The Lake of Dead Languages

  Could it be that there is something about this place that makes these events recur? Are all the deaths, from Iris Crevecoeur’s to Deirdre’s and Lucy’s and Matt’s, written on the landscape of Heart Lake like the glacier scores left on the rocks? Or is somebody re-creating the events, following a script written twenty years ago?

  IT’S ONLY WHEN I AM IN THE DORM STANDING IN FRONT OF the security desk that I realize I don’t know what room Vesta and Aphrodite are in. I dig in my pocket and find the piece of paper Vesta gave me. I show it to the matron at the desk without looking at it and she tells me the room is up the stairs, second door on the left. And so I find myself standing in front of my old dorm room, the one I shared for three years with Deirdre Hall and Lucy Toller.

  I knock and a voice from inside calls, “It’s open.” My students, Vesta and Aphrodite (or Sandy and Melissa as I try to think of them now), are sitting cross-legged on the same bed facing each other. I smell cigarette smoke and feel a cold draft. The bed is under the window. If I checked the sill beneath the window blind I am sure I would find an ashtray, but I don’t.

  “Magistra Hudson,” Vesta says. “Salve. What a surprise.” There isn’t a trace of surprise in her voice. I realize that I am probably one of a long line of adult visitors the girls have entertained tonight. I imagine the grilling they must have received this afternoon in the Music Room and the well-meaning sympathy calls from teachers.

  I notice a book of poems by Emily Dickinson on the bed and detect a faint whiff of mold in the air. Gwendoline Marsh and Myra Todd must have preceded me.

  “May I sit down?”

  Aphrodite shrugs, but Vesta at least has the good grace to gesture to one of the two desk chairs. I sit in the maple Windsor chair and wonder if it’s the same one I sat in twenty years ago. The desks look the same: soft, dark wood scored by generations of Heart Lake girls’ initials. If I looked hard enough I might find mine. Instead I look down and notice the dark stain on the floor.

  “I think we should put something over it, but Sandy says that’ll only make it worse.” It’s the first time Aphrodite has spoken since I came in and I can hear from the hoarseness in her voice that she has been crying. I look at her and take in the dark smudges under her eyes, darker than the ones she used to draw with kohl.

  “I’m sure if you asked the dean would let you switch rooms. No one would expect you to stay in here with… that.”

  “Yeah, Dean Buehl said we could move and Miss Marsh says we ought to move to another room. She said it would be like living with a ghost staying here and we shouldn’t have to…” Aphrodite’s voice trails off and she looks, I think, as white as a ghost herself. I’m sure Gwen meant well, but the ghost image certainly wasn’t well thought out.

  “But Dr. Lockhart says we should stay and face our fears. She says that it’s not good to bury the past,” Vesta says. “I think she’s right. What do we have to be afraid of? That we’re going to suddenly decide to off ourselves just because Ellen went round the bend? I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah,” Aphrodite nods eagerly. “It’s not like we believe in that three sisters story.”

  “Who told you that story?” I ask.

  The girls look at each other. Vesta is scowling at Aphrodite, as if she is mad at her for bringing it up.

  “Everyone knows that story. It’s one of our great Heart Lake traditions like tea in the Lake Lounge and ringing the bell on top of the mansion so you don’t die a virgin.”

  I laugh before I can stop myself. “You all still do that?”

  Vesta and Aphrodite smile, relieved, I think, that they’ve gotten me to laugh. “Yeah, although it’s not such a big issue with some girls,” Vesta says. Aphrodite slaps her playfully on the arm and steals a look at me to see how I’m taking it. I smile at her. I remember what she asked the Lake Goddess—to keep her boyfriend at Exeter faithful.

  “Did Athena have a boyfriend?” I ask. “She told me that she was upset last year when her boyfriend broke up with her. Did something like that happen this time?”

  The girls go quiet. I can feel them shrinking away from me.

  “How could she have a boyfriend here?” Vesta asks. “There are no boys here.”

  “Sometimes girls meet boys from town. When I was here…”

  I see the sudden interest in their faces and stop.

  “What? What did you do when you were here? Did you meet boys out in the woods when you were here?” Aphrodite asks. “Maybe on the swimming beach? You know, you can’t see the swimming beach from the mansion.”

  I feel suddenly hot and I notice that the high-intensity desk lamp is beating down on my shoulders. I remember what I came for—to find out if Athena had my journal and, if she had it, do Vesta and Aphrodite have it now. I look around the room. If I had left it hidden in this room twenty years ago they could have found it. I would like to look in my old hiding place—under a loose floorboard behind this desk, but then I had looked there twenty years ago. It had occurred to me at the time that Lucy might have hidden my journal, on that last night before she followed me to the lake, and Lucy was awfully good at hiding things.

  Ignoring Aphrodite’s question with the smile I give my students when they ask something too personal, I stretch my leg and touch my toe to the edge of the bloodstain. I notice a gouge in the wood that has been worn smooth by time.

  “I wonder if they’ll tear up these floorboards,” I say. “They’re old and loose as it is. I’ll tell you something we used to do when I was here. We used to hide things under the floorboards.”

  I look up to see their reaction, but I can’t read their expressions. They look like they’re hiding something, but they’ve looked like that since I came in. It is a not uncommon look for a seventeen-year-old. At any rate, they’ve got nothing to say to my question.

  “I bet you could find stuff that girls hid over the years,” I say, deciding to take a more direct route. “Have you ever? Found anything?”

  The girls do not look at each other, but I have the feeling they are not looking at each other on purpose.

  “No,” Vesta says evenly. “Did you lose something?”

  I swivel the chair toward the desk, away from Vesta’s gaze. Does she know this was my old room? Suddenly I feel like I’m the one who’s being interrogated and I start to sweat under the heat of the desk lamp. I push it away from me, knocking over an empty teacup.

  “We should get rid of that,” Aphrodite says. “You’re the second one who’s knocked it over tonight. At least now it’s empty.”

  I right the teacup and set it next to a history textbook. I idly flip open to the first page and read “Property of Heart Lake School for Girls” printed on the inside cover. Under the school’s seal are places for students to put their names and the year. The names go back to the mid-seventies and I look to see if there’s anyone I knew, but I don’t recognize any of the names. I was never much good at remembering my classmates’ names, mostly because I hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone that well except for Lucy and Deirdre. On the bottom line is Ellen Craven’s name.

  “Is this Athena’s desk?” I ask.

  “Yes,” one of the girls answers; I don’t notice which one.

  I am looking for a black-and-white notebook; I don’t know which notebook I’m looking for, hers or mine.

  “I’m going into town to see Athena now. I was wondering if she’d want any of her books.”

  “Like her Latin books?” The note of sarcasm in Vesta’s voice sounds vicious, but when I turn around her face is bland and innocent.

  “No. I don’t expect her to do her Latin work right now. I thought something more personal. Her journal, maybe. She did keep a journal, didn’t she? I remember seeing a black-and-white notebook.”

  “Yeah, she had a bunch of those,” Aphrodite says.

  “But you’re too late,” Vesta adds. “Dr. Lockhart came and took them all away.”

  ON MY WAY TO THE PARKING LOT I NEARLY SLIP ON THE ICY path twice. I keep my eyes
on the ground to avoid the icy patches, but the moonlight coming through the pine branches strews the path with black-and-white blotches that dazzle my eyes. The pattern of moonlight and shadows begins to look like the black-and-white cover of my old notebook—of Athena’s journals, too—so that I feel as if I were skating over the slippery cover of a book.

  A bunch of those, Aphrodite said. If Athena had my old journal then it’s possible Dr. Lockhart has it now. I have to find out from Athena if she had it, but will she even be conscious?

  When I get to the hospital, I am relieved to find that Athena is awake, but disappointed to see that she is not alone. Dr. Lockhart is sitting in a chair by the window with an open book in her lap. The room is dark except for the small book light attached to her book. When she sees me come in, she closes the book and rises. The book light moves with her and throws lurching shadows across the room. Athena turns her head on the pillow and smiles when she sees me.

  “Magistra Hudson,” she says in a painfully raspy voice that makes me think of razor blades. “We were just talking about you.”

  “You look like you’re going to sleep,” I say. “I can come back in the morning.”

  “Oh no, I was just telling Dr. Lockhart that I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Yes, Ellen says that Latin’s her favorite subject. I was just keeping her company until she fell asleep, but now that you’re here, I’ll go.”

  Dr. Lockhart comes around the bed and motions me to come with her. “I just want to have a word with Miss Hudson, Ellen, then I’ll leave her to you.”

  Athena turns over on her side to watch us move into the hallway. I can see her bandaged arms in the moonlight from the window. They remind me of a horse’s legs taped for a race.

  Dr. Lockhart takes me by the elbow and steers me down the hall. “I wanted you to know that she’s in a denial stage,” she whispers. “Don’t take anything she says about the suicide attempt too seriously. It would be better if you didn’t ask her too many questions about what happened.”

  “I won’t,” I tell her. “There’s just one thing I wanted to ask you.”

  Dr. Lockhart lifts one eyebrow and crosses her arms over her chest. The book light shines up onto her face ghoulishly the way the seniors used to shine a flashlight on their faces when they told us the three sisters story at the Halloween bonfire.

  “Athena’s roommates told me you took some journals from her desk, I wondered if…”

  “If any of them were yours?”

  I nod.

  “No, I checked carefully. If she is the one who has your notebook, she’s hidden it well. Maybe someone else has found it.” She pats my arm reassuringly, making the light wobble over the dimly lit hall. The effect is like water reflected on the walls of an underwater cavern. “Don’t worry, Jane,” she says, “surely there’s nothing so bad in your teenage diaries.” She turns and walks down the hall, the light attached to her book wobbling weakly beside her like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan.

  Athena’s eyes are closed when I enter her room, but when I sit on the edge of her bed she opens them.

  “Oh, Magistra Hudson,” she says, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you all day. You’re the only one I can tell.”

  The words sound familiar and I realize they are the ones I found on the journal page left for me two days ago.

  “What do you want to tell me?” I take Athena’s bandaged hand and try not to hold it too tight.

  “I didn’t do it,” she says.

  I think for a second she’s trying to deny taking my journal, but then I realize I haven’t accused her of that.

  “Do what?” I ask.

  “Slit my wrists. I didn’t try to kill myself. Someone tried to kill me.”

  Chapter Eight

  PARANOID DELUSION BROUGHT ON BY DRUG OVERDOSE,” Dr. Lockhart says when I tell her about Athena’s claim that someone tried to kill her. “It’s what I was afraid of.”

  We are back in her office with its panoramic view of Heart Lake. Although it’s only been days, it seems like months since I sat here thinking longingly of a swim in the lake. Since yesterday’s first snow the temperature has dropped into the twenties.

  “Denial of a suicide attempt is common,” Dr. Lockhart tells me. “In fact, I wrote a monograph on that very subject when I was doing my residency.” She glides backward in her desk chair and reaches for a file drawer behind her. I notice her chair’s sleek ergodynamic design as she arches back in it and how well its charcoal gray velour upholstery complements her clothes. I wonder how she got the school to order her such an expensive chair while the rest of us make do with creaky, straight-backed desk chairs.

  She hands me a slim sheaf of paper that I expect is her monograph. I am about to utter some polite assurance that I’ll read it as soon as I catch up on my grading, when I notice it’s not a monograph at all. It is a letter, handwritten on pale blue stationery, from Lucy Toller dated February 28, 1977. The letter is to her brother, who had been sent, that last year of high school, to a military school in the Hudson Valley. True to her fashion she starts out with a quote, one I recognize from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris: “A greeting comes from one you think is dead.” She then goes on to assure her brother that the official report of her suicide attempt over Christmas break was false. “I can’t explain now, Mattie, but please believe that I’d never willingly take my own life. You see, Domina Chambers has told me something that changes everything. When she told me I understood why I’ve always felt different from everybody else. The ordinary rules of the world just don’t apply. ‘Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked.’ ” I remember that it was this passage that had been so damning to Domina Chambers at the inquest.

  At the very bottom of the page she had copied a line from a poem, “And sin no more, as we have done, by staying, but, my Matthew, come let’s go aMaying.” I remember the Robert Herrick poem from Miss Macintosh’s English class.

  I read the letter twice and lift it to see what the rest of the papers are, but Dr. Lockhart reaches across the desk and pulls the sheaf of papers out of my hands.

  “As you see, even your friend Lucy denied that she tried to kill herself, and if the dean’s notes are to be believed, the blood from her slit wrists soaked through two mattresses.”

  At her words my vision is flooded with red. I see the blood-soaked bed, the tangle of crimson sheets.

  “And we know that suicide attempt was real. After all, she eventually succeeded. She walked out onto the ice and deliberately drowned herself. You saw it yourself, right?”

  I nod, but realize from Dr. Lockhart’s continued silence that she expects more of an answer. “Yes,” I tell her, “she deliberately drowned herself.”

  “She didn’t try to hang on to the ice? You couldn’t help her?”

  “She didn’t want my help,” I say, “she practically dived under the water. She wanted to die.”

  “And she didn’t call for you to help her?”

  “No,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to keep the irritation out of my voice. “As I said she went right under. She couldn’t very well call for help from under the water.”

  “So we can assume that first attempt was real as well. Besides it would be too awful if your friend Lucy hadn’t meant to kill herself that first time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was the precipitating factor in your other roommate’s suicide. Deirdre Hall?”

  Dr. Lockhart extracts another sheet from the stack of papers on her desk. This one is a Xerox of a lined, handwritten page.

  “Whatever happens now, it’s all because of what Lucy did at Christmas,” I read aloud. The last lines on the page were cut and pasted from a mimeographed handout. I read them to myself: “I will arise and go now, for always night and day / I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; / While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray / I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” Yet another of Miss Macintosh’s favorites: Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” r />
  “Deirdre Hall’s last journal entry before she drowned herself in the lake,” Dr. Lockhart says. “No, Jane, I don’t think we should believe that Ellen didn’t try to kill herself. I think we should watch her very closely. And her roommates, Sandy and Melissa. I consider all three girls at grave risk.”

  FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS I DO LITTLE BUT WATCH MY girls. I tell myself that I am watching them for signs of depression and suicidal tendencies, but truthfully I am also watching them for hints that they have my old journal. They seem, though, if anything, less troubled. Perhaps it’s only the change of wardrobe brought on by colder weather. By the time Athena returns to class all my girls are huddled in layers of sweaters, scarves, and flannel shirts. The sweaters hide the bandages on Athena’s arms and scratch marks on the other girls’ wrists. The girls look more normal, less sepulchral, in their bright red plaids and fuzzy angoras. It’s hard to look like a Goth lumberjack.

  The snows begin in earnest early, even for the Adirondacks. By Halloween the ground is covered, by Thanksgiving the mounds on the sides of the paths are knee-high. The campus takes on that enclosed feeling it gets in winter. I know that by January the feeling may be claustrophobic, but for now it feels cozy.

  I speak to Olivia each night on the phone and visit her every other weekend. As long as I don’t say anything about her coming back to live with me, Mitchell says nothing about seeking permanent custody. I think it is better to leave things be for the time being.

  I receive no more notes from my past. When I look at the lake I can tell it will freeze soon and I find myself looking forward to it, as if the past could be sealed under ice as well.

  I go down to the lake every night, hoping to be there for the first ice. One night I find Athena, Vesta, and Aphrodite there and I almost turn back on the path, but then I see that Gwendoline Marsh and Myra Todd are with them along with a few other girls. They have blankets and Thermoses of hot chocolate.

  “Magistra,” my girls call when they see me. “Join us. We’re waiting for the lake to freeze. Miss Todd says if there’s a moon when it happens we’ll see the crystals forming.”