The Body in the Ivy (25 page)

Her words hung unanswered. Prin lit a cigarette and blew a few smoke rings.

“Look, I'll help you get the proposal done and organize it. But that's all. Maybe a few Bailey's fudge sundae runs,” she said, trying to lighten Prin's mood. The smoke rings and the total absence of any facial expression were never good signs.

“I think you're forgetting something,” Prin said quietly.

“What?” Phoebe said boldly, knowing full well what Prin was talking about.

“A certain little accident?”

Three plus years at Pelham suddenly came crashing down on Phoebe. She felt like someone had sucked all the breath from her body, leaving her lungs limp balloons. The friendship, this supposed friendship, had all been leading up to this moment, the moment when Prin would ask her to do something unspeakable, a moment Prin had planned from the start. Not necessarily this very request, but something like it. All the other ones had been a rehearsal, and Phoebe had played her part to perfection to the point where she herself had disappeared into her character. Now she was left without one.

“Take a deep breath,” she heard from far away. “Oh shit, here, breathe into this.”

Prin had grabbed the paper bag Phoebe used to line her wastebasket and was putting it over Phoebe's mouth and nose. It worked.

Phoebe pulled the bag from her face and stood up.

“No, I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it.” She felt totally calm and in control now. The new Phoebe, she thought. A phoenix Phoebe rising from the ashes of the old Phoebe. Prin couldn't tell anyone about the car accident without revealing her illegal car, and besides, it would be her word against Phoebe's. Prin would never take that kind of chance, Phoebe realized. Prin always had to be in control, always had to be the winner.

And so she was.

Prin tapped the ash from her cigarette onto Phoebe's windowsill. “I took the precaution of having Pete take pictures of the front of the car before his brother came, and samples from the dog hair on the bumper. I wrote an account of the accident. He has it all in his safe.”

Phoebe was not about to give up. This was blackmail pure and simple. She felt an abhorrence for the person in front of her creep into every part of her being, replacing every molecule of adoration.

“There's no way you can prove I was driving.”

“You don't remember what you said to Pete at the garage? I'm afraid you were acting a little crazy, sweetie. ‘I'm a murderer! Oh God, I killed the dog' are the words I recall and the words Pete recalls, too. We were just reminiscing about it the other day. I've never liked the new color—didn't really like the silver, either—and Pete's brother is going to redo it for me in candy apple red before graduation. My graduation, that is. I'd hate for Professor Shaw to find out that the hit-and-run driver who was responsible for his dog's death is a Pelham senior.”

Phoebe had replayed the scene in the garage that rainy night, along with the rest of it, over and over. All summer, she had tried not to think about it, working extra hours tutoring underprivileged kids and refusing the trip to Europe her parents offered. Penance. And she'd be paying for that night for the rest of her life starting now, once more. She knew she was beaten.

“What's your topic?”

 

Gwen Mansfield had always liked Pelham's custom of Friday afternoon tea. The food was sufficiently substantial to lure a date out and show him off in turn. After Andrew, she was into trophies, dumping each conquest as soon as he was securely nailed to the wall. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth—not MIT, though. What was the phrase? “The odds are good, but the goods are odd”? The year had gone by swiftly. It was March and she would be graduating cum laude, hopefully summa, in May. Her applications to business schools had been filed well before the deadlines and she was fairly confident. This afternoon her date was a Harvard senior, Geoff Weaver, who was also prebusiness. They'd been seeing each other for a few weeks now. She'd been planning to break it off for a while, but there was something about him—his drive, a single-mindedness she shared—that kept causing her to postpone it. Besides, he was very good in bed and more than passably good-looking, with toffee-colored hair and bright blue eyes. He hadn't fallen prey to the current fashions, sticking to the Brooks button-downs and chinos he'd worn as soon as he was out of short
pants. Tonight he was taking her to a party at the Harvard B School given by someone from his house who'd been a year ahead of him.

Gwen saw Andrew before he saw her. He was standing with Prin, his back to one of the large plate-glass windows that lined one wall of Crandall's living room. The sun created an aura surrounding the two figures. Prin had looped her arm through his elbow and had pulled him close. Gwen didn't know whether she hated Prin more for taking Andrew away—Andrew, who had truly loved Gwen, as she had him—or for what Prin was doing to Andrew, stringing him along the way she had poor Max Gold and all the others. Andrew had a slightly silly grin on his face. Gwen pictured a huge cartoonlike ten-ton weight suspended above his head, a thread holding it just waiting for Prin to snip it.

“I know that guy,” Geoff said. “He's a Porcellian, too. Andrew Scott. Come on.” Harvard didn't have fraternities, but the clubs functioned in an even more exclusive way.

Gwen followed Geoff over to where Prin and Andrew were standing. Andrew stepped forward to shake Geoff's hand, and they immediately started talking about friends in common and what they were doing. Prin tolerated it all for a minute, then broke in. “I think you're forgetting something, Andrew.”

He blushed and looked a bit uncomfortable, glancing at Gwen, whom he had greeted hastily, then he stood up a bit straighter.

Prin stretched her left hand out and wiggled her ring finger.

“Yeah,” Andrew said, any awkwardness suppressed,
the pride in his voice unmistakable. “I
was
forgetting something. Prin's agreed to marry me.”

“Well, great, man. Congratulations. The old ball and chain!” Geoff gave Andrew a playful punch on the shoulder; Andrew pretended to be hurt, rubbing the spot, saying, “Don't knock it, buddy. You should try it yourself. Gwen's a terrific girl.”

Geoff looked at the girl by his side appraisingly. “Gwen
is
a terrific girl and I'd be lucky to have her say yes.”

“Then why don't you ask her?” Prin challenged. The sun on her diamond was making rainbows on the carpet.

“What do you say, Gwen? I think we'd make a pretty good team.” He got down on one knee. “So, do you think you could marry a poor slob like me?”

Gwen looked at Geoff. The whole thing was ridiculous and she was embarrassed at the picture they made in front of the whole dorm. The room had gone quiet; there was an air of expectation.

“Yes,” she said. A year ago Gwen's father had informed her that due to some ill-advised investments on his part, the family would be doing some rather drastic belt tightening. There was enough to see her through senior year, but that was about it. Geoff was going to go places and they'd go there together. “Yes, I'll marry you, you poor slob.”

He kissed her hand and jumped up. The room erupted in applause. Gwen had just added an M.R.S. to her B.A., supposedly every Pelham graduate's dream.

“We need some champagne,” Prin said. “Let's get out of here. I'm thinking the Ritz.”

And Gwen was thinking that she had never hated anyone as much as she hated Hélène Prince and never would. She told Geoff she had to go change and made her way through the throngs of well-wishers, including the housemother, who said, “That makes ten of my seniors so far! Thank you, dear.”

But one of those seniors wouldn't get her man, Gwen thought. She didn't know how she was going to do it, but there was no way Prin was going to end up in the
Times
bridal section as Mrs. Andrew Scott. Gwen held back her tears of anger and grief until she was in her room, then allowed herself a moment of release, pushing her face into her pillow, and wishing she could be pushing Prin's.

 

When Chris missed her period, she wasn't concerned. She had always had an irregular cycle and Sandy was very careful about using condoms. He'd been amazed she wasn't on the pill and she'd been just as amazed that he would think she was. He knew she was a virgin and had repeatedly talked about the gift she had given him. The Pill. Everybody talked about it, but you couldn't get it unless you were married and even then it wasn't easy in Massachusetts. Chris had never taken part in the freewheeling sex discussions that took place in the common room on her floor. She had preferred to think of the act in plant terms—until she met Sandy, and then it was too precious to be vulgarized by the laughter and innuendo she occasionally overheard from other students. Her mother had given her a thorough, straightforward facts-of-life talk when she'd been about eleven, and that was that. The college had what was called “The Marriage
Lecture” for engaged seniors before graduation. Pelham allowed girls who got married before graduating to finish their degrees, but they couldn't live in the dorms. “Don't want us to know what we're missing,” Rachel had said freshman year when they‘d first heard about the rule.

Yet, as the weeks went by and still nothing happened, Chris began to wonder. She couldn't very well go to the infirmary and ask for a pregnancy test, and she had only a vague notion of what one was, something about a rabbit dying. She certainly didn't want that, but she had to find out. She looked in the Yellow Pages and made an appointment with a gynecologist in Cambridge, using her grandmother's maiden name, “Tolliver,” and wearing a ring Granny had left her that at a glance looked like a wedding band. The doctor was very kind, asking her if this was her first internal exam and explaining what he was doing as he went along. His nurse seemed to be about Chris's own age. It was all a bit scary and definitely humiliating. Surely medical science could come up with a better way to examine a woman, but then there wasn't much incentive, Chris thought, picturing a man in her position and how quickly a new device would make its way onto the market.

“Everything looks fine. I'll send this out to the lab, but I don't really need to. From the looks of it, you and Mr. Tolliver are going to have a new addition to the family in about seven and a half months. Why don't you get dressed and come into my office. We can talk a bit about prenatal care and then you'll need to schedule another appointment with my secretary. Congratulations.”

Even before the doctor and nurse left, Chris was filled with such joy that she could scarcely keep herself from whooping out loud. Sandy would make a perfect father, so kind, so attentive. April. That meant the baby was due sometime in December. Oh, she hoped it would be before Christmas! This year they'd bought a tree in Porter Square, bringing it back to Sandy's apartment and trimming it with garlands of popcorn and cranberries plus six exquisite blown-glass ornaments filled with colored liquid that Chris had splurged on at Design Research in Harvard Square. They'd used real candles, with a bucket of water nearby, and Chris had thought she had never seen a more beautiful tree. After Christmas, she bought peanut butter and birdseed, to make pinecone treats for the birds the way they always had at the farm. They took the tree and set it up deep in the woods surrounding Walden Pond, then made love on the space blanket Sandy had brought to spread on the snow. She hadn't been a bit cold. Just the opposite. Feeling his body melt into hers, she felt as if she was burning up.

There were babies everywhere when she left the doctor's office—in strollers, on their mothers' laps in the bus. Beautiful babies, but none as beautiful as the precious one inside her. She marveled at the thought of it all. This tiny life, this
seed
growing inside
her
. Nature arranged everything so beautifully. She realized that she had known she was pregnant for quite some time. She'd had a feeling of intense well-being and had noticed a new glow in her eyes, her skin. She laughed and covered her mouth, turning it into a cough. People on the bus would think she was crazy. She'd asked the
doctor when her morning sickness would start and he'd told her it varied with the individual: “You might be one of the very lucky ones and never have it.” With or without it, Chris knew she was one of the lucky ones. For example, Sandy was home. She'd called him on the chance that he would be. He didn't have a class this afternoon, but he'd had one this morning and might have stayed on campus. When she'd told him she was in town, he had sounded delighted, but said to give him a half hour or so. “The place is a mess, cher.” She'd told him she didn't care about dirty dishes in the sink, but was pleased that he thought it was important to clean up for her. Maybe he'd be the type of father who'd change diapers. “I have some good news,” she'd said. “Can't wait to tell you.”

 

He flung the door open. “You aced your poetry paper!” Prodded by Sandy, who believed that mathematics was poetry and vice versa, Chris was taking Modern British and American Poetry.

“Yes, I got an
A,
but that's not my surprise.”

“You look like the proverbial cat that got that poor little canary. Come here and tell me all about it.”

Sandy had an oversized, overstuffed armchair by the window in his bedroom that Chris was sure they had shaped to their bodies over the course of the year. It fit them perfectly and she settled in, her legs over his and her arms around his neck.

“Something smells good.” She sniffed the air. Sandy was into incense. “Is it new?”

“You didn't come here to talk about patchouli, now don't be a tease. What's going on?”

Chris moved her arms and took his face in her hands.

“You're going to be a father. We're going to have a baby!”