The Chatham School Affair (23 page)

Witness: No. Miss Channing came into my office the afternoon before the party and asked if I might pick her up.

Mr. Parsons: You, Mr. Griswald? She didn’t wish to be picked up by Mr. Reed?

Witness: Evidently not.

Mr. Parsons: And did you agree to do that, to bring Miss Channing to your house that evening?

Witness: Yes, I did.

And so, as he had so many times in the past, my father demanded that I come with him to Milford Cottage that evening, the two of us driving through a soft blue twilight to retrieve her. On the way, I remember that he had a certain agitated look in his eyes, like someone pressed into a service he’d rather have avoided but felt it his duty to perform. By then, of course, he must have
known that something very grave had begun to darken the atmosphere of Chatham School, something he found it difficult to confront, or simply knew no way of confronting. I have often wondered what I might have said had he turned to me that evening and asked me bluntly what I knew about Miss Channing and Mr. Reed. Perhaps I would have lied to him, as I later did, claiming an innocence I did not deserve

But he talked of the party instead, the long tables that had been placed on the back lawn, the Chinese lanterns he’d hung over them, how festive everything looked.

It was not until we neared Milford Cottage that he grew silent.

Miss Channing came out immediately, dressed in a long black skirt and a dark red blouse, her hair bound tightly in a bun. Her eyes seemed feverish and her skin was very pale.

I got out of the car, and held the door open for her. “Thank you, Henry,” she said as she got into the front seat beside my father.

“Good evening, Miss Channing,” my father said.

She nodded softly. “Good evening, Mr. Griswald.”

They hardly spoke for the first few minutes of the drive back toward Chatham. Then, out of nowhere, my father suddenly blurted out, “I was thinking of offering you a commission, Miss Channing. A private commission, that is. A portrait of myself.” He glanced toward her, then back to the road. “Do you do portraits?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve done a few. My uncle. His wife. When I was in Africa.”

“So, do you think you’d like to take a crack at it?”

She smiled slightly. “Yes, I would.”

My father seemed pleased. “Splendid.”

They went on to arrange various times when my father would be available to sit for her, and during the next few weeks I saw them often in his office together, the door always open, of course, Miss Channing in her gray smock, standing behind her easel, my father posed beside
the window, looking out onto the courtyard, his body caught in a shaft of light.

During the rest of the drive, my father talked rather absently about the spring term, how brief it always seemed compared to fall and winter, warning Miss Channing that the boys would become “increasingly rambunctious” as the end of the school year approached. “So keep a firm hand on them,” he told her, “because they’ll certainly need it.” It was not until we’d turned onto the main road back to Chatham that he suddenly said, “By the way, Mr. Reed may not be able to join us this evening.”

My attention sprang to Miss Channing, and I saw her body grow tense at the mention of Mr. Reed’s name.

“It seems that Mrs. Reed has taken ill,” my father went on. “Something to do with her stomach.”

Miss Channing turned away from my father and toward the window at her side, a quick reflexive gesture made, or so it seemed to me at the time, in order to shield her face from his view. Watching her, I recalled the way she’d sat so stiffly in the boat as we’d made our way down the Bass River only a week or so before, her manner now even more enclosed than it had appeared that day, so that she seemed oddly frightened of the very movement her life had taken, as if it were a blade swinging above her head.

It was warm enough for my father to have rolled the window down on the driver’s side, and as we made our way along the coastal road he peered out over the fields of sea grass that rose from the marshes and the bogs. “I love the spring on Cape Cod. Summer, too, of course. Do you plan to stay here on the Cape for the summer, Miss Channing?”

“I haven’t really thought about the summer,” she murmured as if such a possibility had not occurred to her.

“Well, there’s still plenty of time to think about it,” my father told her, then let the subject drop.

We pulled into the driveway of our house seconds later. I got out and opened the door for Miss Channing. “Thank you, Henry,” she said as she stepped out of the car.

Some of the other teachers had already arrived, the rest coming only a few minutes later, everyone serving themselves from the plentiful buffet my mother and Sarah had arranged on a long table in the backyard, then sitting in small groups on chairs my father and I had placed throughout the grounds earlier that afternoon.

It was my job to help Sarah serve the guests at the buffet table, and from that position I could see Miss Channing as she sat with a group not far away, my mother facing her directly, Mr. Corbett to her right, Mrs. Benton, the Latin teacher, to her left, and finally Mrs. Abercrombie, my father’s assistant, just a bit outside the circle, her long, thin legs requiring somewhat more room.

My mother was doing her best to be sociable that evening, talking in that slightly rapid way of hers about whatever matter she thought might interest the people gathered around her.

At one point I heard her say, “Well, Chatham is small, but I think there must be quite a few eligible young men.” Then she turned to Miss Channing, the only unmarried woman in the group, and asked, “Don’t you think so, Elizabeth?”

I remember that Miss Channing seemed unable to answer my mother’s question, perhaps suspecting that she had some ulterior motive in asking it.

In that brief silence, I saw my mother’s eyes narrow slightly as she added, “I mean to say, I was wondering what your experience had been.”

Still, Miss Channing did not answer, and in that interval of silence I noticed Mrs. Benton glance knowingly at Mrs. Abercrombie.

Finally, Miss Channing said, “I wouldn’t know about that.”

I expected my mother to let the answer go, but she didn’t. “You wouldn’t?” she said, clearly surprised. “So you’ve not become acquainted with any of the young men in Chatham since you arrived?”

Miss Channing shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”

My mother gave her a slow, evaluating look. “Well, I’m sure someone will come along,” she said with a stiff smile.

They went on to other topics after that. Each time I glanced Miss Channing’s way, she appeared fixed in the same position, her hands in her lap, her back erect, a plate of uneaten food nestled in the grass beside her chair.

By nine most everyone had departed. It was April, a chill still present in the evening air, and so my father invited the few guests who remained to join him in the parlor.

My mother took her usual chair by the fireplace, my father the wooden rocker a few feet away. Mrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. Benton shared the small settee, while Miss Channing chose a chair somewhat off to the side. I pulled out the piano stool and sat by the window.

I don’t remember what they talked about for the next few minutes, only that Miss Channing said very little, her face more or less expressionless as she listened to the others, her hands still in her lap, as they had been all evening.

It was an attitude she might have remained in for the rest of the night had she not caught the sound of a car rumbling down Myrtle Street. She clearly recognized its distinctive clatter, turned toward the window, parted the curtains, and peered outside, her face suddenly bathed in light as the car wheeled into our driveway and came to a halt. I saw her eyes widen, her lips part silently as she watched a figure move down the driveway and up the stairs to our front door. One of her hands crawled into the other as she turned away from the window, listening first to the knock at the door, then Sarah’s cheery greeting
when she opened it. “Well, good evening, Mr. Reed.”

He came directly into the parlor, his hat in his hand, the old brown jacket draped over his shoulders, like a cape.

“Hello,” he said. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“No, not at all. Please, come in,” my father told him, though not with his usual enthusiasm. There was something rather stiff in the way he rose from his chair to shake Mr. Reed’s hand. “I hope Mrs. Reed is feeling better.”

Mr. Reed nodded. “Yes, she is,” he said.

“Please, sit down,” my father told him.

Mr. Reed took a seat near the door, glancing about until his eyes fell upon Miss Channing. And though his lips lifted in a thin smile, his eyes seemed utterly mirthless and unsmiling. “Hello, Miss Channing,” he said.

She nodded coolly. “Mr. Reed.”

My father glanced back and forth between them. “Well, now,” he said loudly, clearly trying to draw Mr. Reed’s attention back to the group, “we were all discussing the possibility of adding a course in Shakespeare to next year’s curriculum.”

Mr. Reed turned toward him but offered no reply.

“We were wondering who might best be able to teach such a course,” my father went on.

Mr. Reed stared my father dead in the eye. “I really don’t know,” he said with what must have struck my father as a shocking sense of indifference, as if Chatham School had ceased to play any significant part in his life, but only continued to hang from it, numb, limp, useless, like an atrophied appendage waiting to be cut away.

It was a tone that clearly disturbed my father, and which he could not confront, so he merely drew in a quick, troubled breath and returned his attention to the others. “Well, how about a round of port?” he asked them.

All heads nodded, and with that my father summoned Sarah to serve the port.

“We’re so lucky to have Sarah,” my mother said after she’d finished serving and left the room. “We had a wonderful Negro girl before her. Amelia was her name, and she was quite able.” She glanced at Miss Channing. “As a matter of fact, Amelia would have been very interested in talking to you, Elizabeth.”

Miss Channing’s fingers tightened around her glass. “Why is that?” she asked evenly.

“Because she’d have wanted to hear all about your life in Africa,” my mother answered. She’d picked her knitting from a basket beside her chair and the long silver needles flashed in the lamplight as she flicked them right and left.

“Amelia was a follower of Marcus Garvey, you see,” my father said. “She was quite taken with this idea of going back to Africa, living free, and all that.” He shrugged. “It was all terribly unrealistic, of course, the whole business.” Drawing a pipe from the rack that rested on the table beside his chair, he began to fill its dark briar bowl with tobacco. “But what can you do about such a romantic notion?”

It was a question he’d asked rhetorically, not expecting an answer, least of all a brutal one.

“You can crush it,” Mr. Reed blurted out harshly, his eyes darting over to Miss Channing, then back to my father.

My father looked at him quizzically, his hand now suspended motionlessly above the bowl of his pipe, his eyes widening to take him in. “Crush it, Mr. Reed?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Mr. Reed said. “You can tell her how foolish such an idea of freedom is. How foolish and preposterous it is to believe that you can ever escape anything or change anything, or live in a way that—”

He stopped, his eyes now turning toward Miss Channing,
who only glared at him, her face taut and unmoving.

Then my father said, “Well, that would be rather cruel, wouldn’t it, Mr. Reed?” His voice was surprisingly gentle and restrained as he continued, his eyes leveled upon Mr. Reed’s. “Perhaps you could simply remind her—Amelia, I mean—that there is much in life beyond such extreme desires.”

Mr. Reed shook his head, drawing his gaze from Miss Channing, and waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said wearily.

There was an exchange of glances among the guests, then, as if to lower the heat within the room, Mrs. Benton chirped, “It’s a lovely room you have here, Mrs. Griswald. The curtains are … lovely.”

With that, the conversation took a different and decidedly less volatile turn, although I can’t remember what was said, only that neither Mr. Reed nor Miss Channing said anything at all. Mrs. Abercrombie left within a few minutes, then Mrs. Benton, each of them nodding cordially as they bade my father and mother good night.

Mr. Reed rose directly after that. He seemed weary beyond measure, as if his earlier outburst had weakened him profoundly. At the entrance to the parlor he turned back. “Do you need a ride home, Miss Channing?” he asked, though with an unmistakable hopelessness, her answer already made clear to him by the ravaged look in her eyes.

“No,” she said, adding nothing else as he turned from her and moved silently out the door.

And so it was my father and I who drove Miss Channing home that night, gliding through the now-deserted village, then out along Plymouth Road to where we finally came to a halt at the very end of it, the headlights of my father’s car briefly illuminating the front of Milford Cottage before dissolving into the impenetrable depths of Black Pond.

“Well, good night, Miss Channing,” he said to her quietly.

I expected Miss Channing to get out of the car, but she remained in place. “Mr. Griswald,” she said. “I wonder if I might ask you something?”

My heart stopped, for I felt sure that she was about to tell him everything, reveal the whole course and nature of her relationship with Mr. Reed, ask my father for that wise guidance I know he would have given if she had done so.

But she did nothing of the kind. Instead, she said, “I was thinking of making something for the school. A piece of sculpture. Plaster masks of all the boys and the teachers, everyone at the school. I could arrange them on a column. It would be a record of everyone at Chatham School this year.”