Every year, newbs squirreled bits of food out for Murphy and were frustrated when he wouldn’t eat. Nobody understood why he refused, but the running theory was that someone had fed him LSD back in the seventies—hence his preternatural calm, too. I don’t think anyone worked out that dropping a tab in the seventies would have made this dog Methuselah, but the explanation had become axiom long before I arrived.
Murphy, it was decided, could handle the goose. He was a setter! Against all evidence, students figured that he would spot the goose in the reeds and go bounding in, scaring it off to haunt some other pond. After lunch Murphy was led by his soft collar down to the spot closest to where the bird’s calls were coming from. Its cries increased in frequency as the students approached.
But Murphy was unmoved. So a student picked up a rock and tossed it in the direction of the goose, to alert the dog with the splash. Murphy barely widened his eyes. His ears hung still.
Another boy threw another rock. And a third. It was only a matter of time before someone hit the goose, and the miserable squawk it made gave everyone a chill. Still, more rocks followed. How could they not? There must have been something wrong with the bird in the first place, of course. It was probably already close to death, said the few boys who would talk about it later. That’s why it was stuck there, making that racket. It was a mercy, frankly.
We were all grateful the honking stopped.
We had all read “The Lottery,” of course. It was a staple of fourth-form English class, along with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Hawthorne and Hamlet. But nobody meant to reenact Shirley Jackson’s horror story. We were as blind to allegory as we were to privilege. Consequences were not our concern. The school’s rules were not even called rules—they were formally known as expectations. Here the children of the elite were trained not in right or wrong but in projections of belief.
Once the dead bird began to smell, the maintenance crew drove their cart down the path and waded in. Murphy, failed setter, resumed his spot at the door to Wing, overlooking his grounds.
When I was a sixth former, my parents, pleased that it would soon be over, suffered a convulsion of thanks and made a cash contribution to St. Paul’s. They had noticed that the school’s banner was in tatters. This was the gilded tapestry hoisted by an acolyte in formal chapel processions, just before the high cross. The red stitching of the crest was dulled and loose. You could barely make out the pelican in the corner. I’d seen the banner looking like a sail after a storm and not even guessed what it was. Mom, alert to parish pageantry, rang up the development office and commissioned its renewal.
For the final service of my sixth-form year, with my parents and all the graduates’ families teary-eyed in the pews of the magnificent chapel, the restored banner was revealed. I watched it come down the aisle, shining like a wing. That was our part, I thought, the Crawford part, though nobody knew. I felt neither anger nor pride. It was enough to know that I had been there, and of my time this silk would remain. Alex was beside my family, watching me sing. My parents I could barely look at, so I focused on my fellow choristers—their mouths framing sound, their faces docile, grateful.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Detective Julie Curtin and Lieutenant Sean Ford of the Concord, New Hampshire, Police Department, whose honesty and consistent focus on victim-centered discourse were transformative. Almost alone among administrators and authorities who were involved with my case, they saw through bureaucratic obstacles, diversion, and obfuscation and worked to restore truth and integrity. Where there cannot be justice, there is sometimes clarity, and this is its own mercy.
This book would not have a voice were it not for the leadership of Tarana Burke and the advocacy she has inspired, or for the example of fortitude and fierce care offered by Chessy Prout and the Prout family. Every survivor and witness of abuse at St. Paul’s School who spoke up, anonymously or otherwise, helped generate enough interest and anger to rouse an institution slumbering in its pride and reach those of us who had resigned ourselves to silence. Thank you.
After this book was completed, the trustees of St. Paul’s voted to remove Bill Matthews’s name from the hockey center. This decision was made without consideration of how Matthews treated me and my family, but stemmed from his handling of more recent events. Archibald Cox Jr., as board chair, and Kathy Giles, current rector, presided over a decision that was, and remains, highly contentious among alumni and trustees. The symbolic removal of Matthews’s legacy bespeaks good intentions, but I find cause for hope only in the fact that current leadership is willing to tolerate antagonism to force conversation about change. I wish them courage.
I first wrote about St. Paul’s in a writing seminar led by Toni Morrison, who encouraged this work in its very earliest form and beyond the seminar’s end. The staggering privilege (in all senses) that put me in that room of six women, in the space she created, is in my mind dwarfed only by Professor Morrison’s generosity. In the years since, I’ve been lucky to be encouraged in this telling by wonderful writers, particularly Russell Banks, Carol Edgarian, Tom Jenks, and Mark Strand. Thank you especially to Meg Howrey and Sameer Pandya, who offered essential support through multiple drafts of multiple books.
There are several people who, quietly and with kind patience, offered me words, books, and examples of awareness and advocacy. Thank you to Susan Brison (and to Eva Feder Kittay, for the introduction), Molly Bidwell, and Marva Butler
