Catherine House

by Elisabeth Thomas

  “Yes.”

  “Your boyfriend,” she said, “is quite a scholar. His projects have been remarkable.”

  “Theo?”

  A quirk of a smile. “Yes. Theo.”

  I reached for a butter cookie.

  “It’s been wonderful to watch Theo come into himself,” she said. “The new materials concentration is a unique field of study and requires unique skills of its students. But Theo’s work has been quite impressive. I believe that one day he’ll contribute to the field in a truly meaningful way.”

  “Yes.” I took a bite of the cookie, chewed, and swallowed. Then I said, “He really is so smart, and he works really hard. I know he was disappointed when M. Neptune didn’t choose him for his team.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Not everyone is suited for M. Neptune’s lab,” she said. “Even amongst plasm students. But Theo can always reapply. If he continues to work hard.”

  Viktória uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again.

  I already know, I wanted to say. You can stop this silly pretending.

  She put down the cup.

  “You know,” Viktória said, “you could be a plasm student.”

  It took me a moment to process the words. Then I shook my head and said, “I—I never took the required chemistry.”

  “No,” she said, “and there are other perquisites you’re missing as well. You would have to take them or be tested in. But you would make it. I know you would. You think the right way, Ines. You have the right kind of mind. You have the right … dynamism.”

  I set my teacup on the table. Someone was shouting down in the courtyard, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “This is a serious offer, Ines,” she said. “After you complete your studies in summer, instead of graduating, you could stay here and begin a new education. It would be a long time to be at Catherine, of course. Another three years, at least. But we want our students to serve the concentration that suits them best. I believe—and your professors believe—that the study of new materials could profoundly enrich your life. And you, in turn, with your skills, could enrich the new materials discipline. The most essential discipline there is.”

  She covered my hand with her own.

  “You can stay,” she said. “You can stay here.”

  The noise in the courtyard had stopped. The whole house was quiet.

  “Why?” I said.

  She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you offering this to me?” I raised my shoulders. “Do you think Theo’s sleeping with me because I’m especially smart? Because he’s not. And I’m not.”

  Her lips flickered into a smile, but I couldn’t read her eyes.

  “Theo has mentioned several times that he believes you’re an exceptional young woman,” she said. “And that you would be perfect for the concentration. But this isn’t about Theo. This is about you. Ines, you and I both know that every student who comes to Catherine is in some way … extraordinary.” Her eyes flickered at the word. “And most students graduate from Catherine into fruitful lives of accomplishment and reward. But a rare few others … well. They never quite fit into their lives before Catherine, and they won’t fit in afterward. For them, Catherine is their home. It always was, and always will be.”

  Her hand was warm on mine.

  “I said once that you remind me of myself when I was young,” she said. “That is true. And to be honest, I wish …” Her voice grew soft. “I wish someone had given me this chance, then. A chance to stay.”

  “But you’re Catherine’s director,” I said. “You have stayed.”

  She hesitated, then shook her head slightly. I didn’t understand. But before I had a chance to ask anything more, she was clearing her throat and speaking again.

  “Ines,” she said, “in all my travels to conferences and panels and fund-raisers, I have the pleasure of meeting so many wonderful Catherine graduates. We are everywhere, you know, from the greatest halls of power to the most darling little houses. So many shining men and women who have everything. Everything, except they are no longer twenty years old. They are no longer here. They no longer have Catherine. Is that what you want? Or do you want to stay here, at home?”

  Her breath, so close, smelled like the jasmine tea.

  “Don’t you want to be happy?” she said.

  She was smiling.

  “You don’t have to answer me now,” she said when I didn’t respond. “You still need to finish up your tutorial and the rest of your art history classes. You have a couple of semesters to think about it. But do consider your options carefully. Because this is a real opportunity, Ines. An opportunity to become your truest, most exquisite self.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  *

  I went over to Theo’s that night. He grabbed my T-shirt and pulled me into his room. He had been up all night studying and needed a bath. He smelled like an animal.

  As I fucked him, I thought of Viktória’s long, slender wrists. The pressure of her fingers around my hand.

  Afterward, I held Theo’s body close. A mean, freezing December rain pattered against his window, but I was inside, and Theo’s body was warm.

  Theo was staying here at Catherine. For as long as he worked for M. Neptune, Theo would be here.

  “Do you still have your CDs?” I asked.

  “What CDs?” He was tracing a slow circle around my knee. He had recently trimmed his fingernails and cut them too short. Dried blood beaded on his thumb.

  “You know, that CD booklet you used to have, and the Discman.”

  His hand paused a moment, then kept tracing. “No. I got rid of those things.”

  “Did you really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When? Why?”

  He shrugged. “Man, I don’t know. A year ago? I shouldn’t have had them in the first place.”

  “So you just threw them out? All of them?”

  “Ines, you know that stuff’s not good for us. Viktória’s right—it messes with our concentration. It’s not good for my work.”

  “But you loved that music.”

  “It was just music.”

  “If it was just music, why did you bother throwing it away?”

  “Why are we fighting about this?”

  I lay back down again. He grasped my hand and held it to his chest.

  He had thrown out the Discman. And the photograph of his grandmother, the one he had sneaked past the gate and hidden so carefully. I’d thought he had stashed the photo somewhere else, but now I realized he’d probably trashed it. He had loved that photograph and those CDs. But he loved plasm more. And he’d do anything to keep working.

  I stared at our hands clasped together on his chest.

  I wished I could see Theo at work in M. Neptune’s lab. I wanted to see the expression in his eyes as he bent over a plasm spindle or scribbled down a formula. I wanted to recognize his frown of concentration as he made those strange things happen. Because how bad could they be if he did them?

  The rain had stopped. White mist drifted over his windows.

  I shivered.

  “Are you cold?” he said.

  “A little.”

  He held me tighter. “How did your meeting with Viktória go?”

  “Fine.”

  “What’d she want to talk about?”

  “Just my tutorial,” I said. “Wanted to make sure I’m on the right track.”

  Someone was walking down the hallway with light footsteps. They grew closer, then padded away.

  “She says you’re doing well in your studies,” I said.

  “Mmm. I try.”

  I stroked his arm, then his stomach, then lower.

  A door slammed. The footsteps came close again.

  *

  We celebrated finishing our midterms with wine, music, and Monopoly. None of us were good at the game, or remembered the rules at all, really, so it was hours
before we realized that Nick had been embezzling funds from the bank the whole time. By then we didn’t care. We were drunk, and on our fourth listen of the ABBA greatest hits cassette. Nick and Anna had made up an interpretive dance to “SOS” that involved several pillows and blankets. We cheered for show after show. Their fourth encore was disrupted when Nick realized it was time for cookies, and soon they were running off to the kitchen.

  I closed my eyes and listened to them go, their voices growing smaller, and smaller, then gone.

  “Sometimes,” Yaya said, “I have this idea—a dream—of a room full of people. Everyone I’ve ever fucked, and everyone I will ever fuck. Men and women, young and not so young. They’re all together, standing in, like, a ballroom, at a conference, and they’re all talking about me. And it’s fabulous.” She turned to look at me. “Do you ever think about that?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I dream that exact thing all the time.”

  I poured myself more wine. We were drinking out of glass Winnie-the-Pooh mugs that Yaya had taken from the dock. As I lifted the mug to my lips, I saw the room through the glass, perverted. The Monopoly money, scattered on the rug, refracted into the fireplace, the lamps, and Yaya, who was lying on her back with her legs stretched along the wall. She was upside down. I didn’t recognize her.

  “I wonder what it will be like to shave my legs again when we leave.” She ran her fingers lightly over her calf. Then she said, “I don’t think I will.”

  I put down the glass.

  “Did you know,” I said, “Viktória offered to transfer me into the new materials concentration?”

  Yaya twisted to look at me. Then she pulled down her legs and sat up.

  “Wait,” she said, “what?”

  “Viktória offered to transfer me into the new materials concentration.”

  “No, I heard what you said.” She leaned forward and peered at me with narrowed eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or confused. “Start all over? Stay for more years?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re thinking about doing it.”

  I shrugged.

  “But you were never interested in plasm,” Yaya said. “You never applied for the concentration in the first place.”

  “I know. I would have to take so many prerequisites. It would take a long time.”

  “But you could stay.”

  I licked wine off my lips.

  “You just want to be with Theo,” Yaya whispered. “Theo, who now has no other life than plasm. Plasm, and you.”

  The pipes clicked in the walls.

  “You used to see this house for what it really was,” Yaya said. “You knew why you were here and weren’t fooled by all its glamorous bullshit. Now you’re thinking of staying for you don’t even know how long? Ines, don’t you realize what we’re missing, being in here? Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  I poured myself more wine.

  “I never knew why I came here,” I said. “To Catherine. I’ve never known why I did anything.”

  I stared at the wine without drinking it.

  “But I do know how I feel now,” I said. “Here. And I feel … like I could be getting better.” I laughed. The sound echoed harshly around the room. “Honestly, Yaya. Don’t you feel it? Like Catherine might be the only real place in the world?

  “Ines,” she said, “how can you think this place is real?”

  I didn’t respond. Even I wasn’t sure what I meant.

  Yaya shook her head slowly.

  “I wouldn’t have thought it would happen to you, too,” Yaya said. Her eyes were dark. “But it did. You’re all fucked up.”

  “I have nothing out there,” I said. “Don’t you get it?”

  “No, don’t you get it?” Yaya spat. “Don’t you realize—” She shook her head. “None of us have anything out there. Like, take Nick. His family owns half of Philadelphia, but they’re obviously evil. Catherine is his only chance to become someone different. Theo is brilliant, but he comes from shit. And Anna, well, you know how fucked up things are between her and her brother. She can’t go home. None of us can go home. Come on, Ines, pay attention.” Her voice had risen. “We all think we’re so lucky to have ended up here, that we all got into Catherine despite whatever secrets or miseries we have in our past. But it’s not despite these secrets that Catherine chose us, it’s because of them. If we have nothing—nothing but some creativity and weird test scores—Catherine can become our everything. Our whole, drunk, happy everything.”

  I swirled the wine.

  Was that true? About Nick and Theo and Anna?

  And when Mr. González, beautiful Mr. González, had told Viktória that I was trying to disappear—did that only make her want me more?

  “I have months to decide,” I finally said, trying to remember what we had been talking about. “But if I decide to stay, you can’t stop me.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  Wind rattled the parlor windows.

  “Can you just promise me one thing?” she said.

  I sipped.

  “Someday,” Yaya said, “not today, but someday, I want you to seriously think about leaving Catherine. Because I don’t think you have. You thought about coming here, running here from whatever you’re running from. And now you’re thinking about staying. But you’ve never really considered leaving.”

  “I’ve thought about graduation,” I said. “The daisy garlands.”

  “Not the ceremony,” she said. “I mean really leaving Catherine. Going away and not coming back. Moving on.”

  I chewed at my thumbnail.

  “Will you consider it,” she said, “when I ask you to?”

  I said, “I’ll try.”

  She looked down. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  I didn’t want to, either. I’d finished my glass of wine already. I poured myself another.

  We played more Monopoly, just the two of us. Despite Nick’s cheating, Yaya was winning, though I was pretty sure she had built some houses illegally. I added more and more hotels to Baltic Avenue, my one terrible property, and when Yaya finally landed on it, she laughed so hard she had to pee.

  I rolled the dice. I skipped my thimble forward.

  “This is where we can go,” Yaya said suddenly. “When we leave.”

  “Where?”

  Yaya pointed at the board.

  “Atlantic City?”

  “What?”

  “The Monopoly board is Atlantic City.”

  “No, you doofus.” She tapped insistently on the New York Avenue square. “New York.”

  “New York Avenue?”

  “New York City.”

  “I don’t think there’s a New York Avenue in New York City,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s find out someday.”

  “I thought you wanted to go to Los Angeles.”

  “New York has better clubs.”

  “Everyone wants to go to New York. We should go to Florida.”

  “No. I want to go where everyone is.”

  I lay down on the rug. I closed my eyes.

  “I used to do this,” Yaya said, “with my friends in middle school. Before everything got bad. Sleepovers, you know. Truth or Dare. Prank calls. Did you?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t have friends.”

  She leaned back against the wall. “Truth or dare?”

  “Dare.”

  “I dare you to finish your drink.”

  I did, gulping. It didn’t hurt. I burped into my hand, then said, “Truth or dare?”

  “Dare.”

  “I dare you to tell me something real.”

  “Girl, that’s a truth,” she said. “Anyway, I always say real things.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  She burped into her hand, too. Then she said, “I love you. That’s real. And the truth.”

 
“I love you, too,” I said. “Truth or dare?”

  “It’s my turn.” She scratched her knee again. “Oh, but I can’t think of one. Okay, dare.”

  I said, “I dare you to come to M. Neptune’s lab with me.”

  Yaya glanced at me. Her eyelashes were caked with mascara. “I would never study plasm,” she said. “Even if Viktória lost her mind and offered me the concentration. No way.”

  “No, I don’t mean switch concentrations. I mean come visit his lab. With me. Tonight.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Theo has the keycard,” I said. “M. Neptune added him to his team months ago. Theo hasn’t realized that I know. I’m not sure how long he wants to keep it secret. Maybe until graduation. But I know.”

  “Theo has the key,” Yaya said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I need to see,” I said, “before I decide whether or not I’m doing the concentration. I—” I bit my lip, then said, “I need to see it all and understand and be sure, the way Theo is sure. And the way Baby was sure. I need to know what they’re doing in that lab. I’m going.”

  “You’re going to steal the key and sneak into the lab.”

  “Come with me?”

  “Child, are you insane?”

  “I thought you wanted adventure.”

  “What I want is to graduate. You think there isn’t security in there? Cameras? You could be thrown out.”

  “We’ll be careful and quiet. We’ll wear hoods over our faces.”

  “You are insane.”

  “So, you won’t come.”

  “I wish you hadn’t even told me you were going.”

  The door banged open. Nick and Anna came in, laughing, carrying a tray piled high with fig rolls and lemon bars.

  “What did we miss?” Anna said as she sat down.

  I reached for a fig roll. So did Yaya.

  “Nothing,” Yaya said as she broke off a bite.

  *

  I didn’t go to the lab that night. I went weeks later, after our last session of the semester.

  It had been a ruthlessly cold day, and as we chanted the sky darkened to black. I sat with my hands flat on the table, intoning as I had so many times before: The house is in the woods. The woods are in the night. I am here, in the night. I am here. I am here.

  I was there. Not alone—nothing and no one is alone—but together in everything. I felt the night reverberate from this night into the next, then back again, into all the nights that came before and all the nights that would come after. Minutes mirrored themselves, occurring and recurring in infinite flux. I was there: an infinite object tessellating into the house’s infinite architecture.