The Headmaster's Wife (5 page)

And there, of course, is my girl. She is an okay player, and what she lacks in natural talent or speed she makes up in enthusiasm. She is quick to the ball. She is not afraid of contact. She swings with might and verve.

Mostly, though, it is wonderful to be able to stare at her unfettered. I do not care about the game itself or the other players. They might as well all be props for the one who has my undivided attention. I like the way she runs. You can tell a lot about a girl by how she runs. It is not that she is pure grace in motion, for she is not, but there is something about the flap of her skirt against her strong legs, her ponytailed hair bouncing against her neck, the slight heave of her breasts underneath the cotton of her jersey, the grimace on her face when she is exerting herself completely, that speaks to me.

She knows I am here. At the half, I catch her in the huddle staring over at where I stand making small talk with some of the Groton parents. Word must have gotten out that I am on campus, for after a time my counterpart shows up, and we trade shop talk and pleasantries. We have known each other for a long time. We are not friends. When he departs with an excuse of boys’ soccer calling, I both understand and am grateful, for I can turn my attention back to Betsy.

When the game ends, I pull Betsy from the line of girls shaking hands. She looks annoyed at me, and for a moment we just stand on the green grass, and her teammates look back at me curiously as they begin to walk toward the gymnasium and their showers. Ms. Locke, the field hockey coach, gives me a puzzled if deferential look, and I say to her over Betsy’s shoulder, “It’ll be just a minute, Ms. Locke.”

I am taking risks. The once-crowded field is empty, and it is just the two of us. Some fifty yards away is the stately administrative building, with its brick and broad pillars and the golden dome on top. The windows look like they might have eyes. I take Betsy by the arm, and she says, “They’re waiting for me.”

We walk briskly toward the woods at the edge of the field. Betsy wants to bolt. I slide my arm around her as we enter the trees, and it is like trying to hold a wild rabbit to get her to come with me.

Oh, I want you to know that I do not force her to do anything she does not want to do. When it comes right down to it, she is more than willing, and is even enjoying the brazen nature of this adventure. She is not like other students, you see. Her eyes are more open to the world, and perhaps this is why I am so taken with her. She has a sense of who she is that is usually earned over decades and decades of having your heart broken by the ceaseless beat of time.

In the soft piney woods I find a bare spot of forest floor, and on a bed of needles I lay my trench coat down and her on top of it. Her sweat smells sweet, and there is a hint of salt when my lips touch the soft hollow of her throat. We do not undress. We are as furtive as animals. When it is over, I want to hold her, but there is no time. She picks herself up and untangles a twig from her hair.

“I have to go,” she says.

I nod. She takes one last look at me where I lie pathetically on the ground, my pants down around my knees. She breaks into a run, and I watch her until she disappears between two large trees.

“
What do you think she saw in you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that you are, what, fiftysomething, and she is eighteen?”

“Yes, eighteen.”

“Well, that isn’t typical, right? Wouldn’t she be attracted to someone, I don’t know, closer to her in age?”

“You say attraction. What you mean is love.”

“She loved you?”

“Of course.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugs. It’s an inane question. “How do you know your wife loves you? Or your children?”

The man sits back in the chair. He has a pen that he drums lightly on the desk, and he pauses for a moment and looks up at the caged light that hangs from the ceiling. “Okay. So she loved you. How do you explain it?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out my whole life.”

“Wait a minute. I’m confused. Your whole life? This happened just last year, yes?”

“Can I have more coffee?”

“You sure drink a lot of coffee.”

“It’s warm.”

The other man, the one who doesn’t talk, stands up and takes the mug off the table and leaves the room.

“But you said your whole life. What did you mean?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just tired.”

“Let’s take a break.”

“No.”

“You want to continue?”

“What choice do I have? I have to tell you eventually.”

“That’s true.”

“We go on, then.”

“Please, continue.”

The days merge into one, and there is a period of disquieting loneliness after we make love in the woods at the venerable Groton School. I do not see her. She skips my class first once and then twice. She doesn’t appear at lunch or dinner. I spend more time than usual walking around campus, but still I do not see her. I am losing my mind, to tell you the truth. I cannot think of anything else. I go through the motions of waking and dressing, sleepwalking through the meetings and phone calls that are supposed to be the substance of a life.

One afternoon I run into her dorm parent and inquire about Betsy, using the fact that she has not been in class to cover the nature of my interest. He tells me she is in the infirmary and may have mono, though he is not sure.

The infirmary is a nondescript one-story building on the edge of campus. The school nurses straighten up when I come in, and I do not blame them, for I cannot remember a time when I have shown up at the infirmary unannounced. I tell them I am there to see Betsy Pappas, and one of the advantages of being head of school is that no one questions you, even if your visiting a sick student is unheard of.

Betsy is in a hospital bed in a small room in the back. The shades are drawn, and though it is a bright, sunny day, it is dark in here. She is asleep when I come in, and I walk quietly to her bedside. She lies on her back, but her head is turned on the pillow, away from me. Her hair is down and messy where it falls against her shoulders. She has on a white hospital gown, and the covers come up and over her breasts. I sit down on the edge of her bed, and my weight shifts the mattress. She turns her head and opens her eyes.

She blinks for a moment as if trying to figure out who I am, and my heart goes out to the poor thing. She clearly is not well. You can see it in her heavy eyes and in the pallor of her skin.

“Hi,” I say. “It’s okay.”

She looks up at me. “Why are you here?” she says.

“That’s a silly question,” I say. “I am here for you.”

“This has to end.”

“What does?”

“Us.”

I shake my head. Her hand is next to me, limp against her side. I reach out and take it in my own. She squirms it away.

“Listen to me,” I say. “You need to get better, okay? First things first. There will be lots of time for us.”

“You’re fucked,” she says rather loudly.

“Betsy, please,” I say. “Lower your voice.”

“What? You don’t want them to hear about us? You don’t want all of them to hear about us?”

“Now, now,” I say. “I see I have made a mistake. You are not well.”

“You remember what you said after you fucked me in the hotel?”

“No reason to talk like that.”

“Do you remember what you said? You said, ‘You can’t fall in love with me.’”

“People say all kinds of things.”

“They do, do they? Well, I am not in love with you. It was fun. It was … interesting. But that’s it. I checked the box, remember? I am done checking it.”

“So this is it, then,” I say. “This is where it ends.”

She looks up at me with those green eyes. She is even lovelier when she is mad, if that is possible. There is iron in those eyes. “Yes,” she says.

I search for something to say, something to slow her down. I say, “What are they telling you about your illness?”

She says, “Walking pneumonia probably. Mostly I just wanted to disappear.”

“It’s a beautiful day. Do you want some light in here?”

“I like it dark.”

I am at a loss. “Well,” I say after a long pause, “we will speak again.”

Betsy rolls her head away from me on the pillow. She stares toward the dark wall and the windows with the shades drawn. I slowly rise and walk out of the room, past the nurses, who say, “Good-bye, Mr. Winthrop,” and back out into the bright light of my campus.

Work is palliative. For a time things are normal. The second weekend of October, our Board of Trustees arrives on campus for two days of meetings. There are thirty-four trustees, and many names you would recognize. The board meets four times a year, and for a head of school these are among the most important of events. Like it or not, the board is your boss. Its first and greatest responsibility is the hiring or firing of the head, and while I am the institution in many ways, I do not take this for granted.

The trustees come in on Saturday, and during the day they partake of sporting events and then they have committee meetings in the afternoon. I generally attend the Finance Committee and the Development Committee, which for mature schools are the most important meetings. Then we have a cocktail party and we dine together off campus. On Sunday we meet most of the day.

This meeting should not have been different from any other, except for the fact that Dick Ives schedules a meeting of the Executive Committee for Saturday afternoon, and this is most unusual indeed. The Executive Committee is made of up of the five most prominent members of the board. It meets by phone in between board meetings and has the authority to act on behalf of the board in unusual circumstances, though, for a school as stable as Lancaster, I cannot remember a time when this has happened. Mostly, it receives advance updates on all the critical things happening at school, and provides me with some general guidance on the broad issues of the day.

The fact that I am not aware of this meeting ahead of time has me nervous and, as it turns out, appropriately so.

We gather in the Oak Room, on the fourth floor of the academic building. It is traditionally the boardroom, with one long table, paneled walls, and portraits of many of the lions of the Lancaster School, including my father and my grandfather. The full board doesn’t meet there anymore, and has not in years. It is an austere and quiet room, and on this day, I join Dick Ives, Penny Wilton, Dave Tallmadge, Mark Saltonstall, and Brian Corcoran. These are the school’s largest benefactors. The men are all graduates, and from fine old families. The vice chair, Penny Wilton, is a woman with a great sweep of gray hair who vaguely resembles a late-in-life Anne Bancroft. She made her money in investments, some white-shoe Boston firm, and while her connection to the school is local rather than personal—she has a second home nearby—she has become an influential and powerful member of the board in recent years. I should also say she annoys me. I do not like how she constantly swipes that hair out of her face. And she has that particular affect that successful older women seem to develop: her accent cultivated and almost British, her words always far more measured than they need to be.

Dick Ives calls things to order. He was a class below me in school, though he seems older. To look at him, one finds it somewhat remarkable he is still going as strong as he is. He has a handsome, genial face but weighs somewhere north of three hundred pounds. His clothes fit him poorly, and the blue dress shirts he favors stretch around his awesome bulk. He is always eating. Mrs. LaForge has put out pastries and coffee for our meeting, and Dick thoughtfully chews on a Danish as he talks.

“Let me say, Arthur,” Dick begins, “That I for one have been very pleased to see you back in the classroom. As we discussed, I think you needed some sense of renewal. And it is good to see the school doing everything it should be. All the metrics are good, better than good, in fact. So I don’t think we’re talking about performance here per se.”

The very existence of this conversation angers me. “Then what are we talking about, Dick?”

“Perhaps I can answer that,” Penny Wilton says, and I know then that what I suspected is true. This is her meeting.

I turn my attention to her. She swipes her hair away from her forehead and then folds her hands on the table in front of her where they will stay for only a minute until the hair requires another swipe. “Arthur,” she says. “Look, we’re all grown-ups here. We know you have been having a difficult time. And none of this is meant to take away from anything you have done for the school, or all the challenges you have had recently. But we thought it was important to sit down and talk. While as board members we are not on campus every day, and therefore not privy to everything, we do hear things. And some of the things being talked about are, frankly, bizarre.”

“Well,
bizarre
is a strong word,” Dick Ives interjects.

“What word would you use, Dick?” Penny asks.

“I don’t know. Look, Arthur, I think you know what we are talking about, don’t you? Nothing here is fatal. A lack of focus is all. Completely understandable, right?”

I look around the room. Mark Saltonstall and Brian Corcoran and Dave Tallmadge haven’t said anything, and the three of them look like they would rather be anywhere else but in this room having this conversation. Like Dick, we were all at Lancaster around the same time, and they are peers. I consider them friends, though, as in all things like this, I am also aware of the differences between us, that they have the money to live and do whatever they like, while I have the name and the position, but that when you come right down to it, I serve at their pleasure. And that can be taken away at any time, of course, even though my name and pedigree would suggest that it cannot.