I read Van Gogh’s letters to Theo. Biographies of Michelangelo, Mozart, and Beethoven. I had no clue what disciplines I was paddling in, nor even on what shores a discipline might form. What I was watching, with all the fever of a voyeur, was the practice of passion. These examples were startling alternatives to the life of my own mind, to the steady, frozen-rain fear that made everything glassy and fragile. I was terrified to break through. All I wanted was to break through. I thought I recognized the feeling contemporary artists recalled when asked how they felt in treatment with new psychotropic medications and they described being dulled and divorced from themselves. They wanted off the drugs and back into the storm. I envied them their sense of direction, even if it led to unspeakable misery.
I returned to Plath and her men with a love of the rack and the screw. Sitting in the soaring alcoves of the new library, I read to myself, softly but out loud. If I studied keenly enough, could I borrow these writers’ fire? It was not so different from my little girl’s logic that kneeling on hard wood made God more likely to hear my prayer. I did not understand how a person fashioned a self. But the books I found seemed to lead from one to the next as though someone had gone up ahead and laid them out for me. I rise with my red hair.
I finished my proposal and prepared to present it to Ms. Radley. I hoped from the way she led Vespers that she would agree to supervise me. I just couldn’t begin to think how to explain why I was doing this project, or why I was asking her.
“Just come to my Religion class,” suggested Marion. “Eighth period Monday. You can ask her right afterward.”
“And say what?”
“How about just tell her what you want to write about?”
“But won’t she want to know why?”
Marion’s smile was almost pitying.
I asked, “Will you stay while I talk to her?” I needed so much from Ms. Radley that I was frightened to approach her.
“Um, if you want me to.”
“She has no idea what this is about.”
Marion said, “Do you know what this is about?”
Of course not. “I’ve got a very thorough proposal,” I said.
“Then I think she’ll be happy to say yes, Lace. But I’ll stay if you want.”
When I appeared at the door to their class, Ms. Radley was shrugging into a sweater—it was still chilly in the evenings—and on her way out she suggested we meet at her home when we might have more time.
“Just any time?” I asked, feeling panicky.
“Well, unless I’m on duty. If I’m on duty, you can come talk to me in the dorm, but we’ll have more privacy at my home.”
Marion gave me her lullaby smile.
This planning of Ms. Radley’s attention was a revelation. My encounters with faculty had almost always taken place in a check-in scrum or while walking in a crowd. Halfway through each semester, Mrs. Fenn handed me my interim grades on a small piece of computer paper and said, “Congratulations.” It hadn’t occurred to me that a teacher could invite me to her home for a conversation. I was grateful for this.
I waited until a Tuesday night I thought she’d have free and walked across campus to the little white house where she lived.
She was among the faculty who did not live in a dorm, though she was assigned to one for check-in and advising, as almost all masters were. Somehow, the truly mild girls ended up in the dorm she oversaw—the musicians and poets, girls like Marion. I wondered again who decided housing assignments. For the sixth form I was planning to request to live with the Kittredge girls, though it wasn’t likely they’d put my name down too. We had arrived at a passable détente, as thin-lipped as the new spring over the lawns. I could sit with them at breakfast if I wanted to. I could join them on the path between classes. My company was welcome so long as Budge’s Candace (they were still going strong) was not with them. If I saw her there, I kept my distance.
Ms. Radley heard me on the step before I knocked.
“Come in.”
The room was cozy and low. She sat beneath a floor lamp with a brown satchel at her feet, yarn twining up into her lap. Her knitting needles were ice-blue and flashed beneath the lamp. Books and papers were stacked everywhere, and musical instruments leaned on stands in a corner. There was a golden retriever on the floor. The dog’s tail thumped.
“Good girl, Raz,” she said. And to me: “Now, what’s the plan?”
She gave me so much space, it did not occur to me to wonder what she knew.
“Well, I want to do an ISP. About the connection between biochemical depression and the—”
“Yes, yes,” she said. She let loose a knitting needle and held out a hand. “Give me the form. I’ll have a look.”
“—the creative genius. I was thinking to include three subjects, namely Sylvia Plath, Mozart, and Van Gogh—”
“Sure.” She set the page down, unexamined.
“—and I’ve got several texts lined up that address the pharmaceutical research, which is really new, and I can contact this psychiatrist at Northwestern if I need to for an interview…”
She nodded, eyes on her work. I spun faster, but I was running out of impressive things to say. Finally the dog groaned, and I stopped talking.
“Oh, Raz,” said Ms. Radley. “I bet you’d like a scratch.” She looked up at me.
I went and sat next to the dog and pushed my fingers into her
