The Twisted Thread

by Charlotte Bacon

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Some of them don’t deserve the education they’re getting. They think things will always go easily for them. That they’ll always get their way. Some of them have a lot of money, but they don’t have much more than that, especially parents who think twice about them. And some of them are nice kids, smart kids. I don’t know, Kayla. They’re a mixed bag, like people everywhere.”

  She was listening hard. They could hear Angela making her slow, careful way down the stairs. It was one of the only ways you really noticed her age: the slight warble to her voice and this, the hesitation in dealing with steps.

  “But they get into trouble just like everybody else,” said Kayla and hoisted her bag to her shoulder. “Mr. French, please take off half an hour of my pay this week. I was late, and I shouldn’t have been.”

  “Okay, Kayla,” he said, “if that’s what you want.” Once before, there’d been confusion over her schedule, and that time, too, she had been scrupulous about the money to be docked from her weekly salary. He had tried to add it on anyway, and she had noticed and returned it.

  As she went to greet Angela, Jim got the distinct impression Kayla hadn’t been talking just about Claire. There’d been no judgment in her voice, just a sad confirmation of news she already knew.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Could Roderick Charles please get a haircut?” Madeline asked Fred. The chaplain had a bushel of black frizz he wore tied in a leather thong, and tonight it sprang out like a broom at the back of his head. It was early Wednesday evening, and the rain had finally ended, though humidity lingered in a smothering quilt. It was an appropriately sticky atmosphere for what was about to come. The entire school had gathered for a quasi-memorial service for Claire on the Knoll, an area reserved for just this sort of event: outdoor performance, the more New Agey of celebrations. Once a year, the school’s pets were blessed here, by the same Roderick Charles, chaplain, in flowing robes he claimed to have worn while ministering to the Sioux. But to Fred, the connection between Plains Indians and the dozens of chocolate Labs who constituted the vast majority of the pet community at Armitage remained obscure. He had thought for sure that Roderick would cancel the event after the time Dewey, Mary Manchester’s Jack Russell, nearly took his nose off. But unfortunately, not even pain and plastic surgery had persuaded Roderick to forgo the ceremony.

  Now he cleared his wide throat in preparation for welcoming the community to the service. “How did Roderick ever get hired?” Madeline had asked Fred early in the year during a talk in which he quoted Kahlil Gibran to vast excess. “He’s an alum,” Fred had told her, “and his father basically owns Ohio. He predates Porter.” That apparently was enough to earn Roderick a role on campus, though his work was augmented by an ecumenical and far more serious complement of rabbis, a Buddhist or two, and a couple of Episcopalian priests. No one took Roderick seriously. He was rumored to be on Porter’s list of Faculty Not Asked Back, but his fate wouldn’t be known until the last few days of school, when all such departures were aired at another Armitage institution, Last Tea.

  The wind was blowing, heavy and warm. “No,” said Fred, thinking about Madeline’s question. “Roderick’s entire personality lies in that hair. Not happening.”

  “Well, he ought to chop it all off,” Madeline said crossly and picked at a scrap of food on her shirt. “I’m fried and I’m cranky, Fred. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. Roderick’s doing his best. This is just all really hard.” Fred had missed seeing Madeline the past few days and wanted to ask her about the e-mail she had sent. Madeline was not particularly dramatic; if she said something was weird, it probably was. She looked out of sorts, and he was visited with a desire to wrap her close.

  But there were a lot of good reasons why that was not a good idea—all of their students watching them; the event’s sad occasion; and news of his own he wasn’t quite prepared to share—and he distracted himself from Madeline’s shoulders by looking at the crowd. Students stood in the first ring nearest Roderick, with faculty in a second, taller circle around them. They were clutching the tapers that the chaplain had solemnly placed in their hands as they’d arrived, though matches had yet to be provided. All of us, thought Fred, look beaten up. Even the kids had hollows beneath their eyes and were glancing cautiously about one another. Then Roderick started booming away at them, and Fred saw that Madeline was trying to pay attention.

  The chaplain was holding forth about the sanctity of life, and reincarnation was probably to come; it had been cropping up a lot more in his homilies of late. He’d been to India last year, on what he insisted on calling a pilgrimage to some of the great places of the spirit, and the visit was having lingering effects.

  But then Porter arrived behind him and discreetly displaced Roderick at his makeshift podium. Roddy the Shoddy, as the kids called him, looked like he was going to pout, but what was there to do? Porter was the head. Porter could do as he wished, and that was what made him stand out. Behind him stood Lucinda, his wife. She was rarely in the mix at the school, though this kind of gathering was required if anything was. Often, she claimed her burgeoning landscape gardening business kept her occupied, but Fred knew better. At a faculty Christmas party one year, with perhaps half a glass of wine too much in her, she had told Fred they had let go of the staff that had come with the job, the accoutrements that would have lined their lives with a nearly royal level of privilege. A limo and driver, a valet, a cook. Lucinda had consented to help from a housekeeper once a week because the house was so large, but rejected everything else. “Who do they think he is?” she’d said to Fred. “Some bishop?” Fred thought that even that level of assistance bothered her; she didn’t like people prying into their closets or peering under the rugs. Having access to intimate details when they shouldn’t. After years at independent schools, living in such closeness to others, she guarded her family’s private lives with the wariness and weariness of a politician’s wife.

  Fred, with his background as a kid who’d grown up in the shadow of Armitage, understood Lucinda with more sympathy than most. She had a reputation for coldness, but he thought it was more self-protective than that. He wondered if Porter had ever wanted to do something else, as Lucinda clearly had. If Porter had ever wrestled with leaving this cloistered world. Fred doubted it as he watched Porter lean to light a candle and then pass it to Roderick to start the chain of light around the circle. The man had had his ambitions and he had doggedly pursued them. From everything Fred knew about him, Porter had discreetly and persistently chased a prestigious headship for years, working his way through administrative posts at just the right sorts of schools, earning a reputation for excellent leadership, the ability to manage crises, raise money, recruit and retain good teachers. When the opening came at Armitage, he’d been the natural choice. How much had Lucinda been part of that choosing? What had her feelings been? Maybe it had come down to practicalities. Porter’s position meant, among other things, that her three boys would basically have a free education at one of the country’s best schools. That alone would have made the position hard to turn down. Where was Miles, their youngest? He often stood with his parents at this kind of event, even when he could have mingled with kids his own age. They were a close family, and Fred was surprised not to see them together at such a moment. Maybe Miles was keeping his head low for the time being. There’d been an incident at a recent lacrosse match, his coach had said last week, during which Miles had pegged a player on the opposing team with unnecessary aggression and been ejected from the game. Still, if anything could pull a family together, it would be something like Claire’s death.

  The tapers flickered into brightness around the Knoll, just as the sun was going down. Many of them went out as soon as they were lighted, given the fitful wind. Roddy’s had spilled a great quantity of hot wax on his large hand, and he was hopping from foot to foot in pain. Porter did not hold a candle once he’d passed his on. Lucinda stood close behind him, also candleless.

&nbs
p; He said to them, “Thank you for gathering tonight. We are going to have a service for Claire at her parents’ request in the chapel this Sunday, so right now, I want to say only a few things to you. First, thank you. Thank you for being brave in almost unimaginable circumstances.” He paused and looked around, and so did Fred and Madeline. The girls who had been in Claire’s dorm had their heads bent, Fred noticed. “But look at those boys from Greaves,” Madeline whispered. Fred had already noticed. They were restless and mobile. Something was stirring them up. With a beleaguered air, Joyce Phelan hissed something that made them stop, except for Scotty Johnston, who glared at Porter with what looked like personal malevolence. Porter appeared not to notice, however, and went on, his hair blown back from his forehead. “I need you to understand that we don’t know yet what happened. Or why. And that all of this will take years for us to accept. It has changed us in ways we can’t imagine.” What mattered now, he said, was that they do what they aspired to do at the school, which was to act as a community. To treat one another with respect and care. And to remain both courageous and flexible. “I can’t even guarantee you a proper graduation. It will depend on what happens in the next few days. All I can promise is that I will do my best as your headmaster to support and sustain you. I ask you to provide even more important support to each other. We must in this moment sustain one another. You will face other difficulties in life; you may have already faced them—but this will be among the most important. It will matter how you behave, and we are here to help you do your best.”

  They were listening; they were all listening. Even Scotty Johnston had grown still, though he continued glowering in Porter’s direction. Then one of the programs caught fire and had to be stamped on until it flared out. One of the girls in Madeline’s dorm read a poem about grief by Edna St. Vincent Millay that made Madeline sniff with some scorn.

  Finally, a girl named Beatrice got up to sing a song a cappella, and Fred braced himself for the discomfort of cracked and faltering notes, unachieved high Cs. Madeline turned to him and cringed slightly. They shared this fear of unaccompanied singing, to which boarding schools seemed attached despite the fact these performances so often went awry. They had nearly fled a wobbly rendition of “The Circle Game” in chapel a few weeks ago. But this girl, a freshman he had never seen, turned out to have one of the purest voices Fred had ever heard, and in spite of himself, he felt his throat tighten with the sadness of “Amazing Grace.” A group of girls began to sob on the other side of the Knoll, and the boys had their heads hung low, to keep people from seeing their faces.

  To distract himself, Fred forced himself to watch the crowd and noticed a couple of details that seemed out of place. First, Tamsin Lovell was standing to Porter’s left and a few people behind. Curious: she rarely turned out for after-hours events. As it was, she was well away from Lucinda, who was rumored to loathe her. What was interesting about Tamsin, and why he secretly would have loved the chance to paint her, was the completeness of her composure. Tamsin had an English accent that made most Americans back off in submission, a pair of sharp black eyeglasses, and a manner so precise as to be almost abrasive. She had a horror of what she dismissively called office banter. She staved off chaos with perfect diction, an immaculate understanding of boarding school etiquette, and strongly protective sensibilities toward Porter. Fred knew this about her because he’d tried to be friendly with her, with, it had to be admitted, the ulterior motive of attempting to find out if she were single. She was attractive, curiously sexy in a prim way. But she had rebuffed him and everyone else who’d come knocking, and he’d long ago given up anything but watching to see what she had up her sleeve.

  Tonight, she herself was scanning the crowd and kept glancing over at Scotty Johnston. Sarah Talmadge had once told Fred that Tamsin had the best reference letters she’d ever seen. So glowing they had made her suspicious enough to call each writer to confirm the accolades. Tamsin had been with Porter for three years, and Fred wondered if he would be lucky enough to keep her around for much longer. She had real abilities. Work as a secretary wouldn’t satisfy her hunger much longer, nor would life in a small New England town. What Tamsin’s goals were, however, he couldn’t exactly say.

  The other thing Fred noticed was that those two police officers were there. The tall, scrawny one with a rather disgusted look on his face and Detective Corelli. His expression was far more difficult to read. He, like Tamsin, was watching the crowd, paying particular attention to the faculty. His face was harder than Fred had first thought, but that might have been the light, which was fading. The night was growing cooler. Beatrice, fortunately, had reached the end of the spiritual. Roderick was bustling back to the podium. Porter looked wrung out. Lucinda was already turning to leave. Then Fred saw the dark officer’s eyes rest on Madeline and watched, with some degree of worry, how much more relaxed his face suddenly became. “Ow,” said Madeline as she zipped up her jacket. “Somehow I managed to scrape my thumb.” She untangled herself and obviously had no idea the officer was watching her. But the man kept his eyes on her, even as the other policeman leaned down to talk to him. He nodded in response to his partner’s words but kept his eyes trained on Madeline.

  “Come on, Fred, let’s get out of here,” she said, still oblivious, as the students dispersed in ragged little knots. “I can’t bear another minute of this,” a feeling that Fred at that moment wholeheartedly shared. How callous of me, he thought, to be worried about a rival for the affections of a woman to whom I haven’t even declared myself. Claire is dead, her baby is gone, but my mind is somewhere else entirely. “Hey, want to meet at Mackey’s around ten?” he asked, and she said, “Just what I was thinking. I’m going to run screaming naked into the Bluestone if I don’t get out of here,” a very distracting image.

  “Think there’ll be police or reporters down there?” she asked. “Ah, who cares? We can wear disguises in case they’re staking it out.” They both knew this was unlikely. Mackey’s was so local most locals didn’t know where it was. Still, it was a good instinct. They needed a break. The gloom and anxiety that had descended over the campus had agitated everyone; tempers were fraying. Despite the tumult of the investigation, there was still no news about how the process was moving forward. Fred saw the pair of cops walk slowly toward Porter, cornering him yet again.

  Madeline had a hard time understanding Fred’s pleasure in this life, and Claire’s death and the horror it unleashed had only compounded her misgivings, he guessed. Even when students weren’t dying, there were Saturday classes, and if you coached, you often had to travel most of that day to some dreary corner of New England with your football or tennis players, and by evening, you were worn to the bone. Dorm duty, teaching, sports, the endless exhortation toward excellence, it was enough to drive a lot of people straight back to day schools or out of teaching altogether. Yet despite all the work and the mounting fatigue as the year drew on, this world was what Fred knew, where he had prospered, and what, he had to admit, he liked. The slow, awkward mastery of perspective his students reliably gained each semester; the increasingly crisp plays on soccer fields on fall afternoons; the clear, orderly flow of days. Even when his mind was tugged toward Edward Smith or Scotty Johnston, not to mention Claire, he could look at the school’s world and feel grateful to be part of it, especially now there was the possibility of not staying. That was another reason he’d wanted to talk to Madeline in a slightly more secluded setting.

  It had started to rain again by the time he convinced the cops to let him off campus and arrived at the bar. Madeline’s beat-up Camry wasn’t there yet. He had begun going to Mackey’s, a bar on the border of Greenville and Armitage, with a colleague who had later taken a job as a dean at another boarding school. He’d tipped Fred off to the place in the same way that kids handed down keys to dorms or copies of old exams. Information that let you survive somewhere because you possessed one or two of its secrets. At Mackey’s, he never ran into anyone from the academy. Cheap bee
r, good burgers, Sox and Pats on the tube, no hassle. Basically, no Armitage, just regular life. Sometimes Fred went alone, to be reminded there were other ways to live than at a privileged institution; sometimes he roped in a few young colleagues smart enough not to make a big deal over a great hangout. They had a good time, and never drank enough to be in trouble with the police, hangovers, or locals. A safe release, jealously guarded.

  Fred was happy to find the bar almost empty. Until he sat down on a stool and let his shoulders slump, he hadn’t realized how tense he was. He ordered a draft Guinness and knew Madeline would do the same. They shared a taste for dark beer. Only three other customers loitered in a booth. Business might pick up a little later—the Sox were playing on the West Coast tonight, and the game started late—but it could trickle along like this all evening. He wondered how the owner, whose name was Bill Price, not Mackey, managed to make a living.

  No one smoked in bars anymore, which made tranquil ones good places to think. There was a lot to stew over. Claire’s death. Her missing child. He had heard nothing, and students often talked to him. But this they had kept entirely to themselves. He and his roommates had harbored a Maltese puppy in their room for a year and only revealed it the day of graduation to a combination of outrage and laughter. Bonger had lived with Fred’s family afterward, had his name changed to Quincy, and was still toddling around his parents’ house. But stashing a small animal in a dorm room was nothing compared to hiding a pregnancy and a child. He caught the Greenville guys staring at him and felt momentarily self-conscious. One glance was all it took; they knew instantly where he was from, but there was little more weight to the look than that, even with all that was happening up at the academy. This was what he most appreciated about Mackey’s. Everyone’s business remained private. People came to brood, chat with friends, drink the good draft beer. He sipped his Guinness and waited for Madeline.