I laughed, and then I stood so that we faced each other, Mr. Holmes and I. He raised a hand and I thought he might touch me, but then he brushed his hair from his forehead, and I saw that his hand shook, and I was thrilled, I was unnerved, I was exhilarated: his hand shook because of me.
“Why are you laughing, Thea?” he asked softly. “Everybody’s life is falling apart. What do you want? I know what I want, right now. If things weren’t so bad outside here maybe I’d want it less. But desperation leads men to do desperate things. Isn’t that right? Tell me it’s right.”
Instead of answering I kissed him. Even in that moment I was shocked at my boldness, but grateful for it, too. He was so much better than Georgie, so firm and gentle. Georgie was sometimes rough. Mr. Holmes stood, and looked down at me, and took a step backward, and I couldn’t tell if he was stepping away from me or asking me to follow him.
“Take me somewhere,” I whispered. He looked at me for a moment, then turned his head and looked out the window, and I knew he was deciding.
“Where would you like to go?” His voice was so solemn.
If I did not answer, it was because his question didn’t seem to require an answer. Because I knew precisely where I wanted to go. With him, anywhere.
In the end, after one hundred seconds, two hundred, he led me upstairs into his library. He moved quickly, almost clumsily, as if he was surprised by the course of this afternoon. He closed the door behind us and I glimpsed all the books that lined the walls before he laid me on the couch. He drew me to him and the way his hand rested on my back almost undid me; I moaned, and he kissed me. By the end, he lay on top of me. He kissed my mouth, my face, my neck. I’d never been kissed like this. I felt helpless, my arms pinned to my sides by his weight, but helpless in a very lovely way.
Mr. Holmes offered solace. But so did I. We took comfort in each other.
—
Leona caught me as I was leaving Masters, en route to Augusta House. I tried to ignore her, but she did not want to be ignored, today.
“Weather’s turning,” she said, and sidled up next to me. I said nothing. “I’m going to visit King,” she said, when we were almost at my cabin. “Do you want to come?”
All the other girls disappeared into their cabins. I only had on a light sweater, and now I buttoned it against the chill. A storm had threatened all day but never come; one of those days that felt like a menace.
I could still feel the full weight of Mr. Holmes on top of me, even as I walked through the Square, even as I stood here, deciding what to say to Leona; as if some trace of what we had just done was mine to carry with me, now. I felt changed.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why? I just thought you might enjoy it. I just thought—”
“Stop. I thought that at least you, of all people, would have no tolerance for artifice. So stop, please.”
Something shifted in Leona’s stance. “All right,” she said coolly.
She eyed a group of passing girls. That she could be so casual while we were having this discussion infuriated me. Again I felt the impulse to touch her, to hurt her.
She tilted her head. “I guess you’re kept busy,” she said, “by other things, now. You’re such a busy girl, Thea.” She paused, and I knew she was going to say the worst thing to me now, the reason she had sidled up beside me in the first place. “Why was it you were sent away again?”
I stood there speechless, foolish, aware of how helpless I must seem.
I spotted Sissy coming down the steps of the Castle, and walked, half ran past Leona to join her. She had undone me. Leona called out: “But I forgot. You’re not a girl anymore. You’re very adult now, aren’t you? You spend so much time with adults lately.”
Aren’t you leaving soon? It was on the tip of my tongue to call out. But I couldn’t. It seemed too bad, even for me.
We watched Leona walk away, disappear into the woods.
“Off to see King,” I muttered.
“Did you hear?” Sissy asked.
“Hear what?” I thought she was going to tell me that Mrs. Holmes was returning.
“About Leona.”
“No.” I felt light with relief. I still had more time.
“She’ll be gone by the beginning of summer. And when she goes, King stays here.”
“Oh, no,” I said. I was horrified. To have to leave her horse when she had done nothing wrong. I had had to leave Sasi, but I had nearly outgrown him anyway. And still, it had been miserable. But there was some small part of me that took pleasure in Leona’s misery. She was so awful; perhaps that’s why awful things happened to her. “That’s awful,” I said, because Sissy seemed to expect more of a response.
“Not as awful as everything else that’s happened to her family,” Sissy said, and looked at me curiously, and though I did not agree I said nothing. This was the most awful thing to happen to Leona, of course it was.
—
The next time I saw Mr. Holmes he led me to his library again, and closed the door, and I reached for him, but he stopped my hand in midair. Even that, his hand on mine, was thrilling.
I could feel what he was doing, the way he held my hand, as if stopping a child. He was asking if I wanted to stop. But I did not want to stop.
“Emmy’s gone?” I asked.
“Gone,” he echoed. “With Decca.”
I kissed him, then, and the idea that we were going to stop, that we would not touch each other again, disappeared, a puff of smoke.
He kissed my neck, and unbuttoned the first button of my blouse. His hand shook, and I touched it.
“You’re so lovely, Thea,” he said. His voice was sonorous, trembling.
He brought my hand to his cheek, and held it there for a moment while he watched my face, and I had never before felt so observed, so carefully accounted.
Then I took my hand back and began to unbutton my blouse, began the process by which I would reveal myself to him, and the moment felt so tender, so utterly unlike anything I had felt before. Mr. Holmes touched my breasts, and then pressed me to him and slid down to the floor, so that he was kneeling in front of me.
The world today was dark, wintery, the kind of day we never had in Florida. I could only see the mountains from his window, the rest of camp below my line of sight.
“Thea,” he said, and took my hands in his, “you want this?” And his voice was so kind, gentle. I wanted to please him; I wanted to be pleased by him.
I nodded. “Yes,” I said, and I almost didn’t trust my voice. “Yes.”
He put his hand under my skirt and slid it up my thigh until he reached the line of my panties.
“Take these off,” he murmured, and I let him peel down first my stockings, then my panties. I felt very relaxed, sleepy but not tired. He stroked the inside of my thigh.
I put my hands on his shoulders to steady myself, and he looked up at me, and I saw this was going very quickly for both of us, now.
“Open your legs.” I did. He put one finger inside me, and I tensed.
“Does it hurt?”
I shook my head.
“Here,” he said, and pulled me down next to him, on the rug. He lay at my side and undid his trousers. He put his finger back inside me, then another, and pushed up my skirt.
“There,” he said, “I can see you. You’re so . . .” He stroked my forehead. His voice was so soft, so loose.
“Beautiful.”
He smiled. “Are you supposed to give yourself compliments? I was going to say something else. You’re so . . .”
I waited. He pushed his fingers farther into me, and it was such an odd pressure that I loved.
“Exceptional,” he said. “Beautiful, too, but there are so many beautiful girls. Be something besides that, Thea.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try.”
He took himself
out and I touched him, but he shook his head. “No, just lie there. Just lie there.”
“And be exceptional.”
“Yes.” He kept his fingers inside me as he touched himself and looked at me until he came, and then he seemed like he was in great pain for an instant, closed his eyes and cursed.
We lay there on the rug together afterward.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Nothing too complicated, please,” Mr. Holmes said. He patted my hand. I smiled. Everything was so easy, now. If I could lie right here forever, shut the door on my life and everything it held, I would. In that moment, I would have.
“Thea?” His voice was gentle.
“Mr. Holmes—”
“Jesus. Please call me Henry. I’m begging you.”
I turned and faced him. He placed his palm on my torso. “So strong.”
“You know Mrs. Holmes knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
I waited for him to tense—he rarely spoke of Mrs. Holmes—but he didn’t.
“Do you think you’ll ever leave?”
He was quiet for a long time. “I’m sorry,” I finally said. “Never—”
“No, it’s all right. In a way. Will I ever leave Yonahlossee? It’s a question I ask myself, of course. In a way I like it here. When I was young all I wanted to do was leave Boston. I hated it there. And then I left.” He seemed lost in thought.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“New Orleans. And then we ended up here. I thought the South would be different. And it was. But not different enough.” He turned to me. “But you can never really leave your home, can you?”
“I didn’t want to leave,” I said. “I loved my home.”
He lifted a handful of my hair and inspected it. “You had such long hair when you came here. And then you cut it off, like everyone else.” He smiled. “You should remember that the sins of youth seem very far away when you’re no longer young.”
I said nothing. I thought of my mother, my father, my brother. Sasi. My first pony, before Sasi, dead for years now.
“Do you see your family at all now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “After my father died, Beth and I met my mother in Philadelphia, when Sarabeth was a baby. But since then, no.”
“What did you do?”
I must have sounded stricken, because he propped himself up on his elbow and touched my cheek. “Thea, Thea. I didn’t do anything. My parents wanted me to be a certain person, and I wasn’t that person. I was a great disappointment. But—and this took me years to realize—they were a great disappointment to me as well.” He watched me. “Thea, I don’t know what you did, but you came here so that your family could forget. So that you could forget, so that when you leave here what happened will have disappeared.”
“I ruined my family.”
“I doubt that,” he said quietly. “If your family was ruined, it wasn’t because of you.”
“They trusted me.”
“Who?”
“My parents, my brother.”
“Your brother may have trusted you, but your parents never did. Parents never trust their children. I don’t know what happened exactly, and you don’t need to tell me. I believed for a long time that I had shamed my family. But it’s in a family’s best interest to make a child believe that.” He spoke quietly, but also firmly. He taught a single class at Yonahlossee, an advanced literature seminar that the senior girls took. I wondered if this was how he explained the characters in books to his class. It seemed so important to him that I understand what he meant.
I nodded, but said nothing.
“Do you really see? You’re sixteen years old. What your family thinks of you seems like everything. But it’s not. They have their own interests to protect. I wish I’d known that, how much a family has to protect, how sometimes a child interferes with that.”
“You know it now.”
“Was that a question? I do. Yes, I do.” He paused. “You have a brother, correct? Did they send him away, too?” But they weren’t really questions, none of them.
“I have a cousin, too,” I said.
“And where is he?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said finally.
The light was becoming dim behind the curtains. Mr. Holmes kissed my forehead and held me very close. “So your brother is home. Your cousin is some place unnamed. And you are here. With me.” He drew his finger across my lips. “They traded you, Thea. They sent you here and kept your brother.” I started to speak, but he shook his head. “Don’t believe them,” he said very softly. “Don’t ever believe what is said about you.”
I took his hand and put it in between my legs, and he looked at me uncertainly, and then he understood, and his fingers were cold at first. He knew better than Georgie what to do. He knew how to prop himself up on his elbow, so that he could watch me. He moved his fingers slowly, and I was not embarrassed, or shy to look at him, as I usually was.
“You’re very wet, Thea. And exceptional.”
There was something in his tone that I couldn’t quite place. “Faster, please.”
“Certainly.”
I touched my breasts, and closed my eyes. He knew how to lead me very carefully up this path; he would not go too quickly, or slowly. I moaned, which I could do because the house was empty. I bucked against his hand, and he pushed me down, gently. My eyes were closed but I saw anyway—in quick flashes I saw my mother, my brother, Sasi, and then Georgie, Georgie, Georgie—and his hand disappeared, everything disappeared, and there were only bright flashes and my cousin’s face.
I opened my eyes and stopped his hand. He was watching me very carefully. I pulled his head onto my chest, and we lay there like that for a while, until I heard the bell ring, and I tried to hold Georgie’s face in my mind. It was the first time in a long time I had thought of him and not felt pain.
—
So: I knew this would end, I knew Mrs. Holmes would return. It was the end of February. She would be back by mid-March. But I had always been expert at ignoring the unalterable. Sometimes it was as if God was watching, had narrowed His vision until Yonahlossee appeared, nestled in the mountains. I had wanted something very badly, and then I had gotten it, and the getting kept getting better.
Winter began to disappear. Lifted, like a second skin. Docey took away our comforters from the ends of our beds. Our yellow-and-blue scarves disappeared from our closets, along with our sweaters. We thawed, too; everyone seemed prettier, nicer, fresher in the spring air.
I spent every afternoon at Masters, and our days began to feel like years. It began to feel like we had known each other for a very long time. Mr. Holmes peeled away the layers of Yonahlossee in a way Sissy couldn’t. She was one of the girls, she didn’t have the vantage point he did. He told me Jettie’s drinking was a known problem, that Mrs. Holmes would have sent her away years ago but for Henny, who convinced her that keeping Jettie on was their Christian duty. He told me Yonahlossee was keeping King in exchange for Leona’s tuition, which hadn’t been paid in over a year. He told me Katherine Hayes’s father wasn’t doing as well as Katherine thought, that her grandfather had stepped in and paid her tuition; that her uncle had shot himself because he was about to be arrested. He liked the Kentucky girls best because they were the least mannered. And the Florida girls, he’d said, and grinned. I like them, too.
—
I came back early from French class because I didn’t feel well. My stomach was troubling me—cramps, it was that time of the month.
Docey was mopping the floors, her back turned. She was humming some tuneless melody, but I was certain she’d heard me. I waited for her to turn around, acknowledge me, but she drew the mop around and around, over the same spot. From the back she almost looked like one of us.
“Docey?”
She turned then, but said nothing.
“I’m going to lie down for a bit.” I stopped short of asking her if this was fine.
She nodded, and watched me while I stepped out of my boots, tiptoed across the damp floor. She didn’t offer to help. My stockings were wet, now. I lay back on my bed and peeled them off, surprised by the feel of my bare legs against the quilt. I closed my eyes and pretended to drift off.
Yesterday Mr. Holmes was melancholy, told me I’d forget this place. But I couldn’t imagine.
Mr. Holmes’s breath tasted like gin. Juniper berries, he’d told me, the perfume of the evergreens. If we had been married and a wedding portrait taken, we would not have seemed an unusual couple. Mr. Holmes was thirty-one. Women married men twice their age all the time. His hair was thick and glossy—Eva had joked she’d die for his hair—his carriage boyish, his lips very red. I carried my youth in the way I moved, in my speech and furtive gestures. But I didn’t look young when I stood still.
A sharp sound. I sat up, disoriented. My mouth was dry.
“You were saying things,” Docey said. She was cleaning under Mary Abbott’s desk.
“Was I?” I got up and poured myself a drink of water. “What?”
“Nonsense. Nonsense words.”
For a second I was frightened I’d revealed something. It had been a week since I’d seen Leona in the Square. Now we avoided each other, as if we had come to some mutual decision. I’d gone over and over my comings and goings from Masters. There was no possible way she knew anything. I’d thought of Emmy, too, but Leona wasn’t the kind of girl to ever talk to a servant. I liked to think that there was some sort of mutual understanding between the two of us, that she knew I knew about King, that I felt sorry for her, a pure form of pity. But Leona wouldn’t want to be pitied.
“Do you know Emmy, Docey? From Masters?”
She smiled, almost smirked. I was about to ask again when she answered: “She’s my sister.” She turned to face me, then looked me in the eye for the first time that day. Her lazy eye darted crazily.
“I didn’t know.”
Docey went back to her work. “I didn’t know,” I repeated. I should have known. I watched Docey drag her rag over the desk, carefully, paying attention to the finials and knobs—carefully, but quickly—and knew suddenly that they spoke of us.
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls Page 24
