The Wood of Suicides Read Online Free Page B

Mom,
    Everything is fine here. I like my new uniform better than the old one. We actually have proper kilts, and the emblem on my blouse (an eye and a harp, the same as on the letterhead) is really well stitched. There was a memorial assembly this morning, but we still had to go to classes. I couldn’t be bothered playing hockey in P.E. though.
    I hope that you are having a good time at Yellow Leaf. You deserve a break from things. Tell Lee and Jillian hello. I will be down at Thanksgiving to help with the house. Write soon.
    Your daughter,
    Laurel E. Marks

P ART T WO
    I n many ways, my life only truly began on a day in September, when I was seventeen and far from everything. Before that day, life had been elsewhere; something utterly apart from me and the slanted sunbeams and wooden floors of my childhood. I like to think that I was born in those woods, in a flash of green and stream of sepia sunlight—the mythic haze of that Marin County Monday. Everything before that September day was simply a prelude, leading up to the shock of my conception: bereft, kneeling, as he stood like a god in my sunlight, his white shirt ablaze.
    The tears that brought me to the woods were nothing. They were the strain of staring through a classroom window in the hour before lunch break. They were three weeks of pent-up grief and self-condemnation. They were an exacerbation of my fragile beauty, luring that god into the shadows of my arbor, where California laurel grew heady and tangled as a dream.
    He was a god. His arms were strong, his shoulders broad. His manner was warm and paternal. He had hair on the back of his hands and a pale gold wedding band that flashed when he moved to console me. I didn’t resist his embrace, but cried into his shirtfront—sweet, salt tears that mingled with the smell of his skin. He kneaded my shoulders. He stroked my hair. He murmured in my ear—smooth, hot-breathed nothings.
    If it weren’t for the bell, sounding over the school grounds to reach us in our leafy recess, our illicit embrace, he might have had me then, as any god would a nymph. As it was, we broke apart: I, with the sudden awareness of how old he was; he with the awareness of how young I was. He looked upon my innocent white blouse, my kilt and high white socks, with something akin to horror. I looked upon his collared shirt and sensible, belted trousers, and looked away in embarrassment. He didn’t try to prevent me as I gathered my things and fled from that green inferno.

    W HILE ENROLLING at Saint Cecilia’s three weeks earlier, I had been obliged to make the usual selections among subjects. There were the sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. There were the foreign languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. There were the mathematics: algebra, calculus, geometry, and statistics. Finally, there was English literature. At senior level, this was divided into three classes: Modernism, taught by Mr. Wolfstein; women’s literature, taught by Mrs. Poplar; and Romantic poetry, taught by Mr. Steadman.
    I had no real interest in the writings of women. Meanwhile, though only a month ago, the word “modern” would have held more appeal for me, my father’s death had effected a change, which made me linger over the final option. I skimmed the reading list. My pen hovered above my page. I sighed and scribbled in my small, jerky hand: Romantic poetry.
    After Monday’s lunch hour, I arrived outside my fifth period art class, flustered and grass-stained, with a stray leaf in my hair. The leaf was pointed out to me by Jade van Dam—a slight, snooty girl with seed-like green eyes and bobbed brown hair—and subsequently plucked out by bold little Marcelle Lavigne, who had been in my French lesson prior to lunch, and who wisecracked, “What have you been doing?” When the door to the art room was opened by Ms. Faber, I made a point to sit away from both girls at the communal table, taking a place beside fat Winnie Maddock,