The Hand on the Wall(30)
“Are we coming back?” someone else asked.
“That remains an open question,” he replied. “I hope so.”
He went on for another five or so minutes, talking about community and emotions. Stevie heard none of it. The room continued to distort, and her pulse raced. She had not thought to bring her bag with her medication, so she closed her eyes and breathed. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Pix was coming in as they were going out. She embraced everyone, except Nate, who did not hug.
“I have a flight to San Francisco at two,” Vi said, staring at their phone.
“Mine’s at four,” Janelle said.
The two held each other. Stevie felt the buzz in her pocket but refused to look.
“I’ll meet you all at home in a few minutes,” Pix said. “I’m sorry. It’s all going to be okay.”
But it wasn’t, of course.
They made their way back to Minerva in a slow, silent procession. Vi came along with them, walking hand in hand with Janelle. Stevie had memorized that sentence from The Great Gatsby that had so transfixed her. She hadn’t meant to—she just read it several times and now it was stuck, running through her head as she looked up: He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.
She still didn’t know exactly what it meant, but the words scared her. They made her aware that there were echoey hallways inside herself that she had not yet explored, that the world was big, and that objects changed upon examination. These are not the kinds of things you want to think about when your dreams of school and escape and friendship have—at long last—properly exploded. Everything was the last. The last time as a group walking back from the dining hall. The last time touching her ID to the pad. The last time pushing open the big blue door. The last time looking at the weird snowshoe spikes, and the moose head, and David sitting on the saggy purple sofa. . . .
David. Was sitting there. Hands folded in his lap, a massive backpack by his feet, wearing his two-thousand-dollar Sherlock coat and a knowing smile.
“Hey, everybody,” he said. “Miss me? Shut the door. Not a lot of time.”
September 1936
IT WAS VERY ODD SEEING A LAKE GO AWAY. HOUR BY HOUR, IT SANK from view. At breakfast, Flora Robinson had gone out to its bank to wish it good-bye. After lunch, it was not looking itself and had revealed a mossy, slimy border of rock. By four, one could hear a whooshing sound as it continued to sink. Leaves congealed on the contracting surface. By sunset, it was gone.
The lake met its fate because a famous physic had called the New York Times and told a reporter that Alice Ellingham had never left home at all; that she was at the bottom of the garden lake. Albert Ellingham did not believe in psychics, but after four sleepless nights, he told Mackenzie to call up the engineers and drain it anyway. This was not hard to do. The lake was fed by a series of pipes that brought water down from a higher point on the mountain; another pipe ran downhill and into the river. All that needed to be done was to close the feed and open the drain and . . . good-bye, lake.
As went the lake, so did Flora’s life, drained of beauty and fullness. Wherever Flora went, she was “that woman who was there that night,” or “a speakeasy hostess known to the family.” Never what she was—a friend. The friend. Iris’s best friend in the world. The one who actually mourned her. The world may have seen pictures of Iris’s New York relations as they made public spectacles of themselves at the funeral service at Saint John the Divine, of the greenhouses’ worth of roses and irises and the great bunches of lilacs (her favorite scent) that filled the church. There were movie stars who flew in from California to pay tribute to the wife of their employer. Members of the New York Philharmonic played by her casket, and the mezzo-soprano Clara Ludwig sang “Ave Maria.” Everyone wept.
Many photographs were taken of the cortege of Rolls-Royce Phantom limousines with black crepe that wound through Central Park to the luncheon at the Plaza. From there, the mood turned over countless glasses of champagne and towers of finger sandwiches. It was a fulsome summer’s day, with the hot breeze coming in through the windows. The mourners compared dresses and stock portfolios and vacation plans. So many of them had come in from their summer houses. How terrible to face the city in this heat!
Flora moved like a ghost. She did not eat finger sandwiches or drink champagne. She wore black and sweated in it and twice went to vomit. When the show was over, she and Leo walked numbly through Central Park. The day was endless, refusing to give way to the evening. The sky seemed to swell overhead, and a small pack of photographers trailed them at a distance until they left the park and escaped in a cab to Leo’s studio. Leo gave her something to help her sleep.
Months later, she was still that ghost. Now she watched the last of her friend’s lake disappear into a pipe, leaving a big, empty cup of rocks. She shivered and shut the curtains. She turned to George Marsh, who was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a newspaper. He folded back the top and looked over it at Flora.
“Is it done?” he asked.
“It’s done.”
“I was already out there twice. We’ll go over it inch by inch, but I don’t think there’s anything to find in there.”