The Lake of Dead Languages

by Carol Goodman

  “But you know she tried to kill herself once before. And just yesterday you told me that she leaves drawings of razor blades on the homework she turns in to you. Did it ever occur to you that she might be asking for your intervention?”

  I shake my head. I had thought the pictures were left on her homework by accident, but I can see how lame that would sound now.

  “Did you ever try to talk to her about the scars on her wrists?” Dr. Lockhart asks.

  I remember the conversation I had with Athena before her last exam, when she saw me looking at the scar. She told me that her aunt had sent her here to dry out from boys. I had laughed and turned away from her. Then there was this morning’s swim. I realize now that I may have been the last person to see her before she went back to her room, swallowed her roommate’s sleeping pills, and took a steak knife to her arms. Was she afraid I would turn her in?

  I look up at Dr. Lockhart and remember that I had been planning to tell her about seeing Athena in the lake. I will tell her now. It is not too late.

  Only it is. Dr. Lockhart reaches down and touches the collar of my shirt. I flinch as if she had been about to strangle me, but when she draws her hand away I see she has, magicianlike, pulled a long green ribbon from inside my shirt collar. Only it’s not a ribbon, it’s a strand of grass. The kind that grows on the lake bottom.

  “Interesting,” Dr. Lockhart says, holding the long strand in the light from the window so that it glows like a shard of green glass. I notice that the white sky outside has broken apart. It has begun to snow.

  “We found a piece of grass just like this in Ellen’s clothing. We surmised that she might have tried to drown herself in the lake first, but for some reason couldn’t go through with it. I thought it was odd to be brave enough to slit your wrists but not to drown. But then, maybe someone stopped her.”

  She raises one eyebrow and looks at me. I feel the blood rush to my face and for a second I think how the color red must look, in this deathly white room, on her dress and in my face. The nurse comes to the door and Dean Buehl and Myra Todd are with her. I feel caught, as if the blood in my face has something to do with the blood on Dr. Lockhart’s dress and the slim blade of grass she holds in her hand is the murder weapon. What can I do, confronted with such incontrovertible evidence? I tell them about meeting Athena in the lake this morning. I tell them, too, about seeing the girls on the rock two nights ago. The only thing I don’t mention is the page from my old journal. Because, I tell myself, I can’t see what it possibly has to do with Athena’s suicide attempt.

  I DRIVE BACK TO THE SCHOOL WITH DEAN BUEHL AND spend the rest of the afternoon in her office. All afternoon classes are canceled so the girls can attend a “Support Meeting” in the Music Room. After I have told my story about what I saw at the lake the night before last and my encounter with Athena in the lake this morning, Dr. Lockhart excuses herself so that she can change her dress and meet with Vesta and Aphrodite—Sandy and Melissa, I remind myself to say—Athena’s roommates. Dean Buehl thanks her for “handling everything.”

  “If you hadn’t found the girl…” Dean Buehl’s voice trails off and I notice how haggard she looks.

  “It’s what you hired me for,” Dr. Lockhart replies, “to watch after these girls.”

  As soon as Dr. Lockhart leaves, Dean Buehl regains her official briskness. “Of course, you should have notified me immediately when you saw the girls in the lake,” she tells me. Myra Todd nods and I get a whiff of her moldy smell. It makes me think my clothes are wet, but it is only that I am sweating in the dean’s overheated office and the mold reminds me of how the changing room would smell after we swam in the lake. “You say they were naked?”

  “Yes,” I tell her for the tenth or eleventh time. “Of course I should have told you. I was planning to tell you after my classes today. I didn’t realize it was urgent.”

  “You say they were making some kind of sacrifice on the rocks,” Myra says. She makes it sound as if the girls were beheading chickens. “Well, I think that sounds urgent.”

  “We all used to do it.” I hate the way my voice whines. I know I shouldn’t try to explain, it just sounds like I’m trying to excuse myself, which I’m not. I’ve accepted the blame. “It’s an old Heart Lake tradition,” I appeal to Dean Buehl, who is herself an old girl, as if I were talking about founder’s day or singing the school song and wearing our school colors, rose and gray. “You’d throw something in the lake for good luck. It’s like…” I grope for a harmless analogy, “like tossing three pennies in the Trevi fountain.”

  Myra Todd snorts. “Naked? In the middle of the night?”

  Dean Buehl shakes her head sadly. “It’s that three sisters story that has plagued us from the beginning. Surely you, of all people, Jane, should know how dangerous the story is. But there’s something that upsets me even more than your failure to report your students’ nocturnal activities. Although I hope you understand now that you should have come to me immediately…”

  I nod vigorously. I can hear Myra twisting in her seat impatiently. She wouldn’t let me get off so easily, that’s for sure, and I imagine that what she’s thinking is that I’m receiving this lenient treatment because I’m an alum. I wish suddenly that I’d kept the fact that I went to school here to myself. But how could I have? Aside from Dean Buehl there are Meryl North and Tacy Beade—old girls—who remembered me. Or at least they remembered me once I had reminded them who I was.

  “What I need to know, though,” Dean Buehl continues, “is if you have shared what happened in your senior year with your students?”

  I look up, trying not to show my relief. “Absolutely not,” I say with conviction. “I mean, I’ve thought about it, when I’ve heard the girls telling the three sisters story, just to dispel the legend. I know that only one of the Crevecoeurs’ daughters died—and of the flu, not drowning—from what was said at the inquest, but I knew if I started talking about it they might ask me other questions… and so, I’ve avoided it because it’s unhealthy, I think, for them to hear about other girls who killed themselves. I know how that kind of thing can spread.”

  I am breathless from this little speech and disappointed to see that Dean Buehl looks unimpressed. Unconvinced.

  “Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?”

  I nod.

  “Then can you explain this.” Dean Buehl holds up a piece of lined notebook paper with a ragged edge. I can see I’m supposed to come get it from her but I suddenly feel weighted to my chair, as if my clothes were indeed drenched and they were pulling me down into deep water. Myra Todd stands up and hands the page from the dean to me.

  I am surprised, first off, that although it is clearly a page torn from a bound notebook, the words on it are typewritten instead of handwritten.

  “Dear Magistra Hudson,” the note, which I understand is meant to be Athena’s suicide note, reads, “You’ve been a real friend. I’m sorry that you’ll lose another friend in the same way you lost Lucy and Deirdre. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you. Bona Fortuna. Vale, Athena.” The I, I notice, is underlined, by hand, three times. There is a bloody fingerprint in the lower left-hand corner.

  I look up from the note. “She’s the one,” I tell Dean Buehl. “She’s the one who has my old journal.”

  WHEN I LEAVE DEAN BUEHL’S OFFICE I SEE VESTA AND Aphrodite sitting on folding chairs in the hall outside the Music Room. I would like to stop and talk with them, but I am already late for picking up Olivia from preschool. Besides, they look so pale and nervous I figure they don’t need an extra interrogation. Aphrodite looks like she’s been crying. Vesta looks like she would like to throw up. I rip out a piece of paper from the back of my grade book and hand it to Vesta.

  “Write down your dorm room number,” I tell her. “I’d really like to talk to you both later.”

  Vesta nods and writes down a number on the paper and hands it back to me folded in half. “Yeah, we’d like to talk to you, too, Magistra. Dr.
Lockhart told us you saw us the other night and didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Well, yes, I did see you and I was wrong not to tell.”

  “We think it was nice of you,” Aphrodite says. I think of Athena’s note: You’ve been a real friend.

  “I’ve got to go pick up my daughter now, but I’ll come by the dorm later. Good luck in there.” I almost say Bona Fortuna, but think better of it.

  WHEN I GET TO THE NURSERY SCHOOL I EXPECT TO FIND Olivia in tears, angry that I’m late. But instead I find Mrs. Crane, alone in her room, sorting eggshells. I am out of breath from running and can barely form the words “Where’s Olivia?”

  She looks up at me with the blank look I have always feared. “Her father picked her up. I figured it must be all right, since you weren’t here.”

  “Her father?” Mitchell’s visitation isn’t until next week. “But I wrote on her form she’s never, ever, to be released to anyone but me. You know I’m divorced. He may have kidnapped her.”

  Mrs. Crane pulls herself up. “There is no need to yell, Miss Hudson, we’re all upset today about what happened to that girl.” It takes me a moment to realize she means Athena. “I thought you’d probably be at the hospital with her since she was your student and…” She stops herself from saying whatever she was going to say next. I wonder what stories are being told about my relationship with Athena. “I thought you might have called Olivia’s father to come take care of her. I’m sure you’ll find them at your house. Olivia said she wanted to show him her rock collection.”

  “Her rock collection?” Mrs. Crane shrugs and spills a carton of eggshells onto a sheet of newspaper. She lays another sheet of newspaper on top and takes a small rubber mallet and slams it on the table. I jump.

  “For our mosaic project,” she explains. I think she’s still talking about the rock collection, but then I realize she’s talking about the eggshells. I think about how carefully Olivia and I washed out those eggshells. Then I understand about the rocks. Olivia meant the magic rocks. The three sisters. I leave without saying thank you or good-bye and I can hear Mrs. Crane muttering something to herself as she pounds away with her mallet.

  THEY ARE STANDING ON THE SWIMMING BEACH AND MITCH is showing Olivia how to skip rocks on the water. Olivia is more interested in catching snowflakes on her tongue.

  “Do you think it will stick?” Olivia asks the minute she sees me. “Will the lake freeze? Can we go ice skating? I want to skate around the sister rocks.”

  When did she start calling them the sister rocks? I don’t remember telling her that story, but if I did, and forgot it, maybe I also told the same story to Athena. Or could it have been the person who took her out to the rock who told her the story?

  “No, honey, the ground isn’t cold enough and the lake won’t freeze for a while,” I tell her. The temperature is dropping fast. I zip Olivia’s thin sweatshirt up and huddle her against me.

  “She ought to have a warmer jacket,” Mitch says, turning to me at last.

  “It was seventy degrees this morning. And I had planned to take her home right after school. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Well, I had some business up this way and I thought I’d come check up on you. I would have taken Olivia home, but you were late picking her up, and I don’t have a key to your house.”

  “I wanted Daddy to see the magic rocks,” Olivia says. She points at the rocks. I notice that the snow is coming down so hard now that I can barely see the farthest rock. “They’re supposed to be sisters,” she tells Mitch. “They drowned like Hilarious and now they’re together all the time.”

  “Hilarious?” Mitch asks me. “What kind of bedtime stories have you been reading her, Jane?”

  “I think she means Hilarion. It’s from Giselle. But I don’t know about the sister part. You know she has a very active imagination.”

  “The Wili Queen told me.” Olivia sounds angry, as if I had accused her of lying.

  “OK, honey, we’d better go home and get you warmed up. I’ll make some nice warm soup for dinner.”

  Olivia heads up the path and Mitch signals for me to walk a few paces behind with him. “I thought I’d take her for dinner,” he says.

  “Well, all right, but I wish you had told me. This isn’t the visitation schedule we talked about…”

  “There are a few things we didn’t talk about. We didn’t talk about you leaving Olivia alone at night when you go meet your boyfriend down here at the lake.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “I guess you still keep a diary, Jane. You ought to be more careful about who sees it. This came over my fax today.”

  He hands me a piece of slippery white paper. The top line is typed with the sender’s phone number, which I recognize as the school’s fax number. The rest of the sheet is handwritten.

  “Tonight I will go down to the lake to meet him and I’ll tell him everything. I know I shouldn’t go, but I can’t seem to stop myself. It’s like the lake is calling me. Sometimes I wonder if what they say about the three sisters is true. It’s like they’re making me go down to the lake when I know I shouldn’t.”

  The page is shaking in my hands and it takes me a moment to realize it’s my hand and not the wind that’s causing it to shake. It’s as if I can feel the hatred of whoever sent this to Mitchell in the paper itself. I have to remind myself that whoever sent the message never even touched this paper. I check the time and date of transmission: 8:30 A.M., today’s date. I got back from my swim a little after 8:00 this morning. Dr. Lockhart found Athena at a little before nine. But why would Athena send this and then go back to the dorm, type me a note saying I’ve been “a real friend,” and then slit her wrists? It doesn’t make any sense.

  I look up from the white paper to Mitchell’s face. We’ve reached the top of the path and we have both paused to catch our breath. He’s waiting for a reaction. A denial. But what should I deny? Should I tell him yes, I wrote this, but twenty years ago, and yes, I do leave Olivia alone to go down to the lake, but certainly not to meet this boy who has been dead for nearly twenty years?

  I look back down over the lake, at the snow falling onto its placid gray surface, and although I know the snow must melt when it touches the water I imagine the white flakes drifting like white stars through the dark water. The only thing that is clear to me is that whoever sent this message to Mitchell wants to hurt me. And there is no better way to hurt me than to hurt Olivia. Someone—not a fairy, not the Wili Queen—took Olivia out to the farthest stone and left her there. One false step and she would have been in the water… I have a sudden, unbidden image of Olivia’s light hair fanning upward in the dark water as she sinks, her face a pale white star extinguished in the black water.

  “Maybe I should take her for a while,” Mitchell says.

  I can tell from the combative tone in his voice that he’s bluffing. He’s expecting me to tell him no, call my lawyer, tell him I’ve done nothing to justify his taking her. But instead I say the last thing he expects me to.

  “Yes, maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe you should keep her for a little while.” Because even though it breaks my heart to see her go, I am beginning to think that Heart Lake isn’t a very safe place for little girls.

  Chapter Seven

  THE COTTAGE, WITHOUT OLIVIA, IS TOO QUIET. AFTER dinner (I scramble eggs and throw out the eggshells) I decide to go over to the dorm to talk to Vesta and Aphrodite. Their dorm is next to the lot where my car is parked. I can see if there’s anything they think Athena would like before I drive to the hospital for visiting hours. It seems like a good plan. The dorm and then the hospital. It seems like a good way to fill the evening.

  I walk along the edge of the lake because, I tell myself, it’s a beautiful night. Today’s snow shower has left only a faint white gloss on the ground and a clear moonlit sky. It is cold, near freezing, I think. The moonlight lies on the water like a premonition of ice. It will be many weeks before the lake freezes, but toni
ght I sense something stirring in the lake. Matt Toller once explained to me how a lake freezes. He said that when the surface water grows colder it also becomes denser, so it sinks to the bottom. When the warmer water rises to the top, it’s chilled by the colder air temperature and sinks. The water circulates like this for weeks—a process called overturn—until the moment when the lake is all one temperature and then the surface begins to freeze. Matt said that if you could be at the lake on that night, the night of first ice, you could see ice crystals forming. I imagine the lake now like a giant mixing machine, stirring old things to the surface.

  I pause on the Point. There are ledges on either side of the Point, carved out of the same soft limestone that lines the lake bottom, but the rock here on top is made of something harder—granite I think Miss Buehl told us. Its curved surface is bare except for the cracks and scorings—chattermarks, they’re called—left by the last glacier ten thousand years ago. I think of how even this rock, so impermeable that it bears the scars of a ten-thousand-year-old event, was once under the surface of the earth.

  Looking straight across the water I can see where the lake narrows and flows into the Schwanenkill and from there into the Hudson and the sea. Below me to the right the three sisters march into the water off the swimming beach. To my left I see the lights of the mansion and the dorm.

  The journal pages, the corniculum, the three sisters story that have come to light are just floating debris, flotsam from a wreck that happened twenty years ago. But now the wreckage itself seems to be surfacing. Events that happened twenty years ago are happening again.

  During our senior year Lucy Toller was sent to the infirmary with two slit wrists. A few weeks later our roommate Deirdre Hall was found in the lake, her neck broken. It was determined at the inquest that she jumped from the Point, landed on the ice, and then slipped into the water. A month after that I watched as Lucy, followed by her brother, Matt, walked out onto the thawing lake and vanished beneath the ice.