The Devil and Webster

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  They made their way back to their cars without having slipped, and Naomi, just as Francine was about to unlock her door, and without planning to do so, suddenly heard herself ask whether everything was all right. Francine stopped. “What? What do you mean?”

  “Oh no,” Naomi said. She had alarmed herself almost as much. “I just…I wondered. If there’s anything I can do.”

  “Do about what, Naomi?”

  “Well,”—she was backpedaling frantically now—“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m just…I was wondering if everything’s okay with you. I mean, a few weeks ago you said you weren’t ready to talk about it. And I don’t know what ‘it’ is, but I wanted to say that if you ever did want to talk, you can talk to me.”

  Francine appeared to soften slightly. Her broad shoulders fell forward, and she looked down. “I appreciate that, but I don’t…” She shrugged. “It’s not me, really. It’s just…Sumner and work. Just annoying bureaucratic shit. And you know he works so hard, and he’s so devoted to Hawthorne. It just appalls me how underappreciated he is.”

  “That’s hard,” Naomi said, carefully, neutrally.

  “People love to hurl crap,” she said bitterly.

  Who was hurling crap at Sumner? Naomi thought. But if Francine wanted to tell her, she would.

  “It’s going to work out, I’m confident. But it’s not pleasant.”

  Naomi surprised herself, again, by asking, “What about that guy at your house?” And again, she could not fail to note Francine’s physical reaction. “You know. The Grosvenor who doesn’t actually have any money.”

  “That’s not to be repeated,” she said, alarmed and tense.

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, no. Not really. He’s Sumner’s closest advocate on the board, actually. He’s been a great support.”

  “Okay. Good,” said Naomi, feeling more confused than before. “As I said, the last thing I want to do is pry. But please, if you need to…vent. Or whatever. Anytime.”

  Briefly, Francine looked as if she might actually be considering this offer, but then she seemed to get hold of herself. She opened up her car door. “When’s Hannah back?” she asked.

  “The day before classes start. Think she’s trying to tell me something?” Naomi asked with deep sarcasm.

  “Maybe,” Francine said seriously.

  This required a full five seconds to land.

  Oh, she wanted to say. No, no, we’re fine. Everything’s fine! But it occurred to her that she did not want to hear Francine’s opinion on this subject, so they hugged awkwardly, got into their cars, and drove away in opposite directions.

  A week later she was back at Francine’s for New Year’s Eve, a small dinner to which the problematic Billy Grosvenor had also been invited. This time he came with a woman, but the woman turned out to be another trustee of the Hawthorne School, and very married to someone whose plane had been grounded at O’Hare. Joanne Lattimer was tall—nearly Francine’s height—with a default facial expression of such severe displeasure that her obvious plastic surgery struck Naomi as having been pointlessly undertaken. “Oh, good,” she said tightly, shaking Naomi’s hand. “I was told you’d be here.”

  And here I am, Naomi refrained from saying.

  “This is extraordinary, this transformation at Webster.”

  Was this about the protest again? Naomi wondered. Had the news penetrated even the old guard of Southborough? “Oh?” she said noncommittally.

  “Well, certainly. You never used to hear about Webster. If you weren’t going to the Ivies or the Seven Sisters, it was state school. Nothing wrong with state school.”

  Never said there was, thought Naomi.

  “And now, all the private school kids know about it. They’re choosing it over Harvard and Yale. Half of Groton applied last year. I can tell you, the parents are really playing catch-up with this. Webster College!”

  “Well,” Naomi said dryly, “we’ve always been here. We’ve been hiding in plain sight. Ooh,” she said, eyeing the small but distinctive mounds of caviar on toast, wafting by on a platter in Francine’s hands. “Is that caviar?”

  “Yes, but really, what can you offer them that the Ivies can’t?”

  It was worth a try, Naomi thought.

  “Those are eight fantastic schools. Major differences among them, of course, but all great schools. But just because this particular eight decided to form an athletic league in the fifties, that has never meant there was something magical about them. And the term itself is only sixty years old, you know.”

  She could see from Joanne Lattimer’s frozen and unhappy face that she hadn’t known. And also that she didn’t care.

  “But these are ancient schools,” the woman objected. Only an American would refer to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as “ancient.” “And Webster…”

  “Founded in 1762,” Naomi said shortly. Now, her Irish was up. And she wasn’t Irish.

  Lattimer looked as if she wished she could widen her eyes at this, but sadly wasn’t able to do so.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  So why wasn’t Webster an Ivy? she probably wanted to ask.

  Because we probably had a lousy football team in the 1950s. Okay?

  “Well, then, why did we never hear about Webster until now?”

  It was, of course, a circular argument, and hence not winnable.

  “Just one of those mysteries.” Naomi sighed. “And you work with Sumner, I understand?”

  Joanne Lattimer looked, again, flatly irritated by the question. Or maybe amused? It was so hard to tell.

  “I’m on the board of the Hawthorne School. I have been on the board since 1995. All three of my children attended Hawthorne.”

  Naomi nodded. This time, the tray with the caviar, carried by Francine herself, was coming too close for her to miss it. “They must have had a wonderful experience for you to have given so much of your life to the school.”

  “Hawthorne, I believe, is one of the finest private elementary schools in the state. Perhaps the country.”

  “Mm,” said Naomi. She was taking one of the little toasts from Francine’s tray. “I love this!” she told her friend. “And so far it’s one of the few proteins Hannah doesn’t object to. Not that I get to eat it often.”

  “Who is Hannah?” said Joanne Lattimer.

  “Naomi’s daughter,” Francine said. “She’s phenomenal.”

  “Where does she go to school?” Joanne said, cutting to the chase.

  “She’s a sophomore at Webster,” Francine said, because Naomi’s mouth was full. But if Naomi was expecting the usual Naturally or Of course she is, it didn’t come. In Joanne Lattimer’s world it passed without comment that connections were everything. Undoubtedly her own children had progressed from the hallowed gates of Hawthorne to the hallowed gates of Groton to the hallowed gates of Harvard, and that was as it always had been and always would be, forever, and ever, and ever…amen.

  “Joanne has done wonderful things for Hawthorne,” said Francine, extending her tray to give both women a second stab at the caviar. Only Naomi availed herself of this.

  “Tell me more!” Naomi said. She smiled at her friend.

  The woman, not remotely interested in deflecting praise, but not, apparently, enjoying it either, said, “I designed our capital campaign in the 1990s. We raised over fifteen million for the school and built a new gymnasium and a new media center for the children. We also have our own stables, thanks to a donor. The children ride twice a week.”

  “That’s…” but Naomi felt lost for words. What that was was many things. She wasn’t sure she should say most of them out loud. “Wow.”

  “Yes. Wow,” Francine said helpfully. “And of course Joanne headed the search committee that brought Sumner to Hawthorne. So we are endlessly grateful for that!”

  She said it jauntily, lightly, but it was anything but light. Naomi saw that right away, and it hit with a fittin
g blow. Holy cow, she thought. But she was flying blind.

  “Oh…well…then I have reason to be grateful to you as well!” Naomi managed. “If Sumner hadn’t come to Hawthorne, I don’t think our present dean of admissions would have applied for an opening at Webster. And since this woman”—she linked her arm through Francine’s, the one that was not holding the tray—“is my very good friend, I personally owe you a debt.”

  But even this physical gesture of female solidarity failed to impress the chilly woman before them. She drained her Champagne as her gaze drifted up, past the shoulders of the two women to the far end of the room, where someone more interesting might or might not soon appear. Her snowed-in husband? The president and dean of admissions for Harvard or Yale? Elijah’s ghost? “Well, I don’t know about that,” she said simply. “One never knows how these things are going to work out, ultimately.”

  Naomi merely stared at her, but Francine flinched. Actually flinched. It passed through them both like a current of rasping electricity, and Naomi, involuntarily, turned to look at her friend. But Francine would not look back. Impervious to this (or was she? it was so hard to tell with that petrified face), Joanne Lattimer thanked her hostess and announced that she would now head home to await her husband, though at this point he would certainly arrive in the new year, and her escort, the by comparison warm and delightful Billy Grosvenor, could plainly be seen laughing and enjoying himself with Sumner over by the fireplace. Then she set her empty glass among the caviar toast points on Francine’s silver tray, and walked away, giving both women the back of her narrow, cashmere-encased shoulders. She tapped Billy Grosvenor on his wrist, and with remarkable swiftness he, too, had put down his drink (on the mantelpiece, at least) and left his clearly affected host to accompany her from the room. It was all over in less than a moment. And on that note, soon after, the year itself came jolting to an unhappy end.

  Part III

  Symbol

  Chapter Eleven

  The Basement of Sojourner Truth

  Then, with the new term, they were back. Some of them looked notably tan, others red-cheeked in the distinct manner of winter sports enthusiasts, but once within reach of the Stump they magically regained their shared posture of flinty and united resistance, securing their tents (again!) and making their sordid nests. Naomi, watching them (surreptitiously from the guest room window of the Stone House), felt a dull mood begin to settle over her neck and shoulders. She didn’t call anyone. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, and not merely because she wasn’t sure whom she’d be calling or what she’d expect them to do. By now, her primary feeling about the students around the Stump—the ones from Webster, at any rate (because she’d learned from the media she wasn’t speaking to that there were now student contingents from Wesleyan, Yale, Brown, Mount Holyoke, and, incredibly, MIT—though were they not, as in an Arthur Miller play, all her students?)—was a persistent undertow of shame. She was ashamed of what was happening now. Because she had not solved it. Or stopped it. Or—worst of all—truly understood why it hadn’t ended already. And as the last days of the break passed in thin January sunlight, more and more and more of them arrived: landing, fluttering, unfurling, expanding the encampment out to the edge of the Billings Lawn and impinging upon even the broad avenues on the east and west perimeters.

  Hannah returned from New York and departed almost at once for a crisis meeting at the Sojourner Truth House, dropping bags of books she’d hauled home from the Strand (post-colonialism in Africa, biographies of—bizarrely—both Herzl and Göring, slender volumes of poetry from the 1950s), suitable for period set decoration. Was that what they were for? Naomi wondered, guiltily looking through the shopping bags right where Hannah had dumped them on the floor of the entry hall, spreading out the books on the stone slabs and groping for meaning, as if they were a broken rune language. That night, the Saturday before winter term began, was especially bleak, especially cold. The administrative and classroom buildings around the encampment were all dark, except for the first and third floors of Service Hall, where Francine and her staff were barricaded in their offices, reading applications. (She had not seen Francine since New Year’s Eve, and to be honest she had a pretty bad feeling about that, too.)

  Hannah, naturally, had not been forthcoming about what constituted the “crisis” of the crisis meeting, and so when the house phone rang several hours later, catching Naomi horizontal on the couch in the TV room, where she had accidentally fallen asleep, it took a few minutes before she understood who was calling her and what they were trying to communicate.

  The caller was Peter Rudolph of the campus police, a sweet man, soft-spoken, who had a part-time carpentry business in town and took eager advantage of the staff auditing program. And what he was trying to communicate was that something had happened at Sojourner Truth House that she’d better come over and see herself, and could she come right away?

  The pieces of this—Sojourner Truth, and Hannah, the crisis meeting, and “something happened”—went jolting through her, making her rattle with fear. “My daughter’s there,” she managed. And after a moment Peter Rudolph, who had three daughters of his own, said, without condescension, “Oh no, nobody’s hurt. There’s nobody hurt. Just damage. So just come.”

  “I’m coming!” she’d said, as if her speed was some logical way to repay him for not telling her an awful thing had happened to Hannah. And she dressed and raced through the now freezing darkness, wondering what could be so bad if it was not the so bad of actual harm to her daughter. Or, naturally, another Webster student. (Or, of course, anyone else!)

  Down the stone walkway that ran behind the old classroom buildings and the chapel and the Stone House. Down the little hill to the athletic center and its complex of courts and fields, and then the right turn on Fairweather, counting her way along the row of them: the Co-Op House, the French House, the German House (they were going to have to close the German House, she thought as she reached it, or else adjust its mission; no one seemed to be studying German anymore), and finally, just before the First Nations Center (a massive faux Tudor that dwarfed everything else on the street): the Sojourner Truth House. This was a stately redbrick Colonial Revival, gifted to the college by its last owner, an alum who’d hoped (but sadly failed to specify, in writing, in his will) that his home would be occupied in perpetuity by his own Webster fraternity. It really was so important to put everything in writing, Naomi thought, hurrying up the walkway.

  The door was ajar, and the rooms full of people, the hallway full of people, bodies displaced behind the door as she pushed her way in. Automatically, she looked for Hannah, but there were too many heads, too much din. A girl just inside the threshold was weeping, inconsolable, though not for the lack of consolers: Two skinny, bearded boys had their arms around her waist, their hairy cheeks on her shoulders. “What?” Naomi said.

  “I told her not to go down there,” said someone. Naomi turned. It was Chava, but she was moving. She had elbowed past Naomi without stopping and continued on, into the living room (or what had once, at some more domestic moment in the house’s life, been a living room), where she was swallowed up.

  “Are you okay?” Naomi asked the girl. There was no response from her, but both of the bearded boys lifted their heads to look at her. Not a flicker of recognition.

  “Are you media?” said one.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” said the other. “This is a safe space.”

  Safe from whom? she nearly said.

  “I’m President Roth,” Naomi said.

  “President of what?” the first one said, with mild curiosity.

  “President of Webster,” she said, trying—but failing—to summon some authority.

  “Oh, sorry.” He didn’t seem remotely sorry. “I don’t go here. But you got a bad thing down there, man. I mean, you know, that shouldn’t happen anywhere. It’s a very hurtful thing.”

  “I…” Naomi took a hard shove from her left, but it was only someone backi
ng up, violently, not personal. It knocked right out of her whatever it was she’d been about to say, which she now, helpfully, couldn’t even remember. Was it outrage? Denial? A defense of some kind? Who were all of these people who “don’t go here”? And where was her daughter?

  “Hey! President Roth!” Naomi looked around. Peter Rudolph was at the far end of the hallway, under the staircase. He had his back to the cellar door, and his arms crossed. Beside him was one of the others. New to the security staff? Newish? He’d been at the Day of Campus Discourse, so called. Before she could censor herself, she thought, Oh good. At least one of them is black.

  Excuse me, she told the students, moving very slowly. Hand on a shoulder here. Gentle nudge there. Pardon me. Hi? Sorry…They parted and closed around her, pressing her off balance and righting her, conveying her down the once-dignified hallway. Now the walls were institutional beige with old flyers (campus speakers, themed events) in never-cleaned frames randomly affixed, and a bulletin board of “ding letters” posted by the residents. “Dear Mr. Jonas,” she read while wedging past a cluster of agitated young men, “I thank you for your interest in our trainee program. As you know, Goldman Sachs receives many hundreds of applications for each of our limited places in the program…” The word “limited” had been encircled by thick red pen, and an arrow pointed, from this, to the commentary: “Limited in what way, exactly?” Farther down, at the start of the final paragraph, the hapless writer had blandly offered “We wish you all success with your job search,” but his merciless copy editor had underlined the phrase “We wish you” and added the words “a merry fucking Christmas, cracker!” Beside this, a letter from Yale Law, dark blue ink on heavy cream-colored stock, informed a Ms. Townsend that it was simply impossible to say yes to every one of the impeccably credentialed applicants who had sought admission to the class of 2020. “Et tu, Eli?” someone had written over the Yale crest at the top of the page. “Already too many black people in New Haven!” was written in another hand in one of the bottom corners. Naomi, briefly released from the baffling present, felt a spike of entirely unrelated depression. Then, beneath that, she read: “Nigger, what?” And the involuntary gut punch came immediately. It was as if she had found her quarantined city breached by the feared microbe, a riddled body inside the wall, burrowed under the wall, catapulted over the wall, wormed through the stones: all lost within. All lost. Et tu, Sojourner Truth?