Tuesday morning, a little later
A COP STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF WEST END AVENUE, HIS ARM RAISED, blocking cars and taxis from turning onto the side street. As soon as Rannie Bookman rounded the corner, she saw why. An ambulance and two white-and-blue police cars were fanned out in front of Chaps.
A mental picture of Nate buried under a plaid comforter—“Ma! Go away! I don’t have class ’til ten!”—stopped her from automatically switching into Frantic Mother Hyperdrive. Then the morning headlines made her suck in her breath. “What’s going on?” she asked a throng of kids and teachers gathered on the sidewalk in spite of the drizzle.
A boy, with a wispy soul patch and a wool ski cap pulled low, shrugged. “Dunno. Just got here.”
“If it’s that S.W.A.K. pervert, I swear I’m transferring to Dalton,” a blond girl announced to no one in particular.
Nate’s English teacher, a large-boned, somewhat lugubrious woman, acknowledged Rannie with an anxious nod. “I keep asking, but the police won’t tell us what’s going on,” Augusta Hollins said in her tremulous Southern drawl.
Lowering her umbrella, Rannie (“Rhymes with Annie,” was her standard intro) took her place beside the much taller woman and attempted to peer over the crowd. Since losing her job at Simon and Schuster, she’d been working part-time at Chaps. In ten minutes she was due to conduct a tour.
Fired after ten years as Executive Managing Editor. A life-shattering experience made worse by the fact that the reason was an industry joke, gleefully reported in the pages of Publishers Weekly. Fifty thousand copies of a “pleather” collectors edition of the first Nancy Drew mystery, recalled and destroyed, all because of a single letter—one lower-case “l” missing from the last word in the gold-stamped title…a title that should have read The Secret of the Old Clock.
Heads had rolled, specifically the one belonging to the copyeditor responsible for the oversight as well as the one atop her much more highly paid shoulders. A perfectly timed excuse to downsize. Oh, she knew she was lucky—comparatively speaking. Money wasn’t a pressing issue yet, not with decent severance, a rent-controlled apartment, no lavish tastes, and punctual child support payments. But she felt untethered, superfluous, a forty-three-year-old dangling participle.
Last night her ex-husband had called from San José, where he now lived, wondering why their daughter Alice, a junior at Yale, wasn’t responding to any of his e-mails or phone calls. The short answer, of course, would have been, “Because you bolted nine years ago and she holds grudges.” Instead, Rannie feigned ignorance and, in response to a casual inquiry about her day, said, “My day, Peter? First, I found out I didn’t get a job at Random House, one that paid fifteen thousand dollars less than I was making before. Then, after seeing my pals on the unemployment line, a crazy on the subway got really shrill when I wouldn’t share his baloney sandwich.”
Peter laughed softly. “I hope that’s not the best offer you’ve had lately.”
Rannie made no reply.
“You need a break, Ran…. Come visit.”
How many women, Rannie wondered, were propositioned by their former husband? Of course, she was as much to blame for the unresolved nature of their relationship, one which the New York State Courts had officially ended years ago.
During his last visit to New York, she’d wound up in Peter’s hotel room. It wasn’t the first time that what began as dinner between friendly enough exes left Rannie with a bad case of beard burn and, infinitely more humiliating, a hickey the size of Texas that she had to hide from her son and daughter. The simple fact was Rannie had no willpower when it came to sex. It had been the only problem-free area of her marriage. And, wouldn’t you know it, post-divorce sex was even better—both comfortingly familiar as well as seductively forbidden.
Since their split, Rannie had indulged in a few flings…actually many flings…. Okay—too many flings. As for serious emotional entanglements, however, her policy was to lump them in the same category as reality TV shows, exercise machines, and butchered grammar…things to avoid at all cost.
A sudden stirring among the growing crowd pulled her back to the scene at hand.
“Oh, Lord!” Ms. Hollins’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Holy fuck!” said the kid in the wool cap.
The Annex door had opened and a uniformed policeman emerged, followed by a stretcher maneuvered by a couple of Emergency Medical Technicians, beefy Hispanic guys who wheeled it to the waiting ambulance. Whoever was strapped onto the stretcher was under a white sheet.
“All right…move aside, everybody.” The police officer by the squad car was cradling a cell phone under his neck while scribbling in a little steno pad.
The stretcher was hoisted into the back of the ambulance, something Rannie had seen often enough on cop shows, yet had never actually witnessed in real life. Then just as the back doors were about to shut, Rannie caught sight of an arm that fell from under the sheet, revealing a navy blazer sleeve, a stripe of Oxford-blue shirt cuff, and a hand with a gold signet ring on the pinkie finger.
Mr. Tutwiler, Rannie realized instantly.
Augusta Hollins did too and involuntarily clutched Rannie’s arm. “Oh Lord, I was afraid of this!” There was a scolding, irritated edge to her words, as if she’d warned Mr. Tut many times about dying yet he’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
As the ambulance pulled away, Rannie felt tears suddenly spring to her eyes. She liked Mr. Tut enormously. So did both of her kids. Tut was elegant and courtly, a man of generous gestures who treated the Chaps tennis team to dinner after every game, win or lose. Just recently and most unexpectedly, she’d spent an hour in his office, looking at old photos and having her first taste of single malt scotch.
It was near the end of the school day. Rannie was shutting down her computer in her cube in the Annex. Tut passed by en route to his office and tipped an imaginary top hat Rannie’s way. He was starting up the stairs then stopped.
“Didn’t you tell me you’d gone to Yale?”
“I’m surprised you remember.”
He tapped a manilla envelope under his other arm. “Care to see some photos of ancient Elis?”
Rannie followed Mr. Tutwiler as he proceeded slowly up the stairs, gripping the banister. There’d been whispering among the staff, sotto voce references to Tut “not being well,” murmured with mournful shakes of the head—the implication, cancer. Some incurable kind.
But once Tut lowered his tall frame onto the cracked leather sofa in his office, the pinched, pained expression began to drain from his face, and as he handed over each photo to Rannie, he grew more animated, more relaxed. “The daughter of one of my college roommates sent them…. Christ, I’m the only one still breathing.”
There he was in an a cappella group, sitting in the grass on Old Campus, at the tables down at Mory’s, and on the tennis team, “a lefty like Nate. I was a damned good player.” He was damned good-looking too, she couldn’t help noticing—lanky, dark-haired, and boyish, a little like a young Henry Fonda but with industrial strength eyebrows. Upon discovering that they’d both been in Davenport College and majored in English, Tut asked her to close the office door, then retrieved a whiskey bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk. Single malt scotch.
“Just ‘a wee dram,’” Tut said, swiveling around in his chair to reach for a black lacquered tray on the window seat behind him. From a set of four glasses with the Chapel School crest in gold, he took two, poured a drink for each of them, and after clinking his glass against Rannie’s, tilted back his whiskey.
“Dalwhinnie. Best there is. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“I’m afraid it’ll be wasted on me.”
“It’s very light, tastes almost as if there’s a little honey in it. Try it.”
Rannie did and smiled her approval, the warmth of the whiskey fanning out pleasantly inside her chest while she listened to Tut discourse on single malts; one distiller, he told her, was considered such a natural treasure, its stills were pictured on Scotland’s ten-pound note. They chatted amiably for a while longer, Tut interested to learn about her work as a copy editor and pleased to share a mutual abhorrence of the overuse of “that.”
Tut told her, “The first thing I used to write on the blackboard in Freshman English was: That ‘that’ that that boy used wasn’t necessary.” Then he inquired how her daughter Alice was enjoying Yale, remarking that it was too bad Nathan wasn’t interested in applying. “His tennis isn’t good enough to get him recruited. But he’s still a pretty strong candidate…. More important, Nathan’s a nice boy.” Tut pointed at Rannie’s glass, which was still full, and obediently she took another sip. “I realize that may not sound like much of a compliment. But niceness is in short supply here, far too many entitled little shits at Chaps. There are some dangerous kids—I mean it. Get in their way and watch out.” Tut took a healthy swallow of whiskey and looked over the rim of his glass to gauge her reaction.
Rannie couldn’t have been more startled by the sudden turn in the conversation, startled both by Tut’s outspokenness as well as his choice of words. Chaps kids. Obnoxious, entitled, selfish, thoughtless…okay, no argument. But “dangerous”? As in Columbine dangerous? Or maybe “dangerous,” synonym for “reckless”—using drugs, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, that sort of thing? Or was Mr. Tut referring, however obliquely, to the notion that some grudge-carrying kid was out to get him? Both her kids said that Tut inspired “either/or” feelings: Kids were either die-hard fans or loathed him.
The scotch almost prompted her to ask which kids he meant, but before she could, Tut already appeared to be regretting his bluntness. With a curt nod of his head, read by Rannie as a clear signal that the subject was closed, he returned to lower-pitched emotional ground. He knew that Nate wanted to apply early to Stanford, and, although there were no obvious “flags” to wave, a Tut-ism meaning Nate wasn’t ethnically desirable or a Westinghouse scholar, he concluded by saying, “Look, I’ll put in a call. If Stanford is where he’s set on going, well, we’ll do what we can.”
Rannie left Mr. Tutwiler’s office eager to tell Nate that Tut had uttered the magic words, ones every Chaps senior hoped to hear. We’ll do what we can. Translation: I will personally talk to the powers that be at Stanford and, unless Nate gets a felony conviction between now and graduation, he may expect a nice, fat envelope in the mailbox.
That had been no more than a week ago, and now Mr. Tutwiler was on his way to a hospital morgue. Rannie tried convincing herself it was only fitting that Mr. Tut died at Chaps. He’d spent most of his life at the school. Yet it bothered Rannie that his death was so public, such a spectacle.
Ms. Hollins looked stunned, one hand still pressed to her mouth, and remained standing in the rain, getting wetter. Rannie could feel Ms. Hollins trembling slightly, which Rannie interpreted as shock until she looked more closely at Ms. Hollins’s face. She appeared angry, frightened, and, brusquely waving off Rannie’s hand, hurried over to one of the cops.
A moment later the doors to the main building opened.
The scene greeting Rannie inside the Great Hall, as news spread, was pretty much what she expected. Weird crosscurrents of excitement, giddy shock, and even what appeared to be genuine sadness. There were typical high school histrionics with girls sobbing, “I can’t believe he’s gone!” while finding solace in the arms of the cuter boys. Other kids had an eye to the more immediate future, debating the odds of school closing.
“No way. If we’re lucky, maybe no first period.”
“You are so wrong. I’m heading to Mickey D’s.”
“Mickey D’s? Whazzup?”
“Dude. You didn’t hear?”
“Mr. Tut! He croaked! Right in his office!”
“No shit!” Then a pause. “Oh, man, I’m cooked…‘Good-bye, U. Penn. Hello, Penn State.’”
“Show some respect, man.”
“The dude’s not even cold.”
Rannie listened to the boy catch more flack but he just shrugged it off, not bothering to work up a comeback.
When Rannie arrived in the Annex, Chaps’s brand-new headmaster, Jem Marshall, was relocking the front door after the removal of Tut’s body. He passed Rannie, shaking his head in grim bewilderment. Only a month on the job…. He certainly couldn’t have expected that disposing of corpses would be among his responsibilities.
“Oh, Rannie, we knew this day would come! But still, it’s so sad!” Mrs. MacSkellan approached. She was a shrunken arthritic lady with dyed jet-black hair, a gash of orange lipstick, and a tart tongue. Rannie was never quite sure exactly what Mrs. Mac’s job was; but at Chaps, you name it, she took care of it.
From Mrs. MacSkellan Rannie learned the bare outlines of Mr. Tut’s death. “He had on the same clothes he was wearing yesterday so it must have happened sometime last night. Olivia Werner found him about a half hour ago…. Poor man, cancer eating away at him. My sister—oh, I watched her suffer, too. Esophageal cancer. Not eighty pounds when she died.” Mrs. Mac paused a moment as if mentally lingering on the image of her emaciated sister. “Yesterday was one of Mr. Tut’s bad days. I could tell, not that he ever said anything. But he wasn’t himself, he seemed so agitated and depressed. After his two-thirty with David Ross, his door was shut most of the day….” Mrs. Mac dabbed at her eyes with a tissue held in painfully gnarled fingers, the nails painted the same lurid orange as her lips.
“Your tour’s canceled, naturally,” Mrs. Mac went on, ‘’although the child’s mother is still here and insists on talking to you.”
They walked back to the Great Hall where Mrs. Mac gestured with a cock of her head to a tall blond, busy at a Blackberry. The woman looked both impatient and stylish in a black suit and stiletto sling-backs.
Last week alone, Rannie had taken twenty families on tours—soon she’d be able to make her way around Chaps blindfolded. Just the other day, she’d opened a letter of recommendation from the governor describing a four-year-old kindergarten candidate as “a fine young man of excellent character.” The whole private school pressurefest…it was beyond nuts and, like so much else about living in Manhattan, both fascinated and repelled her.
Rannie found an umbrella stand and, ditching her freebie from the Clinique counter at Bloomingdales, she pushed thoughts of Mr. Tutwiler from her mind for the time being. Then she checked the name on the slip of paper in her purse.
“Mrs. Millstone, I’m Miranda Bookman.” Rannie strode forward, extending a hand and a smile, and pretended not to notice the mascaraed eyes flick over her dismissively, registering everything—Rannie’s dark, blunt-cut bob, minimal makeup and jewelry, just her father’s wristwatch and a pair of silver stud earrings in the shape of commas, a fare-thee-well present from a colleague at S&S. For a moment Rannie considered opening her trench coat—no Burberry plaid lining but a size four, thank you very much—and twirling around so the woman could check out the brown ribbed turtleneck and corduroy trousers she was wearing. Rannie could practically hear the woman typecasting her, Typical Upper West Sider.
Though born and raised in the Midwest, Rannie supposed by now she did fit the stereotype. Never voted Republican; was a stalwart Zabar’s shopper; and both her children would have been in public school if not for her ex-husband, a Chaps alum, and his mother, a moneyed Manhattan dowager who generously footed the bills.
“I’m so sorry your family happened to be here today.”
“It was very upsetting for Phoebe…. Not that I didn’t feel badly when I found out a teacher died.”
Bad. You felt bad. If you have a defective sense of touch, then you feel badly. The copyeditor in Rannie held her tongue although the mistake hit her ear like a sour note.
“We heard this ungodly scream.” From Mrs. Millstone’s description, Rannie pieced together that the new headmaster had found Olivia in Tut’s office.
“Phoebe—she’s at Brick Church Nursery, fabulous place—well, we told Phoebe there’d just been a little accident. Our nanny came right away because my husband, he had to leave and…” The woman stopped herself. “I’m babbling. I know. But Chapel is our first choice. My husband and I are both committed to coeducation for our daughter.”
Rannie nodded solemnly. It amused her how many times she’d heard these words from uber-Wasp parents, always uttered with fervor, the way other people might say that they were committed to gun control legislation or famine relief. It made Rannie secretly giggle, even though she knew that for Old Money New Yorkers, sending children to a coed school instead of Brearley or St. Bernard’s was akin to wearing loud cufflinks or patent leather after Labor Day. Simply Not Done.
Promising to reschedule a tour and interview ASAP, she bade adieu to Mrs. Millstone, who departed, stilettos reverberating on the stone floor, leaving a contrail of perfume in her wake. Rannie shook her head in wonderment at the workings of the viciously competitive, only-in-Manhattan merry-go-round…parents who were ready to kill to get their kid in to Chaps, Chaps kids who were ready to kill to get into Harvard.
CHAPEL SCHOOL
For more than one hundred and fifty years, Chapel School has followed its motto of Virtutis per Laborum (“Virtue through work”). The school first opened its doors as a charity institution for orphaned boys of “pious mien and keen intellect” whose fathers had died on the battlefields at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg. By 1920 the school no longer boarded students and expanded enrollment to two hundred and fifty students. In 1980, the school ended its affiliation with the Episcopal Church and admitted girls.
The first graduating class of five students all continued their education at Columbia College. From among last year’s seniors, five again are attending Columbia. In addition, two-thirds of the class are enrolled at the following institutions: Amherst, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Haverford, Middlebury, Princeton, Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale.
As do all independent schools, Chapel School depends on tuition, income from its endowment, and annual giving for revenue. The four-acre campus is far larger than that of any other independent school in Manhattan. It is with the help of generous donors that Chapel School is able to maintain its exceptional facilities, attract and keep the finest teachers, and offer students an unparalleled education. For further information on donations, please contact:
Chapel School Development Office
349 West 103rd Street
New York, New York 10025