LAUSANNE—November 1997
At midnight, Kersti bursts out of her room to get Cressida. She still isn’t used to them not sharing a room. They both have single rooms on the fourth floor now, which is supposed to be a privilege for the top senior students. Kersti’s lonely, though. Her small room with the single bed and the sloped ceilings sometimes feel like a cell. She misses Cressida’s company.
Their feud at the end of last year is mostly forgotten. The night Cressida confided about her affair with Mr. Fithern, Kersti decided she wouldn’t speak to Cressida for the entire summer. It was already May, which meant only a few weeks of silent treatment to get through until the end of the school year.
She lasted about two weeks, which made things very awkward in their room. Cressida kept trying to explain, tell her side of it. But Kersti was too hurt. At first, she couldn’t get past the fact that Cressida had claimed to still be in love with Magnus while she was already seeing Mr. Fithern, but morbid curiosity ultimately trumped Kersti’s self-righteousness. She couldn’t stand being excluded from Cressida’s unfolding drama. It was killing her not to be able to ask Cressida all the questions that kept popping into her head. She wanted to know everything about the affair. She wanted details. Where did they rendezvous? Was he going to leave his wife? Who else knew? And naturally, Kersti wanted to know if Magnus would be available again.
She finally caved the night of the Ascension holiday. She was in bed unable to sleep and Cressida was at her desk, working on an essay. She always did her homework in the middle of the night—an afterthought. “You told me you loved Magnus and that’s why you wanted him back,” Kersti blurted into the dark. “You knew I liked him, but you had to take him anyway—”
“I didn’t take him from you,” Cressida said, turning around to face her.
“And the whole time, you were also screwing Mr. Fithern. Why?” Kersti demanded. “Why couldn’t you just let me have Magnus?”
“It wasn’t my decision to make,” Cressida said. “Magnus is his own person. He made his own choices. I had no control over that. Besides, I did have feelings for him.”
“Did?”
“Do.”
“But you have stronger feelings for Mr. Fithern,” Kersti said, turning on her bedside lamp. “You said so. I don’t get why you had to have both!”
“Haven’t you ever loved two people at the same time?”
Kersti thought about Cressida and Magnus and the answer was yes, but she said nothing.
“I didn’t think Charlie and I had a future,” Cressida said.
“So you used Magnus as your backup, which also kept him away from me. Just because you could.”
“No, Kersti. I had a fling with Charlie. I never planned to fall in love with him. I planned to be with Magnus. Magnus and I made sense. Charlie and I . . .”
She shook her head, bewildered. Like she was the victim in all this. “I may be impulsive,” she said. “I follow my heart and sometimes it’s reckless and people get hurt, but I’m not a bad person, Kersti. I don’t make calculated decisions to deliberately hurt people. Especially not you or Magnus.”
“You think that makes it okay?”
“I don’t know if it makes it okay,” Cressida said. “I don’t worry about what’s okay or not.”
Kersti knew that to be true. She just wasn’t sure if it was an admirable quality, or reprehensible. She thought about L’Étranger and wondered if Cressida was amoral or just living by her own truth.
For most of the summer, their friendship was like a fragile artifact. Still in one piece, but full of filament-like cracks that weakened its integrity. They emailed each other regularly—Cressida from London or Belize or wherever she happened to be—but their exchanges were terse, formal. Kersti was still aggrieved and didn’t want Cressida to think she was forgiven.
And then on Kersti’s birthday in August, she received a FedEx package with a plane ticket to Greece. Seventeen years on earth deserves seventeen days on the Greek Islands. Happy B-day, Kuusky. I’ll meet you at the Athens airport. Cress
Her parents agreed to the trip, deciding it would be an early graduation present. They gave her a cell phone and two hundred dollars and off she went. Armand and Deirdre were supposed to be there the whole time, but Deirdre got a role in the West End and it was decided the girls would have a chaperone instead, Armand’s twenty-five-year-old personal assistant. Armand flew in on his private plane to meet them for a few days in Corfu and Samos, but for all the other islands they were basically alone.
The Greek Islands in August were teeming with tourists. Everywhere they went it was hot, crowded, and exciting. They quickly fell into a rhythm—sleeping until noon every day, Greek coffee, a few hours at the beach, siesta in the afternoon. Dinner at 10 p.m. Partying until four, five, six o’clock in the morning, dancing and downing tequila slammers and then capping off the night with a gyros at sunrise. Kersti had a fling with Boyd from Brisbane. That’s what they called him. He ended up following them to Santorini and Ios, but eventually Kersti decided to lose him. She actually really liked him, but she started to think Cressida was the one he wanted. How could it not be? Maybe she was being paranoid—maybe she simply couldn’t believe that anyone would like her and not Cressida—but she couldn’t face the possibility of another rejection.
For seventeen days they celebrated her seventeenth birthday, hopping from island to island. The best part was having Cressida all to herself for such a long time. On their last night, when they were on the ferry back to Athens, Kersti reached for her hand and held it. “Thank you,” she whispered.
They were lying side by side on the deck, surrounded by dozens of other stargazing backpackers. “I had the best time.”
“I’m the one who’s thankful,” Cressida returned. “I don’t deserve you.”
Kersti knew their friendship was restored. The cracks were gone; the surface was smooth again. Her heart was full.
She knocks on Cressida’s door and Cressida pops out, grinning mischievously. “I have a surprise for you,” she says.
“What?”
She pulls her into the room, closes the door, and whips a joint out of her kangaroo sweatshirt.
“Where’d you get that?” Kersti asks. She knows Cressida smokes up a lot—with Magnus and with Mr. Fithern—but she usually doesn’t do it at school.
“We have to do it here,” she says. “One time before the end of the year.” She means in Huber House. Whenever they’ve smoked before, it’s been at Ouchy or outside one of the bars.
They bundle up in sweaters and coats and go outside on the balcony. Cressida lights the joint, has a toke, and hands it to Kersti. They pass it back and forth, their smoke mixing with their frozen breath. “It’s freezing,” Kersti says, her teeth chattering.
“Does it seem weird to you that Celine Dion is married to that old guy?” Cressida says, sounding quite vexed by it.
“What made you think of that?”
“She’s Canadian and you’re Canadian. I just kind of put that together. Plus I have that stupid song in my head from Titanic.”
“He was her manager,” Kersti tells her.
“I know, but he’s old enough to be her dad. She was like twelve when she married him.”
Kersti laughs. “She was twelve when he discovered her, not when he married her.”
“Still,” Cressida says. “She was a kid and he was like forty.”
“You’re in love with an older man,” Kersti reminds her.
“Charlie is thirty and I’m almost eighteen. And he’s not fatherly. He’s sexy.”
Cressida suddenly leans forward against the railing and raises her arms in the air. “I’m the queen of the world!” she cries, and starts singing the Titanic theme song.
Kersti stands behind her and places her hands on Cressida’s hips, pretending to be Leonardo DiCaprio from the movie. “I’ve got you, Rose!”
Cressida turns around, playing along. “Where are you going, Rose?” she says dramatically. “To be with him? To be a whore to a gutter rat?”
“I’d rather be his whore than your wife, Cal!” Kersti responds, and they both burst out laughing, Kersti not letting on that she secretly loved the movie.
They go inside and strip off their coats. “Let’s go bake something,” Cressida says.
They head down to the kitchen on the first floor, where the students in the Econome program take cooking classes and learn how to fold napkins. The door has an old lock, which everyone in Huber House can easily pick open with a hair clip. The fridge is always stocked with baking basics—flour, sugar, butter, eggs—and occasionally something special, like jam or chocolate chips.
“Anything good?” Kersti asks, as Cressida starts opening all the pantries.
When she finds what she’s looking for, she holds it up like a trophy. “Cocoa powder!” she cries. “We can make brownies!”
They both start cheering and hugging each other, dancing around the room. They open the fridge and discover a jar of Hero jam and a bottle of whipping cream. “We can make scones, too,” Cressida says.
Kersti turns on the oven while Cressida takes more stuff out of the fridge. “Maybe Celine thinks her husband is sexy,” Kersti says, going back to their earlier conversation. “Maybe you’re in love with Mr. Fithern because he reminds you of Armand.”
At this, Cressida erupts laughing. “Armand is an ass,” she says, mixing cocoa, coffee grounds, and cream in a mug. “And frankly I think he’s gay.”
“Your dad’s gay?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“What about Deirdre?”
“I don’t think she cares,” Cressida says. “She probably has her own lovers.”
“How long have you known?” Kersti asks her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, it’s not like they sat me down and made an announcement. And I don’t know for sure. I just started to suspect the last time I was home. I mean, they’re never together.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s gay.”
“He leers at guys,” Cressida says. “Flirts with them. He always has.”
“Your poor mom,” Kersti says, thinking about young Deirdre on her wedding day, not having a clue she was about to marry a homosexual.
Cressida adds boiling water to her coffee-cocoa concoction and has a sip.
“Armand reminds me of Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island,” Kersti says, creaming butter and sugar in a bowl. “You know how he wears that ascot and talks with the locked jaw and clenched teeth?”
Cressida stretches her mouth as wide as it will go and says through clenched teeth, “Gilligan.”
“Lovey,” Kersti says, in the same clenched-teeth voice. “Skipper.”
“Shit,” Cressida says. “I never thought about it before. For sure Mr. Howell is gay.”
“Do you think Mrs. Howell knew?”
“They slept in separate beds—”
Kersti adds cocoa and eggs to her brownie batter while Cressida gets started on the scones. She could do it blindfolded if she had to. They must have made a million scones over the last few years; it’s the one thing for which they can always find the ingredients.
“It must be weird to grow up super-poor and then one day be a kajillionaire,” Cressida says, kneading her dough.
“Thurston Howell grew up poor?” Kersti says, shoving the brownies in the oven.
“No. Celine Dion.”
They look at each other in a moment of mutual confusion and then collapse on the linoleum floor laughing.
“Do you think it’s wrong for me to expect that I should always get what I want?” Cressida asks, turning serious.
“Um. Yes, probably.”
“Does it make me a bad person?” she asks, her tone more curious than concerned.
“Of course not,” Kersti says, leaning on her elbow. “It’s normal to you. You’ve always gotten everything you want so you don’t really know another way.”
They lie there for a while, the smell of their baking wafting around them.
“What am I going to do without you, Kuusky?”
“It’s only November.”
“Have you decided what you’re going to do next year?” Cressida asks.
“Maybe U of T, or Ryerson. Or I might just work at my dad’s travel agency.”
“Why would you ever do that?” Cressida says.
“They’d like it if I went into the family business.”
“What about you? What do you want?”
“I don’t know. To write. But that’s lame . . . I need a real job.”
“I hate when you say shit like that,” Cressida says, reaching up for the mixing bowl and scooping out a glob of brownie batter with her fingers.
“Hate when I talk like what?”
“Like: ‘I need a real job,’ ‘I can’t be writer,’ ‘I’ll do what my parents want me to do.’” She turns to face Kersti with brownie batter all over her face. “It depresses the hell out of me.”
“Sorry I’m not like you,” Kersti says. “I don’t expect to get everything I want in life.”
“Maybe you should.”
“I prefer to please people rather than to hurt them or disappoint them.”
“That’s your problem,” Cressida says. “You need a little more Cressida in you.”
On their way back upstairs, with their bellies full of brownies, scones, and coffee, they clutch the mahogany banister for support. How many times have they made this climb over the last four years, Kersti wonders? Everything she does now, that’s what she thinks about. How many times have we done this and taken it for granted? Climbing the Huber stairs; baking scones in the middle of the night; gossiping in the bathroom; roast chicken and french fries on Saturday; Sunday morning treks to McDonald’s by the Gare; chasing each other through the passerelle that connects Huber and Lashwood.
Cressida places her hands on Kersti’s lower back and starts pushing her up, one step at a time. They’re both suppressing giggles. When they come to the second-floor landing, Kersti stops abruptly.
“Look,” she whispers, and points down the hall to where someone is creeping stealthily toward them—a tall figure with short hair, mannish, ungraceful. As the person approaches, her face is momentarily lit by a slice of moonlight coming through one of the dormer windows. It’s Angela Zumpt.
Angela gasps when she spots them both standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for her. “What are you doing?” she asks them.
“We were hungry,” Kersti says. “What are you doing on the second floor?”
“Using the washroom,” Angela answers, trying to get past them.
“What’s wrong with our bathroom?” Kersti wants to know. Angela’s room is also on the fourth floor, where there’s a perfectly good bathroom.
“I prefer this one,” she says, flustered. “Iss none of your business anyway.”
Kersti laughs and looks over at Cressida, expecting her to jump in, but her expression is strangely solemn. She’s dead quiet. “Cress?”
“I ate too much,” Cressida says. “I have to puke.”
Angela hurries up the stairs on her way back to the fourth floor, with Cressida not far behind.
“What was that all about?” Kersti asks Cressida, trying to keep up with her. “What do you think she was doing? Policing someone on the second floor? Spying?”
“Probably,” Cressida responds absently, rushing to the bathroom.