Читать книгу Everything We Ever Wanted - Сара Шепард - Страница 9

Normally, Sylvie looked forward to the bi-weekly Tuesday board meetings at Swithin. She loved sitting in the library, drinking tea, plotting, gossiping, the Philadelphia classical station on quietly in the background – it was less a board meeting and more a nice cozy get-together with people she’d known for years. But she dreaded this one, not getting into the shower until the last possible moment. She found herself wishing the weather would abruptly turn biblically catastrophic, raining down frogs or locusts or bumblebees, forcing the Department of Transportation to close the roads. She found herself longing for a sudden high fever – though nothing dangerous, just a passing flu. She even took her temperature as she sat at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee.

It was just that she needed a few more days. A little while longer to collect herself, to get her bearings. If only the bi-weekly board meeting was scheduled for next week instead. In a week, she’d be organized. In a week, everything would be in its place. She would have planned out everything she needed to say, a response to every prying, insolent, loutish question.

James would know how to deal with this situation. He’d talk to Scott, or he’d at least try. He’d been the one to encourage Scott to take the coaching position in the first place. Last fall, at a fundraiser, a Swithin teacher and activities organizer approached Sylvie and James. ‘The wrestling team needs an assistant coach,’ he said. ‘Would that be something your son might be interested in?’ James stepped in, saying he was sure Scott would be happy to take it. Sylvie gawked at him – how did he know? – and that night, when James went into Scott’s apartment and shut the door, she heard them arguing through the wall. ‘Where do you get off, making decisions for me?’ Scott roared. ‘How can you assume that’s what I want to do?’

Sylvie sighed, but she wasn’t surprised. Of course Scott was putting up a fight – James should have known better than to speak for him. Though they’d been close when Scott was young, building things in the garage together, playing in the waves at the beach houses, sharing stories about wrestling matches, as James had played the sport, too, Scott’s interest in his father had seemed to wane over the years, too. Sylvie guessed James knew why Scott was angry at him, for he always seemed so contritely attentive to Scott, forever trying to clear the stale air between them, but it was something he and Sylvie had never discussed.

But then, without explanation, Scott took the job. When James’s schedule allowed, he and Sylvie climbed up Swithin’s bright blue bleachers and watched the matches, just as they’d watched Scott wrestle when he was younger. Scott stood next to the wrestlers, clad in a burgundy Swithin blazer. After the last match, Sylvie and James heard Scott speaking to Patrick Fontaine, the head coach and the school’s Phys Ed teacher. ‘You wouldn’t have any interest in subbing in for me for a few of my gym classes one of these days, would you?’ Patrick said. ‘Sometimes I think these kids need someone closer to their own age to get them moving.’ Scott’s eyes lit up. ‘I have lots of ideas about how to make gym more fun,’ he said excitedly, pressing his right fist into his open left palm. ‘Obstacle courses, real Marine Corps training kind of stuff.’ Fontaine smiled and said that sounded great. It might even lead to a permanent position.

James took Sylvie’s hand and squeezed. You see, the squeeze said. Convincing him to take the coaching job was a good thing. And Sylvie had felt that same swooping, desperate optimism. Yes, this was a good thing. Maybe even the answer.

Even if James couldn’t penetrate Scott, he’d known how to talk to everyone else. James was good at things like that – he had a way of making his opinions sound like inscrutable facts. Global warming is a myth, a regular earthly cycle. Capital markets are best left unregulated and free. Unions are always unwieldy and corrupt. He made declarations about more personal things, too – like that Sylvie had to go out to dinner with him when they first met, no questions asked, as though something horrible might happen to her if she didn’t. And the day after Charles got engaged to Joanna, when Sylvie remarked, offhandedly, that she was surprised Charles hadn’t chosen to marry someone more like Bronwyn, the girl he’d dated in high school, James’s eyebrows melded together, his chin tucked into his neck, and little puckers of skin at each corner of his downturned mouth. ‘Oh no,’ he’d said. ‘Charles and Bronwyn weren’t right for each other at all.’ Sylvie couldn’t recall James saying one word to Bronwyn when Charles was dating her, but her long-held assumptions felt uprooted all the same. Perhaps James was right – perhaps the two of them hadn’t been right for one another. James had a way of appearing very wise, while at the same time making everyone else feel very childish.

Sylvie could see James making a grand, sweeping statement about Scott now. All he’d have to do was unequivocally and righteously say that Scott wasn’t responsible for the boy’s death, and just like that, he would eliminate the foolish necessity of consulting a lawyer. He would reverse everyone’s suspicions.

The side door to the kitchen opened and shut, startling Sylvie from her chair. Scott loped through the mud room and into the kitchen, talking on his cell phone. He opened the fridge and stuck his head inside, not even looking in her direction.

She stared, feeling visible and obtrusive in her own home. When had she last seen him? When had they last spoken? He looked sloppy, unshowered, his mess of dark hair thick around his face. His tattoos peeked from under his clothes, the ones on his wrists, the one creeping up his neck, another peeking out the t-shirt sleeve on his bicep. There was a tattoo on his calf of a black man and Sylvie didn’t dare ask who the man was or why Scott had chosen to put him there. Before Swithin gave Scott the assistant coaching job, they’d balked at his tattoos, ordering he cover them up. It was difficult to imagine Scott at Swithin as an adult figure, a quasi-authority. Certain teachers, all prim and neat in their burgundy blazers and tortoiseshell glasses, probably gave him wide berth in the hallways. Conversations probably halted when Scott entered a room.

Scott barked a few more words into his phone and hung up without saying goodbye. Sylvie cleared her throat, and he looked over. His eyes were dark, unresponsive. She had no idea what to say. Every icebreaker seemed clumsy, inappropriate.

Scott shut the fridge, shuffled to the coffee maker, and lifted the carafe. ‘The coffee’s cold,’ Sylvie said quickly, rushing over to him. ‘Here. I’ll make some more.’

Scott held the carafe in midair. ‘I’ll just microwave it.’

‘No, you should have fresh coffee. It’s terrible microwaved. Skunky.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘It’s no trouble.’ She already had the grinder out and was dumping the cold grounds into the trash.

Scott stepped away, folding his arms over his chest; even though he was fairly thin, he filled up a room. Sylvie spooned the fresh grounds into the filter and cleared her throat. ‘So. What’s new with you?’

He didn’t answer, opening and closing cabinet drawers, looking for something to eat.

The coffee maker began to burble and hiss. Sylvie licked her lips, staring at a slight water blemish on the stainless-steel toaster. Her heart drummed fast. ‘Wrestling team going well?’

Scott snickered. Sylvie was glad she wasn’t holding a coffee cup; if she had, it would be rattling in her hand, the liquid sloshing over the side. He knew that she knew. He knew what was being said. And now he was enjoying watching as Sylvie scrambled to figure out a way to talk to him about it. How could he chuckle? A boy had died. Was he that remorseless?

She turned to him then, vinegar suddenly in her veins. ‘They said you have to meet with some of the teachers.’ There. That was her way in.

He assessed her, leaning against the counter. One eyebrow arched. ‘Yep. That’s what they say.’

‘Do you know when your meeting is?’

‘Next week, I think.’ He inspected his nails.

‘Ah.’ It was as though they were having a conversation about the weather. If she should put regular or premium gas in her car. Sylvie ran her finger on a chipped spot on the countertop, wishing she could crack something against it. ‘And…do you know who the meeting is with?’

‘Nope.’

She stared at the slowly filling coffee pot and took a breath. ‘Well. Maybe you could dress up to the meeting. Wear a jacket.’

Scott made a noise at the back of his throat. ‘A jacket?’

‘Or at least a shirt and tie.’ Just don’t wear those ridiculous pants that show your underwear. Just don’t wear the sweatshirt that says that word I can’t even think, that N-word, on it. Just comb your hair.

Scott said nothing. He turned and took the lid off the old earthenware cookie jar, the very same one that held homemade sugar cookies when Sylvie was a girl. Scott reached for a chocolate chip cookie, took a big bite, and then held the uneaten part outstretched reflectively. ‘Mmmm,’ he decided. Crumbs fell to the floor.

He finished his cookie, laced his hands together and turned them inside out, giving each knuckle a crack. ‘I thought you were, like, a powerful force at that school. You can make it go away.’

She blinked at him, trembling inside. Is that what you think? she wanted to say. But now Scott had walked into the mud room – presumably, the conversation was over. A few moments later, he returned with his sneakers, loud orange and white high-tops. She watched as he sat down at the table, propped up one foot on his knee, and began to lace the shoes up, casual as he could be. It was like she was a woman and he was another being entirely, one whose actions she couldn’t begin to predict. One of those sea creatures that lived in the sunless depths of the ocean. A carnivorous plant that ate gnats.

‘Going somewhere?’ she asked.

‘To the city. Just for the morning.’

‘How come?’

He gave her a pained look. ‘I’m helping out at Kevin’s shop. Someone can’t come in until one. I said I’d cover.’

‘Kevin was at the funeral, right?’ Scott had come with three friends, two girls and a guy, all of them black.

‘Uh huh.’ Scott threaded the other shoe but left the laces untied and dangling.

‘What kind of shop does he own?’

‘Shoes.’

‘Oh!’ She knew she sounded relieved, but shoes were so…innocuous. ‘Well. Tell him “Hi” for me.’

He sniffed. ‘You didn’t even speak to him that day.’

Sylvie shrank. At that, she strode out of the room, found her handbag near the laundry, and walked to the driveway to her own car – she still parked outside, not yet wanting to disrupt the half of the garage that housed James’s jigsaw, lathe, and woodworking rasps. She slammed the door hard. It felt good. Once belted in, she shut her eyes, listening to the birds and the gentle swishing sounds of the tree branches. She lifted her ring finger to her mouth, cupped her lips around the big yellow stone on the ring James had given her, and sucked.

That first night, when she just thought James wasn’t coming home, when she figured it was retaliation for what she’d brought up the night before, she’d taken off this ring and buried it at the bottom of her jewelry box, hating what it meant. Then she’d gone into James’s office and looked hard at the room. James’s infuriatingly clean desk, the stack of blank computer paper next to the printer, the Lucite plaques on the bookshelf. She’d walked in and touched the bare spot on the bookshelf where she’d found the little box that held the bracelet. A film of pale gray dust had stuck to the pad on her finger.

The ring tasted like cold metal. Maybe it was primal, like a child sucking on a pacifier. Only after Sylvie let the stone click against her teeth and press on her tongue did her pulse begin to settle down.

In no time Sylvie found herself pulling up the hill to Swithin, the school resplendent at the top. The guard at the gate recognized her right away. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bates-McAllister!’ he cried. ‘So nice to see you!’ He waved her right through.

Sylvie loved this drive up the Swithin lane, how the school rose up before her, all stone and brick, with its spires and bell tower and flags and dazzling green fields beyond. There wasn’t a tree branch out of place. The steps and windowsills and sidewalks were swept twice a day. One of Sylvie’s earliest memories was of her grandfather bringing her into the library and showing her the rare books. ‘These were almost lost forever,’ he told her. And then he wove the tale of the fire, how it had caught in the east wing classrooms and spread into the gymnasium horribly fast, burning half the school to the ground before the firefighters even arrived at the scene. When her grandfather surveyed the damage the day after, he sobbed. ‘It was just so sad,’ he told Sylvie. ‘I felt like the school was calling out to me, Please don’t let me go.’ Whenever he got to that part of the story, tears always welled in Sylvie’s eyes.

Since it was the Depression and no one had any money to spare, Charlie Roderick Bates financed rebuilding Swithin with his own money and resources. He used materials from the countless limestone quarries and brick foundries he owned to pour the new foundation and rebrick the walls. Recreating the school from scratch provided a lot of jobs, so he was a hero several times over, hiring Polish and Italian crews to do the construction, even providing duties for people in the black neighborhoods. ‘But we had to make great sacrifices during that time,’ he told Sylvie. ‘I paid everyone’s wages. I bought all the materials.’ ‘Did you have to move out of your house, Charlie Roderick?’ Sylvie asked – her grandfather got a kick out of her calling him by both his names. He shook his head and told her that no, they were able to remain in the house, but Sylvie’s father, who was a young child at the time, wasn’t allowed new riding gear. His wife, Sylvie’s grandmother, couldn’t travel to Paris. They didn’t have their annual Christmas party. ‘Did you still have a tree?’ Sylvie asked. He nodded, patting her head, ‘Yes, of course. We still had a tree.’

Those afternoons with her grandfather were filled with peppermint tea and chocolate chip cookies on the estate’s enormous back porch. They watched the swans in the pond, which were probably the grandparents or great-grandparents of the swans that lived there now. They sat at the Steinway baby grand piano that was still in the music room today. He played Chopin for her, his fingers kissing the keys. When Sylvie saw her mother’s car wending up the driveway, her heart would plummet. Her own house was dark, the blinds pulled tight. Doors in different wings eased quietly shut; her parents rarely spent any time together except for meals. Sylvie hated eating with her parents most of all; they never spoke during those taut dinners, the only sounds the clinking forks and the scraping plates and the chewing. When Sylvie couldn’t stand another second of silence, she’d burst out with something her grandfather told her that day, even though her parents had heard the stories plenty of times before. ‘Did you know Charlie Roderick let some of the people who worked on Swithin stay at his house?’ she’d crow. ‘Did you know he worked even on his birthday?’ But this just angered her mother, Clara, even more, and she often wearily snapped, ‘Your grandfather isn’t the messiah you think he is. Those people who rebuilt the school? The ones he let stay at his house? Fat chance he let their children go to Swithin. Even if they’d scrimped and saved all their money, he never let those kinds of kids in.’

And then Clara would glance at Sylvie’s father, Theodore, as if daring him to scold her for saying such things about his family. Sylvie’s father never took the bait, though, his eyes fixed on his Wall Street Journal, his jaw working his food.

Sylvie didn’t understand what her mother meant by those kinds of kids. It wasn’t until she was in middle school and heard a few other similar rumors that she finally worked out what her mother was implying, but by then she refused to believe it. Everyone was jealous of the Bates family, including Sylvie’s mother, who had come from a good family, but not as good. And anyway, her mother was bitter and meanspirited about everything and everyone. It was obvious why Sylvie’s father was around increasingly less and less, conducting most of his business out of New York – Sylvie would have escaped to New York, too, forever avoiding those crypt-quiet dinners, her mother’s inimical remarks, all those heaving sighs through her nose. Her mother had once been more involved in Sylvie’s life, for Sylvie remembered how she’d given Sylvie a dollhouse for Christmas when she was six. She’d even helped Sylvie to select more furniture for it from a big, glossy dollhouse catalogue. And Sylvie used to slip her hand into her mother’s when they walked through the revolving doors at the Strawbridge & Clothier department store in Philadelphia, snug and secure in her mother’s grip. Something had happened to her mother in the years between, though, something that seemingly couldn’t be reversed.

When she was about thirteen, Sylvie called her father at the hotel he usually stayed at in New York, wanting to know if she could take the train up and visit him. She thought that once outside their dour house, her father would be more like his father, the great Charlie Roderick Bates. The hotel concierge connected Sylvie to her father’s room. A woman answered. Sylvie said she must’ve dialed the wrong room and went to hang up. ‘Are you looking for Teddy?’ the woman asked. ‘Who?’ Sylvie said. ‘Theodore,’ the woman corrected. ‘He’s in the shower.’

Sylvie put the phone back into its cradle, her heart beating fast. Teddy. She couldn’t imagine her father being called that. It seemed weak, childish, a stuffed bear flung on a bed.

After that, Sylvie drifted from both her parents. Whenever anyone teased her at school, she sobbed into her grandfather’s lap, feeling like he was the only person in the world who liked her, who made time for her. ‘Don’t worry about any of them,’ he said softly. ‘You’re different than everyone. You’re better. Someday, all this will be yours.’

‘All what?’ Sylvie had asked. But he hadn’t elaborated. Perhaps he meant the house, knowing even then that he would bequeath it to her, skipping right over his only son. Or maybe Charlie meant the school. Maybe he meant the whole world.

Now, Sylvie parked her car and turned off the engine. Her heels clicked across the parking lot. The flag in the middle of the lot was at half-staff, and there was a small, red ribbon tied around the pole, although she wasn’t sure what it signified. She looked for other evidence of the boy’s death – a picture of him on one of the glass-paned doors that led to the lobby, for instance, or a collection plate in his memory on the arched, wooden sign-in desk, but there was nothing else. Photographs of the class officers hung next to the flag. A large stuffed hawk, the school mascot, sat on top of the secretary’s desk. There was a big poster for an upcoming school play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Inside the auditorium, she heard a piano, then someone singing, probably a late choir practice. There was no scrawled, accusatory graffiti about wrestlers and hazing and suicide across the lobby walls. There were no We Miss You, Christian flyers strewn across the lobby couches and chairs. The song in the auditorium didn’t sound funereal, either, but something Sylvie vaguely recognized from a Rogers & Hammerstein musical.

The others were already in the library. They were sitting on the leather couches, a pot of tea on the large, low coffee table. When they saw her, they stood.

‘Sylvie.’ Daniel Girard held out his arms. He was tall, silvery-haired, good-looking. He had come from work, presumably, still in his suit. Geoff Whitney stood too, all jowly and blustering, smelling a little like cigars. The other two stood as well – Jonathan Clyde, bookish and nervousfingered, and Martha Wittig, plump and matronly and always wearing a different-colored pair of glasses. Today’s frames were a warm pumpkin shade.

Sylvie kissed them all on the cheeks. She knew intricate details about each of their lives – Jonathan had bought an eighteenth-century historic Quaker meeting house that had allegedly once belonged to William Penn. He and Stewart, a man he always referred to as his friend, restored it themselves. The house had been featured in a splashy magazine, featuring just one photo of Jonathan sitting on the couch, his hand clenched nervously in his lap. Last year, Dan’s father had unexpectedly willed all his money to charity, meaning Dan was forced to find his first job at forty-four. Geoff and his wife had divorced, and he’d married a much-younger woman named Melinda two months later. They knew about Sylvie, too – that her children had gone to school here, that Charles had attended Cornell, that he’d married Joanna, and that Joanna…well, Sylvie knew that Joanna had held some sort of job before they moved out to the suburbs a few weeks ago, but she could never remember what that job had been, nor did she know what Joanna was planning to do with herself now.

They knew about Scott, too, though they never asked about him, as if it would be impolite to do so. And they knew about James’s death. They’d paid their respects at his funeral and gone to the luncheon afterwards.

They had all attended Swithin, and so had their children, those that had them. They’d worked together for years now, planning and debating and deciding. When they considered adding an extra member to the board, they pored over each potential candidate as if they were running for political office, examining tax records, properties owned, extramarital affairs. They didn’t help vote for teachers or staff – which meant, thankfully, they hadn’t had to discuss Scott’s position as an assistant coach – although they did help to choose Michael Tayson as headmaster two months ago after Jerome announced his retirement. That meeting had been only one week after James had died, and Sylvie had felt too shell-shocked to come. Now, she wished she had.

They sat down, and Martha pressed play on the minirecorder. It taped the meetings from start to finish, and afterwards, Martha’s husband, who was adept at all things technological, would plug the recorder into his computer, press a few buttons to launch the software that could translate the contents of the audio file into a Word document, and voilà, they had minutes without any of them having to feverishly write or transcribe.

Martha started talking about the numbers and research on the school-wide laptop program, which issued laptop computers to every student to use to take notes and do homework. ‘The thing is, they’re all using them to do non-school-related activities,’ she said. ‘Apparently, the network goes down at least once a week, because everyone’s on their laptops, using all those Facebook sites. And they’re not very careful with them. Seventeen machines have gone in for repairs just this month.’

‘Are they encouraging the kids to learn?’ Dan asked.

‘It’s hard to say.’ Martha flipped a page. ‘But I mean, it looks good. Having laptops. The way kids are learning isn’t the same anymore. But the teachers are the problem, too. A lot of them aren’t technologically savvy, not nearly as much as the kids are. They’re still making their kids write their papers in longhand.’

‘Oh God, especially that Agnes,’ Geoff said, rolling his eyes. ‘How old is she now, eighty?’

Martha pressed pause on the tape recorder. ‘And still spry as a fox,’ she whispered giddily. ‘There are rumors that she’s dating Harold.’ Harold was one of the guidance counselors. He was quite a bit younger than Agnes, the doyenne of the English teachers.

‘Speaking of Harold.’ Dan raised a finger. ‘That daughter of his is back at home. I heard somewhere she was kicked out of Brown.’

Martha’s eyes widened. ‘Another one?’

‘She’s all out of Ivies,’ Geoff sniffed. ‘She’ll have to start on the Seven Sisters next.’

‘Because of cheating again?’ Jonathan shook his head.

‘I thought she was kicked out of school because of prescription drugs.’ Martha blew her bangs into the air. ‘Poor Harold.’

Sylvie stared at her fingernails. Nothing seemed amiss. None of them were looking at her funny, indicating they knew about Scott. Maybe Michael Tayson had kept his word, not telling them about the rumors or Scott’s upcoming meeting.

Martha pressed PLAY on the recorder again. ‘Anyway. Back to the laptops. Should we take them away?

‘Laptops do look good, though,’ Dan said. ‘Parents are impressed by that kind of stuff.’

Geoff stroked his chin. ‘But it’s a big expense. I’ve heard some complaints from the art department. Their supplies are getting more and more expensive, and they can’t buy as much with what they’ve been allotted. A few of the sports coaches have come to me, too, talking about replacing old uniforms and equipment.’

‘Which teams?’ Martha straightened her papers.

Geoff shrugged. ‘It was the basketball coach who spoke to me. And Carla with gymnastics registered a request in the office.’

‘We still have a gymnastics team?’ Martha sniffed. The others snickered, too, and just like that, the suggestion was dropped. Basketball and gymnastics weren’t steeped in history and scholarship money the way, say, girls’ soccer was – the team was top in the state, and many girls were recruited by Division I schools – or the way the boys’ crew was – it was Swithin’s first official sport, and the school had sent several boys on to row for Yale and Penn, and from there on to the Olympics. Those were the teams that got the money.

Sylvie often wondered why her fellow board members invested so much of their time in Swithin. What made them come, year after year, budget after budget, graduating class after graduating class? Did they feel they were part of something? Did it truly define them, as it did her, or did they simply do it because, as people of means, it was their obligation? Take Martha: Sylvie could remember Martha from when they were in school together, though Martha had been a few grades behind her. Back then, Martha had been a bossy, solipsistic field hockey player, always preening herself, always surrounded by a group of cackling girls. When a representative from the New York Public Library Conservator’s office spoke at an assembly about Swithin’s rare book collection, Martha whispered to the girl next to her the whole time, completely uninterested.

But as a board member, Martha had gotten involved in just as many school projects as Sylvie had. There had been some discussion that Martha had become so involved because of trouble at home – she and her husband wanted another baby, but she had unexpectedly started her menopause. ‘Maybe their marriage is falling apart,’ Sylvie once whispered to James only a few months before he died, after she’d found everything out about him. ‘Maybe the school is Martha’s oasis.’ ‘So the only possible reason Martha could be so heavily involved at the school is because she’s miserable at home?’ James had replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Of course not!’ Sylvie said quickly. ‘I mean, I’m involved. I’m not miserable.’ James looked at her challengingly. Sylvie looked back. Neither said anything.

‘Next up?’ Jonathan said. He leaned over the table and glanced at the list. ‘Hmm. This.’

Martha tipped forward, now curious. ‘The death.’

Sylvie’s heart started to pound. She glanced at the recorder, thinking that Martha might hit pause again. Martha didn’t.

Geoff leaned back in his chair, the springs squeaking. Dan riffled through a few papers on the desk and found a photo of the dead boy, Christian Givens. Sylvie leaned forward. He had elfin features and freckles across his cheeks. His hair was bright green. Acid green, really, a color not found in nature.

A flutter danced through Sylvie’s stomach. She recognized him.

‘What do you suppose they call that color, antifreeze?’ Martha murmured. She covered her mouth. ‘Goodness. Sorry.’

‘What happened?’ Dan murmured.

‘We don’t know,’ Martha admitted. ‘They’re doing an autopsy. That’s all Michael Tayson would tell me. The boy’s father has been very private about everything else.’

Jonathan glanced at his watch. ‘I wonder where Michael is. He said he would come to this.’

Sylvie’s heart leapt into her head. She hadn’t considered that the new headmaster might show up. She didn’t want to see him.

‘Has counseling been made available?’ Geoff asked.

‘They’re using Judith.’ Jonathan laced his hands together. ‘She really helped out when those girls on the crew team died in the car accident last year. And during that school shooting at Virginia Tech. A lot of kids saw her after that.’

‘Judith is so good,’ Martha cooed.

‘Which one’s Judith?’ Geoff scratched his head.

‘The one with the long hair,’ Dan said.

‘She’s so gentle,’ Jonathan added. ‘But firm.’

Everyone looked again at the boy’s photo. Unnatural hair colors weren’t allowed at Swithin – teachers were required to immediately send home anyone who wasn’t adhering to the dress code. So how had Christian’s hair gone unnoticed long enough for him to sit for his portrait? Maybe Christian was the type of boy who fell between the cracks, even with acid-green hair. Sylvie thought about what Michael Tayson said on the phone – You probably wouldn’t remember him from the matches. But Sylvie did remember him, an image of him with the wrestling team flashing into her mind.

‘So what about the boy’s mother?’ Geoff looked at Martha. ‘You only mentioned the dad. Are they divorced?’

‘Out of the picture for some reason or other, I guess,’ Martha said. She looked at the piece of paper, presumably some kind of dossier on Christian. ‘He is a scholarship boy. Was. The address we have on file has him living over at Feverview Dwellings.’ She flipped a page. ‘It doesn’t list an employer for the father.’

‘Maybe he’s unemployed,’ Jonathan suggested.

‘Or on disability,’ Martha said.

‘Do we remember admitting this boy?’ Dan asked. ‘What’s the father’s name?’

‘Warren,’ Martha read.

‘Warren…Givens,’ Dan repeated. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

Everyone looked around, sheepish. Sometimes they had a say in admitting students, especially those receiving scholarships. But there was a separate committee for that, people with actual credentials to judge one candidate from another.

‘If we wanted to set up a scholarship in his name, what could it be for?’ Geoff said quietly.

Martha picked at her cuticles. ‘Well, we’d do the standard scholarship, of course. Needs-based, I would imagine. How does that sound?’

‘Or we could make it kind of specific,’ Dan suggested. ‘You know, according to what he was interested in. Do we know if he liked particular subjects in school? Art? Music?’

‘He doesn’t look like he’d be involved in anything,’ Jonathan said, holding up Christian’s photo. ‘I suppose we could look for his transcript…’ He started to leaf through the papers.

‘Good Lord, stop,’ Sylvie blurted out.

They all paused, raising their heads.

‘I mean, the poor boy died only days ago.’ Sylvie’s voice was a tautly-held string. ‘We should have some respect.’

The grandfather clock in the corner bonged seven times. Sylvie had to stop them. If they looked through his transcript, they’d see that he’d wrestled. Then the conversation would turn to Scott, the tape recorder still rotating, still capturing everything. She could picture their faces. Did Scott know this boy? Funny he was on the wrestling team…he doesn’t look like the type. She had no idea what would come after that. She had no idea what she might say after that, either. She kept thinking about the look on Scott’s face when he’d tried to suffocate that mouse in the basement. And all the times he’d dressed up as slashers from horror movies for Halloween. And the music he listened to, my God some of that music! Full of such violence and hatred! Could she – should she – have kept him away from the school, from all these delicate kids?

Geoff sat back. ‘Goodness, Sylvie. You’re right.’

Martha coughed quietly. ‘Of course.’

The others hung their heads. They don’t know, she thought. She wondered instead if they thought she felt sensitive about them talking behind this boy’s back because so many people had talked behind hers. It was what Michael Tayson meant by character assassination – all those rumors about how her grandfather selectively chose who did and didn’t get to attend Swithin. All that tut-tutting that Scott was so unruly and different. And what was with that ring Sylvie had started wearing, they might have hissed more recently. What do you think that means? They probably even gossiped about how James died, that cleaning woman finding him on the floor soaked in urine. It had gotten out, she knew it had. So many things had gotten out.

Dan leaned over and patted Sylvie’s hand. Jonathan brought her a box of tissues from the librarian’s desk. Or maybe they thought that with James’s passing so fresh and raw, Sylvie couldn’t talk about any deaths right now. If that was the case, it was wrong to accept their pity.

They moved off Christian immediately, and the rest of the meeting bumped along. They made decisions and doled out who should do what. Jonathan wrote down phone numbers in his leather booklet. As they were finally leaving, Geoff reminded them of the cocktail party at his house next week for his wife’s birthday. ‘The party’s on a Monday,’ he warned. ‘But she insisted on having it on the day.’ He rolled his eyes as if to say ahh, youth. This was Geoff’s second wife; she was twenty years younger than him, than all of them.

And then Martha caught up to Jonathan, and they walked out of the library together, rehashing the laptop details. Geoff and Dan were already on their cell phones. Sylvie lingered behind, gazing after them. All of her colleagues walked with such assured entitlement. But my grandfather told me all this was mine, she wanted to tell them. I’m the rightful owner of this place, not you.

And she wanted to say something else, too. She wanted to yell out to them to be careful – their good fortunes might be more precarious than they thought. It could blow away in an eye blink, especially when they weren’t paying attention.