The Eliot Girls (2 page)

“I don't think you're really that narrow-minded, are you?” Richard frowned. “Doesn't that generalization trouble you?”

Audrey shrugged. “At least the guy is being honest. Isn't that better than trumping up some stupid injury he supposedly can't afford to treat? Like those people whose dog had a torn ligament?”

Richard returned an unconvinced, conciliatory smile. “I'm not sure any argument can be made for this guy's honour.”

Ruth began ladling batter onto the sizzling frying pan. “Okay, okay. Let's not forget what good things this day holds. Have you not noticed your daughter this morning?”

Audrey shuffled to the fridge and took out the orange juice. She scowled at the neatly laid out pancakes, then reached over and drew a long hair out of one.

“Oops,” said Ruth.

“I'm sorry,” Richard said. “Of course I haven't forgotten. You're looking very attractive, Audrey. Very proper. Deceptively proper.” Her father's smile was a hair grudging, without the bullying radiance that made her mother's so stifling.

Ruth, detecting ambivalence, stared at him meaningfully. “Audrey's going to love it,” she said.

“I'm sure you will,” Richard said.

“Yeah, yeah, “Audrey replied.

“Just get through the day and it'll be smooth sailing.”

Audrey turned back to Ruth. “This tie looks like it's choking me. Did I do it right?”

Ruth pointed the spatula at Richard. “That reminds me. I just saw Leslie at the clinic yesterday for the first time in months, and I barely recognized her. Has she gained a ton of weight?”

“So kind of you to notice.”

“How could I not notice? It's an enormous amount, isn't it? Enough that we could describe it in terms of ‘stone.'”

Smiling, Richard coughed into his hand. “Yes, I would say that Leslie has—how can I put this?—increased her allotment of herself.” He turned back to the newspaper and flipped through the front section absent-mindedly, not staying long enough on any page to do more than scan the articles, then stood up and slung his tie around his neck. “You know what, I think I'll head out and grab some breakfast later. I need to get to the clinic early so I can get my bearings.”

“But the first batch is ready.”

He passed Audrey's plate to Ruth and kissed first her, then Audrey, on their cheeks before hurrying out to the front hall, holding up his hand in a backwards wave.

“Brush your teeth. And don't forget your tongue!” called Ruth.

“Done, and done,” he said. “Best of luck, kiddo.” And he slipped out the front door before another word could be said to suck him back into the unproductive diversions of the kitchen.

With his exit, the house was unsettlingly quiet for a minute, and Audrey was reminded of the imminence of her own departure. She returned to the table and sat heavily. She knew that she ought to be savouring her anticipation—that the lead-up was the best, and certainly the easiest, part—but all the things that made the day important also made it seem insurmountable. She just wanted everything to be finished.

Ruth dumped four slightly burned pancakes onto the plate, delivered them to Audrey's place, and spread a napkin across her lap with a playful flourish of servility. “My dear.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“But you need the energy!” She glanced at the clock. “Oh, shit. I've got to get dressed. Can you be ready in fifteen?”

In Ruth's absence, Audrey occupied herself by staring at the loudly ticking clock. Morosely, she took in the kitchen, sentimentalizing even the most insignificant household objects: the dusty linen curtains, the stained and dripping dishcloth, the licked-clean dog bowls. She felt that she was leaving it all forever, that the day's experience would form a barrier between how she felt now and how she would feel for the rest of her life. There would be no return to the shelter of this banality.

Ten minutes later, Ruth returned in the outfit she felt most presented her as the person she wanted to be, a crimson pencil skirt and pressed white blouse, her sapphire necklace falling just to the centre of her clavicle. Standing at the hall mirror, she fussed with her hair, which had been messily swept upwards and clasped in place with a tortoiseshell clip. She grumbled under her breath. “Ugh, I can't do anything with my hair in this weather.” She looked past Audrey into the kitchen, where Audrey's pancakes sat untouched, and a shadow of poutiness flitted across her face. “But your special breakfast. I worked so hard.”

“I'm sorry.” Audrey put a hand to her stomach. “I just can't.”

Ruth took a step forward, her arms lifted a little, but then let them fall to her side, a vague sadness on her face, as though Audrey had rebuffed a hug. Opening the front door, she gasped at the humidity already descending. “We better get a move on. The last thing we want is to be rushing.”

Audrey had hoped for longer at home—not to prepare herself, exactly, but to stew in her apprehension. Procrastination could only make her feel worse, she knew, but logic and emotion had never set off in her more discordant desires. Ruth wanted her to luxuriate in the archetypal profundity of all first days, to experience that view of Eliot, looming at the top of the long driveway, but the impossibility of her mother's ambition had never been more clear. She stepped onto the front porch and looked down the long treed hill, past Queen Street to Lake Ontario stretching out into the boundless distance like the ocean.

Inside, in the living room, Marlow and Stevie erupted into a chorus of barks and bombarded the couch to offer an explosively confused—equal parts exultant and irate—audience for the passage of the poodle next door, out on a walk.

“Ugh!” cried Ruth as McGill rushed to join them, leaving a trail of saliva on her skirt as he brushed past. Her glow was substantially mediated now, but she persisted in her pleasure. She joined Audrey outside and pressed her hand. “We're finally at Eliot together! But don't worry, I promise I won't embarrass you.”

And with that, they headed off into the sticky morning.

 

 

Cha
p
ter
T
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o

AUDREY STOOD AT THE
top of the driveway, delaying her move forward into the throng. Madness lay before her. Shiny Volvos and minivans swished past, and advancing on Devon Hall was a swarm of students, each girl's distinctiveness devoured by the multitude. The crowd travelled as one happy, undulating beast, and hovering above it, as if in protection, was a cloud of laughter that seemed its own entity. Audrey braced herself and moved forward, trying to look indifferent and distracted—unpersuasively, she repeated to herself that her solitude was not a liability—but she was sinking into terrible regret. Ruth had insisted that they part ways at the gates. She was, after all, a teacher and feared her position made her a social handicap for Audrey. Audrey knew her mother was right. She wasn't a child. But to be so quickly—indeed, callously—abandoned left her floundering.

It was a day when everything was apt to look pretty, and Audrey couldn't fail to be mesmerized by the radiant swirl of Eliot girls. The beauty came from their cumulative power—not one girl in her navy-blue kilt and white shirt, but at least a hundred, milling on the pristine grass under the expansive shade of the towering trees, streaming towards Devon Hall, as poised in its place as if it had risen up from the grassy field through the sheer magnitude of its will and ambition. Though the shops and restaurants of Yonge Street were mere blocks away, George Eliot Academy sat on a tidy parcel of bucolic land that brooked no threat of urban intrusion. The school's exact location had long been a source of contention among parents. Those who hoped George Eliot would take a place amidst Toronto's chief girls private schools alleged that it was in Rosedale, while those who hoped it would provide quality education but with a more daring curriculum with courses in women's studies and Russian literature insisted that it stood on no-man's land. Those who thought the school's headmistress, Larissa McAllister, was a traditionalist averred Rosedale, and those who said she was a feminist protested. And on it went. But what everyone agreed was the school couldn't have been finer and more elegant, even if it were old. (Larissa McAllister had consulted with the architects at every step during the school's lengthy conception. Later, unable to hide how gratified she was to read in the
North Toronto Post
that George Eliot looked like a compressed version of Upper Canada College, Larissa admitted to Ruth Brindle that she had indeed, rather cheekily, taken that old boys' club as her inspiration.)

For as long as she could remember, Audrey had imagined her own form in the shadow of those Georgian-style buildings, in the sunlight on the pristine lawns. But now the loveliness of the vista only made it more impenetrable.

The scene inside was no better. The front door swung closed behind Audrey with a mute heaviness that shut out the sunny day with the humourless authority of a chastising librarian. Standing to the side of the roomy octagonal foyer, she had only a second to contemplate her approach before another wave of girls propelled her forward. She had been in this hallway many times before, but she had never seen it from just this perspective, the change in her own status having in turn changed all her views. The maelstrom of voices echoed off the panelled walls and high ceilings. Outdoors, the open spaces and wind had diffused the volume, but enclosed in the broad corridor, the noise became a commotion, a deafening flurry out of which burst the occasional squeal. Groups of girls cluttered every foot of space. There were the predictable conversations about summer activities, the shrieked greetings, the theatrical hugs. Near the door huddled a group of prefects making half-hearted efforts to corral the incoming students into some kind of order. (
Hey guys, you know what? Guys, if you could just…
) Beyond them, the groups broke down more imprecisely: a squat, sporty brunette chattered aggressively upwards into the Nordic landscape of her friend's face (
And would you believe he had the nerve to be like, “Sorry, I think we were always better as friends.” As if I invited myself…
); four nearly identical blondes resuming an argument apparently left unsolved before the summer months (
No, because you told her before exams, no, don't give me that look, no, I'm totally sick of you lying about it, Jen told me…
). Crouching by a shiny ficus was a girl as overwhelmed as Audrey, searching for something in her knapsack, on her face the terrified alarm of a cornered dog.

Down the length of the hall, huge pendant lights like golden orbs blanketed the scene in a warm, old-fashioned glow that made it look like a still from another time. On the long wall hung portraits of Larissa McAllister's favourite feminist thinkers, flanked by calligraphic renderings of what she considered their most gleaming philosophical aperçus. In the prime position of glory at the beginning was George Eliot herself. The words
“
ADVENTURE IS NOT OUTSIDE MAN; IT IS WITHIN
”
made a grand pronouncement next to her grave likeness and encapsulated what Larissa McAllister felt to be the theme of her own life. After George Eliot, the women formed a pictorial assembly line, their words, their sketched faces, offering nothing so common as inspiration; their ideas were to be the students' sustenance, their very breath: Mary Wollstonecraft (“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillizing the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”); Simone de Beauvoir (“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.”); Virginia Woolf (“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”); Eleanor Roosevelt (“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one.”); Betty Friedan (“The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.”). At the end of the gallery was a portrait of Larissa McAllister herself—an audacious placement meant to convey that she was assuming her rightful place in history—wearing a smile of Mona Lisa reserve, surveying, with modest approval, the scene of her creation.

Audrey edged through the crowd to the grand central staircase and made her way up past the mahogany panels with the names of all the head girls and prefects etched in gold. At the landing window, she paused: her gaze fell on the swing set in the Junior School playground. Although not the site of her earliest memory—that involved something less pleasing, a running crash into a giant pillar in a neighbour's basement, a splitting pain in her forehead, a babysitter's rank breath, her orange teddy bear, tucked against her chest—its significance, bound as it was in her ever-growing Eliot mythology, came in time to surpass the status of that first recollection. She was on the swing, propelling herself ever higher. Ruth, ordinarily overprotective, was off attending to school business, and Audrey was alone, perhaps for the first time ever, in this place perceived as entirely safe, sheltered from the threats—the thieves, the perverts, the dangerous drivers—of the city. Even now, on the bustling landing, Audrey could remember that feeling of being alone—astoundingly, marvellously—out in the world. She could see herself on that swing, looking down at her childish legs, athletic and determined. It seemed that at that moment she became aware of herself. She moved her legs because she chose to, because her brain sent a signal. She was not just living—running over the moist grasses, noticing a purple bruise on her shin, leaning back and looking up at the clouds—but conscious of living.

Ruth had taken her inside after that. As they made their way down the corridor, its empty glass cases awaiting awards that had yet to be created, everything so clean that they seemed to have been the first people to set foot inside, Ruth glanced furtively around, then pulled Audrey into a shady classroom. “Next year, this will be your room,” she said. The curtains were drawn across a wall of windows. In the corner, a child-sized Paddington Bear stood guard over bookshelves crammed with a kaleidoscopic array of illustrated volumes. Framed watercolours were hung in a row across the top of the blackboard—children skipping down a cobbled road, a young boy curled up in a window seat with a book, a girl napping with her head on the stomach of a watchful St. Bernard.

Audrey was wearing the new dress bought for her upcoming entrance interview. When she'd woken up in the morning, it was hung up on her closet door like an empty person, new patent leather Mary Jane shoes with a pretty rose buckle positioned underneath. She walked up and down the aisles, stepping lightly, as though afraid to awaken the spirits that would banish them for trespassing. Finally, she stopped at the side farthest from the door. “I want this desk,” she said.

Ruth crouched down beside her. “It's yours.” She started to get up, then, but a thought dawned on her. “Want to engrave your initials?” She drew her new Montblanc ballpoint pen from her briefcase.

Audrey shook her head, scandalized.

“Come on, Auds. Show a little daring. You're A.B. The first two letters of the alphabet. No one will ever guess.”

Audrey laughed and took a step back, disowning participation, as Ruth applied the pen to the wood. The desks were antique, joined in a line of six, and they had recently received a shiny new coat of thick varnish. Ruth chipped at the wood, barely managing to draw a short diagonal line, before measured footsteps sounded in the hallway.

As students now dashed this way and that, Audrey considered how sure she had been, so many years ago, that she would fit in here. She had been destined an Eliot girl well before becoming an Eliot girl. Now life was going on everywhere around her, but she was shut out of it. She could locate no entry point, and although she had never been more anonymous, she had never felt more conspicuous. Every glance felt like an attack.

Audrey forced herself to keep moving, to seem to have a purpose. On the second floor, she headed for the bathroom and found it empty. Facing her reflection in the long wall of mirrors, she closed her eyes and opened them again. She had imagined herself disappearing into the crowd, but it was becoming obvious that even the coveted uniform couldn't stimulate such a swift and sly metamorphosis. The clinical brightness of the bathroom did no kindness to her face. Her eyes were shadowed and bloodshot from nights of fitful sleep, her wavy hair was frizzy, her cheeks were still flushed from the walk. Anxiety had fixed her in a state of permanent, wide-eyed vacancy, as though she spent her life on the brink of unwanted revelations, perpetual astonishment her only mode.

Audrey blinked at the strange girl staring back at her. In the past month, she had grown somewhat used to looking in the mirror and failing to recognize herself. In August, vexed by every facet of her appearance, she had cut her hair. Although Audrey was forever being told she resembled her father, her long, unruly hair had been one attribute she shared with her mother, and chopping it off had been just one in a series of attempts to differentiate herself from Ruth. The change had been meant to help her grasp some new, defining image, but all it had accomplished was to make her feel more alien in her skin. She thought that feeling less like herself would help set the tone for this new chapter in her life; it would catapult her into the role she was preparing to play. But she missed being able to hide behind the plenty of her old hair. Too much was her face now laid bare. Her features, she was sure, took up an excess of space against too pale a backdrop: her olive eyes overly large, her lips inelegantly full.

She was still frowning at her reflection when the door swung open and two girls burst into the room, shattering its hermetic serenity. One girl doubled over, laughing noiselessly with her mouth wide open, while the other was alternately seized by laughter and hyperventilation. They opened the door again and the taller girl threw what looked like a mashed orange wedge down the hall.

“Oh, you are in some deep, deep
merde
! I almost pity you. I really do!” she yelled, still barely able to hold herself up under the force of her paroxysmal laughter. The orange was whipped back at her; she grabbed it and reared back like a professional pitcher and returned it down the hall.

Again the orange was hurled back by a distantly cackling phantom, and again it fell with a damp thud at the yeller's feet. This time, she stepped gingerly over it and let the bathroom door swing shut behind her.

The two girls turned at once to Audrey in the spirit of dissection. They leaned slightly into each other, their elbows touching as though they were exchanging messages with a series of nearly invisible nudges. Indistinguishable from the neck down—both uniforms were arranged in a state of conscientious chaos, the kilts a hair shorter than allowable, the Oxford shoes scuffed at the tips, the white blouses crumpled and half-tucked—the girls were otherwise a study in contrasts. The thrower of the orange gathered her brown hair into a messy bun, exposing ears dotted with tiny silver-adorned piercings, and cleared her throat. Her review of Audrey was undisguised and penetrating, and though her lips revealed no smile, her eyes twinkled, either in the aftermath of the orange throwing or in the discovery of something amusing in Audrey's bearing. The other girl, neck stiff and arms folded, a single blonde braid hanging tidily over her shoulder, took in Audrey more coldly, as though she had long since conducted her appraisal and discarded the subject.

“What grade are you in?” asked the dark-haired girl.

“Ten,” replied Audrey. “You?”

“We're in grade six!” she answered in a shrieky falsetto meant to sound childlike.

She skipped towards a cubicle and paused before going in.

“God, it's the first day, and already this bathroom reeks of shit.”

Audrey's nose had picked up nothing other than the overpowering antibacterial smell of industrial cleaner, but she knew that she must be the prime suspect in the creation of any fecal odour and that the smell, even if fictitious, was as real as they chose to believe.