Ethan sits in his study down the hall from the kitchen, the door almost shut, trying to prepare lesson plans for the first few days of school but listening instead to the noise coming from the kitchen. The girl has come downstairs for breakfast. He can hear the excitement in Nancy’s voice, the way her pitch rises, and he knows she’s filling a plate too full with eggs and bacon. Gerald is bouncing a rubber ball, over and over, and Ethan forces himself not to yell.
He hadn’t wanted to take this girl in. There’s the cost, for one thing. Nancy had dismissed his concerns with a wave of her hand. What’s one more small mouth to feed, she said. Honestly, Ethan. We all need to be doing our part. But his other concern is almost as pressing: he doesn’t know much about girls. He’d grown up—here, in this house—with no siblings. His father had chaired the math department at the Boys School and, after Harvard, he’d returned here to work under his father and then, later, to take his place. He thinks about boys all day: how best to teach them; how to bring them up to be decent young men; how to reprimand them when they stray over the line. He has felt, since becoming a father, strangely less sure of himself. He had thought he would be the lead parent, the one who always knew what to do, the one the children would follow. But strategies that work in the classroom don’t work at home. What works with Gerald doesn’t seem to work with William. And they both gravitate toward Nancy, whose touch is often too gentle. It’s messier at home, he’s less in control, and more and more, he retreats to the comfort and solitude of his study. Still, he feels comfortable with boys, knows how to get them at ease, knows what to talk to them about. Except for Nancy and Mother and a cousin or two, his life has been filled with boys and men.
But he knows that Nancy sees this as her way of finally getting a girl. She’d been disappointed when William was born and then again with Gerald. They’d tried repeatedly but after the third miscarriage, the doctor had told her no more. She’s never said anything—about the disappointment with having one boy and then another, about the miscarriages, about the doctor’s orders—as she’s always unfailingly positive. About everything, really. And that’s what he had seen in her at the start. He’d hoped that her willingness to see the good would help draw him out of himself, help him become a better version of who he thinks he truly is.
There’s a quiet knock on the door. Yes, he says, forcing his voice to be soft, knowing it’s not Nancy or either of the boys. The girl pushes the door open but stands in the narrow hall. Hello, she says. Sorry to bother you, sir. She barely catches his eye before they both look away. Mrs. Gregory asked if you could please come into the kitchen for breakfast. Ethan nods, shuffling his papers. He should ask whether she slept all right, or whether there’s anything she needs, but by the time he looks up, she has disappeared.