“Be careful,” he told her. “I’ll come and see you soon and we can discuss how we’ll go about setting that trap.”
“Thank you, Valentín,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
They embraced. Her face was close to his neck, and she kissed him there before he turned his face down and kissed her on the lips. She smiled and he blushed. “I ought to start courting you properly,” he told her.
“I suppose so,” she said.
He grinned at her, as happy as could be, and she twirled away from the young man, grabbing her mount’s bridle. As she led the horse back toward the stable a light rain began to fall. Once again, she recalled how her father had said rainy days were good for casting spells, and she quickened her pace, afraid of remaining out in the open.
1934: 5
Time is a treacherousmistress. In our youth it flows slow and deep; the days stretch out endlessly. When we are children, a summer lasts for a century. As we age, the flow of time speeds up. Suddenly, a year vanishes with the snap of one’s fingers. How quickly time eludes us, how easily it tricks us.
When I think back to the end of 1934, I picture an unending, bone-chilling whiteness. That month of December seems to have taken place in slow motion, as if our lives had been as frozen as the pond where the students skated.
Certain sentences, certain words, suddenly leap to my mind, and I can recall with a startling clarity a moment I thought long faded. Tiny details surface, as if revealed by the spring thaw. I can remember, even decades later, the timbre of Ginny’s voice, the sound of her footsteps on the stairs, the embroidered vines adorning the cuffs of her winter gloves.
After Thanksgiving break Ginny’s melancholia and anxiousness worsened. It was a few days into December that she had a row with Edgar over the phone. I didn’t hear what was said, but Mary Ann Mason, who made it a habit to eavesdrop on anyone who used the house phone, hurried up to tell Carolyn and me about it.
“Ginny hung up on Edgar,” she said, installing herself at theedge of a couch while I was busy combing Carolyn’s hair. She was going out that night and I was to be her handmaiden again.
“Mary Ann, you should be ashamed, snooping around on us,” I said, even though I’d eavesdropped on Carolyn and her father recently.
“What? I was getting a book I forgot downstairs and happened to overhear them,” Mary Ann said. “Anyway, she’s mighty strange lately, don’t you think?”
“She likes melodrama,” Carolyn said. “She’s probably trying to seem more interesting.”
“I don’t think she’s doing this for attention,” I said.
“Betty, I know you’re fond of her, but you must admit she’s an odd one and getting odder. If she’s not doing it for attention, then she clearly has something wrong up there,” Carolyn said, and tapped her forehead with her index finger for emphasis before fiddling with her jewelry box. “Mind you, Gin-gin can be a sweetheart at times, but she’s also a handful.”
“You’re absolutely correct,” Mary Ann agreed eagerly. “That’s a pretty necklace. Where are you going tonight, Caro? Don’t tell me, are you heading out with David Dundy?”
Carolyn pressed a pearl necklace against her neck and looked in the mirror. “It’s not David.”
“Who, then?”
“Someone or other,” Carolyn said.
“A secret lover?”
“Mary Ann, if I tell you, then it’s no secret.”
I joined Mary Ann in her cheery teasing. I was eager to move us away from the subject of Ginny’s behavior. It was not something that could be discussed with Carolyn, who’d never understood Ginny’s personality in the first place and seemed now even less likely to comprehend the delicate state of our mutual friend.
But did anyone understand her? Did I? Decades later this question still haunts me. Did I even know Ginny? If I had known her, wouldn’t I have been able to save her?
The day after that fight over the phone, when I was working on a paper, I heard the sound of a motor and looked out the windowto see Edgar’s glossy car coming down the driveway. It stopped in front of the dorm. He stepped out of the car and waved up at our window. I waved back, put on a sweater and my gloves, and hurried downstairs to greet him.
“Ginny’s in class,” I informed him. “She won’t be back until three o’clock.”
“I know that. I was wondering if I could talk with you,” he said.
“The house mother is not here right now, so you can’t come in.”
“Understood. Can I interest you in a brief ride instead?”
Edgar had a light, effervescent quality, yet that day his face seemed sallow and serious. Whatever he wanted to discuss must have been important. I suspected, by the way he looked over my shoulder, that even if we could have gone together into the dorm, he wouldn’t have liked that. There would be no guarantee of privacy, not with people like Mary Ann around.
