yes, Ivy, my …” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t own my own child to one of the only two people alive who knew she was mine. I knew then the terrible truth: I’d felt no bond of love or affection toward that strange, homely girl I found in the chapel. Except for one thing. I’m not the family kind, she had said. Well, we had that in common. I was no better at being a mother than she had been at playing someone’s daughter. “Ivy St. Clare,” I said, beginning again. “My new protégée. I’d like to offer her a scholarship at our new arts school.”

  And so I brought Ivy to Arcadia … oh, not right away, of course. First I had to convince Vera that we could single- (or double-) handedly start our own school. She was skeptical at first, but when she saw how determined I was, she gave way.

  “I suppose this is your way of making up for not having children,” she said one evening as we sat before the fire in Fleur-de-Lis. “I’m afraid we women can’t avoid the mothering instinct in the end.” When she said that, it occurred to me for the first time that Vera might regret not having children. Had I been wrong all those years ago not to trust her with my secret? Might she have accepted my child? It was an awful thought given how things had turned out, but I banished it from my head as I went forward, putting my plan into effect. I had plenty to keep my mind occupied in the coming year if I wanted our new school to open by the next fall. I needed teachers, classrooms, art supplies and, of course, students—some of whom, it became immediately clear to me, would have to be paying students.

  “I hate to say it,” Vera said when she looked over the figures with me, “but if you ask Fleur Sheldon to come, a dozen of the Sheldons’ friends will send their daughters as well. With their tuition, we’ll be able to support a dozen scholarship girls.”

  I had to agree, even though I hated to admit Fleur Sheldon. It wasn’t that I had anything against the girl. In fact, I felt sorry for her. She was so clearly talentless, but Gertrude would not see that and forced Fleur to apply herself to her artistic studies day and night. No expense was spared. The most exclusive instructors were hired and the poor girl was dragged around the great museums of Europe and forced to copy the masters. What a waste! If only poor little Ivy had been given Fleur’s education and opportunities! But I would rectify that imbalance now—and if it meant fleecing the Sheldons’ pocketbook, so be it.

  It happened just as Vera predicted. Vera wrote a letter that Christmas to Gertrude Sheldon inviting Fleur to join the Arcadia School of the Arts. By March, we’d gotten applications from fourteen full-paying students. I posted notices at the Art Students League inviting applicants, and Dora and Ada recruited from the city schools and settlement houses where they taught pottery. Then I wrote to Sister Margaret inviting Ivy—and whatever other deserving girls she might recommend.

  “I’m afraid no one’s more deserving than Ivy St. Clare,” she wrote back. “She will be missed here, but I’m confident that she is going where she belongs.”

  Was that, I wondered, a veiled reference to our relationship?

  It hardly mattered. By late spring we had chosen eleven scholarship students including Ivy and enrolled fourteen paying students. When I sent out the final notices to our accepted applicants, I sent one more to a girl who hadn’t applied at all—Mimi Green’s daughter, who I figured must be close to sixteen by then and who, if she had any of her mother’s talent, would be just right for the school. I suppose I wanted Mimi to know that I appreciated how she’d kept my secret all these years. Mimi’s response was a terse “No thank you.” I never again tried to contact her.

  The girls arrived in the last week of July. We had no dorms yet, so they stayed in the main house, sharing two or three to a room. All except Ivy.

  “I had my own room at the orphanage,” she told me on the first day. “I can’t sleep with the sound of other people breathing.” If it had been anyone else I would have told her to make do, but how could I deny her anything when her whole lif
e had been one of want because of me? I gave her the room I had before Vera and I moved to Fleur-de-Lis.

  Mrs. Byrnes sniffed with disapproval when I asked her to get bedding for Ivy’s room. “Will the lady be having her breakfast in bed as well?” she asked. “Shouldn’t the girls here on scholarship have to work to help earn their keep?”

  “I want no distinction made between them,” I told Mrs. Byrnes. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t say a word. I knew what she was thinking. I had already made a distinction. I realized then that I would never be able to treat Ivy dispassionately. I would always be trying to make up for what I hadn’t given her. And yet I could tell that being indulged was not what she needed. She’d already been the pet at the convent. Here she needed to be challenged—but someone else would have to do the challenging.

  After dinner that night, while Vera and I were sitting by the fire going over the accounts, I casually mentioned my idea for Ivy. “I’ve been thinking you should have one of the students as your personal assistant. Someone who can take care of the little details that distract you from your work—appointments and correspondence and such.”

  “You always take care of those things,” Vera said, looking up from the account book.

  “Yes, but I’ll be too busy now with the school and I think it would be good if someone else knew how to attend to such things—”

  “You sound as if you’re thinking of leaving.”

  I looked up and saw she’d gone pale and her jaw was clenched. The hand that held the pencil above the account book was trembling. I was startled by how frightened she looked. Was she that afraid of losing me? It should, I suppose, have flattered me, but instead it made me feel a little frightened myself. Not that I had any thought of ever leaving, but what if I did? What would Vera do? Would she let me go?