The Body in the Ivy (19 page)

She knew there was something to find—and she was pretty sure she knew what it was.

JUNIOR YEAR

First she stretched her arms up and touched the head-board, then reached for the footboard with her legs. For a moment she lay taut, elongated, with her eyes closed, unwilling to open them, unable to start another day. Max had killed himself in June. Sped off the highway toward a scenic turnout and over a cliff into the ocean without apparently slowing down, looking at the view, or hesitating in any way. “He wouldn't have felt anything; there wouldn't have been any pain,” the police had reassured the family. Rachel had wanted to scream, “Of course he felt something, you morons! Of course he was in pain! Why do you think he drove over the cliff? For a thrill?” But she'd kept quiet. Very quiet. No tears, even at the funeral. No tears while the family sat
shivah and every table in the apartment was covered with offerings of food—deli platters, bagels, lox, cream cheese, stuffed cabbage, chopped liver, kugel, rugelah, crumb cake—that no one ate. She was still keeping quiet and she still hadn't cried. It was the only way she could think of to keep herself from getting in a car and following her brother.

She slept a lot. “Sleep is the sweet escape.” She wondered where the phrase came from, but not enough to try to find out. Her parents wanted her to go to a grief counselor.
They
were going to one. Her mother cried every day; her father almost as often. Rachel didn't need a grief counselor, didn't need someone to tell her it wasn't her fault, help her deal with survivor guilt. Because it
was
her fault. She'd introduced him to Prin, even encouraged the relationship, and when she realized what Prin was really like, she should have told Max. He wouldn't have believed her, but she would have prepared him for what was to come. She would have opened his eyes to the possibility that Prin would dump him. Unceremoniously, cruelly; humiliating him, destroying him.

Rachel flicked her eyes open and looked at the clock next to her bed. Eight o'clock. She had a nine o'clock class. She closed her eyes again. If she pictured a blank sheet of paper in her mind, getting larger and larger until it occupied every corner, she might be able to fall back to sleep. It sometimes worked.

Her parents hadn't wanted her to come back to Pelham, but she'd insisted, lulling them with false assurances: “I want to be with my friends.” “I won't see Prin; we move in different worlds.” This last was true.
They did move in different worlds; Prin in Hades. Rachel had no doubt that the breakup had been calculated from the beginning and that Prin had never loved Max. But why? Was it to hurt Rachel? Except Rachel had been her friend, dazzled by Prin, as they all had been. Had she sensed Rachel's later misgivings? Unlikely, when they weren't that clear to Rachel herself. And so Rachel had freely shared her most precious possession with Prin—Max.

She would never forget the moment when she'd introduced her brother, presenting Prin as if she, too, were a special gift. It was at the beginning of sophomore year. Rachel and Max had been walking to the dorm from Max's car—the car Rachel had urged her parents to buy him, so he could come rescue her, the car that would carry him to his death. Prin was ahead of them and they soon overtook her. The autumn sunlight had blazed through the red swamp maples, the first trees to turn color. Rachel had been stunned at the way the light had caught her friend and her brother, binding them together, two glorious children of nature. As the year had progressed, though, she'd begun to wonder about her classmate, but had never given voice to her uneasiness, had never done anything to make Prin suspect. She had chided herself for being jealous and gone out of her way to support Max's growing attachment, an attachment Rachel believed Prin shared. The three were together a lot; Rachel was seeing more of Prin than she had the year before, and even when they weren't with Max, Rachel found herself watching Prin. Watching the way she led Phoebe around on a leash, the way she used Maggie's various offices, and
the way others reacted to Prin. Lucy Stratton hated her. It was subtle, but like a leitmotif that underscored their every encounter. Lucy would move to another table if Prin sat down at hers; walk out of the living room if Prin was there, holding court. Yet they had grown up together, were obviously friends freshman year. What had caused the change? And Bobbi Dolan. At times Rachel caught her looking at Prin with what could only be described as fear in her eyes. Prin made a point of including Bobbi, remarking effusively on a new hair-style or outfit, yet with an underlying series of notes, a descant of sarcasm. Faint, all so faint that Rachel thought she was looking too hard. Trying to find fault. That no one could be good enough for Max.

But it was there. All of it. She didn't know any of the details, and now she didn't want to.

Chris Barker was the only person Rachel could stand to be around. She was taking two of the same classes as Rachel, including this morning's, and if Rachel wasn't there, she'd slip a sheet of carbon paper in her notebook and drop the notes off afterward. Rachel didn't mind doing the reading for her courses and often stayed up all night, buried in her books. Chris seemed to understand. She was the only girl who hadn't tried to offer condolences. Besides Prin. She'd sent flowers the day of the funeral, or rather the card had read, “Deepest sympathy from the Prince family,” but Rachel knew who had ordered them. A massive basket of Stargazer lilies, their heavy scent reminiscent of an expensive whore, which was what Prin was. And Max had paid the price. Rachel had told the doorman to send them back to the florist with the message that delivery had been refused; then
she had gone into the bathroom—the one she had shared with Max—and vomited bile, since she had eaten nothing, resting her head finally on the cool white porcelain, spent, empty. She smelled the lilies for days and the nausea didn't go away until the odor did.

Nine o'clock. Too late to go to class. She closed her eyes, willing the sheet of paper to fill every part of her brain.

He had wanted to marry her. “Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous. I'm only a freshman in college, but Rach, I'm sure. Hélène is my soul mate. If I hadn't met her now, we were destined to meet another time. And the miracle of it all is that she loves me as much as I love her.” He was solemn. His was not a delirious, head-over-heels passion, but the pledging of his troth for life and ever after. The taking of a vow. In May, he showed his sister the ring he'd bought—a sunburst of diamonds, one large perfect stone surrounded by smaller ones in a platinum setting.

And Prin had said yes. School ended. They were all back in the city, and it started. She had to do something with her sister, her mother. They were going out to the Island. It was hard to get into town. She hated the drive and the train was a bore. Max cut rehearsals and drove out, but there were always so many people around, he complained to Rachel. He almost never saw his fiancée alone. Then she stopped taking his calls. “Miss Hélène is not available,” the maid would say. Max grew increasingly despondent, and desperate. “I just don't understand, Rach. What's happening?” He wrote letters—pages long—sent telegrams. There were no replies. One night Rachel overheard her
father give Max the old bullshit “plenty of fish in the sea” line and Max left the apartment, slamming the door behind him. They didn't see him for two days. Bleary-eyed, he told Rachel he'd gone out to her house and tried to force his way in to see her. He just wanted to talk to her. Just talk. Her father had come out onto the porch and told him to leave. To stop harassing his daughter. She didn't want to see him. When Max tried to argue—he'd spent what he thought were happy dinners, concert outings with the family—Mr. Prince told him he didn't want to go into it, but Max was a very sick young man. “What have I done? What has she told you?” Max had shouted. He shouted the same questions at Rachel, who could only shake her head. “There's nothing wrong with you. It's Prin.” She tried telling him about her suspicions, about the poison Prin spread, but he'd put his hands over his ears and told her to stop. That she wasn't to talk about his beloved that way.

Rachel called the Princes herself, asking for Elaine, but when the maid heard who was on the line, Rachel got the same reply as Max. She debated giving Phoebe's name, or calling Phoebe. Maybe she knew what Prin was up to. But Rachel didn't need to call Phoebe. She knew herself. She tried to talk to Max again. Tried telling him that his beloved was really a monster. She'd pulled his hands away from his head and, panting, struggling, pushed him into a chair and forced him to listen. “She's not worthy of you! You have to let her go! Let the
idea
of her go!” He sat silently, very still, and then looked up at her with those beautiful eyes, eyes that were filled with tears. “It's no use, Rach. Save your breath. I
love her.” Then he left. It was the last time she saw him. Ever.

No “sweet escape” this time. No blank sheet of paper. No sleep. Just images of those terrible days. The phone call from the state police. Her mother's screams. The questions: “Was your son depressed about anything, Mr. Gold?” “Had he voiced suicidal thoughts, Mrs. Gold?”

She'd come back to Pelham as penance. It was the one place in the world she most did not want to be, so it was the place she had to be.

Rachel hadn't played her guitar since Max's funeral, but she'd brought it to school, mostly to convey an air of normalcy to her parents. She hadn't been in touch with her teacher. Hadn't even kept the instrument in tune. She got out of bed now and went to the closet, removing the guitar from the case. Then she sat on her bed and tuned it. When Chris came by with the notes from class, she heard the music and didn't go in. Rachel was playing the same piece over and over, Ravel's hauntingly beautiful
Pavane pour une infante défunte—
a pavane for a dead princess. Not a princess, Rachel was thinking, a prince. He had been a prince, a prince among men. Her mouth tightened. But his princess was a Prince, too, and Rachel wanted to kill her, wanted her
défunte
.

 

“This junior class is the worst I've ever had in all the years I've been at Pelham,” Mrs. Archer complained to Mrs. MacIntyre, who had come by for a chat, and she wouldn't say no to a touch of something. “You must remember some of them from freshman year.”

“What seems to be the problem? And who are you talking about?” The two women had come to Pelham the same year, childless widows whose grief was tempered by the fact that neither of the deceased had left a penny—no insurance, no savings, no nothing. Pelham offered the only livelihood for which the women were qualified, and over the years both had come to view the college as a lifeboat. “I don't know what I would have done if this hadn't turned up,” they had repeated to each other on innumerable occasions. The housemother's suites were large and attractive with small kitchenettes, although meals were provided, of course. They had health insurance, and a modest pension would come to them when, and if, they retired. More than one colleague had simply stayed until she moved on to that final dormitory. Increasingly white hair and softly folding wrinkled skin added rather than detracted from these Minervas, wise women keeping watch over the Vestal Pelham girls by day and by night, especially night. And it was true that in the case of Mrs. Archer and Mrs. MacIntyre they fulfilled their obligations to the letter—very little got by them, hence Mrs. A.'s complaint about her juniors. She might not be as quick on her feet as she once was, and a pillowy bosom complemented her dowager's hump, but her sharp, china-blue eyes didn't miss a trick.

“Last year during housing, none of the juniors wanted the penthouse—such a foolish idea, wish we could block it off—so the sophomores drew lots and the group that got it, Gwen Mansfield, Phoebe Hamilton, Maggie Howard, and Prin—Hélène Prince—seemed tickled to death.”

“I don't know Gwen, but Phoebe, Maggie, and Prin were all in Felton. I'm sure I must have mentioned Prin, such a lamb and makes Elizabeth Taylor look homely! Don't mind if I do.” She raised her glass for another drop.

“I thought the very same thing the first time I met her. She used to be here a lot visiting her sister, Elaine,” Mrs. Archer said as she topped up their drinks.

“Phoebe is very brainy. I never got to know her well, but she was always pleasant, and Maggie, well, she was our star, the first freshman class president from Felton in twenty-five years. I'm sure she'll end up as student body president and, who knows, president of the college someday!”

Both women smiled at the thought of one of their protégées, their favorites, at the helm of the ship that had carried them so well. So what if they had to scramble about to find a place to stay over vacations and in the summers when the dorms were closed? Early on there had been house-sitting jobs, and for the past number of years, they'd gone in with two other housemothers, renting a small bungalow one of them knew about in New Hampshire. It wasn't as if the college was turning them out.

“Gwen was class treasurer freshman year and a real go-getter,” Mrs. Archer said, flying the Crandall flag. “We'll be hearing about that one, too. Wants to go to business school, of all things. Well, the times are changing.”

“You can say that again. But what happened to upset you, dear?”

Mrs. Archer made a face. “Miss Gwen announces
on moving-in day that she's not going to live in the penthouse. She called the college the week before and they told her it was impossible to change room assignments at that late date. I told her the same thing. Well, she refused to move her things from the foyer. I took her in here and spoke to her sternly, but she was dead set against going up there. And wouldn't tell me why.”

“What a mystery!”

“Not for long. You know how much I rely on my girls to keep me up-to-date on what's happening. I let Gwen go and got ahold of Emily Howie; she's a senior but is tight with that group. She knew all about it. Apparently Gwen's beau, Andrew something, left her for Prin and Gwen was ready to kill Prin.”