“My husband mentioned that he met you on the Donne School campus. I’m not sure how well you know him, but I imagine if you’ve spoken even once you’ll understand that his whims are often ridiculous.” I said nothing, and still refused to frown or smile. The longer I was quiet, the more Vera would have to say—something. Talk into the white space of me. “Well, I admit I wasn’t happy with the idea of being blind-matched with a companion this summer, but he was quite insistent. ‘You’ll love her,’ he told me. ‘She’s a gem,’ and so on. Not in those words, you understand, but that was the general bent of it.”
“So?” I prompted.
“I’m giving in. Let’s be friends, take a trip. Visit those… deep waters.” She made it sound like drowning.
“Well, that’s wonderful, of course.” I said. “But you didn’t have to buy my ticket. You’re supposed to be my friend”—I offered a shy smile—“not my benefactor.”
“Nonsense. The one is the other. And I’m not sure if Lev told you about my reluctance,” (She spat on the ground when I said your name, he’d said) “but I want to make up for it. On a spiritual level. So we can start our relationship on an even emotional footing.”
“Spirit, emotion. That’s rather heady.”
“Well.” Vera smiled. “That’s the first thing you’ll learn about me. I’m a rather heady person.”
Was I apprehensive, reader? Naturally I was. I’d expected an unwilling participant, a Vera of cold and ice pushing me away with both hands. I’d found instead a bosom buddy, ready-made. Too easy. Too neat. I hadn’t thought Lev was going to tell her about our trip to the seaside—that was to be my suggestion, once we started getting along. And so when she handed me the tickets it felt very much like a dare.
Still, there was something intoxicating in what she offered. No Donne girl had ever done so much to win my favor: not Cindy and Adeline with their sweet blackmail, nor Caroline with her sad, dead friend. Not even Margaret. Just Vera, here and now. That she had designs on me, reasons of her own—I had no doubt. But she found my favorite tea cake. Praised the simplicity of my hairdo and leaned in to embrace me when I departed. I couldn’t get the scent of her off me all day, and found myself smiling whenever it surprised me, looking around with a pang of regret when she didn’t appear alongside it. Putting her hand over my hand. I went back to the greenhouse and pruned rose bushes for the rest of the afternoon, pricking myself several times on the thorns. My arms, when I left, were streaked with blood. Lev had prepared me for Vera resisting, but not for Vera playing our game.
And, well. There is a special pleasure to be found in having one’s expectations subverted. Opening a well-loved novel and finding the dead dog resurrected, the hero turning course at the moment of his doom and retiring as a beloved medical doctor in a village sur la rivière. I thought Vera would be distant until the moment of her death, a (temporarily) living embodiment of the vast space between memory (mine) and fact. But instead she was fully present, physical. Ready to wound me, or so it seemed. Her face recalled Kay’s healthy malice; I could almost imagine her hair into a braid.
Sitting at home with a glass of wine, I spread the pills before me and fidgeted with them, sticking my fingernail into the seal and seeing if I could pull them apart. One almost split right there in front of me, and it was tempting to open them all and spill them into my cup. What would Vera do then? If I called her in the middle of the night with stomach cramps, and had her rush me to the hospital? If I called, and she found me stiff and dead, and suddenly her problem? I didn’t want to die, but I was inspired to make big moves in order to impress my opponent, to show her she was not the only one who could expand the field of play. Our train departed in two days. I had to arrange for John to keep an eye on the plants, had to scour the kitchen of perishables, pack.
I expected Vera to be stern, not sportive. But wasn’t that just because Lev had told me she would be? He left us each, Vera and me, with a single role to fill, as if we were automatons moving through a prearranged scene. Can you blame me for being enticed by Vera’s suggestion that we might both choose to be more? And by the idea that I might show Vera I was more than she bargained for?
Poem by Anonymous
From the Donne School Charter and Handbook
Editor’s note: Ms. Andropov doodled lines from this poem in the margins of her later diary entries. Although it no longer exists as part of the Donne School recruitment or matriculation materials, we were able to confirm that a version of it appeared in the Charter from 1913 to 1945.
Zoya
For the train, I tied my hair into a ponytail and hid it under a kerchief. Brought along a packet of sandwiches in wax paper, though the ride was only a few hours long. We were to arrive in Twisted Branch before sundown, with enough time to check in to our cottage before dark. The postmaster had the key for us. The grocer had been told to anticipate our arrival with a few necessities already stashed in the cupboards, though we’d need to do a more thorough accounting the next day. Milk, yes. Milk chocolate, maybe not.
I hadn’t been to the Maple Hill railway station in years—not since I stepped down onto the platform shivering with anticipation and mild scurvy from my shipboard confinement—and for ten minutes or so I amused myself by noting the changes: new newspaper stand, different hot dog vendor, better benches under the awning. But our train was set to depart in a quarter of an hour, and still Vera hadn’t met me by the open cars. I was starting to get anxious when I saw her talking to the conductor some distance away, hat in hand and bags by her feet—more bags, in fact, than she could possibly need. I hurried over.
“Dear,” she said when she spotted me, “why aren’t you in your seat? The good places will be going fast.”
I felt a splinter in my heart. That’s right, I thought. We aren’t a team. “I was waiting for you.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m sitting in first class, so my place is reserved. Surely you knew that.” Her face was impassive, but I thought I saw a twinkle in her eye. She hadn’t mentioned anything of the kind.
“Oh. Of course.” I’d have to be quicker on my feet. Turning to the conductor I asked, “How much would it cost to upgrade my ticket?”
Vera frowned. “I don’t know that—”
“I’ll pay, of course.” But the conductor stopped me pulling my wallet from my purse.
“My apologies, miss,” he said, “but the first-class berths are all sold out.”
I looked at Vera, and she looked at me.
“Well, don’t I feel silly.”
“Not at all, Zoya darling. It was just a misunderstanding.” She gave my hand a squeeze and said, “I’ll see you on the other side.”