out to Claire. And she’d be miles away. Think about it, okay?”
“Well, how about keeping Claire Nelson right where she is and making Mitch Michaels wish he were dead?” Rachel asked.
Frothingham chuckled into the phone. “That would be a lot of fun, wouldn’t it?”
“It would be right too!”
“Maybe. For a philosopher. Maybe a poet. But for the school? And your job? Have you any idea how hard it is to keep a job like yours and mine? And what about Claire?” His pause had a definitive air. “Goodbye, Rachel. Let me know when you want me to talk to St. Agnes. I will put in a good word for her.”
RACHEL CROSSED THE campus toward the Art Building to tell Eudora, knowing the world couldn’t get more beautiful anywhere, anytime, than it was here, on this campus by the side of a river in New England in September. It was a fact for her, not mere opinion. She was surrounded by glory. What an amazement to know this in spite of the bad news she would deliver.
In the anteroom of the Art Building, more glory: three huge chairs, pieces of Kinetic Visionary Furniture designed and built by students to fulfill Eudora’s assignment—to demonstrate a sense of humor while being intensely utilitarian. They’d been returned at the end of the summer by the Smith College Art Museum where they had been displayed for almost a year: a chair in honor of multitasking, with foot pedals for typing a novel, piano keys for simultaneously making music, a reading lamp so you can also read a book, a bracket that turned the pages, and, looming from above, a shiny cone for sticking your head into to get a permanent wave. Next to it, a Humpty Dumpty chair, disassembled into its many parts, which when you pushed a button was immediately reassembled, and next to that a chair that played “The Star-Spangled Banner” when you sat in it so that you had to stand up for it to stop. Each beautiful in shape, multicolored and shiny. A work of art that worked. To think that Claire would be separated from a teacher who could unleash such marvels!
In Eudora’s kingdom, it smelled of turpentine, paint, wet clay—and silence. A dozen girls, one of whom was Claire, each at an easel, were sketching a classmate who stood on a raised dais before them. She was tall, thin, gawky, only a little self-conscious, leaning glibly on a cane, trying to look debonair in a man’s tuxedo. Eudora, in a flowing yellow smock and big golden earrings, glided among her artists looking at their work, whispering, patting shoulders, sometimes nodding her head. There was nothing casual in this scene. It was dignified and formal. Learning how to see. That’s a serious business. No one noticed Rachel enter. She stood in the back until the bell rang and the girls reluctantly put their easels away.
In Eudora’s office, Rachel delivered the news and explained her reasons why it was imperative to send Claire and Amy away. She told Eudora that Amy’s mom was going to talk to Amy about going to St. Agnes School in England on an exchange with a St. Agnes student, and that she, Rachel, would call the head of St. Agnes right away to make the arrangements.
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