Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (14 page)

“It’s okay,” said Gilda, sensing that Danielle was in big trouble with the other seniors. “I don’t think there’s much of a story here anyway.”

The girls regarded her with disbelief.

“I mean, it’s
nice
in here; don’t get me wrong. But it isn’t what I was hoping for, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint the other freshmen.”

“Are you kidding?!” Nikki yelled. “It’s awesome in here!”

“Where are the tanning beds? Where’s the whirlpool? Where’s the minibar?”

“We
have
a mini-refrigerator right over there and for your information, there’s plenty—”

“Listen,” said Priscilla, interrupting Nikki. “Freshmen aren’t allowed in the Senior Common Room. It’s as simple as that. And Gilda, we’d appreciate it if you’d keep quiet about everything you saw here.”

“I was just leaving,” said Gilda. “Thanks, Danielle; I’ll start researching my story about Miss Underhill instead.”

Outside the Senior Common Room, Gilda stopped and pressed her ear against the door. She thought she heard Priscilla saying something about “secrets.”

Gilda glanced at her watch and saw she only had half an hour left in her free period before her next class. With pen and reporter’s notebook in hand, she headed straight down the hallway toward Miss Underbill’s office.

Gilda was surprised to find Miss Underbill’s office occupied by a stranger—a young woman who had the formal, uncomfortable look of someone just starting a new job.

“Can I help you?”

“I was looking for Miss Underhill.”

“She’s not here. I mean, she doesn’t work here anymore.”

“She doesn’t
work
here anymore?”

“Excuse me.” Mrs. McCracken suddenly appeared in the doorway, instantly blasting the room with honeysuckle-scented perfume. “Susan, would you mind setting up a lunch meeting for me to talk with this girl’s parents?” She pointed to a stack of papers in her hand.

“Of course.” Susan was apparently Mrs. McCracken’s new assistant.

“And how are things going for
you
, Gilda?”

Gilda remembered the intimidating feeling of gazing into the headmistress’s fierce eyes. “Great!” she declared, aware that she should try to stay on Mrs. McCracken’s good side. “I’m learning so much in my classes, and I’m writing for
The Petunia
now.”

“Wonderful! And is there anything we can help you with?”

“I’m supposed to be interviewing Miss Underhill for
The Petunia
, but it appears that her employment has been terminated.”

Mrs. McCracken stood up a little straighter. “Unfortunately, Miss Underhill is no longer with us.”

“Why did she leave?” Gilda wondered if Miss Underhill had been fired.

“The circumstances of her departure are private, which is how she wanted it.” Mrs. McCracken glanced at Susan, who quickly busied herself with penciling something in an appointment book. “Sorry I can’t tell you more, Gilda, but just ask me or Susan for help if you need anything.”

Gilda thought fast, hoping to get a bit more information out of Mrs. McCracken. “Mrs. McCracken, I’ve also been wondering what happened to Tiara.”

Mrs. McCracken looked surprised. “You’re friends with Tiara?”

“Sort of.” What was the right answer? If she said she was Tiara’s close friend, would Mrs. McCracken give her more information? “Tiara hasn’t been in school for a while, and I wondered if she was okay.”

Mrs. McCracken put an arm around Gilda and guided her toward the doorway. “Gilda, I know that Tiara’s little episode was upsetting for everyone. She has some issues that I’ve been talking to her parents about, but you don’t have to worry because she’s doing fine.”

“When is she coming back to school?” Gilda turned to face Mrs. McCracken, resisting the headmistress’s subtle effort to nudge her out of the office.

“As I said, there are some issues. We’re hoping she’ll be back in school, but it’s a private matter involving Tiara and her parents.” Mrs. McCracken glanced at her watch. “I’m late for a meeting, Gilda, but so glad your school year is going well so far!

“Susan,” said Mrs. McCracken, now halfway out the door, “please do get that meeting set up for me.”

“Will do,” said Susan, turning to her computer.

Mrs. McCracken hurried away.

Gilda hesitated, noticing something on the new assistant’s desk that might be very useful—a stack of directories of home addresses for all the school employees. As Susan busied herself with typing, Gilda swiped one of the handbooks and walked quickly from the room.

Gilda looked up Velma Underbill’s address in the directory and discovered that she lived in Hamtramck.

Pausing in the hallway, she pulled out her reporter’s notebook and scribbled:

G
ilda gazed through the bus window at the treeless streets of Detroit, where small lots were stuffed with cars: used cars, trucks, taxicabs, school buses, junkyards towering with crashed cars and auto parts. She passed liquor stores and small churches where some young man always stood alone, as if waiting for someone to show up; she passed weather-beaten houses and burned-out, boarded-up old factories.

Finally the bus turned down Holbrook Street into the gritty, quirky community of Hamtramck, where the streets were lined with rows of pointy little houses with rickety porches and balconies with wrought-iron railings.

Gilda stepped off the bus and walked past Genie’s Wienies and the Our Lady Queen of Apostles Church. Finally, she reached the row of fragile houses where Miss Underhill lived.

Miss Underhill greeted her with frank confusion. “Gilda? What are you doing here?”

Miss Underhill looked softer away from school: she wore faded jeans and house slippers, and her black hair hung over one shoulder in a loose ponytail.

Gilda realized she hadn’t thought through exactly what she was going to say. “I heard you left Our Lady, and—well, I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.” She knew that her words sounded false; she and Miss Underhill hadn’t been the least bit close. Nevertheless, Miss Underbill’s face softened.

“That is so nice of you, Gilda! Why don’t you come in?”

Inside, Gilda’s curiosity was piqued by the sight of a wheelchair in the middle of Miss Underbill’s dim, cluttered living room. She followed Miss Underhill into the kitchen, where a tiny, elderly woman moved slowly toward the kitchen table, clutching her walker with rope-veined hands.

“Mother and I were just about to have some tea,” said Miss Underhill, pulling china cups from a cabinet.

“Your tea tastes like pee,” Miss Underbill’s mother slurred. She wore dark red lipstick that bled into the wrinkles and crevices of her lips.

Gilda giggled, and Miss Underbill’s mother stared at her with small, watery eyes that gleamed with a mean sparkle.
She looks like a little witch
, Gilda thought.

“Who are YOU?”

“That’s Gilda, Mother. She came to say hello. Gilda, this is my mother, Hazel.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Gilda.

“One of them li’l Lady of Sorrows girl-chil’ren?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Miss Underhill, helping her mother sit down and handing her a cup of tea. “Gilda goes to Our Lady of Sorrows.”

“Rich girl!”

“I’m actually on scholarship.” Gilda felt the need to distinguish
herself from the stereotypical Lady of Sorrows “girl-chil’ren.”

“Smart girl,” Hazel declared, pointing a finger directly at Gilda. “Not like Velma. She drop out of college.”

“And
worked
to help support you,” Miss Underhill snapped. “Gilda, would you like some tea?”

Gilda didn’t have a chance to reply because Miss Underhill’s mother began to scream. “Don’t you tell me about money! You’ve been stealing from me all my life! All of you have!”

With her outburst complete, Hazel glared fiercely at her daughter, waiting for her to respond. When Miss Underhill only continued to dangle a tea bag into a cup, Hazel seemed to give up and crumple inwardly. She crouched quietly, like a small grumpy squirrel, lifting her teacup slowly to her withered lips with two gnarled hands.

Miss Underhill remained eerily calm, and simply placed a plate of shortbread cookies next to her mother.

“Gilda, Mother’s having a bad day because she decided to go outside by herself and cross two lanes of traffic in her
walker
—and not at any stoplight, mind you, but right in the
middle
of the street—just so she could get to the liquor store. Mother
knows
she’s not supposed to be drinking because this is what happens when she drinks.”

“I need my Bailey’s.”

“You’re lucky you’re even alive right now, Mother,” said Miss Underhill, sounding increasingly impatient. “You could have been hit by a car.”

Miss Underhill’s mother blew raspberries at Velma.

This was the last straw for Velma. “Mother, I’m going to have to put you in a home if this keeps up!”

“Put yourself in a home.”

“Put myself in a home? That makes a lot of sense!”

“We should both be in a home for the mentally insane. Then we’ll have tea.” Hazel Underhill broke into a raspy laugh.

Gilda felt as if she had accidentally wandered onto a stage where a volatile, demented play was in progress. It seemed that both Miss Underhill and her mother were liable to pick up an object and hurl it across the room at any moment.

“I should probably be going,” said Gilda, quietly beginning to back out of the kitchen. “I have a ton of homework to do.”

“There’s a drowned girl at that school,” said Hazel, looking at Gilda.

This non sequitur made Gilda catch her breath. She hesitated, eagerly waiting for Hazel to say more.

“I seen her walking up and down the lake by the trees when I visited Velma for lunch one time. Lost.”

Gilda stared. “You
seen
—I mean, you
saw
Dolores Lambert’s ghost?”

Hazel merely nodded and sipped her tea in reply.

Miss Underhill gestured to Gilda to follow her from the kitchen toward the living room. “Gilda,” she said, lowering her voice, “Mother’s been drinking today, and she’s suffering from some senior moments, to say the least. She hardly knows what she’s saying right now.”

Gilda felt certain that Hazel’s words must have
some
meaning. “But—you
yourself
told me that ‘if you make any sound when you cross the bridge, Dolores’s ghost comes out of the water screaming’!”

Miss Underhill winced, as if remembering something she would rather forget. She reached for a package of cigarettes on the mantel. “Sorry if I scared you, I just don’t take chances with stuff like that.” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply “Call me superstitious.” She exhaled toward the ceiling.

Gilda coughed. It was a habit she had developed from the days when her mother smoked; she had often used dramatic displays of poor respiratory health to motivate her mother to quit.

“Sorry,” said Velma, waving smoke around with her hand. “But we’re not at school, right?”

“Hey, it’s a free country.” Secretly, Gilda was shocked to see the woman who had aggressively handed out detentions about skirt length lighting up right in front of her. She wondered how many of the most strict teachers at school were at home chain-smoking right at that moment.

“I’m trying to quit, but I’m just so stressed after the day I’ve had with Mother. And on top of that, I need to find a job.”

“It’s none of my business, but—did you get fired?”

Miss Underhill shook her head. “I decided to leave.”

“Why?”

“I need a job that pays better, for one thing. Besides, there’s something just—
wrong
about that place.” She flicked cigarette ashes into her teacup. “I think it really is haunted.”

Gilda was fascinated. “You saw Dolores’s ghost, too?”

“The whole time I was there, I sensed this presence—like someone who was really unhappy about something was always watching me. I think …” Miss Underhill shook her head as if she thought better of whatever she was about to say.

“You think,
what
?”

Something crashed in the kitchen, startling both Gilda and Miss Underhill.

“Sounds like Mother dropped her teacup again.” Miss Underhill sighed and stubbed out her cigarette. “Listen, I would drive you home, but I can’t leave Mother.”

“But, Miss Underhill, what were you just about to say?”

“Oh, nothing. I can’t remember. I have to go now, okay?”

Gilda wanted to ask Miss Underhill and her mother about a hundred more questions, but Miss Underhill made it clear that the conversation was over.

“Good luck, Gilda,” said Miss Underhill, showing the way to the door. “Be careful, okay?”