The Headmaster's Wife Read online

  The following Monday I announce to my class that I will be providing office hours to any student who would like to discuss the assigned reading or who might have questions about the first paper I have asked them to write. I expect to see her. Her earnestness suggests she is the type to take advantage of office hours. I am getting a sense of her: She is grateful to be at Lancaster. Many take it for granted. She is not one of them.

  In the meantime, I’ve discovered what I can about her. She is different from what I thought. First, her name is Betsy Pappas. The name sounds Greek, not Jewish, but you can never be sure. She is not from New Jersey at all, but instead from Vermont, the small Northeast Kingdom town of Craftsbury. She is a scholarship student. She tested off the charts at some tiny Podunk school and is on a full ride. The family has no money to speak of. Her father teaches woodshop at a small college up there. What a thing to teach at a college. Last I checked, carpenters didn’t require a college education.

  Her mother makes jewelry. There is one sibling, a younger sister who still attends the Podunk school. Betsy has redone her junior year, which is a requirement at Lancaster. Transfers have to spend at least two years to get their degree. She turned eighteen in August.

  It’s an entirely different portrait from the one I imagined. Instead of new-money suburban Jews, they are no-money Vermont hippies. I picture an aging, run-down farmhouse, a pickup truck and a VW van in the driveway.

  With that bit of research settled, my workweek proceeds on in typical fashion. Mrs. LaForge, who has been the headmaster’s secretary for close to forty years, keeps the schedule moving. Meetings come in half-hour increments, and there are set-aside times for me to make calls to the heavy hitters who keep the wheels of Lancaster greased. In between, I deal with discipline cases. This week there is a sophomore boy who was found to have an ounce of marijuana in a cigar box hidden in his bureau during a room inspection. Drug cases are normally a swift exit from the school, but as with all things, there are nuances at play. The boy is a Mellon, of the Pennsylvania Mellons, and the boy, an arrogant, chubby kid with a mop of brown hair, knows this makes an easy decision complicated. The boy shows no fear in the headmaster’s office. He sits comfortably, sunk back in one of the leather chairs like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

  When I was younger, I might have just gone by the book, but with age you come to terms with the fact that not everyone arrives into this world on an equal footing. There is no real equity at boarding school. There are the Mellons, and then there are the Betsy Pappases from Craftsbury, Vermont. Justice is not blind at Lancaster. I call the boy’s father and let him know I will make an exception to the normal policy, but that if it happens again I will not be able to be so generous. The father says he understands and will have a difficult talk with Junior. It goes without saying that a check will arrive in the coming week. History says it will be significant.

  On Wednesday, Deerfield, one of our fiercest rivals, comes to campus, and I spend the afternoon touring the sporting events. Mrs. LaForge maps them out for me on my phone, one of the many clever things she does to make me look good, and a beep goes off when I am supposed to move to the next event. A quarter of the football game, off to boys’ soccer for fifteen minutes, then to girls’ soccer, and finally to the finish line of the cross-country race. A light rain falls on a dull gray day, and not many parents make the trip. Nevertheless I do my best to summon the slick enthusiasm my role as chief booster demands, moving up the sidelines under my umbrella, shaking hands, talking to parents about their children, patting faculty on the back.

  Everyone is happy to see me, or pretends to be. Whatever they think of me personally, they respect the office. That is one thing I have learned. Like it or not, I am the face of Lancaster, and they are suitably pleased that I have graced their particular game with my presence, which is entirely the point.

  On Friday, I hop a flight from Lebanon, New Hampshire, to Manhattan, and that evening, at the Lancaster Club, I move among the well-heeled alumni who have come out to hear me speak. In the large wood-paneled room with its deep-set leather furniture, I rise to speak, glass of wine in hand, and for a moment the old doubt comes over me. I have been doing this a long time, you see, but sometimes I still feel like a fraud. I do not know if I really ever wanted to be head of school. I am not my father, as my son is not I. The older alums still compare me to my father, and I know they find me wanting. I am not starchy enough, perhaps, a pale imitation of the old man’s greatness. I do not have his stentorian voice. But tonight I do a reasonable job of bringing forth that old love of school. I give my stump speech. I tell them about the cantilevered glass addition to the library, the new tech center, the field house under construction that will be the envy of all the great New England schools. I have facts at the tip of my tongue: the percentage of graduates who will go on to Ivies next year (53 percent, best among the competition), the accomplishments of faculty, and of course all the news on the beloved sports teams.

  I wear my Lancaster tie, black and gold with small crests on it, and for a moment it is as if nothing has changed. I am doing what I have always done, what you could say I was born to do. The old school has given me my life.

  Mrs. LaForge brings her into my office and then closes the door on her way out. The girl sits in one of the tall wingback chairs in front of my desk. I take in her clothes and see she is in full compliance of the dress code. White blouse buttoned appropriately, knee-length skirt, close-toed shoes fully laced. On her lap are three of the novels from my class.

  “Betsy,” I say, saying her name for the first time, feeling it in my mouth.

  She looks up at me expectantly. “Yes?”

  “You are enjoying the Russians?”

  “I like the realists.”

  I nod. “Which of the books we have read speaks to you the most?”

  “Turgenev. It seems … relevant.”

  “Expand on that, please.”

  “His view of love. Of marriage. He seems to be constantly questioning the importance of institutions while reaffirming them at the same time. And the struggle of the two brothers to find their place in the world seems similar to my own experience.”

  I smile. “Are you struggling to find your place in the world?”

  “We all are,” Betsy says.

  She shifts in her chair now and crosses her legs. There is the sense of white flesh beneath her skirt.

  “Surely the struggle is different now than in nineteenth-century Russia.”

  “I don’t know about that. The trappings are different. Technology and so on. Ways of travel. But those are all surface things. The elemental truths are the same.”

  “The elemental truths?” I lean back in my chair and stroke my chin thoughtfully.

  “Love and family. Fathers and sons. Mothers and daughters.”

  “What about economics?”

  “Like serfdom?”

  “Yes.”

  “It still exists, just under different names.”

  “Are we a young Marxist, Ms. Pappas?”

  “No. It’s just that the idea of America as a meritocracy is an illusion designed to make the elite feel better.”

  “Designed?” I say. “That implies someone is calling the shots.”

  “It’s self-perpetuating,” she says.

  “What about a black president who was born poor and raised by his grandmother in a Hawaii apartment? Doesn’t that refute your premise?”

  “Not at all,” Betsy says. “To maintain the illusion, a few have to be allowed through. Anyway, the presidency isn’t a good example.”

  This makes me laugh. “The presidency? The leader of the free world?”

  She shrugs. “Presidents still work for others.”

  I look beyond her to the wide windows that line my office. On the quad the large maples have turned the brightest of red, their leaves catching the afternoon sun and lifting their color as if they are on fire.

  “I have an idea,” I say. “Next week I have to
go to an alumni gathering in Boston. I would like you to come.”

  “Me?”

  “I sometimes bring promising students. So the alumni can meet the new generation of Lancaster students. And see the minds their scholarship gifts support.”

  She smiles. She likes this. A proud phone call back to the parents. She looks down for a moment. When she looks back up, her hair falls in front of her face, and she does that thing again, pulling the blond strands behind her ears.

  “Okay, then,” I say. “Mrs. LaForge will make the arrangements with your dorm parent and see you are forgiven your classes that day.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Winthrop,” Betsy says, as if sensing her time has come to an end.

  “You’re welcome, Betsy,” I say.

  It is not at all calculated, this idea of bringing her to Boston. The amazing thing is that it comes to me on the spur of the moment. Now, it is true I have brought students to alumni gatherings before, but mostly a star quarterback and the like, some prize horse to show off to the donors. I have never brought someone undistinguished in the obvious ways. Betsy is a very bright scholarship student, and the alumni will certainly be happy to meet a young woman who is a prime example of the importance of these kinds of contributions. Opening the world of Lancaster to the gifted, regardless of progeny. Nevertheless, I am concerned that her charms are below the surface, you see—a subtle but agile mind and a beauty that is invisible to the rest of the world.

  I do not feel the least bit awkward about letting others know she is coming. One of the advantages of being head of school is that, in matters like this, others will assume only purity of motive. And while it crosses my mind—one can never be too careful when it comes to female students—it is hard to imagine anyone suspecting an attraction on my part. What is it I would see in Betsy Pappas? If I were truly to be interested in a female student, it would hardly be this unremarkable daughter of hippies from the woods, now, would it?

  “A gifted student,” I tell Mrs. LaForge once Betsy has left. “Surprising. Interesting ideas on literature.” I continue, pacing in the outer office, moving to the window and then back to her desk. “Yes, very interesting, Mrs. LaForge. You do not come across young women like that very often.”

  Mrs. LaForge watches me from the pile of paperwork on her large desk. She does not say anything, which is par for the course with Mrs. LaForge. She assumes all my statements are rhetorical unless I am very direct.

  The notion of the pending trip lifts my spirits. In the days preceding it there is a noticeable spring in my step. I bound out of bed to get my morning coffee before heading across the street to the dining hall. I cheerily greet all I pass on the campus walkways. Talking to me on the phone, Dick Ives appears to notice something in my voice.

  “You sound good, Arthur,” he says.

  “Brilliant idea about the classroom, Dick,” I say.

  “You are enjoying it, then? Perfect.”

  I don’t mind the September rain that falls ceaselessly, day after day, dulling the seasonal color. And even Elizabeth, interrupting my post-dinner scotch in my office wanting to talk, cannot jar me out of this feeling. Something is happening, I know it. Even the presence of Elizabeth, once-beautiful Elizabeth, now with her gray hair cut short across her forehead like a man’s, cannot knock me out of it.

  But first I must listen to my wife. I try to be patient, though it is a conversation we have had before, and I do not invite her to sit. She stands in front of my desk. For a while now we have been moving around this old house like a pair of ghosts. Sometimes I feel like I live alone.

  “You have to deal with this, Arthur,” Elizabeth says. “You cannot just ignore it.”

  “I am not ignoring anything,” I say calmly. “I just don’t see any reason why I need to dwell on all this, which is what you are asking me to do.”

  “You have to come to terms with it,” she says. “You cannot hide from this.”

  “Is this about Ethan again?”

  “No, this is about me. It’s like you … forget it. It’s no use.”

  I raise my hand to stop her. “Elizabeth,” I say. “I know full well what happened. I know all of it.”

  “How come you won’t talk about it? It’s not normal.”

  “What is normal?” I say. “No one can answer that, can they? I am dealing with this in my own way. As are you.”

  I look down at my desk now. There are some papers there, a draft strategic plan the academic dean put together that I really need to look at. I pick it up absentmindedly and am instantly fixated on the first paragraph (a spelling mistake of all things), so that I do not even hear Elizabeth until she is on top of me, pushing my chest and crying.

  “Elizabeth, for Christ’s sake,” I say.

  “Fucking wake up, Arthur,” she says. “I know someone is still in there.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Calm down, please. Calm down.”

  Her body goes slack in my arms, though she feels oddly weightless. I take her in my arms. Her body heaves with heavy, racking sobs. I know what to do. I run one hand through her hair and then pull back and look at her, at her gray eyes, at the pronounced crow’s feet that fan out from their corners.

  She dresses for the occasion, more than the normal school requirements of safe preppiness. She wears beige heels, a black dress, and a small cardigan sweater she holds tightly around her breasts as she steps into the passenger side of my Saab. There is something different about her, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is. It is makeup. She wears lipstick and eye shadow. There is something cheap about it, like a child playing dress-up, and for an instant after she is in the car, I am disappointed in her. And in this disappointment I also find relief, for now I can just take her to Boston and back to school and forget about her.

  But then we are on the road. I like to drive. I love that sense of mastery you get from country roads, where the road rises and falls and the fields stretch out to the river and you bend the car around sharp curves, and where just when you think you are going to lose control, the machine corrects itself and brings you back into line. If only life could be so simple.

  We talk casually. She tells me about her family. I ask her all the right questions. I draw her out. I have experience in this, generations of reticent students and donors. Betsy does not need my help of course, for she is at ease with herself. Far beyond her years. I even forget the makeup that bothered me, and as we drive, I focus on the soft lilt of her voice, her stories, and it is like the years between us somehow disappear and we are just two adults traveling on a weekend trip. To the Cape, perhaps, or up to Maine. Some B and B where we will eat dinner and retire to a tasteful room to become lovers.

  At dusk we cross the Zakim Bridge, shiplike with lights strung across its high curved beams. Soon we are in the city. I watch her next to me. She looks up at the buildings as we drive through the Back Bay, past the brownstones and down streets full of people. She has known only the Vermont woods and, to her, Boston must seem like another world.

  The alumni event is at the top of the Prudential Center. I have never liked heights, but Betsy has the fearlessness of youth. From the great windows she looks out into the twinkling fall night, her fingers stretched out across the panes of glass. Across the harbor to the ocean in the distance. Airplanes swooping in from the sea. The buildings of the Financial District rising up like a bulwark against the water.

  I bring her around and introduce her to those I know, and to others I introduce myself, though no introduction is necessary. Everyone who has come knows who I am.

  Betsy comports herself well. She makes eye contact. She talks about what she loves about Lancaster. She says all the right things. She even has kind words for my class. She tells a ruddy-faced member of the class of ’54 that the Russians teach you how to live today. I am touched by this, naturally, and I could not agree more.

  There are two rules to alumni gatherings that are unspoken but understood in my line of work. The first is that you take it easy on
the wine. The second is that you are never photographed with a drink in your hand. The second I follow this time by handing off my wine to Betsy, who is always there, like an eager assistant. I cannot help but imagine her drinking the ruby wine, see it staining her lips.

  The first dictum (take it easy on the wine), I ignore this night. I drink far too much, and by the time things are winding down, I am not nearly as together as I should be.

  As we ride the elevator down and then walk out onto the street, it is apparent to me that I am in no condition to drive. Lancaster is three hours away, and it is already nine o’clock at night. I do not say any of this to my young charge, of course. Instead I say to her, “Do you mind walking for a little bit? I like to stretch my legs before getting back into the car.”

  If this confuses her, she says nothing. We begin to walk. It is a lovely night in Boston, with only the slightest of fall bites to the mild breeze. It is early, and the streets are full of people. I am tempted to offer her my arm, but it is a terribly old-fashioned thing to do.

  Soon we make our way across the Common and through the wide avenues of the Back Bay. We do not talk, and Betsy seems smitten with the night. I watch as she takes it all in; the people, the homeless men on the benches, the glassy rise of the John Hancock, improbably tall next to buildings and churches from another time.

  On Newbury Street we stroll past restaurants and stores. Immaculate brownstones. We are aimless, the two of us, and feeling the wine in my head, I know I should say something, that I am the leader here, but I cannot do it. We just walk and walk. At one point I am looking over at her, and she is gazing across the street at diners spilling out of a basement-level French restaurant. Fashionable people not much older than Betsy. A wry, knowing smile comes across her face, and when she turns back to meet my gaze, I am overcome.

  I pull her toward me, awkwardly. It is so clumsy, this embrace, unannounced, and I have a sudden moment of clarity, that I am about to do something that will change my life forever. Something that will undo in a second all I have done. Nevertheless, she is in my arms, and against a waist-high wrought-iron fence, I kiss her forcefully on the mouth.