The Affliction Page 2

  “You’re the history of art teacher,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, somebody’s done her homework!” Florence studied a tray that was thrust between them. “Now what are these, Marnie?”

  “Tapenade pizza,” said the girl.

  Florence took one and thanked her. After a bite she said to Maggie, with manic energy, as if the force of her flood of words alone could forestall disaster, “Oh! It’s olives! I wasn’t sure. I like olives by themselves, but not so much in food. Do you know what I mean?” She could even talk while swallowing. “Last summer when I was in Spain, doing my research, my hotel served a breakfast buffet, I think they call it a continental breakfast, or we call it that, probably they don’t but anyway, I was, well you know how it is when you travel, so I was so pleased to see there were prunes there with the cheeses and other things I don’t eat for breakfast so I put a big spoonful of them on my cereal and it was good I was sitting alone, because of course they weren’t prunes at all they were olives! Then I didn’t want to spoon them out because the waiters would think I was a fool, so I ate them, but they were very odd in cereal. Have you been to Madrid?”

  “I have,” said Maggie.

  Emily George materialized and said, “Good evening, Florence. That’s a lovely pin you’re wearing.”

  Florence looked down to see what pin she was wearing and before she could reply, Emily added, “I’m just going to spirit Maggie away, because I know you’ll meet with her in the morning.”

  She guided Maggie toward a group who were deeply engaged in their conversation. They were clearly trustees, more expensively dressed and shod than the faculty. When they saw Emily, they moved a little apart from each other. Maggie wondered what exactly they had interrupted.

  Bright smiles turned to Maggie. Introductions were made. Emily said to one of the men, “Lyndon, could I have a word with you?” They stepped away for a tête-à-tête. A waiter appeared at Maggie’s elbow with a tray of glasses, mostly filled with ruby- and topaz-colored liquids. A shortish man at her elbow wearing a blazer with nautical flags embroidered on the pocket asked the waiter, “What is the red?”

  “Ummm,” said the waiter.

  “The color says pinot noir, do you mind?” The man put one hand on Maggie’s arm and with the other took a glass and held it up to the light. He had coarse ash-colored hair and was sturdily built, somehow reminding Maggie of a Shetland pony. He plunged his muzzle into the glass just short of actually touching the wine. After a solemn inhalation of the fumes, he declared, “It’s a little chocolatey for a pinot.” He took a sip and rolled it around in his mouth a long time before he swallowed. “What do you think?” he said to Maggie and held the glass toward her.

  “I think I’ll stick to water,” she said pleasantly. “We’re working.”

  “I’m getting a little hint of petite sirah,” said the man. Apparently this was a good thing, as he did not, as Maggie feared he might, return the glass to the tray. Instead he took a long thoughtful pull at it and said to Maggie, “Hugo Hollister.”

  “Yes,” said Maggie, since they had just been introduced and he was labeled.

  “You ran the Winthrop School in New York, I think,” he added.

  “I did. For several eons.”

  “I wish we’d sent my stepson there.” He smiled at her, as if he felt they were beginning a conspiracy.

  “Do you have children here at the Manor?” she countered.

  “My stepson went on to Andover and then Princeton, and now he’s at Goldman.” Hugo rolled his eyes. “He could have done so many useful things besides mint money.” A platter of hors d’oeuvres commanded his attention.

  “Roquefort cheese puffs,” said the girl with the tray.

  “Oh,” said Hugo, as if she had said “dog dirt on toast.”

  “Tell me about this,” said Maggie, indicating the emblems on his blazer pocket.

  “Oh, that’s a yacht club burgee, and this is my commodore flag. You don’t have to salute or kiss my ring or anything though.”

  “Commodore of . . .”

  “It’s a tiny club in Massachusetts. On an island.”

  “Which one?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  “Try me.”

  He named the island.

  “That’s owned by the Caldwell family, isn’t it?” said Maggie.

  Hugo beamed. “You do get around! Yes it is. I’m from the cadet branch. The ones who went with the buggy whip side of the business when the brains of the family bet on petroleum.”

  And made a vast fortune when they sold out to Standard Oil. Maggie knew this from having had two of those Caldwells in her school and being quite good friends with their mother.

  “So you’re a sailor?”

  Hugo laughed happily. “Well that’s . . . that’s, that’s the funny thing, I’m absolutely paralyzed on boats. My back goes into spasm. It’s not uncommon; I’m told it was epidemic in the submarine corps in World War II. Related to claustrophobia somehow. But I’m very useful on land. The rest of the family goes to sea in all weathers and comes in from the races starving and soaked to the bone, and they’re very happy to find me in charge of the roaring fire and the cocktail table.”

  Emily George joined them. Across the room Maggie could see her colleague Bill Toskey in deep conversation with the head of the math department, and Sister Rose was more or less pinned against the wall by Florence Meagher.

  “Hugo’s daughter Lily is having a wonderful year, has he told you?” Emily asked.

  “Tell me,” said Maggie to Hugo.

  Emily said, “I’ll just . . .” and left them, tacking across the room to liberate Sister Rose.

  “She’s a little . . . distrait tonight, our leader,” said Hugo, watching Emily.

  “I know,” said Maggie.

  “Lovely woman, though.”

  “Tell me about your daughter’s wonderful year.”

  “The light of my life. You know there are so many kinds of intelligence in this world.”

  Maggie did know that. Hugo went on. “My daughter has a vocabulary of two hundred words, and a hundred of them are awesome. And yet she is a physical genius. She was Optimist sailing champion of our club when she was eight. And you should see her dive. Her coach thinks she should train for the Olympics, she just amazes me. It takes lightning calculation. Velocity, distance, trajectory—she can do it like an angel. And has no idea how.”

  “She’s an optimist, then?”

  Hugo chuckled. “An Optimist is a class of boat. A tiny little single-hander for beginners. But yes, I’d say she is an optimist . . . oh, would you excuse me please? I think the excellent Mrs. Meagher is closing in on my wife.” Maggie watched as he moved smoothly through the crowd to slide his arm around a pleasant-looking woman in an emerald-colored evening jacket wearing a string of enormous freshwater pearls.

  At this point, a tinkling on a spoon against a wineglass alerted them that Ms. Liggett was going to make a speech.

  Maggie’s room at the Manor House Inn was bare-bones but clean, with an ample work desk and a comfortable chair with a good reading light. She’d had a working supper with her colleagues and Christina Liggett, and now, finally alone, had unpacked and changed into her nightdress. Comfort at last. She answered her e-mail, made notes on the people she’d met and impressions she’d formed, and had gone over the schedule for the next day, which would be packed.

  Workday done, she got a beer from the minibar, settled herself in the armchair, and texted her friend Hope Babbin: Are chocolate notes wrong in pinot noir?

  The reply came in moments: who on earth have u been talking to?

  And then her phone rang.

  “You don’t even drink red wine,” said Hope. “Where are you?”

  Maggie explained.

  “Rye-on-Hudson,” said Hope. “I guess they’ve already heard the sandwich jokes.”

  “So I believe.”

  “How is it going to go?”

  “Hard to tell
. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

  “Who’s we?”

  Maggie explained her colleagues. “Sister Rose is very good and pure but she has a sneaky sense of humor I like. Bill Toskey has a chip on his shoulder about something, I’m not sure what yet. What are you up to?”

  “Trying to finish the book we’re reading for book group, but I hate it.”

  “Oh too bad. Who chose the book?”

  “I did.”

  “What is it?”

  “Silas Marner.”

  “I could have told you you’d hate that. Not your thing at all. Does that mean you have to lead the discussion?”

  “It does.”

  “Everything else all right? How are the twins?”

  “Molly has an earache.”

  “Lucky her mom’s a doctor.”

  “Yes. Remind me, why did I join a book group?”

  “Lauren was worried you were addicted to mah-jongg.”

  “There are worse things. And I’m reading one of them.”

  Maggie said, “I’d better leave you to it.”

  She finished her beer while polishing off a double-crostic, then brushed her teeth and got into bed. When she turned out the light and settled herself for sleep she found the night was quiet, eerily so to one accustomed to the nighttime hum and sizzle of New York City. The high beams of the occasional passing car sent blades of light through the gaps at the sides of the blinds and sliced across the blue-gray wallpaper. She had a vague but tenacious sense of unease that she eventually put to rest by reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade” until she fell asleep.

  Chapter 2

  Wednesday, April 22

  The visiting committee’s business of the morning was to observe classes. Maggie went first to Marcia Goldsmith, the head of the French Department. Actually, at this stage Ms. Goldsmith was the entire staff of the French Department, Maggie knew from the school’s self-study report. A student guide delivered Maggie to the right classroom and hurried off to her own class. Maggie tapped on the door and opened it, about to announce herself, when she realized that the woman sitting alone at the massive desk in the front of the room was crying.

  She was a long boney woman with her sleek dark hair pulled back and held with a barrette. She was plainly dressed in a skirt and sweater set such as might have been worn by a teacher or student on this campus at any period since the 1940s. She jumped when she realized Maggie was in the room.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” Maggie said as Ms. Goldsmith rose and came toward her, mopping her nose, then poked her handkerchief into her sleeve.

  “I lost track of the time, I’m so sorry,” said Marcia Goldsmith, producing a strained smile. She shook Maggie’s hand. “I’m having a bout of allergy, pollen, or something, not contagious, just ignore me.”

  There was a slight accent, not French. Scottish, maybe?

  “We didn’t meet last night, did we?” Maggie asked her, giving her time to compose herself.

  “No, I had a . . . thing that came up. Family issue.” Maggie saw now that the woman was older than she had thought at first. Mid- to late forties, she guessed. She had a very long neck, and with her hair skinned back as it was, Maggie could see that her ears were pierced, but she wore no earrings. Something had distracted her or delayed her as she was dressing? Or she just wasn’t much focused on her appearance?

  “It was very pleasant,” Maggie offered. “I met a number of your colleagues. Mrs. Maltby, and Jody Turner. I had a nice talk with Florence Meagher.”

  Marcia Goldsmith turned her hazel eyes to Maggie’s. “You know she’s really a lovely woman.”

  “I could see that.”

  “In spite of The Affliction.”

  Maggie looked questioning.

  “She cannot shut up,” said Marcia Goldsmith.

  Maggie smiled. “Yes, there’s that.”

  “She’s a marvelous teacher, though. Passionate about her subject.”

  “May I ask you something, off the record?”

  Marcia tensed a little before she said, “Go ahead.”

  “In my experience, teenagers aren’t very kind about that kind of thing in their teachers.”

  Marcia’s tension dissolved. “No, they do terrible imitations of her. They don’t mean any harm though. They just don’t really understand that teachers have feelings.”

  “Well, that’s true enough. Now tell me, if you will, what is the thinking behind doing away with AP language classes?”

  Marcia was now quite composed and fully inhabiting her teacher persona, and she turned to the task at hand, which was to try and convince Maggie that failing to offer advanced placement courses was actually an enrichment of the curriculum. She was spared having to carry on long by the noisy arrival of adolescent girls streaming into the room, tossing their cell phones into a box on the teacher’s desk, banging around the room stowing their backpacks and taking their seats.

  At the end of the class, when Maggie’s student guide failed to reappear to lead her to Florence Meagher, Marcia said, “I’ll take you. I’m free until eleven.” Maggie had a sense that for whatever reason, Marcia Goldsmith welcomed a chance to not be alone this morning. Marcia locked the door of the classroom behind them and led off down the hall.

  “Is that personal choice, or school policy?” Maggie asked as they clattered down the echoing tiled fire stairs. “The locked door.”

  “Both,” said Marcia. “We had a cheating episode last year. Someone got one of the teachers’ grading sheets for the final exams.” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s all right. It can happen anywhere.”

  “The kids are under so much pressure to perform. To be absolutely honest, these days we tend to get the warm fuzzy students, terribly nice but not in the top academic tier, and some parents just can’t get the message. They see their kids the way they see their cars and jewelry, advertisements for themselves. They think raging at these girls, or at us, will change what they got in the delivery room.”

  Marcia pushed open a door to the outside in spite of a sign that said do not open; alarm will sound and they stepped out into the sunshine. No alarm sounded. “I’m sorry,” Marcia went on, “I shouldn’t have said that either. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not, but I feel so strongly about it, parents who can’t just accept the children they have, instead of . . . well you must have seen a lot of this.”

  “The way of the world, these days,” said Maggie. They were crossing a sun-washed quadrangle, with streams of girls full of animal high spirits clattering around them.

  “Do you have children?” Marcia asked.

  “Three steps,” said Maggie. “All in their teens when I got them, and long grown up now. They were a handful, though. Do you?”

  “Two boys. I’m surrounded by hormones.”

  “You are. Do you mind my asking, where are you from? I’m interested in accents.”

  “I grew up in Cape Town.”

  “Ah. You’re far from home, then, or is your family here now?”

  Marcia seemed to appreciate the personal interest. This was not part of the job Maggie had come to do; she just couldn’t help herself. If she hadn’t been so sincerely curious about people she wouldn’t have been the gifted teacher she was.

  “No, my mother and brother are still there; I came here for college and never left. And you?”

  “I’m from Pittsburgh. Outside of. My sister is still there, and two of her children. Two more nieces are in New York now, so I’ve captured them. Tell me, since I’ve got you, how do you think Ms. Liggett is getting along?”

  There was a pause. They were now waiting at the light to cross the tree-lined street to the other half of the campus. Students burbled around them and the sun shone on the bright yellow-green of spring leaves.

  “She’s young. But she’s doing her best,” said Marcia.

  “I’m sure of t
hat. How did she handle the cheating episode?”

  Marcia looked around to be sure they were out of earshot as they hurried across the street with the light. “It was complicated, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Parents were angry that their girls had to take their exams over, even though they swore they hadn’t cheated. Christina can’t tell us much more than that, because of the lawsuit . . .”

  “Oh dear,” said Maggie. “Did she identify the culprit?”

  Marcia considered her answer. “We all think she did, I mean we think we know, but the girl wouldn’t confess, and no one would turn her in.”

  They had reached one of the original classroom buildings, a handsome faux-Georgian brick house set on a knoll, with broad stone steps leading up to a veranda, and white pillars flanking the front door. It had certainly been a private residence in the Gilded Age, and it still had beautiful bones, if it made sense to say that of buildings. “Through here,” said Marcia as they entered the parlor floor. The front and back reception rooms to the right of the foyer had been opened up to form one large teaching hall. Already the room was nearly filled with girls sitting in rows, notebooks open, textbooks out and ready. Some girls were reading, or doing homework; most were happily gossiping and laughing.

  “Good morning,” said Marcia firmly over the noise. The girls instantly quieted and composed themselves to signal attention. “We have a visitor. This is Ms. Detweiler. Mrs. Meagher isn’t here?”

  There were murmurs. She wasn’t. Mrs. Goldsmith looked at her watch, then went to the front of the room and said, “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute. What are you working on this week?”

  Silence.

  “Shaundi?”