The Lake of Dead Languages

by Carol Goodman

  For a moment the air around me seems to shimmer, as if the light the lake throws into the room was lapping up against me. It’s that feeling I’ve had that the lake, as it moves toward freezing, is churning up the past, casting its secrets into the light of day. And now look whom it’s cast up—Matt.

  But then he takes a step toward me, out of the glare, and the copper hair fades to dark brown streaked with gray, the golden skin ages and sallows. Not Matt. Maybe what Matt would have looked like if he’d lived many years past his eighteenth birthday.

  “It’s Roy Corey, isn’t it?” I ask, reaching out my hand. He takes my hand and holds it for a moment, really holds it instead of shaking it, and I’m surprised and gladdened by the warmth. “Of course I remember you. You’re Matt and Lucy’s cousin. We met once.”

  He drops my hand rather suddenly and that warmth is replaced by a sudden chill in the air. The sun has gone down behind Main Hall and the gold glow goes out of the lake like a light that’s been switched off. I feel inexplicably that I’ve disappointed this man, yet, I think I’m doing pretty well to have remembered as much as I have. After all it’s been twenty years and we only met that once.

  He turns his back to me and sits down. Dean Buehl gestures for me to sit in the other chair in front of her desk. “Detective Corey was just saying we ought to check the Schwanenkill icehouse,” Dean Buehl tells me.

  “I believe your Heart Lake girls have made a habit over the years of meeting town boys down there.”

  I find myself blushing. I’m sure he’s said this to embarrass me—he knows as well as I do what used to go on in that icehouse.

  “This Melissa Randall, did she have a boyfriend?” he asks.

  Dean Buehl tells him that she did, but that he’s at Exeter.

  “Anybody call to see if he’s still there?”

  Dean Buehl places the call and speaks to the headmaster. Twenty minutes later he rings back and puts Brian Worthington on the line. At a signal from Corey, Dean Buehl hits the speakerphone so we all can hear Brian Worthington swear he hasn’t been out of New Hampshire since Thanksgiving break.

  “When was the last time you heard from Melissa?” the dean asks him.

  “Night before last,” he answers. “I knew something was up when she didn’t call last night. She calls every night.” I can hear the weariness in his voice and I’m not sure whom to feel sorrier for, him or Melissa. “She hasn’t done anything stupid, has she?”

  Dean Buehl explains that Melissa is missing. She asks Brian to please let the authorities know if Melissa should show up at Exeter and promises to call as soon as she knows anything. When she gets off the phone, Athena raises her hand as if she were in class.

  “Yes, Ellen?”

  “Melissa said she was going to the hall phone to call Brian at around ten last night. We heard her talking to someone on the phone.”

  “Did she say she had reached him when she came back?”

  Athena and Vesta shake their heads. “She didn’t say and we didn’t ask. She’d been crying, but that wasn’t unusual.”

  “And did she go out after that?”

  “We don’t really know,” Vesta answers. “She went into her room and closed the door. We just thought she wanted to be alone to… you know… cry and stuff.”

  “We went to sleep around eleven,” Athena continues. “I noticed when we turned out our lights that her light was off. But I don’t know if she was there or not. Her room has a separate entrance.”

  “So we really don’t know how long the girl’s been missing,” Corey sums up. He slaps his hands on the arms of the Morris chair he’s in and then shifts his weight forward as if to get up, but pauses there on the edge of the chair. I revise my opinion about him. Matt wouldn’t have looked like this. He’d never have become this… solid.

  “We’ll start the search on the south end of the lake and split into two parties to cover the east and west sides,” he says.

  “Of course we’ll want to be part of the search effort,” Dean Buehl says.

  “That’s up to you, of course, all volunteers are welcome, but I’d appreciate it if you could keep track of your girls. Last thing we need is someone else getting lost.” He lays his hands on the arms of the chair and heaves himself up. “Ask me,” he says, “the best thing would be if your teachers kept the girls calm and in their rooms.”

  “We’re perfectly capable of keeping the girls calm, Officer,” Dr. Lockhart replies.

  When Corey is gone, Dr. Lockhart sighs and looks out the window. It is dark outside now, too dark for her to see anything but her own reflection in the glass.

  “Thank goodness we’re in capable hands,” she says.

  “I’m sure the police will do their best,” Gwen Marsh says. It’s the first time she’s said anything since I’ve come in. “I agree with that nice Officer Corey—the girls should stay in their dorms. They’ve been through enough already.”

  “That’s not fair,” Athena blurts out, shrugging herself out from under Gwen’s arm. “She’s our friend. We want to help.”

  “A very natural response,” Dr. Lockhart says moving from the window and sitting on the edge of the couch next to Athena. “The last thing we want to encourage in the girls right now is a feeling of helplessness.” She looks directly at Gwen and I have the feeling that this has been a bone of contention between Lockhart and Marsh before. What surprises me is how warmly Athena and Vesta respond to Dr. Lockhart’s suggestion.

  “We could organize a search team with teachers and students and work in shifts,” Athena says.

  I see Dean Buehl considering. “Very well, as long as there’s a teacher in every squad.”

  “Well, of course if that’s what you think is best, I’ll get working on a schedule right away, but I’ll need a secretary,” Gwen says, holding up one of her bandaged arms. “Perhaps Sandy will help me.”

  I see Vesta exchange a desperate look with Dr. Lockhart, but Dr. Lockhart only shrugs and moves back to the window. Gwen has already commandeered a pad from Dean Buehl’s desk and put Vesta to work.

  THAT NIGHT I WATCH THE SEARCHERS’ LIGHTS MOVING through the woods across the lake.

  The shift I am assigned doesn’t start until four A.M. I am touched that Vesta and Athena ask to be on my search squad. I know I ought to sleep until then, but I also know that sleep is impossible. I wonder if Athena and Vesta are asleep in their dorm room. I doubt it.

  From their window, I know, they, too, can see across the lake to the south shore.

  The lights moving through the woods remind me of Wilis, seeking vengeance for earthly betrayal.

  At a quarter to four I put on long underwear, jeans and a sweater, gloves and a wool hat and take a flashlight. It is still dark when I walk outside, the moon having set, the woods lit only by faint starlight reflected on the snow. I pause on the Point and look at the lake, which is so still that its surface looks like black marble. It is one of those calm cold nights that don’t, at first, feel as cold as they are because there is no wind. But in a few minutes, despite the layers I am wearing, I feel the cold bearing down on me. I shine my flashlight on the scratches on the rock and imagine the mile-high glacier that made them.

  I consider taking a shortcut through the woods to the dorm, but already the snow beyond the paths is too deep. Soon the paths will narrow between two walls of packed snow and daily walks from dorm to dining hall to classroom will follow the same ever-tightening pattern.

  “Like rats in a maze,” Lucy would say.

  In our senior year she began at the first snowfall carving out her own paths, narrow deer tracks that meandered aimlessly through the woods.

  At the dorm I find Athena and Vesta waiting for me on the steps. They are blowing into their mittened hands to warm their faces. “Miss Marsh was just here,” they tell me, “and she says we’re supposed to look down at the swimming beach—in case Melissa took out a boat or something.”

  “When I was a student here,” I say slowly and carefully,
“I once took a boat out on the lake and rowed to the stones.” I am thinking not just of Aphrodite’s fate right now, but of that afternoon I found a dry Olivia on the farthest rock and the flash of white I saw vanishing around the curve of the Point.

  “Yeah, that’s nice, Magistra,” Vesta says impatiently, “but the boats are all locked up for the winter. If a person wanted a boat they’d have to go down to the icehouse. I think I heard Miss Todd say once that the county extension agent keeps a boat down there to take water samples. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  I remember suddenly the day I met Athena swimming across the lake and the impression I had that she was meeting someone on the other side.

  “Well, then, why don’t we go there instead,” I say.

  “You mean deviate from Miss Marsh’s carefully choreographed schedule?” Vesta asks, lifting both eyebrows at me.

  “Yes,” I tell her. “Let’s use some initiative. We can walk around the west side of the lake, check the icehouse, and then continue around the east side to the swimming beach. That should warm us up. But remember what Detective Corey said about staying together—I can’t afford to lose one of you.”

  At the mention of Detective Corey’s name the girls exchange meaningful glances.

  “What?” I ask, feeling suddenly like another teenager, the one not in on the joke.

  “Oh, nothing, Magistra,” Athena says. “It’s just that we thought you and Detective Corey would… you know, make a cute couple. What do you think?”

  I click my tongue and motion for the girls to start down the path, which is too narrow for three to walk abreast. I want to walk behind the girls so I can keep an eye on them. It helps, too, that they can’t see me smiling at their matchmaking attempt. It’s ridiculous—me and the stocky police officer who clearly seemed not to like me—but it touches me that they’re concerned about my personal life.

  We call Melissa’s name as we go and, at Athena’s suggestion, vary our calls of Melissa with Aphrodite.

  “She really liked her Latin class name,” Athena tells me. “She said in her old school her Latin teacher assigned names and she got Apia, because Melissa comes from the Greek word for bees and Apia means…”

  “Bees,” I finish for her.

  “Only the other girls called her Ape and she was… I mean she is… really sensitive about her weight.”

  “Kids can be so mean,” I say. I am thinking about that was and wondering if my students are telling me everything they know about their roommate’s disappearance. “When I was here one of my roommates threatened to get my other roommate, my best friend, in trouble by telling a secret they shared. She teased her all the time about it, until my roommate, the one who was my friend, was nearly going crazy.”

  “That’s pretty lousy,” Athena says. “I mean, no one likes a tattletale.”

  Tattletale. The word is so childlike that instantly I am ashamed of myself for suspecting these girls of any wrongdoing, but then Vesta says, “Yeah, that must have gotten on your friend’s nerves. You could really get annoyed at someone like that.”

  “It must have been annoying,” I say, “to hear Aphrodite crying all the time. I could tell her boyfriend, Brian, sounded worn-out.”

  Vesta sighs. “God, it’s all we’ve heard all semester. Brian this and Brian that. He’s just this little pimply-faced nerd with a trust fund. Girls makes such fools of themselves over guys.”

  “She should have just trusted him or decided he wasn’t worth it. That’s what I told her. I mean, a guy’s just not worth all that heartache.”

  “Certainly not,” Vesta murmurs. “You know what they say, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’ ” I laugh at the old aphorism. At Vassar we had Tshirts made up with that slogan.

  “Hey look, we’ve come to another path. I wonder where that leads,” Athena says.

  “It follows the Schwanenkill into town,” I tell them. “The icehouse should be just past here on the other side of the stream.”

  I had forgotten that we would have to ford the stream to continue our walk around the lake. Fortunately, the Schwanenkill is mostly frozen.

  “There’s a place that’s narrower, just off the path,” I tell the girls. “We just have to go a little into the woods…”

  “Good,” Vesta says. “I have to take a leak anyway. I’ll be right back. Can I borrow that flashlight, Magistra?”

  Vesta takes the flashlight out of my hands before I can think to object and then disappears into the shadows of the pine trees. Athena and I stand at the place where the two paths cross and wait for her. It occurs to me that this might be a good opportunity to talk to Athena without Vesta’s restraining presence.

  “Vesta sounded pretty annoyed with Aphrodite,” I say.

  “She just couldn’t understand the attraction,” Athena says in a normal tone of voice, then she leans closer to me and whispers into my ear, “You know, it’s just not her thing.”

  When she leans away I can feel the warm breath she left on my cheek crystallizing in the cold air. It’s not until I watch Vesta walking back toward us through the woods, zipping her fly, that I realize that she’s trying to tell me that Vesta’s a lesbian.

  “Oh,” I say, to no one really, because the two girls are walking on ahead of me. What impresses me about Athena’s revelation is the lack of malice or censure. When I went to school here girls were teased and called “lezzie,” but it wasn’t something you could talk openly about. For all our drug use and talk of sexual revolution, we really were still naive. And the suggestion at her inquest that Helen Chambers was a lesbian practically sealed her dismissal.

  “I see where we can cross,” Vesta calls back to me.

  I follow them into the woods, keeping my eyes on the beam from the flashlight which Vesta still holds until I’m forced to watch my footing instead. Off the path the snow is calf deep. I feel the cold and wet seeping into my cheap boots. Each step requires effort and concentration. I watch my feet disappear into the snow and look for places where the snow isn’t so deep. There are places where the snow has drifted up against a tree and my legs sink in to my knees. I slip into one particularly deep spot and find, for a moment, that I can’t pull out. My hands flutter over the surface of the snow seeking for purchase but finding none. I realize how silly I must look, floundering in the snow, and look up, expecting to find the girls laughing at my predicament, but instead I see nothing but snow and pine trees stretching out around me.

  For a moment I do nothing but listen to the silence. And then I panic. It’s what they tell you not to do when you’re drowning. Miss Pike said if you try to save someone from drowning and they panic, the best thing to do is sock ’em in the jaw and carry them back to shore unconscious. “Never risk your own life,” she’d tell us. “That’s the first rule of lifesaving.”

  When all my thrashing has done nothing but sink me deeper into the snow I stop and listen once again to the silence. The night is so eerily calm that not even a breeze moves through the pines. Then I hear, from behind me, the crunch of snow.

  I try to turn around but that only makes me sink deeper.

  I can hear it clearly now. Footsteps moving through the deep snow toward me. I can do nothing but wait. I imagine a blow to the head and then sinking, drowning, my mouth and lungs filling with ice.

  Then I see the lights. Moving through the woods in front of me, they seem to dance among the pines. Wilis, I think, they’ve come to dance me to my death and drown me in the lake just like Hilarious. It’s the last thought I have before losing consciousness and it makes me happy. Well, at least it makes me laugh.

  Chapter Ten

  WHAT’S HILARIOUS?” SOMEONE IS ASKING ME. “FOR God’s sake, what’s so hilarious?”

  The whole thing, I want to say, but my mouth is full of ice.

  I open my eyes and see why I’m so cold. I’m in the icehouse. A face leans over me and I realize why I’m so happy. I am in the icehouse with Matt Toller.

  “Ma
gistra,” another voice says. “We’re so sorry we left you all alone.”

  It must be Lucy, I think, only why would she call me Magistra? I’m glad, though, that she has finally apologized after all these years. How could they go and leave me alone. It’s all right now though, we’re together again.

  “Miss Hudson, please try to drink some of this.” A strong arm holds me up and I sip from the Thermos cup. Matt always remembered to bring the hot chocolate when we went skating.

  I take a sip and the bitter, black coffee burns my tongue. I look at the man holding the cup and the wave of sadness that moves through my body is so strong I start to shake all over. I remember that when I gave birth to Olivia I shook like this. It’s because your body has lost all that mass, the nurse told me, it makes your body temperature drop. Yes, I remember thinking, this is what missing someone feels like, like part of your flesh has been torn away. Looking now at the man who is not Matt Toller, who is only his cousin, Detective Roy Corey, I feel that same precipitous drop all over again.

  I lean into Corey’s arm and immediately he moves it away as if he just noticed he had it around me. No, I think, the girls are wrong. This man can’t even stand to touch me.

  I take another sip of the bitter coffee and look at Vesta and Athena.

  “Your girls led me to you,” Corey tells me. “I met up with them here and they were surprised you weren’t right behind them.”

  “I got stuck in the snow,” I say.

  “You passed out,” he tells me. “I was afraid you had hypothermia, but I think it was just fear. How do you feel now?”

  “Fine,” I tell him. I look around the icehouse. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to check out the icehouse first thing last night.”

  “I did, but then all I was looking for was a lost girl. I wasn’t noticing what wasn’t here.”

  I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the wooden ledge. I am sitting, I see, on one of the wide shelves where they used to store the slabs of ice harvested from the lake.