on this trip that he would start tomorrow, the first day of summer vacation? He would be away not only from her for the entire summer but also from the new head who needed the senior teacher’s help in getting acclimated—and had every right to expect it. Francis had a big responsibility to fulfill right here this summer, one that he could fulfill better than anyone. So why did he choose to wander? He was not just out of college; he was fifty-five, for goodness sake!
She knew Francis’s response would be that he wouldn’t be wandering. He’d be chaperoning a group of students from schools all over the East on an archaeological dig in California—what was wrong with that? Wasn’t Miss Oliver’s School famous for its anthropology courses; wasn’t that what made them different from all those other schools? “If our girls can learn to look objectively at other cultures,” he had reminded her, “then they can look at their own with open eyes, instead of the way they have been indoctrinated to see—by men. That’s how we change the world! We’re going to live in a reconstructed Ohlone Indian village on the shoulder of Mount Alma while we do the dig to find the real village they lived in,” he had told her—as if she hadn’t known!
If he would just admit to himself the real reason, that he wanted to be like an Indian, she could object—and remind him that Indians made their vision quests when they were fourteen years old! For that’s what Francis and his students were trying to do: be like Indians. Otherwise, why not just live in tents?
But chaperoning an exercise in anthropology? How could Peggy argue against that? She was the one who, thirty years ago, had started the tradition of cultural relativism that made Miss Oliver’s unique. For it was she who had discovered the jumble of Pequot Indian artifacts in a closet of the little house that then served as the school’s library, and it was she who had persuaded Marjorie to raise the funds for a new library in which the Pequot artifacts, and several small bones of a young Pequot woman unearthed when the library’s foundation was dug, were now respectfully displayed. It was lost on no one that the library—which many of the faculty thought of as Peggy’s Library—was situated exactly at the center of the campus.
Peggy walked slowly down the hall of her dormitory, entering each girl’s room as if it were ten-thirty in the middle of the school year and she were saying goodnight. Even though she knew the girls wouldn’t be in their rooms to turn their faces to her as she stood in the door, she was surprised to discover how lonely she felt in the sudden barrenness where the sound of her footsteps echoed off the walls.
She moved from room to room. It didn’t surprise her that Rebecca Burley had left the poster of Jimi Hendrix on the wall; she and Francis had told each other more than once that this kid needed to try on lots of different coats before it was too late, but further down the hall, when she discovered a well-used bong sitting squarely in the middle of the desk of Tracy Danforth—who had just graduated and was president of the Honor Council—she wanted to get Francis, bring him here to show him how Tracy had been trying to show them who she really was. But she didn’t get Francis. Because he was too busy. Packing for his trip.
She thought: He can’t possibly pack for a whole summer without my help, he’s helpless about such things, doesn’t know where anything is, he’ll go off with no underwear and ten pairs of pants. She turned away from the empty dorm.
SHE FOUND FRANCIS in their bedroom. He was on the other side of the bed from where she stopped in the doorway the instant she saw him putting a big duffel bag on the bed. He was holding his hiking boots in his hands, about to stuff them in.
“Oh!” she said. “I’ve never seen those before.”
“They’re new.”
“When’d you buy them?” They were ugly, she hated them.
He shrugged. “The other day.”
“Oh!” she said again. She took one step back, almost out the door. Why did seeing him pack disturb her so? She wondered if she were going to cry for the second time that day.
He noticed the movement and stopped packing, his attention full on her. “I got them at Le Target.” He pronounced it “targay,” looking for her smile.
It didn’t work. But his little joke did stop her retreat. “Maybe you should pack later, Francis,” she said, taking several steps back into the room. “The reception for the new headmaster starts in half an hour.” She knew it was dumb to think he’d change his plans and stay home where he belonged if he deferred packing until after the reception. Nevertheless, the thought flashed.
“I’m not going to the new head’s reception,” he said.
“Say that again.” She was standing perfectly still now.
“I’m not going,” he said again. But already he was beginning to relent. He knew how foolish it was to stay away, how churlish it would seem. But in Marjorie’s house! It’s her home, he wanted to say, no one else’s. But of course it wasn’t her house; it was the school’s.
“Yes, you are, Francis,” Peggy said. “You’re going. You’re not childish enough to stay away,” and immediately she regretted using that word.
He dropped his gaze to the bed. Now he was tossing in his shaving things and his toothbrush and toothpaste. Loose. All jumbled up with everything else.
“Oh, for goodness sake!” she said. “You can’t pack like this!” She reached in, pulled out a wad of shirts, tossed them over her shoulder. “Or this!” she said, tossing a crumpled pair of chinos in another direction. “Or this!” Three big paperback books went flying, their pages fluttering. She put her hand back in the bag again. She was going to empty the whole damn thing. She knew perfectly well she wasn’t helping him pack, she was unpacking him, and she was crying now, his clothes flying all over the room.
“Peg! I said I’ll go!” He was gripping both her wrists now, one in each hand.
She let him hold her, keeping her hands still, and forced herself to stop crying. “You know,” she said, “sometimes I think we’re as married to the school as we are to each other.” It was the first time she’d dared to put the thought into words.
“No,” he said. “No way, Peg.”
“So when you risk your place here, I wonder what other seams will start to tear.”
“Peggy, I said I will go.”
She felt a huge relief growing, as if maybe she didn’t have so much to worry about after all. “You know, he’s been very considerate,” she said, speaking of the new head. She was looking at Francis again because now, with victory, she couldn’t resist explaining her point. “He refused the invitation to speak at graduation.” “
I know all about it,” Francis said
She saw Francis trying not to look irritated and persisted anyway. She wanted so much to convince! “He said it was inappropriate. He said it was Marjorie’s moment, not the new head’s. That’s pretty nice, you know.”
“I don’t want to talk about him, “Francis said. “I’m not going to his reception for him. I’m going for you.” She realized that the other part of her relief was that of the mourner who doesn’t want the wake to end because then she’d be alone.
FIVE MINUTES BEFORE they left for the reception, Francis stood in front of the mirror above his bureau, putting on his tie. Peggy came up beside him, kissed him on the cheek. Leaning against him, she felt his body soften.
