The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  When he accepted the job at Ruxton Academy, he’d pictured himself living in nearby Dumfries, a quaint Revolutionary War town twelve miles to the south. Built along the Quinebaug River, Dumfries had made its name in textiles; for exactly one year, 1818, it had the largest cotton mill in Connecticut. In the 1920s, the firm of Lipscomb and Blore opened four shirt factories within its limits, and Dumfries became known as Shirttown U.S.A. Those factories had long since closed, leaving Dumfries with no industry to speak of, only monuments to its former wealth: handsome Greek Revival architecture, a white Congregational church. The U.S. Post Office, a former blacksmith shop, had been a stop on the Underground Railroad; it, town hall and the old Lipscomb mansion had been designated historic landmarks. The local Heritage Society mowed and watered the town green. To Scott’s eyes, accustomed to the barren newness of inland California, Dumfries looked enough like Concord to prompt an aching nostalgia, a feeling that he’d finally come home.

  Accompanied by the only realtor in town, a brisk Yankee named Tom Harwich, Scott and Penny had toured every available house in Dumfries: a few creaky Victorians, some cramped Capes. Scott had a small inheritance from his grandfather Drew, most of which they’d piddled away on rent and utility bills, minimum payments on their maxed-out credit cards, the dreary monthly expenses of a couple with two children. What remained would cover a skimpy down payment; but these houses were at the upper end of their price range. Worse, all cried out for costly remodeling or, in Penny’s view, a kiss from a wrecking ball. They’d nearly given up when Tom Harwich showed them a stone gamekeeper’s cottage at the edge of town. “A little snug for a family,” he admitted, “but the price is right.” The house was tiny but graceful, with French doors opening into a walled garden. Charmed by the phrase “gamekeeper’s cottage,” with its literary and lascivious associations, Scott lobbied hard. He pointed out the random-width pine floors, the heirloom roses in the sunny garden. Penny was not impressed. The ceiling showed water damage. The appliances looked fifty years old. The place had no air-conditioning and only one bathroom. Oblivious to the stiff presence of Tom Harwich, she wondered aloud how people could live this way.

  Scott started to explain that air-conditioning was unnecessary, that New England summers were nothing like the six-month human barbecue they endured in San Bernardino. He noticed in midsentence the sweat running down his forehead, his shirt plastered wetly to his back.

  “Window units,” he said, changing tactics. “We’ll put one in each bedroom.”

  Penny sighed. Her sigh told him that arguing was futile. For all its decrepitude, the cottage was nearly as expensive as the much larger Victorians. Making it livable would require not just carpentry skills—which Scott had—but long months and vast sums of money, which he had not. There was no getting around it: the cheapest property in Dumfries cost more than they could afford.

  Crushed, he settled into one of the black funks that had haunted his childhood, a rich, satisfying blend of outrage and self-pity that, once unleashed, overtook him completely—for hours or sometimes days, until somebody noticed and wheedled him out of it. Back then, his mother had wooed him with gifts or candy. Penny usually offered sex or ganja, but this time she was in no mood. He watched miserably as, disgusted by his wallowing, she took over the house search. She scanned the newspaper. She picked a new realtor out of the yellow pages, one with offices in nearby Gatwick. The agent, a perfumed blonde named Misty Sanderson, took them on a tour of the town, which at that time resembled a vast construction site.

  From the backseat of Misty’s Ford Taurus, Scott stared out at backhoes and forklifts, real men in blue jeans and work boots. He felt effete and infantilized, riding in the backseat like a child while Penny sat up front next to Misty. From behind they were as alike as sisters, their voices identically pitched, their hair streaked the same shade of blond. He tried, idly, to imagine them naked together, a fantasy that should have inflamed him: one writhing beneath him, one dangling above. But nothing. His pulse was slow, his blood sluggish. His misery was like a tourniquet strangling his groin.

  “It’s hard to picture right now, but trust me,” Misty said brightly. “In six months you won’t recognize the place.” The car bounced along a stretch of unpaved road. Heavy equipment roared in the distance.

  “Welcome to Loch Lomond Acres,” said Misty. “The best address in town.”

  “What town?” Scott mumbled, and Penny shot him an angry look. Though less than a year old, Misty explained, the development was sold nearly to capacity. People were buying the houses faster than the Wood Corporation could build them. Only two lots remained.

  “Oh, but we need a place right away,” said Penny. “Scott starts work in September.”

  Misty flashed a dazzling smile. Her teeth were preternaturally white. “Don’t worry. We can sell you the model, if you like it. We have exclusive rights.”

  This roused Scott from his torpor. “No,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “No housing developments. No planned communities. Not for us.”

  Both women turned around to look at him, as if they’d forgotten he was there.

  “They’re fabulous houses,” Misty protested. “One look and you’ll change your mind.”

  “Come on, honey,” Penny said. “We have to at least look.”

  “We most certainly do not.”

  Misty eyed him nervously. “Why don’t I give you two a minute?” she said, stepping out of the car.

  The door closed with a thud.

  “What’s your problem?” Penny demanded. “What’s wrong with taking a look?”

  “Listen to me,” he said evenly. “You will become a widow in Loch Lomond Acres. One week here and I will blow my brains out.”

  “You’re so dramatic.”

  “Nevertheless.” He sat back, shading his eyes.

  “Scotty, we have to buy something. Or rent something. You can’t just not like anything.”

  “The cottage,” he said. “I liked the cottage.”

  “Oh, get real. The kids are too old to share a bedroom. Where do you suggest we put Ian? Tie him up in the backyard?”

  “We can add a room onto the kitchen.”

  Penny sighed. “You know we can’t buy some falling-down piece of shit. We need a house we can move into in September.”

  He stared out at the muddy flats. Somewhere a truck was backing up. Its beep-beep-beep seemed aimed at him personally, a jeering assault at his brain.

  “We should at least look at this.” Penny’s voice had gone tight and thin. “We should look at something, for God’s sake. We can’t live in a motel forever.”

  For the first time he noticed the deepening crease between her eyebrows. She was not yet thirty. Life with him had aged her.

  “Fine.” He stretched out on the seat and closed his eyes. “Get that Stepford wife back in here and have her take us to a house. A house not in a development. With two bathrooms. And I don’t give a flying fuck what it looks like, we’re buying it.”

  Ruxton Academy sat at the northern edge of Gatwick, on a parcel of land first inhabited by the Quinebaug. The tribe had sold it to Dutchmen, and for two centuries it was the largest family-owned dairy farm in the state. Then, in the early nineties, the land was bought by a group of private investors known as the Merit Corporation, which had made a small fortune taking over the management of failed public schools. Paid with tax dollars by the school districts themselves, Merit swooped in, fired most of the teachers, and replaced them with bright, tireless college grads, willing to work cheap and embrace the Merit Method. Designed by Ruxton’s headmaster, Rick O’Kane, the method emphasized rote learning and intensive preparation for standardized tests, the results of which bore out Merit’s company motto: We Turn Schools Around. Ruxton was Merit’s first foray into private schooling, which its directors had identified as a growth segment of the education market. (There’s an education market? Scott had marveled in his job interview with O’Kane. He had since learned to keep such questions to himself.)


  He’d taught at the school for three years. This qualified him as a veteran at Ruxton, from which teachers fled at a feverish rate: the youngest and brightest, for jobs at legitimate prep schools; the middle-aged and cynical, lured by pensions and decent health insurance, to Gatwick High. Either move was a step up. Ruxton offered its teachers the huge class size and mediocre students of a public school with the paltry salaries of the privates. Glossy marketing materials sold the school as an alternative to the top-shelf prep schools, to the wealthy but gullible inhabitants of places like Loch Lomond Acres. Rick O’Kane had a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Connecticut but was, constitutionally, a salesman: he’d sold cars, then insurance, before forming Merit with a group of college buddies. He’d outlined the company strategy for Scott in that first interview. Ruxton parents, he said with a gummy smile, are used to paying for things. They accepted that, in the way that bottled water was superior to tap, a private school education had to be better than what the local school district handed out for free. And because Ruxton was a day school, they were happy to pay its exorbitant tuition, comforted by the knowledge that they were saving big bucks on room and board. It’s like two percent milk, O’Kane said, without a trace of embarrassment. A compromise solution.

  Sitting in O’Kane’s office, in the good suit he hadn’t worn since his wedding, Scott found himself torn. O’Kane was a con man, that much was clear; but Scott was in no position to quibble. He was desperate to escape San Bernardino, his dire financial straits, the mean concrete bungalow where he and Penny were held hostage by their two hyperactive children. He had sent résumés to every private school in New England. Only Ruxton had offered him an interview.

  And there was this: against his will, against all reason, he felt O’Kane’s sales pitch working on him. Scott felt sized up by this man, his sterling qualities appreciated and understood. Of all the other applicants for the job—over a hundred, O’Kane assured him—only three had been offered interviews.

  He was hired on a year’s contract, to teach English and coach soccer. The coaching was a condition of his employment—every Ruxton teacher had to advise an extracurricular activity, at no additional pay. He’d explained to O’Kane that he’d never coached anything in his life, that he hadn’t set foot on a soccer field since Pearse. In that moment O’Kane’s face brightened, with the sort of beatific smile worn by saints in Renaissance paintings, and Scott knew he’d said the magic word. He understood, then, that his prep school education was the only reason he’d been granted an interview in the first place. This surprised him more than it should have. He had a General Studies degree from Cal State; for two years he’d taught remedial grammar at an inner-city vo-tech. Even for a fake prep school, he wasn’t much of a catch.

  THE FACULTY lot was full. Scott circled it twice, then headed for the student lot. Ruxton students disdained the school bus; each morning they or their parents wheeled up in a cortege of expensive automobiles. Scott found a narrow space in the first row and sat a long moment before cutting the engine. To his left was a black BMW convertible, brand new, with dealer plates; to his right a white Lexus sedan. Both had clearly been purchased by somebody’s father. It was not lost on Scott that (a) with a blue book value of nine hundred dollars, his Golf was worth 4 percent of the cars on either side of it, and (b) he too was somebody’s father. He reached into the backseat for the battered leather briefcase that had belonged to his grandfather Drew. He continued to use it in preference to the slick new one Penny had bought him last Christmas.

  The rain quickened. As always, he had forgotten an umbrella. He would have to make a break for it. He threw open the car door and heard a metallic scraping sound.

  “Shit,” he said aloud.

  He stepped out, rain pelting his head. His door had hit the Beamer’s front quarter panel, leaving a two-inch gash. Some spoiled Ruxton kid was going to have a fit.

  Quality, he thought. McKotch, that was a quality maneuver.

  He knelt to examine the scrape, flecked with yellow paint from his own car door. He thought of a time, years ago, when his father had banged bumpers with a red convertible in a parking lot, the manful way each driver had stepped from his car, the sober exchange of phone numbers and insurance information. The other driver was only a kid, a few years older than Scott, and was clearly at fault. Alarmed and delighted, knowing his father’s temper, Scott had watched from the passenger window, expecting an explosion; but Frank spoke to the kid in a low voice, nodded calmly, and in the end shook his hand. He had treated the little punk like a man, an equal. Seeing this, Scott had felt a stab of jealousy. Was that what it took to win the old guy’s respect—slamming his car in a parking lot? Wasn’t it enough just to be his son?

  He rummaged in his pocket for a scrap of paper. The car’s owner was nowhere in sight; a note on the windshield would have to suffice. He was standing there fumbling when a car horn sounded behind him. He turned to see Rick O’Kane’s Mercedes backing into a space opposite his.

  O’Kane lowered his window. “Can you believe this? Some little puke had the brass to steal my space.” He stepped out of the car, under cover of a huge green-and-white golf umbrella. He looked freshly barbered, fit and healthy with his year-round tan.

  “Jesus, what happened to you? You look like a drowned rat. Come on.” He held the umbrella in Scott’s direction. Seeing no way out, Scott fell in step next to him.

  “Actually,” he said, “I stopped to look at the billboard.”

  O’Kane beamed. “Pretty good, huh? It cost us a bundle, but if it brings in two new students, it pays for itself.”

  Scott nodded energetically. “That’s good. Advertising is good. I just wasn’t expecting—” he paused. “It’s awfully big, isn’t it?”

  O’Kane laughed, an airy, horsy sound. “That’s the idea, McKotch. We want them to see it from the highway.”

  Scott nodded. “But, well, it’s kind of misleading. I don’t coach soccer anymore. So, you know, why me?”

  “Who else am I going to put up there? Mary Fahey?”

  Scott laughed weakly. Mary taught first-year biology, a big, homely girl who’d led the women’s field hockey team at Bryn Mawr. After his dismal 1–9 season, the team had been put into her meaty hands, making Ruxton the only boys’ team in the conference with a female coach. When Scott pointed this out to O’Kane, he had merely laughed. Relax, will you? Female is a relative term.

  Scott tried a different tack. “Where did that photo come from, anyway? I don’t remember anybody taking pictures at practice.”

  “Great shot, huh? The candids are always the best.”

  Scott blinked. Arguing with O’Kane was impossible. He’d lost count of the times he’d shown up at the guy’s office with a complaint and left with a smile on his face.

  “Actually,” he said, “it’s a little embarrassing.”

  “Oh, come on.” O’Kane thumped his shoulder, like a jockey gentling a horse. “It’s aspirational advertising, McKotch. We’re selling these parents a dream. And you’re the dream.”

  Scott was stumped for a response.

  “You know, of course, that your likeness can be used for publicity purposes,” O’Kane added smoothly. “You did sign a release.”

  He charged forward, leaving Scott standing in the rain.

  Wetly he made his way to his office, a cramped cubicle he shared with Jordan Funk, who taught history and civics and advised the drama club. By a cruel trick of destiny, Jordan was the least funky person Scott had ever known, a skinny kid in round John Lennon glasses—cool ten years ago—and a cardigan sweater that hung from his shoulders like a bathrobe. He had a tendency to stutter when excited; that and his puppylike enthusiasm made him seem younger than the students, who radiated boredom and cynicism. Fresh out of Bennington, Jordan was still plagued with teenage acne. The blemishes came and went in cyclical fashion, like constellations appearing in the heavens.

  “Hey, man,” said Jordan. A new zit
had appeared on the bridge of his nose, red and shiny. “You look rough. What happened to you?”

  Scott glanced down at his sodden trouser legs. “I stopped to look at the billboard. Jesus Christ.”

  Jordan glared into the distance, squared his jaw, and clapped loudly. “Good effort!” he grunted.

  In spite of himself, Scott was impressed—by Jordan’s effrontery, his skillful mimicry, the fact that his skinny chest could produce such a manly voice.

  “Smart-ass.” Scott scooped up a shrink-wrapped stack of blue books from a box on the floor.

  “Are you serious?” Jordan said in his normal, sophomore-cheerleader voice. “You’re giving a test?”

  “Apparently I am.”

  “It’s pretty c-close to Christmas. The k-kids are going to freak out.”

  “It’s Tuesday,” Scott said. “Christmas is Thursday. What’s the problem?”

  “It’s Christmas week.”

  “Christmas week?” Scott repeated. “What’s next: no tests in December because it’s Christmas month? Which comes right after, oops, Thanksgiving month?” Irritation washed over him. In spite of its pretensions, Ruxton stuck to the standard public school schedule—short afternoons, no Saturdays. Instead of Greek and Latin, it offered test-prep classes: Vocab Builder (for freshmen and sophomores), Math and Verbal Intensive (for juniors), and Senior Refresher (last chance, kids, before we give up and send you to a good trade school).

  “Relax,” said Jordan.

  “What, I’m supposed to wait until January? And make sure they’ve forgotten everything I’ve said this quarter?”