The Chatham School Affair

She turned when she heard my footsteps on the stairs, squinting into the darkness, yet with a strange, expectant air, as if she had been waiting for some important guest.

“Hello, Alice,” I said as I came up the stairs, moving slowly, closing the space between us. “You remember me, don’t you?”

She watched me silently, her eyes moving up and down.

“I’m Henry,” I told her. “Henry Griswald.”

She stared at me, uncomprehending.

“I knew you when you were Mary Reed,” I said. “Back when you lived on Black Pond.”

Her face brightened instantly. “With Mama,” she said.

“Yes.”

She smiled suddenly, a little girl’s smile, then stood, lumbered heavily to a wide bench that rested, facing the sea, at the far end of the porch. She sat down and patted the space beside her, offering another slender smile. “You can sit here,” she said.

I did as she told me, lowering myself unsteadily onto the bench, my eyes averted from her briefly before I forced myself to look at her again.

“I have something for you,” I told her, drawing the envelope from the pocket of my overcoat. “It’s a gift. From a friend. A check. I’m going to deposit it in your account tomorrow. Mr. Jamison, at the bank, he’ll handle it for you.”

She glanced at the envelope but did not take it from my hand. “Okay,” she said, then returned her gaze to the sea. “Boats go by,” she said. “Sailboats.”

I nodded. “Yes, they do.”

I saw her as a little girl again, heard her laughter as she’d darted up the stairs, answering her mother’s call, Mary, come inside, then later, on the beach, her eyes so still as she’d watched the red striped kite dip and weave in the empty sky.

“We flew a kite once,” I told her. “Do you remember that?”

She did not look at me, nor give an answer.

I looked away, out toward the nightbound sea, and suddenly it shattered, all of it around me, the great shell I had lived in all my life. I felt the air warm up around me, a green water spread out before me, my body plunging into it from off the wooden pier, the world instantly transformed into a dense, suffocating green as I surged forward, first toward the rear end of the car, then along its side, my eyes open, searching, everything held in a deathly stillness as I peered inside, staring frantically into what seemed an impenetrable wall of green. Then I saw her face swim out of the murky darkness, her red hair waving behind her, her eyes open, staring at me helplessly, her mouth agape, a wave of blood pouring from it as she gasped for breath. I grabbed the handle of the door, started to jerk it open, free her from a watery grave, then heard a voice pierce the depths, cold and cruel, as if the dark mouth of Black Pond were whispering in my ear: Sometimes I wish that she were dead. I felt my fingers wrap more tightly around the metal handle, Mrs. Reed now staring at me desperately, her face pressed against the glass, her green eyes blinking through the swirl of blood that had gathered around her head, her mouth moving wordlessly, unable to cry or scream, her eyes growing large, bulging, gaping at me with a strange incomprehension as I faced her through the glass, my hand on the handle, poised to pull open the door, but pressing against it instead, holding it in place. For a moment she saw it in my face, knew exactly what was happening. Her lips parted with her last words, Please, no. Then a wave of bloody water came from her mouth, and I saw her hands lift with an immense heaviness, her fingers claw almost gently at the glass as the seconds fell upon her like heavy weights, and her eyes dimmed, and the last bubbles rose, and her body began to drift backward, rising slowly as the weight of life deserted her, so that the last thing I saw was her body as it made a slow roll, then began to descend again, curling finally over the jutting wheel, her eyes lifted upward in the final moment, searching for the surface of the pond, its distant glimmer of bright summer air.

I closed my eyes and felt winter gather around me once again, the faintly sweet odor of Alice Craddock’s blanket wafting over me. I could feel my fingers trembling as I returned the envelope to my jacket pocket, listening first to my father’s voice as it rang over the boys of Chatham School, Evil on itself doth back recoil, then to the last stanza of a song I’d heard repeated all my life and whose every word had served to prove him wrong:For the fear and slaughter

In the dark green water

Miss Channing pays alone.

I started to rise, now wanting only to rush away, back to my house, my books, retreat once again behind the shield of my isolation, but I felt Alice’s soft, fleshy hand grab my coat, draw me back down onto the place beside her.

“You can stay with me awhile,” she said in a voice that sounded like a child’s command.

I eased myself back down upon the bench. “All right,” I said. “I’ll stay awhile.”

She smiled softly, unwrapped her blanket, and draped it over both of us.

We sat very still for a long time, then I felt her fingers reach for my hand and close around it. “Pretty night,” she said.

I nodded, waited a moment, then, because I couldn’t stop them, let the words fall from my lips. “I’m sorry, Mary,” I told her.

Her fingers tightened around mine. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said almost lightly, a child’s forgiveness for some small slight, but her gaze lifting toward the sky, a curious gravity gathering in them, so that for a moment she seemed to take on the greater burden, a whole world of broken bodies, mangled hearts, her eyes searching through the vastness for some reason that would explain their ruin, past stars and worlds of stars, the boundless depths, the last dim light, where still there was no answer to her Why?

I put my arm around her shoulders, and drew her close against my side. It seemed so little, all I had.

“You’re right,” I told her. “It is a pretty night.”

About the Author

THOMAS H. COOK is the author of fifteen novels, including The Chatham School Affair, winner of Edgar Award for Best Novel; Instruments of Night; Breakheart Hill; Mortal Memory; Sacrificial