The Twisted Thread

by Charlotte Bacon

  She strode over to him, but not before pouring herself a large glass of Merlot, too. “Hey,” she said, “you know what Emily James just told me? ‘Miss Christopher, you look as bad as I feel.’ ” Fred laughed. She did look tired, it was true, but he said to her impulsively, and it made her cheeks flare red, “Madeline, you could be dressed like Marie-France and you would still look good.” She took a sip of her wine and dribbled a little on her skirt. “Oh, damn,” she muttered happily. “Are you going?” she asked, clearly not able to help herself. When he told her he was, she said “damn” again and whispered “of course,” because she had just been offered a chance to stay.

  Then neither of them felt they could say much, and they stood together in nervous, companionable silence. The room filled with their colleagues, some of them well past usefulness in the classroom but most of them dedicated, bright, orderly people with tidy minds, truly engaged with their subjects and students. Many of them he would miss; some he’d forget altogether, and others he’d be actively happy to leave behind. Harvey Fuller, reptilian as ever, had just poured himself a glass of juice.

  And then there was this shadow of loss. It lay across everything. Despite his own uneasy elation, Fred was able to recognize just how deflated, frightened, and undone the community of teachers was. Madeline got dragged off by Grace to the other side of the room, but conversation was muted, although he could hear people muttering about Tamsin and Scotty and poor Jim French’s banged-up head. Most people drank coffee and lemonade instead of alcohol. An anxious murmur had replaced the usual end-of-year giddiness. And where was Lucinda? She ought to be here helping Porter out. Regal, stylish, straightforward, she was formidable, and her invisibility made a difference in the event. But just then, Porter cleared his throat, and his colleagues stilled themselves. Most people had to take a fork and clank away at the stem of a wineglass to command attention. All Porter had to do was stand up straighter.

  “It’s time for the hard part now,” he said. “Saying good-bye to those we know and care about, the ones who have had the audacity to find a job somewhere other than Armitage. And this year, we have more than just that sort of loss to deal with. Before we start, I want to thank you all for your grace and hard work in an absolutely horrifying time. I have never felt closer to you and more blessed to have you as colleagues.” This was more effusive than Porter usually allowed himself to be. Madeline had unhooked herself from Grace and come back to join Fred; they both noticed Porter’s voice and looked more closely at him. Then, as if recognizing that his tone was slipping, however slightly, he turned over the event to the chair of the math department, who did his best to sound sad about losing Marcus Lyle, off to pursue his love of fly-fishing. Next came a couple who taught history and had taken positions to be nearer their families in Georgia. Known, expected departures, announced early in the spring, which was the season for change in this world. A couple of advancement people were wished well next, off to do their necessary, grubby work at salaries close to three times what the faculty were paid.

  Madeline had sneaked off to fill up her and Fred’s glasses and secure a napkinful of goodies. She came back just in time to see Porter claim the room’s attention again. “We have a bit more business to attend to,” he said, “other rather unforeseen developments.” Fred looked at the head more closely and knew the man must be referring to him, but who were the others? Could Roddy the Shoddy finally have gotten the ax? “The first is Fred Naylor, our fantastic art teacher,” Porter said and waited to go on as surprise settled over the room. And then he began to speak about Fred, to Fred. What he said and how he said it made Fred blush, and he noticed that Madeline was smiling crazily. She even punched him in the arm, Porter’s praise got her so excited. And no one missed Porter’s resounding finale: “Art does matter, art may matter more than schools, and Fred, despite his heritage, despite the safety his life here has held for him, has made the harder choice to leave, to find out what he is really good at, to find out who he is.” Fred could barely glance at Porter. Colleagues came up and congratulated him, honestly pleased at his news. “Great opportunity, Fred,” said Forrest Thompson. Even Marcus Lyle gave him a smile. Slowly the hubbub subsided and they composed themselves for the next announcement.

  At last, Porter cleared his throat and started again. “After thirty-two years of service,” he said, “Marie-France Maillot has decided to return to Marseilles.” No one had known, and all eyes turned to watch the slender, stiff woman, her eyes trained on the carpet, her fingers taut around the handle of her teacup. “Thirty-two years of being our most treasured emblem of France. Thirty-two years of reminding us every May Day how to sing the ‘Internationale.’ ” He spoke about the Mustang, the way she carved her fruit, and the herbs in her windows that thrived despite all the, ahem, cigarette smoke in her apartment. He spoke about the trips she took with kids back in the eighties and the time they all escaped from her and went to the casino in Monaco. He made people laugh, and even more, Fred noticed, he made them see Marie-France as more than the stick-figure caricature of a grammar-mincing Frenchwoman. She emerged in his words as a passionate person, someone worth knowing. And then he did a lovely thing. He had memorized a short poem by Apollinaire, and he spoke it aloud to her. He then gave her a first edition of the poems, found a few years ago in Paris and waiting for this occasion, which he knew had to come sooner or later. Her family would reclaim her, and why not? She was eminently worth reclaiming. Then he leaned to kiss her, once, twice, three times, four. The kiss of the South, the placing of the cheeks on one another, les bises. “Tu me manqueras, Marie-France,” he said as he leaned in the last time. “Tu me manqueras.” I will miss you, in the familiar form. I will miss you.

  Then Porter released the frail woman and looked round the room. “I wish I were done, but I am afraid I have to ask for a few more moments of your time.” He gathered in another breath. He looked, Fred realized abruptly, incredibly sad. “I have nothing but the simplest words for it. I must resign from Armitage. This is my last day. I can do nothing but thank you for all you have been to me, done for me, done for the school. You have meant more to me than you could ever know.” Marie-France fell to the ground, and Forrest Thompson bent stiffly to revive her. Stan Lowery spilled his Chardonnay on Porter’s dog. Several women screamed. At last, Fred saw Lucinda, who stood as cold and dry as a dead tree in the threshold of the door that led from the foyer to this stiff and stately room. She had twisted a sweater around herself, and she could not look at her husband. “Why, Porter?” asked Stan, for all of them.

  Porter shook his head and said, “Stan, I owe you an explanation. I am more than aware of that. It will all become clear very soon.” Fred was too shocked to speak. He wanted only to get himself and Madeline out of there. But she was rooted to the floor. She was whispering, “He did it. He was the one who killed Claire. She told the girls about an older man. It must be Porter.” Fred looked at her. “Madeline, that’s not possible,” he hissed. Lucinda was still standing there, though she watched the room of teachers with unconcealed contempt and then started to walk quickly up the stairs.

  Porter turned to follow her and stopped once, to look around the crowd, but he said nothing. Fred said to Madeline, “We have to get out of here,” and grabbed her hand. He wanted to believe she was wrong. He wanted more than anything to know that the fine man who had made those speeches was innocent. But he thought instantly of his grandfather and knew it was impossible to say what people were really like, to know motives fully, to be aware of all the layers that constituted human beings.

  The last thing Fred saw as he steered Madeline out the far door and through an exit in the kitchen—he knew this house, after all; he had grown up in it partly—was Marie-France sobbing in Forrest’s arms. Finally, they were outside. The air was cool on their faces, and it was starting to rain, and Fred couldn’t tell if Madeline was crying or not in the suddenly steady downpour.

  He didn’t care who saw them. He didn’t care what anyone th
ought. He opened the door to his apartment and unplugged the phone and planned not to turn on any computer or any device that might tell him one scrap of what was going on. He settled Madeline on the sofa and poured her some Scotch. He took off his jacket and tie and poured himself a drink, too, and sat next to her. She was still shaking and on the verge of tears.

  “He was in Castine with Claire. I think he must have raped her or gotten involved with her somehow. He was the father of the baby,” Madeline said, gulping the Scotch. “God, that’s strong. That’s why she stayed. She was going to humiliate him, humiliate the school. Show everyone that his beautiful family wasn’t what they thought. But then Porter killed her and took the baby, or someone did. Fred, it doesn’t make sense.” She told him then about the mirrors between Scotty’s room and Claire’s, and that she thought it was a signal the girl could send to him if she were in trouble.

  “Porter? Rape a student? And why wouldn’t Scotty and Claire just call each other? Madeline, it’s all insane,” Fred said, but as he said it, he thought again of Llewellan and how intensely unknowable people were.

  Madeline was crying now. “I don’t want to believe it’s true,” she said. “He’s a good man, I know he’s a good man.” And in spite of himself, of his imminent departure, Fred folded her in his arms and found himself kissing away her tears.

  “Fred,” she said and pushed him slightly away. “You have to stop that. It feels way too nice and then you’ll be gone and painting away and going on dates with girls named Ilsa and I’ll be up here grading papers and spilling cranberry juice on myself and missing you.” She smacked him on the arm quite hard and smiled, even as the tears kept rolling.

  “Ilsa?” he asked and kissed her cheek again.

  “Yes. Or Simone or Vanessa. And they’ll be video-installation artists and half-Brazilian, half-Norwegian, and—” She was clearly going to continue in this vein for some time so he was forced to kiss her mouth, just to keep her from talking, which was effective for a while.

  But after a minute, she went on just where she’d stopped, though she also said, “That was even nicer, Fred, in fact I’ve been dying for that to happen for some time, but those girls won’t have straggly hair or talk too much.”

  He kissed her again, and it was indeed the best thing that had happened in a long time. It felt both incredibly new and wonderful—she tasted like honey with some Scotch in it—and also just as he’d known it would: she was so darling, this woman, and he liked her immensely. It was so delightful to show her that. But she was right, even though she was kissing him back with passion and surprise and pleasure. There was no predicting the Ilsas, Simones, or Vanessas he might encounter.

  “Madeline,” he said as he delicately pulled her hair back in order to gain access to the buttons on her shirt, “what about you and all the Andrews and Jakes and Peters who are going to be lining up in front of your door? What are we going to do about them?”

  She snorted. “My door? Here at the convent of Armitage? Do you think it’s an accident that Marie-France is leaving a virgin, Fred?” But she helped with the buttons and got her own fingers working on his. Her hands were cool and her fingers lean and nimble and delicious on his warm skin.

  “But that won’t be your fate, will it?” Fred asked as he pulled her shirt away to reveal round shoulders and a plain bra and Madeline’s sudden shyness at being half-naked in the room of her closest friend on campus.

  “No,” she said as she pulled his own shirt free from his body and began tracing her fingers across his chest. “But that wasn’t the state that I arrived in, either.” And then, thank God, she stopped talking altogether.

  At one point in the night, Madeline had woken up and said, “Fred? Porter didn’t do it, did he?” and Fred had said, “No, he’s not capable of that,” and they had both gone back to sleep, reassured and wrapped around each other. When he woke up again, it was fully dark in his bedroom. He lay there and listened to Madeline breathing deeply, snuggled below the covers. He had no idea if it was midnight or three in the morning. All he knew was that he was ravenously hungry and torn with more than a little misgiving. Making love with Madeline had been, his body told him, total pleasure. She was as passionate a lover as she was a talker, generous and full of humor and sweetly curved in exactly the right proportions. Careful not to wake her, he wondered at the edge of anxiety, almost fear that followed him as he tiptoed into the kitchen to find something to eat.

  His hand on the refrigerator door, he remembered. Porter. His resignation. The utter trouble the academy was in. What a dark note on which to start a relationship. Was that what had happened? Yes, he thought, as he looked at the rather bare shelves. That was exactly what had happened. Then he felt rather than heard Madeline behind him, and he turned to find her warm and naked in his arms again and saying, unsurprisingly, “I am starved. Can you cook? And aren’t you never supposed to spoil a friendship with sex?”

  “Yes, to both, absolutely. And especially about the friendship part. Except when you should and it turns out to be a great decision.” They made a plate of eggs and sausages slathered in ketchup for Madeline and hot sauce for Fred and sat in his bed to eat it. “This is great, Fred,” she said, and he knew she meant the whole thing. The lovemaking, the food, the unexpected joy of it amid the sadness. “You’re a great kisser, Madeline,” he said and kissed her some more. “Thanks, Fred,” she said.

  Which led to more time below the covers and another long nap, after which they woke to find it was dawn. “I should go,” she said. “It’s Claire’s service this morning. And I bet there are a thousand e-mails and announcements, and all of it will come crashing down today.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Don’t go yet.” He wanted, he realized, to tell her why he was leaving Armitage for good. He wanted to tell her about Llewellan. “I know it’s been a bad week for revelations,” he said and held her hand, “but there’s more.” To her credit, she sat and listened to the entire story. To Malcolm Smith coming into the studio. To Fred’s search in the archives and Scotty’s sudden appearance there. To the eventual discovery of the file and of Naomi Beardsley’s note. He ended with his visit to Fox Marsh. “I can’t,” he finished, “come back. I have to find out what it’s like to live outside this place,” and he gestured around the room, which was strewn with clothes, some of which were, he was happy to note, Madeline’s.

  She looked at him and said, “You know, there’s no way to be sure what happened. Edward’s family blamed the school, blamed your grandfather. But who knows what those masters did or what sort of state that boy was in. Is it possible to judge him so clearly? It’s disgusting that people thought that way about kids, that they could judge a boy who was probably gay so harshly, but wasn’t it the way of the world then?”

  Fred sat up straighter. He was surprised, but he kept listening. “I’m not apologizing for him or excusing him. It is creepy and irrevocable and all those things, and maybe, hopefully, it’s a little better now. But isn’t it easier to look at it today and cast all that harsh criticism his way? Isn’t he also the same man who taught you how to fish and swim? Wasn’t he beloved by all those people for real reasons? All I’m saying, Fred, is that people are complex. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t responsible for what happened to Edward, but it doesn’t mean that the good pieces of him weren’t real, too.”

  “You’re also saying that I can’t use him as an excuse to leave,” he said. How smart she was. Just stepping on the high-mindedness of it and grounding him more firmly in what his leaving really amounted to, which was doing what he desired.

  She smiled. “That’s right, sweetie. It’s your choice. Own up to it. It’s what you want, no matter what your grandfather did. But what you did, sending the file to the family. That was the right thing to do. Now they have to deal with it or not. It’s up to them. That was brave, since anything could happen,” she finished. “They could file a suit, make it all public, create a huge stink. I think you did the right thing, but I would have want
ed to burn it.” She told him then that her own sister had been part of the Reign and had refused to talk about it with her, protecting something evil even years past necessity. “And I wanted to pretend for a minute that I was going to stay here to root it out and make things better at Armitage, to make up for Kate’s sins. If you think about it, the Reign’s just an extension of the kind of terror that was probably inflicted on poor Edward. But if I were really truthful, I’d have to say I want to stay because I like teaching.” You have to be honest in the end, she said, if you even want to try to sleep through the night.

  “I thought about not sending on the file,” Fred told her, extremely close to kissing her neck again. “But Malcolm chose me for a reason. He bided his time. He made a very precise shot. And he had no idea what we had our hands on. What was lurking in the basement.”

  “But I know,” Madeline said and edged herself out of his range. “And we don’t have time. And I need to make myself presentable.”

  She dressed quickly and leaned over to give him a long, happy kiss. “Bye, Fred. See you later,” and she was out the door with a loud bang, neither of them caring what the kids or teachers saw, heard, knew. He leaned back, aware he should follow suit, get showered, dressed, roused for another impossible series of events. But he lay there thinking about this lovely woman, her warmth and spirit still on his body, in the room. She hadn’t said a word about what was next, how they were going to manage. Madeline, stinted on love as a child, took affection where she found it, gratefully. Or perhaps he was underestimating her, he thought as he made his way to the shower. She was grown-up enough to know that you couldn’t predict what was going to happen next and that staking claims or making commitments when every element of her life was in transition was something it was wiser to avoid. All he knew as he turned the shower to the hottest possible temperature was that he couldn’t wait to see her again. My girl, he thought, and then, Not yet. Haven’t earned her, and he washed himself clean.