The Lake of Dead Languages

by Carol Goodman

  I watched in silence as Domina Chambers picked her up while Miss Buehl unlocked the door. What could I say? Maybe Albie was right. I should have stopped Lucy from cutting herself. I should have come back sooner. I should never have left.

  Inside the infirmary, Albie switched on the light and ran to get the things Miss Buehl asked for. She seemed to know her way around. Everyone seemed to have something to do but me, so I sat down on the extra bed across from where they put Lucy and watched. They went to work quickly, peeling away the cotton cloth from Lucy’s wrists, getting her out of her wet clothes, taking her blood pressure.

  “She’s stopped bleeding,” Miss Buehl reported. “Thank God she didn’t sever the arteries.”

  “But doesn’t she need stitches?” Domina Chambers asked.

  “Yes, but I can do that. Don’t worry, Helen, I’ve done it before. What I’m worried about is her blood pressure. It’s quite low. Do you have any idea how much blood she lost, Jane? Had she been bleeding long when you found her?”

  I shook my head. I thought of the blood on the sheets, but remembered that wasn’t Lucy’s blood.

  “We found her right away,” I said, trying to remember the story we’d agreed upon. “She went into Deirdre’s single and we heard her crying so we went in.” I had heard crying, I remembered, but when Lucy had opened the door her eyes had been dry.

  “We?” Miss Buehl asked.

  I pushed away the memory of what really happened and concentrated on what we’d agreed upon. “Yes, me and Deirdre Hall.”

  “Well, then, where is Miss Hall?” Domina Chambers asked.

  “She stayed in the dorm.” I realized now that this was a weak spot in our story. Why had Deirdre remained behind? I knew the real reason—to dispose of the bloody sheets—but what reason had we agreed upon?

  “Um, she was so upset and the blood was on her bed, so she stayed behind to clean it up.”

  Domina Chambers clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Imagine thinking about such a thing while your roommate is bleeding to death. There’s something very off about that girl. At least you had more sense, Jane.”

  I smiled at the rare compliment even though I knew it wasn’t fair to Deirdre, and caught Albie glaring at me again. It was almost as if she knew that Lucy had told Deirdre to stay behind to get rid of the sheets.

  “So there must have been quite a bit of blood,” Miss Buehl said. She was bending over Lucy, peeling back her eyelids and listening to the pulse at her throat. “I wish we could get her to the hospital for a transfusion but I’m afraid that will be impossible in this storm. The phone lines have been down and the roads closed for hours.”

  “Is there anything else we can do, Celeste?” Domina Chambers asked. I noticed she was shaking and thought it was probably from the cold, and yet the room felt quite hot to me. “Will she be all right?”

  “I’ll give her a saline drip to get some fluids in her. That should help her blood pressure. Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait. I’d feel better if she regained consciousness.” Miss Buehl shook Lucy’s shoulder and called her name. “Maybe you should try, Jane, you’re her best friend.”

  I got up off the bed and walked across the room. It seemed like a long way. I noticed that the floor was slanting. I knelt down by Lucy and called her name. Amazingly, she opened her eyes.

  “Jane,” she said.

  “It’s OK. Lucy, we’re in the infirmary.”

  “You’ll stay here?” she whispered to me. “Don’t go back to the dorm.”

  I was so touched that she wanted me to stay that my eyes filled with tears and the room went all blurry. Then it went black.

  I’D BEEN TOUCHED WHEN LUCY HAD ASKED ME TO STAY AT the infirmary, but of course the real reason, I realize now, is that she didn’t want me to talk to Deirdre. She had to make sure Deirdre went along with the plan to pretend that the baby was really hers.

  It is one thing, though, to assume the parentage of a baby lost in childbirth, and another to drop out of college and raise someone else’s baby. As I make the trip from Vassar to Corinth, less than 150 miles but worlds apart, the person I think more about is Hannah Corey Toller, class of —. Class of Nothing. Why had she agreed to take Helen’s baby, return in shame to her hometown and raise a child not her own?

  It’s this question that plagues me as I drive slowly down River Street looking at the big Victorian houses set back on their snow-covered lawns. Most still have their Christmas lights up and the colored bulbs spill jewel-like pools onto the sparkling snow crust. At the end of the street I pull up opposite the gatehouse on the intersection of Lake Drive and River Street and turn off the car so as not to draw attention to myself. Really, though, I needn’t be so cautious; it doesn’t look as if anyone is in the old Toller house. Not only are there no Christmas lights, but there are no other lights on in the house. The house has a general air of neglect—the driveway hasn’t been plowed since the last snow and one of the shutters has come loose from its hinges and hangs from the window askew. I remember that I used to think the house looked like Snow White’s cottage, but now I think it looks more like the witch’s house in “Hansel and Gretel.”

  I wonder if anyone has lived in it since Cliff and Hannah Toller died in that car accident. It happened my last year in college and I read about it in an Albany newspaper. They had been driving back from Plattsburgh when a freakish May snowstorm swept across the Adirondacks. Their car was found at the bottom of a deep ravine. The newspaper made a big deal out of the fact that, like their children, the Tollers had died together. DOUBLE DISASTER STRIKES TWICE FOR ADIRONDACK COUPLE, the headline read.

  I remember feeling unsurprised at the Tollers’ fate. It was harder to imagine the two of them going on after losing both their children.

  But only one of them was their child.

  I wonder if at the end they thought of Lucy as an interloper—the changeling who dragged their own child to his death.

  Just as I put my hand on the ignition key I see a light come on in the house and a figure pass behind a curtained window. It comes so hard upon my thinking of Lucy as some fiendish demon that the sight strikes me as a reproach—and indeed, there is something in the profile silhouetted in the top floor window that reminds me of Lucy. I feel that rush of cold and inability to breathe that marked the panic attacks I experienced in my twenties. I turn on the car and put the heater on high, but the cold persists and now I am sweating as well. I’m too afraid to drive like this. I look at the house again to reassure myself that the figure in the window is not Lucy, but the window is dark again. Instead, a rectangle of light appears in the doorway and a woman steps out into the deep, unshoveled snow and walks straight for my car. She taps on my window before I fully take in that it’s Dr. Lockhart.

  “So you decided to come back,” she says when I lower the window. “Better to face your demons, eh?”

  I wonder what demons she is referring to, but I am determined, for once, not to let her control the direction of the conversation.

  “What are you doing in the Toller house?” I ask.

  Dr. Lockhart smiles. “It’s not the Toller house anymore, Jane. This is where I live.”

  “You live here? But…”

  “Where did you think I lived, Jane? In one of those cozy little apartments in the mansion? I don’t think so. In my profession it’s very important to maintain a distance. And I like my privacy. These boarding schools can be such fishbowls. Fascinating to study as cultural microcosms, but such parochial bores to live in twenty-four hours a day. Doesn’t it get to you sometimes, being watched all the time?”

  I hadn’t thought of myself as so visible, but when I think of the events of the last semester I realize that I have felt observed.

  “From whom did you buy the house?” I ask, if only to steer the conversation away from last semester. She straightens up and glances back at the house. I can tell she is surprised by the question.

  “From the estate. The house was empty for many years…”
She trails off and I decide to pursue the subject if only because I’ve never seen her look this uncomfortable.

  “Since the Tollers died? Maybe people thought it was an unlucky house, everyone who lived there is dead now.”

  “I’m not superstitious, Jane. People make their own fates. Believing this house is unlucky is like… like believing in the three sisters legend. It’s the superstition that causes the problem. If Melissa Randall hadn’t read about the three sisters legend in your journal she might still be alive today.”

  There is a note of triumph in her last comment. Finally, she has brought our conversation to where she wants it. I can’t avoid talking about the events of last semester now.

  “I told you and Dean Buehl that someone had my journal. What else was I supposed to do?” I ask.

  “You should have told us what was in your journal: sex with masked strangers, sacrificial rites, a dead baby in a tea tin…”

  “I take your point, Dr. Lockhart. Yes, I should have told someone, but it was a rather unusual circumstance. What would you think if pieces from your old journal started appearing on your desk?”

  “I wouldn’t know because I’ve never kept a journal. I would never be so foolish to commit such incriminating evidence, if I had ever done such things, to writing.” I can believe it. She doesn’t look like she’d give anything away.

  “Well, I’ll certainly be more careful in the future. Now I’d better get back to campus. I want to see if Athena and Vesta are back yet.”

  “If you mean Ellen and Sandy, they’re both back. Perhaps you ought to consider dropping the goddess names. Didn’t your old Latin teacher use Roman names like Lucia and Clementia?”

  Is it just coincidence she picked my old Latin name and Lucy’s? Is it something else she gleaned from my old journal?

  “Yes, but I can’t see what harm there is in the girls keeping their names. Doesn’t it just make a bigger thing out of it?”

  “Miss Hudson, one of our students is dead. How much bigger do you want it to be?”

  “All right. I’ll suggest they take other names. Look, can I give you a lift back to campus?” I try to make my voice conciliatory. The last thing I want is this woman for an enemy.

  “No thanks, I’m going skating.” She turns her right side to me so I can see a pair of worn ice skates with decorative stitching hanging over her shoulder. “There’s a shortcut through the woods behind my house. I can skate straight across the lake to the school.”

  “Be careful,” I tell her. “There’s a weak spot in the ice near the mouth of the Schwanenkill.”

  “Don’t worry, Jane,” she says, smiling, “I know where all the weak spots are.”

  I TAKE LAKE DRIVE AROUND THE EAST SIDE OF THE LAKE. Through the pines lining the drive I catch glimpses of the frozen lake, shimmering under a full moon. Dr. Lockhart has picked a beautiful night to skate. I believe her when she says she is not superstitious. It’s hard to imagine, otherwise, how she could bear to be alone on that ice at night. I don’t think it’s something I could do.

  I turn off Lake Drive and park in the faculty parking lot. I’ll have to haul my suitcases up the long path to my house without a light—of course I hadn’t thought to leave any light on in the house when I left. Two weeks ago I hadn’t even been sure I’d be coming back. It occurs to me it might be better to go up to the house first and turn on some lights before trying to navigate the path with a heavy suitcase.

  I look in my glove compartment and find a flashlight, but the batteries are burned out. I resign myself to finding my way in the dark, the moon is full so it shouldn’t be too bad, but when I get out of my car I notice the path on the opposite end of the parking lot, the one to the dorm, is ablaze with light. Dean Buehl must have had extra lighting installed after Melissa Randall’s death to reassure worried parents—although how extra lighting is supposed to prevent girls from taking their own lives, I do not know.

  I decide I’ll go to the dorm first. It’ll give me a chance to visit with Athena and Vesta before it gets too late. Maybe the dorm matron will have an extra flashlight to lend me. As I walk up the well-shoveled (Dean Buehl must have had to call in a plow to clear the paths enough to install the lights) and well-lit path I realize that all my prevarication about going up the unlit path to the cottage amounts to one thing: I’m not ready to be alone in that house yet.

  The dorm matron has a plentiful supply of flashlights and she is happy to give me one as long as I sign it out. She also has me “sign in” to the dorm and leave a photo ID. I notice, as I walk up to the second floor, hand-lettered signs posted exhorting students to travel in pairs and flyers for community counseling groups. I think I recognize Gwen Marsh’s handwriting. The thought that poor Gwen has spent her Christmas holiday making up flyers, with carpal tunnel syndrome no less, and planning how to help the girls cope with returning after the trauma of Melissa Randall’s death, suddenly makes me feel guilty and self-absorbed. It makes my two weeks at the Aquadome seem like a luxury vacation by comparison.

  The second floor is quiet except for the hissing of the steam radiators. One of the flyers advertises a “Welcome Back Sing” for tonight and I’m afraid that Athena and Vesta will be there, but when I knock on their door I hear the familiar shuffle and window shutting that tells me they are in, and they haven’t given up smoking over the break.

  Vesta unlocks and opens the door, but only a few inches. When she sees it’s me she scrunches her eyebrows together suspiciously and reluctantly opens the door the rest of the way.

  “Sandy,” I say, determined to avoid the girls’ classical names as per Dr. Lockhart’s suggestion, “nice to see you. How was your break?”

  Vesta shrugs and sits down on the bed underneath the window. Athena turns around in her chair and smiles at me. I notice right away that her face looks less drawn and, somehow, more open. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but she looks healthier. The two weeks away from Heart Lake have done her good.

  “Salve, Magistra,” she says, “quid agis?”

  “Bene,” I say, “et tu, Ellen?”

  “Ellen? Why aren’t you calling me Athena?”

  I shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. The room is hot and damp.

  “Here,” Athena says, getting up from her chair and seating herself cross-legged on the floor, “take off your coat and sit down. They keep it like a sauna in here.”

  I sit down at my old desk. Now that Athena is sitting beneath me I can see one thing that’s different about her. She’s let the dye grow out of her hair. I can see several inches of her natural color—a light mousy brown—showing at the roots. I scan her books and realize that I’m still looking for the black-and-white notebook. I see instead Wheelock’s Latin grammar and a paperback copy of Franny and Zooey. “I read this when I was your age,” I say.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” Vesta says. “Why have you dropped our Latin class names?”

  “Dr. Lockhart thinks the goddess names might not be appropriate…”

  Vesta snorts. “The names are the best part,” she says. “I always hated Sandy. My real name is Alexandria, which is even worse. If you stop calling me Vesta, I’ll drop Latin.”

  “Yeah,” Athena chimes in, “I’ve always hated ‘Ellen.’ ”

  “OK, Athena,” I say, “and Vesta, I can’t have you all dropping out of Latin.”

  Immediately I notice a change come over the girls. They seem more serious and somehow embarrassed.

  “A bunch of girls have,” Athena says. “Some of the parents didn’t want their kids in the class after what happened to Melissa.”

  “Yeah, there’s this rumor we were sacrificing babies and stuff.”

  I look at Vesta when she says “babies” but she doesn’t seem to attach any significance to the example she’s chosen. Dean Buehl said that no one was told what was found in the tea tin. But then if Melissa had my journal, she might have shared its contents with her roommates.

  “It’s our fault,” Athena
says. “If we hadn’t started that stuff with the three sisters and making offerings to the Lake Goddess none of it would have happened.”

  “Who thought of that?” I ask. “Going out to the rocks and offering prayers to the Lake Goddess?”

  Athena and Vesta look at each other and shrug. “I don’t know. We all kind of did. I guess Melissa got into it the most because she was worried about Brian.” I remember the night I watched the three girls at the stones. Melissa had asked for loyalty from her boyfriend, Vesta for good grades, but I hadn’t been able to hear what Athena asked for. I find myself wondering now what it was she asked for and whether she has gotten what she wished for.

  “Did you notice that Melissa had a black-and-white notebook?” I ask.

  “Like this?” Athena opens a desk drawer by my feet and takes out a marbled notebook. I see that the name written on the white box on the cover is “Ellen (Athena) Craven.”

  “Yes,” I say, “something like that.”

  Athena shakes her head, but Vesta is looking at me strangely.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I see that I have wound myself into a trap with my own questions. If the girls really don’t know that Melissa had my old journal (and Athena, at least, seems innocent) I certainly don’t want to tell them.

  “I just thought that if she kept a journal,” I say with feigned casualness, “we’d understand more about what happened to Melissa.”

  Vesta looks unconvinced. “You think she wrote down why she drugged Athena and slit her wrists?” Vesta points at Athena’s wrists and Athena tugs at the cuffs of her sweater even though they already reach down to her knuckles. I notice that the cuffs are frayed and unraveling, as if they’d been plucked at again and again. “Jesus,” Vesta says, “who would be stupid enough to write down all that stuff?”

  I MAKE AN EXCUSE TO LEAVE BEFORE VESTA CAN ASK ME any more questions about the journal. I realize as I leave their room that I’ve made a tactical error visiting the girls before talking to Dean Buehl and finding out what exactly they were told about Melissa’s death. I promise myself that I’ll call Dean Buehl as soon as I get into the cottage, but I see that I won’t have to. Dean Buehl is waiting for me at the matron’s desk.