The Chatham School Affair

by Thomas H. Cook

  She did not answer me. And when I recall that moment now, I realize that she could not possibly have answered. For we have never discovered why, given the brevity of life and the depth of our need and the force of our passions, we do not pursue our own individual happiness with an annihilating zeal, throwing all else to the wind. We know only that we don’t, and that all our goodness, our only claim to glory, resides in this inexplicable devotion to things other than ourselves.

  I turned back toward the lighthouse. Its open door was now empty, for Mr. Reed had mounted the stairs to its top by then. I could see him standing there, staring out over the village, his hands gripped to the iron rail, posed exactly as I would no doubt have painted him, a crippled silhouette against a bloodred sky.

  “She’s killing him,” I said, my mina now so fierce and darkly raging that I all but trembled as I said it. “They’re killing each other. Why don’t they just get in his boat and sail away from all this?”

  Sarah looked at me intently. I could tell that she hardly had the courage for her next question, but felt that she had to ask it anyway. “Is that what you were doing, Henry?” she asked. “Building a boat for them to run away in?”

  I thought of all I’d seen and heard over the last few weeks, the hours of labor I’d devoted to helping Mr. Reed build his boat, the unspoken purpose I’d come to feel in the building of it. I looked at her boldly, proud of what I’d done, regretful only that so much work had come to nothing. “Yes,” I told her. “That’s what I was building it for. So that they could run away.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened in dismay. “But, Henry, what about—” She stopped, and for a moment we faced each other silently. Then, with no further word, she rose and walked away, taking her place, as it seemed to me, among that numb and passionless legion forever commanded by my father.

  For the next few hours, lying sullenly in my bed upstairs, I felt nothing but my own inner seething. The most ordinary sounds came to me as an unbearable clamor, the heaviness of my mother’s footsteps like the thud of horses’ hooves, my father’s voice a mindless croaking. The house itself seemed arrayed against me, my own room closing in upon me like a vise, the air inside it so thick and acrid that I felt myself locked in a furiously smoldering chamber.

  It was nearly nine when I finally rushed down the stairs and out into the night. My mother had gone to a neighbor’s house, so she didn’t see me leave. As for my father, I could see the lights of his office at Chatham School as I slunk down Myrtle Street, and knew that he was at work there, curled like a huge black bear over the large desk beside the window, his quill pen jerking left and right as he signed “important documents.”

  I didn’t know where I was going as I continued toward the bluff, only that it vaguely felt like I was running away, doing exactly what Sarah had warned me not to do, fleeing Chatham School on a wave of impulse, casting everything aside, throwing my future to the wind.

  I knew that I was not really doing that, of course, but I kept moving anyway, down through the streets of the village I so despised, past its darkened shops, and further still, out along the road that ran between the marshes and the sea, to where Plymouth Road suddenly appeared, a powdery lane of oyster shells, eerily pale as a bank of clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight fell upon it, abruptly rendering it as gothic and overwrought as I would no doubt have drawn it, its route stretching toward me like a ghostly hand.

  In my mind I saw Miss Channing as she’d rushed from the lighthouse hours before, the red scarf trailing after her, Mr. Reed left behind, his head bowed, his hand clutching his cane. They had never appeared more tragically romantic to me than at that moment, more deserving to be together, to find the sort of happiness that only people like themselves, so fierce and passionately driven, can find, or even deserve to find.

  I turned onto Plymouth Road with little specific intention in mind, recalling the many times I’d strolled down it with Sarah to find Miss Channing sitting on the steps of Milford Cottage or standing beside the pond. I remembered the snowy day in November when we’d all walked to the top of a nearby hill, how happy everyone had been that day, how open all our lives had briefly appeared, how utterly and permanently closed they now

  I reached Milford Cottage with no prior determination to go there. Had I found the lights off, I would have turned away. Had a car been parked in the drive, I would have retreated back into the darkness and returned to Myrtle Street. But the lights were on, and no car blocked my path. Perhaps even more important, it began to rain. Not softly, but with a deafening burst of thunder, so that I knew it would be over quickly, that I would need the shelter of Milford Cottage only just long enough for the storm to pass, and then be on my way.

  When she opened the door, I saw a face unlike any I had ever seen, her eyes so pale they seemed nearly colorless, two black dots on a field of white, dark crescents beneath them, her hair thrown back and tangled as if she had been shaken violently, then hurled against a wall. Never had anyone looked more cursed by love than Miss Channing did at that dreadful instant.

  “Henry,” she said, squinting slightly, trying to bring me into focus, her voice a broken whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just out walking,” I explained, speaking rapidly, already stepping back into the night, aware that I had come upon her in a grave moment. “Then it started to rain and so …”

  She drew back into the cottage, opening the door more widely as she did so. “Come in,” she told me.

  Candles were burning everywhere inside the cottage, but there was also a fire in the hearth, a stack of letters on the mantel, some of them, as I could see, already burning in the flames. The air inside was thick and overheated, a steam already gathering in the corners of the windows.

  “I was just getting rid of a few things,” Miss Channing told me, her voice tense, almost breathless, beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and along the edge of her upper lip, her long fingers toying distractedly at the collar of her blouse. “Before I leave,” she added. Her eyes shot toward the window, the rain that could be seen battering against it. “Things I don’t want,” she said as she glanced back to me.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said only, “What can I do to help?”

  Her gaze was directed toward me with a terrible anguish, all her feeling spilling out. “I can’t go on,” she said, her eyes now glistening in the candlelight.

  I stepped toward her. “Anything, Miss Channing,” I said. “I just want to help.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do, Henry,” she told me.

  I looked at her imploringly. “There must be something,” I insisted.

  I saw a strange steeliness come into her face, a sense of flesh turning into stone, as if, in that single instant, she had determined that she would survive whatever it was that love had done to her. With a quick backward step she drew away from me and walked into the adjoining bedroom. For a moment she stood beside the bookshelf near her bed, staring down at it with a cold, inflexible glare. Then she plucked a necklace from its top shelf, her fingers clutching it like pale talons as she returned to me. “Get rid of this,” she said.

  “But, Miss Channing …”

  She grabbed my hand, placed the necklace in its open palm, and closed my fingers around it. “That’s all I want you to do, Henry,” she said.

  The rain had stopped when I left Milford Cottage a few minutes later, Miss Channing standing in the door, framed by the interior light. She was still there when I rounded the near bend and, with that turn, swept out of her view.

  I walked on in darkness, moving slowly over the wet ground, thinking of what I’d glimpsed in Miss Channing’s face, shaken by what I’d seen, the awful ruin of the passions she’d once shared with Mr. Reed, unable to imagine anything that might return her to its earlier joy save for the one that had always presented itself, the two of them in Mr. Reed’s boat, a high wind sweeping through its white sails, propelling them around Monomoy Point and into the surging
, boundless sea.

  For a time I was locked in pure fantasy, as if I were with them, sweeping southward, a Caribbean wind whipping the tropical waters off the coast of Cuba, Miss Channing’s face radiantly tanned, her black hair flying free in warm sea breezes, Mr. Reed at the helm, miraculously cured of his limp, the scar erased forever from his face, the winters of New England, with all their frozen vows, unable to reach them now or call them back to anything.

  It was the headlights of an approaching car that brought my attention back to Plymouth Road. They came forward slowly, almost stalkingly, like two yellow eyes, covering me in so bright a shaft of blinding light that it was only after the car had come to a halt beside me that I saw Mr. Reed behind the wheel, his eyes hidden beneath the shadows of his hat.

  “Get in,” he said.

  I got in and he pulled away, continuing down Plymouth Road, but turning to the left at the fork, moving toward his house on the other side of the pond rather than Milford Cottage.

  “What are you doing out here, Henry?”

  “Just walking.”

  He kept his eyes trained on the road, his fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel. “Were you with Miss Channing?”

  “Yes,” I told him.

  “Why?”

  “I was out walking and it started to rain. I went there to get out of the rain.”

  The car continued forward, two shafts of yellow light dimly illuminating the glistening road ahead.

  “What did she tell you?” Mr. Reed asked.

  “Tell me?”

  His eyes swept over to me. “About this afternoon. At the lighthouse.”

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I answered.

  For a moment he seemed not to believe me. We sped on for a few seconds, his attention held on the road ahead. Then I saw his shoulders fall slightly, as if a great weight had suddenly been pressed down upon them. He lifted his foot from the accelerator and pressed down on the brake, bringing the car to a skidding halt. In the distance I could see the lights of his house glowing softly out of the darkness. “Sometimes I wish that she were dead,” he whispered. Then he turned to me, his face nearly as gray and lifeless as the masks of Miss Channing’s column. “You’d better get home now, Henry” was all he said.

  I did as he told me, then watched as he pulled away, the taillights of his car glaring back toward me like small mad eyes.

  Mr. Reed did not come to school the next day, but Miss Channing did, her mood very somber, the agitation of the night before now held within the iron grip of her relentless self-control.

  It was the Friday before final examinations, and we all knew that since she was leaving Chatham School, it would be the last class we would ever have with her. Other departing teachers, those who had retired or found better posts, even the few whose abilities my father had found unacceptable and sent packing, had always taken a moment to say good-bye to us, usually with a few casual words about how much they had enjoyed being with us and hoped we’d stay in touch. I suppose that as the class neared its final minutes that day, we expected Miss Channing to do something similar, perhaps give a vague indication of what she intended to do after leaving Chatham School.

  But Miss Channing didn’t do any of that. Instead, she raced through a review of the major things she’d taught us, her manner brittle, giving only the most dipped answers to our questions, ending it all with a single, lifeless comment. “It’s time to go,” she said only a few seconds before the final bell. Then she strode down the aisle and stationed herself at the entrance to her classroom.

  The bell sounded, and as we all rose and filed out of the room, Miss Channing nodded to each of us as we went past, her final word only a quick, barely audible, “Good-bye.”

  “We don’t have to say good-bye now,” I told her when I reached the door. “I’ll be coming over with Sarah on Sunday.”

  She nodded briskly. “All right,” she said, then swiftly turned her attention to the boy behind me. “Good-bye, William,” she said as he stepped forward and took her hand.

  For the rest of the day Miss Channing spent her time cleaning out the small converted shed that had served as her room and studio for the preceding nine months. She put away her materials, stacked the sculpting pedestals, folded up the dropcloth she’d placed over the tables on which she’d fashioned the masks for the column on the front lawn.

  By four in the afternoon she’d nearly finished most of the work and was now concentrating upon the final details of the cleanup. Mrs. Benton saw her washing the windows with the frantic wiping motions she later described to Mr. Parsons and Captain Hamilton. Toward evening, the air in the courtyard now a pale blue, Mrs. Abercrombie saw the lights go out in her classroom, then Miss Channing step out of it, closing the door behind her. For a moment she peered back inside it, Mrs. Abercrombie said, then she turned and walked away. A few seconds later Mr. Taylor, a local banker who lived in the one great house on Myrtle Street, saw her standing beside the column on the front lawn of Chatham School, her fingers lightly touching one of its faces. And finally, just before nightfall, with a line of storm clouds advancing along the far horizon, my father came out of the front door of the school, glanced idly to the left, and saw her standing on the bluff, the tall white lighthouse to her back, her long black hair tossing wildly in the wind as she stared out over the darkening sea.

  During the next day, Saturday, May 28, 1927, no one saw Miss Channing at all. The local postman said the cottage was deserted when he delivered her mail at eleven o’clock, and a hunter by the name of Marcus Lowe, caught in the same sort of sudden thunderstorm that had swept over the Cape two nights before, later said that he’d stood for nearly half an hour on the small porch of Milford Cottage and heard no stirring inside it. Nor had any of its lamps been lighted, he added, despite the gloom that had by then settled along the outer reaches of Black Pond.

  CHAPTER 25

  It’s quite possible that from the time Miss Channing left Chatham School on that last Friday before final exams, no one at all saw her until the following Sunday morning, when Sarah arrived for her final reading lesson.

  The storm of the previous evening had passed, leaving the air glistening and almost sultry as we walked down Plymouth Road that morning. Sarah appeared hardly to have remembered the sharp words I’d said to her as we’d sat at the edge of the playing field two days before. Once she even took my arm, holding it lightly as we continued down the road, her whole manner cheerful and confident, the timid girl of a year before completely left behind.

  “I’ll miss Miss Channing,” she told me. “But I’m not going to stop studying.”

  She had mastered the basics of reading and writing by then, and from time to time during the past few weeks I’d seen her sitting in the kitchen, an open book in her lap, her beautiful eyes fiercely concentrated on the page, getting some of the words, clearly stumped by others, but in general making exactly the sort of progress I would have expected in one so dedicated and ambitious and eager to escape the life she might otherwise have been trapped in.

  She released my arm and looked at me determinedly. “I’m not going to ever give up, Henry,” she said.

  She’d dressed herself quite formally that morning, no doubt in a gesture of respect toward Miss Channing. She wore a white blouse and a dark red skirt, and her hair fell loosely over her shoulders and down her back in a long, dark wave. She’d made something special as well, not merely cookies or a pie, but a shawl, dark blue with a gold fringe, the colors of Chatham School.

  “Do you think Miss Channing will like it?” she asked eagerly as she drew it from the basket.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I answered, recalling how distant and unhappy Miss Channing had seemed in her final class on Friday, the way she’d only nodded to us as we’d left her room. But even that distance seemed better than the torment I’d seen two nights before, the look in her eyes as she’d placed the necklace in my hand, the cold finality of the words she’d said, Get rid of this.

&nb
sp; But I hadn’t gotten rid of it, so that by the time Sarah and I reached the fork in Plymouth Road, I could feel it like a small snake wriggling in my trouser pocket, demanding to be set free.

  I stopped suddenly, knowing what I would do.

  “What’s the matter, Henry?” Sarah asked.

  I felt my hand slide into my pocket, the glass necklace curl around my fingers. “I have to go over to Mr. Reed’s for a minute,” I told her.

  “Mr. Reed’s? Why?”

  “I have to give him something. I’ll come to Miss Channing’s after that.”

  Sarah nodded, then turned and headed on down the road, taking the fork that led to Milford Cottage while I took the one that led to Mr. Reed’s.

  I arrived at his house a few minutes later. His car was sitting in the driveway, but the yard was deserted, and I heard no sounds coming from the house.

  Then I saw her, Mrs. Reed walking toward me from the old gray shed that stood in the distance, her body lumbering heavily across the weedy ground, so deep in thought she did not look up until she’d nearly reached the front steps of the house.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Reed,” I said.

  She stopped abruptly, startled, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun, gazing at me with a strange wariness, as if I were a shadow she’d suddenly glimpsed in the forest or something she’d caught lurking behind a door.

  “I’m Henry Griswald,” I reminded her. “The boy you—”

  “I know who you are,” she said, her chin lifting with a sudden jerk, as if in anticipation of a blow. “You helped him with the boat.”

  I could hear the accusation in her voice, but decided to ignore it. “Is Mr. Reed home?”

  The question appeared to throw her into distress. “No,” she answered in a voice now suddenly more agitated. “He’s out somewhere, walking.” Her eyes shot toward the pond, the little white cottage that rested on its far bank. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”