The Headmaster's Wife(30)

“Yes.”

“I’m Kenna. Want a beer?”

It was an act of kindness, reaching out and bringing her across the breach, and she smiled and said, “Sure,” and soon she had found a spot on one of the couches. Crosby, Stills, and Nash harmonized on a stereo in the corner, and a joint was being passed around. The conversation was about Nixon, and as she listened to the easy, intelligent banter, it occurred to her how much they were children playing adults, mimicking their parents with their cigarettes and their beer and their talk of politics and war.

The joint made its way to her, and she looked at it as Kenna handed it to her and she shook her head and passed it on.

“Hey,” a boy across the way said. “You don’t smoke?” He had slightly longish brown hair and wore a tattered corduroy jacket. Suddenly all eyes were on her.

“Leave her alone, Arthur,” her new friend, Kenna, said.

So this was Arthur Winthrop, she thought, the headmaster’s son. She gazed across at him, across the smoke, and said, “No. Is there a problem?”

He shrugged. “Nah,” he said, “no problem. What do I care if you partake?”

“Okay, then,” Betsy said, and around her everyone laughed, and she felt that she had won something.

A little bit later she found herself in front of a large goldfish tank. The ten or so goldfish all seemed to be standing in place at different depths, as if stuck. Their tails wagged like dogs. She was watching them intently and didn’t hear Arthur until he was right next to her.

“Do you think we are like those fish?” he said. “And the earth is a tank?”

She looked at him. “Don’t be obvious,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘Don’t be obvious.’”

He stepped back. “Wow. Are you always this tough?”

“It depends.”

“On?”

“Who’s bothering me.”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Good, ’cause you’re sort of pretty.”

“Sort of? That’s a hell of a compliment.”

“I just meant you have nice green eyes.”

“You don’t do this much, do you?”

“Do what?”

“Talk to girls.”

He laughed. “I can see we didn’t start well. I’m Arthur Winthrop.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh, good, and you are Betsy?”

“Betsy Pappas.”

“Betsy Pappas. Where are you from, Betsy Pappas?”

“Craftsbury.”

“Craftsbury what?”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “Craftsbury, Vermont. It’s only an hour from here.”

“Which way?”

“North.”

“I never go north.”

“You really are a snot, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I guess I am.”

She suppressed a smile and watched a goldfish in front of her, its eyes like tiny marbles. “At least you know yourself. Not many people can say that, you know.”

“Self-awareness is one of my strengths,” he said, and grinned, and she permitted herself a look at him. He had good teeth, a strong jaw, even if his brown eyes were a little small.

“Well, I feel safe here,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yes. The headmaster’s son. Who’s going to bust this party?”

“You don’t know my father.”

“Would he kick his son out of school?”

She saw him considering this. “No, probably not. But my life would not be easy.”

“You mean like it is now?”

“You can presume to say that my life is easy?”

“Isn’t it?”

He kicked his head back and laughed heartily. She looked at him and then back to the goldfish.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is. But you’re tough, you know that?”

“I’m just not good at being a girl,” Betsy said.

Later he walked her home, and when he left her at the front door of her dorm, she wanted him to kiss her, but she was not going to let him know that. Before he had an opportunity, she stuck out her hand, and he shook it and then shook his head and laughed. She laughed, too, at the formality of this parting, a shared joke. He walked away into the fall night, and she stood there for a while, watching the breeze swirl leaves in the yellow lamplight, oblivious to the rush of girls who moved past her and into the dorm to check in for the night.





This is what Elizabeth does sitting in Ethan’s room on those long winter afternoons staring out at the snow-covered fields sloping toward the woods. She considers the past. She measures it and weighs it and holds it in her hand like a plum. The past is everything now, and she understands that this is what it means to be dying: You stop looking forward, instead living for moments that happened years before. She turns them over and over in her mind, things she has not thought about in years, and she can see now how obvious it all is. Every small event begets another one, each one built off the other until you have a chain of events that all lead to this heartbreaking room with the day slowly fading outside the windows.