The Eliot Girls (11 page)

Looking around for a snack, Ruth took some Bran Buds down from the cupboard and poured them into her raspberry yogurt. Sheila approached and surveyed the contents of their bowls. “Look at the two of you, showing off with your health food! Well, I'm just going to eat my blueberry muffin and enjoy every bite! No matter what you say!”

“I can assure you I won't say anything,” Ruth replied icily.

“Ruth,” said Lorna, blowing on her tea. “Audrey is only mouthing the words in music class. Tell her to sing! I want to hear her beautiful voice.”

Sheila turned in curiosity. “Whyever would Audrey just pretend to sing?”

“Her voice is perfectly adequate,” Lorna said.

“I'm sorry,” Ruth replied. Whereas Chuck Marostica had been concerned about Audrey's mathematical aptitude as a key intellectual skill, Lorna seemed personally wounded by Audrey's apathy.

“Why would anybody not want to sing?” asked Sheila.

“Is she terribly self-conscious?” asked Lorna.

Backed into a corner of the small kitchenette, Ruth smiled in discomfort as Lorna and Sheila beamed their concern into her. “Aren't all teenagers self-conscious?”

“Has the adjustment been very challenging for her?” Lorna asked.

Ruth was taken aback by the question. The fact that Audrey wasn't particularly liking Eliot seemed like a dirty secret to her, one she barely wanted to admit to herself. “It's early yet. I think…” But she didn't know what response might appease them, whether she should defend Audrey's emerging mediocrity or confess her worries.

The door swung open then and in walked Michael Curtis. She headed straight for the now-crowded kitchenette and transferred her lunch from a Lululemon bag into the fridge.

“Ooh, cute bag!” said Sheila. “I'm not sure I've got the bum for yoga pants anymore, but I've just got to get one of those. Don't you love it, Ruth?”

Ruth nodded vaguely. Although she liked Lululemon clothes, she found the aphorisms covering the bags irritating and moralistic, not to mention simplistic—New Age tripe about doing something every day that scares you and children being the orgasm of life. The only one of these prosaisms she could wholeheartedly agree with was that one should floss daily.

As the women discussed the relative merits of Lululemon and Roots, Ruth took the opportunity to escape to a wingback chair at the side of the circle. In addition to Lorna, Michael, and Sheila, the circle held Janet McLeod, the Latin teacher, who was marking on her lap, and Pat Bernstein, an English teacher with a bosomy warmth. Ruth cast a longing glance at the Flannery O'Connor in her lap but supposed the scene was manageable. Then she heard a rustling behind her and saw Henry Winter by the window, fiddling with the blinds. She sighed.

“What's that book you have there, Ruth?” asked Sheila.

Ruth held it up.

“Mm. Only one I've read is
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
. Don't I wish I didn't know how true that is!”

Sheila was recently divorced from her husband of twenty-five years, and she claimed to have an active, if amusingly disastrous, dating life.

A shadow fell over the surface of Ruth's book. “There we go,” said Henry, stationing the blind halfway down the window.

“Thank you for that, Henry,” Michael said as Henry stepped into the circle. “That glare was blinding.”

The room now seemed divided into two weather systems: on the far side a sunny day and on the sitting area side the gloom of rain. The last thing Ruth wanted was to read in the dark, but everyone else seemed to be in agreement that they were best off without the distraction of sun. Henry took a seat in the chair next to Ruth, his legs crossed effeminately as he sipped from a mug full of steaming water with lemon. Sheila leaned forward with her chin in her hand. “How about you, Henry? Did your lengthy studies bring you into much contact with Flannery O'Connor?”

He shook his head as though not much interested in the question. “I'm not excessively familiar with O'Connor's work.”

“What
should
we be reading?”

“Ah, in reading, there are no shoulds, Sheila.”

“Well, who is your favourite author?” asked Sheila, unwilling to give up.

Ruth took a long sip of her coffee. Now he would name some obscure Brazilian writer no one had ever heard of, someone whose forbiddingly dense prose no normal person could enjoy, an unappreciated genius whose aesthetic of inscrutability would attest to the incomparability of his intellect. And his rapt audience would swoon over how well informed he was, how impressive was the mind that had conquered its lowdown and facile need for entertainment.

“I'm not generally given to favourites,” he said, “but in this category, my loyalty is unwavering. Jane Austen has no close competition in my mind.”

“Oh!” Sheila exclaimed. “Great minds think alike!”

“And who's up and coming?” asked Michael, uncrossing and recrossing her legs grandly. “Who are the young geniuses bursting onto the scene, revolutionizing everything?”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Henry said. “My tastes are decidedly antediluvian.”

“Mine too,” said Sheila cozily.

“I can think of nothing better than an evening in front of the fire with
Pride and Prejudice
and Angela Hewitt playing the Goldberg Variations,” said Michael. “After the kids get to bed, of course!”

Lorna released a noisy sigh of longing. “I have searched high and low for a student who can play Bach,” she said. She was sitting on the couch next to Pat Bernstein, with her legs tucked up under her. The effect was of a bird perched on a branch.

“Lorna,” said Sheila, “speaking of music, what a wonderful job you've done with Seeta Prasad. She's brought the fun back to assembly. I find myself looking forward to chapel each morning. When she played ‘Fast Car' the other day, boy, did I get chills.”

“She is an extraordinary talent,” nodded Michael austerely. “What a breath of fresh air.”

Pat Bernstein gathered her layers of skirts and shifted heavily, transferring her marking to the coffee table. Around her neck were tiers of bulky, beaded South American–flavour necklaces, which knocked and rustled like a percussionist symphony as she moved. In some ways Ruth envied Pat and wanted to be like her (although, of course, she didn't want to be like her at all)—the throaty voice that clearly belonged to someone of ample body and spirit, her clipped white hair, her loose, monochromatic blouses and skirts, and the jewellery collected on her extensive travels. She seemed unconcerned about her appearance, not aggressively or defensively so, and not as though she had given up, but in a way that called into question whether stereotypical beauty was of any value at all.

“I've heard,” Pat said, “that Seeta is not having an easy time of it in her own class. Peers aren't always the most receptive audience.”

“I heard the same,” said Lorna, nodding vigorously. “I asked Seeta about it, and she was wonderfully courageous. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘The voices of one or two dissenters won't keep me from entertaining all the others.' Did that ever give me the shivers. I felt I was in the presence of a great, great human being. What kind of kid has that perspective?”

“Have you heard anything, Ruth?” asked Pat. “Isn't Audrey in Seeta's class?”

Ruth had been staring at the cover of her book, wondering whether it would be rude to crack it open. Even just a couple of pages, like two sips of red wine, would do to restore her. “Audrey hasn't mentioned anything,” she said. “She's probably too busy getting used to things to notice.”

“Mm.” Pat nodded sympathetically. “And you know how secretive kids can be with their parents.”

“Well, no, Audrey's not…” Ruth didn't know the end of this sentence—Audrey wasn't secretive? Was that claim still true?

“I was speaking to Claire Wright the other day,” said Michael. “As you may know, I've always been a bit of a mentor to her, and since her mother passed, she and I have become extremely close. Well, we were gabbing, and she told me all about it. A slew of highly unimaginative comments. ‘Anyone up for a round of “Kumbaya”?' ‘Hey there, Garfunkel'—that sort of thing.”

“Claire's always been such a lovely person,” said Sheila.

“True,” replied Michael. “I had to do a bit of work redirecting her to the high road, however. She thinks it's all somewhat inane, but she also holds the typically unsympathetic teenage opinion that in so flamboyantly showcasing her considerable talent, Seeta is ‘asking for it.'”

Looking around the circle, Ruth felt something welling up in her. She didn't think before speaking. “In addition to being lovely, Claire is astute.”

All heads whipped around as rapidly as if she had just upended the coffee table.

“Ruth, what on earth could you be suggesting?” asked Michael. Although usually quick to commit herself to indignation, Michael was frowning with concerned confusion, as though Ruth had just barged drunkenly into the staff room and she wanted to intervene for Ruth's own safety but wasn't sure how to do so diplomatically.

Sheila cocked her head and looked to Henry as though he could provide the clarification Ruth could not.

Ruth's hands quivered slightly as she set down her coffee. “I just…yes, the music is excellent…but…I don't know how anyone can deny that a student who plays an acoustic version of—what was it yesterday?—“Sympathy for the Devil” is asking for it, no matter how talented she is.”

“So you're saying she should conform just to fit in? Pretend to be mediocre?” Henry asked. He paused with the aplomb of someone who knew everyone was willing to watch him and wait to hear what he would say next. “I thought going beyond the mediocre was what Eliot stood for.”

Was there a sarcastic edge to his voice?

In a move that was simultaneously sprightly and angry, Lorna untucked her legs and landed on the edge of the cushion, leaning forward rigidly. She clutched her hands so tightly in her lap that her knuckles whitened, and when she spoke, her voice was quivering. “Seeta Prasad is the most talented student musician I've ever met. Without close competition. But then, clearly, not everyone can be musical.”

Lorna's narrow chest moved quickly up and down as she squared herself challengingly. There was something personal, queerly taunting, in Lorna's expression, as though her comment had been intended as a piercing coup, and Ruth was puzzled, unable to account for Lorna's bright-eyed defiance. Was she referencing Audrey's musical inhibition? Ruth took a deep breath. She was supposed to be enjoying her book. Its promise of escape had gotten her through the morning. Why had she opened her big mouth? Why was she speaking as if she cared about these things? She didn't care about any of it, least of all Lorna's ridiculously subtle jab at Audrey. As if she would have wanted her daughter making that spectacle of herself. As if she wouldn't have sooner seen Audrey with two mob-style broken wrists than up in front of that audience belting out “I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues.”

Ruth held up her hands. “Please, it's not that I disagree with you. I'm not saying that Seeta deserves harassment. I know she's talented. I know that. It's just, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.”

“Does the problem lie in our understanding or in your expression?” said Michael, settling comfortably into her usual mode.

“What
do
you mean, Ruth?” asked Sheila slowly and gently, the way she spoke to children made incoherent by distress.

Ruth wasn't sure what she meant. She had barely paid attention to Seeta's playing in chapel, and she certainly didn't feel strongly enough about it to be taking on a team united by the belief in one's right to play amateur guitar in public. A part of her wished she were standing up so she could escape, taking backward appeasing steps, claiming she was late for a meeting somewhere. But another part of her, the part that was morally weaker but vocally stronger, found that the stridence of the opposition was making her form a strong opinion she hadn't previously held.

“Look,” she said. “Teenagers are brutal. Is this a surprise to anyone?”

“I think we have all tried very hard here,” Lorna said, “in fact, it's been our life's work, to create a welcoming learning environment where gifted people are safe from assaults on their spirit.”

“I don't disagree.”

“Bollocks!” said Michael. “For someone who doesn't disagree, you're doing a lot of disagreeing.”

“So her classmates are being mean!” Ruth exclaimed. “That's not exactly unusual. They're teenage girls! It's not as if Seeta is the first loser ever to darken Eliot's door. She just may be the first one oblivious to it.”

A hush travelled across the room like an electric current.

Michael closed her eyes and shook her head. “Ruth, let's not resort to the name-calling we discourage in our students. But perhaps more seriously, please refrain from using racist terminology, at least in my presence.”

“What? What did I say?” Ruth was stunned. She looked around searchingly for an ally, but even Sheila, whose alliance she had always been quick to reject, had lowered her head in consternation. What had she said? She could barely remember now. Some kind of amnesia overtook her mind when she was arguing, and the memory of what she had said evaporated the moment the words left her lips.

“I don't think anyone is comfortable repeating it,” said Michael.

Sheila glanced up furtively from her lap and mouthed something Ruth couldn't make out. Then it hit her: darken the door.

“That's not what I meant! That's a common expression!” Ruth cried. “I'm not being racist. You know I'm not racist.”

“I don't know what I know,” offered Lorna.