The Twisted Thread (25 page)

Just then there was a knock on the door, and Madeline jumped and nearly fell she was so jittery. Pulling on some clothes that at least looked clean, she got to the door and saw Sarah Talmadge standing there, arms folded across her chest. “Sarah,” Madeline said, “I'm so sorry. I just got out of the shower.”

“Don't worry, Madeline. I'm the one who should be apologizing to you, for not getting back to you and then barging in like this.” She looked even more wan than she had when Madeline had seen her earlier in the week. “Could I come in for a moment?”

Madeline offered Sarah water or coffee, and the assistant head gratefully accepted water. “Well, there's a lot to talk about, but why don't you start?” She sat on an armchair and settled in to listen.

Madeline flopped on her futon and leaned in to describe what she had learned about the Reign of Terror, Claire, Sally, and Rosalie. Sarah listened with some of the same concentrated intensity as the police officer, and she shared as well his apparent lack of surprise.

But before she spoke, she took a long sip of water. “We've been wanting to get rid of this Reign business for years. Porter and I and a few others have been looking into it for a long time. Unfortunately, as you discovered with your sister, it is something that alumnae hold dear. And in the beginning, it was, apparently, almost benign.” Sarah explained that it had started when the first female students enrolled, at the end of the 1970s. “The name was meant to be a joke of sorts. Something that showed how smart and serious they were that they could use a reference connected to the French Revolution. To them, it was obvious that the real Reign of Terror existed among the boys and the male teachers, with their traditions of hazing. The girls looked after each other those first few years, and the group was supposed to support solidarity among the young women and, ironically, prevent them from losing their heads.”

Sarah sighed. “But it changed. There were a few Robespierres who had different ideas about the position, and they begin imitating the boys rather than avoiding their bad habits.” They even tried to sponsor a scholarship, to become an alumnae group, though that effort got squashed, fortunately. And then, one year, Sarah said, in the mid-eighties, a new girl was driven to a suicide attempt that did not succeed, and at that point, the head took on the task of trying to banish all traditions. Sarah looked at Madeline and said, “It might be hard to believe, but the backlash came not only from alumni but from faculty, who saw the traditions as holding together something sacred at the school. The kids were smart about it. In the middle of all the brouhaha, they just went underground. The last couple of years, Porter and I have been gathering evidence about what's really going on. But we had no idea that Claire was a voice of reason on this front.”

Madeline asked her, “Did you know about Rosalie? About how she'd been harassed?”

Sarah's face grew more pinched. “I suspected it, yes, and pressed both her and her parents about it, but they would have nothing to do with the school. We failed that child. We failed her utterly.” Sarah looked tired enough to collapse on Madeline's shabby armchair. She was taking all of this personally. She saw it as her duty to admit where Armitage had gone wrong. “And Rich Girls?” She repeated the website's name as if she'd discovered a morsel of rotten food in her mouth. “That one we didn't or at least I didn't know about. There are lots of others, Madeline. Lots of them. And we keep tabs on them, to protect the kids, to try and block what they have access to. But there's a lot of leakage nonetheless.” Sometimes, Sarah said, she wished it was fifty years ago, when it was hard to take airplanes, make phone calls, do any of the million things kids took for granted now. Technology was supposed to be this fantastic boon, and then its abuse showed you it was just another way to draw out the darkness in people.

Madeline said then, “I looked at it, Sarah. It was blocked on my school computer, but not on my laptop, for some reason. But I wanted to see if Rosalie was telling the truth.” Madeline almost had to close her eyes as she told Sarah this part of the story. “I felt ashamed even typing in the name of the site,” she said, stumbling over herself. The images of the girls' lush curves had been both horrifying and erotic at the same time, and she had experienced a thrill of recognition when she saw the bodies of the four girls who had slept like children on the floor of her living room. Rosalie had been right. If you knew who they were, you could recognize them from the curl of a lip, the angle of an arm. They hadn't entirely disguised themselves. They were mostly nude, and in poses with one another, arms wrapped around one another, legs lifted high. There was a crudeness about the entire series of images and shadowed expressions that was utterly at odds with how they presented themselves at the academy, but as Rosalie said, they had even used their school's name for the titles of the pictures: Armitage Babes, they called themselves. The shot that purported to be of Rosalie revealed nothing but a girl's naked body, up to her mouth and chin. The eyes were absent, and it might have been any barely developed child. For some reason, they had yet to terrorize Maggie by posting a similar image. Madeline had felt an intense wave of nausea pass through her, and she had turned off the computer with a rough snap. “But it's real,” she said now to Sarah. “They're there. And almost proudly, barely disguised. Anyone could find them there. Why would they do it? What could possess them?”

Sarah was looking out the window as she spoke. “It's something I've thought about a lot, Madeline. Why did Claire have her baby here? Why did Lee Hastings post pornographic pictures of herself on the Web? Why did any of these children do such damage to themselves? And I know I don't have a definite answer, and the one I've come up with might be woefully partial.” Her hands locked together, she looked at Madeline again and said, “I have to keep reminding myself that they are children. They don't talk like kids, dress like them, want to be treated like them, but they are. Don't think I'm saying that they're naïve or should be condescended to simply because they're young. What I mean is that they are inexperienced. Impulsive. Unable to foresee consequences with brains that aren't in any sense fully developed. What I mean is that it is understandable that they make mistakes, sometimes ones that change their lives.”

Madeline thought about what Sarah was saying. She remembered with shame some of her own teenage missteps. Crawling through the window of a boy she liked only to discover she was in his parents' bedroom. Intemperate e-mails that had gone astray. “Maybe,” she told the assistant head, “maybe that's a part of it. But I wondered if it was more cynical than that. Sometimes I think they just don't care what people think. Not us, their parents, no one but their peers. There's some bravado and disdain in what they do that makes me wonder who they are. And it's so unfathomable to me. They sit there in front of you all excited to read Milton, for God's sakes, and then they do things like this.”

“You might be right, too,” Sarah said sadly. “But even so, it doesn't mean they shouldn't have the chance to learn from serious errors in judgment. It doesn't mean they don't have the capacity to change. Thanks for telling me, Madeline.”

“What happens now?” Madeline asked. “Do you tell the parents?”

Sarah said, yes, they had to, come what may. And there were usually disciplinary actions taken, as discreetly as possible but still pursued. Last year, a boy had been kicked out. Others were suspended and required to seek therapy. Parents always went berserk. “Every time it's the same. Lawyers, threats to sue, all the rest. But yes, we tell the parents, even if it reflects badly on us. This year, given everything that's happened, it's harder to say what the consequences will be.” She paused then, clearly gathering herself for something else. Sarah, a small woman, took a deep breath and seemed to straighten her spine in an effort to appear taller. “All of which makes what I'm about to ask you now seem almost farcical. But I would like to offer you a full-time faculty position for next year. As a rule,” Sarah continued, “we don't offer positions to interns, no matter how good. But I think you're a real teacher. I think you've got tremendous potential. Everyone's seen it, and we'd like to ask you to stay.”

“Really?” Even with my messy hair and being late to chapel? Madeline wanted to ask. Even though I don't entirely believe in what's on offer here? Even though I've been quite vocal about that? She couldn't help herself then and said, “But Sarah, I'm, well, very un-Armitage. And that's a polite way of putting it.”

For the first time in what Madeline suspected was a while, Sarah laughed. “And maybe that's exactly what we need, Madeline. Someone who doesn't take everything we do entirely seriously, who remembers that what we're supposed to do is keep teaching.”

Madeline looked at the assistant head's clear eyes. Her fierce expression and her taut posture. She was committed to her work, no matter what happened. She was committed to her school, no matter its blemishes. She was committed to trying to understand students, even when they engaged in activities she didn't countenance. Her lack of sure footing didn't steer her away from her appointed tasks. Suddenly, Madeline wanted badly to be someone like Sarah, someone that confident and poised. But just then, her hair still dripping, her brain still grappling with what Kate had told her and the pictures of the girls, she knew she couldn't yet give a definitive answer. She thought about the cramped Boston apartment that otherwise awaited her. The afternoons in rich kids' homes, stuffing them full of ways to ace the SAT. Armitage, even in its current state, was certainly a more appealing option, even if it did leave you a spinster stranded in the middle of woody Massachusetts. But still, she had to think about the offer more coherently and make sure she wasn't leaving her roommates or employer in the lurch. “Sarah, I want to say yes. But I want to be sure that yes is a real one. Can I take a day to think about it and then can we talk?”

“Absolutely,” Sarah said and started to rise.

“But one thing is for sure,” Madeline added hastily. “If I stay, can I switch dorms? I'd love a slightly bigger place.”

Sarah said she was certain they could work something out. Madeline saw her to the door and said she'd call her office to make an official appointment early next week. “Thank you, Madeline,” Sarah said, and Madeline said, “Actually, it's you I have to thank, for thinking I might be good at something.”

Madeline liked Sarah, genuinely liked her. But she realized, as she stood at the door, she hadn't said a word about Claire being up in Maine when Porter was. Was it that she didn't trust Sarah with the information? she wondered, as she saw the upright woman make her way across the Quad and past James Armitage's resolute bronze presence. No, Madeline thought, it's because I don't want to believe something like that is true. She knew she had to tell Matt, and she knew she'd call him in a few minutes, but all she could do for that moment was stand there at the threshold and breathe the clean, rich air, what she needed after these encounters with Kate and Sarah.

And after all the endless meetings that had crammed the week. Nothing like a crisis to bring out the administrators and their shuffling stacks of papers. At one yesterday, the head of admissions had announced that almost half of the new students had reneged on their decision to attend Armitage next year. No one wanted to come to a school where a desperate scandal had struck so decisively. With almost languid fatigue, the dean had also said that it wasn't really a problem; he could make a trip to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Taipei, and fill the dorms to bursting with kids whose parents were more practical about this sort of thing. Armitage was still Armitage, and soon enough its domestic audience would remember its reputation. A couple of years from now, one of its diplomas would still have its strangely powerful currency. Thinking about this, Madeline felt a renewal of her vigor. She wasn't going to abandon this place because it was injured, because its name was sullied. Her intention was to stay. You could almost turn Armitage into an underdog at this moment in its history; Madeline had never felt as good rooting for the Red Sox since their two World Series wins finally shifted their long, sad streak of ill fortune. Her sympathies had covertly turned toward Chicago, though she hadn't admitted that yet to Fred.

She was going to need some coffee to stay awake enough for Last Tea. The machine gurgled and released a comforting scent into her kitchen, a generous term for the compact space. If she got enough of a raise, she might be able to afford an actual sofa and not merely her sister's cast-off futon. She slumped on a tall stool and looked out the window. It was shockingly sunny at the moment, but the clouds lay in a low pad over the river, a sure sign of more bad weather. The Quad was deserted. There were about four events and one more day of classes to limp through until Madeline was released for the summer for good.

Early this evening was Last Tea. On Sunday, they were holding Claire's memorial service, which in spite of everything, the parents were insisting on. Grace had said that it was because they couldn't agree on an alternate venue and that, charged as it was, Armitage was the best available compromise. Madeline shivered a little thinking about that; only students, the family, and faculty would attend, but it was still going to be dreadful. Why couldn't they wait? Because, Madeline knew, it was a way to appease the grieving parents, to stave off or at least delay the filing of the inevitable lawsuit for wrongful death, because Claire's class was a captive audience here, because Porter had said it was the right thing to do. It was hard, but they had to face it.

Porter. He had pared down everything. There would be no baccalaureate service, a quasi-awards ceremony at which prizes for everything from best Latin essay to finest moral fiber were given away. No hokey, jokey dinner before graduation, and then a very modest ceremony itself. Reunion had been canceled altogether. Even the development people, normally willing to forgo all matters of etiquette when it came to money, had agreed that this was not the year to wring the alumni dry. The coffee was ready. Madeline poured in a lot of cream and sat down again to drink it.