The Headmaster's Wife (7 page)

What follows is the stuff high school dreams are made of. A banner is brought out by earnest-looking cheerleaders. It has the number 2,000 on it. Russell, with a big grin on his face, jumps through it. The crowd goes bananas. The mayor of the small town comes out with a microphone and addresses the crowd about Russell while Russell stands off to the side, the timeless athlete. When it is his turn, he says all the right things, thanks his teammates, thanks the fans, and sounds like someone who was born to be worshipped, as he clearly has his whole life.

I turn off the television and read his admission essay. It talks about basketball mostly, though he does say that he knows that the NBA is not in his future and that, despite the interest he got as a senior in Great Barrington, his goal is to go to Dartmouth, and to do that, a postgrad year could make the difference for him.

His references all paint the same portrait: a good, humble kid with a preternatural gift. A natural leader. Someone his classmates all look up to. And on and on.

I am no match for Russell Hurley, and not just on the basketball court. I am haunted by the image of him jumping through the banner made to honor him. While I have never been the sports enthusiast that many of my peers are, I do know the grip it has on the high school imagination, even at Lancaster. Russell Hurley is instantly the most popular boy on campus, and not just among the students. Suddenly conversations come back to me: the admissions director and Mr. Peabody, the basketball coach, raving about this new boy, maybe the strongest player we’ve had in a generation. We’re talking New England championship, Arthur, he’s that good, they say. Pencil in thirty-five a game, they say. And they couldn’t understand my lack of excitement, but then again, that was before Betsy and during the time I found it difficult to get excited about anything.

I return Russell’s file to Mrs. LaForge and walk outside into a raw Vermont day. It is late October, and the leaves have mostly fallen off the trees, except for a few that cling to the bare branches like lifeless birds. It is gray and overcast, and as I walk, the first snowflakes start to fall. They won’t mean a thing when they hit the ground, but it is always significant, a harbinger, when you first see snow in the sky. Turns a page on a part of the year. The long dark winter lies in front of us now.

I walk to the river. It is not often I come here anymore. Across are the barren fields of New Hampshire. The river runs slow and fat and black on this gray day. I stare at the inky water. A big stick comes down the heart of the river, spinning as it goes, caught in the current. This part of the river never fully freezes, though it can be deceptive when a membrane of gray-white ice forms over it on the coldest of days. I follow the stick with my eyes. It spins one more time, then rolls toward the riverbank. It comes to rest at my feet and stops moving.

“
Tell us about the river.”

“What about it?”

“You talk about it, but not directly.”

“What is there to say?”

“It’s important to you.”

“Of course.”

“Expand on that, then.”

“On why it’s important?”

“Yes.”

“I grew up on that river.”

“Did you swim in it? Fish?”

“Swim, yes. All the time. Fish? No. People did fish there. But we didn’t.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “We weren’t the type that fished.”

“Because fishing was…?”

“Something other people did. What are you after?”

“Tell me about your wife. Did she like to swim?”

“Elizabeth? Elizabeth wasn’t a swimmer.”

“Did you find that odd?”

“What?”

“That she didn’t swim?”

“She would dip her toes in the ocean. But she didn’t swim in the river, and of course I didn’t, either, after college.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “Have you ever read
Madame Bovary
?”

“
Madame
what?”

“Never mind. It’s just that her husband doesn’t dance. Charles doesn’t dance. I don’t dance, either. Or swim. It’s not—for a man like me—it’s not appropriate.”

When I need alcohol, I travel for it. There is only one liquor store in the town of Lancaster, and it would be unbecoming for the headmaster to be in there as often as I require. So I get in my car and drive fifteen or twenty miles, where I will not be so easily recognized, and pick up what I need.

It is on one of these sojourns, up to St. Johnsbury, that a lightbulb goes off. At the liquor store, I buy my normal assortment of a case of wine and a case of single malt scotch, but I also buy a smattering of bottles this time that one would not expect me to pick up. Some rotgut vodka, and something called Mad Dog 20/20, and some peppermint schnapps. All products that must appeal to the teenage palate—the times we have found students with alcohol, these are generally what they have.

That afternoon I do something I am not particularly proud of, though, when it comes to Betsy, all things feel like war, and in war, you see, there is what is euphemistically called collateral damage.

During the sports hour, I take the skeleton key afforded to me as head of school and open the front door to Spencer Hall. It is a two-story clapboard building on the main quadrangle, and as a student I once lived here, on the second floor. It houses junior and senior boys and is a desirable place to bunk on campus.

The dorm is empty, as it should be. All the boys are out on the fields. Out of habit, I stop and pick up a wayward flyer that has fallen off the bulletin board. I walk down the long, narrow hallway, and all the flaws of the building catch my eye. It could use a new coat of paint, and the carpet is threadbare down the middle from all those pounding feet, boys wearing cleats inside, which they are not supposed to do but do anyway. Items for next year’s capital budget.

I climb the stairs to the second floor, and here everything is the same. In an hour or so these hallways will be full of rambunctious boys readying themselves for the dining hall. But for now I have it to myself.

I find the room I am looking for: 219. I put the paper bag I am carrying down on the floor, just so I can check the number again against the slip of paper in my pocket. I have the right room.

I key the door and open it. The dorm rooms are all the same: high-ceilinged and stately in the manner of the older dormitories, a solitary window that looks out onto the quad. I go to the window and peer out. The quad, too, is devoid of students. One of the things I love about structure: You always know where to find Lancaster students. Their lives are scripted, unlike those at Exeter or Andover, which take a decidedly different approach, though I know they feel equally strong about the preparatory power of their pedagogy.

This room has two beds, one on either side. This is a challenge I hadn’t really thought about. Which side of the room belongs to Russell, and which side belongs to his roommate, another postgrad basketball player, though much less heralded? They both have basketball posters above their beds, and this does not provide a clue. Then I remember that Brett, Russell’s roommate, is a point guard, and stands only about five foot nine, as compared to the six-foot-five Russell. These rooms have two closets, and the closets are aligned with the beds. It is in here that I discover what I am looking for. In the end, the size of the clothes determines the fate of the man.

Having decided that Russell sleeps on the left side of the room, I unburden my cache of booze and set about placing it under his bed. The area under his bed is already used for storage, so I find a duffel bag he keeps rolled up under here and fill it with the cheap liquor. I tuck it back deep under the bed and exit his room and then the dormitory itself.

That night, at a quarter to eleven, right before lights-out, the dean of students and I, having been notified by an anonymous tip, arrive at Russell and Brett’s doorway. The dean of students, a young man named Marx, enjoys the fascist side of his job, and in a loud voice he announces to the boys as they sit on their beds reading, “Room search.” They look surprised but unworried as they stand in their boxer shorts and T-shirts and take their place at the front of the room.

Mr. Marx, whom the students loathe, begins his search with zeal, though he is focused initially on Brett’s side of the room. It is somewhat unusual, though not unprecedented, for me to accompany a room search. In my youth I did it far more often, though the job of head of school was different then from how it is now. As I have said before, the position has become much more like a conventional CEO than in my father’s era, where you were more the head of a vast, sprawling household. A father to all.

While Mr. Marx gleefully attacks the room, emptying clothes out of the bureau and leaving them piled on the floor, I walk around with a general’s bearing, lifting books and papers on the desks, turning around and pacing and studying the boys. They are suffering this indignity with measured exasperation and the look of young men with nothing to fear.

This is taking too long. Mr. Marx has his methods, but as any parent will tell you, under the bed is an obvious hiding spot, and I am losing patience. I move toward Russell’s bed, and because, I suppose, I want him to know, I look back at him before I go under there. He is unfazed. I reach under and, with my hand stretching, I feel for the fabric of the duffel bag.

I pull it out, and when I do, everyone in the room can hear the unmistakable clink of glass against glass. Mr. Marx stops what he is doing, and I say, “What do we have here?”

Russell Hurley looks positively puzzled. I unzip the bag. I pull out a bottle of flavored vodka.

“These yours, Russell?” Mr. Marx says.

“I’ve never seen those before,” Russell says.

“This your bed?” I say.

“Yes, but—”

“We’ll see you in Disciplinary Committee,” I say. “I am disappointed in you.”

“Sir,” he says.

I dismiss him with my hand. “Save it for the committee, Mr. Hurley.”

The next day, I receive two visitors in my office. The first is not a surprise. Mr. Peabody, the basketball coach, comes to see me. Tim Peabody was a few years ahead of me at Lancaster and was the Russell Hurley of his day. A middle-class kid with an ace jump shot. Went to college and returned as an assistant coach and a math teacher and never left. He has been our head coach for twentysomething years, and since basketball has never been the priority at Lancaster—trailing both soccer and lacrosse in import—I can honestly say he is someone I do not think of often.

I know why he is here, of course, though I let him say it.

“It’s about Russell Hurley,” he says.

“Yes?”

“He’s a good kid, Arthur. For what it’s worth, he swears the alcohol was not his.”

“It was under his bed.”

“I know. I don’t know why he would lie. It’s not like him. But either way, there are more important things at stake here.”

“Your team’s prospects?”

“No. Though we are favorites to win the league for the first time in a long time. A young man’s life. That’s what matters.”

“What about the values of the school? Don’t those supersede the needs of any one individual?”

“Oh, come on, Arthur. Respectfully, we know those get bent all the time. If you’re a Mellon or an Astor, you can do far worse than a few bottles of vodka and be okay.”

“And so you’re suggesting we ignore the handbook and our policies because Mr. Hurley is a basketball star?”

“Not because he’s a basketball star,” says Mr. Peabody. “But because he’s a good kid. A solid kid, Arthur. Good head on his shoulders. This is his one chance, and he knows it. He wants Dartmouth, and to come from his family, that’s saying something.”

I nod. I look away from Mr. Peabody and out the window to the bare trees on the quad. Another gray day in a string of them. Stick season in Vermont.

“Thank you, Tim” is all I am willing to give him at this point.

He stands to go. “Oh, Arthur,” he says, “one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“Just wanted to say that I admire how you are handling things. A lot of us are.”

I stand up and hike my pants a little. I am not sure what to say to this. While I appreciate the generosity of the statement, it always makes me uncomfortable when subordinates attempt to offer some sort of assessment of my performance. It is a breach of sorts, though I know the intention is good. In the end, I just give Tim a firm nod, as if to say I understand.

She is in the outer office when I return from lunch. Sitting in one of those wooden chairs with the Lancaster seal on them that line the wall across from Mrs. LaForge’s desk. Blue cardigan sweater buttoned smartly over a white blouse. Modest gray skirt and flats.

Mrs. LaForge looks up at me. “Ms. Pappas was hoping she could see you for a moment.”

I am pleased to see her, though I do not show this. I look over and flash her a quick smile, though it is not returned. “Of course,” I say. “Ms. Pappas.”

She follows me into my stately office, and I turn and close the door behind her. She takes a seat on the couch, and I sit across from her, in my leather wingback chair. It is so good just to have her across from me, so much nicer than the classroom, where I cannot give her my full attention. She is not happy, and I know why she is here, but before we get to the matter at hand, I want to drink her in. The thing that surprises me about this whole Russell business is that he could have any girl he wants, I suppose. Tall and handsome and a basketball star. Charming in an ingratiating way. Yet he has chosen my Betsy, whose charms always seemed subtler than those of some of the other girls. I know how lovely she is, having held her in my arms, having moved with her on beds as varied as those in a high-end Boston hotel and on the forest floor. It is one of the things that has given me the most pleasure in our relationship: the fact that it feels like I can see what others cannot. I feel that I alone know her true beauty, that intelligence that flows so easily out of her willing mouth. How could Russell, simple Russell dribbling a ball endlessly, possibly understand her? This is a folly. She and Russell. If I choose to be objective, I see why, why she needs this. For, despite her confidence, there is a part of her that still wants to fit in. She is straddling two worlds: the world of school, where Russell is a prime catch and awards her status on campus. Then there is the adult world she longs to be fully a part of, and all I can offer her there. The difference is that the former she can advertise, while the latter she must hold deep in her pocket like a set of keys.