Chapter 7
They buried Tag in the cemetery come September, the Monday after Labor Day. Most of the town showed up, and the men wore uniform and saluted his coffin as he was borne past. Some people stayed away. They felt Tag had brought shame on the town, dropping out and all.
Two more kids vanished between Tag’s death and Jack’s departure and the funeral: Timmy Seighart, who went to the city, and Tammy van Houten, who went off in a campervan to travel across Europe into Afghanistan.
They were kids from Alice’s school, and she knew them, but she told herself it didn’t mean a thing.
Things fall apart. Alice added the little Merlin figurine to her shelf of treasures.
Often she wondered what Jack was up to. Whether he had made it to California, whether it was still warm there; she had heard San Francisco was cold.
No one spoke about him now; it was as if he was dead.
When people saw Joan Maynard at church or at the train station coming back from the city and asked her how her son was doing, she didn’t lower her sunglasses. She’d smile and say:
‘Jack’s doing great, thank you so much,’ and then move on.
‘Alice! Come, sit down. I’m so glad you could make it.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Finkelstein.’
Alice edged into the classroom as though it might be boobytrapped.
She’d graduated from Orchard High assuming she was never going back, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about being here again in August. It was most strange, out of season, to be in a classroom in an empty school.
The light through the heavy green trees was wrong; the desks covered in a thin film of chalk dust were all wrong, as was the silence magnifying her steps as she trotted through the halls.
‘Now, my dear.’ Mrs Finkelstein stacked a pile of papers efficiently and laid them to one side. She took out a tin of mints, offered one to Alice, then popped one in her own mouth. ‘Do you know why I’ve asked you here?’
Alice nodded. She said politely: ‘Dolores told me you were interested in helping me.’
Mrs Finkelstein stuck her chin out, pursing her lips. ‘That’s true. I’m helping myself too, I guess.’
‘How?’
Mrs Finkelstein closed the mint tin, sucked on a mint and pulled out a yellow lined pad. ‘There’s no real charity, that’s what you’ll understand. It always comes with an ego being massaged somewhere.’
‘I believe you.’
‘We’re off to a good start.’ She put the mint in one corner of her cheek where it bulged out.
‘Now, Alice. I’m a busybody. I was brought up to be a busybody, to do what I can where I can, even if it does massage my ego along the way.
How can I persuade you to apply to college? More specifically to Barnard?’
Alice shifted in her seat. She opened her mouth, and then closed it.
‘I can understand it’s a little awkward,’ said Mrs Finkelstein. ‘Tell me, dear.’
Alice thought for a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d love to go to Barnard.’
‘Wonderful news.’ Mrs Finkelstein smiled. ‘That’s all to the good. Your SAT scores are excellent. Can you tell me why you didn’t apply last year?’
‘Well –’ Alice felt buffeted, like a beach ball on the tide of a rocky shore. ‘I don’t know. I want to learn. My father wanted me to go to college. He –’ She stopped and looked down.
‘So you and your mother never got around to it, that’s what you’re saying?’
‘It’s not my mom’s fault. It was me.’
‘Why didn’t the school step in?’
‘I – I don’t know. I guess I told them my mom and I had hopes of a job.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. Helping out with Mr Kynaston, I guess.’
This was what she’d told the guidance counsellor, Mrs Palaccio, and what she’d told anyone else who’d asked.
Mrs Palaccio, one year off retirement, had exhibited so little interest in her educational career that when Alice realized over half her friends were leaving Orchard – to go to Wellesley or Penn State or NYU – and she was stuck here, not doing anything, not going anywhere – she started to wonder if this outcome would have been the same had her father been alive.
She’d have ignored Mrs Finkelstein’s message via Dolores and nearly did but for one thing: she wanted to study more than anything.
She wanted to get on. She wanted to travel: go to Stratford-upon-Avon and stand in Shakespeare’s house, and walk round the stones at Stonehenge.
And then she wanted to see Rome and Jaipur, the Pink City.
She wanted to help to make the world fairer and better.
Sometimes, at night, the fury and impotence she felt and her rage at everything – her dad, her mom pretty much an unpaid servant to the Kynastons, Tag being killed, Jack disappearing, the war, the politicians who caused the war – overwhelmed her.
It made her heart race, her head spin, and she’d tell herself it was because she was young and didn’t know any better.
It didn’t occur to her, until she was in Mrs Finkelstein’s neat classroom, with the last of the summer sun streaming in through the gaps in the ivy that ran across the window, that she could change, that something needed to change for her and she was the person to change it.
‘You, Alice, were one of my most gifted students. I have an obligation to the Barnard admissions board, my dear, to make you known to them.’
Alice said quietly, ‘Isn’t it too late?’
‘I spoke to them about you, Alice. My views are welcome as far as the admissions board is concerned, you see.’ She tapped the side of her nose.
‘So they’d let me interview? And I might have a place?’
‘Undoubtedly. If you interview well – and they have their own separate exam which I know you’d pass with flying colours, provided we do some practice – I think a place would be found for you. Next fall, not this fall, you understand.’
‘I do. But there’s still the problem of money.’
Mrs Finkelstein waved at her. ‘Ah, my dear, we’ll worry about that another time.
The exact details are not your concern. As I say, my family has made certain endowments, and two of my protégés have dropped out this summer.
I’m anxious to send someone to Barnard on my recommendation who deserves it.
And who, I should note, is from a good family. ’
‘Ah,’ said Alice. ‘Mrs Finkelstein … did you speak to my mom? Or Wilder, Wilder Kynaston? Isn’t he some relation of yours?’
‘Wilder? Goodness, he’s my cousin. Do you know him?’ Mrs Finkelstein wrote something down. ‘Of course, you’re Bob’s daughter, I’d forgotten.’
‘We live at the Kynaston gatehouse.’
‘Yes …’ Mrs Finkelstein seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes, I know all about you. I know your mom too. Yes, Bob’s daughter. I’m happy to help. Very happy to.’
Later that evening, thinking back over the whole meeting, the school deathly quiet and strange in August, the older woman offering her candy like in a fairytale, Alice realized how odd it had all felt, as though Mrs Finkelstein was a witch.
Perhaps she was a witch and this was leading to some sacrifice situation.
Three kids had been murdered upstate in the summer, their bodies arranged in a pentagon shape.
People said it was witches. But then Mrs Finkelstein didn’t seem like a witch.
Even though it was August, the summer break, and she was in the same turquoise bouclé suit and black court shoes she always wore.
‘Are you sure?’ Alice said.
‘What do you mean, am I sure, dear?’
Alice said, ‘Is it some plan? Some plot? I don’t understand what –’
Mrs Finkelstein looked surprised. ‘What kind of a plot?’
Alice realized she sounded crazy. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you so much for your help.’
‘That’s no problem, dear. Wait to hear, won’t you?’
Alice stood up. ‘Thank you, Mrs Finkelstein.’
‘How are you keeping yourself busy in the meantime?’ said Mrs Finkelstein, staring at the form and chewing a pen.
‘I’m not, really. I’ll be helping my mother with the apple harvest,’ said Alice, ‘and with housework, and making things nice for Mr Kynaston.’
‘I heard. Wilder likes to have things nice, doesn’t he?’ said Mrs Finkelstein, scribbling on her pad. ‘I guess I’ll see you in November, at Cemetery Supper. In the meantime, leave it with me.’
‘You sure?’
The teacher looked at her over her glasses. ‘I am. When it comes to you, Alice, I’m very sure.’