The Headmaster's Wife
Page 16
“Yes.”
“Okay, Arthur. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, okay?”
Arthur nods, and Russell stands to leave. Arthur says, “Russell? You are Russell?”
Russell turns around and looks at the slender figure in clothes too big disappearing into the metal chair. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
Russell nods. “Me, too,” he says.
Riding the subway uptown, moving with the train as it shudders around the bends with the lights flickering, Russell thinks about the randomness of life. It was entirely arbitrary that he happened to hear the name Arthur Winthrop as he moved through the hallway of the D.A.’s office yesterday morning and decided to stop one of his younger colleagues, who told him the story of the headmaster in the park. It was hardly a serious crime and never would otherwise have come to his attention, if it hadn’t been for the station of the person involved, which made for good office gossip. Even though Russell had been at Lancaster for only four months, for some reason all these years they had kept him on the mailing list, and every three months or so the glossy magazine showed up at his apartment, pictures of Arthur everywhere, and sometimes pictures of Betsy, so in this way he has watched the two of them grow older, like a celebrity couple you follow in the newspapers. And sometimes, looking at Betsy, he got pangs of remembrance, but then he would stop and chastise himself, how silly it was, and how long ago. It doesn’t make any sense to mourn the loss of something that happened when you were a teenager, though there were other times when he thought in some ways everything that had happened since in his life traced back to that short time he had had on that campus.
But after he heard Arthur’s name and asked what was being done, it took only a moment for him to decide to involve himself. He placed the call to the school, and after a long pause he was talking to Betsy, and on the phone, things changed for him. There she was, telling him things like an old friend—that they had lost their son, that Arthur had lost his mind, that she had tried to take her own life. She said they had a horrible row when she was in the hospital recovering from hypothermia—a student had found her crawling toward the dorm after she came out of the river. She blamed Arthur for their son’s death and she knew it was unfair but she needed to say it and she did. After that, he disappeared. Until the call from the NYPD that he was in custody.
And so he found himself telling Betsy to have the lawyers hold on, that he would take care of it, all of it. And he heard the relief in her voice and the trust coming across the decades and through the phone. “Come down here,” he said. “It will be okay. I promise.”
He exits the subway and on Amsterdam he stops at Planet Sushi and orders two sushi dinners and an extra order of the hamachi. This is one of those nights when he wishes he knew how to cook, wishes he had one good dish he could execute, even if it was pasta with clams or something like that. But since he divorced ten years ago and moved to the one-bedroom with its view of the Hudson, he turned his refrigerator off and took the door off of it and filled it with books. The stove, also unplugged, holds in its oven his important papers, his birth certificate and passport and so on, since he figures if there is ever a fire, this is the one place that will withstand it. And New York allows you those possibilities, he thinks, the ability not to have to do anything for yourself.
Out on the avenue the night is dark and cold, and the streets are full of people walking huddled and faceless against it. Coming down Ninety-second, he can see the river now beyond in the icy dark and, as he enters his unassuming apartment building, he has this sudden sinking feeling that she will no longer be upstairs.
He rides the elevator to the fourteenth floor, and Mrs. Goldsmith, well into her eighties, is in the hallway, her groceries at her feet, her terrier looking up at him expectantly as she fumbles through her bag for her keys. Russell desperately doesn’t want to talk with her, not tonight, but she sees him and breaks into a wide smile, and he says, “Let me give you a hand with those.”
A moment later he has Mrs. Goldsmith safely in her apartment, her groceries on the kitchen table, and he opens the door to his own apartment and for a moment he thinks his fears are to be realized, as the kitchen is dark and in the small living room there is only the light from the reading lamp and there is no sign of her. But then he sees the bathroom door is closed, yellow light coming from underneath it. He goes to it and says, “Betsy?”
“Oh,” the voice comes back to him, and he is relieved. “Just finishing in the tub. Be out in a minute.”
Russell quickly hustles and turns on lights, cleans off the small dining room table in front of the best feature of his place, the large window that looks out over West End Avenue to the wide Hudson and the twinkling lights of New Jersey on the opposite shore. He considers candles—he knows he has them somewhere, in the kitchen perhaps—but that would be too much, he decides, deliberately romantic. That is not why she is here, though, from the moment he saw her yesterday, for the first time since they were in boarding school together so long ago, he has allowed himself the fantasy, and why not? He is single, and he suspects, from the few things she has said opaquely, that she has left Arthur for good. But more than that, standing in front of her for the first time in fortysomething years, he realized that she has aged, of course, as has he, but that the ineffable part of her beauty, the part he thought about all the time during that interminable six months after he left Lancaster and before he started as a freshman at Brandeis, had not changed one bit. Even with short gray hair and the furrowed lines of late middle age, he would have recognized her on the street. And, he thinks, she is even more beautiful now to him, if that is possible. She wears her sorrow like clothes, but with wisdom and loss and years of living come a different, particular beauty that no smooth-faced adolescent can possibly match.
When she comes out finally, flushed from the heat of the bath, and wearing a T-shirt and jeans, he smiles at her. The table by the window is set. It is hardly elegant, with the containers of sushi simply opened, but he does have small plates and wineglasses and an open bottle of rosé, more of a summer thing than winter, but he couldn’t think what else made sense with the fish.
“Oh, lovely,” she says.
“I hope you like sushi.”
“I do,” says Betsy.
And she sits down across from him, and when she does he looks her in the eye and he thinks how much time can steal from us, what a goddamn thief it is, that an entire lifetime could be lived since he last sat with her. They should be strangers but he does not feel that way. He is comfortable with her, and he has been alone so long he decided a few years ago that he might never be comfortable with someone again. But here he is, the great irony, sitting across from Betsy Pappas (for, in his mind, that is what he will call her), and the years have stripped away. He permits himself to imagine that maybe this is just another Wednesday at their city apartment. Their kids are out and about in the world, living splendid lives. They will small-talk about what each of them did that day, about the children, who might have called with some new bit of news. Perhaps a new boyfriend or girlfriend or something they can collectively worry about.
She jars him out of this. “How is Arthur?”
Russell shrugs. “He’ll be okay.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Are they going to keep him?”
“They don’t want to. I proposed a solution.”
“Oh?”
“Stamford Hills. A facility in Connecticut. He’ll get the help he needs. But it won’t be Bellevue. He may even like it there.”
Betsy raises her glass. She leans it toward Russell’s. “Thank you.”
He tips his glass into hers. “He still needs to agree.”
“He will, won’t he?”
“I think so,” says Russell.
They eat. Russell watches as she takes a piece of slender fish into her mouth, dipping it first into soy,
and he follows. She is skillful with the chopsticks—smearing wasabi on the fish, and all of it is seamless, and for a few moments they eat in silence.
“This is wonderful,” she says.
He shrugs. “I wish I could cook, but New York always has sushi.”
She smiles, and in the smile he sees her younger self once again and suddenly he is insecure for all the years he has worked and lived. What does he have to show for it? This apartment? He doesn’t even have a tiny spit of land. All he has is this apartment on the Upper West Side, a failed marriage, but at least there are children who think fondly of him. He has his job as an assistant district attorney, one of many. He will never be district attorney, for this is Manhattan, and he is not that person. Perhaps in a small town, where he came from, but he always had different aspirations, didn’t he? Otherwise he would not have gone to Lancaster, which is not the place for the son of a plumber from Western Mass.
They eat. For a moment there is only the sound of chopsticks picking up shiny pieces of fish on rice, dipping them into soy sauce and wasabi and then lifting up to their mouths. He watches her. She enjoys eating, and though he has no right to do so, he loves her for this.
Finally, he says, “I have to ask you. I am sorry.”
“Say it,” she says.
He hesitates. He sips from his wine. “Okay,” he says. “Shit, I don’t know how to say it.”
“Just say it. You can ask me anything.”
He breathes deep. “It’s none of my business.”
“Go ahead.”
“You tried to kill yourself.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
She puts down her chopsticks. She looks out the window.
He says, “You don’t have to say anything.”
“No,” she says, turning back to him. “I want to. This is important.”
“Okay,” he says.
“I couldn’t.”
“Okay.”
“I mean: I couldn’t. Something happened. I jumped, right? Jumped into the frozen water. I wanted to die, I did. I wanted it all to go away. I wasn’t well. I really wanted it to go away. But then something happened.”
“What?”
“I hit the water and I sank. It was so cold. Coldest thing I ever felt. And it was like—it was like hands pulling me down. It was so easy. Just go, Betsy, I thought. Let go. But then suddenly I didn’t want to. It was like my body said, ‘Fuck that. You need to live.’ I remember looking up, and everything was hazy. I couldn’t see anything. Next thing I was above the water gasping. I wanted air more than anything. And I swam. I didn’t know I could swim. How silly is that? But I did. I swam. It was like someone else was swimming for me.”
“You wanted to live.”
She smiled. Played with a piece of salmon on her plate. Outside, a barge moved down the river, and he saw it from his peripheral vision, lit like a Christmas tree. “Yes, I guess that’s true. Something wanted me to live.”
“Something?”
“It was so cold, Russell. I can’t remember what I was thinking. I just went for the bank as fast as I could. And when I climbed up it, I knew I wanted to live. I knew I needed to live. Maybe for Ethan, though I know that sounds hokey.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You’re kind.”
“There’s nothing I can say that will sound right.”
“I always loved that about you.”
“What?”
“Your honesty.”
“I work for the district attorney.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something about you. I don’t know. You are only yourself.”
“I know,” he says.
She cocks her head. “Yes, you do. That is your beauty.”
He laughs. “I didn’t know I had beauty. I mean, look at me…”
“I like you,” she says.
“You once loved me,” he says wistfully and then immediately regrets giving this idea words. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“That was another life,” she says.
“Yes,” he says.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” she says.
“I know.”
They sit in silence. He reflexively takes a piece of dragon roll into his mouth, though he is not hungry. He eats because it gives him something to do with his big hands. It gives him something to do besides stare into her green eyes.
He says, “I have overstepped.”
“No,” she says.
“Arthur—are you?”
“We were done a long time ago,” she says.
“Okay,” he says.
“I want him to be well.”
“He will.”
“I hope so.”
“Betsy?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to be foolish.”
“Stop.”
“Okay.”
“I mean I am not ready for anything, you know?”
“Yes,” he says.
She smiles. “Sushi is good.”
“Sushi is great.”
“Yes, it’s great.”
He drops his head and cracks a smile. She is across the table from him. He looks out to the winter night. It has been forever since someone else shared this space with him. And he thinks about the nature of the world, that after all these years she is here and he loves her as if they were sixteen again, but he cannot say this to her, and that is okay, that is as it should be. He looks out to the winter night. Far below them is the river, timeless and uncaring. It moves to the sea as if they were not there at all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I began this novel in the neonatal intensive care unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in the summer of 2009. Our second daughter, Jane, had just been born and born far too early. She weighed less than two pounds. Her lungs didn’t work. But nevertheless she was a miracle, and while I was in the middle of the arduous work of starting a college, I spent every moment I could next to her bedside during the six months she lived. And what began as one novel eventually became a very different one, a novel of grief and one that I dedicate to her, for though she did not live long, she taught everyone who came into touch with her the true meaning of courage and fearlessness. She was a remarkable brown-eyed baby girl, and this book, the most honest thing I have ever written, is for her.
This book is also for her mother, Tia, the true hero of that time of our lives. This book is also for my daughter Sarah, who just turned seven. She is a marvel.
It is also for the amazing nurses and doctors at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. I especially want to give a shout-out to the nurses: Someday, if there is any justice in this world, nurses will inherit the earth. I need to single out a few of you by name: Ali, Angela, Christy, Donna, and Eneroliza. You were like family to us, and I don’t know if we will cross paths again, but each of you is an amazing woman who gives so much love and labor to what you do.
I want to thank my agent, Marly Rusoff, without whom this book would not have been possible. She sets the standard for representation that every agent should aspire to.
My gratitude extends to the great Thomas Dunne, who saw in this book everything I had ever hoped a publisher could see in my work. I can’t thank you enough for your warm welcome and for bringing this novel to the world.
Likewise, I also want to thank my editor at Thomas Dunne Books, the talented Anne Brewer, whose insights made this book so much stronger. And thanks to Peter Wolverton, for his leadership and advocacy on behalf of my novel.
I also want to thank my early readers and hope I don’t miss any of you: Maura Greene, David Greene, Carolyn Greene, Meghan Westbrook, Miciah Bay Gault, Dana Routhier, Ann Wood, Alfred Donovan, and Alex Lehmann.
I would be remiss in not thanking all of my colleagues, trustees, staff, and faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Your belief in my leadership and your willingness to give
me the space to be an artist as well as your president mean the world to me. We are building something special and lasting together, and I am forever grateful to each one of you.
Finally, I need to thank my amazing parents for all their support of me and my work and especially for sacrificing to send me to Suffield Academy as a teenager. As my brother, Richard, recently put it, “If you hadn’t gotten into all that trouble in public school this book would be called The Principal’s Wife, and who wants to read that?”
ALSO BY THOMAS CHRISTOPHER GREENE
Envious Moon
I’ll Never Be Long Gone
Mirror Lake
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Christopher Greene is the author of three previous novels. His fiction has been translated into eleven languages and has won many awards and honors. In 2007, Tom founded the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a top fine arts college, making him the youngest college president in the United States at that time. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont, with his family. Visit him online at www.thomaschristophergreene.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
THE HEADMASTER’S WIFE. Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Christopher Greene. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Michael Storrings
Cover photograph © Joe Mercier/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-03894-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3424-8 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466834248