right. Because I could.” Claire still refused to look up at Rachel.
“I thought that might be the case,” Rachel said. “I’m glad you understand this much.” And when Claire didn’t speak, she added, “You know, we would have let you in if you’d told us when you applied.”
Claire nodded her head, then looked up at Rachel at last.
“We really would have, you know.”
“I know that now.”
“But you didn’t then. I understand, Claire. But if we had known that you were hiding something, we had the right to know—”
“You wouldn’t have.”
Rachel nodded. “Maybe not.”
“Especially since I was eighteen. It wasn’t a crime.”
“Really, Claire? Did you know that then?”
Claire flushed.
“I bet he didn’t either. He had other things on his mind,” Rachel said, bitterly. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. He just disappeared.”
“Probably to Australia. Maybe Mars.”
“You think so?”
“Oh, Claire, don’t pretend you don’t know he was disappeared. I would have sent him to a whole other galaxy if I’d been his headmaster. Yes, you were eighteen, and you knew what you were doing, but he was older than that and a teacher, with a teacher’s authority, doing the worst thing a teacher can do, and he knew he was doing it. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good, but it doesn’t let you off the hook, does it? Did your father sue the school?”
Claire shook her head.
“See? He didn’t because it might have come out if he had.”
Claire didn’t answer.
“I’m glad you’ve told me, Claire. It’s a start—”
“You’re not the only one I told,” Claire blurted.
Rachel didn’t answer. Claire had answered the question she had planned to ask next. She was now aware of a headache throbbing, and her neck felt stiff.
“Two people,” Claire said. “They both said they wouldn’t tell. One’s the best friend I have in the school. The other’s already graduated.”
“That’s good news,” Rachel said, relieved that the second girl was no longer in the school. “It’s really confidential, isn’t it, Claire? Nobody’s business. Make sure your friend still in the school understands.”
“I told you. I already did,” Claire said, and started to cry. “She’s the best friend I have anywhere, not just in the school.”
“So you thought you’d get it off your chest by telling her?”
Claire shook her head.
“Well, then you wanted to impress her, maybe?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make? I just did.”
Oh all right, Rachel thought, giving up for now. Half the time adults don’t have any idea why they’re doing what they’re doing. So why should children?
“Oh, I just wish I hadn’t done it!” Claire said through her sobs.
Rachel wondered if Claire’s tears were authentic—or was she like an actress in a movie whose director says, “Cry.” She was irritated now—at herself as much as at Claire. Something was very wrong about the way she was handling this. She stood up, told Claire to stay there until she got settled, and went out through the door to walk by the river—until she felt settled too.
RACHEL’S EVERY INSTINCT told her that casual sex was wrong. Plain and simple: wrong, especially for kids. Call her an old-fashioned woman, she didn’t care. Nothing about each person in the world should ever be treated casually. If she didn’t believe that, then how could she believe anyone was worth teaching? So why wouldn’t she be especially heartsick about a kid having sex with a teacher, and also especially since the kid in question was Claire? And even more especially since she was sure Claire had been the initiator. Yes, Claire was the victim too, but so was teacher. That this wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last, only made it more painful for Rachel.
Rachel remembered again how touched she’d been when Claire wanted her to see her first real painting. They had only known each other for a couple of days. Claire was indirect about it, as if she were actually a shy person. She started the conversation by talking about how Eudora Easter had begun the first class of the new semester by simply telling the girls to start drawing.
The girls had stared at Eudora. “Draw what?”
Eudora smiled. “How about this?” She put her hands on her hips, turned her head to one side, and pointed her chin skyward: an African Queen. Round and soft, at least two hundred pounds. Red beret, red sneakers, big pendant earrings golden against her black shiny skin. “Or something out there,” she said, changing her pose to point out the window. “Or something in here,” pointing to the left side of her voluminous chest, “or here,” touching her forehead.
“But you keep moving,” someone said. “And we don’t know how.”
Eudora said, “Just start.”
Claire told Rachel she already had. “Everything went quiet,” she said. “And I didn’t draw Eudora, I drew my mother. Isn’t that silly? I could hardly remember what she looked like. It’s in the studio if you want to see it.”
So in her next free moment, Rachel had crossed the campus to Eudora’s studio. “I know why you’re here,” Eudora said. She pointed to the wall where she’d posted the picture. She didn’t need to. It had already drawn Rachel’s attention.
Claire had turned the sheet of paper sideways to make it horizontal and then cut it in half lengthwise to make it long and thin. A long, narrow beach stretched along that horizontal. Two little girls walked holding hands toward the right margin. In a few more steps they would disappear. Behind them, the ocean, the horizon, the sky, each long and thin and horizontal. “Look!” Eudora said. “There’s no real foreground. Everything recedes.”
Rachel didn’t answer. She wouldn’t have been able to describe what she was feeling without sounding crazy. All she knew was she was intensely alive and profoundly lonely at the same time. She wondered, after Claire learned the skills to go with her talent, would her pictures still be as primal as this? How did she know to make mother and daughter the same age, collapsing time?
“This is why I do what I do,” Eudora had said.
NOW, AS RACHEL walked on the bluff above the river, some clouds, moving fast, crossed the sun and a cool wind came up, roughing the water below her, which was suddenly gray like November, and Rachel realized why she had suddenly
