The Lake of Dead Languages

  When I finally realized that no one was going to come I pulled myself up and lugged my suitcases back upstairs. The room was empty and the door to the single was closed. Putting my suitcases down next to my bed, I went to the door and put my hand on the knob. Like the outside knob when I first came back, it was warm to the touch. I turned it but something was blocking it.

  “Who is it?” Deirdre’s voice came to me from behind the closed door. From the direction it came I guessed she was sitting on the floor, her back against the door.

  “It’s Jane,” I called. “Let me in.”

  I heard something shift along the floor and the door opened as if of its own volition. Deirdre was sitting on the floor, facing the bloody bed. Lucy wasn’t in the room. Then I heard her voice behind me.

  “OK,” she said, brushing past me. Something silver glinted in her hands. “I know what to do, but you both have to promise me not to freak out. Jane’ll take me to the infirmary and Deirdre should stay behind and bundle the sheets up. They won’t be able to tell exactly how much blood there was.”

  I looked at Deirdre to see if she understood what Lucy was talking about, but for once she was as much in the dark as I was.

  Then we both looked up just as Lucy, sitting in the middle of the bloodied sheets, took a razor to her left wrist and slashed her wrist.

  WHEN I HAVE STOPPED SHAKING I DRINK A LITTLE WATER from the bottle I bought at the last rest stop. I look at the road I have pulled off of and notice a green-and-white sign with a stylized drawing of a figure in a cap and gown. It points to a local college, and even without reading the words beneath the generic picture I realize that i’ve gotten off at the pough-keepsie exit and the sign is pointing to Vassar. It’s funny, I think, that the sign shows a male figure for what has been, for most of its history, a women’s college. Then I think of another picture: the yearbook picture of Hannah Toller and Helen Chambers at the Freshman Formal with the mysterious man off to the side. Hannah Toller had come back from her freshman year at Vassar with a baby. Although she would never tell who the father was, everyone assumed she was the mother. But if she wasn’t the mother, who was?

  I have been thinking, on the road to Heart Lake, that the answers lie there, because that is where my story began. But now it occurs to me that the story started elsewhere.

  I pull onto the road and drive, not back toward the Taconic, but west, toward the river and Vassar.

  THE CAMPUS, AS I PASS THROUGH THE ARCHED GATEWAY and drive toward Main Hall, looks even prettier than I remember it. There is a light dusting of snow on the ground and icicles hang from the row of pines flanking the drive. The winter sun warms the bricks of Main and sets fire to the green patina of the mansard roof. There is a certain clarity of light here that I instantly remember even though it has been over fifteen years since I saw the campus. I have not been back since I graduated, not for my fifth reunion, not for my tenth or fifteenth. It had always seemed pointless; I had made no friends at Vassar. And when I thought of the questions people asked at reunions, I knew I did not have the kind of life that would translate easily into polite cocktail banter at the reunion banquet.

  I park my car in front of Main and get out. I notice instantly how still and quiet everything is—it is still winter break here. I am glad, as I walk toward the library, that I am unlikely to meet any of my old teachers. It occurs to me, though, that for the first time since I graduated it might not be so hard to answer the inevitable questions. True, teaching Latin at a private girls’ school is no one’s pinnacle of success and Heart Lake isn’t exactly Exeter or Choate, still, it used to be considered rather good, and not everyone would know of its slow slide into second-rate.

  I pass under the giant London plane tree that spreads its dappled boughs before the library’s gothic facade. I remember the feeling of peace I had, each evening after dinner, walking beneath the ancient tree and through the arched doorway of the library. After the tumult of high school, the years I spent behind these gray stone walls, toiling away at Latin translations like some medieval monk, had seemed like a cool balm applied to a feverish forehead.

  The girl behind the main desk is young, probably a financial aid student working over the break to make her tuition. It’s what I used to do. I almost think to tell her that, but I am enjoying the silence of the library too much. I ask her, briefly, where I can find the old yearbooks and she directs me to a room that contains not only yearbooks but the college’s archives.

  I take down the 1963 yearbook and slowly leaf through the pages. I look for Helen Chambers’s picture in the seniors’ photographs, but I can’t find it. It seems unlike Domina Chambers, with her love of tradition and adherence to form, not to have posed for her yearbook picture. I have to go through the book twice to find the picture of the Freshman Formal. Then I find it toward the end of the book, between the lacrosse team and a candid picture of the bridge club. “Freshman Formal,” the caption reads, “Helen Liddell Chambers ’63 and Hannah Corey Toller.” There is no year following Hannah Toller’s name. In this book where every name is followed by those two digits, the final mark of belonging, their absence seems like a brand. The girl who dropped out after freshman year because she had a baby out of wedlock. That’s how her classmates would have remembered her. But that wasn’t what happened. She had taken the blame for someone else.

  I look closely at the picture. I remember thinking that the handsome blond boy on the edge of the picture smiling at the girls—why had I thought he was smiling at Hannah?—looked like Lucy. How blind had I been not to notice the resemblance? It’s Helen Chambers, young, her pale swept-up hair shining like a swan’s wing, who looks like Lucy. Like mother like daughter, I think. Just as Lucy pretended that Deirdre had been the one to give birth to that baby, so Helen Chambers had let her friend assume the shame of an out-of-wedlock baby. It explains, of course, all the extra attention Helen Chambers had lavished on Lucy. No wonder Domina Chambers had been so horrified the night Lucy cut her wrists.

  I PRACTICALLY HAD TO CARRY LUCY TO THE INFIRMARY. EVEN though Deirdre had wrapped her wrist in a thick linen napkin, blood splattered the snow at our feet. When I looked behind us, though, I saw that the drops of blood were already covered by the fast-falling snow.

  When we reached the infirmary we found the door locked and a 3 x 5 card taped to the window. “HOLIDAY HOURS: 9 A.M. TO 4 P.M. FOR EMERGENCY CALL THE CORINTH FIRE DEPARTMENT.”

  Lucy was leaning against the wall of the building while I read the card to her. When I finished she slid down the wall and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her jeans were already damp from the snow, but I thought I saw a new stain spread over her left knee where her wrist lay against the cloth.

  “We’ll have to go back and call an ambulance,” I told her.

  “I can’t walk anymore,” she said. “I’m too tired. You go back and call. I’ll wait here.”

  “I can’t leave you here, Lucy, you’ll freeze to death.”

  She didn’t answer me. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to have fallen asleep. I looked out into the snow, spinning in a cone of light from the porch lamp. At least Lucy was out of the snow here. Maybe I should go back to the dorm and call from there.

  I took off my coat and laid it over Lucy. When I stepped off the covered porch and out of the lamplight I was immediately enveloped in a world of spinning snow. I could barely make out where the path split off to go back to the dorm. I couldn’t even tell if I was on a path, let alone if I was on the right one. I walked for several minutes when I realized I was no longer walking on a dirt path covered by snow, but over rocks sheeted with ice. I stopped and slowly turned in a circle and realized I had lost all sense of direction. I must have missed the path leading back to the dorm, but then where was I? Under the sounds of wind and snow falling I heard another sound—a creaking noise, like a door opening. I moved toward it and lost my footing on the ice.

  When I stopped sliding headlong down the curved surface of the rock I was looking down into a
void of swirling snow. The creaking sound was directly below me now, but still far away. I stared into the glittering whirlpool below me and it was like looking into deep water when you opened your eyes and looked into the deepest part of the lake and saw the drifting silt lit up by the sun shining through the water. I was on the Point hanging over the edge of the cliff. The creaking sound I’d heard was new ice cracking in the wind.

  I tried crawling backward from the edge but when I lifted myself to my knees I slid forward a few more inches. I took off my mittens and felt around me for the deep cracks in the rock I knew were there. Chattermarks, Miss Buehl had called them, left by a retreating glacier. When I found one deep enough I dug my fingers into it and pulled myself around so I was facing away from the lake. I only moved forward when I found a crack deep enough to use as a handhold. By the time I’d worked my way up to level rock, my fingernails were broken and bloody and I’d realized I’d left my mittens behind. I crawled over the rock face, not daring to stand until I’d gotten to the woods.

  I stood up and realized that I still had no idea how to get back to the dorm or how long it had been since I’d left Lucy. She could have bled to death by now. Even if I found the dorm it would take too long for an ambulance to get here. I stood in the falling snow and thought about the icy plunge from the Point to the lake.

  Then I noticed a light shining through the woods. At first I thought it was the infirmary porch light and I was amazed at how little distance I had traveled, but then I remembered the nights we had sneaked over the Point to avoid Miss Buehl’s cottage. Could it be Miss Buehl’s light? And was it possible she was in her cottage? I knew she stayed for part of the break. Also, I remembered that before she’d become a science teacher she’d been a nurse. She helped out, sometimes, when the infirmary was understaffed. She’d know what to do for Lucy.

  I headed straight for the light even though it meant walking through the deeper snow in the woods. I didn’t take my eyes off the light until I reached the cottage and started beating the door with my frozen, bloody hands. When the door opened I couldn’t see who opened it because burning spots blurred my vision.

  Someone pulled me inside and rubbed my hands. I was pushed into a chair and wrapped in a blanket. I closed my eyes and tried to get rid of the light spots dancing in front of my eyes. I was sure the afterimage of Miss Buehl’s porch light would be seared into my retinas forever.

  When I opened my eyes, though, I could see perfectly. Miss Buehl was holding a towel around my hands and behind her Domina Chambers was offering me a steaming tea cup.

  “Drink this before you try to talk,” Miss Buehl said, taking the cup from Domina Chambers.

  I looked around the room and took in the cozy scene I’d stumbled upon. A fire in the fireplace, a teapot and cups on a low table, classical music on the radio. Both women in sturdy corduroys and ski sweaters.

  “It’s no night to be out, Jane,” Miss Buehl said in the same scolding tone she used when we played around with her Bunsen burners. “Miss Chambers has been over all day working on the advanced placement curriculum and we were waiting for the storm to pass so she could go back…”

  “Lucy,” I said, interrupting Miss Buehl.

  “What about Lucy?” Domina Chambers knelt down next to me and hot tea from her teacup splashed my already soaked jeans.

  “She’s at the infirmary. Bleeding.” For a moment I couldn’t remember the story we’d concocted. I was confused by the other blood I’d seen that day. Birth blood.

  “She slit her wrists,” I finally said.

  “Lucy? No, I don’t believe it.” Domina Chambers gave me the very same look she gave me when I mistranslated my Latin homework, but Miss Buehl took me at my word. She was already pulling on boots and a coat.

  “I’ve got the key to the infirmary in my book bag, Helen, would you get it for me?”

  “But this is absurd, Celeste,” Domina Chambers said, rising to her feet, “this child is hysterical.”

  “Hysterical or not, something is obviously wrong and if Lucy Toller is out in this storm—bleeding or not—we’d better find her.”

  Domina Chambers opened her mouth as if to argue, but at another look from Miss Buehl she clamped her mouth into a tight line and turned on her heel. I heard her rummaging around in the other room muttering under her breath. I’d never seen Domina Chambers so cowed by anyone.

  I thought I’d had enough surprises for one night, but then a small figure appeared in the doorway of the room Domina Chambers had gone into.

  “Oh, Albie,” Miss Buehl said, “I’d forgotten all about you. You’ll have to come, too. Go get dressed in your warmest things.” She turned to me. “Albie’s grandmother dropped her off a little early from break,” she said, and then, lowering her voice, “She must have gotten the dates mixed up.”

  I thought to tell Albie that my father made the same mistake, that we had that in common, but she’d already gone back in the other room, slamming the door behind her.

  BEFORE I LEAVE, I ASK THE GIRL BEHIND THE DESK—SHE’S yawning over a copy of Dante’s Purgatorio—if the library has a copy of the Vassar alumnae directory. She puts down her copy without bothering to save her place and slips out from behind the desk. Following her, I notice she’s wearing sandals and thick white gym socks. The socks have holes at the heels. I can see her bare, unshaven calves between the hem of her skirt and the tops of her socks. I imagine how cold she’ll be walking home tonight. It makes me think of my students, Athena especially, and I am, for the first time, really anxious to be back at Heart Lake.

  She asks what year I’m looking for and when I tell her 1963 she gives me a scrutinizing look.

  “You don’t look that old,” she says.

  I laugh. “I certainly hope not. I was class of ’81.” I realize as I say it how glad I am to have those digits to name. Unlike Hannah Toller. “No, I’m looking for a friend… for a friend’s mother.”

  “Oh,” she says without interest. She pads back to her desk and picks up Dante at any old place and yawns into the book.

  I run my finger down the list of names. Most of the names, I see, are in bold type followed by another name in lighter typeface. The names in bold are maiden names, the ones following are married names.

  When I get to Helen Chambers’s I see it, too, is in bold. So Helen Chambers got married after she left Heart Lake. I’m surprised but also somehow relieved. Watch out you don’t turn out like Helen Chambers, Dr. Lockhart had said to me. Well, maybe she didn’t turn out so bad after all. Maybe there was a life for her after Heart Lake.

  But then I see that the record keepers have made a mistake. The name following Chambers in light typeface is Liddell. Someone must have mistaken her middle name for a married name. I pull my finger across the page to locate her address, but instead my finger comes to rest on a single word: deceased. It is followed by the date May 1, 1981. She died only four years after leaving Heart Lake. Dr. Lockhart was right after all. Helen Chambers had ended badly.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  WHILE WALKING TO MY CAR I NOTICE THE GIRL FROM the library leaving the building. She is wearing a light denim jacket and carrying a heavy backpack. I offer her a lift back to her dorm and she tells me she lives in the student housing across Raymond Avenue. I remember the complex is a good mile’s walk from campus and again I urge her to take a lift from me. I see her assess me and decide I’m probably not dangerous—after all, I’m Jane Hudson ’81. She is quiet, though, in the car. I ask who she’s reading the Dante for and she names a medieval history professor I had junior year.

  “When you do your term paper include a map of Dante’s underworld and compare it to a map of Virgil’s underworld,” I tell her. “He loves that kind of thing—the geography of imaginary places—I think there’s even some name for it…”

  “Really? Thanks, I’ll remember that.”

  Then she gets out of the car and runs quickly up the steps of the dilapidated housing complex. I remember that these units h
ad been built as temporary housing five years before I came here. They were already falling apart then. I wait until she’s inside and I see the lights go on, and then I drive back to the main road and, from there, to the Taconic.

  I am sorry, after a few miles, that I didn’t take the better lit and straighter Thruway. The road is icy, especially on the curves. Each time the back of my car fishtails on the slippery road my stomach lurches. I keep thinking about the astounding coincidence of Helen Chambers and Lucy Toller both pretending their babies belonged to someone else. Is it just coincidence though? I think of the two of them. Both beautiful with the kind of rarefied beauty of a fairy-tale princess. It was more than their beauty though; it was a certain look they each had of possessing some secret charm. They inspired, in others, not only admiration but the desire to please and emulate. I’ll never know what Lucy said to Deirdre to convince her to let me think the baby was hers, but I can imagine the way Lucy looked when she asked. And I realize that if Lucy had asked me to say the baby was mine I would have. And it wasn’t just me and Deirdre who idealized Lucy. There was that younger girl, Albie. I remember how mad she was at me when we went back to the infirmary and found Lucy nearly half dead on the steps.

  WE FOUND LUCY CURLED IN A BALL ON THE INFIRMARY doorstep, like a cat locked out in the cold. It broke my heart to think how long it had taken me to bring her help.

  “I’m sorry I was so long,” I told her, but she didn’t wake up.

  “How could you leave her here?” The voice at my ear was so low I thought it was my own conscience, but it wasn’t, it was Albie.

  “I had to go find help,” I tried to explain, but Albie shook her head.

  “You left her to die,” she hissed at me, leaning close so Miss Buehl and Domina Chambers couldn’t hear, so close that I felt her hot spit prick my skin.