Esker, may I see you when you have a chance?” It’s Florence, sticking her head inside the math-office door. She’s got her fund-raising smile on, bright and practiced. Esker figures this is in regard to that development-initiative memo she never got around to answering before vacation—why bother trying to recruit her? Florence knows she’ll demur—and replies she’ll come down after B-block. Esker has little use for the headmistress, who, as Esker’s heard her describe it on more than one occasion, came over into the world of education and human service last year after a long career in the world of high finance because she wanted to “give something back.” She prides herself on her natural rapport with the students, which, Esker begrudgingly admits, seems genuine. She’s well coiffed—a consummate shade of blond chosen on the basis, Esker imagines, of expert consultation and lengthy deliberation—and well dressed—today in a rather cutting-edge pink-and-fuchsia wool plaid suit—not to mention well connected; thanks to her, the school’s endowment now exists in more than token fashion. Ordinarily, Esker’s manner toward Florence is just barely shy of rude, but this morning she’s in such a good mood that she smiles, even warmly, at her boss, who, Esker thinks, does after all have an earnest, generous heart, and adds, “I won’t forget!”—a sort of jab at herself, since she routinely forgets to keep appointments with Florence or to respond to her various little memoranda.
Florence leaves, and Rhada, marking papers with her feet in striped tights up on the slurpy radiator, mutters, “Wear much perfume?” and fans in front of her nose. But Esker doesn’t even mind it, today she even almost likes the lingering scent of whatever expensive fragrance the headmistress feels the need to use, and she only smiles, rather gently, at Rhada, who then demands, getting her Clara Bow eyebrows into full arch, “What’s the matter with you?”
What’s the matter with Esker is she’s happy. Baskingly, destabilizingly happy.
In Black Pete’s last night, it had gotten progressively stranger, with the dour huddle at the bar increasing as the hour wore on, more men in dark coats drifting in to slump on their stools; the accordion continuing its densely woven music, merry and plaintive, around them; the bartender like some gruff guru drawing and dispensing the beers; and then Wally, over the music, had tried to tell her something about the bar’s being an allegory, and had asked her, if her life were an allegory, what did she think he’d represent, something like that, she hadn’t quite made out his words, he’d also said something about horse trading, and baking bread in the shapes of objects, she thought, and then he’d gotten suddenly absolutely pale, even in the assertively dim light of Black Pete’s she could see the drama of it, the rapidity with which his face drained of color, the way people say, “He turned white as a sheet,” which brought to mind the other cliché, which before she thought about it was out of her mouth, “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” and as soon as she said this it filled her with sorrow, an actual slow-seeping ache, like a cold fluid, through her body: her, her! As if she’d painfully named herself aloud. Don’t let him see this in her, don’t let him see her for a ghost.
He had bolted from the table and toward the entrance, even causing some of the somnolent patrons to look over their shoulders, where he pushed aside the curtain, exiting in a rush of cold air—
And she thought, I’ve broken it. I broke it. How did I? But really she knew, she’d been too much, it was too much to bear, seeing her here, having her sprint across the street and arriving too jaunty, too free and pleased and ghostless. Too solid and heavy for the paper-thin-ness of life, for their rice-paper connection; she had crushed it; it had crumpled under the full burden of her living weight. As she’d known it would. As she’d always known it would.
But then, grabbing his coat and his funny furry Russian hat, she’d followed him outside, and there he was just getting sick, that’s all, retching at the curb. After a moment she stepped up and held his forehead for him. It was burning hot. He heaved a while more.
“You have a fever,” she said, after he’d stopped.
“I was afraid you’d think I just couldn’t handle my alcohol.”
“Yeah. Lightweight.”
She helped him across the street, both of them shivering hard by the time they got to her apartment (“It opens so easily for you,” he’d kind of marveled, weakly, when she turned her key in the door), and into the bathroom, where he stayed for twenty minutes before she knocked, and called his name, and then pushed the door open, and there he was asleep with his grayish face on the tiny ceramic tiles. She roused him enough to get aspirin into him, and the tiniest bit of chamomile tea before he balked, and then she’d tucked him into her bed in all his clothes but his shoes, which seemed awfully uncomfortable (she did at least want to take off his belt), but she wasn’t about to presume. “Sorry, sorry,” he kept saying. “I never get sick.”
“I can see that.”
“Sorry.”
“All right, stop that.” Esker sat on the floor beside the bed. He lay on his back, his eyes closed. “What about Ann?”
“She’ll be sleeping, I don’t want to wake her. I’ll get up and go home in an hour.”
“Sure thing, Attila.”
“Or call in the morning.”
“You think we need to get you to the hospital or anything?”
“No. I actually feel a little better now.” His eyes still closed.
“Do you need anything? Bucket beside you?”
“I’m in your bed!” He lurched up.
She nodded mildly. “You’re sick.”
He looked for information in her face.
“There’s a couch,” said Esker. She rose. “There’ll be lukewarm tea beside you when you wake up again. Try to drink some.”
“I’m so s—” He checked himself, changed it to, “Thank you,” and lay down heavily again. A commanding sound from one of the wooden rails that ran under the mattress: not an actual splitting, perhaps, but more than a creak. “I’m always breaking things . . .” he sighed, already half asleep.
“But that’s my job,” whispered Esker. Though she almost could stop believing it. She sank back down on the floor and stayed in the room awhile, not as Florence Nightingale but for her own pleasure, because she seemed to need to listen to his breath, to look at him, sick and peaceful and large in her bed, with her clean covers upon his body, the pineapple-tin ceiling above them both. She dozed, eventually, her head against the wall, and when she opened her eyes his were open, too, and on her. “Where are you going?” he whispered. She thought and thought and had no idea what he meant. Maybe it was the fever. “Nowhere,” she said. Then they both fell back asleep, and the next time she woke it was after midnight. She felt his forehead: better. She took off some of her clothes and put herself to bed on the couch.
In the morning, he’d been gone. In the kitchen, on the dark wooden table, this took her breath: he had spelled out her name with spoons.
After B-block, Esker makes her way down the curving staircase to Florence’s office, in part of what was once the parlor, so there is a black-and-green marble fireplace behind her desk, and the original brass sconces on either side, refitted now for electric lights. Florence is forever pointing out the restored period details to visitors, so that Esker can hardly walk into her office without hearing in her mind, in Florence’s cadences, the guided tour. The Renovation Committee, Florence’s pet project, will draw its inspiration from this room. Florence is at her desk, busy with a Mont Blanc fountain pen.
After a moment, Esker knocks on the doorframe. “So what’s up?” she asks, trying not to sound brusque. The uncharacteristic burst of tolerance she’d felt for Florence earlier, from the comfortable remove of the math office, is fading fast in the headmistress’s actual fastidious lair.
“Oh, Esker.” Florence looks up. “Please come in, please have a seat.” And then, “Oh, please close the door behind you.”
Esker does, gritting her teeth. The airs! She imagines Florence relishes any opportunity to say it.
“You had a good holiday, I trust?”
Esker laughs. “Why do you trust?”
But it fails as humor; Florence looks unnerved.
“It was fine, thanks.”
“Good. I’ll come right to the point. It has come to my attention that you may have become romantically involved with the parent of a student.”
Collapsing, crushing silence.
“Excuse me?”
“Of course, there is no official prohibition on friendships between faculty members and the family members of current students. However, as the senior administrator of this institution, I am responsible for considering the possible adverse ramifications of such a relationship on the well-being of the institution.”
Careful, Esker, she cautions herself. Her heart is slamming around inside. She chooses the driest words she can find. “How exactly do you envision a legal, consensual adult ‘relationship’ might have any ‘adverse ramifications’ on the well-being of the ‘institution’?” Careful, Esker. Stay civil.
“We have to consider, for one, the fact that the parent in question is married.”
Floods of hot and cold coursing beneath her skin. Married! Does Florence even realize the terms of their marriage? But again: Careful, don’t address it. She wants to rise from her chair and walk out. She wants to take the millefiori paperweight from Florence’s desk and send it through the window. Who has been talking to Florence? Not Ann. One of Ann’s friends? Some parent? Alice? Has Alice Evers placed a call from her film set? Is Florence thinking about the publicity factor as related to Alice Evers alone, with her demicelebrity status? Or might Alice be in tight with any of the school’s larger donors? One of the trustees? Has a trustee placed a call directly? And what might anyone have said? Is she romantically involved with Wally? What does that even mean? Romantically involved. How do you parse it? What counts? Leaving her appointment book on his coffee table? Eating gelato on Broome Street? Holding his forehead while he throws up? They did kiss, it is true, inescapably. . . . But! She is furious, her mind sputtering in protest, even to be made to go through the exercise of analyzing it, the events and terminology, for Florence’s sake, when it’s nothing she would do on her own. Who is Florence? Who is this woman in her champagne perm and fuchsia plaid, looking a bit sad as she sits there with her Mont Blanc mini-scepter, proud but weary guardian of institutional standards and well-being?
“I can see you’re upset.”
“Florence. I think I need you to help me understand better what is upsetting you. Have you been made aware of any concrete harm likely to come to the school as a result of a possible liaison between a parent and teacher?” Anger catapults her speech to a more formal register. But her voice is shaking. Can Florence hear it?
“I can certainly envision concrete, damaging repercussions resulting from public knowledge of a liaison between a married parent and his child’s current teacher.”
She wants to object to this repeated use of the word “married.” Don’t get sidetracked, she warns herself. Focus. Don’t let that become the issue. “That’s not what I’m asking you.” Esker sighs. “It’s a little difficult for me to address your concerns without knowing what information, precisely, has been passed on to you, accurately or inaccurately, and without being made aware of its source.”
Now Florence sighs, and looks down heavily.
Oh, what an act, thinks Esker, and she hates everything about it, the stilted language, the strategic way she is calculating her own responses, the way they are sitting, the distribution of power: the executive fronted by the fortress of her desk and backed by green-and-black marble, streaky as a fine steak; the employee in her slighter chair, adrift in the middle of this genteel office, which broadcasts a kind of superior claim to morality and righteousness—but of course: people installed in offices like this are inherently more fit to interpret ethical guidelines, are by natural law better able to discern, and more likely to protect, the best interests of the community!
“Look, Florence. It’s difficult for me to respond specifically when your question is so vague. Basically: who told you what?”
Florence looks up, pained. Oh, how delicate is the skin around her eyes! Oh, how sympathetically pursed the rose-painted lips! “Yesterday afternoon a faculty member overheard Ann James telling another student, in the hallway, that you and her father are dating.”
“I see.” Esker sits back in the chair and folds her arms across her chest. She feels relieved, as well as annoyed that Florence is wasting her time when she could be preparing for D-block. “This is the whole basis for your concern?”
“Can you tell me whether this is true?”
How much should she say? As little as possible. “I don’t know, Florence. I haven’t used the word ‘dating’ since . . . I’m not sure I’ve ever used the word ‘dating,’ and I won’t presume to guess what your definition of the term would be.” Ann said “dating”? Esker wonders if Wally called it that. Now that she knows the relatively innocuous source of Florence’s concern, she feels willing to elaborate a little, let Florence feel she’s successfully ferreted something out. “I have seen Mr. James on a few occasions outside of school grounds, during which times we have discussed his daughter, my student, as well as other subjects. One of these conversations took place in a café.” There. That’s the truth. Now Esker can get back to prepping for D-block.
But she has miscalculated somehow, badly. Florence, who ought now to excuse her from this ludicrous interrogation with a little apology about the inappropriateness of having put Esker through it at all, instead folds her hands on her desk and leans forward. Gone are any affectations of sympathy. Esker has a swift, startling image of her removing from the top drawer a revolver and placing it heavily on the desk as preface to her next utterance. “Here are the facts I have to deal with. At least three people in the school community, excluding ourselves, have information that you are romantically linked to the married parent of one of your students. Given the nature of the institution, it is reasonable to assume that that number will grow, if it hasn’t already. It is reasonable to assume that this information may come to the attention of members of the broader school community, including benefactors. This . . . situation is, yes, largely about perception. Unfortunately, perception matters—is virtually all that matters—in the public arena. In the private arena, too, I would say, but that is not my concern. If I do nothing to address the impropriety, I will be perceived to be condoning it. Such an event, even in this day and age, is likely to reflect badly on the school’s reputation, and to impact unfavorably on the school’s well-being.” Florence pauses and picks up her pen again; Esker’s mind transposes the image into the headmistress stroking her gun. “You should know, in the interest of full disclosure, that I have concerns about your commitedness to the school community which predate this development. While your performance in the classroom, as I understand it, is satisfactory, your participation in the full range of faculty responsibilities is, frankly, not up to par. As indicated”—she peruses the open file on her desk—“in your performance review last May.”
Esker exhales slowly. Perhaps it sounds like a sigh. Somewhere, dimly, she realizes the sound might come across as insubordinate. She is outraged. That performance review had been Florence’s and the dean’s show of sulking when Esker had declined to sign up for any of the capital-endowment initiatives implemented last spring. “As I recall, faculty participation on fund-raising committees was voluntary.”
Florence closes the file, lays a heavy hand on it, gazes upon Esker with imperial might. “There is the letter of the law. And there is the spirit of the law. And a private-school community is one that functions best with a team that embraces and champions the spirit of the place.”
The law? The spirit? Team champions? What the hell is she talking about? It is beyond Esker, who really tries, who concentrates actively, on not smirking.
“I will be talking with a few people in the next day or so regarding the best way to proceed with this. And I ask you, in the meantime, to weigh whether you are truly happy in your position here at The Prospect School. Is there anything you would like to add at this point?”
Esker can see her own blouse moving, faintly, in rhythm with her furiously pounding heart. “Simply that I find it interesting that you have at no point spoken of the well-being of the student.”
Florence clears her throat. “Of course, that is another consideration uppermost in my mind.”