T
he news came through an old house mistress, who lived in Dallas and was friends with Henny. Leona’s family had lost everything. Her father’s oil was sour, we kept hearing, though no one knew what it meant. It was now worth less than drinking water. We knew what this meant.
Everything
, Henny said, but even she seemed to take no pleasure in this gossip.
“Where will they live?” I asked Sissy, on our way to the bathhouse, both of us swaddled in our winter robes.
She looked sideways at me. “They’ll still have their house, Thea. Just not their lives.”
When we arrived at the bathhouse, I scanned the room for Leona, whom I sometimes saw around this time, but saw only a gaggle of first-years, Molly among them. We were required to bathe every other day during the summer, but only every third day during the winter. Mrs. Holmes’s standard of hygiene was high.
As I waited for Docey to draw my bath, I wondered what sort of life Leona was left with. Leona had done nothing wrong, nothing unforgivable. She would leave this place. She would give up horses, or at least horses like King, who had cost a small fortune. She would not go to a ladies’ college, perhaps.
Docey motioned that the bath was ready and took my robe as I stepped in. I’d completely discarded any remnants of modesty after the first few weeks here. Docey’s hand was red, from testing the water so many times. Leona’s life might be limited, now, in a way that it hadn’t been before, but she would not be a maid, like Docey. She would never go hungry. There was surely a rich relative who would help.
Victoria, Leona, all the girls who had been sent home—their lives would change in subtler ways. Rich suitors would not abound. They would have to choose more carefully. All the
Ladies’ Home Journal
s
mothers sent us were now full of articles about little jobs women could take in to support the household: laundry, sewing. I’d almost laughed. As if Leona’s mother could save the family fortune. As if Aunt Carrie could have doubled the size of her garden and paid back the bank. That wives could earn even a fraction of what their husbands had lost was a fantasy.
I understood that our teachers, whom we had previously pitied, for they had none of our advantages, were lucky. Miss Brooks had a salary, and room and board; she talked about books all day instead of worrying about keeping her family afloat. It must feel like a relief, not to be saddled with a family right now.
In the days that followed, everyone watched Leona, for signs that she had faltered, would falter. But she acted no differently. And, gradually, the girls, as girls are wont to do, lost interest. If anything, she acted more imperiously. Watching her guide King over jumps as if they were playthings, clear the course beautifully, perfectly, then pass us on her way out of the ring without so much as a nod—well, it made us wonder if it was really true at all. But still she reminded us of our own precarious balance in the net of fate. If Leona’s father could lose everything, what of our own fathers? What of us? The question floated above us, now, a cloud.
—
I
n Augusta House one night Eva switched off the lights and lit candles, brought out a Ouija board, which she had borrowed from a first-year cabin. The first-year girls were consumed by them. We had been trapped indoors almost all day, unable to ride because of the rain. It almost felt like hurricane weather.
“Those,” Gates said, as soon as she saw it, “are forbidden. And foolish, besides.” But even so, she joined our circle, placed the tips of her fingers very lightly on the heart-shaped piece of wood. We sat on the faded Oriental rug that lay in the center of the cabin. I absently combed its fringed edges. They covered the floors of all our cabins; I knew how expensive they were. Mr. Holmes should sell all these, I thought, and pay a girl’s tuition.
“My father says those are demonic,” Mary Abbott said, from her bed. “You shouldn’t.”
“Oh, Mary Abbott,” Eva said. “Don’t be so grim. It’s just fun.”
“Who are we contacting?” Sissy asked.
“My grandmother,” Eva suggested, “but she was so boring in real life. I can’t imagine death has made her more interesting.”
“Eva!” Gates said. Eva raised her eyebrows, lazily, and smiled. I stifled a laugh.
“How about you, Thea?” Sissy asked. “Is there anyone you’d like to contact? Do you know anyone dead?”
The question rang out like a bell, sounding clearly in my mind. Was Georgie dead? Tears came to my eyes, that old, familiar wetness. But no: Mother had said in her last letter he was fine.
“No,” I said, and smiled, weakly, “no one I can think of.”
Sissy tried to meet my eye. “How about an old Yonahlossee girl?” I asked, to interrupt the stillness.
“Which one?” Gates asked. She sat primly, her legs folded beneath her, the way we had been taught to sit in etiquette class if we ever found ourselves without a chair.
“Lettie Sims,” Eva said. “She’s why we can’t swim in the lake anymore. Drowned,” she added.
“When?” I asked.
“In the 1800s,” Sissy said. “A long time ago.” She smiled reassuringly. “A very long time ago.”
I smiled back, to show her I was fine. But Sissy did look a little otherworldly in the candlelight; all of us did. I was not so fragile that a drowned girl from the previous century could alarm me.
We all touched the wooden heart, lightly. Mary Abbott turned off the electric lights, so all we had were candles. “Spirit of the occult,” Eva began, and Sissy giggled. “Spirit of the occult,” she began again, “please let us speak to Miss Lettie Sims, who we know the girls called Simsy. We want to ask her a question. Respectfully.”
The heart moved, of course it did, one of us pushed it. I watched the faces of these softly glowing girls and wondered what I would ask if I could ask anything at all and know the answer would be true.
“A-S-K-O-N-E-Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N-I-F-Y-O-U-M-U-S-T-B-U-T-O-N-L-Y-O-N-E.”
Gates’s freckled fingers, I thought; she wanted to get this done with.
Mary Abbott whimpered, from her bed, “I’m scared.”
“Shh,” Eva whispered. “She doesn’t want to hurt us.”
Sissy’s hands were shaking. Did the girls really believe this? We had read an essay about the occult with Father, how it was simply a way not to believe all the soldiers from the Great War were dead. I tried to meet Gates’s eye, but she was watching the board.
“This is foolish,” I said. “It’s one of us moving it.” I started to take my hands away, but Sissy shook her head.
“Please, Thea,” she whispered. “Wait.”
“Hurry, then. Ask a question.”
The wind whipped against our cabin, which felt unsturdy, suddenly, like a house made of paper. A branch hit the window and Eva gasped. Sam had briefly been afraid of Kate the Bell Witch, when we were seven; he said she could disguise herself as anyone or thing, recognizable only by her green eyes. A snake, a bird, a little girl. Georgie had told him the legend, scared Sam silly. Mother blamed him, he had let the outside world in. For years Sam looked carefully at the faces of people we encountered. But we didn’t encounter many, and none of their eyes, to his relief, were green.
“A question?” I asked.
“I have a question,” Gates said, which surprised us all. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Will we be all right?” Her voice wavered, ever so slightly, which it never had before and never would again, at least not in my presence.
—
T
hat winter I got better and better on a horse. The cold seemed to agree with me. At the very least, you could ride longer without fear of overheating your horse. Faster and stronger, I jumped perfectly any course Mr. Albrecht arranged, usually on the first try. My legs no longer ached after I finished a ride. My arms were stringed with muscle. Eva had cut my hair off; now it fell to my shoulders, and I looked less like a child. When I examined myself in the mirror over my washstand, I liked what I saw, I liked what I’d become again: perhaps it was my imagination, but I looked in the mirror and saw that I was superior to the old Thea, I was more powerful than she’d ever been.
I cleared my plate most mealtimes. Henny watched and sipped glass after glass of cold water. Not fat, not yet—she was plump, very round, but anyone could see that she would be fat soon. It was her fate.
Sometimes I asked about her wedding. She was pleased with me then—oh, it was so easy to put myself into Henny’s good graces. She talked less about her fiancé than about her flowers, the rolling cart of desserts, her dress from New York. Martha and Jettie were going to be bridesmaids. I wondered if it pained Henny to think of beautiful Martha standing next to her. Miss Metcalfe was silent when Henny spoke of her impending matrimonial bliss, and I realized with a shock that she was jealous.
I asked a question about their new house, the one they would move into after they were married, and Henny turned to me, excluding all the other girls at our table.
“You’ll know what it’s like, Thea, you’ll know how much joy there is.” Her hot breath smelled faintly of chocolate. What an odd way to phrase it, the joy floating somewhere, an infinite quantity of it, as if you only had to stand in the right place to catch it.
—
W
hen Mr. Holmes did appear, a week into my visits with Decca, it was nothing extraordinary. So many things were like that: you waited and waited and waited, and then it happened, and you were still you. I wasn’t yet sure if this was a disappointment or a relief. It seemed to be a little bit of both.
We were downstairs, playing dominoes on the coffee table. I was drinking tea and watching Decca’s milk—her glass rested very close to the edge of the table and I was afraid she’d knock it over with her elbow. I’d already told her to be careful, twice, and there was a limit, I’d learned from spending so many hours with Decca, to how many times you could warn a child.
There were expensive pieces in this room: a collection of tiny Limoges boxes in a glass case, six silver calling-card cases on an end table, all engraved with various initials. An oil painting of a girl sitting in a field, a sheep in the distance, that reminded me of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. There was nothing personal except for the initialed card cases; again I wondered if any of these things belonged to the Holmeses. Was there a discretionary fund that each headmistress was allowed to draw from? But that fund surely would have been stopped now, with the trouble. Even if the money in the fund hadn’t been affected, it would be in poor taste to use it.
“Go.”
“Sorry,” I said, “sorry, let’s see . . .” But I didn’t see. I’d never played dominoes before and apparently the Holmes girls had played since birth. It was a dull, endless game.
Decca wore a summer dress, evidence of a father’s hand. Decca could be obstinate, and she was picky about her clothes. I imagined she’d insisted on this, and Mr. Holmes had given in to his daughter’s seasonally inappropriate whims.
I was wearing the Yonahlossee uniform but I didn’t mind it. I had gotten used to the sight of us, all alike at first glance. I wore no jewelry.
Decca stood; I interrupted the caressing of my hair.
I was vain, I was sixteen years old and would never again feel so watched.
“Father’s home,” she announced, and twirled in a tight circle.
“Decca,” I scolded, “behave.”
There was always some tragedy that accompanied his arrival: the milk, this time.
“Decca!” I was furious. All this waiting, all my calibrations, and now the milk was spilled and Emmy unavailable—how to call her without sounding coarse?
Decca ran to her father and I busied myself with soaking up the milk with my skirt.
“An accident?” Mr. Holmes asked, and lifted Decca on his hip. He offered his free hand to me and I accepted it and stood.
“Emmy,” he called, and she appeared so quickly I knew she must have been waiting.
“We were just . . .”
“Playing?”
I nodded, looked to the right and out the window. Everything was blank, still and cold. “Playing.” I felt defeated. Decca sat curled and small on her father’s hip, Emmy scurried on the rug, patting and feeling.
“That’s fine, Emmy.” And although he sounded distracted, he spoke gently to Emmy, who stood and curtsied and backed out of the room without ever meeting his eye.
I wasn’t going to say a thing, I wanted him to speak next, after I’d waited and waited.
But it was Decca who spoke: “I’m winning at dominoes.”
“Don’t boast.”
“She’s not. It’s true.” I smiled at Decca, who grinned back.
Mr. Holmes put Decca down but she clung to his leg. He rested a hand on the top of her scalp, carefully extricated his leg from her grip.
“Is that right?” He smiled.
Decca nodded, unsure; there were adults laughing and sometimes that was fine and sometimes it was not.
“Go upstairs, now,” he told Decca. “Please,” he asked, anticipating her refusal. “I’ll be up in a second.” And we were to be alone, now! I wondered if he thought I was pretty. I willed him to look at me, to notice me, but he seemed distracted.
Decca kissed me on the cheek and my cheek flamed scarlet, she was so close to me, her scalpy smell and her thin shoulders.
Mr. Holmes patted Decca’s head as she passed and smiled after her, and I knew that if she had not been his favorite before she would be now.
There was one thing in this room that did not belong, I thought, and it was me: I was intruding; surely Mr. Holmes thought I was a bother. Sometimes the house mistresses met here with Mrs. Holmes, but mainly the Holmes house was private, theirs, not a place for girls. As Mr. Holmes arranged himself in a chair, I knew that he did not want me here.
“Well,” I said, ready to make my excuses. What had I thought? That Mr. Holmes would fall in love with me? This was how crushes made fools of girls. I resolved to never have one again, to never love someone until they loved me first: to control my heart.
“Sit, sit,” he said, “please,” and gestured toward a chair, and I had been wrong. He wanted me here. He seemed genuine. I had not imagined everything.