“I’m Betty Tremblay,” I said. “I’m an English major.”
“And what do you do for fun?”
“I write stories. Excuse me, did you say you speak to ghosts?”
“Yes. What kind of stories do you write?”
“Stories,” I mumbled, trying to utter a coherent sentence in the presence of such an apparition and managing only to stare at her. “I…ah…I write fantastic stories. I want to be inWeird Tales.” When I spoke, I made a sound closer to the croak of a frog than words. “Spiritualism?”
“I’ll tell you all about it over ice cream. I am deplorably in need of something sweet and I’ve been told they’ll serve us sundaes to welcome us to campus this afternoon. I saw you have Poe’s stories atop your desk. Who else do you like to read?”
That is how we met. Her communion with the dead struck me as odd, almost sacrilegious, but she dismissed my concerns with such good humor that I was utterly charmed. Soon enough it didn’t seem strange to me that I had a roommate who would periodically sit at her desk and write down words dictated by a ghost.
Ginny did not go into a trance. It was none of the stuff you see in films. She’d simply sit and scribble. It did not bother me. But it bothered Carolyn. Their first meeting was frosty, the second was like we were living in Antarctica, and Carolyn didn’t warm up to Ginny no matter how much I tried to convince her that the new student would make for a pleasant addition to our social circle. Carolyn called Ginny “a broad with a soft conk,” and that was that.
Unfortunately, because Ginny was my roommate and because Carolyn and Ginny both happened to be arts students, they saw quite a bit of each other. I remember Carolyn ranting against Ginny’s painting techniques. Ginny had said in class that she simply let spirits guide her hands, while Carolyn was a dedicated perfectionist, and she railed for an hour against the “frilly fool,” as she’d nicknamed her on account of her eccentric fashion sense.
I quite liked Ginny’s drawings and still have many of them, along with some of her Spiritualist “correspondence,” as she called it. I thought her art was original and vibrant.
I couldn’t tell Carolyn that.
It is difficult nowadays to understand the lines traced by someone’s class and background, boundaries as rigid as iron. Traversing them was perilous. As the daughter of a working-class French Canadian couple, I was lucky that Carolyn had taken me under her wing, that she’d allowed me into her circle of friends. I couldn’t jeopardize my standing by taking Ginny’s side. I attempted to cool Carolyn’s hot temper whenever she began bickering with Ginny, but these attempts were unsuccessful.
I was placed in an impossible position. I liked Carolyn and was grateful for the many times she’d given me a ride in her glossy white car and the occasions on which she’d let me borrow her shoes or a bracelet. For my birthday, Carolyn had given me an exquisite brand-new typewriter. It was the thing I’d dreamed of for months, and like a fairy godmother she’d waved her wand and brought it to my room, wrapped with a blue ribbon. Such generosity, such thoughtfulness. Carolyn was my friend.
Yet I loved Ginny.
At the time I was unable to recognize the nature of my feelings. I’d had schoolgirl crushes on other young women, yet I was struck quickly and suddenly with what amounted to true love when it came to Ginny. I loved the sound of her voice, the curve of her mouth, her long monologues at night while she brushed her hair and she told me about a book she’d read or a painting she’d seen.
This might be why she has lingered in my thoughts for so long: because she was my first love. It was a one-sided, silent love, and yet it was true. This might also be why I sometimes feel I understand Edgar’s grief better than Carolyn ever did. Both of us were left brokenhearted and bereft. Both of us still cling to the hope that one day we might have answers, that we might be able to write an ending to this tale.
It would be much easier to know that Ginny died, even if it was in a terrible and brutal fashion, than to picture a nothingness, a void, darkness.
Forgive me, I am getting ahead of myself.
Suffice to say that September was a quilt knit of petty squabbles and spats, and there was little peace to be had around Joyce House whenever Carolyn and Ginny were in the same room. Most often it was Carolyn who instigated the disagreements and Ginny who’d storm off, but whoever caused the clashes, they were loud, and more than once the house mother was roused and spoke sternly to the both of them, with no discernible change. Carolyn was too proud to admit she’d done any wrong and Ginny too wounded to receive a half-hearted apology, if Carolyn should deign to speak it.
Peace reigned when Ginny and I were in our room, or when she spoke to other girls, but it was nothing but rows and arguments if Carolyn poked her head through our doorway or they chanced to bump into each other on the stairs.
In October, however, Carolyn evinced a drastic change in her attitude toward Ginny. She became more pleasant, less judgmental, and even began inviting Ginny on our outings. Bertha Trumbull, another member of our social circle, believed Carolyn’s mind was altered after she learned that Ginny’s father was a friend of an important Hollywood producer. Carolyn had mentioned once ortwice that she’d like to act, and Bertha firmly believed Carolyn was courting Ginny’s favor because she hoped to be screen-tested the next summer.
Mary Ann Mason said Carolyn had sweetened her tune after Edgar Yates stopped by one evening to drop off a few books for Ginny. He was a young law student in Boston, from a very good family, and rumor had it Ginny had transferred to Stoneridge to be closer to him. Further rumor was that he’d propose any day now, that he was besotted with her, and that they’d been writing to each other since they’d met a year earlier when he visited friends on the West Coast.
Carolyn knew Edgar through the intricate web of social connections around Massachusetts Bay and Mary Ann thought Carolyn’s estimation of Ginny had increased greatly after she learned of her association with him. If Patrick Yates’s son liked Virginia Somerset, then that must mean she was not a country bumpkin.
Still, there were other theories. If you believed the Gardner twins, it was Ginny’s secret blueberry pie recipe that won Carolyn over.
I simply thought it was Carolyn being Carolyn, for she was mercurial and mutable, although that was part of her charm. One minute you’d be infuriated by one of her comments, the next you’d be delighted by a clever retort.
Whatever the reason for this change, I welcomed it.
—
I remember October asone long, pleasant succession of days filled with laughter and light.
We decorated the common room at Joyce House with harvest wreaths made with wooden beads and corn husks, went apple picking, and constructed a papier-mâché cornucopia for our dinner table.
Ginny did try to teach Carolyn and me her blueberry pie recipe. Even if Carolyn’s valiant culinary effort turned out burned at the edges, we laughed and ate together. We headed to the movies, seven girls squished into Carolyn’s car, all of us wearing hats and gloves except for Ginny. We flicked on the radio in the commonroom in the evenings and tried to learn the latest dances. They played “You Oughta Be in Pictures,” “Cocktails for Two,” and “All I Do Is Dream of You.”
