by Anita Shreve
Anna leaned against the counter in her usual posture. Her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, as if supporting them. The lace of her slip was in full view.
“Normally, Owen would be home by now,” Anna said.
“He’s away?”
“He’s down to Bennington.”
“Business?”
“Always.”
Waiting for a tea whistle, Mike thought, promoted a tense and stilted conversation. It was as if one had to wait for the signal and the delivery of the tea before speaking freely. For a time, he and Anna avoided each other’s eyes, until — and it did seem forever — the kettle announced itself and they were allowed to get on with it. Which, Mike thought, was possibly the reason he had never really liked tea all that much.
Anna sat across from Mike and unwrapped the plate of lemon bars. “I saw you eyeing these,” she said.
“I’m that transparent?”
“Occasionally.” She smiled.
“Thank you. For some reason, I’m starving.”
“Silas always points out to me, when I use that expression, that I’m not actually starving. I am merely hungry.”
“And Silas would be right about that,” Mike said. “What did he do this summer?”
“He worked as a counselor at a camp up near Burlington.”
“Live-in counselor?”
“Yes, it was good for him. To get away. He missed his girlfriend, though.”
“Noelle.”
“Yes.”
“Bodes well for going away to college,” Mike said. “Has he thought about where he would like to apply?”
“He says Middlebury, but I worry that he’ll disappoint himself.”
“I don’t know,” Mike said. “With the basketball, he’ll have a leg up. And you know I’ll write him a strong recommendation. I write only three or four a year, so they tend to have some weight.”
“Thank you,” Anna said with feeling.
“Sometimes I’m asked to do these things and I have to because the parents have given money to the school or are friends of a trustee, and I just hate writing them. This one, however, would be a pleasure.”
Anna smiled again.
Mike fussed with the tea bag and looked around for a place to put it. Another thing about tea that annoyed him to no end. If you put the tea bag on the plate, it ruined the pastry, and you couldn’t very well just put it on the tablecloth. If you put it in the saucer, the bottom of the cup became wet, and that in itself was irritating. “What’s Silas doing for a fall sport?”
“Soccer. He hates it.” Anna took a sip of tea. “He always starts off the year a little slow, but then he buckles down. You can almost time it. Somewhere between October fifth and tenth, he seems to get it.”
“Who’s his college counselor?”
“Richard Austin.”
Mike made a mental note to speak to Richard in the morning to ascertain Silas’s chances of being accepted to Middlebury. He finished off a lemon bar and reached for a napkin. “You look nice,” he said.
Her face flushed with color. “I got dressed early because when Silas gets home, I like to be around for him. Not rushing, trying to get ready for something else.”
It seemed a thin reason — did she and Owen often go out in the evenings? — but Mike simply nodded. It then occurred to him that though he had eaten perhaps a half-dozen or more meals at the Quinney residence, they had never been invited to the headmaster’s residence. He vowed to rectify that soon. Meg would just have to suffer through the meal. Mike had, over the years, learned to cook a few dishes for such occasions.
“Where are you from?” Anna asked suddenly. “I realized the other day that we always talk about Silas or things having to do with the school, but you never talk about yourself.”
Mike seldom talked about himself for a good reason: his origins were humble and working-class and, here and there, a bit ugly — a background that didn’t at all befit the headmaster of a private secondary school. Despite the fact that it was 2005, the assumption often was that the headmaster had come from an educated if not actually an upper-class background.
“My father was a mechanic at Logan,” Mike said. “He was a good man, though I think he was disappointed in me. I’ve never had any aptitude for anything mechanical. I turned to books at an early age, mostly because of my mother, who had wanted to go to college and didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“She got pregnant with my older sister, and she and my father married. She was only nineteen at the time. The marriage didn’t last. After the divorce, my mother married a teacher. I was nine.”
“Oh,” Anna said, folding her hands under her chin. “That must have been hard for you.”
“It was,” Mike said honestly. “I didn’t like the man my mother had married, and I was very angry with her. My sister and father raised me. But, really, I know most of what I know about life through books. It’s one of the reasons I was drawn to academia.”
“Do you want to open one of those bottles of red wine?” Anna asked suddenly. “Don’t they have to breathe properly?”
“Absolutely,” Mike said, relieved to no longer have to talk about his past.
Anna produced a corkscrew. Mike, in turn, picked out the best of the reds he had brought. Altogether too good for the parent-teacher association, but perfect for a spur-of-the-moment glass in the late afternoon, an occasion that was beginning to feel European in flavor. There was the business with the corkscrew, a cheap version that caused him to worry he might break the cork. Mike poured the wine into two mismatched goblets Anna had brought to the table.
They raised their glasses simultaneously. “To . . . ?” she asked.
“To involved parents and excellent students,” he said.
“No, to you,” she said, and clinked Mike’s glass.
He accepted and took a sip. There was a certain incongruity in drinking a good wine in such a modest kitchen, but Mike had largely come to think of the Quinney kitchen as a backdrop for Anna only, and so was able to convince himself, at odd moments, that they were at a café in the south of France in early September, drinking a very good red at an outdoor table, watching the light hit the tops of the trees. That this view was echoed at the edge of the Quinney property aided his fantasy.
“Owen would kill me,” she said.
“For drinking wine at four o’clock in the afternoon?”
“Pretty much.”
“He drinks,” Mike said, remembering the dozens of beers the man had put away in his presence alone.
“He wouldn’t like this,” she said.
The word this seemed freighted with meaning, and Mike was surprised that Anna had said it. He couldn’t remember what it was he was supposed to be doing at that hour, but it certainly hadn’t included a glass of wine with Anna Quinney.
“You’ve done so much for Silas,” Anna said. “He’s thriving at the school. What more could a mother ask for? It’s all you want for your child, isn’t it?”
She realized her mistake at once and set her glass down. “Did you ever want children?” she asked.
“I did,” Mike said, “and then I didn’t. I sometimes wonder if my job hasn’t made me cynical about adolescents. Not Silas, of course.”
“And your wife?”
“Meg.”
“It’s hard to think of her as anything but Mrs. Bordwin. Silas had her for math his first year.” She smiled. “Parents with well-behaved children are insufferable, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Mike said, agreeing with her.
“Smug.”
“Very.”
“It’s a dangerous attitude to have about a child. So many things can so suddenly go wrong.”
“You’re on solid ground with Silas.”
“Let’s change the subject,” she said, “or I’ll jinx myself.”
Mike poured them both another glass. He reasoned that they had drunk the first glass too quickly because they were both a little nervous. This second glass
, he vowed, he would drink slowly and truly savor.
“I shouldn’t,” she said of the wine. “I’ll get tipsy.”
Mike smiled at the old-fashioned word. “You’ll be the life of the party,” he said.
“I have an agenda to get through.”
“You’ll be great,” he said. And it was then that he crossed another subtle line, equivalent to Anna’s this. “You are great,” he said.
Anna blushed, and Mike stared at her profile.
It took so little to move a woman, Mike had sometimes observed. Whether this spoke to the fragility or to the strength of the gender, he wasn’t sure. When Anna turned back, she was trying to smile, but he could see the effort this was costing her. He was certain that had he vanished at that very moment, she would have wept in the privacy of her kitchen.
He was not sure why.
He didn’t take advantage of what he was sure would have been a certain opening. Instead, he busied himself with another lemon bar while she composed herself. Her eyes had pinkened, however, and he knew that she would be unhappy when she looked in the mirror.
“Owen’s looking at a particular sheep?” Mike asked, trying to steer the conversation onto more solid ground.
“Owen . . .” she said, and pressed her lips together. Mike knew that Anna would not say anything unkind about her husband. Another woman might have used the opportunity to complain about the lack of attention, the inability to understand, the disinclination to discuss or even to notice a wife’s feelings. But not Anna.
“He’ll be home soon,” she said, and Mike knew it to be a warning.
Mike nodded. He pulled himself up and took a quick sip, signaling that he would leave. “I should go,” he said.
Her gesture was so quick, Mike barely saw it. She covered his hand with her own.
Mike experienced that first touch not as electric but rather as a fluid movement that spread throughout his body.
He looked at their hands on the table. The gesture, he knew, was not an invitation. It was a statement, though Mike wasn’t sure exactly of what.
He felt a quick pressure on his hand, and then Anna pulled her own away. “You’ve been so good to us,” she said, allowing them that pretext.
He stood while Anna took the glasses to the sink. He noted that she was washing them with care. He knew that they would be hand dried and replaced in the cabinet as soon as he left. What she would do with the opened bottle of wine, he had no idea.
“Good luck tonight,” he said, pulling on his coat.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll come by again.”
Anna looked over through the open doorway to the dining table carefully laden with appetizers. When she turned back to Mike, she seemed to have made up her mind about something that was important to her.
“Yes,” she said. “I hope you will.”
Ellen
For a moment, a naked look passes between you and your son. It is a look you have never seen before, and it chills you.
“Rob, what happened?” you ask.
He shuts his eyes. He will not answer your question.
Behind you, the headmaster enters the room. “Mrs. Leicht,” he says. You turn, and something in the man startles a bit when he sees your face. You have no idea what is written there.
You have met the headmaster a number of times. On each occasion, you and he talked about Rob. You accepted compliments. You chatted about the team or about the school year. Perhaps you had the same conversation with the man half a dozen times.
“Rob, I wonder if I could speak to your mother alone,” the headmaster says. “You can stay here. We’ll talk in my office.”
Your son is happy you are leaving. He doesn’t want to be in the same room with you. You can smell it.
You follow the headmaster into his office. He sits behind his desk, and you understand that you should sit in the chair in front of it. You have never really noticed before how blue the man’s eyes are. He is slight, and this surprises you, too, because when you saw him before, he seemed taller. He wears glasses, and you can see, in the slanting natural light from the window, that they are smudged. You wonder why you are just noticing these details now — now, when you have so much else on your mind.
“Thank you for coming,” he says.
You repeat the question that you asked of your son. “What happened?”
The headmaster asks if you would like a bottle of water, and you say yes. He reaches behind him and takes a half bottle of Poland Spring from a shelf. Your hands are shaking, and you know that he can see this. You reach up with a nervous gesture to tuck your hair behind your ears, and you note that your earring has fallen off. You check your other ear. You are wearing only one earring. You think — quickly, because there is business at hand — that it must be in the car.
“Rob and I have had a talk about the incident,” the man in front of you says.
You take a quick breath. “You said on the phone only that Rob was accused of a major rule violation of a . . . sexual nature. Has he been expelled?”
“He will be,” the headmaster says.
Your head jerks a bit, as if you hadn’t heard correctly.
The headmaster nods.
Expelled. The word is a bullet careening in your brain. Causing serious injury.
“What did he do?” you ask.
“This is very hard, Mrs. Leicht.”
“Ellen.”
The headmaster studies you a moment. He shifts in his chair. You realize you are perched forward in yours.
“Your son was involved in a sexual incident with an underage girl,” he announces.
It is a moment before you can respond. “What?” you ask.
The headmaster does not repeat himself.
“I don’t understand,” you say. And you don’t. You cannot imagine.
“He was involved in an incident in which he had . . . sex . . . with a girl who is only fourteen. Rob is, I believe, eighteen?”
You nod slowly, trying to take it all in. “That’s grounds for expulsion?” you ask.
The headmaster seems taken aback. “Yes, I’m afraid that it is.” He appears, for a moment, to want to say more but doesn’t.
“Oh God,” you say.
The headmaster picks up a pen and begins to tap it lightly against a pad of paper.
“Are you positive it was Rob?” you ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“How do you know that this girl, I assume she has a name, this fourteen-year-old girl and my son were . . . involved . . . as you say, in this, in this incident?”
“The incident was caught on tape,” the headmaster admits reluctantly. “The tape was brought to my attention. It’s how I know about it.”
You put your fist to your chest and press hard. “A tape,” you say.
“Yes.”
“My son and this girl. You’ve seen it.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Is it . . . ?” You begin the question, but you cannot finish it.
“Graphic?” he asks for you. “Yes, it is.”
You cover your mouth, as if it were you who had been caught out. You who had been exposed.
The headmaster waits. There are tiny seeds of perspiration along his hairline. This is hard for him, too, you think. Awful for him, probably.
“How many have seen the tape?” you ask.
He moves in the chair, as if this were a question he didn’t want to have to think about. “That’s difficult to say,” he answers cautiously. “Four staff members. We don’t know yet to what extent it was circulated among students, but we have reason to believe some have seen it.”
You are silent.
“There were a number of people involved in the incident itself,” the headmaster says, adding blow upon blow to what is already hideous news. “Five, to be precise.”
“Five?”
“Three boys, your son among them, and the girl. And the person behind the camera. We don’t know who that is yet.”
&nb
sp; You are incredulous. “This was . . . it was . . . an orgy?” you ask, your voice faltering at the word orgy.
The headmaster rubs a finger under his nose, as if he might be going to sneeze. “Something like that,” he says. “I would rather not get into the specifics of the tape. I don’t think you need to hear details. I can’t see that it would do you or your son any good. I can say, though — how shall I put this? — it appears that Rob did not have actual intercourse with the girl.”
Unwanted images flood your brain. You work to erase them. You bristle at the notion of not being allowed to know everything about an event your son was involved in. Who is this man to keep facts from you? But you realize the headmaster is correct. You do not want to see any of it.
“How do you know it’s Rob?”
“It’s Rob,” he says.
“You’re positive.”
“Yes. Two other staff members have identified him as well.”
“Oh God,” you say as another lid is sealed, another door shut.
The idea that other adults have watched your son having sex with an underage girl — with any girl — makes your chest tight.
The headmaster pushes the bottle of water closer to you. You reach for it and take a long sip. “Do I need to call a lawyer?” you ask.
The headmaster looks away. “I would do that only if you wish to contest the expulsion,” he explains. “Which would mean, I am bound to say, that the incident would have to be made public.”
“It doesn’t have to be made public now?” you ask.
“Not really. The students will know he and the other boys have been expelled, and there are bound to be rumors. But so far, the incident is contained within the school walls. I see no need to go public with this.”