Now!” Elizabeth whispered in the front row, standing up. Next to her, Sylvia stood up too. They stepped into the aisle and headed toward the stage. The boring announcements section of Morning Meeting—I can’t find my blue cashmere sweater; has anyone seen it? The bus to X will leave at—had just been gotten out of the way so the interesting stuff could begin. The two girls felt a strange relief. In another moment or two, it would all be over.
“No, I’ll go first.” It was Gregory van Buren’s instantly recognizable voice behind them. Sylvia and Elizabeth stopped walking and glanced at each other. It was clear to them why he was going first: so whatever they were about to announce, something so heavy Sylvia wanted only to announce it once, wouldn’t take the wind out of the sails of what he was going to announce.
Resplendent in his double-breasted blue blazer with the golden buttons, red-striped tie, and fresh-pressed khaki trousers, Gregory passed them without a glance, striding fast. Sylvia and Elizabeth returned to their seats and sat back down. They were going to have to wait some more.
On the stage, Gregory looked straight at Sylvia for a second or two as if apologizing for being so rude. Then he announced, his voice swelling with pride, the outside publication of a poem by Edwina McManis, who was only a junior. “A sonnet no less, in Glimmer Train,” he said. “Do any of you have any idea how hard it is to get a poem published in a literary journal of that caliber?” Every student at Miss O’s knew all there was to know about rhetorical questions by halfway through their first semester, so of course no one answered. “This kind of high accomplishment is what happens at Miss Oliver’s School for Girls,” Gregory went on. Sylvia could swear he was looking directly at her and Elizabeth—especially Elizabeth—as if he needed to remind them of what they were about to lose. “We learn that we have potential previously unimagined. We learn that we can do it!”
Edwina marched up front and read her poem in her own idiosyncratic voice, catching every subtle sound and sense. It was clear she’d rehearsed for hours under Gregory’s coaching. There was a silence and then everyone in the auditorium stood up and cheered and clapped her hands. Gregory and Edwina started to walk to the steps down from the stage.
“No, stay up there!” It was the head of school’s voice from the back row where she always sat. Gregory and Edwina went back to center stage and waited. A moment later, Sylvia’s mother moved past the front row, her skirt brushing against Sylvia’s elbow, and climbed the steps up to the stage. Taking Edwina’s hand in hers, she raised it like the winning boxer’s above Edwina’s head. Edwina stood there, her hand held high, a triumphant smile lighting up her face. When the cheering finally subsided, Sylvia’s mom said, “This is a wonderful day. Enjoy the rest of it,” and everyone started to leave.
Sylvia stepped out into the aisle, turned, raised her hands. “Wait! There’s more.” Almost every girl hesitated. “Please. Sit back down,” Sylvia said. Some girls sat down again. Others continued to hesitate. It felt wrong. Like an epilogue to a novel that didn’t need one, or a joke explained. Many looked to the stage, waiting for the head of school to adjudicate. But the head of school said nothing.
Rachel Bickham being indecisive! What’s going on?
Elizabeth stood and joined Sylvia in the aisle and headed forward. Everyone in the audience sat down again.
At the foot of the steps up to the stage, Sylvia and Elizabeth waited while Gregory and Edwina came down. Gregory gave Sylvia and Elizabeth a look of concern, but Edwina looked straight ahead as if Sylvia and Elizabeth didn’t exist. “Sorry,” Sylvia whispered to Edwina. Then Sylvia turned and followed Elizabeth up the steps. Her mother was waiting there, wearing an expression Sylvia had never seen before: a strange mixture of worry and exultation.
Then Sylvia was standing beside Elizabeth at the lip of the stage, and from the top of the stairs, her mother said, her voice ringing out over the audience as it always did, “Evidently Elizabeth and Sylvia have something to say we need to hear.” She went down the steps and walked briskly down the aisle, returning to her seat in the back row. Sylvia watched her all the way.
Sylvia drew a big breath. It was very quiet. Elizabeth nudged her on the hip. Sylvia let out her breath, took another big one.
“As you know, I’m president of the Outdoor Adventure Club. I have the key to the equipment shed.” Everyone leaned forward. Just then, one of the big doors in the back of the auditorium swung open. Sylvia stopped talking and stared. Everyone, including her mother—especially her mother! —turned to watch as Aunt M swept through the door and stopped walking, her eyes going straight to the stage, and everyone turned back to stare at Sylvia. “Now you know who stole the stuff,” Sylvia said, pointing to herself. There was a collective gasp, then silence, while Sylvia and Aunt M continued to stare at each other as Aunt M took a seat in the back row. “So, you don’t have to wonder anymore who it was,” Sylvia said. “Or if anybody thinks it was you.”
Sylvia watched Aunt M swivel her head to find her sister—who must have felt that gaze on the side of her face. Her mother turned to Aunt M. The two women looked hard at each other across the width of the auditorium, like people do when they come upon each other by surprise in a city far away from home, and Aunt M nodded her head. Her mother swung around and stared across the audience at Sylvia, and Sylvia nodded her head too, feeling a surprising calm.
“Sylvia didn’t steal the stuff by herself. I helped,” Elizabeth said.
“And don’t anybody ask us to apologize,” Sylvia blurted.
Elizabeth shot Sylvia a warning look. Then turning to all the faces: “It was for a homeless guy. We brought him food too. From the dining hall.”
“And guess what else we did?” Sylvia said. “We brought him into the dorm.” She paused to let that sink in, watched the fascinated expressions. “Yeah, we gave a roof to a homeless guy last night. That’s our crime.”
“It was during the blizzard,” Elizabeth said.
“So, you think that’s all, just bring him in to where it’s warm? Come on, you have to sleep with them when they get cold.” Sylvia paused. There was a rage expanding in her chest. “Any of you ever slept with a homeless guy?” She roamed her eyes over the audience, as if waiting for someone to confess. “You should try it.” she said. “It warms them right up.”
“Calm down,” Elizabeth whispered.
“She wants me to calm down,” Sylvia said, pointing with her thumb to Elizabeth. “He has post-traumatic stress disorder. And she wants me to calm down? From the stupidest fucking war that ever happened!”
In the second row, Gregory van Buren stood up. “This meeting’s adjourned.” Everyone stayed transfixed in their seats. “It is adjourned!” he said. “Go, now, to your classes.” Still, everybody sat, eyes flashing back and forth between him and the two girls on stage. “Go!” Gregory pointed to the doors in the back. “Now!”
Without a word, everyone stood up and began to troop out. Marian went out the same back door she entered through. Rachel and Gregory looked at each other across the space between them. Gregory mouthed, “I’ll bring them to you.” Rachel nodded, then followed Marian out, and Gregory came forward and stood beside Elizabeth and Sylvia.
THE AUDITORIUM WAS cavernous now that everyone had left.
“So what happens now?” Elizabeth asked.
“We clean out our rooms, I suppose,” Sylvia said, imagining the trudge back and forth across the snow, carrying boxes of stuff to the Head’s House. She’d be in limbo, expelled from school, but still living on campus.
The distraught, surprised look on Gregory’s face had melted away. He was now wearing his thoughtful look. When that happened, no one ever could figure out what he was thinking, but Sylvia was sure he was asking the same question: What’s it like to be half expelled? He said, “Let’s go see your moth—” and, like Eudora before him, he corrected himself. “—the head of school.”
“Why bother?” Sylvia asked him. “The penalty is automatic.”
“Because even when it is automatic, as you put it, there is a process.” Gregory put a hand gently on each girl’s elbow. “Besides, there are mitigating circumstances.”
As soon as they were outside, he let go their elbows. So Elizabeth and I won’t look like perps in a newspaper photo being led to jail, and he won’t look like a cop, Sylvia thought, gratefully. She’d known him all her life.
But nobody was outside to watch them go. It was much too cold and windy. Everybody had gone as fast as they could to their classes where it was warm. And where Sylvia knew they were still processing the news. The teachers too.
OUTSIDE, IN THE piercing bright gleam of sun on snow, Rachel said to Marian, “You and I need to talk.”
“I reckon,” Marian said. “Why don’t you start?”
“Not here, where everybody’s staring at us!” Rachel started walking fast toward her office. Marian caught up and walked beside her. Neither said a word on the way.
In her office, while her sister watched and listened, Rachel first called the security person on duty and reported the presence of a male intruder who needed to be escorted from the campus—“after being brought to my office,” she added.
The security person wanted to know why he should be taken to her office. “Why not just get him the hell out of here? Turn him over to the cops?” Rachel didn’t answer, instead told him to start looking for him in Sylvia and Elizabeth’s room. “Really! In their bedroom!” The security person was almost shouting now. “This is for the cops.”
“No! Do as I say. Bring him to me,” Rachel shouted back, and hung up before he could object anymore.
“Atta girl!” Marian said.
“I’m glad you approve,” Rachel said sarcastically.
Marian just nodded her head. “So you want to talk? Those kids will be here in a minute.”
“Yes, I do. Because you knew all along, didn’t you? You turned to me and nodded your head.”
“Like you already knew and we were just agreeing?” Marian’s tone was neutral, like she really wanted to know. “Or was I just confirming what I knew and you didn’t? You have to answer that before I know whether you really have a reason to be angry with me.”
“How do you get the right to tell me whether or not I should be angry?”
“Because you’re my sister, sweetie, that’s how.” Marian glanced out through the big French doors. Rachel followed her gaze. Here came Gregory van Buren, flanked by Sylvia on his right and Elizabeth on his left. The snow piled high on each side of the path towered over them. “You want some advice before they get here?” Marian said.
“I don’t know. Depends what it is.”
“Well, how about this? Either kick them out because that’s what your school is, or give them a prize because that’s what it’s trying to be. But whatever you do, don’t sit in the middle.”
Before Rachel could think about that, Margaret Rice, who’d been to Morning Meeting too, poked her head in, her expression studiously blank, and said, “They’re here.”
“I CALLED SECURITY,” Sylvia’s mother said. “Is he still on campus?”
Sylvia and Elizabeth looked at each other.
“Please, we have to know. Is he in the dorm?”
“Not exactly,” Sylvia taunted.
“Well then, where exactly?”
“Eudora’s taking care of him,” Elizabeth said.
“Eudora!”
Elizabeth nodded. “She gave him breakfast.”
“Breakfast! In her apartment?”
“That’s where her kitchen is,” Sylvia said.
Aunt M stood up.
“Where are you going?” Sylvia said. “Stay.”
“Nope. You girls are doing just fine. It’s Eudora who might need my help.” Aunt M left the office, moving fast.
And Sylvia’s mother reached for the phone.
“You don’t need security, Mom. He’s totally harmless,” Sylvia said.
“That’s not for me or you to decide,” her mother said, punching the numbers..
Gregory van Buren said, “Obviously you need to recuse yourself. So I’ll take your place at the discipline committee.”
She put her hand up to Gregory. “He’s in Ms. Easter’s apartment,” she said into the phone.
“Of course,” Gregory said. “First things first.” Then he turned to Sylvia and Elizabeth and said, “You two. Go back to your room and wait.”
“MY FRIEND JUST got home and called right away,” the round, soft lady said. “I knew he would. I’ve known him forever. He wants to give you a place to stay.”
A place to stay? Like here? He was drinking coffee in a rocking chair.
“You do know why you can’t stay here, don’t you?”
There was a knock on the door. She took the coffee cup from him and pointed with her other hand. “Hide in there.”
He was only in there a minute, standing by her bed, gazing at a picture of a great big tree, before she said, “It’s all right, Christopher, it’s another friend,” and he went back out.
“This is Sylvia’s aunt,” she said. “Her name is Marian. She’s going to come with us to my friend’s house.”
THE ROUND, SOFT lady drove. He sat up front in the passenger seat beside her. “Put your seatbelt on,” she said.
But he just pretended. If he did as she said, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the car fast enough if he didn’t want to be there. Keeping his gaze straight ahead, he didn’t push the metal thing all the way in past the click, just held it there with his hand. The other lady sat in the back. He forgot her name already. He looked in the rearview mirror. She was looking in the mirror too, watching him look at her. She wasn’t round. She was thin and almost tall. “You belong to Sylvia,” he said to the mirror. “I can tell.”
“Indeed I do. Now put your seatbelt on.”
He didn’t know how to say no to this one. He clicked his seatbelt in.
The gates to the school were in front of him, down the hill, maybe a hundred yards. He felt the worry rise. They went through the gates onto the road where he’d walked that night, jumping into the snow beside the road not to be hit by the oncoming cars, and he was just as afraid and tense and worried as he had been then—until he’d cut through the campus and heard the girls sing. He put his hands down beside himself and gripped the front edge of the seat. He held on and on, his fingers getting tired.
And then there was a church. Gray stones, shaped like a little castle with a steeple. Smaller than the one he went to with his aunt. Around the back, a house. With a big front porch. “You’re going to be safe here,” the round, soft lady said. “My friend is the kindest man in the world.”
The engine stopped. She pulled the hand brake on and touched his shoulder. A little man, all dressed in black, came out the front door onto the porch. Next to him, a big black hairy dog, wagging his tail. Doctor Doolittle, he thought, all the animals loved him. He thought of Uncle Ray, reading him to sleep
He got out of the car. The two ladies went first. He climbed the steps behind them. “Hello, my dear Eudora,” Dr. Doolittle said. He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.
“This is Sylvia’s aunt, Marian,” Dear Eudora said. “And this is Christopher.”
“Christopher, I’m glad you’ve come. My name is Michael, and this is Red. Say hello, Red.” The big black dog came forward, still wagging his tail, and shoved his nose into Christopher’s crotch. He leaned and scratched the dog between the ears. “Come on in, everybody. I’ve lit a fire,” Dr. Michael Doolittle said.
SYLVIA AND ELIZABETH left the head’s office through the sliding glass doors that opened directly onto the campus so they wouldn’t have to undergo Margaret Rice’s second effort to keep her expression blank. It was uncomfortable to be the objects of curiosity, purveyors of vicarious experience to the cautious. The only company they wanted was each other’s.
They were aliens already, returning on empty paths to their dorm, past the classroom building, the science and music buildings, the library, each filled with their schoolmates who would still be there tomorrow. Entering through the big front door of their dormitory, they were hit by silence, like a wind coming at them. All the doors of the rooms lining both sides of the hall were closed.
In their own room, Sylvia picked her sleeping bag up from the floor, stuffed it into its carry bag, and chucked it into a corner. Soon they’d be packing everything up, taking the posters off the walls. What would be left was the barren space they’d entered in the fall and made their own: two chairs, two desks, two bureaus, all in blonde wood, one wastebasket—exactly the same in every room.
Elizabeth threw herself down on her bunk.
Sylvia, restless, remained standing. “What are you going to say to your parents?”
“The same thing we told Eudora. It was cold outside.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the easy part. The hardest is going to be when they ask me…” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off.
“Was it worth giving up so much?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Yeah, that’s what they’re going to ask. They’ll say, You were about to graduate. And for once I won’t know what to say. How come I didn’t know I wanted the Miss O’s diploma for its own sake, not just the ticket into MIT? That’s what I’ve been realizing since we got caught. I wanted to show it to my parents. I wanted to frame it and hang it on the wall wherever I lived for the rest of my life.”
Sylvia collapsed down beside Elizabeth. “I feel like I dragged you into it.”
“I did it just to keep you company?” Elizabeth stared at the wall across the narrow room and shook her head. “No, I was the first, remember? I dropped two dollars in his hat, and you told me what your father would say about that, how you should give to organizations instead, and I was about to say that’s too easy, you don’t have to look them in the face, but you’d turned around and gone back already and I watched you put your two dollars in his hat. It all began right then.” Elizabeth paused. “Besides, it’s just as bad for you. This is your home.”
Sylvia didn’t think so. “You wanted to get away from home,” she said. “Now they’re sending you back. That’s what I’m sorry for. But anyway, we still have each other.”
Elizabeth smiled a wan smile. She looked out the window at the campus covered in snow. Saying goodbye to it, Sylvia thought. They heard footsteps in the hall. Elizabeth turned away from the window. The footsteps got nearer. “Yeah, we have each other,” Elizabeth said.
The footsteps came nearer and nearer. They waited for them to stop and the doorknob to turn, but the footsteps went right on by and they heard a door open to a room down the hall. Sylvia let out her breath. She hadn’t known she was holding it. “What’s taking them so long?”
“If the discipline committee met for only a few minutes it would look like they didn’t think about it,” Elizabeth said.
“Nobody expects them to think about it. There are only two things you get kicked out automatically for and we did both of them.” Sylvia giggled, a small hysteria rising. “Too bad there’s not a third thing. We could do that too. Since we’re getting kicked out anyway.”
“What do you think it would be?”
“I don’t know. Propositioning a teacher?”
“That’ll do it. Which one do you think?”
“How about old Gregory? Let’s tell him he can have both of us. Maybe he’ll let us off.”
“No, just you,” Elizabeth said. “If he does me, he’ll be so turned off, he’ll kick us out twice.”
Both girls laughed. The hysteria melted, and in the silence Elizabeth asked, “So where are you going to go? To your mother’s house?”
Sylvia didn’t answer.
“You didn’t think of that?”
“Of course I thought about it. I thought about it a lot.”
“So?”
“I think I’ll go to my aunt’s house,” Sylvia said, deciding as she spoke. The prospect of living in limbo, half expelled, at the Head’s House, was even more confusing now that Elizabeth had asked the question. “Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”
“I’d go there with you. But my parents are going to assume you influenced me into being so stupid. They’d send the sheriff to get me out of your clutches.”
“Because I’m Black?”
“Why’re you bringing this up now? You know my parents and I don’t talk about stuff like that.”
“Yeah, but you must have told them.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I sort of told them and I sort of didn’t.”
“And they sort of didn’t ask,” Sylvia said. Her spirits rose a little knowing she and Elizabeth shared this knowledge together, having navigated it by living together, knowing each other.
Elizabeth shrugged. “It’s a different world out there.”
“I suppose so,” Sylvia said in closing. “I wouldn’t know.”
New footsteps now, heavier, were coming nearer and nearer.
“Well, I think you are about to find out,” Elizabeth said.
The two girls stood up and stared at the doorknob, waiting for Gregory’s knock. It was about to happen.
At last the knock came. “Come in,” Elizabeth said. The door opened.
Gregory van Buren, his golden buttons gleaming, was framed in the doorway.
“Which news do you want to hear first, the discipline committee’s decision or what is happening with your friend?”
“What!” Elizabeth said.
“I think you heard me.”
“What is this, a test?” Elizabeth said.
“No, Elizabeth. It’s a choice. I didn’t want to make it for you.”
“That’s not fair,” Elizabeth said.
“Probably not,” Gregory agreed.
“Sometimes I hate you,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like to punch you right in the nose.”
“I understand. Sylvia?”
“Me too. Just tell us.”
Gregory shook his head.
“Oh all right, tell us about him first,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve made your point.”
“Yes, tell us,” Sylvia said.
Gregory looked like he did in class when he’d reached a goal in his lesson plan. “You’ll be pleased to know your friend is now at the Reverend Woodward’s house. Ms. Easter and your aunt, Sylvia, have taken him there. A very good decision. He’ll be safe and warm. What better place than a church pastored by such a person could there possibly be? And your aunt will know how to get him help. I hope this news makes you warm too.” He paused, nodding his head. “Of course it does. Otherwise, why would you have gone to such lengths?”
“Yes, we’re glad,” Sylvia said. “Now just tell us we’re expelled and get it over with.”
“But you’re not. As I said, there were mitigating circumstances. You are suspended for two weeks. It was the least unsatisfactory consequence the committee could arrive at, given the unusual situation. Elizabeth, I have informed your parents. You have a reservation on Southwest Airlines. And you, Sylvia, you will leave your clothes here, as you have a supply at your mother’s house. Proceed there directly.”
“Not expelled!” Elizabeth said.
He put his hand up “When you return, you will both apologize to the school in Morning Meeting. From this moment until after you have made that apology, please refrain from any interaction with the school.” He stopped talking and stood very still. “Now I must inform the head of school. I thought I should tell you first.” He backed out of the room, a soldier about to salute, closing the door as he left.
Elizabeth collapsed back down on her bunk. The cuff of her jeans slid upward on her leg and it was as if Sylvia could actually see the oil rig, crossed out by the big exuberant X, right through the thick woolen sock, and know how much more desperately Elizabeth had wanted to stay and graduate than even she had realized. Sylvia’s own relief was enough to make her collapse down on her chair.
Yet she also wanted to argue with Gregory about suspension instead of expulsion and, even more fervently, about the requirement to apologize. When he’d stopped talking and stood so still, he’d seemed disturbed. Unresolved. The least unsatisfactory consequence—given the unusual situation.
But the decision had been made. He would never try to change it. She stayed in the chair, giving in entirely to the huge, overwhelming relief: they were not expelled!
Why not enjoy it—while it lasted?
“SYLVIA! YOU’RE HOME. How nice!” Bob said first thing when he arrived from the City where he’d been making final arrangements for the sale of Best Sports. “You going to stay here with us tonight?” Silence from Sylvia and her mom.
“What? Tell me.”
“Tell him, Sylvia,” her mother said.
Sylvia shook her head. “You tell him.”
“No. He’s your dad. He deserves to hear it from you.”
Sylvia shook her head again.
“Syl, honey. Please. Whatever it is. You can tell me.”
“No. It will sound like a confession.”
“Okay, Syl. I understand. You have a secret. But it’s still nice to have you home.”
Sylvia smiled in spite of herself.
“Please,” he said. “Just tell me.”
So Sylvia told him everything. Right from the beginning. It took a long time. When she was finished, he sat very still.
“Are you surprised, Dad?”
“Not very. Especially now that we know why you returned the stuff. Right, Rachel?”
Her mom flushed.
“Mom?” Sylvia said.
“And anyway, suppose you didn’t do anything to help the guy,” her dad said. “There wouldn’t even be a suspension. You’d get off scot-free for doing nothing. How would Mom and I feel about that?”
“Yes, how would we feel? That’s the big question, isn’t it?” her mom said. “You know what your Aunt Marian told me? ‘Either kick them out because that’s what your school is—or give them a prize because that’s what it’s trying to be. But whatever you do, don’t sit in the middle.’”
“But you recused yourself,” Sylvia blurted. “And look what happened!”
“Yeah, look what happened,” her dad said. “Squarely in the middle. No satisfaction for anyone. But for me, the middle has its merits: I get to enjoy your company. The timing couldn’t be better. I stop going to the City, and presto, you stay home all day for two whole weeks.”
“We’ll do stuff together,” he said. “Maybe I’ll even go with you when you run—if you go slowly enough.”
Sylvia looked down at the floor.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “You’d practically have to walk. But I could teach you chess. How about that?”
“That would be great, Dad, but I can’t stay here. It would be too weird, suspended from school but still on campus. I’m going to go to Aunt M’s.”
“Oh?” he said, crestfallen. “Suppose your mother and I ask you to put up with feeling weird and stay with us. We love you. We want you here with us.”
Sylvia turned to her mom.
“Bob, she’s right,” she said. “She’s not supposed to have any connection with the school.”
“Because, Dad, if I met a student on a path, what would I do? Turn my back?”
“Is that the real reason, Rach?” he asked. “Or is that it is wrong for the head of school to make exceptions for her daughter?“
“Well, of course that’s one of the reasons. Elizabeth goes all the way home to Oklahoma, and Sylvia stays right here. How would that look?”
“Sensible,” he said. “Sensible. Practical. Reasonable. To people everywhere except at Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. What is it about this place? Is it like this in other schools?”
“All the good ones,” her mom said.
“Don’t be sad, Dad. It’s only for two weeks,” Sylvia said.
“Well, I am sad. How can I not be? You’re my daughter.”
Sylvia got up from her chair and crossed the room. She kissed him on the cheek and tousled his hair, as if she were the parent, not the other way around, and went upstairs to her room. Of course her parents weren’t completely surprised. How could they be? And she’d put her mother in a difficult position. Shouldn’t she feel guilty? The truth of the matter was that she hardly felt any emotion at all, vaguely aware too that her numbness was purposeful. After so much drama, she needed the respite from urgent emotions. She wondered if two weeks would be enough, especially since Auda Hellmann’s long-anticipated visit from Germany would start the same day as what Sylvia was already thinking of as The Reinstatement, and Sylvia would have to listen to Auda’s angry protestations that it was the school that should feel guilty. She didn’t want to hear that either.
Right now, she needed to pack a suitcase.
“AREN’T YOU GOING to help her pack?” Bob asked.
Rachel shook her head. “I’m sure she wants to be alone. I know I would.”
Bob sighed. “I suppose you’re right. And anyway, she’s a big girl now.”
“Yes, she is. And I just had an idea!” Rachel went to the window, gazed out. “Plant a new copper beech tree.”
“Wow, that’s a change of subject!”
“No! How can you say that? It’s totally related. Look.” She pointed across the campus. He got up and stood beside her. “We’ll put it there just past the shade the old one makes,” she said. “So when the old one dies—”
“Oh yes, totally related,” he said. “I love the way your mind works.”
“IT’S NICE IN here,” Eudora said, sending her smile across the room to Michael.
“So stay for dinner,” Michael said. He crossed the room, took Eudora’s hand, and led her into the kitchen, leaving Christopher alone with Sylvia’s Aunt Marian and the dog, Red, who lay on the floor near Christopher’s feet, like all good dogs who always know who in any room is the one most in need of company. Marian sat opposite Christopher in a stuffed chair, regarding him with a calm directness. The sound of Eudora and Michael working in the kitchen floated into the room.
“Sylvia told me about you,” Marian said. “Are you surprised?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not either.”
Eudora came back into the room bearing a plate of crackers and cheese. Red thumped his tail on the floor. Michael came close behind, carrying a bottle of red wine and four glasses on a tray. “Beef stew’s heating in the oven,” he said, pouring the wine. “One of my parishioners brought it to me.”
Christopher put a hand over his glass to prove he wasn’t crazy and was never going to be. “I have an aunt in Hartford, where I’m going to stay. Will one of you drive me there?”
“You just rest here for a day and get your strength back,” Eudora said. “I’ll take you on Sunday.”
“That’s right,” Michael said. “You stay right here.”
Over dinner, Michael and Eudora continued to look at each other as if they couldn’t get enough of the sight, and Sylvia’s aunt explained how she and Sylvia had made a friend at the Veteran’s Administration for Christopher when he was ready. After dinner, the four of them washed the dishes together while Christopher’s spirits went right up to the ceiling, and then Eudora and Sylvia’s aunt went back to the school and Michael showed Christopher where his bedroom was. It had a big soft bed with a fat down cover. Christopher got in it and went right to sleep.