The Finishing School

“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.

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