long closed, its doors locked, its windows boarded, the playing fields gone to weed, all its former reputation by then reduced to a dark and woeful legacy.
My mother had prepared a chowder for us that afternoon, buttery and thick with clams and potatoes, the sort typical of Cape Cod. We ate at the dining table, Sarah Doyle, the teenage servant girl my father had brought from Boston only two years before, ladling the fragrant chowder into large china bowls.
Sitting at the table, Miss Channing asked few questions as my father went through his usual remarks about Chatham School, what its philosophy was, how it had come to be, a lecture my mother had heard countless times, but which clearly engaged Miss Channing’s interest.
“Why only boys?” she asked at one point.
“Because girls would change the atmosphere of the school,” my father answered.
“In what way?”
“The boys would feel their presence,” my father told her. “It would cause them to show off, to act foolishly.”
Miss Channing thought a moment. “But is that the fault of the girls or the boys, Mr. Griswald?”
“It’s the fault of the mixture, Miss Channing,” my father told her, obviously surprised by the boldness he detected in her question. “It makes the atmosphere more … volatile.”
My father fully expected to have brought the subject to a close with that. An expectation I snared so completely that when Miss Channing suddenly spoke again, offering what amounted to a challenge, I felt something like a call to arms.
“And without the girls, what’s the atmosphere?” she asked.
“Studious and serious,” my father answered. “Disciplined.”
“And that’s the atmosphere you want at Chatham School?”
“Yes,” my father replied firmly. “It is.”
Miss Channing said nothing more on the subject, but sitting across from her, I sensed that there was more she might have said, thoughts that were in her head, bristling there, or firing continually, like small explosions.
At the end of the meal my father led Miss Channing and my mother into the little parlor at the front of the house for a cup of tea. I lingered at the table, watching Sarah clear away the dishes after she’d served them. Though my father had closed the French doors that separated the parlor from the dining room, it was still possible for me to see Miss Channing as she sat listening quietly to my father.
“So, what do you think of the new teacher?” I asked Sarah as she leaned over my shoulder and plucked a bowl from the table.
Sarah didn’t answer, so I glanced up at her. She was not looking at me, but toward the parlor, where Miss Channing sat by the window, her hands held primly in her lap, the Joan Crawford hat sitting firmly on her head.
“Such a fine lady,” Sarah said in an almost reverential tone. “The kind folks read about in books.”
I looked back toward Miss Channing. She was taking a sip from her cup as my father went on, her blue eyes peering just over the rim, sharp and evaluating, as if her mind ceaselessly sifted the material that passed through it, allowing this, dismissing that, her sense of judgment oddly final, a court, as it would prove to be, from which there could be no appeal.
I was in my room an hour later, perusing the latest issue of
“It’s time to take Miss Channing home,” he told me.
I followed him out the door, then down the front stairs to where Miss Channing was already waiting in the car.
“It’s only a short drive,” my father said to her as he pulled himself in behind the wheel. “Perhaps I can get you there ahead of the rain.”
But he could not, for as we drove toward the cottage, the overhanging clouds suddenly disgorged their burden, thunderously and without warning, as if abruptly being called to account.
Once outside the village center, my father turned right, onto the coastal road, past the great summer houses that rose along the shore, then on toward the marsh, with its shanties and fishermen’s houses, their unkempt yards scattered with stacks of lobster traps and tangled piles of gray netting.
Given the torrent, the drive was slow, the old Ford sputtering along, battered from all directions by sudden whipping gusts, the windshield wipers squeaking rhythmically as they swept ineffectually across the glass.
My father kept his eyes on the road, of course, but I noticed that Miss Channing’s attention had turned toward the landscape of Cape Cod, its short, rounded hills sparsely clothed in tangles of brush and scrub oak, wind ripping through the sea grass that sprouted from the dunes.
“The Cape’s pretty, don’t you think, Miss Channing?” my father said cheerfully.
Her reply must have startled him.
“It looks tormented,” she said, staring out the window on the passenger side, her voice suddenly quite somber, as if it came from some darker part of her mind.
My father glanced toward her. “Tormented? What do you mean?”
“It reminds me of the islands of the Florida Keys,” she answered, her eyes still concentrated on the landscape. “The name the Spanish gave them.”
“What name was that?”
“Los Martires,” Miss Channing answered. “Because they looked so tormented by the wind and the sea.”
“Forgive my ignorance,” my father said. “But what does ‘Los Martires’ mean?”
Miss Channing continued to gaze out the window. “It means ‘the martyrs,’” she said, her eyes narrowing
