The Headmaster's Wife(6)
The notion of the pending trip lifts my spirits. In the days preceding it there is a noticeable spring in my step. I bound out of bed to get my morning coffee before heading across the street to the dining hall. I cheerily greet all I pass on the campus walkways. Talking to me on the phone, Dick Ives appears to notice something in my voice.
“You sound good, Arthur,” he says.
“Brilliant idea about the classroom, Dick,” I say.
“You are enjoying it, then? Perfect.”
I don’t mind the September rain that falls ceaselessly, day after day, dulling the seasonal color. And even Elizabeth, interrupting my post-dinner scotch in my office wanting to talk, cannot jar me out of this feeling. Something is happening, I know it. Even the presence of Elizabeth, once-beautiful Elizabeth, now with her gray hair cut short across her forehead like a man’s, cannot knock me out of it.
But first I must listen to my wife. I try to be patient, though it is a conversation we have had before, and I do not invite her to sit. She stands in front of my desk. For a while now we have been moving around this old house like a pair of ghosts. Sometimes I feel like I live alone.
“You have to deal with this, Arthur,” Elizabeth says. “You cannot just ignore it.”
“I am not ignoring anything,” I say calmly. “I just don’t see any reason why I need to dwell on all this, which is what you are asking me to do.”
“You have to come to terms with it,” she says. “You cannot hide from this.”
“Is this about Ethan again?”
“No, this is about me. It’s like you … forget it. It’s no use.”
I raise my hand to stop her. “Elizabeth,” I say. “I know full well what happened. I know all of it.”
“How come you won’t talk about it? It’s not normal.”
“What is normal?” I say. “No one can answer that, can they? I am dealing with this in my own way. As are you.”
I look down at my desk now. There are some papers there, a draft strategic plan the academic dean put together that I really need to look at. I pick it up absentmindedly and am instantly fixated on the first paragraph (a spelling mistake of all things), so that I do not even hear Elizabeth until she is on top of me, pushing my chest and crying.
“Elizabeth, for Christ’s sake,” I say.
“Fucking wake up, Arthur,” she says. “I know someone is still in there.”
“Okay,” I say. “Calm down, please. Calm down.”
Her body goes slack in my arms, though she feels oddly weightless. I take her in my arms. Her body heaves with heavy, racking sobs. I know what to do. I run one hand through her hair and then pull back and look at her, at her gray eyes, at the pronounced crow’s feet that fan out from their corners.
She dresses for the occasion, more than the normal school requirements of safe preppiness. She wears beige heels, a black dress, and a small cardigan sweater she holds tightly around her breasts as she steps into the passenger side of my Saab. There is something different about her, and it takes me a moment to realize what it is. It is makeup. She wears lipstick and eye shadow. There is something cheap about it, like a child playing dress-up, and for an instant after she is in the car, I am disappointed in her. And in this disappointment I also find relief, for now I can just take her to Boston and back to school and forget about her.
But then we are on the road. I like to drive. I love that sense of mastery you get from country roads, where the road rises and falls and the fields stretch out to the river and you bend the car around sharp curves, and where just when you think you are going to lose control, the machine corrects itself and brings you back into line. If only life could be so simple.
We talk casually. She tells me about her family. I ask her all the right questions. I draw her out. I have experience in this, generations of reticent students and donors. Betsy does not need my help of course, for she is at ease with herself. Far beyond her years. I even forget the makeup that bothered me, and as we drive, I focus on the soft lilt of her voice, her stories, and it is like the years between us somehow disappear and we are just two adults traveling on a weekend trip. To the Cape, perhaps, or up to Maine. Some B and B where we will eat dinner and retire to a tasteful room to become lovers.
At dusk we cross the Zakim Bridge, shiplike with lights strung across its high curved beams. Soon we are in the city. I watch her next to me. She looks up at the buildings as we drive through the Back Bay, past the brownstones and down streets full of people. She has known only the Vermont woods and, to her, Boston must seem like another world.
The alumni event is at the top of the Prudential Center. I have never liked heights, but Betsy has the fearlessness of youth. From the great windows she looks out into the twinkling fall night, her fingers stretched out across the panes of glass. Across the harbor to the ocean in the distance. Airplanes swooping in from the sea. The buildings of the Financial District rising up like a bulwark against the water.
I bring her around and introduce her to those I know, and to others I introduce myself, though no introduction is necessary. Everyone who has come knows who I am.
Betsy comports herself well. She makes eye contact. She talks about what she loves about Lancaster. She says all the right things. She even has kind words for my class. She tells a ruddy-faced member of the class of ’54 that the Russians teach you how to live today. I am touched by this, naturally, and I could not agree more.