Arcadia Falls (35 page)

I
left Ivy in the chapel sketching another scene—she informed me she sketched three a day and spent the afternoons teaching drawing to the younger children. I went to find Sister Margaret, trying to calm myself as I walked through the long stone hall to her office. “She spends her mornings in there ‘working,’ but really I think she just stares out her window,” Ivy had said. “She hasn’t been right in the head since they told her the convent has to be moved. Good luck getting anything out of her.”

I tried to persuade myself that if Sister Margaret really had gone senile I couldn’t blame her for not telling me about Ivy. At any rate,
there was little to gain in chastising an old woman. After all, I had left my child in her care and clearly she had been cared for. In the short conversation I had with Ivy, I sensed that she was the pet of the nunnery. She had her own room, she told me, disdainfully dismissing the notion that she would share quarters with the babies; she ate with the nuns, and she had her mornings free to draw. When I asked if she wouldn’t prefer to live with a family, she sniffed and said she wasn’t the family kind. “I prefer to be on my own.”

Perhaps I should have been glad for her self-sufficiency, but I felt chilled by it.

I knocked on Sister Margaret’s door, but when there was no answer I opened it myself. Ivy had been right. The old nun was turned away from her desk so that she could look out her window. It was a lovely view, just as I remembered it from the day I had told Sister Margaret that I was pregnant. You could see the East Branch rolling through green hills, past the white steeple of Easton’s church, and toward the blue mountains beyond. Was she imagining, I wondered, the valley flooded and turned into a lake? When she turned to me at the sound of my footstep I was startled to see that her once-sharp blue eyes were covered with a milky film, as though her eyes had been flooded as her beloved valley soon would be. She couldn’t see the view at all.

“Sister Margaret,” I said gently, all my anger dissolving, “you probably don’t remember me. I’m Lily Eberhardt. I came here sixteen years ago—”

“Lily Eberhardt,” she said, her face creasing into a web of lines as she smiled. “Of course, I remember you.” She reached out her hands and I realized she meant me to put my hands in hers. That must be her way of “seeing” people, I thought, stepping closer. As I laid my hands in hers, though, I had a strange and sudden fear that she would place her hands on my belly as she had the time I told her I was pregnant. But of course she didn’t. She gripped my hands in hers and crooned, “Such talented hands! They gave us
St. Lucy. I told the man from the water company that they couldn’t possibly think of putting such beautiful paintings under the water. He had no answer for me.” She smiled slyly. “So you see, your pictures have saved us. I knew it was a good day that you came here. You brought us such beauty!”

I sank down to my knees in front of Sister Margaret, still clasping her hands. “I brought something else here,” I said. “Do you remember? I had a child here—a baby girl.”

The old woman raised her hand, index finger pointing to the sky. I thought for a moment she was pointing to heaven, admonishing me to God for my sins, but then she touched her finger to her pursed lips and said, “Shhh. It’s a secret. The baby girl that the painter took. She’s a secret.”

“You mean the baby girl that the painter had,” I said, but Sister Margaret waved my correction away, her crabbed arthritic fingers trembling in the air. “Yes, I did tell you to keep her a secret. But when no one came to take her—”

“Such a beautiful baby, of course someone wanted her.”

“But she came back, didn’t she?”

Sister Margaret tilted her head to one side and then placed her trembling hands on either side of my face. “You came back. I thought you would.”

I sighed with exasperation. What difference did it make? “Yes, I came back. I’d like to take Ivy back with me now.”

“Ivy?”

“Yes, Ivy, my …” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t own my own child to one of the only two people alive who knew she was mine. I knew then the terrible truth: I’d felt no bond of love or affection toward that strange, homely girl I found in the chapel. Except for one thing.
I’m not the family kind
, she had said. Well, we had that in common. I was no better at being a mother than she had been at playing someone’s daughter. “Ivy St. Clare,” I said, beginning again. “My new protégée. I’d like to offer her a scholarship at our new arts school.”

And so I brought Ivy to Arcadia … oh, not right away, of course. First I had to convince Vera that we could single- (or double-) handedly start our own school. She was skeptical at first, but when she saw how determined I was, she gave way.

“I suppose this is your way of making up for not having children,” she said one evening as we sat before the fire in Fleur-de-Lis. “I’m afraid we women can’t avoid the mothering instinct in the end.” When she said that, it occurred to me for the first time that Vera might regret not having children. Had I been wrong all those years ago not to trust her with my secret? Might she have accepted my child? It was an awful thought given how things had turned out, but I banished it from my head as I went forward, putting my plan into effect. I had plenty to keep my mind occupied in the coming year if I wanted our new school to open by the next fall. I needed teachers, classrooms, art supplies and, of course, students—some of whom, it became immediately clear to me, would have to be paying students.

“I hate to say it,” Vera said when she looked over the figures with me, “but if you ask Fleur Sheldon to come, a dozen of the Sheldons’ friends will send their daughters as well. With their tuition, we’ll be able to support a dozen scholarship girls.”

I had to agree, even though I hated to admit Fleur Sheldon. It wasn’t that I had anything against the girl. In fact, I felt sorry for her. She was so clearly talentless, but Gertrude would not see that and forced Fleur to apply herself to her artistic studies day and night. No expense was spared. The most exclusive instructors were hired and the poor girl was dragged around the great museums of Europe and forced to copy the masters. What a waste! If only poor little Ivy had been given Fleur’s education and opportunities! But I would rectify that imbalance now—and if it meant fleecing the Sheldons’ pocketbook, so be it.

It happened just as Vera predicted. Vera wrote a letter that Christmas to Gertrude Sheldon inviting Fleur to join the Arcadia
School of the Arts. By March, we’d gotten applications from fourteen full-paying students. I posted notices at the Art Students League inviting applicants, and Dora and Ada recruited from the city schools and settlement houses where they taught pottery. Then I wrote to Sister Margaret inviting Ivy—and whatever other deserving girls she might recommend.

“I’m afraid no one’s more deserving than Ivy St. Clare,” she wrote back. “She will be missed here, but I’m confident that she is going where she belongs.”

Was that, I wondered, a veiled reference to our relationship?

It hardly mattered. By late spring we had chosen eleven scholarship students including Ivy and enrolled fourteen paying students. When I sent out the final notices to our accepted applicants, I sent one more to a girl who hadn’t applied at all—Mimi Green’s daughter, who I figured must be close to sixteen by then and who, if she had any of her mother’s talent, would be just right for the school. I suppose I wanted Mimi to know that I appreciated how she’d kept my secret all these years. Mimi’s response was a terse “No thank you.” I never again tried to contact her.

The girls arrived in the last week of July. We had no dorms yet, so they stayed in the main house, sharing two or three to a room. All except Ivy.

“I had my own room at the orphanage,” she told me on the first day. “I can’t sleep with the sound of other people
breathing.”
If it had been anyone else I would have told her to make do, but how could I deny her anything when her whole life had been one of want because of me? I gave her the room I had before Vera and I moved to Fleur-de-Lis.

Mrs. Byrnes sniffed with disapproval when I asked her to get bedding for Ivy’s room. “Will the lady be having her breakfast in bed as well?” she asked. “Shouldn’t the girls here on scholarship have to work to help earn their keep?”

“I want no distinction made between them,” I told Mrs.
Byrnes. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t say a word. I knew what she was thinking. I had already made a distinction. I realized then that I would never be able to treat Ivy dispassionately. I would always be trying to make up for what I hadn’t given her. And yet I could tell that being indulged was
not
what she needed. She’d already been the pet at the convent. Here she needed to be challenged—but someone else would have to do the challenging.

After dinner that night, while Vera and I were sitting by the fire going over the accounts, I casually mentioned my idea for Ivy. “I’ve been thinking you should have one of the students as your personal assistant. Someone who can take care of the little details that distract you from your work—appointments and correspondence and such.”

“You always take care of those things,” Vera said, looking up from the account book.

“Yes, but I’ll be too busy now with the school and I think it would be good if someone else knew how to attend to such things—”

“You sound as if you’re thinking of leaving.”

I looked up and saw she’d gone pale and her jaw was clenched. The hand that held the pencil above the account book was trembling. I was startled by how frightened she looked. Was she that afraid of losing me? It should, I suppose, have flattered me, but instead it made me feel a little frightened myself. Not that I had any thought of ever leaving, but what if I did? What would Vera do? Would she let me go?

I shook the thought off. After all, I had no intention of going anywhere. Where, at any rate, would I go?

“Of course not, darling,” I said, trying to sound casual. “You can’t get rid of me, Vera. I’m yours for life. I only thought … well, that poor orphan girl, Ivy St. Clare, she’s used to doing odd jobs for the nuns. She’s
like you
. If she doesn’t have enough to engage her energies, I’m afraid she’ll become broody. I think she’d make a good assistant for you.”

“Yes, she does seem quite bright. Tell her to come to my office tomorrow after class. She can help sort through next year’s applications.”

The next day I found Ivy at breakfast and told her that Miss Beecher had asked specifically that she be her assistant.

“Me?” she asked, looking none too pleased. “Why would she want me? She doesn’t even know me.”

“Ah, but she does know you through your drawings and paintings. She looked at all the submissions of the scholarship applicants and she was most impressed by your work. She chose you especially for the scholarship and she’d like to get to know you better. And she really does need help sorting through all the paperwork. I’m afraid I’m hopeless with such things.”

I saw the girl thaw a bit under the warming influence of praise. “Well, I am good at organizing things,” she said a trifle condescendingly. “Of course, I’d be happy to be Miss Beecher’s assistant.”

And so, with only a few lies and a little flattery, I fitted Ivy and Vera together as neatly as I might fit together the pieces of a puzzle. And fit together they did. It was almost as if she were Vera’s child and not Nash’s, they suited each other so well. Vera was demanding, but Ivy thrived under her orders. She worked day and night to make things just right. Vera had only to voice an idea and Ivy would make it happen. At the end of the fall semester, for instance, Vera mentioned that it was a shame there was no sculpture class. By January Ivy had found a teacher and ordered marble and clay. Her only fault was that at times she was so single-minded in carrying through Vera’s wishes that she didn’t care whom she stepped over to get her job done. When the marble arrived for the new sculpture class over the Christmas break, she had it delivered to the pottery shed without a thought to how it would inconvenience Dora and Ada. When I mentioned it to her she stared at me as though I were speaking a different language, as if the feelings of two people meant nothing. I often
think she has something missing. Like the girl in the fairy tale who’s been raised by wolves, she seems to lack an essential part of being human.

I do regret that I was never able to form a close bond with Ivy myself. I blame my own self-consciousness around her and my fear of overfavoring her. At the end of that first year, I admitted to myself that I had lost the opportunity of telling her that I was her mother. She wouldn’t thank me for the knowledge and she wouldn’t forgive me for deceiving Vera. Nor could I ask her to keep such a secret from Vera, whom she clearly idolized. I settled for knowing that I had given Ivy a good home. A year-round home. As the other girls made their plans for the summer vacation, Vera asked Ivy to stay on. “She has no place to go,” she said to me when she explained that Ivy would be given her old suite of rooms in Beech Hall.

I would have been content, I think, if Virgil Nash had not reappeared on the scene.