The Headmaster's Wife(18)

“It’s good to see you,” I say.

“You know why I am here?”

I decide to play coy, for this is a game. “You are struggling with your appreciation of all things Chekhov?” I smile slightly.

“Don’t be cute,” she says.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You know why I am here, then.”

I lean back. I am enjoying this. Her needing something from me. I have played this well. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“It’s about Russell. I know what you did.”

“What I did?”

“You put the bottles under his bed, didn’t you, Arthur?”

I laugh. “Don’t be absurd.”

Her eyes flash with anger. “Russell has never so much as tasted alcohol. He has no interest in it. The bottles were not his.”

“He will have a chance to make his case in the Disciplinary Committee.”

“Oh, you are something,” she says. “Look at you. So smug.”

“You are lovely when you are angry,” I say, and I mean it. There is genuine passion in her voice, in her demeanor, the coiled energy of her young body.

“You think your Disciplinary Committee would like to know about you f*cking me?”

She says this rather loudly, probably not loud enough for Mrs. LaForge to have heard in the outer office, but close enough to make me uncomfortable. I have not imagined Betsy going here in this conversation, and it unnerves me a little bit. I suddenly have lost the upper hand.

“Easy now,” I say. “Easy.”

“Do you actually believe that getting rid of Russell will make me love you? Is that what this is about?”

I sigh deeply. “We are in different places. I know that.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Betsy, please. So much anger.”

“Do not take this out on Russell, you hear me?”

Before she can say “or else,” I have an idea. “Tell you what,” I say. “Come away with me. To New York. One night. I will show you the city. If after that night you no longer want to see me, I will leave you alone. It will hurt me deeply, but I will leave you alone.”

I see the air go out of her. She sits back, crosses her arms over her chest. She looks toward the window, the spindly bare branches of the maple. “And if I do this, will you leave Russell alone?”

“I have not done anything to Russell,” I say. “Despite what you might think.”

“Give me your word,” she says.

“Okay,” I say. “You have my word.”

“When?”

“New York?”

“Yes.”

“This weekend,” I say.

“Where do I say I am going?”

“Sign out for home,” I say. “No one will question that.”





You should see us. My Saab parked next to the Dumpster behind her dorm, a Saturday morning. It is a bright, sunny day, and I cannot remember a time when I felt so happy, so full of anticipation. In my rearview mirror I look for her and out the windows I glance around nervously. This first moment will be the delicate one, her getting in the car, our chance to be exposed if someone were to come by. It is oddly thrilling, the daring of this escape in broad daylight.

Here she is now, in the rearview, moving quickly toward the car with an overnight bag. She is aware of the stakes and peers all around her as she walks. She opens the car door quickly and throws her bag in the back, and I say to her, get down, and she closes the door behind her and tucks herself as best she can into the footwell on the passenger side, her head coming over and resting in my lap.

We drive through campus. It fills me with delight to pass students and faculty, staff members and maintenance people. Everyone recognizes the car and they wave to me, and I wave back. Betsy’s face is nuzzled to the right of my crotch, and in between waves, I run my fingers through her hair.

It is with a measure of reluctance that I let her know when we have left campus and that she can sit up. She does, letting her hair down when she sits back, and I watch it cascade down and around her shoulders.

There is something cathartic about taking her out of Vermont. About crossing the river and driving downhill to the splendor of New York. She is a small-town girl, and I try to see all of it through her eyes. The speeding down the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, with its old stone bridges and stately forests hiding mammoth homes. The first glimpse of the wide Hudson, with its steep Palisades, running massively to the sea. And then the turn onto West Seventy-ninth and the immediate hum of the city, the choreography of the cabs, Betsy gazing longingly at the tall buildings rising up all around us.

This is her first time in New York. And whatever misgivings she has about us seem to be disappearing as her awe of the city grows. I have Dick Ives’s apartment keys. He is in Florida now, where he will stay most of the winter. The apartment is spectacular. It takes up the top two floors of Halvorsen Hall, a grand old prewar building on Central Park West. The building itself is more reserved than its more famous neighbors, like the Dakota, and you might not notice it if you were to walk by it on the street.

Dick Ives’s pied-à-terre has long been one of the perks of being head of school at Lancaster. He is there only a handful of days a year now, and the doorman Rupert knows me by sight and is too discreet to say anything about Betsy. He arranges for someone to valet my car, and we walk through the cobblestone courtyard to the outdoor elevator that will take us directly to the top floor.