The Finishing School

by Joanna Goodman

  “You think that makes it okay?”

  “I don’t know if it makes it okay,” Cressida said. “I don’t worry about what’s okay or not.”

  Kersti knew that to be true. She just wasn’t sure if it was an admirable quality, or reprehensible. She thought about L’Étranger and wondered if Cressida was amoral or just living by her own truth.

  For most of the summer, their friendship was like a fragile artifact. Still in one piece, but full of filament-like cracks that weakened its integrity. They emailed each other regularly—Cressida from London or Belize or wherever she happened to be—but their exchanges were terse, formal. Kersti was still aggrieved and didn’t want Cressida to think she was forgiven.

  And then on Kersti’s birthday in August, she received a FedEx package with a plane ticket to Greece. Seventeen years on earth deserves seventeen days on the Greek Islands. Happy B-day, Kuusky. I’ll meet you at the Athens airport. Cress

  Her parents agreed to the trip, deciding it would be an early graduation present. They gave her a cell phone and two hundred dollars and off she went. Armand and Deirdre were supposed to be there the whole time, but Deirdre got a role in the West End and it was decided the girls would have a chaperone instead, Armand’s twenty-five-year-old personal assistant. Armand flew in on his private plane to meet them for a few days in Corfu and Samos, but for all the other islands they were basically alone.

  The Greek Islands in August were teeming with tourists. Everywhere they went it was hot, crowded, and exciting. They quickly fell into a rhythm—sleeping until noon every day, Greek coffee, a few hours at the beach, siesta in the afternoon. Dinner at 10 p.m. Partying until four, five, six o’clock in the morning, dancing and downing tequila slammers and then capping off the night with a gyros at sunrise. Kersti had a fling with Boyd from Brisbane. That’s what they called him. He ended up following them to Santorini and Ios, but eventually Kersti decided to lose him. She actually really liked him, but she started to think Cressida was the one he wanted. How could it not be? Maybe she was being paranoid—maybe she simply couldn’t believe that anyone would like her and not Cressida—but she couldn’t face the possibility of another rejection.

  For seventeen days they celebrated her seventeenth birthday, hopping from island to island. The best part was having Cressida all to herself for such a long time. On their last night, when they were on the ferry back to Athens, Kersti reached for her hand and held it. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  They were lying side by side on the deck, surrounded by dozens of other stargazing backpackers. “I had the best time.”

  “I’m the one who’s thankful,” Cressida returned. “I don’t deserve you.”

  Kersti knew their friendship was restored. The cracks were gone; the surface was smooth again. Her heart was full.

  She knocks on Cressida’s door and Cressida pops out, grinning mischievously. “I have a surprise for you,” she says.

  “What?”

  She pulls her into the room, closes the door, and whips a joint out of her kangaroo sweatshirt.

  “Where’d you get that?” Kersti asks. She knows Cressida smokes up a lot—with Magnus and with Mr. Fithern—but she usually doesn’t do it at school.

  “We have to do it here,” she says. “One time before the end of the year.” She means in Huber House. Whenever they’ve smoked before, it’s been at Ouchy or outside one of the bars.

  They bundle up in sweaters and coats and go outside on the balcony. Cressida lights the joint, has a toke, and hands it to Kersti. They pass it back and forth, their smoke mixing with their frozen breath. “It’s freezing,” Kersti says, her teeth chattering.

  “Does it seem weird to you that Celine Dion is married to that old guy?” Cressida says, sounding quite vexed by it.

  “What made you think of that?”

  “She’s Canadian and you’re Canadian. I just kind of put that together. Plus I have that stupid song in my head from Titanic.”

  “He was her manager,” Kersti tells her.

  “I know, but he’s old enough to be her dad. She was like twelve when she married him.”

  Kersti laughs. “She was twelve when he discovered her, not when he married her.”

  “Still,” Cressida says. “She was a kid and he was like forty.”

  “You’re in love with an older man,” Kersti reminds her.

  “Charlie is thirty and I’m almost eighteen. And he’s not fatherly. He’s sexy.”

  Cressida suddenly leans forward against the railing and raises her arms in the air. “I’m the queen of the world!” she cries, and starts singing the Titanic theme song.

  Kersti stands behind her and places her hands on Cressida’s hips, pretending to be Leonardo DiCaprio from the movie. “I’ve got you, Rose!”

  Cressida turns around, playing along. “Where are you going, Rose?” she says dramatically. “To be with him? To be a whore to a gutter rat?”

  “I’d rather be his whore than your wife, Cal!” Kersti responds, and they both burst out laughing, Kersti not letting on that she secretly loved the movie.

  They go inside and strip off their coats. “Let’s go bake something,” Cressida says.

  They head down to the kitchen on the first floor, where the students in the Econome program take cooking classes and learn how to fold napkins. The door has an old lock, which everyone in Huber House can easily pick open with a hair clip. The fridge is always stocked with baking basics—flour, sugar, butter, eggs—and occasionally something special, like jam or chocolate chips.

  “Anything good?” Kersti asks, as Cressida starts opening all the pantries.

  When she finds what she’s looking for, she holds it up like a trophy. “Cocoa powder!” she cries. “We can make brownies!”

  They both start cheering and hugging each other, dancing around the room. They open the fridge and discover a jar of Hero jam and a bottle of whipping cream. “We can make scones, too,” Cressida says.

  Kersti turns on the oven while Cressida takes more stuff out of the fridge. “Maybe Celine thinks her husband is sexy,” Kersti says, going back to their earlier conversation. “Maybe you’re in love with Mr. Fithern because he reminds you of Armand.”

  At this, Cressida erupts laughing. “Armand is an ass,” she says, mixing cocoa, coffee grounds, and cream in a mug. “And frankly I think he’s gay.”

  “Your dad’s gay?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “What about Deirdre?”

  “I don’t think she cares,” Cressida says. “She probably has her own lovers.”

  “How long have you known?” Kersti asks her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, it’s not like they sat me down and made an announcement. And I don’t know for sure. I just started to suspect the last time I was home. I mean, they’re never together.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s gay.”

  “He leers at guys,” Cressida says. “Flirts with them. He always has.”

  “Your poor mom,” Kersti says, thinking about young Deirdre on her wedding day, not having a clue she was about to marry a homosexual.

  Cressida adds boiling water to her coffee-cocoa concoction and has a sip.

  “Armand reminds me of Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island,” Kersti says, creaming butter and sugar in a bowl. “You know how he wears that ascot and talks with the locked jaw and clenched teeth?”

  Cressida stretches her mouth as wide as it will go and says through clenched teeth, “Gilligan.”

  “Lovey,” Kersti says, in the same clenched-teeth voice. “Skipper.”

  “Shit,” Cressida says. “I never thought about it before. For sure Mr. Howell is gay.”

  “Do you think Mrs. Howell knew?”

  “They slept in separate beds—”

  Kersti adds cocoa and eggs to her brownie batter while Cressida gets started on the scones. She could do it blindfolded if she had to. They must have made a million scones over the last few years; it’s the on
e thing for which they can always find the ingredients.

  “It must be weird to grow up super-poor and then one day be a kajillionaire,” Cressida says, kneading her dough.

  “Thurston Howell grew up poor?” Kersti says, shoving the brownies in the oven.

  “No. Celine Dion.”

  They look at each other in a moment of mutual confusion and then collapse on the linoleum floor laughing.

  “Do you think it’s wrong for me to expect that I should always get what I want?” Cressida asks, turning serious.

  “Um. Yes, probably.”

  “Does it make me a bad person?” she asks, her tone more curious than concerned.

  “Of course not,” Kersti says, leaning on her elbow. “It’s normal to you. You’ve always gotten everything you want so you don’t really know another way.”

  They lie there for a while, the smell of their baking wafting around them.

  “What am I going to do without you, Kuusky?”

  “It’s only November.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do next year?” Cressida asks.

  “Maybe U of T, or Ryerson. Or I might just work at my dad’s travel agency.”

  “Why would you ever do that?” Cressida says.

  “They’d like it if I went into the family business.”

  “What about you? What do you want?”

  “I don’t know. To write. But that’s lame . . . I need a real job.”

  “I hate when you say shit like that,” Cressida says, reaching up for the mixing bowl and scooping out a glob of brownie batter with her fingers.

  “Hate when I talk like what?”

  “Like: ‘I need a real job,’ ‘I can’t be writer,’ ‘I’ll do what my parents want me to do.’” She turns to face Kersti with brownie batter all over her face. “It depresses the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry I’m not like you,” Kersti says. “I don’t expect to get everything I want in life.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I prefer to please people rather than to hurt them or disappoint them.”

  “That’s your problem,” Cressida says. “You need a little more Cressida in you.”

  On their way back upstairs, with their bellies full of brownies, scones, and coffee, they clutch the mahogany banister for support. How many times have they made this climb over the last four years, Kersti wonders? Everything she does now, that’s what she thinks about. How many times have we done this and taken it for granted? Climbing the Huber stairs; baking scones in the middle of the night; gossiping in the bathroom; roast chicken and french fries on Saturday; Sunday morning treks to McDonald’s by the Gare; chasing each other through the passerelle that connects Huber and Lashwood.

  Cressida places her hands on Kersti’s lower back and starts pushing her up, one step at a time. They’re both suppressing giggles. When they come to the second-floor landing, Kersti stops abruptly.

  “Look,” she whispers, and points down the hall to where someone is creeping stealthily toward them—a tall figure with short hair, mannish, ungraceful. As the person approaches, her face is momentarily lit by a slice of moonlight coming through one of the dormer windows. It’s Angela Zumpt.

  Angela gasps when she spots them both standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for her. “What are you doing?” she asks them.

  “We were hungry,” Kersti says. “What are you doing on the second floor?”

  “Using the washroom,” Angela answers, trying to get past them.

  “What’s wrong with our bathroom?” Kersti wants to know. Angela’s room is also on the fourth floor, where there’s a perfectly good bathroom.

  “I prefer this one,” she says, flustered. “Iss none of your business anyway.”

  Kersti laughs and looks over at Cressida, expecting her to jump in, but her expression is strangely solemn. She’s dead quiet. “Cress?”

  “I ate too much,” Cressida says. “I have to puke.”

  Angela hurries up the stairs on her way back to the fourth floor, with Cressida not far behind.

  “What was that all about?” Kersti asks Cressida, trying to keep up with her. “What do you think she was doing? Policing someone on the second floor? Spying?”

  “Probably,” Cressida responds absently, rushing to the bathroom.

  Chapter 23

  TORONTO—February 2016

  A light snow is falling outside. The lobby of the clinic is decorated for Valentine’s Day, with a banner hanging in the window. Kersti and Jay are sitting side by side in the waiting room. She looks up from the “Everything You Need to Know about Your Sperm” pamphlet and notices Jay clutching his laptop bag so tightly his knuckles are white. He’s staring miserably out at nothing. “You’re not nervous, are you, babe?” she says gently. “You’ve done this before.”

  She holds up the pamphlet. “Did you know that motile sperm are called spermatozoon?”

  “Sadly, I do. I’ve read that one before.”

  “It’s been at least forty-eight hours, right?”

  “You’ve asked me that fifty times already. Yes. It’s been forty-eight hours.”

  “I just want to make sure they’re fresh—”

  “They’re fresh, Kerst. Believe it or not, I’m capable of going forty-eight hours without jerking off. I also ate your oyster and pumpkin seed casserole, took my zinc, my folic acid, and my vitamin D. My sperm is fucking FRESH.”

  She touches his hand and rests her head on his shoulder. “This is it, babe. I know it. I had a beautiful thick uterine lining this morning and the nurse said my cervical mucus was gorgeous.”

  “That’s why I married you,” he mutters. “Gorgeous cervical mucus.”

  “And my inner labia isn’t swollen anymore—”

  “Babe?” he says. “I don’t ever want to hear the words labia and swollen come out of your mouth again.”

  “Jay Wax?” The nurse is standing in the corridor with a clipboard. “We’re ready for you.”

  Jay stands up and salutes her. “Spermatozoon reporting for duty,” he says.

  Kersti hands him his laptop bag. “Here’s your porn. Now go make us a baby.”

  She still can’t believe they’re at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine making a baby with Cressida’s eggs. The journey to this point has been surreal and yet divinely fated—starting with Lille’s letter, which ultimately led to this moment. If not for that first visit to Deirdre, Kersti would still be in Toronto, reluctantly giving up her dream of motherhood.

  It turns out Deirdre was thrilled to donate as many of Cressida’s eggs as Kersti needed. The only catch is if Kersti gets pregnant, Deirdre wants to be in the children’s lives. “I would never impose myself,” she said. “Never expect them to think of me as their grandmother, but I would need to see them once in a while, to be kept abreast of their development. Technically, even if they never know, I would be their biological grandmother.”

  It seemed fair, a small price to pay. Deirdre agreed to have her lawyer draw up a contract, and Kersti left that day with only one more obstacle to overcome: Jay.

  She managed with great restraint not to say a word about it until dinner that Saturday night in Boston, after their day at the spa and a couple of rounds of make-up sex. And then, when Jay was relaxed and flushed from wine, with a belly full of filet mignon and creamed spinach, she said, “I want you to know, you’re a hundred percent right.”

  “I am? About what?”

  “About me, not ever being willing to give up on having a baby.”

  He looked at her nervously. “And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “I would have kept going until it bankrupted us.”

  “You’re scaring me, Kerst—”

  Kersti shifted in her chair and sipped her wine, carefully choosing her words. “What if the cycles were free?” she asked him.

  “It would help,” he admitted. “But they’re not. Especially with a donor—”

  “I’ve found a privat
e donor,” she said. “Hear me out. She’s already got fifteen superb-quality eggs frozen at one of the best fertility clinics in the United States. She would donate them to us for free. There’s a lot of legal stuff involved—it’s like adopting a baby—but I know her very well. She’s not a stranger. I know her family history. We would only pay for my drugs, which would be minimal, and the transfer—”

  “Who is it?”

  “Listen to me,” she said, reaching for his hands. “Look at me, Jay, and just answer this question. Do you want to have a child? Forget everything else—”

  “I can’t forget everything else—”

  “Do you want to have a child?” she repeated.

  “Yes,” he answered, and she was moved to see he had tears in his eyes. “Of course I do. You know how much I want to be a father.”

  “Then think about this. As many high-quality eggs as we need for free, from someone I know. It’s meant to be, Jay. We can’t walk away from this.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Cressida.”

  Jay’s mouth fell open. “How the hell?”

  “Her mother had her eggs frozen.”

  “Holy shit. This is fucked up.”

  “She’s already had one child with those eggs,” Kersti continued. “I met her. She’s beautiful. Perfect. Deirdre used a sperm donor, but of course we would use your sperm and you would be the father—”

  She pulled out her phone and showed him the pictures she’d taken of Sloane, as well as a few she’d added of Cressida as a baby and in her teens. “That’s her daughter, Sloane. And this is Cressida. That’s her at two, and then here at five. . . .”

  Jay scrolled through the pictures. “She was gorgeous,” he said, lingering on one of Cressida from the Lycée.

  “I spoke to Deirdre about their family history,” Kersti said. “There’s nothing alarming or unusual—”

  “Except suicidal tendencies,” Jay said, handing back her phone. “She tried to kill herself, Kersti.”