Somebody Else's Daughter

by Elizabeth Brundage

  “I saw geese this morning,” Maggie said. “They were flying somewhere in a triangle.”

  “They’re so goddamn organized,” Greer said. “Try getting our students to do that.”

  “The sign of an early winter,” Jack said, finishing his drink.

  “Perish the thought.” Greer shuddered. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it.”

  Two girls in a small boat were rowing to shore. The sun was low behind the trees and you could see their long shadows stretching across the lake’s surface. The girls were in silhouette.

  “There’s Ada now,” Jack said.

  “Who’s that with her?” Greer squinted down at them. “Is it Willa?”

  “Last week they weren’t speaking, this week they’re best friends.”

  Greer laughed. “Ah, the social pecking order. It’s terribly hard keeping track these days, isn’t it?”

  “Terribly complicated,” Maggie agreed.

  Willa. Nate’s throat went dry and the air seemed impossibly warm. Keeping her name had been part of their agreement; it was what Catherine had wanted.

  Although he’d anticipated this moment a million times, trying to predict its outcome, he was still not prepared for it. He put down his drink and wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers. What if she should know him somehow? Even worse, what if she resembled him? Yet, even if she did resemble him, he reasoned, nobody would draw any conclusions—it was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, including hers. And of course she wasn’t going to recognize him—she’d been an infant! Still, he felt foolish for coming here. It had been a terrible idea, a mistake. What had he possibly been thinking?

  He held his hand over his eyes to cut the glare and studied his daughter for the first time. Even from a distance he could see how closely she resembled Catherine. Just the way she was sitting in the boat, angular and poised. The Heaths’ daughter, Ada, had gotten out first and was directing the boat toward the shore. They were laughing. Then Willa stepped out, coltlike with her long legs. Her hair was long, auburn, the same color as his. The girls were wearing cutoff shorts and bathing suit tops and they were laughing hysterically, playing some kind of push-me pull-you game. Willa fell backward into the water and laughed some more and Ada took her hand and pulled her up only to be pulled down all over again by her friend. Now they were both in the water, laughing and splashing each other, rolling around like lovers.

  Apparently annoyed, Maggie stood up. “Girls! Come in and get changed. We’re having dinner in ten minutes.” The girls looked at Maggie and then at each other and burst out laughing all over again. “Hard to believe they’re juniors in high school,” Maggie said, displeased.

  “They look like they’re having fun,” Nate said.

  “Too much fun,” Greer remarked sourly.

  “They’re apparently very good friends,” Nate said, hoping to prompt more information.

  “Willa’s father’s one of our trustees,” Jack said. “He’s a very generous man.”

  “Exceptionally generous,” Greer clarified. “He’s made buckets of money in advertising—commercials, I think. The wife collects thoroughbred horses.”

  “Willa’s somewhat . . .” Maggie paused, trying to find a tactful adjective, “confrontational.”

  “She’s adopted, you know,” Greer confided, and the phrase seemed to hover in a cloud of ambiguity. “Not that that has anything to do with it. We have lots of adopted kids at Pioneer—truthfully, it’s how we maintain our diversity.”

  “Willa Golding’s a fine girl,” Jack said definitively, closing the subject.

  “Yes, she is,” Greer said. “No argument there.”

  Soaking wet, the girls ambled up the incline in their awkward, teenaged way, and said hello to the adults. Nate’s heart began to pound. He could feel the sweat rolling down his back. He stood there, waiting to be introduced, his hands clammy. She was taller than her mother had been, and lean. He recognized Ada as one of Larkin’s piano students. Heath stood up and made the introduction. “Girls, this is Mr. Gallagher. He’s to be your writing instructor.”

  “How’s that novel coming?” Ada asked in melodious flirtation. She had the same face as her mother, sprinkled with freckles.

  “Do you two know each other?” Greer frowned.

  Nate explained the Larkin connection, relieved to have an explanation for the idiotic grin on his face.

  “You’re writing a novel?” Greer said.

  “He’s trying to write one,” Ada answered importantly.

  “Well, good for you,” Greer said. “Nate, this is Willa Golding.”

  “Hello,” Willa said, and reached out to shake his hand. Her hand was cool, her fingers long and tapered. He instantly remembered her grip as a baby, the way she wouldn’t let go.

  “Hello, Willa.” Their eyes met and she grinned and for a crazy moment the world stopped.

  Maggie’s voice shattered the moment. “Go get out of those wet clothes, girls.” She ushered the girls into the house. “I’ll get dinner started. Look at that, it’s already getting dark. I hate that, don’t you? All of a sudden it’s fall and I was just getting the hang of summer.”

  “Let’s have a toast,” Jack said, holding up his glass. “Here’s to you, Gallagher. Welcome to Pioneer.”

  “Hear, hear,” Greer said, and they lifted their glasses and drank.

  Maggie served trout with roasted potatoes and salad and corn bread. The food was delicious, but Nate could hardly taste it. The girls sat off to themselves on lawn chairs, holding their plates on their laps. Everything about Willa spoke of Catherine. The way she moved, her voice, her mannerisms—if only Cat could see her, he thought. How incredible just to be near her. It was as though he’d been revived from a very long sleep. The world seemed brighter, astoundingly vivid. He was awake! Her presence dazzled his senses, the long hair, the bones of her face, the white teeth. She was, in all her full-grown femaleness, magnificent—and she had come from him—she was his flesh and blood!

  The girls excused themselves and went inside. It was dark now, and a layer of mist covered the surface of the lake. Maggie brought out scones that had been baked by the school’s chef, who’d trained at the Sorbonne. “All the interesting people retire to the Berkshires,” Maggie said. “We’re so lucky to have him. Of course everything’s organic.”

  “Organic,” Greer said wryly. “That’s an operative word here at Pioneer, Gallagher. Consider it a metaphor for our clientele.”

  “The Patagucci set,” Maggie said. “You know the clothes? It’s the uniform of choice, a kind of subliminal dress code. Of course we’re all slaves to it.”

  “Ah, the salubrious allure of the Berkshires,” Greer said like a travel agent. “Don’t panic, it’s organic.”

  They all laughed.

  “What’s underneath is all the same,” Jack tried to explain. “We’ve got our share of doctors and lawyers, trust fund babies, and entrepreneurs. And we’ve got a handful of Wall Street folks. But people don’t come up here to get in the limelight. It’s just the opposite. They come up here to get out of it.”

  “It’s not just that,” Maggie said. “The people who come up here to live are looking for something they can’t find anywhere else.”

  “Utopian longings,” Greer said.

  “Whatever it is,” Jack said, “it’s keeping us in business.”

  They drank their coffee and ate the scones and the moon rose full and bright over the lake. Nate decided that Maggie was right: There was something about the Berkshires. They sat out there for another hour, and then Willa’s mother came to pick her up. Nate stayed where he was and watched the mother and daughter from a distance through the French doors. Candace Golding was taller than he remembered her, an equestrian in jeans and paddock boots, a sweater tied with casual perfection around her shoulders. The long black ponytail was gone, as was the bewildered pleasure in her eyes. Now her eyes were clever and sharp and her hair was cut short and blunt at her shoulders. Maggie hurried over
to her and handed her a little bag of scones. Willa appeared with her enormous satchel—it seemed to contain the entire contents of her closet—and kissed her mother’s cheek, and all four of them talked a little more. Willa looked out through the glass doors and called out her good-byes. She met his eyes and waved and he raised his hand, like a flag, and waved back. “Good night, Willa!” he called. Sleep tight.

  8

  The Squire boy had been assigned to Maggie as an advisee. At first glance, he appeared to be polite, almost reticent, but among his fellow classmates an arrogance surfaced, a slippery bravado that thrilled and charmed the others. Maggie had tried to get to know him during advisee lunch every Tuesday, but he gave her little to work with. When she’d asked if his father would be coming to any of his soccer games—the boy was a capable athlete—his face went sullen and he shook his head. It wasn’t his fault, she supposed. There were issues there, in the genes. The grandfather, for one. According to Berkshire folklore, Eddie Squire’s behavior had been so outrageous he’d been asked to resign his membership in the country club—and that didn’t happen very often, especially when there were deep pockets in the mix. And the boy’s mother—well, Maggie would have to reserve judgment about her. “Give them a chance,” Jack had said in one of his more generous moods. “The boy will come around.” But Maggie knew it was too late for him—it was harsh, perhaps—yes, she knew it was—but it was the truth.

  Experience had taught her that kids showed their true colors in grade school. You could always spot the ones who’d end up at the better colleges—the likelihood presented itself as early as fourth grade—you saw it in a child’s handwriting, in the neat formation of cursive letters, their ability to reason and solve equations, and in the articulation of thoughts and ideas. The children who couldn’t grasp concepts in the early grades generally had some form of a learning difference—that’s what they called it these days—she called it a disability. A small percentage of their students had some form of a learning disability, but they generally made it clear during the admissions process that their school was not suitable for children with disabilities. When parents were adamant that their children could get along all right, Pioneer recommended testing, but the parents interpreted the results the way they wanted to, in some cases claiming that the testing provided only vague parameters of a child’s intelligence—if they tested significantly above average, the parents clung to the numbers as sacred evidence of a child’s brilliance. If the child tested in the average range, which was usually the case, the parents maintained that the numbers were simply an arbitrary consequence of the child’s mood that day. So what good was any of it? Under the giant umbrella of dysfunction, the parents found ways to rationalize their children’s myriad issues: the ADD and dysgraphia, the dyslexia and processing disorders, the names of which, in the age of euphemism and rationalization, anointed their children as unlikely warriors, members of an underdog class of students whose brilliance was so dynamic and extreme—akin to Einstein’s—that no ordinary high school teacher could recognize or identify it. Many of their students took drugs, not just one prescription but sometimes two or three—the school nurse had a lengthy list on file and dutifully dispensed them as instructed. There were drugs for sleeping, drugs for waking. Drugs that quelled depression. Drugs that made the kids more focused or more alert or more relaxed or more able to demonstrate self-control. In most cases, Maggie didn’t approve of giving drugs to children, she didn’t care what the doctors said, but she kept her opinions to herself, it wasn’t her place to judge. But she did judge, she couldn’t help it. In her mind, the drugs said more about the parents than the children. Over the past ten years there’d been a marked rise in the routine dispensing of drugs like Prozac and Ritalin, yet Maggie wasn’t always impressed by the results they promised. To some degree she could understand the parents’ anxiety—nobody wanted to hear that their kid was lacking in the brain department— but instead of facing up to the fact that their kids weren’t destined for Harvard, the parents squirmed around the reality and turned it into something else. Over the years, during interviews with these sorts of parents, Maggie had observed a growing phenomenon among the applicants to Pioneer. They were all geniuses.

  But Jack looked at things differently. Jack was a businessman.

  When she’d mentioned the boy’s reading and writing difficulties to him one afternoon, waving a stack of papers in his face, Jack had shrugged and said, “How is he doing in math?”

  “All right,” she admitted, “but look at these, Jack. They’re unacceptable. He needs help.”

  Jack glanced at the papers and tossed them down on the desk, irritably. “What’s happened to you, Maggie?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s your ‘I can teach anyone’ attitude?”

  “This is different. We aren’t equipped to deal with his issues.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” He took hold of her shoulders and directed her toward the window. “You see that building? Whose name is on that building, Maggie?”

  She looked out at the Squire Gymnasium. “He doesn’t belong here,” she insisted. “And you know it.”

  “I’m sure the boy has other strengths. Find out what they are.”

  She shrugged him off and started toward the door, but he caught her wrist and held it harder than necessary. “You don’t seem like yourself these days.”

  She looked up at his benign face, his sea-glass eyes. “I’m fine.” “Could have fooled me.”

  “I just want the best for the boy.”

  “Sure you do,” he said, letting go of her. “Get him a tutor.”

  Something was happening to her and Jack. It had been happening for a long time. She couldn’t discuss it with anyone—she didn’t dare. She didn’t have any friends, really, and the only person she might confide in, her sister, Tess, was off in Africa somewhere with the Peace Corps. Instead, she focused on routine, the predictable unfolding of her days. Mornings, she got up, made breakfast, put in a load of laundry, and the three of them went off to work. She was proud of their daughter, who was an excellent student and knew how to follow the rules. Maggie would observe some of her daughter’s classmates, noting their obvious peculiarities, their blatant insecurities, and be glad that Ada had escaped such problems. It was a tribute to her and Jack, she knew, and she took great pride in their parenting. But recently, Maggie had observed a change in the girl, and she suspected it had something to do with the Squire boy. Most of the girls were in love with him. He was new, for one thing, a novelty, but there was something else about him, something sexual, a wily dynamic, that was irresistible to them. Watching the kids in the cafeteria during lunch period, Maggie had detected an attraction between the boy and Willa Golding that could not be ignored and she knew that, before long, it would have an effect on Ada. Maggie was well aware of the fact that she had no business having an opinion about the personal relationships of her students, but she didn’t like the possibility of her daughter getting hurt and she was nearly certain that she would be hurt; it seemed inevitable. Like Maggie, Ada was plain and unexceptional in the looks department. She tended to carry weight around her middle, and had stubby fingers— peasant hands, her mother called them. Her hair was a dull shade of cornmeal, and her skin was pale, sallow almost, and sprinkled with freckles. She had Jack’s nose, flat and prominent as an Eskimo’s, and two lumps, tablespoons of flesh, that represented breasts.

  For as long as she could remember, there had been a rivalry between Ada and Willa Golding. The girls had attended the Children’s School before coming to Pioneer, and had been competitive students, although Ada always got better grades. They had been good friends for a long time, even though they came from significantly different backgrounds. Money, for one thing. Willa’s father had plenty of it. And they were Jewish. In fact, Willa was Ada’s only Jewish friend. They didn’t have many Jewish families at Pioneer, but that was changing. For a long time, Pioneer had a Waspy reputation. Most of the Jewish families
in the area sent their children to the public school. But since 9/11, more and more New Yorkers, many of them Jews, had moved up to the Berkshires and had established themselves as full-time residents. Nearly all of them sent their children to Pioneer, which had the reputation of being as good as the private schools in the city, without the high tuition or the grotesque pressure of getting admitted.

  You could always tell the newcomers—the immigrants, Jack called them—who had escaped their complicated lives in New York and absconded to the Berkshires. In a fury of romance, they’d buy impractical country homes on acres and acres of glorious land, only to discover months later that they had no closets in which to store their towels and their kids would rather play with their insipid electronic gadgets than run through the grass picking up ticks.

  The temple had acquired so many new members that they’d had to build a new synagogue, and the Goldings had helped to fund it— there’d been an article about it in the Berkshire Eagle. Four years ago, they’d attended Willa’s bat mitzvah, an extravagant affair at the country club. Maggie had spent half her paycheck on a new dress for the occasion, not to mention a gift. The Goldings had hired an expensive band from New York; all of the performers had been black. The guests, all of whom were white, had danced all night, gyrating in their party clothes, and the windows in the hall went opaque in the rising heat. Jack had played his usual role as ambassador to Pioneer, shaking hands, patting the men on their backs, joking about their golf games, and when the other men asked their wives to dance, Jack asked Maggie, holding her gently at a distance as the music pounded in their ears, a primal beat, and the bodies all around them shimmied and shook. It had been a long time since they’d danced together, she couldn’t remember the last time, but before long Jack lost interest, distracted by another Pioneer couple, standing awkwardly on the sidelines. She followed Jack, but one of the dancers from the band wrapped a feather boa around her neck and pulled her back onto the floor. He took her hand and swirled her around and a burst of joy sprang from her mouth. He pulled her close then spun her around again and she felt his warm chest against her own. It thrilled her to be held like that, it made her feel like a woman again—desired—and it stirred up other emotions too and her eyes glazed over with tears. She excused herself and ran into the bathroom, her skin flushed, a shimmer of sweat on her forehead.