Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

Nikos looked stung.

  Cady instantly regretted snapping at him, embarrassed by her behavior. She knew that for all his joking, Eric’s death had taken a toll on Nikos as well. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean to tell you how to feel—”

  “You didn’t, I just have to go. I have this paper due Tuesday for Hines who hates me, I haven’t started it, and I realize I left the poetry book I need in my room. I should’ve checked before you went and brought all your stuff down. Sorry.”

  “Oh, no worries at all.” Nikos did a poor job of masking his disappointment.

  She gathered her things, and he rose to hug her goodbye.

  As they embraced, he said, “Just remember to look out for yourself, all right?”

  She nodded into his shoulder.

  But she was already planning her next move.

  25

  Cady knocked on the door of Kirkland N-42 and waited, working her tongue to unstick her lips from her dry mouth.

  The girl who answered the door wore thick glasses and light brown hair pulled tightly back. Her skin was pale, save for her nose, which was red and glistening. “Yeah?” she asked, before blowing her nose loudly into a wad of tissue.

  “I’m looking for Lee, is she here?”

  “No.” The girl coughed and hocked something into the tissue.

  “Oh.” Cady cleared her own throat, out of sympathy-disgust. She had come up with a contingency plan on the walk over. “Well, my name is Julie, and Lee and I have French 27 together, and she’s in my project group. Can I drop off some papers for her in her room? She has to write the conclusion for our skit tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Come in.” The girl turned around and Cady saw that her braid went all the way down her back. “Hers is the second door on left.” Cady thanked her, and she reentered the cocoon of a comforter and tissues scattered all over their futon.

  Cady closed Lee’s bedroom door behind her with a soft click. She had no clear objectives beyond getting a sense of the girl, but whatever she was looking for ought to be easy to find—Lee’s bedroom was Spartan and immaculate, as though she was in the military already. The old wood floors were bare and clean, and the bed was made with tight hospital corners. Cady scanned her desk for anything that might give her a sense of the person who lived there, a day planner, even a Post-it, but the surface was completely clear except for a large monitor and a jack for a laptop—Cady inferred with disappointment that Lee’s laptop must be with her. The only evidence of personality was on the walls, which were covered in photographs. But not personal photos of family or friends; instead there were careful rows of black-and-white photographs of birds in flight. Geese flying in formation over the Charles. Pigeons fighting over a piece of bread. A cardinal, drained of its sanguine color, about to alight on a branch.

  Lee is a lonely person, Cady thought, or an envious one. Although it would have been hard to envy Eric on that front, as he isolated himself pretty well. But he had Matt, and Nikos, despite going for the Bauer at the same time. Maybe with Lee, the budding soldier, everything was a rank, a battle, zero-sum. Maybe that was her motive for targeting Eric online, to throw him off balance for the competition. Lee hadn’t known he was already so close to the edge.

  Cady’s eyes fell to the bookshelf, where a Nikon 460 lay with a telephoto lens beside it. She picked up the camera and started clicking through the images on the digital screen: birds, birds, and more birds. Then, a picture of the back of a blond woman’s head, taken from far away, seemingly without the subject’s knowledge. Cady clicked through a succession of images of the woman, which, going in reverse, showed the woman getting out of a car. She kept clicking, hoping she’d get one shot that showed the woman’s face, with each click the woman’s head rotated closer and closer, beep beep beep.

  Cady gasped.

  “What are you doing?” The roommate was standing in Lee’s doorway. “You said you were just dropping something off. Don’t touch that.”

  Cady clicked the camera off and set it down. “Sorry. I was just looking at it.”

  “You need to leave right now.”

  Lee’s roommate walked her out of the suite and slammed the front door shut behind her. Cady stood momentarily stunned on the fourth floor landing before the vertiginous entryway staircase. She was full of adrenaline, but not from getting caught.

  Why was Lee Jennings taking photos of Professor Mikaela Prokop?

  26

  With Ranjoo gently snoring above her, Cady lay in her bed squinting against the brightness of her phone screen a few inches from her face. She was reviewing every aspect of Lee Jenning’s social media presence. Unfortunately, her initial assessment of Lee’s Facebook in Lowell House was correct, there wasn’t much to see. She’d thought she’d hit paydirt when Cady found Lee’s Instagram set to public, but it appeared only to show off her photography hobby; Cady didn’t think Lee was very good, but she wasn’t in a charitable mood. Very few of Lee’s photos were of people and nearly zero of herself. The closest thing Lee had to a selfie was one in which she was reflected in a broken mirror propped against a stop sign. In the reflection, Lee’s face was mostly blocked by the same fancy-looking camera that Cady had found in her room, all of her that was visible was one dark eye above a haughty cheekbone, and half of a full mouth. She was not smiling.

  The screen’s glare at last became too much, and Cady squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing the greasy skin of her forehead where a headache bloomed. What grudge did Lee have against Eric? Cady asked herself. Why go after my brother?

  Not him, Bilhah’s voice cut in to her thoughts, someone else.

  Cady’s eyes flew open. She saw nothing but the fuzzy darkness in her bedroom, but she knew better than to think she was alone.

  If somebody disguising hisself as your brother, it’s not him they after. You don’t wear a mask to fool the mask. You wear one to fool someone else. So the better question is, who they trying to fool?

  Yes. Cady had been too preoccupied with protecting Eric. Who was the imposter profile meant to fool?

  I’ll tell you a story. Some months ago, a stranger came to Cambridge village, Mister Bristol, looking for someone to help his sick little boy. I told you I know Indian medicine, so I thought I might help, and the Holyokes let me go. Mister Bristol took me in his buggy, and he whipped his horse so fast, I thought the wheels would spin off. But by the time we reached the house, it was too late. Child been dead for hours, skin white as flour, but the mother wouldn’t let go of him, wouldn’t let anyone near who might try and take him from her, she wouldn’t even look at me. I wept for her the whole way home. That Bristol boy, they only son, reminded me greatly of mine own. Eli is the same age, same soft curls—it was like I seen my baby’s ghost. Her voice trailed off. I couldn’t wait to get home to feel him safe and warm in my arms again.

  That’s when I knew: If Missus Bristol saw my boy, she wouldn’t think twice, she’d take him in.

  What do you mean?

  Eli will never be safe with me. But the Bristols would think they prayers was answered if Eli was found on the doorstep of they parish church. A precious white child, an orphan boy who needs a home, just like the one they lost.

  Cady didn’t understand—But … your son isn’t an orphan, or white.

  He might as well be. I’m mulatto, and he take after his father—light eyes, Christian hair.

  What little Cady knew of this woman came together in a bleak picture—a slave with a biracial child, a woman who knew to warn Cady from the dangers of drunk, entitled, privileged men—Cady didn’t need to press farther. She knew his conception was just one of many horrors Bilhah had likely endured, but she could also hear that the pain in her voice came from the deep love she felt for her son.

  The Bristols will want to believe it. If I get Eli the proper clothes, genuine leather shoes, they’ll believe he’s one of them, no question. And once they do, so
will others. People see what they want to see.

  But how can you part with him?

  Tell me how can I keep him? White mothers get to hold on to they children even in death. Black babies been taken from black arms since birth. I either wait for my son to be sold a slave, or give him a chance to be reborn a white man. I love him more than anything in this world, but if I try and hold on to him, they’ll take him anyway, he’ll forever be a thing to be owned, and used, and broken. If I can set him free of me now, before he grows, before he remembers, he can live free forever.

  I won’t be the chains around my child’s feet.

  Her words flattened Cady in her bed, her heaving chest her only movement.

  People have many reasons to disguise themselves. You’re trying to understand why this person used your brother as the lie, then you need to ask, who was they after? Who was they lying to?

  Cady blinked away a tear and picked up her phone in a trembling hand. But how could she concern herself with this after what she’d just heard? Her mind felt too clouded by the voice to think clearly.

  Look for who would believe that lie, she insisted. Go on.

  Eric’s fake profile reappeared on the screen. She navigated to his Friends list, which was blocked from view except for one profile listed in “Mutual Friends:”

  Andrew Archer

  Her father.

  “Oh my God,” Cady whispered aloud.

  I been too long. My candle’s almost done.

  Wait, please, just wait—Cady couldn’t even process the bombshell she’d just seen, but she didn’t want to let the voice go without answering some of her questions—Why do you come to me, why do you want to help me?

  Because you listen. Because nobody here seems to know you or ever seen you except for me, which makes you the perfect person to help me save my son. I’ll explain more next time. I hope you will agree to help me when I come again.

  Yes, yes, I will. I wanted to help you before, I went to Wadsworth House—

  —No! You mustn’t tell them I spoke to you, don’t tell anyone.

  No, no, I didn’t, I won’t.—Cady felt especially insane reassuring someone she wouldn’t tattle on her more than two hundred years into the future, but here she was. She wondered how she could explain herself without alarming her. —Your secret is very, very safe with me.

  It has to be. That awful fire—

  The library fire?

  Oh, the sorrowful bellowing over those burned books last year. But no, those aren’t the flames that chase me in my nightmares.

  Then what is?

  My first autumn here, two slaves, named Mark and Phillis, killed their master by poisoning him. (They only caught them because they stole the arsenic. Pity they didn’t know how to do it with mushrooms). They was dragged through Cambridge Commons and executed right outside these gates of Harvard. Everyone gathered to watch. Mark was hanged to death. But poor Phillis, she was old enough to be a grandmother, she was burned alive at the stake. Her smoke blew right through the Yard. Ten autumns since, and when the leaves turn, I can still smell her burning.

  If you tell anyone, it will be me next.

  27

  Waking up the next morning was a mercy, as Cady had never had such vivid nightmares as she did after Bilhah’s visit, and she vowed that whatever she could do from this dimension to help her, she would. As for her own agenda, Cady had been given a new hypothesis to test: that Lee was catfishing her father with an idealized version of Eric. It seemed utterly bizarre that these two people should be connected, and yet it appeared to be true. Cady hadn’t even known her father had a Facebook account, was this one a fake, too? Was someone impersonating her entire family? But she checked, and neither she nor her mother had a dupe account. There were too many unknowns to speculate; she needed to go to the source and call her dad.

  Ranjoo was getting ready and blasting Lizzo, her current morning jam, in their bedroom, and Andrea was in the common room, snowed in under a flurry of white index cards for Organic Chemistry and still giving Cady the silent treatment, so she went out to sit in the hallway just outside their door to make the call. She tried to keep her voice down for some modicum of privacy.

  After brief small chat, she got right to the point. “Dad, do you have a Facebook profile?”

  “I’m not on it, per se, you know me, I still miss my BlackBerry, but yes, I made a rudimentary profile.”

  “I saw it. I was so surprised, I thought it was a fake. Did you friend Eric?”

  “Yes.”

  It was off topic, but Cady couldn’t help herself. “You didn’t friend me.”

  He chuckled. “You actually talk to me! You remember how Eric was with me that last year. Facebook was the only way I could keep up with him, see how he was doing. He was the only reason I made an account in the first place.”

  Cady did remember. Eric was the most combative with their father. “Dad, that account—”

  “That stupid account was a huge comfort to me. I know, it’s absurd, I ‘friended’ my child. Virtual crumbs of a connection to my only son. But it was something, I was completely shut out of his life, and then with that Facebook, it was like the door opened a crack.”

  Cady bit her lip.

  “And he seemed happy on it. All we got at home was the Sturm und Drang of his illness and the business of trying to get his life back on track, but on his profile you could tell there was some good stuff left too, you know? I still visit it sometimes, just to see the pictures. That he accepted his dopey dad’s friend request was your brother’s final gift to me.”

  And Cady wouldn’t be the one to take that away from him, she decided. He deserved this bit of softness, even if it wasn’t real. She had gotten what she needed—confirmation that her father’s profile was legitimate. The rest of her questions she would have to answer for herself.

  The sound of her father’s heavy sigh came through the receiver like a hurricane. “I will happily add you as a friend. I need pictures of you too, now that you’re not under my roof anymore. Was that what you wanted to talk about, Cady-Cake?”

  “Parents’ Weekend.” Cady pulled out of her subconscious. “I forwarded you that email a while back, but I think it’s soon, like next weekend. You guys should book your hotel if you haven’t already.”

  “Oh, dear, I meant to discuss this with you in person when you were home, but then everything became”—another gale-force breath—“chaotic. Anyway, I feel terrible about this, but I realized Parents’ Weekend coincides with my firm’s partners’ retreat. It’s when the Management Committee votes on new partners, and it’s absolutely mandatory. I looked into coming for part of the weekend, but the retreat is all the way out in Bolton Landing, so a hike to sit in Adirondack chairs with men too old and fat to hike, and I think it’s not gonna work out.”

  “Oh.” Cady tried to hide her disappointment. “That’s okay.”

  “I know, you just saw me, so you’re probably relieved. But I’m so sorry to miss it. I hate thinking of you with nobody there.”

  “So, Mom isn’t coming either?”

  “She hasn’t made a decision, but … I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  Cady fell silent. A moment ago, Parents’ Weekend was nothing more than a convenient excuse to call home, but now she felt the full weight of what she would be missing. She had been worried about how she was going to manage her mother without her dad as a buffer, but instead of relief, she felt anger. “She’s never going to be okay with me being here.”

  “Not never, but not yet. That place holds such bad memories for her.”

  “Does it for you?”

  “We’re going to make some new ones, aren’t we?”

  Cady nodded, since it was easier than talking with the lump in her throat. Her father kept counting on the fact that Cady would make up for Eric. That was worse than her mother thinking she co
uldn’t.

  “There’s something else I should mention,” her father continued. “From now on, the best way to reach me is by calling my cell or here at my usual office number, not at home.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve taken on almost double the workload lately, and I’m spending more time in the city, so I’ve decided to rent an apartment.”

  “Wait. You’re moving out?” Cady asked, stricken.

  “Not permanently, just for a while, to get some space.”

  “Whose idea was this?”

  “Mine.”

  “What does Mom think?”

  “Neither of us is happy about it, but it’s a decision we discussed. I’d prefer to keep the details between us.”

  “Are you leaving her?” Cady’s voice caught on the word her; it sounded like a line from a movie, not a question about her own parents.

  “It’s not that simple. Your mom and I made a promise to each other that will bind us together in ways more profound than a shared living space.”

  She felt panicky. “Mom can’t be alone.” They couldn’t both leave her, she thought.

  “We all have to learn someday.” Her father’s voice was suddenly gruff.

  “But how can you?” Cady’s feelings of protectiveness of her father and resentment of her mother completely inverted. “After everything we went through, she’s the only one who understands. You’re going to go meet some woman who doesn’t even know Eric, who never even knew he existed?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. I’m not moving out to meet women. We’re not getting divorced. But I’m trying to move forward and I can’t do that living with your mother right now.”

  “Why? Because she reminds you of him? Because she’s still sad?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “It’s like you want to erase him. And Mom reminds you of him, so now you have to erase her, too. What about me? I’m still sad, I still miss him. And I look like him! Am I next?” Cady was yelling now. “I can’t win with you guys! Mom will never be happy because I’m not him, and you won’t because I’m too much like him.”