Arcadia Falls

by Carol Goodman

  He looked up from the clay model he had sculpted of me—the last of the three and the smallest. In this one I stood in a pool of water, looking over my shoulder, as if I were Diana surprised at my bath. The pool at my feet was full of water lilies, a reference to my name. It was my favorite of the three statues and it was hard to be angry with Nash while looking at it. “You’re throwing me out of paradise?” he asked.

  “It won’t be a paradise if you stay,” I replied.

  Nash sighed. He turned the statue around on its revolving plinth. Then he looked up and grinned at me. “To tell you the truth, I was getting a bit restless. Teaching Fleur Sheldon is enough to drive a man mad. It’s like trying to teach a monkey to paint. If I make my escape, do you promise not to give the Sheldons my forwarding address?”

  “I’ll tell them you disappeared without a trace!” I promised, “On one condition.” I touched the head of the little statue. “Would you make another copy of this for me to keep?”

  He put his hand to his chest. “I’m touched you want a reminder of me. Of course! I’ll have it ready for you at the barn the day I leave.” I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t of him I wanted a reminder; it was of myself as I once had been.

  We agreed that his imminent departure would remain our secret until after the Christmas Day dinner that marked the end of term.

  That was yesterday. After dinner, Nash followed me into Vera’s office where I’d gone to retrieve a book she wanted me to bring back to the cottage. She had gone on ahead of me, so I wasn’t afraid of her seeing us together, but I asked him to close the door anyway.

  “Your statue will be ready by four tomorrow,” he said. “Will you come to the barn to take it as my farewell present to you? My train leaves at five.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “I’ll be there by four.”

  “And have you kept your promise to me and kept my new address a secret from that little monkey?”

  “You shouldn’t be so cruel to her,” I said. “She can’t help how she is. It’s how she was raised—”

  “Or not raised,” he said.

  I had to agree. For all her hovering over Fleur, Gertrude Sheldon was a curiously neglectful mother. She left the girl alone here over the break while she went to Europe on a skiing holiday, for instance.

  “It’s just that I feel sorry for the poor girl,” I said. “If only she had a little talent—”

  “Dear Lily.” He put his hand to my face and for a moment I was afraid that he would embrace me, but he let his hand drop. “Always looking after everyone but yourself. I hope that will change now. I’ll see you tomorrow then, at four in the barn.”

  I spent last night and this morning writing in this journal. Vera has gone to the Hall to finish replying to the Christmas cards we received. I chided her for working on the holiday, but in truth I was glad that she gave me the time and privacy to complete this. Or almost privacy—Fleur Sheldon was here earlier, wanting to show me some of her drawings. I felt bad for the girl, abandoned by her mother for the holidays, and spent a half hour with her. I had to tell her I had an urgent appointment in town with Dora and Ada in order to get her to leave.

  I will put this journal behind the beech panel in the mantel, above the hearth that has been the center of our lives together. Ivy is coming soon to pick up some papers and I will send a note to Vera telling her—in language only she will understand so it will be safe from prying eyes—where to find it. Then it will be up to Vera to decide whether she will still have me or not. I can’t continue to play a role. When I look at the paintings Virgil Nash has done of me this last year and a half, I see a woman who stands naked in the sunlight as if she has nothing to hide. That is the woman Nash sees when he looks at me and that is the woman I want to be again and I can’t be that woman if I continue to keep the truth—about Nash, about Ivy—from her. Even if Vera can’t forgive me—and yet I can’t believe she won’t have the heart to—it is better to live honestly than continue to live a lie.

  And so, my darling Vera, this part of my story ends here. It’s up to you what the next part of my story will be. I put myself entirely into your hands.

  When I finish the journal my face is wet with tears. Is it because Lily hadn’t betrayed Vera after all? Or because somehow her plans all went awry? Did Vera read the journal and reject her pleas for forgiveness? Did she force Lily out into the storm? Or did Lily flee and throw herself from the ridge into the clove after Vera rejected her?

  I get up off the couch and cross to the fireplace. I run my fingers along the broken tiles as if they were a braille message that could tell me what happened in this room sixty years ago. But the only answer I get is a knock at the front door which makes me nearly jump out of my skin.

  In the seconds it takes me to answer, I’ve posited half a dozen disasters that could have befallen Sally. Finding Callum Reade on the other side of the door doesn’t dispel any of them. He must read the look of panic on my face.

  “It’s nothing to do with Sally,” he says. “I got a call from the dean saying she was handling the girls’ punishment and thanking me for not summonsing them. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. She sounded pretty severe….” His voice trails off and I realize he’s staring at me—at my chest, to be precise. I look down, afraid I’ve answered the door in my nightgown, but it’s worse than that. I’m wearing his sweatshirt—and nothing else under it.

  When I look back up, his eyes lock on mine and I feel something click inside of me, like a bolt sliding home. As if he’d heard it, he steps toward me and stops when he’s an inch away. I don’t move back. He moves his hand to my face, his fingers stroking my cheekbone, his palm cupping my jaw. I feel as if I am one of his wood carvings, taking shape under his hands. Then he tilts my face up and leans down to kiss me.

  For a moment, as his lips first brush mine, I feel as if we are suspended in time. We’ve both become statues frozen in the moment of the kiss. I almost want to stay like this forever. Almost.

  I’m not sure who moves first, but suddenly we’re both moving. His arms wrap around my back, pulling me tight against him; his hands slip beneath the heavy sweatshirt. When he finds bare skin beneath, he moans. Or maybe I’m the one who moans. He takes a step back—somehow we’re at the foot of the stairs—and places his palm flat against my sternum.

  “I don’t want to rush you,” he begins. “I don’t know if you’re ready.”

  Instead of speaking—I’m not sure I can—I press my hand over his and move it over my heart so he can feel how fast it’s beating. Then I interlace my fingers in his, turn, and lead him upstairs to my room.

  Sometime in the early hours of the morning, he asks, “When you answered the door you looked like you’d been crying. Was it Sally you were upset about?”

  “Partly,” I answer. “But also about something I’d been reading …” I stop, unsure if I should go on. For a few hours I’ve forgotten that a world exists beyond this bed. Now I’m reluctant to let it in. But then I glance toward the window and see that the sky is lightening above the tips of the pine trees. The world will be with us soon enough anyway.

  I tell him about finding Lily’s journal and all that I’ve read in it, along with what I learned from Beatrice Rhodes. By the end I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed—in his sweatshirt again—reading the last bit of the journal to him. When I’m done, Callum doesn’t say anything right away. He lies with one arm bent beneath his head, looking up at the ceiling. I resist the urge to trace the lines of his face with my hand or push my fingers through his short hair that seems to bristle with electricity when I touch it.

  “So Lily didn’t mean to leave Vera after all,” he says about three seconds before I would have completely changed the subject. “I’m glad. I always thought less of Lily for it.”

  “So now we have to think less of Vera. She must have read the journal and been unable to forgive her.”

  “Maybe,” he says, frowning. “But if she’d read the journal then why has it be
en lost all these years?”

  “Do you think Ivy kept the note from Vera?”

  “I think Lily was foolish to trust her. Make me a promise: if you ever have something important to tell me make sure you do it face-to-face, okay?”

  I smile at the implication that we will have important things to tell each other in the future. He grins back at me. “You mean,” I say, leaning down so that my lips are inches from his ear, “if I have to tell you this, for instance?” I whisper the rest in his ear. I’m not sure who blushes the most.

  “That,” he says, pulling me down beside him, “should definitely never appear in writing!”

  When we finally get out of bed, I find I’ve barely got enough time to shower if I want to have time to run by the dorm and check on Sally as I was planning to do before class.

  “I’m coming back here to keep an eye on the Halloween bonfire,” Callum says at the door, “Or Samhain bonfire, as these crazy pagans are calling it.”

  “Oh, I guess if you have to come back here—”

  He grabs me and burrows his head in my neck. “I’ll be back here for you if you want me,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against my clavicle.

  I shiver and press my lips against his earlobe. “Yes, I want you to come back,” I say. “After the bonfire?”

  “After the bonfire.” He lifts his head and grins at me. “As long as roast sheriff isn’t on the witches’ menu tonight.” Then he turns and leaves before I can tell him it isn’t a very funny joke.

  I stop at Sally’s room, but Haruko tells me that Sally went out early. “She was meeting Chloe to talk about tonight’s thing.” She rolls her eyes on the word thing.

  “You’re not too into these rites, are you?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says. “I thought they were kind of fun at first, but now I think some people take them too seriously.”

  “By ‘some people,’ do you mean Chloe?” Haruko looks visibly uncomfortable. If Sally finds out I’ve been grilling her roommate, she’ll never forgive me. “Forget I asked you that,” I say. “It’s none of my business.”

  “No,” Haruko says, “actually it is your business. I think there’s something really bothering Chloe. Someone ought to talk to her and you’re probably the best one to do it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because Sally says you know how to listen without judging people. I think Chloe’s afraid to tell anyone about what happened the night Isabel died because people will judge her, but she might talk to you if you tried.”

  “Okay.” I want to ask Haruko if Sally really said that about me, but don’t. “I’ll try to talk to Chloe.”

  I leave Haruko, determined to repay the girl’s trust by talking to Chloe. First, though, I have to get through Folklore. Fortunately, there’s only one report left and the students are all anxious to get out early so they can get ready for tonight’s festivities. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to end the class early and have enough time to talk to Chloe before my seminar. Since she’s the one giving her report today, it will seem natural to ask her to stay after.

  She comes to the front of the room carrying a large artist’s portfolio. “I don’t really have all that many mementos and photographs that I felt like sharing,” she begins. “My parents travel a lot—my father works for the State Department—and so I’ve been in boarding schools since I was, like, ten.”

  A few students make sounds of agreement and I realize that many of these students must have been sent here by parents too busy to deal with them at home.

  “So I decided I wanted to do something a little different for my project. I hope that’s okay with you, Ms. Rosenthal?”

  Chloe should have cleared a change of topic with me first, but I can tell her that when I talk to her after class. “I’m curious to see what you’ve done,” I say.

  “I started thinking that the Arcadia School was more like my family than my own family and so I did the project on the school’s history. Isabel and I were working on a paper together about the history of Arcadia before First Night, but then … well, after Isabel died the dean said she didn’t need to see the paper and that I should just forget about it … but I haven’t been able to. I mean, Isabel did a lot of work on the project—more than I did, honestly, and I thought it would be a sort of tribute to her to finish it.”

  Someone in the classroom snorts. I turn to glare at Tori Pratt. “Do you have something you want to share, Victoria?”

  “Isn’t what Chloe’s done, like, plagiarism? She’s just taking Isabel’s work and trying to pass it off as her own.”

  “Isabel wrote the paper, but I’ve illustrated it.” Chloe opens the portfolio and takes out several pieces of stiff bristol board. She places them on the easel. The first picture facing out is a watercolor of a woman holding a baby beneath the copper beech tree.

  “Is this supposed to be from The Changeling Girl?” I ask.

  Chloe shakes her head. “Not exactly. You see, Isabel had this theory that The Changeling Girl was autobiographical and that it was really a story about what women had to give up to become artists. She thought Lily Eberhardt had given up her own child in order to stay at Arcadia with Vera Beecher.”

  I’m so stunned to hear the same version of events that I’ve just read in Lily’s journal that I don’t say anything. Chloe removes the first picture and slides it behind the others. The new watercolor shows Lily standing on the edge of the ridge, still holding the baby. With her is another figure, which I guess is supposed to represent Vera Beecher. The tame, bucolic landscape of the campus lies below them on one side, the wild rocky cleft of the clove on the other. Vera is gesturing toward the clove as if demonstrating the view, but I already have a queasy feeling that something else is going on in these pictures.

  “Vera Beecher believed a woman couldn’t be an artist and a mother, too,” Chloe says, “so she asked Lily to give up her baby. But Lily wouldn’t….”

  Chloe slides the last picture in front. As I feared, it shows Lily Eberhardt leaping into the clove, her white dress billowing about her like a cloud, her baby floating beside her like an angel in a baroque altarpiece. It’s strangely beautiful but also very disturbing. The class seems stunned by it as well. Any minute now they’ll recover and start asking questions about how Isabel could have come up with this bizarre story—and I don’t want that. I want to find out first.

  “Okay,” I say, “that’s a really original way to approach the topic and I’m sure you all have a lot of questions for Chloe, but I wanted to give you extra time today to get ready for the Halloween celebration, so why don’t you save your questions for tomorrow? Class dismissed.”

  The class is quick enough to shake themselves out of their stupor and leave. Chloe starts to slide her pictures in the portfolio, but I tell her to wait. “I want to talk to you about your project,” I say.

  As they pass on their way out, Tori Pratt says something to Justin Clay and then laughs. Chloe glares at them as they leave, but as soon as they’re out the door, Chloe’s lower lip begins to quiver.

  “I know I should have okayed the project with you before I did it, but I thought you’d like it!” she wails. “You’re so into that changeling story and Isabel’s paper was all about that.”

  “It’s okay, Chloe, I’m not angry, I’m just curious. Where did you get Isabel’s paper? I thought she was delivering it to the dean the afternoon of the bonfire.”

  “She was … I mean she did. But when I checked my e-mail the next day I saw she’d also sent it to me.”

  “Huh. I’m surprised. When I saw the two of you I thought you were mad at her because she hadn’t given you the paper.”

  “I was, but I guess she figured that if she sent it to me before she went to the dean’s office it would look like she’d done what she was supposed to do. She knew I wouldn’t get it until after she turned the paper in to the dean. The whole thing backfired, because when Dean St. Clare found out we hadn’t worked on it together she gave us both Fs anyway.
”

  “And the dean kept the paper?”

  “Yeah … I guess so.” Chloe furrows her brow, confused at the direction I’ve taken.

  “And do you know where Isabel got the idea that Lily Eberhardt had a baby that she gave up?”

  “No. Isabel was really secretive about her sources. She kept bragging that she was doing original research, but she wouldn’t say what she meant. And then she didn’t even send the bibliography with the paper when she e-mailed it to me.”

  “I see. Do you have the paper?”

  Chloe nods and takes out a folder from her portfolio. “I’m really sorry I didn’t talk to you about it first. I thought it would be a way of making it up to Isabel….”

  An anguished look crosses her face. I put my hand on her arm and lean toward her. “Is there something you’re not telling about what happened that night?” I ask. “I remember that you were mad at Isabel.”

  Chloe looks up at me, her eyes wide, frightened at what she’s let slip. I’m frightened, too. If Chloe admits to hurting Isabel, what will I do? “She was always so sure of herself,” she says, looking miserable. “I just wanted to give her a little scare.”

  “What kind of a scare, Chloe?”

  “You know those white dresses that Ms. Drake made for us? Well, there was an extra one for a girl who had to go home. I took it and hung it from a tree near the edge of the woods. Then I made sure Isabel ran in that direction—”

  “So she’d think it was a person hanging in the tree and be frightened by it?”

  “Yeah. She was a wuss about that kind of thing.”

  “So did it work?”

  Chloe bites her lip and nods. “She went into the woods right where I’d rigged up the dress, and a minute later I heard her shriek. I thought she’d run straight out again, but instead she must have run deeper into the woods.”

  “And you didn’t follow her?”

  Chloe shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears. “We’re not allowed in the woods and I’d already gotten in enough trouble.”