The Headmaster's Wife (3 page)

“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.

I am prepared to blame it on drunkenness. Another small blight of erratic behavior in a year of behaving oddly. I am prepared to be slapped. I am prepared to be repelled.

But Betsy Pappas does not recoil from me in the shadows of Newbury Street. She kisses me back. If anything, she is more passionate than I am. My hands are in her hair, at the back of her head. Our lips come together. Our teeth clash for a moment as we search for each other’s open mouths. Her tongue hot against my teeth. Warm breath intermingling. I run my hand along her back, and she moves into me.

A few passersby come within feet of us, but this is the city and they do not pay us any attention. Her back is to them, and there is something amazingly normal and romantic about two lovers kissing on a fall night. As for me, I am oblivious to all except what is in front of me, the firmness of my hand on her back, her mouth on mine, her smell, clean as baby powder.

It is an ancient lust that roils inside me. We make our way back toward the Common, and every ten feet or so, it seems, we stop in the shadows and fall once again in each other’s embrace. At one point I say in a hushed tone, “We can’t do this.”

“We can,” she says back, and they are the words I want to hear.

I am crazy with lust. My heart beats like a sparrow in a hand. We move quickly across the Common and to the great granite façade of the Copley Hotel. Doormen whisk us into the stately lobby with its friezes and marble and ceiling painted a pale Michelangelo blue. At the counter we are a May-December romance, a sudden change of plans, no luggage. A place for the night, if you please.

Upstairs, Betsy ducks into the bathroom while I make a quick phone call to school. I am practically incoherent on the phone. I reach her dorm parent, a Mr. Crane. It is right before lights-out. In the background I hear girls scurrying. “Yes, of course, Mr. Winthrop,” he says, when I plead car trouble and say I will be finding a place for Betsy Pappas to stay for the night in Boston. He does not ask where, and I do not tell him.

I dim the lights. Betsy comes to me. I undress her from where I sit on the edge of the bed. She is magnificent. She turns her head away from me, toward the window that looks out on the Common, the orangeish light of the city and the sounds of traffic. I nuzzle my face in her belly. Her inexperienced skin is soft and pliant. She moans softly. She is greedy to know, though I believe this is not her first time. Some kid pushing into her inside a car in Northern Vermont. I try not to think of this, but instead am torn between the exclusive feelings of deep tenderness and a desire to own her.

I remind myself to be slow. This is not the furied and practiced act of the long married. I need to discover her. I want her to discover me.

Afterward, we lie spent on the bed. This is the hard part. The lust has left me, like air expelled from a balloon. Her head rests contentedly on my chest. I absentmindedly play with her hair. Outside, a siren wails, a sudden and harsh reminder of the rest of the world.

I reach for the phone and order a bottle of wine to be sent to the room. I felt better earlier, when my blood was full of alcohol.

I am the first to speak. I say, “You can’t fall in love with me.”

She surprises me by laughing. She rises off the bed and walks toward the window. I watch her full buttocks as she walks. “You have nothing to worry about from me,” she says.

“No?” I say. It dawns on me that the language of love, the very word,
love,
may not be the lingua franca of her generation. Maybe no one talks about love anymore, maybe there is some other language I am not privy to. Everything grows coarser over time, less subtle. There is no mysticism anymore. Perhaps love is too high-minded.

Betsy cracks open the window, and the night air comes in, along with all the sounds of the cars passing by the Common, the stop-and-start, the diesel roar of a bus. “You have nothing to worry about from me,” she says again.