Abby Ho-Tai jumps up from her desk and runs out of the classroom. She takes laxatives to lose weight so she’s always rushing to the bathroom. Magnus slides over another cartoon drawing, this one of Abby sitting on the toilet with a mountain of Dulcolax boxes beside her.
After class, Magnus walks out with Kersti and they stop for a cigarette in the garden, where most of the student body gathers to smoke between classes. “Let’s go to the tennis courts,” he suggests, lighting her Marlboro.
She looks around for Cressida, but can’t find her. She’s probably still at Model United Nations practice. Kersti accompanies Magnus to the tennis courts, her heart pounding. They sit down side by side on the grass, legs outstretched, faces upturned to the fall sun. The air smells faintly of Alpine jasmine. Magnus plucks a forget-me-not and hands it to Kersti.
“You going on the Gstaad trip over the holiday?” he asks her, blowing perfect smoke rings with an exaggerated motion of his jaw.
“Um, no,” Kersti says, laughing. “I’ll be going home to work at my dad’s travel agency, so I can afford to buy my family presents.”
“That’s cool,” he says.
“Is it though? Because I think skiing in Gstaad is a lot cooler.”
“Not really. You’re not like any of the spoiled weirdos who grew up here,” he tells her. “I like that about you, Kuusk. You’re real.”
“Are you a spoiled weirdo?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “But you. You’re refreshing, Kuusk. You’re almost normal.”
It’s exactly what Cressida told her in her first year. Kersti had never thought about such things before coming to the Lycée. Normal, not normal. Are the Kuusks really normal? Kersti doesn’t think so, but everything is relative.
“I just got my driver’s license,” Magnus says. “Why don’t we go for a drive this Saturday? My uncle said I could use his car. I’ll take you for beer fondue.”
Kersti is caught off guard by the invitation. She wants to run onto the court, jump over the net, and squeal. She can’t even look at him when she answers. “Sure, Foley,” she says, in the most aloof, offhanded way she can manage. “Beer fondue sounds great.”
Later on in her room, still giddy about the afternoon, Kersti carefully tucks the forget-me-not he gave her inside her copy of L’étranger.
Chapter 9
BOSTON—October 2015
Deirdre Strauss’s place is on Beacon Street in the flat section of Beacon Hill known as the Flat of the Hill. She lives in a restored townhouse with a granite fa?ade and copper roof, surrounded by birch and dogwood trees, hydrangeas and wisteria, and ivy swirling around the front door.
Kersti rings the bell. A Filipino woman wearing jeans and a stained T-shirt answers.
“Hello,” Kersti says. “Is Deirdre home?”
“Not yet.”
“She said it was okay if I came. I’m Kersti Kuusk.”
The woman hesitates, but eventually steps aside.
“And you are?”
“Laylay,” the woman says, closing the door.
The house is exactly as Kersti remembers it. High ceilings, dark parquet floors, wall-to-wall bookcases filled with old books that look more like props. Dark, gleaming antiques, fancy brocade sofas with matching armchairs, expensive knickknacks cluttering the surface of every piece of furniture in the room. The parlor has a breathtaking view of the Boston Public Garden.
“How is she?” Kersti asks.
“See for yourself,” Laylay says. “She’s waiting.”
Kersti moves numbly down the hall, past the bedrooms. She glances inside one of them, startled. It’s a room for a princess, with light pink walls and white eyelet curtains. There’s a pile of stuffed animals in the center of the bed, an embroidered bolster pillow, a Barbie sitting cross-legged on a hand-painted bookcase. It’s as though Deirdre reconstructed Cressida’s childhood room, preserving it exactly the way it must have been. As though she’s still expecting Cressida to return home from boarding school.
The den is at the end of the hall and has been converted into a hospital room. The smell hits Kersti before she even enters. Ointment layered with vanilla diffuser and perfume, an attempt to mask the scent of illness and hopelessness.
Kersti gasps when she sees Cressida for the first time in almost fifteen years. She’s propped up on her orthopedic bed, staring at a flat-screen TV on the wall in front of her, looking as beautiful as she was at eighteen. Deirdre obviously goes to great lengths to maintain her daughter’s appearance. Cressida’s hair is clean and shiny, still curly and perfectly untamed. Her lips are glossy, her aqua eyes clear and her cheeks pink, whether naturally or from a touch of shimmery rouge, Kersti can’t tell. She’s wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and a soft gray cardigan, her slender body not even hinting at paralysis or disfigurement.
Here is the beautiful, promising Cressida Strauss: a thirty-five-year-old invalid with massive brain damage. Kersti finds it easier to think of her as having died that day.
When Cressida first came out of the coma, Deirdre wrote Kersti to update her with the news. She was in a persistent vegetative state, which meant a partial state of arousal, with no sign of improvement. It sounded bleak, but by the time Kersti was finally allowed to see her three years after the accident, Cressida was able to blink, make sounds, and move her right hand enough to reach for things. And although Cressida did not seem to recognize Kersti that day, she did make eye contact with her.
“She’s looking right at me,” Kersti said.
“She’s in a minimally conscious state,” Deirdre explained. “She’s a bit more aware and responsive than someone in a vegetative state. Although, frankly, it’s hard to tell the difference.”
“What is the difference?” Kersti asked.
“She can focus and sometimes she responds to people,” Deirdre said. “She communicates with us, either by squeezing our hands or blinking. She can occasionally follow instructions and she’s attempted the odd word or phrase over the years, but nothing significant enough to hold on to. It’s all so very inconsistent, Kersti. From one day to the next, she can be alert or totally unresponsive.”
“It must be hard for you.”
“I was so hopeful at first,” Deirdre said. “When she first began to show signs of life. It was so encouraging, but then her progress just sort of stalled.”
“You mentioned she’s tried to speak. What sort of things does she say?”
“Nothing enlightening,” Deirdre shrugged. “‘Mom.’ ‘Cold.’ ‘Thirsty.’”
Kersti turned back to look at her friend and was startled to find tears streaming down Cressida’s cheeks. Kersti was baffled. Was Cressida capable of feeling things?
“She knows me,” Kersti said, leaning over her friend’s body. “Cress? Do you know who I am?”
“This wasn’t a good idea,” Deirdre said, stepping in.