The Lake of Dead Languages

by Carol Goodman

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say, something I’ve said, and had said to me, countless times in the last two months. Still we go on blaming ourselves. Roy and I have gone around and around it. He suspected, as soon as I found the deer’s mask, that it must be Albie because she was there on May Day and could have found the mask after he left it in the woods. But he hadn’t guessed that Albie was Dr. Lockhart.

  The only one who knew that for sure was Dean Buehl and she holds herself accountable for hiring Dr. Lockhart in the first place.

  “I felt so awful when the girl was expelled. I told her she’d always have a home here at Heart Lake and she took me at my word. How could I turn her away again? Then she asked me not to tell anyone she’d gone here and been thrown out. You see, she wasn’t really an old girl.”

  “She took advantage of you,” I’ve said many times to Dean Buehl. “You couldn’t have known she was crazy. Maybe she would have been all right if I had never shown up here.”

  “Well, that certainly isn’t your fault.” And so it goes—the two of us absolving each other of our sins. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any end to this cycle of guilt and retribution. Even Athena has been sucked into the whirlpool of blame.

  “But she couldn’t have done it without me,” she says now. “I told her we’d taken the boat out from the icehouse…”

  “You certainly couldn’t know she’d use it to take Olivia out to the rock that day,” I say trying to keep my voice from shaking. It’s still unbearable for me to think of Olivia and Dr. Lockhart in that boat. Or to think of Dr. Lockhart lurking around the preschool, seeding the ground with cornicula.

  “I also told her you left your homework folder on your desk.” Athena sighs. She’s determined, I see, to confess all. Maybe she needs to finally get it all out.

  I nod. “That’s how she sent me that first journal page, but she would have found another way.”

  “I told her about Melissa’s crush on Brian and she sent her those awful letters from Exeter pretending to be a girl who knew Brian.”

  “Yes,” I say, remembering the Exeter stationery I saw in the attic bedroom, “and then she must have called Melissa and pretended that she was that girl, to lure her down to the lake.” I remember how well she was able to change her voice. A natural mimic.

  “And I told her I was mad at Vesta for planning to go skating alone that night and she waited for her out there and killed her.”

  “Athena, you thought you were talking to a psychologist. You were supposed to tell her things. You couldn’t have known what she would do with the information. She used you,” I say, “but it was to get at me. She wanted me to relive that whole awful year only, this time, not to survive it.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault what happened twenty years ago.”

  “From where she stood it was.” And she may have been right, I add to myself. Some part of me wanted Deirdre gone so I could have Lucy to myself and some part of me was willing to save Matt at the risk of losing Lucy. The part of me that didn’t want to be left out again. In many ways, I was a lot like Albie.

  “So why didn’t she kill me, too?” Athena asks, shading her eyes from the glare off the lake so she can see my eyes when I answer.

  I tuck a strand of sea green hair behind her ear. “I think you reminded her of herself. Her notes on your sessions, she wasn’t talking about you anymore, she was telling her own story through you. A girl who had been shuttled from school to school…” Athena looks away and I wonder if I should go on. “Whose parents don’t seem to care…” I stop. How many of these girls, I wonder, have a little Albie inside of them?

  I shiver at the thought and Athena, as if reading my thoughts, sets me straight. “I’m not that girl,” she says. “And neither are you.”

  THEY’RE WAITING FOR US IN THE MUSIC ROOM. LUNCH TODAY is a barbecue on the swimming beach, so we’ve got the room to ourselves. Sitting on one side of the long table, their backs to the long windows facing the lake, are Dean Buehl, Meryl North, Tacy Beade, Myra Todd, Gwendoline Marsh, and one man in a dark suit whom I don’t recognize. Roy Corey sits next to two empty chairs on the other side. The long expanse of polished mahogany is bare except for a pitcher of water and some glasses and a manila folder in front of the man, who rises as we come in to introduce himself as the lawyer in charge of the Crevecoeurs’ estate. I shake his hand and sit down next to Roy. Athena is still standing.

  “And you must be Miss Craven. I know your aunt. She wanted to be here today…”

  “But she’s got something, somewhere, I know.” Athena ignores the lawyer’s outstretched hand and plops down in the chair next to me. Two of the pins in her stola pop open, but, much to my relief, the folds of Gwen Marsh’s satin sheets stay in place. I notice Myra Todd staring at Athena’s outfit, pursing her lips to comment, but before she can the lawyer slaps his hand down on the manila folder.

  “Well, since all the principals involved are present,” he says, “let’s begin.”

  “I don’t see why Jane Hudson is here,” Myra says. “She isn’t on the board and she isn’t a principal.”

  “A principal in what?” I ask, more confused than insulted. “Would someone please say what this is about.”

  “India Crevecoeur’s bequest,” Miss North, the historian answers. “When she turned the property over to be made into a school her relatives were furious. She agreed that she’d give the family a chance to reclaim the property.”

  “But not until the seventieth anniversary of the founding,” Tacy Beade finishes.

  “When most of them would be long dead,” Dean Buehl adds. “It was her idea of a little joke.”

  We all instinctively look up at the family portrait that hangs at the end of the room from which India Crevecoeur, dour as Queen Victoria, looks down on us.

  “She doesn’t look like she would have much of a sense of humor,” Roy says.

  I’d be inclined to agree, but then I look at Tacy Beade and remember that May Day morning twenty years ago when the old woman escaped from her and Miss Macintosh and found her way into the mansion.

  “So, the school could go back into private hands?” Across the table seven heads nod in agreement.

  I am surprised at how bereft I feel at the thought of Heart Lake closing. After Dr. Lockhart’s death I told Dean Buehl I’d stay to the end of the term but I just couldn’t say for sure what I would do after that. She said she understood the place must have bad memories for me and promised that she would write me a good reference. But now, at the thought of Heart Lake closing its doors forever, I am suddenly enraged.

  “That bitch,” I say so loudly even Athena looks shocked. “How could she do it? What about all the girls here? Where are they supposed to go?” I imagine all of us—teachers and students—in a procession north to St. Eustace’s. I wonder if it still exists. Or has Heart Lake become the last stop, the school of last resort? And if it has, what refuge is left if Heart Lake closes?

  “Jane,” Dean Buehl says, “I know how you feel. But the school won’t close if the Crevecoeur descendants don’t want it to.” Her eyes slide from me to Roy and Athena. Roy shifts nervously in his chair and Athena slides a little lower down in hers and bites a cuticle.

  “Oh, yeah,” she says, “my aunt said we were related to those people. That’s why she sent me here, because she got a break on tuition or something. Well, if it’s up to me, I say, sure, the school should, like, go on.”

  “Wait a second,” I say, “Athena’s only just turned eighteen. Shouldn’t she have a lawyer present? She doesn’t have to decide right now, does she?”

  “Now you’re worried about Miss Craven’s rights?” Myra Todd asks. “A minute ago you were all upset about the school closing.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Roy says. “I’m the only other descendant, right?”

  I look over at him incredulously and he shrugs. I remember then, that May Day, old Mrs. Crevecoeur telling Lucy that the Coreys were related to the Crevecoeurs if you went back f
ar enough. Then it hits me, what any good Latin teacher should have noticed long ago. Craven and Corey. They each derive from one half on the name Crevecoeur.

  Myra Todd shifts uneasily in her chair, releasing a whiff of mold into the room. “That settles it then, the bequest becomes permanent and the board now has access to the whole estate—”

  “With Mr. Corey and Miss Craven installed as lifetime board members for which they will be paid a stipend…” Dean Buehl is already rising from her seat. All the women on that side of the table are following suit when the lawyer stops them.

  “Well, that would be the case,” he says, “if not for the codicil.”

  “The codicil?” Dean Buehl echoes, falling back to her seat. One by one the rest of the women sink down, like sails in a regatta becalmed by a lull in the wind.

  “Yes, India Crevecoeur added a codicil to her bequest on May 4, 1976. It was, I understand, prompted by her visit to the school on the fiftieth anniversary of the Founder’s Day. If you will all listen patiently now, I will read to you the terms of the codicil.” He looks at each of us in turn to see if any one of us will object, but when we all remain silent, he extracts a thick sheet of cream-colored writing paper from a folder and reads, at first in a hurried monotone as he dutifully repeats the legal formulas, and then slowly when he comes to the substance of India Crevecoeur’s missive.

  “It was my intent, after the death of my youngest daughter, Iris, to transform a scene of grief to one of communal productivity and improvement for young girls. I had some qualms, though, that in providing for strangers I might be impoverishing the children of my children, and so I made my bequest provisional. I confess I was afraid, as well, that a school founded so on grief might founder, and I wanted to give my descendants an opportunity to reclaim their inheritance if such were the case.

  “It is not surprising, though, that in my grief-stricken state I overlooked one thing. I’d meant the school to honor the memory of my lost daughter, Iris, and so I should have provided especially for her relations instead of just my own.”

  Myra Todd clucks her tongue. “She must have been senile. The girl died at twelve! She wasn’t old enough to marry. How could she have relations that weren’t Crevecoeur descendants?”

  The lawyer glares at Myra and resumes. “My daughter Iris was adopted.” He pauses a moment for us to take in this piece of information. We all look again at the family portrait at the end of the room. There’s little Iris standing off to one side of the group, closer to her nursemaid than the rest of the family. She’s small and dark, where everyone else in the family is large and fair.

  “She was the natural child of an unfortunate girl who worked in our mill. I’d long wanted a third daughter, but the good Lord had chosen not to bless me with that boon. When I was made aware of the mill girl’s predicament I proposed to give the innocent baby a good home—and offered the mill girl a position in my own household. When our little Iris left us, her natural mother chose to leave as well. I could understand her reluctance to remain on the scene of such a tragedy. I tried to make what amends I could, but I’m afraid her daughter’s death left the poor woman distracted with a grief that turned to bitter gall in her heart. She even blamed my own two daughters, Rose and Lily, for the death of her child.”

  I look up at the portrait. Rose and Lily, smiling smugly at the camera. What use would they have had for this strange dark interloper? I remember the story of how the two older girls had taken the youngest out in a boat and she’d fallen in. She’d been saved, but she’d gotten a chill and fallen ill with the flu that was ravaging the country. When I look away from the picture, I notice that Dean Buehl and Roy are both staring at me.

  “When it recently came to my attention that my former servant—Iris’s mother—had subsequently married and borne a child of her own, who in turn had her own child, I realized that the chance to make amends had finally arrived. Better late than never, as the girl herself said to me.”

  It’s that phrase, so out of tune with the rest of India Crevecoeur’s language, that finally wakes me up. I remember the way the old woman looked at me when I said it. I thought she was appalled at my cheek. Appalled to find her servant’s granddaughter attending her school.

  Although the lawyer is still reading I get up and walk over to the picture. I look, not at poor, spindly legged Iris, but at the nursemaid, my grandmother, who bends down to fix her charge’s ribbon. At least, that’s what I always assumed she was doing. Now that I look more closely I see she’s giving the girl a little push, trying to send her closer to her sisters so that she’ll be part of the family group. Why didn’t I ever wonder how the maid got in the family portrait? Was it because Iris would never have been far from her? I look at the maid’s face; her brow, dark and plain, is pinched with worry, but under that anxiety, that her child will never really fit in with her adopted family, I think I can read, in the plain brown eyes, familiar to me as my own, something like love.

  “And so, Miss Hudson,” the lawyer is saying, as I turn back to face the table where everyone is now looking toward me, “Mrs. Crevecoeur left the deciding vote to you. The granddaughter of Iris’s mother.”

  “Well, then I say make the bequest permanent.”

  “As you told Miss Craven,” the lawyer says, “you don’t have to decide right now. Certainly you’ll want to consider the amount of money you’d be giving up.”

  Dean Buehl claps her hand to her breast and begins to weep as if she’d been holding back this uncharacteristic flood of emotions the whole time. Athena looks at her and starts to giggle, but stops herself by biting her thumb. Roy gets up and puts his arm around me.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  “Why? Would you like me better if I were an heiress?”

  The smile he gives me comes slowly but reaches into someplace deep, someplace that feels as if it’s never been touched until now, like the cold bottom of the lake that the sun has never warmed before this moment. “You forget,” he says, “you’re my heart’s true love.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say.

  Then the others are around us, all talking at once, but it’s Athena I hear.

  “You’re going to be late, Magistra.”

  “Yikes, you’re right.” I look down at my watch.

  “The procession?” Roy asks.

  “Something else,” I tell him, giving him a quick, hard kiss on the mouth. “A surprise.”

  I RUN DOWN THE STEPS OF THE MANSION. MY GIRLS ARE gathered there, the flowers in their hair trembling in the light breeze coming off the lake. I wave to them and tell them that Athena will lead the procession and I’ll join them at the Maypole. Beyond them I see the car parked down by the lake. As I step off the path, the car door opens and she gets out. For a moment, she is only a dark figure silhouetted against the bright fire of the lake; a small girl standing alone in an enormous swirl of atoms. Then she sees me and comes running, arms open wide.

  By Carol Goodman

  THE DROWNING TREE

  THE LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES

  THE SEDUCTION OF WATER

  Read on for a preview of

  The Ghost Orchid

  Carol Goodman

  Available in hardcover from

  The Random House Publishing Group

  Chapter One

  I CAME TO BOSCO FOR THE QUIET.

  That’s what it’s famous for.

  The silence reigns each day between the hours of nine and five by order of a hundred-year-old decree made by a woman who lies dead beneath the rosebushes—a silence guarded by four hundred acres of wind sifting through white pines with a sound like a mother saying hush. The silence stretches into the still, warm afternoon until it melts into the darkest part of the garden where spiders spin their tunnel-shaped webs in the box-hedge maze. Just before dusk the wind, released from the pines, blows into the dry pipes of the marble fountain, swirls into the grotto, and creeps up the hill, into the gaping mouths of the satyrs, caressing the breasts of the sphinxes, snaking
up the central fountain-allée, and onto the terrace, where it exhales its resin- and copper-tinged breath onto the glasses and crystal decanters laid out on the balustrade.

  Even when we come down to drinks on the terrace there’s always a moment, while the ice settles in the silver bowls and we brush the yellow pine needles off the rattan chairs, when it seems the silence will never be broken. When it seems that the silence might continue to accumulate—like the golden pine needles that pad the paths through the box-hedge maze and the crumbling marble steps, and choke the mouths of the satyrs and fill the pipes of the fountain—and finally be too deep to disturb.

  Then someone laughs and clinks his glass against another’s, and says…

  “Cheers. Here’s to Aurora Latham and Bosco.”

  “Here, here,” we all chime into the evening, sending the echoes of our voices rolling down the terraced lawn like brightly colored croquet balls from some long-ago lawn party.

  “God, I’ve never gotten so much work done,” Bethesda Graham says, as if testing the air’s capacity to hold a longer sentence or two.

  We all look at her with envy. Or maybe it’s only me, not only because I didn’t get any work done today, but because everything about Bethesda bespeaks confidence, from her slim elegant biographies and barbed critical reviews to her sleek cap of shiny black hair with bangs that just graze her perfectly arched eyebrows—which are arched now at Nat Loomis, as if the two of them were sharing some secret, unspoken joke—and set off her milk white skin and fine, delicate bone structure. Even Bethesda’s size—she can’t be more than four nine—is intimidating, as if everything superfluous had been refined down to its essential core. Or maybe it’s just that at five nine I loom over her and my hair, unmanageable at the best of times, has been steadily swelling in the moist Bosco air and has acquired red highlights from the copper pipes. I feel like an angry Valkyrie next to her.

  “Magic,” says Zalman Bronsky, the poet, sipping his Campari and soda. “A dream. Perfection.” He releases his words as if they were birds he’s been cupping in his hands throughout the day.