The Headmaster's Wife(4)
What is this? I am the headmaster of the elite Lancaster School. I have been around young women my whole life and have never so much as given their bodies more than passing consideration. That part of my mind has been closed for a long time. And now here I find myself, on a cool fall night under the stars on the old campus that has been my home for fifty-three of my fifty-seven years, peering through a window at an eighteen-year-old girl.
The following Monday I announce to my class that I will be providing office hours to any student who would like to discuss the assigned reading or who might have questions about the first paper I have asked them to write. I expect to see her. Her earnestness suggests she is the type to take advantage of office hours. I am getting a sense of her: She is grateful to be at Lancaster. Many take it for granted. She is not one of them.
In the meantime, I’ve discovered what I can about her. She is different from what I thought. First, her name is Betsy Pappas. The name sounds Greek, not Jewish, but you can never be sure. She is not from New Jersey at all, but instead from Vermont, the small Northeast Kingdom town of Craftsbury. She is a scholarship student. She tested off the charts at some tiny Podunk school and is on a full ride. The family has no money to speak of. Her father teaches woodshop at a small college up there. What a thing to teach at a college. Last I checked, carpenters didn’t require a college education.
Her mother makes jewelry. There is one sibling, a younger sister who still attends the Podunk school. Betsy has redone her junior year, which is a requirement at Lancaster. Transfers have to spend at least two years to get their degree. She turned eighteen in August.
It’s an entirely different portrait from the one I imagined. Instead of new-money suburban Jews, they are no-money Vermont hippies. I picture an aging, run-down farmhouse, a pickup truck and a VW van in the driveway.
With that bit of research settled, my workweek proceeds on in typical fashion. Mrs. LaForge, who has been the headmaster’s secretary for close to forty years, keeps the schedule moving. Meetings come in half-hour increments, and there are set-aside times for me to make calls to the heavy hitters who keep the wheels of Lancaster greased. In between, I deal with discipline cases. This week there is a sophomore boy who was found to have an ounce of marijuana in a cigar box hidden in his bureau during a room inspection. Drug cases are normally a swift exit from the school, but as with all things, there are nuances at play. The boy is a Mellon, of the Pennsylvania Mellons, and the boy, an arrogant, chubby kid with a mop of brown hair, knows this makes an easy decision complicated. The boy shows no fear in the headmaster’s office. He sits comfortably, sunk back in one of the leather chairs like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
When I was younger, I might have just gone by the book, but with age you come to terms with the fact that not everyone arrives into this world on an equal footing. There is no real equity at boarding school. There are the Mellons, and then there are the Betsy Pappases from Craftsbury, Vermont. Justice is not blind at Lancaster. I call the boy’s father and let him know I will make an exception to the normal policy, but that if it happens again I will not be able to be so generous. The father says he understands and will have a difficult talk with Junior. It goes without saying that a check will arrive in the coming week. History says it will be significant.
On Wednesday, Deerfield, one of our fiercest rivals, comes to campus, and I spend the afternoon touring the sporting events. Mrs. LaForge maps them out for me on my phone, one of the many clever things she does to make me look good, and a beep goes off when I am supposed to move to the next event. A quarter of the football game, off to boys’ soccer for fifteen minutes, then to girls’ soccer, and finally to the finish line of the cross-country race. A light rain falls on a dull gray day, and not many parents make the trip. Nevertheless I do my best to summon the slick enthusiasm my role as chief booster demands, moving up the sidelines under my umbrella, shaking hands, talking to parents about their children, patting faculty on the back.
Everyone is happy to see me, or pretends to be. Whatever they think of me personally, they respect the office. That is one thing I have learned. Like it or not, I am the face of Lancaster, and they are suitably pleased that I have graced their particular game with my presence, which is entirely the point.
On Friday, I hop a flight from Lebanon, New Hampshire, to Manhattan, and that evening, at the Lancaster Club, I move among the well-heeled alumni who have come out to hear me speak. In the large wood-paneled room with its deep-set leather furniture, I rise to speak, glass of wine in hand, and for a moment the old doubt comes over me. I have been doing this a long time, you see, but sometimes I still feel like a fraud. I do not know if I really ever wanted to be head of school. I am not my father, as my son is not I. The older alums still compare me to my father, and I know they find me wanting. I am not starchy enough, perhaps, a pale imitation of the old man’s greatness. I do not have his stentorian voice. But tonight I do a reasonable job of bringing forth that old love of school. I give my stump speech. I tell them about the cantilevered glass addition to the library, the new tech center, the field house under construction that will be the envy of all the great New England schools. I have facts at the tip of my tongue: the percentage of graduates who will go on to Ivies next year (53 percent, best among the competition), the accomplishments of faculty, and of course all the news on the beloved sports teams.
I wear my Lancaster tie, black and gold with small crests on it, and for a moment it is as if nothing has changed. I am doing what I have always done, what you could say I was born to do. The old school has given me my life.