The Chatham School Affair

I shrugged. “I … don’t …”

Something seemed to ignite in her mind. “He wouldn’t be the first, you know. The first one to leave me.”

I said nothing.

She was watching me apprehensively, as if I were not a boy at all, but someone sent to do her harm, my fingers wrapped not around a frail glass necklace, but a length of gray rope, the steel grip of a knife.

“I just wanted to see Mr. Reed,” I told her. “I’ll come back some other time.”

She stared at me angrily. “You tell him I’ll not have it again,” she said loudly, distractedly, as if she were speaking to someone in the distance. “He said he would be home.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said.

She remained silent, locked in what now seemed an impenetrable distraction, her eyes drifting, unhinged, so that they seemed unable to focus on anything more definite than the old apron her fingers now began to squeeze and jerk.

Looking at her at that moment, I could not imagine that she would ever embrace Mr. Reed again, draw him into her bed, or even go walking with him through the woods on a snowy afternoon. How could he possibly live the rest of his life with her, eating a milky chowder while she stared at him from the other side of the table, babbling about the price of lard, but thinking only of betrayal?

Suddenly, the alternative to such a fate presented itself more forcefully than it ever had, and I saw Miss Channing rushing from the lighthouse, Mr. Reed at her side, the two of them making their way down the coastal road, through the village streets, until they reached the Elizabeth, its broad sails magnificently unfurled, the trade winds waiting like white stallions to carry them away.

It was then, in a moment of supreme revelation, that the answer came to me. Someone else had to do it. Someone else had to set them free. Miss Channing and Mr. Reed were helplessly imprisoned in the dungeon of Chatham School, my father its grim warden, Mrs. Reed the guardian of the gate. It was up to me to be the real hero of their romance, turn the iron key, pull back the heavy door.

And so I leveled my eyes upon Mrs. Reed and said, “Let them go, Mrs. Reed. They want to be free.”

Her eyes froze, everything in her face tightening, her features now a twisted rope. “What did you say?”

“They want to be free,” I repeated, now both astonished and emboldened by my own daring.

She stared at me stonily. “Free?”

I glanced toward the pond. In the distance I could see the willow behind Milford Cottage, the pier that stretched out over the water. I thought of the moment when Miss Channing had pressed a trembling hand against Mr. Reed’s cheek, the look in his eyes as he’d felt her touch.

It was a vision that urged me onward with a ruthless zeal. “Yes,” I said coldly. “To be free. That’s what they want. Miss Channing and Mr. Reed.”

For a moment she stared at me silently, her eyes now strangely dull, her features flat and blunted, as if they’d been beaten down by a heavy rod. Then her body stiffened, like someone jerked up by a noose, and she whirled around and bolted away from me, calling out as she did so, Mary, come inside, her voice pealing through the surrounding woods as she swept up the stairs and disappeared into the house, a little girl darting around its far corner only seconds later, climbing up the wooden stairs, laughing brightly as she vanished into its unlighted depths.

Miss Channing and Sarah were inside Milford Cottage when I arrived there a few minutes later, standing very erectly in their midst, still in awe of the great thing I felt sure I had just accomplished.

Sarah had obviously waited for my arrival before giving Miss Channing her present. “This is for you,” she said, smiling delightedly, as she brought the shawl from her basket.

“Thank you,” Miss Channing said, taking it from her gently, as if it were an infant. “It’s beautiful, Sarah.”

We were all standing in the front room of the cottage. Many of Miss Channing’s belongings were now packed into the same leather traveling cases I’d brought there nearly a year before, along with a few boxes in which she’d placed a small number of things she’d acquired since then. In my mind I saw myself loading them onto Mr. Reed’s boat, then standing at the edge of the pier, waving farewell as they drifted out of the moonlit marina, never to be seen again at Chatham School.

“I have something for you too,” Miss Channing said to Sarah. She walked into her bedroom, then came out with the African bracelet in her hand, its brightly colored beads glinting in the light. “For all your work,” she said as she handed it to Sarah.

Sarah’s eyes widened. “Oh, thank you, Miss Channing,” she said as she put it on.

Miss Channing nodded crisply. “Well, we should start our lesson now,” she said.

They took their seats at the table by the window, Sarah arranging her books while Miss Channing read over the writing she’d assigned the Sunday before.

I left them to their work, strolled to the edge of the pond. In the distance I could see Mr. Reed’s house half concealed within a grove of trees, his car sitting motionless in the driveway.

I was still at the water’s edge an hour later, when I saw Sarah and Miss Channing come walking toward me, Sarah chatting away, as she often did at the end of a lesson.

“Where is it you will be going now?” she asked Miss Channing as they strolled up to me.

Miss Channing’s answer came more quickly than I’d expected, since I hadn’t heard anyone in my household mention her intentions.

“Boston, perhaps,” she said. “At least for a while.”

Sarah smiled excitedly. “Now, that’s a fine city,” she said. “And what do you plan to be doing once you’re settled in?”

Miss Channing shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was a subject that appeared to trouble her. To avoid it, she said to me, “Henry, I have some books from the school library. Would you mind taking them back for me?”