When All the Girls Are Sleeping

by Emily Arsenault

  I had thought those words deep in my head a hundred times.

  Who but a ghost would know that?

  Who but Taylor would know that?

  48

  Just before lunch, I got an alert that a package was in the mail room for me. I picked it up right away—a FedEx envelope with a book inside and no note.

  The Last Dollhouse: Stories by Lucia Jackson was engraved on the cover. I opened it and saw it was published in 1999. I was curious about the title story, but flipped to “The Snow Angel” as Lucia had instructed. It was only about seven pages.

  In the campus center cafeteria, I sat by myself reading while I nibbled a piece of cold pesto pizza.

  It was about a girl—an only child—named Evie Fleming. Fleming again. Whatever it was with this Fleming woman, Lucia Jackson really wanted to hammer it home.

  As the story begins, Evie lives in a village of somewhat vague geography and time period. At the start of the story, Evie is eleven.

  Her mother wakes up on the morning of the first snow and squeals and points out to her that there is a snow angel in the backyard, under the ancient oak tree. She explains to Evie that this snow angel mysteriously appears to the family every year, on the first morning of the first long snow. Evie has obviously heard this story before and loves it. As her mother cooks at the stove, Evie stares out the window at the blanket of snow, the weighted-down trees, the snow angel and the squirrel prints running across it. She sings to herself, eating her porridge. Her father comes down the stairs, bellows happily at the sight of the snow angel before going off to his job, which appears to be in a coal mine, although that’s not said explicitly.

  The next scene is the following year—where a similar incident unfolds on a December morning: the appearance of a snow angel, delighted parents, Evie quietly taking it in.

  And the next scene is an evening the following year. Evie is thirteen and her aunt is visiting—her father’s youngest sister. Snow is expected that night, and Evie and her aunt stay up reading and knitting long after Evie’s parents go to bed.

  They seem to be waiting for the snow to deepen. And then Evie goes out and climbs the oak tree without a hat or mittens. There’s an old rope tied to one of the limbs—tied by her aunt. After staying there for a couple of hours, she lowers herself into the snow and pumps her arms and legs furiously, “fighting against the cold, but losing. Until she could no longer feel her little hands—and no longer knew if they were moving anymore.”

  There is apparently nothing magical about the snow angel at all—that the snow angel is always made by one of the youngest girls in the family, starting at age eight or nine and ending whenever she passes it on to a young daughter or niece.

  It is unclear why or how this tradition started. But Evie is simultaneously ecstatic and resentful that she has this role—the last snow angel. She does not imagine herself passing this role on to a daughter. She wants sons or no children at all. She imagines her parents dying old and happy, with snow angels appearing to them and comforting them in their final moments.

  And she is so cold and delirious that it’s uncertain if she’s frozen to death in the end—although I preferred to presume that her aunt would eventually go out and save her.

  I closed the book, vaguely unsettled, vaguely agreeing with the Darkinses’ long-ago suggestion that there might be something not quite right in Lucia Jackson’s head. But vaguely feeling, at the same time, that I could relate to that not-quite-right thing. I knew how it felt to have to pretend something was magical that really was not. For the sake of my elders. Or at least, one maternal elder. It was like being a reverse Santa Claus. I had, in some ways, been in that role since I was about twelve. But especially since coming here to Windham-Farnswood.

  A shudder went up my spine. Could Lucia Jackson really tell so much about me from one short, weird phone conversation?

  I shook the question away.

  Maybe more Windham girls could relate to that sentiment than were willing to talk about it. It didn’t need to be just about me. Maybe it was a scholarship kid thing. (But was Lucia a scholarship kid?) And maybe what she thought I could relate to—any Windham senior could relate to—was simply the coldness of it all. Dearborn’s high ceilings and drafty windows and relentlessly inadequate heating system. After the warm, cocoon-like underclass Windham experience, it was like Dearborn was designed to cool you down for your exit—acclimate you to the cold reality of the world outside this strange, coddled collection of girls.

  After classes, I headed to the library.

  The archives were closed, and I doubted that there would be much there about Norma Fleming—since the bulk of the archives was 19th and very early 20th-century stuff.

  The main library did have a cheesy “alumnae corner” that students rarely visited—with alumnae books (almost half of them Lucia Jackson’s), photo albums of recent school trips or student projects, and a large collection of yearbooks going back to 1940.

  Michelle had mentioned Norma’s maiden name, and I remembered that it had started with a W. She hadn’t said exactly how old Norma Fleming was—although she had implied she was elderly. She had said that Norma Fleming’s cake and pie business was big in the ’70s and ’80s. She’d have to have been at least in her twenties then, so that would put her as a teenager…well, anywhere from the 1940s to the 1960s. Probably not the ’40s, or she would be in her nineties—or dead—by now. The picture on her website was of a woman roughly in her seventies, but it might be an old picture.

  I slipped out the yearbook for 1950. Only seniors were pictured. There was no Norma in the W’s. Same for 1951. And 1952 and 1953.

  But then—1954. Norma Wozniak. As I looked at her photo, I felt my chest tighten and my breath catch. She was willowy, pale, bony-faced. Her smile was tentative. Her light hair curled stiffly around her face, like an old Hollywood starlet’s. She was the only girl on the page not wearing pearls.

  And what was it that was making me hold my breath?

  Was it her skinniness, her half smile, her pallor?

  Was it all three of those things, or something more intuitive and emotional that made me feel this way? That if you ignored the hair, she looked kind of like Sarah Black?

  Was I just seeing it that way because I wanted to?

  The passage below the photo, like all of the others from that era, was spare:

  French club, Blue ribbon typist, Honor roll, “Sunny,” Betty Crocker Award

  Betty Crocker Award? I guess that was something they didn’t give out anymore.

  * * *

  As I came out of the library, I worked up the courage to try Lucia Jackson again. There was no answer. I couldn’t bring myself to leave a message. What would I say? Were you trying to tell me something about Norma Fleming? Obviously she was. I felt inadequate for not figuring it out. Because if Lucia was inclined to explain it to me straight out, wouldn’t she have done it by now?

  I wandered aimlessly for a few minutes, considering going to the student center, but not certain what I’d do there. I pivoted, reluctantly heading back toward Dearborn for some much-needed studying. But then I saw Anthony waiting near one of the shuttle stops—and had an idea.

  “Anthony!” I shouted, and ran up to him. “Hey.”

  “What’s up?” he said cheerfully.

  “Not much. I need you to let me borrow your car.”

  “What? When?”

  “Mmm…now? Or tomorrow?”

  We both knew that I wasn’t a great driver because I’d only gotten one summer of practice, not to mention that weekday car trips weren’t really allowed. But Anthony’s residential director was notoriously blasé about seniors bending the rules.

  “You know we can’t do it now. How about Saturday?”

  “Tomorrow? Please?” I said. We could get permission for Friday after class because technically it was t
he start of the weekend.

  “What’s this about, though? Can you tell me?”

  “Not yet. I can tell you it’s important to me. Is that enough?”

  “Important how? Give me a category. Important for school, important for family, important for personal life?”

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

  I sighed. “Important, like in the way that if your friend uses that word, you trust their use of it in a general way.”

  “Oh, please.” Anthony made like he couldn’t bear the weight of his backpack—as if it was somehow filled with pounds of my bullshit.

  “Important for school,” I said. “There’s this lady, this alum, I want to interview for the paper. I’m on deadline.”

  Anthony studied me skeptically. I decided to double down.

  “Now, do you want to be my rich-boy friend who lords his car keys over my head, or do you want to be a different kind of guy than that?” I asked.

  His eyes sort of glazed over. I didn’t feel great about it, but I knew I had him.

  “Tomorrow after classes,” he mumbled. “If we can get permission. But I’ll drive. Maybe you’ll explain in the car.”

  * * *

  In my room before dinner, I clicked onto the “Haunteds” group and typed:

  Any of you ever heard of something called the Fleming scholarship?

  I was getting behind on homework, so I closed my laptop and worked on calculus for a while. When I finished, I found my question had sparked sudden interest:

  Jane Villette: No. A Windham scholarship?

  Laurie Rowell: Not familiar with it, I wasn’t on fin aid.

  Darla Heaney: Me neither.

  Katherine Van Kamp: Fleming as in the famous Norma Wozniak Fleming?

  Laurie Rowell: Norma Fleming is an ungrateful b*tch.

  Well, that was a stunning assertion. About a nice old lady who gave lots of money to sick kids and their families. Apparently Suzie Price was taken aback as well:

  Suzie Price: Hey now. As the admin, I can’t condone language like that about any alum.

  I heard a couple of sharp knocks. I jumped and grabbed my phone before my brain had a moment to process that knocks don’t come from phones.

  When I opened the door, Anna was standing there.

  “Hey, Haley,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t worry…Star’s in the infirmary for the night.”

  “What? Is she okay?” I demanded.

  Anna seemed startled by my questions. Maybe I sounded inappropriately panicked.

  “Oh…yeah, she’ll be okay. She said she was feeling suddenly worn down, like she might be getting the flu. Actually, probably for the best for her to take a night off, then. Keep those flu germs out of your room, out of the dorm.”

  “I see,” I said uncertainly.

  “You feeling okay yourself?” Anna wanted to know.

  “Oh, sure,” I said, feeling a vague sarcasm accompanying my words—and dread creeping in behind it.

  “Great,” Anna said, smiling. “Have a good night.”

  “You too.”

  I closed the door gently and turned to stare at the inside of my room. Star’s neatly made bed and slightly tidied area around it—absent the usual pile of clothes. Her decorative umbrellas overhead circled slowly, like pretty little vultures.

  It seemed Star had known in advance she was going to leave—or saw fit to clean up the space while feeling sick with the flu. The first possibility was a little unsettling. The second was typical Star.

  The beluga grinned at me, challenging me to decide which made more sense.

  The room felt different now that I knew I would be alone in it for a whole night.

  I settled back on my bed and opened up Facebook again.

  Karen Norcross: What I think Laurie might be referring to is that she got a free ride to Windham for four years—that townie scholarship, do they still have that? Excellent education that helped her get her start, and whenever anyone asks her about it, she says how much she hated it. Like here: UWClibrary.donorscelebration.3story. And don’t get me started on how the alumnae association courted her for years, and never got a penny back.

  Suzie Price: I think we are getting off topic. Haley, why were you asking this question?

  I typed quickly.

  Haley Peppler: Another “haunted” alum—who is not on this forum—mentioned it.

  Suzie Price: Probably not really relevant to this discussion, sorry.

  Jane Villette: And people who wish to gossip about Ms. Fleming should do it elsewhere. She has done a lot of good for others, that’s probably her way of paying it forward, we should leave it at that.

  I wondered if I should write that I was sorry I’d started this. Even though I wasn’t sorry.

  I clicked on the link that Karen Norcross had included in her complaint. It was an article about a generous donation Norma had made to her alma mater college’s library. Skimming through, I saw that she mentioned that her college “was a refuge for me—of warmth, acceptance, and intellectual curiosity. It helped heal some of the psychic wounds I’d suffered at a rigid elite girls’ school during my high school years.”

  Ouch. She didn’t elaborate, as she went on to describe how she made friends for life in college.

  I closed my laptop and went to dinner.

  49

  So I have to try to sleep in this room by myself.

  Star didn’t seem sick this morning.

  But it is flu season. And the flu can hit you fast—collapse you.

  I’ve only been sick enough to go to the infirmary once. It made me sad; it made me think of the raspberry sherbet my mother used to buy me whenever I had a bad cold.

  I should write Star a text saying hi. Even with the phone restrictions in there, she will at least know I care.

  But maybe she doesn’t want me to care.

  What I told her about Taylor and the burner phone and the video of Jocelyn—maybe it was too much. Maybe she hates me now. Which I could understand. And maybe she’s kind of hated me all along? I would kind of understand that, too, actually.

  I checked the panda sticker right before I went to bed. It seemed like it was wrinkled on one side. Like maybe Star had tried to peel part of it off and see what was underneath.

  I’m not certain.

  That would have freaked her out for sure. But wouldn’t she have asked me about it?

  I can’t help but feel this has nothing to do with the flu.

  And I never realized how much I relied on the rhythm of my roommate’s breath to lull me, eventually, to sleep.

  50

  Two Nights Left

  Sometimes it seems to happen in an infinite loop.

  Out the window.

  Out the window.

  Out the window.

  Her face.

  Her scream.

  My trembling hands.

  Please make it stop.

  51

  Friday, February 8

  Anthony’s phone GPS had found Norma Fleming’s place without any problems.

  The yellow Victorian house didn’t look as cheerful as it had in the photographs—but about as cheerful as it could be in early February. It didn’t have flowers, but it had charming icicles.

  “What is this place?” Anthony demanded.

  I rubbed my eyes and took a long sip of cold coffee. After a night of little sleep—and a long day of classes—I didn’t have a lot of energy left for explaining.

  “It’s called the Robin Hill House,” I said, yawning and then pointing out the sign. “Isn’t that such a cozy name?”

  “I guess,” Anthony said, killing the engine. “If you like birds.”

  As we gazed at the porch, a couple
and a small child came up the path from the back driveway and entered the front door. Instantly I felt uncomfortable with my own presence there.

  “I mean, I don’t mind birds,” Anthony continued. “As long as they don’t get too close. I don’t like to be up close to their little dinosaur faces.”

  “Please drive a little down the street,” I said. “I don’t think Robin Hill Cottage is on the side we came from. It must be farther down.”

  “Robin Hill Cottage,” Anthony murmured, starting his engine purring again. “Do these people think they’re in a Winnie the Pooh story?”

  “The lady I’m interviewing…she restores old houses and runs some charities out of them,” I said quickly, as if this explained everything. “There!”

  Indeed there was another ornate yellow house, about half the size of the first but still substantial for a single person or family.

  “You’re going to wait in the car, right?” I said.

  “I guess.” Anthony picked up his phone and opened one of his many brain-exercise apps.

  “She’s only expecting a girl. I don’t want to startle her.”

  “You’re right.” Anthony didn’t look up. “My beard stubble might be too threatening.”

  I didn’t look back at Anthony as I walked the brick pathway and steps to the glossy black door. I rang the bell immediately, like someone who thought she belonged here. About thirty seconds later the door opened slightly. A bright-blue-eyed elderly face peered out.

  “Hello. Are you Norma?” I asked cheerfully.

  “Yes.” The woman smiled and opened the door a bit wider. “Are you the new girl? Are you here for the laundry?”

  She was tall but hunched over slightly, with shiny white curls that looked freshly set. She looked several years older than the photograph on her website. Which would put her well over eighty.

  “Oh…no. I’m a Windham-Farnswood student. I’m here about the Fleming scholarship?”