The Chatham School Affair

she’d been before, locked in what appeared the same concentration that I now noticed in Mr. Reed. Throughout the lesson she’d occasionally glanced out her front window, peering through the parted curtains to the empty lawn, her eyes filled with a subtle but detectable agitation, the way I imagined the wives of sailors to have gazed out from their widow’s walks, apprehensively scanning the horizon for their husbands’ ships. I now had no doubt that it was Mr. Reed she’d been thinking of at those moments.

Mr. Reed returned to his work, the brush moving rhythmically right and left.

I watched him for a few moments, knowing that he was thinking about Miss Channing. I could feel the present I’d made for him still cradled under my arm. It seemed the perfect time to give it to him.

“I have something for you,” I said, rising from the chair. “A Christmas present. I finished it while you were in Maine. I hope you like it. Merry Christmas, Mr. Reed.”

I’d wrapped it in bright green paper and bound it together with a red ribbon. “Thank you,” he said, lifting it slightly, smiling. By its shape he must have known that it was a drawing, although when he opened it, I could tell that what I’d done both surprised and pleased him.

“Miss Channing,” he murmured.

I’d drawn her with pen and ink, though in a pose far different than Mr. Reed would have expected, her hair falling over her bare shoulders in a tangled mass, her eyes intense and searching, lips full and slightly parted, her head tilted forward, but her gaze directed straight ahead, a figure both real and unreal, ethereal, yet beckoning, rendered in an unmistakable attitude of seduction.

“It’s beautiful, Henry,” Mr. Reed said, his eyes fixed on the portrait. He gazed at it a moment longer, then walked over to the small table in the corner. “I’ll hang it here,” he said. He took a nail from his jacket pocket and drove it into the wall above the desk. But before he hung the portrait, he paused, as if another thought had come to him. “You know, Henry, we should show it to Miss Channing.”

“Do you think she’d like it?”

“Of course she would.”

I was not so sure, but Mr. Reed seemed certain, so a few minutes later we were backing out of the driveway of the boathouse, headed for Milford Cottage, Mr. Reed’s spirits considerably higher now, the framed portrait of Miss Channing pressed against his side.

And so, as it turned out, I didn’t do any work on the boat that day. But during the next few weeks I often returned to the boathouse to do what remained of the caulking and sealing, construct the mast and the boom, assemble the rigging. Enough work so that, four months later, after the Coast Guard had found the boat adrift in Cape Cod Bay, towed it back to Chatham, and moored it in the harbor, I could still walk down to the water’s edge, look out beyond the other boats to the far side of the marina, and see the white prow of the Elizabeth lolling emptily in the distance, my eyes forever focused upon that part of it, the naked mast, the rolled-up sail, that I had helped to make.

Miss Channing was standing at the edge of Black Pond when we pulled into the driveway, a place where Sarah and I would sometimes find her when we arrived at Milford Cottage on a Sunday morning, and where, in my mind, I still see her, dressed in white, her back to me, framed by a swath of dark water.

She’d turned as Mr. Reed’s car came to a halt, rushed toward it briefly, then glimpsed me in the passenger seat, and instantly reined herself in, so that she was walking slowly by the time she reached us.

“Hello, Elizabeth,” Mr. Reed said softly as he got out of the car.

“Hello, Leland,” Miss Channing answered. It was the first time I’d ever heard her call Mr. Reed by his given name.

He drew the picture from beneath his arm. “I want to show you something. It’s a Christmas present. Henry gave it to me.”

She stared at the portrait much longer than I’d expected her to. Now I realize that she could not possibly have cared for the way I’d drawn her, that it was only a nakedly romantic vision of herself, fervidly adolescent, and as she’d continued to study it that afternoon, she might well have been thinking those very words she would later say to Mr. Parsons, her eyes downcast, staring at her hands. It was never me.

“Very nice,” she said softly at last. She looked at me, smiled thinly, then handed the portrait back to Mr. Reed. “Would you like some tea?”

Mr. Reed didn’t hesitate in his reply. “Yes. Thank you.”

We went directly into the cottage.

“When did you get back?” Miss Channing asked Mr. Reed after she’d prepared the tea and served us.

“Just yesterday,” Mr. Reed answered.

“And how was Maine?”

“Like always,” Mr. Reed muttered. He took a quick sip, then said, “And you? What did you do while I was away?”

“I stayed here,” she replied. “Reading mostly.”

Mr. Reed drew in a slow breath. “Tell me, Elizabeth … do you sometimes think that you’re living only in your head?”

She shrugged. “Is that such a bad place?”

Mr. Reed smiled gravely. “It depends on the head, I suppose.”

“Yes, of course,” Miss Channing said.

There was an interval of silence before Mr. Reed said, “The boat will be finished by summer.”

Miss Channing said nothing, but only raised the cup to her lips, her eyes on Mr. Reed.

“After that it would be possible to”—he stopped, as if cautioning himself against speaking too rashly, then went on—“possible to go anywhere, I suppose.”