The Headmaster's Wife(20)

What I do say is foolish talk, and she knows it and I know it. But it flows like water out of me, and she shushes me, saying, “Arthur, enough,” and I love that she calls me Arthur.

“Say my name again,” I ask her.

She puts a finger over my lips and says, “Go to sleep, Arthur.”

She rolls away from me. I roll into her. I wrap my arms around her and hold her, and soon she is sound asleep.

For a while I just listen to her. Listen to the rise and fall of her breath, and then I slide away from her and stand up.

Outside on the balcony the wind has picked up. I put my hands on the railing and feel it push my hair back. I look out into the dark, at the park, and the bright lights of residential towers on the East Side.

I am twelve stories up. Below me is the hard concrete of the sidewalk. I think of Betsy inside sleeping. And the fact is, late at night, the only question one should ask oneself when standing on a high balcony is whether to jump. I know that sounds morbid, and perhaps insane, but when you boil it down, is anything else relevant?

I look straight down. A man and a woman—at least that’s what they appear to be from this height—walk huddled together in their overcoats. The breeze that blows toward me is thick with winter. I think about going over the balcony. Would I jump and fly for a moment? Or would I just lean over and tumble like a high diver?

I do not want to die. Not because I have tons to live for, other than this girl sleeping upstairs. The philosopher will make an argument that the truly courageous never jump, because the real courage lies in going on living when you know death is an eventuality. That this is the very stuff of being human. I am not sure this is true. I do not jump not because I am brave. Rather, I do not jump because I am a coward.

What do I fear? I fear a tiny moment in time. A tiny moment that will last no longer than two hands clapping. And it is not that (as they say in movies and books) life will flash before your eyes that scares me, but that it will not. Death is so pedestrian, you see, that when it comes it will not be imbued with the ineffable meaning you hope it will. You at least want it to matter; and to be sure, for some it will. For a small few, it will matter a great deal. But the larger truth is that when we die it is no different from a shoe stomping on an ant. The ant stops moving. The world goes on. The world goes on as if the ant never existed.





“You don’t talk about your son much.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Arthur shrugs. “What is there to say?”

“You were angry with him.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Do you have children?”

“I do.”

“How old?”

“Two girls. They are both in junior high.”

“You have dreams for them? High hopes?”

“Sure.”

“Now imagine if, just to spite you, they do the exact opposite with their lives from what you hope they will.”

“Is that what he did to you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Because he went in the army? Some people would think that’s a great thing. Serving your country.”

“He’s my only child. My only son.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I need to stand.”

Arthur stands up. He looks down and once again is reminded of his ridiculous clothes. He looks around the small room. He is a kept man, and that should be okay, he thinks, because in many ways that is what he has always been.

He stretches and then sits back down. Sips his coffee. “His mother—his mother worries about him. It’s different when you have only one. I have nothing against the army. But the army is for…”

“For what?”

“I can’t win here. I know that. One thing about being head of school? You learn how to count votes. You never fight a battle you can’t win, you see. Let me put it this way, and my apologies, for I have no interest in offending anyone. My son, by virtue of his birth mainly, had every opportunity. He did not need to become me, though it is a good life. But it was there for him, and it was not a question he had to answer until he was older. He chose to answer it when he did, and you can argue that it was his choice, that he was a man, but I cannot forgive him for that.”

“To play devil’s advocate for a moment … wasn’t it his life?”

“He’s eighteen. There is no choice when you are eighteen. What is he trying to do? Be a hero?”

“You’re asking me?”

“No. I am not.”

“Your wife, Elizabeth, what did she think about his decision?”

“What do you think she thought? She was worried sick.”

“That he might die?”

He looks at the man across from him. He suddenly wants to be outside, and thinks about asking for that. He thinks about asking if he can walk on the city streets outside all this cement, if he can take off these clothes that hang on him like blankets and just trudge through the snow in his bare feet, because he could feel that, really feel that. But he doesn’t ask because part of him knows this man cannot understand what it means to desire something as visceral as the numbing cold, the crusty snow as sharp as knives against your toes.

He takes a deep breath. Looks the man in the eye. He says, “What is the only thing a parent needs to do?”