Arcadia Falls

18


On the morning of the autumn equinox Dean St. Clare announces that the last period classes will be cancelled in order to allow students to prepare for the equinox ceremony. I decide to use the time to hike up to the ridge to where the students are planning to have their ceremony. I tell myself it’s because I want to have a good look at the terrain to make sure that they’ll be a safe distance from the cliff, but in truth I also find myself drawn to the site after reading Lily’s last journal entry. I keep reliving that night in my mind, imagining Lily entrusting herself to the slippery rocks of the clove—almost as if she’d really wanted to die rather than face the pain of Vera’s disappointment in her. Certainly her desperate coupling with Nash sounded as if she was punishing herself.
It’s a warm, clear day—more late summer than the first day of fall. I change out of my teaching clothes into jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers and, at the last minute, tie a windbreaker around my waist in case it’s colder on top of the ridge. I remember it as windy and cool, but maybe that was because the last time I was there I watched poor Isabel Cheney’s body being carried up out of the clove—a sight that would have chilled anyone.
The hike up to the ridge takes much less time than I expect. Of course, I remind myself, the last time I was pausing every fifteen minutes to call Isabel’s name. It saddens me, when I reach the fallen tree where we found the torn shred of her dress, to realize how close Isabel had been to her friends down in the apple orchard. She needn’t have felt so frightened—so alone. Yet turning around in a circle I see why she felt that way. Deep forest rings the tiny clearing; the trees stand like sentinels blocking the way out. The only sound is the roar of the waterfall. Even if she had screamed or called for help, no one would have heard her.
I sit for a moment on the fallen tree with my eyes closed, letting myself mourn for Isabel. I’ve been afraid, I think, in the weeks since she died, to really allow myself to feel it. The death of a girl Sally’s age is too unbearable to contemplate. But now I realize how cowardly—and selfish—my avoidance is. I let myself relive the brief glimpses I had of Isabel’s blunt, friendly demeanor and her naked ambition, which I’m sure wore on people’s nerves, but which I suspect would have mellowed with age and experience. Who knew how far her drive would have taken her? What a colossal waste for a girl of her talents to die so young.
When I open my eyes, a tear slides down my face. It seems like an insignificant tribute for such a tragedy. As I get up I see that someone before me has left something more tangible. A small bouquet of flowers, which I’d mistaken at first for naturally growing wildflowers, lies in the crevice of the log. It’s too late in the season for lilies of the valley, though, and the bunch is tied with lavender ribbon. I pick them up and see that the crevice they were placed in is a Z-shaped gash. Was this the tree, then, that fell the night Lily said goodbye to Nash? I run my fingers along the mark, recalling that Lily had compared its jagged scar to the gash she felt in her heart. The years—and moss and rain—have softened its edges. I wonder if the years were so kind to the rend in Lily’s heart.
I get up and walk to the top of the ridge. A sign has been crudely hammered onto a tree near the head of the falls: DANGER! STEEP DROP! NO HIKING BEYOND THIS POINT.
It doesn’t look like much of a deterrent. In fact, I can see a fresh path worn through the grass on the path leading down into the clove. I can only hope that it’s not students who are still hiking here. I remind myself to talk to Sally about staying away from here, although a lecture on the subject might well have the opposite effect and spur her to frequent the spot to spite me.
I had thought that the clove would look less menacing in full daylight, but the black, shadowy cleft seems even darker in comparison to the blue sky above. When I look up from the clove I see the old barn in the valley below. From this angle it looks even more decrepit than from the road. The cupola leans crookedly and wide holes gape in the walls like missing teeth. Who knows how much longer it will stand? I imagine some enterprising builder—like Sheriff Reade—will eventually loot it for vintage barn wood. Then no one will watch the sunlight or moonlight paint patterns on its floors and walls ever again.
I’ve started down the path before even realizing I’ve decided to go. It’s reckless, I know; I don’t have the right shoes or know the trail well enough. I can hear the lecture I’d give Sally about hiking alone in unfamiliar terrain, but I can also hear—as if she’d told me her story aloud and not in writing—Lily’s voice describing the moonlight spilling onto the barn floor like a pool of water.
At first the path doesn’t seem so bad, but then it becomes so steep I have to grab at the tree branches along the side to keep from falling. The steep stone walls on either side of the waterfall block out all but a narrow band of sunlight that struggles to light the long descent. In the narrow chasm, the sound of falling water is deafening, like the roar of a beast crouching at the foot of the falls, hiding behind the huge boulders. It looks like a giant tossed them down the slope to make the descent impassable—or perhaps to make the ascent impassable. It feels like I’m climbing down into a pit. Spray from the waterfall coats the moss-covered boulders. I have to sit down on them to navigate my way. At one point, after a near miss that would have sent me hurtling down to the bottom, I look up—and immediately wish I hadn’t. The steep slopes on either side seem to be closing over my head, like a giant jaw about to snap shut.
By the time I’ve reached the bottom, the damp from the moss and ferns has soaked through my thin canvas sneakers and into my socks, which squelch with every step. Despite my discomfort I can’t help but appreciate the beauty of the place. At the bottom of the clove, the water, glowing silver and black in the alternating light and shadow that falls between the stone walls, pools into a series of stone basins ringed by ferns. A circle of weeping willows rings the lowest pool. The only sound in this perfect round grove is the splash of water on moss-covered rocks and the wind stirring the long willow branches. That recording Fawn was playing in her shop could have been made here. No wonder local legend decreed the place to be sacred; it feels like I’ve wandered into the apse of a cathedral.
I rest for half an hour. I only leave when I realize that if I want to make it to the barn and back before the ceremony at sunset I should get going. Before I leave the pool though, I recall what Vera told Lily at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park—that whoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. As I watch, a breeze moves through the grove, sending ripples across the still, black-green surface. Before I can question why I’m doing it, I bend down and dip my fingertips into the ice-cold water and whisper a quick prayer for Sally’s safekeeping tonight at the equinox.
When I push aside the willow branches and step out of the clove I’m surprised to find a bright and sunlit day waiting for me. It’s a good ten degrees warmer in the field than it was in the clove. The grass in the field is waist high and damp, the ground boggy and uneven. My legs are soon as soaked as my sneakers and flecked with seed pods. I walk quickly, trying not to think about snakes. When I reach the barn I’m surprised to find that the door is intact. I’d expected to just walk through one of the holes in the wall, but I see now that they’re covered with sheets of clear plastic. Maybe the barn isn’t as deserted as it looks from a distance.
The old wood shrieks against the rusted hinges and the plank walls shiver as I shove open the heavy door. As if in answer to the door’s complaint something inside the barn lets out a low, eerie moan that makes me freeze in my tracks. Thoughts of angry spirits—Lily’s? Nash’s? The white woman’s?—flit through my brain … and then something white takes shape out of the shadows and swoops toward me.
I shriek and duck, but the white phantom swoops back up before it reaches me. I’m poised to run—thoughts of the white woman in my head—but then I look up into the shadowy rafters where a white heart-shaped face stares out of the gloom.
A barn owl. That’s all, I tell myself.
When I step into the barn, though, I’m not so sure I’ve escaped the white woman. In the center of the barn, in the circle of light that pours through the broken cupola, stands a figure shrouded in white. I walk toward her, mesmerized. She—I can tell from the curves beneath the cloth that it’s a woman—is standing where Lily stood on May Eve. Any moment now she’ll turn and shed her cloak.
“Can I help you, Ms. Rosenthal?”
I turn in the pool of sunlight to find Callum Reade, silhouetted against the doorway. “What are you doing here?” I demand.
“What am I doing here?” he asks, stepping out of the bright light. I see that he’s dressed in jeans and a soft blue shirt that’s rolled up over his elbows. A spear of sunlight falls on his arm, lighting the red-gold hairs on fire. “I think I should be asking you that. You’re in my studio.”
“Studio?” I look around the barn and see, now that my eyes have adjusted to the gloom, a workbench set against one wall. The edge of a circular saw and metal tools glint in the uneven sunlight. Slabs of wood are stacked on one side of the table; another shrouded shape crouches in the corner. “You’re a carpenter?” I ask. It makes sense, I suppose, since he also restores houses.
“Nothing so useful,” he says. He walks toward me, his hands on his hips, talking as he approaches as if he were trying to gentle a skittish horse. I must look as tense as I feel. It’s from being startled by the owl and then Reade’s unexpected appearance, I tell myself. But it’s also because this scene—a woman standing in a pool of light, a man walking toward her—so vividly recalls the May Eve that Lily and Nash first met here. “My dad used to carve decoys for duck hunting. I started fooling with his tools when I was a kid. After I moved back here, I needed something to keep my hands busy.” He lifts his hand and for a moment I think he’s going to touch my face, but instead he tugs at the cloth draping the figure beside me. It falls to the floor like water flowing into the pool of light.
I hear the sharp intake of my own breath in the silence of the barn. Standing in the pool is a naked woman in the moment of turning, one arm crossed over her breasts. Her face, tilted modestly downward, is unfinished. I feel Callum’s eyes on my back, relentless as the barn owl’s gaze. I’ve reached out to stroke the woman’s hip before I can think of how the gesture might look, but the softly rounded curve is irresistible. The wood is warm and smooth to the touch. Running my hand along the polished slope it’s hard not to think of Callum Reade’s hands carving, then sanding, then oiling the wood until it ripples in the light like flesh.
I try to swallow and find my throat dry. “She’s …” I turn and find Callum right behind me. My shoulder brushes against his arm and I feel a wave of heat coming off him along with a scent of fragrant wood. “She’s beautiful,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice steady. “The wood looks like skin—”
“Cherry,” he says. “It’s got a beautiful grain. I found a downed cherry tree in the woods a few years ago and I’ve been working on a few pieces from it.”
I take a deep breath and catch that scent again—the same scent I’ve noticed coming from Callum—also on the statue. There are flecks of sawdust on the hair of his arm and clinging to a damp patch on his throat. “Um … it reminds me of the bronze statuette in the alcove in Beech Hall,” I say.
“I was inspired by it,” he says, his eyes staying on me, not the statue. When I nod he says, “But the face is unfinished on that statue and I haven’t been able to finish this one’s face.” He squints his eyes at me and then changes his mind about whatever he was going to say. “So. I’ve shown you what I’m doing here. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I wanted to see the barn. I’ve been reading a journal that Lily Eberhardt kept in which she writes that she met Nash here….” I falter, embarrassed by the details of that first meeting, but Callum Reade rescues me.
“He painted her here,” he says. “You can see in those paintings that he loved her.”
“You’ve looked at the paintings in the Lodge?” As soon as the words are out I realize I sound as if I thought he wasn’t capable of appreciating art. I’m expecting a defensive response, but instead his eyes soften as he looks toward the sculpture.
“Remember I told you how kids used to dare one another to stay all night in the woods above the clove and brave the wrath of the white woman? Well, I did it once when I was fifteen. I sat all night at the head of the falls, waiting to see her appear out of the mist. I was scared at first, but then I was disappointed when the night was almost over and I hadn’t seen anything, so I hiked down to the Lodge. I think I had some minor act of vandalism in mind—something to mark the night since there’d been no supernatural visitation.”
“Sheriff Reade!” I exclaim in mock surprise. “Vandalism?”
He grins. “I wasn’t always so law-abiding.” He rakes his hand through his hair, and I can picture him as the boy he was, those green eyes alert in the dark woods, waiting for the white woman to appear. If I were the white woman haunting those lonely woods I don’t think I’d have been able to resist appearing before those eyes. “I broke a window to get into the building—it was easy, the school’s never been much for security—and raided a supply closet full of paints and pencils. I was looking for something more substantial to steal in the parlor when I saw her. A life-size naked woman glaring down at me from the wall. It was how she stood there—completely unashamed, brazen as an animal—that got me. That and the way she was looking at me as if she saw right through me to my soul and knew all my secrets. I put back everything I had taken and spent the rest of the night just looking at her, wondering who she was. When I found out that she’d died in the clove I wondered if I hadn’t met the white woman after all.”
“Is that why you work here?” I ask.
“Partly. I first came to the barn when I found out the paintings were done here. Dymphna caught me here once—you know she and her cousin Doris own the barn and the farm stand—”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” He smiles again. He seems like a different person here, more relaxed. His hand drifts to the statue and brushes a smudge of dust off the curve of her hip. A tremor moves through me, as if he’d touched me and not the statue. Do I want him to touch me? It has been so long since I’ve felt a man touch me like that—longer than the year since Jude died. We’d been having one of those lulls—as I’d come to think of the sexless spates in our marriage—in the weeks before he died. It might have been a whole month, but I never liked to count. Jude had been working a lot; the market had been especially volatile and he’d started trading at night. I’d started to feel a little restless and concerned, but I reassured myself that we’d always come out of these dry periods with renewed passion. That’s how a marriage worked, I figured, you had to weather the ups and downs. I just hadn’t figured on that particular lull stretching into eternity.
“Are you okay?” Callum Reade asks, moving closer to me.
“I just caught a chill,” I say. The chill of an eternity of not being touched, I think. I look up to find Callum’s pale green eyes fixed on my own, intent, as if he could read my thoughts. Again I feel heat coming off him, the heat of the sun on his skin … or maybe it’s from the accumulated heat of Lily and Virgil’s passion all those years ago. Whatever its source, I find myself leaning into it, hungry for it. I close my eyes and picture his hands carving rough wood into the shape of a woman, feel his hands cup my face as if he were measuring my contours for a mold, and then, before I can change my mind, I tilt my head up and meet his lips. They are soft but firm, as smooth as polished cherrywood. They even taste like cherries. He takes a step closer, his arms enfolding me like giant wings, which I can almost hear….
And then I do hear them. And feel them. Stirring the air right above us. I open my eyes just in time to see the barn owl swooping over our heads, heading out into the fields. I step back, breaking the embrace, and glance toward the statue, away from the look of confusion and hurt in his eyes. Standing in the circle of light she looks like a woodland nymph surprised at her bath—Diana discovered in her sacred grove by Actaeon. Only instead of punishing her intruder she has been punished herself, turned into wood for all time.
I turn away from her and Callum Reade. Walking out the door I think to myself that I know exactly how she feels.
Callum follows me across the field. “Where are you going?” he calls from behind me.
“Back to the ridge,” I shout without looking back. “I’m supposed to supervise the autumn equinox. I can’t be late.”
“That’s where I’m going, too,” he says.
“Fine,” I say, quickening my pace. “We’d better hurry.”
The climb up through the clove is longer and harder than I had anticipated. It’s so steep that we have to dig our fingers into the cracks in the rock to pull ourselves up. We do it in silence, saving our breath and concentration for the climb. I’m relieved that we don’t have to make small talk or acknowledge the interrupted kiss. It’s not the time, I tell myself as I attack the steep rock face as if I could burn away desire like a few extra calories. Another voice reverberates in my head as we climb, though. Will it ever be time? Or will I always feel like this, as lifeless as a woman carved from wood?
By the time we reach the top of the clove, my fingernails are caked with mud and I suspect my face is streaked with it from wiping the sweat off my brow. My legs are trembling with effort. Callum gives me a hand up over the last boulder—and then holds on to my hand at the top of the ridge.
“Are you done running from me?” he asks. “Or are you going to find another mountain to climb to get away from me?”
“I’m sorry,” I say when I see the look of hurt in his eyes. “It was a mistake—”
“Oh, I can see that!”
“I mean it was a mistake for me. I’m just not ready yet. It hasn’t even been a year yet.”
“Okay then, I wasn’t trying to rush you. In fact, I believe it was you who kissed me.”
I’m grateful my face is already red from exertion as I feel the blood course into my cheeks. “As I said, it was a mistake. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Now if you don’t mind, I have to go home and shower….”
“I’m afraid there isn’t time.” He lifts his chin up over my shoulder. I turn and look into the darkening woods. It’s like a swarm of fireflies is coming up the hill.
There must be at least forty students walking single file, each holding a lit candle. It looks like a river of light flowing uphill.
Leading the procession is Chloe, dressed in a long dark green dress that hugs her hips and breasts. A gold rope is tied over her hips, the tassel swaying back and forth as she climbs the hill. A wreath of red and gold leaves crowns her head and some kind of symbol is painted on her forehead: a circle topped with a crescent moon. When she reaches the clearing, she stops at the stump of the lightning-struck tree and sets her candle down among the twisted roots. As the other students file into the clearing, they spread out into a circle. I see Clyde Bollinger in a white dress shirt that flaps loosely around his thin hips and bony wrists, Hannah Weiss in a floaty pink dress trimmed with violet ribbons, and Justin Clay in a pink Oxford shirt and khakis, looking more like he’s at a clambake on the Cape than at a pagan rite in the woods. Tori Pratt, also in a snug long dress, approaches the tree stump with a wide copper basin, which she places next to Chloe’s candle.
I strain to find Sally in the crowd. I’m tempted to go closer to the clearing, but then I want to stay between the students and the ridge. Callum seems to have the same idea. With his arms folded over his chest and legs planted wide apart, he looks like he’s ready to block any student’s approach to the cliff edge. I finally spy Sally and Haruko among the last arrivals to the clearing. Sally’s at the point of the circle farthest way from me—and the ridge—which suits me just fine. I want her as far from the edge as possible.
The last of the procession enters the clearing and I see the rear guard is made up of faculty and staff: Shelley Drake in a floaty gauze caftan, Ivy St. Clare in her usual black tunic and slim pants, Colton Briggs looking out of place in suit and tie, a woman in a Grecian style robe whom I don’t recognize at first but then identify as the regal Miss Pernault with her hair down, Toby Potter looking perfectly in character in a homespun monk’s robe, and motherly Dymphna Byrnes in a flowered housedress and burnt orange cardigan. The librarian, Miss Bridewell, in some kind of floral muumuu brings up the rear. Everyone is holding a candle except for Ivy St. Clare.
Behind me the sun, which has reached the line of mountains in the west, sends a gold light skidding into the clearing. As if that was the signal, Chloe picks up her candle from the stump and holds it high over her head.
“We come to say farewell to the sun,” she says, her girlish voice clear and sweet in the quiet woods. “And to say a final farewell to those who have traveled into the land of shadows before us. Isabel Cheney, we speed you on your journey and beg you to forgive any wrongdoing you suffered here. We ask all of those we have lost to watch over us in these coming days, as the nights grow longer and the shadows stretch farther and the dark rises. We promise to honor you, to look deep into the darkness in our own hearts, and pray we survive the journey into the dark until the light returns.”
Chloe takes a black candle out of a pocket in her dress. She lights it from the wick of the white candle and then turns around and starts walking up toward the ridge.
“What’s she doing?” Callum asks, his voice low.
“She said the ceremony required her to approach the ridge. The rest of them are supposed to stay in the clearing.” As the circle of candle-holders stirs, though, I have a sudden misapprehension. What if they all start walking up toward the ridge at once? I have an image of them all marching up the hill and over the edge like lemmings plunging into the sea, taking Callum Reade and me with them.
Callum must have the same thought. As Chloe approaches us holding both candles, Callum steps between her and the ridge. She stops and looks up at him, her pale face glowing in the flickering light of the candles. She creases her brow, making the painted moon ripple as though a cloud has passed over it. It reminds me of how Lily described the clouds moving over the moon on May Eve. It strikes me that just as Lily’s life was irrevocably altered by an unwanted pregnancy, so the darkness of Isabel’s death has fallen over Chloe’s life.
“I need to go to the head of the waterfall,” she says in a small but insistent voice, “to put my candles in the water.”
“Why don’t you give them to me?” Callum says, holding out his hand. His voice is low and gentle, too low for anyone but me or Chloe to hear. The students below us are whispering among themselves, trying to figure out what’s going on.
“No!” Chloe hisses, her face distorted now by anger. “It has to be me!”
Callum tilts his head. “Why?” he asks.
The single word question seems to light a spark in Chloe. She flings herself at Callum like a small missile. Even though she’s tiny and light the force of her fury knocks him a step backward toward the edge of the ridge. Before I can think, I throw myself at Chloe, grabbing a handful of her hair to pull her back—whether to save her or Callum, I have no idea. It does both, though. Chloe spins on me, the wax from her candles spraying outward in a wide arc that hits my hands and arms, and Callum regains his footing enough to step forward and restrain her. He moves her down from the ridge, commanding the rest of the students to move back. Only one manages to get past him and make it to the top of the ridge. It’s Sally. I hold out my arms, which are only now beginning to register the scalding pain from the hot wax—sure that she’s come to see if I’m okay. Her face is stained with tears.
“What were you thinking, Mom?” she cries, her voice breaking into a sob. “Why would you bring that man here? You ruined everything!”
She turns and hurries down the hill with the rest of the disbanded troop, leaving me to wonder which hurt worse—her angry words or the burns that I can feel already beginning to blister.