Arcadia Falls, Page 3

  Chloe casts a lingering look at the orange folder, as if she’d like to swoop down and pluck it out of Isabel’s hands, but then she throws up her hands, utters the teenager’s favorite rejoinder—“Whatever!”—and turns away from us.

  “Sorry,” Isabel says, turning back to me.

  “Really, you don’t have to take me. I don’t want to make you late for—” I’m about to say class, but then I realize that classes haven’t started yet.

  “It’s just the fitting for First Night and, as I said, my dress already fits. Chloe’s just pissed because I won’t show her the paper we were supposed to do together, but that I did all the work on. She’s afraid she might have to answer questions about it, but she should have thought about that when she let me do all the work.”

  We pass through a long echoing hall set up with easels, go up a short flight of stairs, along a corridor lined with glass-fronted cabinets that I imagine were once meant to hold the family china but are now full of art supplies, down another short flight of stairs, and across a small parlor where a fair-haired girl is curled up on a rose velvet settee sound asleep. Charcoal sketches of nude figures are scattered on the floor beneath her, their shadowy limbs intertwined in a dreamlike orgy. “Wow,” I say, “I am glad you’re showing me the way. The house seems to be set out like a maze.”

  “That’s because the Beechers were a secretive family,” she tells me. “They suffered persecution in England for their religious beliefs and when they immigrated to Massachusetts, Hiram Beecher was accused of witchcraft. That’s why they settled here on the edge of the wilderness and that’s why they built their houses with twisting hallways and secret hiding places in case they needed to hide from persecution.”

  “You’re quite the historian,” I say.

  Isabel beams with pleasure. “I love history! I plan to double major in history and poli-sci at Brown or Cornell. I’m working on a senior thesis on the history of Arcadia.”

  We’ve come to a pair of wide oak doors, which I assume must, finally, lead to Ivy St. Clare’s office. “I’ve been researching the history of Arcadia, too,” I say. “Perhaps we can compare notes.”

  “Yes, I read the article you published on the historical sources of Lily Eberhardt’s fairy tales. I liked it … but … well, I think you’ll change your mind about the real meaning of the fairy tales when you’ve learned more about her life.”

  “Well,” I say, a little taken aback by her presumption, “that’s why I’m here.” I give her a tight smile that I hope disguises the chagrin I feel at being corrected by a teenager. It’s the arrogance of youth, I remind myself, she’ll find out soon enough that life isn’t just about doing well in school and being right … and that not everybody will respond as kindly to her smugness. “Thank you for showing me the way here,” I add with more genuine warmth.

  “My pleasure,” she says. “Good luck with the dean. She can be a little intimidating.” With that last warning, Isabel Cheney turns around and goes back the way we came. I watch her go, envying the certainty of her youthful confidence—the confidence of thinking that everything will go according to one’s plans. I could use a little of that confidence now as I knock on my new boss’s door.

  A soft but penetrating voice from inside calls, “Enter.”

  As I cross the threshold into Ivy St. Clare’s office I have two conflicting impressions at once. One is that I’ve walked into a crowded party; the other is that the room is empty. I quickly see that my first impression comes from the murals. Monumental figures of women dressed in medieval robes line the walls. Some play musical instruments, while others carry sketch pads or artists’ palettes. One sits at a loom, while another kneels beside a chunk of marble, a mallet raised to strike the stone. At the center of the painting, directly above the desk chair, a golden-haired woman holds a pen in one hand and a sketchbook in the other. She looks straight out at the room as if she were about to draw the viewer’s portrait. The Muse of Drawing, I remember, recognizing the work as The Arts, a famous mural painted by Vera Beecher in the 1940s. It’s a smaller version of the one she was commissioned to paint for a college in Pennsylvania. I’ve seen photographs of both versions, but none had captured how the figures fill the room, making it seem inhabited even though the chair behind the massive oak desk and the two seats in front of it are empty.

  I glance over at the windows, imagining that my new employer must have slipped out to play a trick on me. Perhaps it’s another initiation rite, like not giving coherent road directions. But then I detect a slight bulge in the heavy drapes.

  “Dean St. Clare?” I say to the drapery, which happens to be of the same wilted lettuce print as the curtains in my cottage. “I’m Meg Rosenthal.”

  “Yes, yes, just give me a moment. I’ve almost got her.”

  I step forward and a little to the right to find a diminutive woman curled up on the ledge of a bay window, legs tucked beneath her, with a fat sketchpad balanced on her knees. Her head is bent to the pad, a wing of perfectly white hair concealing her face. I look out the window to see what she’s drawing and find that after all the twists and turns Isabel led me through we’re somehow facing the front lawn again. Most of the students have vanished from it, except for one girl who has fallen asleep lying on her side, facing the copper beech. Her long strawberry blond hair spills over the grass like a cascade of autumn leaves.

  I look down at the sketchpad and see that Ivy St. Clare has perfectly caught the line of the girl’s hip, the splay of her long legs, and the fall of her hair—all framed against the massive tree towering above her. In the drawing, though, there are other shapes sharing the lawn with her—hips and elbows and shoulder blades roiling just below the surface of the grass. The image is so powerful that when I look back out the window I half expect the scene to be suddenly populated by the artist’s imaginary cohorts. The lawn, of course, is empty, but now I see the origin of those underground figures. The roots of the beech tree snake across the lawn, here and there breaking the surface of the grass and then diving back underneath. Once you look at the scene as the artist has drawn it, it’s hard not to see them as bodies beneath the ground.

  “There! I think I’ve captured it as best I can for now. The sun’s gone behind a cloud.” She shivers and cranks closed one of the two narrow casement windows that flank the wide central window. Then she flings the pad down on the ledge and looks up. The white hair falls back to reveal a wizened face, the color and texture of a walnut shell, that seems too small for the large brown eyes that stare up at me. When she uncoils herself from the window seat I see that all of Ivy St. Clare has been pared down to the essentials. She can’t be more than 4’11” and she’s as slim as a pixie—an impression enhanced by fawn-colored capris and a dark green tunic with a wide portrait collar that shows off her sharp collarbones and sunken chest. A round silver brooch, engraved with a design of two women encircled by a ring of ivy, is pinned to her collar. Her hair is cut in the same helmet bob I remember from photographs of her in the forties, but it’s turned from chestnut brown to ash white.

  “I see you found us all right,” she says, cocking her head to one side. “Are you all sorted out in Fleur-de-Lis?”

  “My daughter’s unpacking. I thought I’d come over and let you know we’d gotten here.”

  “I’m glad you did. I was just about to ring for tea. Please, have a seat.”

  She perches on the edge of the desk, pushes an intercom button on a sleek office phone, and asks someone named Dymphna to bring the tea.

  “I hope the cottage isn’t too run-down. I sent some students over to clean it out….” She pauses, no doubt seeing the look of surprise on my face. “Oh no, don’t tell me, it hasn’t been cleaned?”

  “It really doesn’t matter—”

  “Of course it matters! We pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency here at the Arcadia School. The students all have jobs and the two I sent to Fleur-de-Lis were let off kitchen duty last week because they were supposed to have the cotta
ge ready for you. I’ll have to speak to them when we’re done…. Ah, there’s Dymphna now.” Ivy St. Clare slips down from her desk, responding to some signal from outside the door that I have failed to hear. She’s right, though. A stout woman holding a heavily laden tray is standing in the doorway. The dean tries to take the tray from her, but the woman ignores her efforts, slowly trundles across the carpet, and sets it down on the desk.

  “Dymphna, who did I send to clean Fleur-de-Lis?”

  “Chloe Dawson and Isabel Cheney,” she answers as she pours out the tea. “But I’m not surprised if they didn’t do a thorough job of it. They’re both caught up in getting ready for the First Night festival.”

  Ivy St. Clare lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I thought they’d compete to see who could do the most cleaning, but I guess the festival was more important to them.” She turns to me. “We always start the year off with a fall festival which we call First Night. Chloe and Isabel, as the two seniors with the highest class rankings, have the lead roles in it. Since they were here early I thought they could also do your cottage. I’ll have to have a word with them.”

  “It’s really all right,” I say for the second time, wishing I’d managed to lie about the state of the cottage. I hate to think that the two girls will think I complained about them—especially Isabel Cheney, who was so helpful to me. “I just met Isabel Cheney,” I add. “She was nice enough to show me the way here. She struck me as a very responsible and intelligent girl.”

  “An aggressive and ambitious girl,” Dean St. Clare says with a little shudder. “She’s probably already planning to ask you for a college recommendation. I imagine she thinks she’s above having to do her cleaning chores, but it’s part of our philosophy here that each student takes part in the day-to-day running of the school. Dymphna, do you know where the girls are now?”

  “They’re upstairs in the Reading Room. Miss Drake is making the last adjustments to their costumes. Do you want me to send them down here?”

  The dean tilts her head for a moment, considering. She looks, I think, like a robin cocking its head to the ground to listen for worms beneath the earth. “No,” she says. “I’ll go up so I can have a look at the girls’ costumes. Thank you, Dymphna. That will be all.

  “Well, then,” Ivy St. Clare says after Dymphna has left, “I imagine you’d like to know more about the classes you’ll be teaching.”

  “Yes.” I take a sip of what turns out to be a bracing black tea—Darjeeling, maybe?—with some kind of spice. “I’m so happy to have the opportunity to teach a folklore class.”

  “And we are glad to have you to teach it,” she says, handing me a plate of buttered brown bread and apple cake. “The minute I saw that you were writing your thesis on Vera Beecher’s fairy tales I was interested in your application. I was also interested to see that you were a fine arts major in college. Do you still draw?”

  “Not really,” I say. I pause to take a bite of the apple cake—which has delicious chunks of tart apples in a buttery yellow cake flecked with cinnamon and pecans—and to wonder if I should tell her the truth and say I gave it up when I had Sally. But I’m never sure how other women—especially women without children—will react to that, so I skip over it. “But when I went back to school I was interested in combining the study of visual arts and language.”

  “That’s exactly what we look for here at Arcadia. I enjoyed your paper on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s illustrations for his sister Christina’s poem ‘Goblin Market,’ by the way. It’s one of my favorite poems. Vera used to recite it in the evening.” St. Clare puts down her teacup, closes her eyes, and recites in a low contralto so unlike her own high-pitched voice that I have the uneasy feeling that Vera Beecher is speaking through her: “We must not look at goblin men, / We must not buy their fruits: / Who knows upon what soil they fed / Their hungry thirsty roots.” She pronounces the last line with such relish that I feel a chill I haven’t felt since the first time I read Rosetti’s poem of demonic seduction.

  “I’ll certainly cover Rossetti in the nineteenth-century fiction class, as well as the Brontës, Thomas Hardy—”

  “Good, good … and for the folklore class, I would expect that in addition to the usual texts you will also use Vera Beecher’s Tales of Arcadia, especially since it’s the subject of your thesis—which I trust is near completion?”

  “Oh yes,” I say with what I hope sounds like conviction. The truth is that with Jude’s death, dealing with the estate, looking for a job, and relocating I’ve done barely any work on my dissertation all year.

  “Good. Most of our teachers have their Ph.D.s, but the board and I felt that in view of your interest in Vera Beecher’s fairy tales—”

  “The fairy tales by Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt, you mean? They were written and illustrated by both women. One of the goals of my thesis has been to figure out who drew and wrote what.”

  Ivy purses her mouth, making her face look even more pinched than before. It occurs to me that interrupting my new boss while she was pointing out my professional shortcomings hadn’t been the best idea. “I think you’ll find most of the artwork was done by Vera, who was by far the superior artist of the two. As for who wrote them, Vera liked to give Lily the credit, especially after Lily died. Lily had a trove of childish tales she had heard from her mother that she liked to tell around the hearth side in the evening. It was her contribution to the community. Vera would write them down in her notebook and then later transform them into works of art. Believe me, I heard the original tales and then read the finished product. There’s no doubt who really wrote them.”

  “But you didn’t come here until 1945,” I say. “And you were only … what … sixteen?” I know from my research that Ivy St. Clare was one of the first scholarship students at the Arcadia School. “And Lily was here from the late twenties. How do you know the collaboration worked the same all those years?”

  “Because Vera asked me to transcribe all the early versions of the fairy tales. It’s all in the notebooks.”

  “Vera’s notebooks? I can’t wait to see them. Are they in the archives in the school library?”

  “No, they’re far too precious … and fragile. I keep them locked in the Reading Room upstairs, here in Beech Hall.”

  “Those notebooks would be invaluable to my work.”

  Ivy St. Clare fixes me with her bright brown eyes and I have to try hard not to squirm. It’s like being stared at by a hawk. I feel sure she’s not only going to turn down my request, but that she’s going to fire me on the spot. And then what will I do? After selling our Great Neck house and almost everything in it to pay back the debts that Jude had accrued, I have nothing but an eleven-year-old car and an unfinished doctorate. I’m thirty-eight years old and haven’t held a job since waitressing during college. This job is the only chance I’ve got for supporting Sally and myself. I take a deep breath, preparing to plead if I have to.

  But Ivy St. Clare doesn’t fire me. She smiles and says, “Of course you’ll have access to Vera’s notebooks. It’s half the reason I hired you. It’s about time she received her proper academic recognition. In fact, we can go upstairs to the Reading Room right now. I have to have a word with Chloe and Isabel anyway.”

  “Thank you.” I wonder why I don’t feel more relieved. For a moment I had pictured Sally and myself driving away from here and for the second time today it had seemed like a good idea. But that’s probably just anxiety over a new job—my first real job.

  Ivy St. Clare gets to her feet and I’m startled again by how tiny she is. “While we’re getting the notebooks, I’ll tell Dymphna to wrap up some cake and sandwiches for you to take back to your daughter. If she’s like most teenagers, I know she’s probably ravenous.”

  She says ravenous with a glint in her eyes, as if the appetite of the young fed something in herself.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.” When she’s on the intercom with Dymphna, I wander back to the window and look out at the lawn. T
he day has turned overcast again and the sleeping girl is gone. Before I turn away, my eye falls on Ivy St. Clare’s sketchpad still lying on the window seat. Her last touches to the drawing had subtly changed the figures beneath the ground. It’s clear now that they are heading toward the sleeping girl. The one closest to the girl has reached a hand up out of the grass and is about to pull her down to join the rest of them.

  I follow Ivy St. Clare back through the rose parlor, from which the sleeping artist and her charcoal sketches have vanished, and then up a narrow flight of stairs to the second floor.

  “This was the Beecher family’s winter parlor,” she announces as she opens the double oak doors. “Vera loved to read here on snowy days.” The scene inside the parlor might be a pageant entitled “Snowy Day.” Girls in white dresses lounge on settees and chintz upholstered chairs. Swaths of transparent tulle lie on the floor or are draped over tables and bookshelves. In the center of all this white froth Isabel Cheney stands still as a statue in a long white Empire-waist dress while a woman with silvery hair—Ms. Drake, I assume—kneels at her feet. Isabel looks every bit a goddess, but the woman at her feet is not worshipping her—she’s letting down the hem.

  “I don’t understand,” Isabel is saying as we enter. “The length was perfectly fine yesterday.”

  “Maybe you grew another inch.” The comment comes from the dark-haired fox-faced girl I saw earlier—Chloe. She’s draped across a love seat, her white dress spread out around her so no one else can sit next to her. She’s surrounded by a circle of girls sitting on the floor and balancing on the arms of the love seat who giggle at her next remark. “Around the waist, that is.”

  “Is that why you two failed to clean Fleur-de-Lis in time for Ms. Rosenthal’s arrival?” The dean’s crisp voice cuts across the laughter. “Because you were wasting time arguing?”

  Isabel Cheney looks from the dean to me, her face pinking with embarrassment. Although I’ve only just met her I feel I’ve betrayed her trust.