“My name means ‘follower of Christ,’ which is ironic since my parents are both atheist.”
Cressida laughs and Kersti feels a sudden crushing desire to impress her new roommate, to hear that laugh again and again.
“So what’s your story?” Cressida asks her.
“I don’t think I have one.”
“If you’re here, you’ve got one.”
Kersti thinks about it for a moment. She feels unsure of herself, more than the usual low hum of insecurity. The beer is making her queasy. Everything is whirling—her mind, the room, her sense of balance.
Cressida hands her a cigarette from her pack of Marlboro Lights.
“I don’t—”
“Right.” Cressida lights one for herself. “Give it some time,” she says confidently. “Smoking is like breathing here. I started at twelve.”
“My parents are European. They both smoke.”
Cressida exhales perfect smoke donuts above Kersti’s head. “You met Claudine?”
“Who?”
“Madame Hamidou. Our mother-away-from-home.”
“Yes. She seems nice.”
“What does your dad do?” Cressida asks her, jumping from one question to the next.
“He owns a travel agency.”
Cressida raises an eyebrow.
“I’m here on scholarship,” Kersti says.
Cressida tips her head and fixes her aquamarine eyes on Kersti, as clear and brilliant as two perfectly round gemstones.
“My mother is an Old Girl,” Kersti explains. “Her parents had money, but they cut her off when she moved to Canada with my dad.”
“That’s romantic.”
Nothing about her parents’ marriage strikes Kersti as romantic. It’s true Anni Lepp came from a fairly affluent family—by Estonian standards—and gave it all up to be with Kersti’s father, Paavo, but having grown up in their home, under the dark cloud of their mismatched union, Kersti can only describe her mother’s decision as impractical and misguided. Romantic, never.
Anni was from the Old Town of Tallinn, the daughter of a successful architect. She claims to have had a good childhood. They lived in a modern house facing a vast pine forest and her fondest memory is of putting on her cross-country skis inside the house every morning, and then skiing down the stairs right into the woods. When she was nine, her father sent her to school in Switzerland. It was 1944 and he wanted her to be safe and also to have better opportunities than she would have had in a poor country like Estonia. She ended up staying there almost a decade. Her father also sent his money to Switzerland, stashing it there for safekeeping during the war, which is how he managed to hang on to it when most people lost everything. When she graduated from the Lycée, her parents sent her to Canada to live with second cousins, always hoping she would have a better life than Estonia could offer.
Paavo was a poor working-class guy from Kalamaja in Northern Tallinn. He was not educated and had no obvious skills or ambition. He worked on the assembly line at the cross-country ski factory. In 1948, when he was eighteen, he went to Canada on the SS Walnut—a boat full of Baltic refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion. Paavo had nothing of real substance to offer a girl like Anni Lepp, but he was extremely handsome and charismatic, and she fell in love with him at an Estonian Youth Club dance. He’d already been in Canada five years but was still doing odd jobs in factories. He hadn’t managed to build anything.
Her parents were furious. All their hard work and sacrifice to ensure a good life for their daughter had led Anni to a blue-collar Estonian barely eking out a living. When she married him, they cut her off.
Four decades later, Kersti’s parents have the kind of terrible marriage that is marred not by vicious fighting, but by frequent, long, punishing silences.
“Does she ever regret it?” Cressida asks Kersti.
“Marrying my dad?”
“Sacrificing the family money.”
“We don’t talk about that stuff.”
“Parents rarely do,” Cressida says. “They’re too afraid to let us know they make mistakes. God forbid we would ever find out they’re human.”
“What are your parents like?” Kersti asks her. “How come they sent you here when you were so young?”
“It was the best thing for me,” Cressida says, as though she’s said it a million times before and believes it. It’s a canned response, even Kersti can tell. “My mother’s a stage actress and my father is a producer. She’s British and he’s back and forth between L.A. and New York all the time. They’re never in the same city for very long. They felt boarding school would give me the most stability.”
“Did it?”
“Oh, sure.”
Kersti can’t tell if she’s being serious.
“What difference does it make if I’m here on my own, or if they’re fucking me up in closer proximity?” she says rhetorically. “It all evens out in the end.”
She finishes her chope and flags the waiter, who doesn’t seem to care how old they are.
“Do you do this every Sunday morning?” Kersti asks her.
“And Saturdays after lunch.”
“Is there anything else to do?”
“Besides skiing? Sometimes we go to Ouchy, down by the lake.”
The waiter brings over the chope and Cressida speaks to him in perfect, melodic French. They laugh and he pats her shoulder affectionately.
“What else can you tell me about Kersti Kuusk?”
Kersti wants to tell her something dramatic and shocking that will impress her, but she doesn’t have much in her arsenal. Her father drinks too much. Whose doesn’t? She’s a virgin. It’s the usual adolescent alienation and sense of impending doom. “I’m pretty ordinary.”
“You must have some little juicy secret.”
“My family’s nickname for me is ?nnetus,” Kersti offers.
“Which means?”
“Accident,” Kersti replies. “My mom got pregnant with me after her tubes were tied, seven years after what was supposed to be her last kid. I don’t really get along with any of them.”
“Didn’t they adore you and smother you? Isn’t it always like that when the baby of the family comes along late?”
“Not in my family. They were pretty indifferent to me. It’s kind of like I’m not a real Kuusk because I wasn’t supposed to be. I think that’s the real reason they sent me here. They don’t have the energy to parent me.”
“I knew you had a story,” Cressida says triumphantly.
“I don’t think about it much.”
“That’s a lie. I bet you think about it a lot.”