The Eliot Girls (30 page)

The noise of loud laughter in the hallway burst through the closed door. Someone called out, “We're going to be late,” with a kind of wicked glee, as if the speaker very much hoped to be late, followed by the sound of galloping down the hall.

He looked at the clock. “Ruth, I can't have you here.”

“Oh, is this not my workplace too?”

“Clayton could walk in at any minute.”

“Something tells me that Clayton is impeccably punctual.”

“Don't be obtuse. You know that I can't have you following me around when Clayton is due to arrive.”

“Following you?” she exclaimed. “I deserve some credit. I've never followed you!” She knew that, at this point, to say less was the judicious choice, but she thought of the hair point at the back of his head and was filled with loathing. Her voice dropped several decibels. “You know, I think you want me to be that kind of lover. You hate that woman but you need me to be her at the same time.”

He shook his head dolefully, as if saddened by how wrong she had gotten everything.

Wind gasped at the window. Purple-grey shades tinged the rattling glass, offering even clearer warning of the time than the noisy tick of the clock. Someone slammed a nearby locker, the sound ricocheted off the rows of abandoned lockers in the empty hallway. At the far end of the hallway, a vacuum cleaner started up, the cleaners already beginning their systematic progression through the closing school.

“Will you tell me something?” Ruth said suddenly. “Why did you leave U of T?”

“I don't understand.”

“Is the question confusing? I remember Larissa saying you had tenure. There's been gossip, you know. Constantly.”

Henry reordered the folders in his briefcase. “Well, I'm sorry to disappoint your desire for mystery. There's nothing whatsoever gossip worthy behind it. I needed a change. It wasn't what I wanted anymore.”

“After all the years of work that went into getting there?”

He shrugged.

That was it? After all these months of speculation, all that waiting for the perfectly timed confession, the clarifying turpitude, she had ended up with only this? At the core of it all was not some appalling, life-threatening shame but simply his own capriciousness? Ruth had been—they had all been—so certain that there was a dark secret. She supposed that she had wanted to think this, that to believe him debauched in some spectacular way was not materially different from heroicizing him. Although she had not actively planned, over the course of their affair, on exhuming the secret, she saw now that its projected presence had bestowed on him a grandeur, had rendered him instantly, undeservedly intriguing.

She thought of that first night in the staff room: the reverent darkness of the school, their cocoon of exclusive light, the mesmerized compliance of her shocked body, the thrill, equal to the raw pleasure of the kiss itself, of knowing that her life could still take turns, that it was not, after all, entirely arranged. She had not known that the experience, even had it ended there, would become necessary to her sustenance. An insane leap, she knew, but the closest parallel she could summon for the way she felt with Henry that night was her moody elation when she discovered that she was pregnant. That concurrence of foreboding and euphoria—not merely the connection, but the symbiosis, of fear and hope.

“Tell me,” she pressed. “Tell me what happened.”

He looked towards the window, and she was certain that she saw something in his face: a hardness that aged him, the pulse of bitterness.

“Don't I deserve to know, after all this?”

“Ruth, don't be facile. I can't think why on earth it matters anyway.”

“Why did you start this with me, Henry?”

He took a small step towards her, his palms upturned but not outstretched. He seemed at a loss, a state that only made everything worse. He had become wary rather than frustrated. Annoyance she would have welcomed. Antagonism would have offered at least some acknowledgment of her modicum of power, an assurance of some enduring conviction on his part.

“What do you want from me? A psychological examination of my
motives
?”

“You
just
got married.”

“There are no reasons, Ruth.”

What had she hoped for? A philandering father? A murmured confession that he had never learned to be better than this, and that he chosen her because he had seen, even before she did, that she wasn't better than it either? She walked down an aisle towards the back of the room and crossed her arms, ostensibly studying the arrangement of wilted, faux-antique brownish maps of the continents. For a second she thought that she could hear Larissa's voice travelling through the grid of hallways—so distant it sounded like a television left on at low volume. “I envy you your restraint,” she said.

“Restraint?” he replied with a smile. “We wouldn't be here if I had any. We both know that.”

“But you know better than to talk about love.”

She thought that now was the safest time to float that idea, even to say it, flat out, when he was sure to say nothing back. She had not planned on ever bringing that word into their vocabulary. Whatever she felt she would feel privately. But Henry's distance made her push for something she didn't quite understand. She turned to face him, and he looked at the clock, then to his watch, assessing their synchronicity, as if to throw onto an imaginary screen before them the image of Clayton in the parking lot, jingling her keys in her hand, heading to the door under the cover of the low evening clouds.

“Let's be dignified about this,” he said.

She searched his face for some sign that there was something he wanted to say to her, a softening at the corner of his lips, a cautious dip of his eyelids, an allusion to affection, somewhere, but she found nothing. He clicked shut the clasp of his briefcase: the insignificant sound of dismissal.

He regarded her for a moment, relenting. “You were so nervous that first night. So nervous and lovely. Your nervousness made you more lovely.”

The words were brutally elegiac.

“Maybe you should meet Clayton outside,” she said.

Nodding, he grabbed his briefcase and was gone with a bashful backwards wave, gone to the warm, waiting car, its private swish through the gathering congestion of the city streets to the gritty freedom of the train station, which would take him farther, still, from this classroom, where it seemed she would wait forever, wondering what had just happened.

 

 

Cha
p
ter
Si
xteen

MS. MCALLISTER'S DARK FORM
was silhouetted against the too-bright window when Audrey opened the door and stepped into her office on Thursday afternoon. The summons had been sent during final period, and Audrey had spent the remainder of French class in a flap. Unsuccessfully, she tried to pay even closer attention to the lesson, as though at the eleventh hour she could make up for her academic apathy. All her alarm focused on her grades: another midterm report card loomed, and she had made little improvement since the fall term. She had a vision of Ms. McAllister poring over her results with an enormous magnifying glass.

With a sideways flick of her wrist, Ms. McAllister motioned for Audrey to sit, then continued to gaze out the window for a moment, her profile precisely outlined again the dusty glass. Audrey had the impression of forced calm—not leisure but the performance of it. At length, she made a stiff and slow revolution, fixing her eyes on Audrey as she sank into the commodious recesses of her stately chair. A file was open before her and she leafed through it with reflective gravity. Finally she folded her hands and spoke. “You worked very hard to get into this school.”

Audrey nodded.

“Although the process of test design certainly has its own rewards, the entrance examinations are not simply a difficult test I design for my own fancy,” Ms. McAllister began. “They serve a critical function you and I have discussed before. In many respects, they are the linchpin of George Eliot Academy's success. What is a school but an amalgamation of its principles and its people?” She looked at Audrey as if waiting for a response, then continued. “This is why I allow prospective girls to try the tests only twice. In your case, as you know, an exception was made. For this, I blame myself. I allowed personal feelings and the obligations of a long-standing professional relationship to override my better judgment. And now, I fear, we are all suffering the consequences of my misguided, and dare I say foolish, compassion. I have never so heartily wished to be proven wrong. ”

The sound of rowdy male voices shouting outside roused Ms. McAllister from her desk. She pulled back the half-drawn curtain and peered outside in curiosity and consternation. Even with her back turned, her eyes were trained on Audrey, immobile but seemingly alive, staring out from the enormous portrait of her that hung on the wall to the right of the desk. Although painted a decade before, to mark the occasion of Eliot's opening, it might have been a likeness of her appearance that day. It made words, the lecture or punishment intended to set Audrey on the right path, almost unnecessary, so clearly did it convey her message of authority and disappointment.

Ms. McAllister cleared her throat and turned back around. “What have you to say for yourself?” she asked.

Audrey swallowed hard. “I know I can do better.”

“I shouldn't think it possible to do much worse.”

“I'm trying really hard. I am. My mom's getting me a math tutor. I'm just starting to catch up. Everything was different at my old school. It was a lot easier, obviously. And I mean, I love how challenging it is here. I'm really getting used to it now. I know that by the end of the year, you'll see how hard I'm working.”

Ms. McAllister frowned and held up her hand. “I must stop you here, for I can't comprehend the purpose of this vile charade. If there's one way to redeem oneself, it's through honesty and repentance. Evasion is an extension of the original sin. To commit such an inexcusable offence is bad enough. But to show no desire, no ability, for atonement is quite unthinkable.”

It was at this point that Audrey realized they weren't talking about the same thing. Dizziness washed over her, a nostalgia that was avoidant but entirely without comfort; every ounce of her wanted to return to a time, even just seconds before, when she had considered bad marks a problem of any magnitude. It didn't occur to her to wish for the chance to do everything differently, but simply to revisit the hour when she didn't know the outcome would be this: the restoration not of innocence, but of ignorance. She felt her face crumpling. “I don't—”

“Enough. Do you truly propose to deny the charges against you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Her quivering voice allowed her no dignity and was a reasonable enough indication of guilt.

“Dr. Winter caught you in the act you now mean to disown. Caught you red-handed at your victim's locker.”

Audrey fought the insight threatening to submerge her.

“Ah. Now we're getting to it.” Smiling spitefully, Ms. McAllister exited her chair and began to pace stiffly in front of the bookcases. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Audrey muttered a hushed no. Even this single, inadequate word took considerable effort to get out.

In the middle of Ms. McAllister's desk was the remainder of a reheated Lean Cuisine lasagne, sitting in its plastic dish on top of a chipped white plate, emitting a powerful smell of tomato sauce and cheese. Nausea swelled inside Audrey. Ms. McAllister was standing to the side and just slightly behind her, so that Audrey could feel, but not see, Ms. McAllister staring at her. She turned, compelled to witness the loathing she would find there. Ms. McAllister's lips were pursed and the studied restraint in her face had been replaced not by simple antipathy, but by triumph. She seemed not merely satisfied to have caught the culprit, but pleased at the outcome, at locating the trouble in Audrey, about whom she had always had doubts. There was a resurgent gleam in her eyes, a twitching at the corner of her lips that suggested a smile suppressed. She was vindicated: Audrey's crime was proof not of the failure of her instincts, but their success, her distaste for the girl evidence not of pettiness, the random targeting of snobbery, but of her powerful insight. The exams, the interview—the meticulously erected structures of assessment—were proven effective, Audrey's multiple failures clear warning signs that she did not heed for one reason only.

A quiet knock came at the door.

“Enter,” called Ms. McAllister.

In the doorway stood Ruth.

“Oh!” she said, spotting Audrey.

“Take a seat, Ruth.”

Ruth obeyed swiftly and solemnly, as though already under the weight of punishment. She looked at Audrey searchingly, but Audrey refused connection.

“It is my unfortunate and unusual burden to call you here today,” Ms. McAllister said. “I won't waste time on preamble. The culprit has been identified in the recent crimes that have victimized our school. She sits before you.”

Ruth's face was as blank as if nothing had been said. Audrey dared to look at her mother, but saw no cascading recognition, no identifiable emotion. Ms. McAllister seemed content to witness Ruth's immobility. Firmly rooted, she made no movement, even as the phone on her desk rang.

In the jarring silence that followed, Ruth finally awoke. “No,” she said, a laugh skirting the edges of her tone, as though a joke had been made that she didn't quite get.

Ms. McAllister was visibly annoyed. “Did I ask a question?”

“No, it's just…Audrey? No. She can't have.”

“I'm afraid she did.”

“It's totally unlike her.”

“I don't doubt that your maternal bias prevents you from being able to accept this news with equanimity. However, accept it you must.”

Now Ruth appeared to have altogether forgotten Audrey's presence. A strength was gathering in her body. She raised her eyes from the large mole on Larissa's right knee, visible through her tan pantyhose, to her expectant face. Ruth's voice was tight. “I won't accept any such thing. Not until you give me good reason.”

“Mom, I—”

Ruth put out a hand to silence her daughter. “Larissa, I'm—”

“Ms. Brindle, don't forget yourself.”

Ruth smiled angrily. “I'm quite certain there's some sort of explanation here for whatever conclusion you've drawn. Ms. McAllister.”

“This isn't about any conclusion
I've
drawn. Audrey was caught red-handed in the act.”

“You must be confused.”

“Dr. Winter witnessed the atrocity himself.”

Ruth's eyes cast around confusedly, as though scrambling to spot an alternative. “Henry?” she said.

“I'm sure you'll agree that he's as reliable a witness as can be.”

“Henry.” Ruth nodded slowly.

“I don't know if I've ever felt so personally attacked by misbehaviour,” Ms. McAllister said. “For months, Audrey has terrorized not just one girl, but an entire school. In the history of Eliot, no comparable villainy has been perpetrated against us. Clearly, this act will not be treated as mere sophomoric hijinks.”

Ruth was still clinging to the fight, Audrey could see, but she herself had let it go. She was exhausted by the decade-long struggle that had been her relationship with Eliot. Late one afternoon about a month into fall term, she had gone into the grade one classroom to see if the desk Ruth had marked so many years earlier was still there. Of course it wasn't. All the old schoolhouse desks had been replaced with roomier, more practical models. At first she had remarked the changes bleakly. But then another part of that old memory—the part she usually excised—surfaced. On their way out of the room, her mother had hoisted Audrey up to a world map on the wall. “How many countries does the Danube run through?” Ruth asked. All the excitement Audrey had been feeling drained out of her. “I don't remember,” she replied, squirming to be put down. What telling throb of intuition had she forced herself to ignore?

“I can't begin to understand what motivated you. You came here from an ordinary public school, true, but you were given the chance to make yourself more than ordinary. To take your place in a league of exceptional females. To be elevated by them. You could have been part of something great.”

Ms. McAllister continued to speak, but Audrey was barely listening. What she didn't want—what she couldn't bear—was for Ruth to ask her why. From the beginning, she had avoided directing too much insight towards the Seeta notes, her own desire to participate. She had always known what Arabella and the group's professed reasons might be, or at least what they would tell each other, but that crude patchwork of logic still only covered the surface of it. Audrey wasn't sure she even wanted to place it in the clear light of her scrutiny, to understand what was best left ignored. All year, there had been signs of an ugliness she wanted to deny. Seeta repelled her, repelled all of them, but the nature of that repulsion was a tricky thing. It was imperative that the cause be insignificant, that it should stem from nothing more malignant than Seeta's refusal to recognize the rules that governed them.

Audrey could see Ms. McAllister gluttonously suspecting, desiring, the worst. It was clear in her thinly victorious smile, that septic pleasure. How desperately she wanted it on her own behalf, how plainly the desire shimmered in that vampiric face.

“Not everyone is capable of elevation, of course,” Ms. McAllister was saying. “The lowest common denominator will seek to drag others to its level.”

Ruth shook her head. “I understand, of course I do, that there must be some punishment, some atonement. But Audrey can't have been alone in this. Ms. McAllister, all this mess can't have been the work of one girl.”

“You must open your eyes, Ms. Brindle,” Ms. McAllister replied. “Really, you must.”

“My eyes are open. Are yours?”

Ms. McAllister smiled coldly. “That Audrey was not an appropriate candidate for George Eliot Academy was clear from the beginning. For years, I chose to spare you the full assessment of her entrance exam results. Suffice to say, my judgment is unerring.”

Audrey looked her mother. “I'm sorry.”

“No. No!” Ruth exclaimed, standing up quickly. “You're not sorry for anything!”

“Think about what you are saying, Ms. Brindle.”

Roughly, Ruth swung Audrey's knapsack onto her own shoulder, accidentally knocking onto the floor a row of framed photographs of Eliot that adorned the edge of Ms. McAllister's desk.

“Get up, Audrey. We're leaving.”

Ms. McAllister's polished penny loafers formed a perfect
plié
as she stood by the door, looking very much as though she were hearing music in her head. Audrey looked down at the jumble of photographs by the principal's feet. On top was Martha McKirk, before a screen of library books, smiling blandly for the picture-day photographer, the dates of her birth and death inscribed on the cream mat. Another Eliot girl of the past.

Ms. McAllister was waiting to escort her into the disgrace of her expulsion. But Audrey had already vanished into her future.

 

THE IMPRESSIONISTIC FORMS OF
the known landscape sailed
past, but Ruth remarked none of it. Her sightline had become a tunnel. Her hands gripped the steering wheel at some distance in front of her, but she couldn't have said how near or far they were. In this distortion, reminiscent of a childhood fever, the only thing she was truly aware of was the acrid odour of the antibacterial soap from the school bathroom, where she had stopped before leaving. The drive home, away from this place, had seemed impassable—all at once too long and too short. How would she manage the mechanics of driving? Hurtling vehicles, red stoplights, weaving bicycles—the world was full of things that required her to command and coordinate her senses, which seemed to exist just outside of her reach. But the alternative, actually being at home, was equally incomprehensible. What would she tell Richard?

There had been no reason to linger at school, there was every reason to get out, but she had stayed as long as she could in the cold brilliance of the empty staff bathroom turning her hands under the warm water. How was she to return to her ordinary life and eat cilantro-encrusted halibut for dinner as if nothing was wrong? No, she would rather stay in the school, as odious as it now was, because entering the aftermath meant admitting that the events had happened, that they were no longer unfolding, fluid, changeable. It meant that the outcome was settled.