The Eliot Girls (14 page)

Audrey was relieved that for once she wouldn't have to staunch the rise of her own tears. She'd felt the sadness building in her from the first words of the service, intensifying with each reverent display, but she'd expected her own shame to beat it back. It wasn't even fair, really, to classify such feelings as sadness, given how exclusively they were roused not by distress over the dead girl, but by pity for herself. To watch the whole school rally in mourning for Martha McKirk only made Audrey more aware of how remotely she still stood from Eliot's innermost gate. She ought to have known Martha McKirk. She ought to have been a part of all this history. But she had been shut out, then, as she was shut out now.

As Seeta finished her song and retreated to the wings, the sound of a choir started up in the shadows at the back of the chapel, where Martha McKirk's former class was beginning a procession down the aisle. The girls were all holding yellow roses and singing “Be Thou My Vision.” As each girl arrived at the front of the chapel, she laid her yellow rose at the base of Martha's grade eight class portrait before withdrawing. Some bowed their heads solemnly; some crossed themselves; many blew Martha a kiss.

They were all so wonderfully sad for Martha, so moved by the spectacle of themselves grieving her, but Audrey was entitled to none of it. How was it that even Seeta believed herself connected to all this feeling? Seeta, whose playing, not a week before, had been universally reviled? The injustice of it confounded her. And even though she knew the real story of Martha and Eliot, even though she knew that Ms. McAllister couldn't stand the girl, the only thing she could truly see was her own seclusion. If there was something profane in meeting a young person's death with such dishonesty, she didn't care. She envied Martha McKirk. The smallest part of her wanted to be Martha McKirk. Martha was no longer an Eliot girl, but still the Eliot girls considered her one of their own. They wanted to be part of the grief at her death. Did the quotient of sincerity matter, in the end? If there was one benefit of dying young, it was surely this: to be misremembered so beautifully. The sun shone through the high stained-glass windows, casting regions of multicoloured light around the chapel with seemingly strategic flair—over Martha's flower-bearing classmates, over Martha's unknowing smile.

Ms. McAllister stepped forward to lead the congregation in the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, and Ms. Massie-Turnbull took to the piano to play a final hymn, “God Be with You till We Meet Again,” which Ms. McAllister, not requiring a hymn book, sang bullyingly into the microphone.

And it was over. Someone had propped open the heavy oak doors at the back of the chapel, and people were already leaving, laughing and calling to each other as they made their way out into the sun.

 

AUDREY WAS CROSSING THE
quad on her way back to Devon Hall when she felt a warm, moist hand over her eyes.

“Guess who?” sang Seeta's voice.

Audrey pried the hand away and kept walking. “Hi.”

Audrey's unfriendliness did nothing to deter Seeta. Whether she was needy or unaware, Audrey couldn't tell. Even when Audrey blatantly tried to escape her, taking a seat at the back of the room one recent morning in music class, Seeta took no notice, waving to Audrey with the full force of her arm, as though Audrey were trying to spot her in a dense crowd. In the hallways, in the classrooms, her eyes chased Audrey down with their bright, uncompromising stare.

“That was a really beautiful ceremony,” Seeta said, falling into step next to Audrey on the quad, raising her face to the sky in contentment.

Audrey shrugged.

“Didn't you think so?”

“It was nice, I guess.”

“It made me wish I'd known Martha. I've heard some things about her, but I don't think they can be true, given everything Ms. McAllister just said.”

Audrey gave Seeta a mystified look. She was incredulous that Seeta had been on the inside track of even the smallest bit of gossip. “What have you heard?”

“On the bus home yesterday, Laura Chang was telling me that Martha McKirk was, um…” Here Seeta coughed prudishly and looked around. “I probably shouldn't repeat it.”

“You've got to tell me now,” Audrey said. “You can't start then just stop.”

“But it's not really appropriate, especially now that she's passed away.”

“Why did you bring it up then?”

Seeta made a worried face. “I tried to get Laura not to tell me, but she was determined. You're right, I shouldn't have brought it up.”

Audrey sighed. “Fine, then.” She started walking again.

Seeta quickened her pace to keep up. “Okay. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else.”

Audrey nodded.

Seeta leaned in and spoke in a voice just above a whisper. “She and her boyfriend were caught, um, you know, in the bathroom at the St. George's semi-formal.”

“What?” Audrey said. “They were having sex at the semi?”

“Shhh,” Seeta replied, her eyes wide.

Arabella, Whitney, and Dougie were just then passing, and they stopped beside Audrey and Seeta.

“You don't say,” Arabella said in a British accent. “Sexual relations? Really? How scandalous!”

Whitney and Dougie laughed.

“Poor Larissa must have been jealous,” said Whitney.

“It can't be easy being a ninety-year-old virgin,” offered Dougie.

“Actually,” said Seeta, raising her chin defiantly, “it's an inspired life choice. Ms. McAllister's chosen to make a really sophisticated assertion of her feminist values.”

“Ms. McAllister's a virgin?” asked Audrey. “How do you know?”

“How do you
not
know? She tells all her religion classes,” said Whitney coldly. She turned to Seeta. “That's the first time I've heard someone call being a dried-up old bitch a feminist statement.”

“She's standing up for what she believes in,” replied Seeta.

“It's not feminist,” Arabella said. “It's religious and reactionary. But hey, it's a good thing you admire it. I'm sure one day you'll be just like her.” She gave Audrey a queenly look. “We'll let you girls get going. I'm sure you don't want to be late for math.” And with a laugh that drew her friends to her, she turned away. Within seconds, they were lost in the crowd congesting the open doorway.

“Well, I'm always up for a debate,” Seeta said happily, “but of course it's better when everyone plays fair.”

She took Audrey by the elbow and pulled her gently towards the door. “Come on, pal. It's true. I don't want to be late for math. Mr. Marostica promised to give me some harder problems for extra credit.”

 

 

Cha
p
ter
Eigh
t

WHEN MIDTERM REPORT CARDS
arrived in early November, Audrey spent the day feeling as though she might throw up. There were rumours that Larissa McAllister kicked out students who got more than two marks below seventy percent, and although Ruth said this wasn't true, the fact of the matter was that very few girls regularly received grades in the sixties. In Audrey's class, many girls considered even seventy-five a calamity. Sarah-Jane Day had once required a paper bag to breathe into when she got seventy-one on a math test.

The report cards came during English class. Henry Winter was lecturing on “A Rose for Emily” when Ms. Moss, the secretary, knocked with foreboding quiet. Henry Winter started in surprise, then crossed to the door and engaged her in a whispery conference before returning with the pile and placing it next to his briefcase. He then resumed his lecture as though nothing had happened, seemingly oblivious to the anxiety coursing through his audience. Finally Whitney called out, “Please, show some noblesse oblige, Dr. W. Put us out of our misery!” He looked up, as though confused to hear a voice other than his own.

“Oh, are you interested in these?” he asked, gesturing towards the envelopes with a crooked half smile, suggesting that perhaps he hadn't been in a cerebral daze all along.

Audrey couldn't quite get a handle on Henry Winter. The other teachers fit various expectations of what teachers should be: the popular ones who were approachable and funny and tried to meet the students as equals; the older ones who were kind but out of touch; the strict ones who could barely be believed to exist outside of school. Henry Winter did not fit any of these types, a fact that made him infinitely less approachable. During class, he often paced at the front of the room, jangling coins in his pocket. He glanced at the clock frequently. His mind seemed not to be entirely with the class. It was as though he were performing in a pageant written by grade schoolers, and although bound to indulge the children and recite the lines, he couldn't hide that he found the dialogue atrocious and utterly lacking in credibility. At other times, he was charming and dropped sudden jokes into the middle of lectures, and when the girls laughed, he was clearly gratified. His own laughter would swell up, then just as quickly subside, as if he had lost himself for a moment before remembering where he was.

He walked the aisles now with a slowness that might have been real or a torturous tease. The report cards were in alphabetical order, so Audrey received hers quickly, but unlike everyone else, she felt no temptation to rip it open right away. As Henry Winter had handed it to her, their eyes met, and she tried to read what she saw there. But he offered no clue—no sympathy, no consternation—nothing that foreshadowed what he might have seen inside.

When Seeta opened her report card, she made a noisy intake of breath, then whispered, “Yippee!” to herself. All around Audrey, the rustling and tearing of paper, the nervous silence, gave way to sighs and mumbles, the occasional groan or shriek of relief. Audrey's results were worse than she thought. Of eight subjects, she'd received seventies in only three. Three others were in the high sixties, and two—math and French—were a nausea-inducing fifty-eight. Most of the teachers had made prim comments about the meeting of her potential. Mme. Moreau had written, “I keep hoping for some improvement,” as though Audrey's performance had been a terrible blow to her personal sense of expectation. Henry Winter's comment was illegible, a scrawl that didn't want to fit into the small rectangle provided, though Audrey thought she made out the word
adequate
. She knew that she shouldn't have been surprised, but some tests were yet to be returned, and somehow she had thought there could be a disparity between the marks she had received along the way and the final result. She was about to stuff the report back into the envelope when she noticed a note at the bottom: “Please be in my office at four o'clock sharp. Ms. McAllister.”

Audrey glanced around the room. No one appeared as pale and troubled as she was. Most people were showing their report cards to their friends. Vanessa Blair had lain her head, face down, in her arms on her desk. (Audrey overheard later that this was because she had received a seventy-eight in math.) Arabella was loudly bemoaning, so that everyone was sure to hear, that she had done horribly, absolutely horribly, in French. “Eighty-three,” she wailed. “It's so bad.” Seeta had placed her report card flat against her desk, as if to appreciate it, like a work of art, from a different angle, and Audrey noticed no mark below ninety.

Audrey knew that she would not look at hers ever again, unless she was forced to by her parents. Having foreseen exactly this outcome, she didn't understand why she felt so jarred. There was something in the nature of a formal document, she supposed. As individual marks, sixties and seventies had been easy enough to ignore—they had seemed somehow temporary, the possibility of change, of improvement, still existed. But here before her was the power of compilation, accumulation; there was the bleakness of authority, of irrevocability. Particularly galling had been all the comments about how she needed to try harder. She felt she had tried, though perhaps not in the way her teachers meant. She didn't even know how to try in the way they meant. She had sat at her desk many school evenings and Saturday mornings, in her black ergonomic chair, bought by Ruth in the hope that by facilitating the appearance of scholarly aptitude, she could engender the proper inner feeling. But no matter how Ruth designed the exterior, the interior would not follow. Audrey simply had not been able to keep her mind trained on her work. She considered the image of herself, bent over her books in a useless show of academic piety, and was overcome with self-pity.

Audrey stayed in her seat while the classroom emptied, then packed her bag and headed down to Ruth's classroom to report the news. They had planned to go shopping for new jeans and were due to meet at 3:45.

“I can't bear the thought of going to a mall,” Ruth said when she saw Audrey. “I was thinking Bloor Street and then dinner at Spring Rolls.”

Audrey shook her head dolefully. “I can't go.”

Ruth cocked her head in query.

“I have to meet Ms. McAllister in ten minutes.” Audrey cast her eyes down.

Ruth's face fell. “Oh, come on,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give it here.”

Audrey produced the wrinkled report. For several silent moments, Ruth stared at it, looking as disgusted as if it were a particularly vulgar piece of pornography. Then she shut her eyes. The struggle that played out over the course of a millisecond was almost visible. Ruth wrested her natural response—anger, and the impulse to punish—into something more suitably delicate. When she looked at Audrey again, she was a model of vivacity. “Well, it's just the first report! Things will change,” she said.

“That's it?”

“What more should there be? It's just a midterm report. It's not that significant.”

Audrey shook her head. She had thought that she feared Ruth's passionate dismay, but this reaction was far more disorienting. It was clear that Ruth was being circumspect, and in that tact was a quality Audrey found dishonest. Concern about Audrey's academic fate had always been a key feature of Ruth's life. Audrey had felt almost debilitated at times by the weight of her mother's hopes for her. A decade-old image of Ruth, standing on the front walk in the twilight, under the specific light of the iron lantern, still haunted her. In Ruth's hand, a white envelope: Audrey's first rejection from Eliot. It was Audrey's chore to bring in the mail, but she had forgotten that day. Hearing Ruth's car pull into the driveway, she had run to the window to greet her mother, but Ruth had stopped in her tracks. A sickness flooded Audrey's gut. Never had she seen her mother's face so bereft. Minutes later, she discovered the contents of the letter, and felt worse still, not at the retreating promise of the Eliot life, but at the woe in her mother's face. In that moment came Audrey's first confrontation with her own power, a glimpse of the responsibility she would consciously bear for the rest of her life.

She knew that she should be thankful that they were not now embroiled in a heated argument, fighting to keep their voices down so no one would overhear. But she was not. Her mother's artificefelt like yet another way she had been cast out of the familiar world.

Ruth sat on the edge of the desk and glanced at the report again. “It's my fault anyway. I should never have let this happen.”

But this absolution was no more welcome. “How is it exactly that
you
made it happen?”

“You need a tutor, Audrey. We'll get someone really great. Please agree.” Ruth leaned forward and kissed Audrey on the head just as footsteps sounded out in the hall. Ruth and Audrey looked up tensely and saw Henry Winter approaching at a leisurely amble. As he continued around the corner, he gave them a little nod.

When he was out of sight, Ruth handed the report card back to Audrey. Then she stood, and as she pulled on her own coat, she gave Audrey an impatient shove in the direction of the door. “Look, you should go. The last thing you need now is to be late for Larissa.”

 

IN THE OFFICE, AUDREY
waited for ten minutes before Larissa McAllister was ready to see her. Ms. Moss sat at her desk, alternately typing and filing papers. In what seemed an ostentatious show of avoidance, she scarcely acknowledged Audrey's presence. No sounds emerged from within the chamber, but when the door finally opened, a grade seven girl exited, looking red-eyed and chastened.

In stately silence, Ms. McAllister ushered Audrey inside and gestured for her to sit in the ladder-backed chair. For some moments, she relished the hush her office produced. The last of the day's sunlight poured in through her pristine windows, slanting across her tidy desk. Audrey had last been in this room for her entrance interview, and she was no more at home now than she had been then. Still, this was the room in which all her deficiencies were brought to unsparing analysis. Still, this was the room in which her most graceless self came tripping out into the spotlight.

“I have always been loath to make exceptions,” Larissa McAllister said at last. “Second-guessing is for the halting mind. In life, as in an examination, my approach is confident. Never have I changed an answer on a test paper.”

Audrey studied her hands, waiting for more.

“I was not,” she continued, “under the impression that you would be one of our star pupils. Our entrance examinations serve the very important purpose of helping us to assess a potential student's intellectual promise. Your results on these tests were telling. And I fear that I predicted you and I would end up exactly here.”

She primly adjusted her glasses and leaned forward, hands folded, a pose that might have seemed confiding had it not been for the sparkling hostility in her face. Audrey's own face burned. Larissa gently tapped the tiny gold cross that lay just below her jutting collarbone, as if calling on divine sustenance.

“In what has been proven to be a regrettable error,” she said, “I set aside my own sizeable misgivings because of your mother. She had high hopes for you.”

Audrey noted the past tense.

In spite of Ms. McAllister's repeated allusions to her displeasure, there was nothing in her demeanour to suggest upset. On the contrary, exhilaration coursed visibly through her. Her face was bright and hard, her dry cheeks flushed. The battle against academic apathy was a terrifying one, she declared. They were in the trenches, all of them, fighting for a mandate on which the whole world seemed to depend. And could there be a more critical mission? Could there be a nobler cause? Audrey knew that her desolation must only remind Ms. McAllister of the passionless masses, that it must make her angrier, hungrier, but she couldn't speak. She had no self-defence.

“I'm sure you realize that your mother's position as a teacher makes your results even more distressing,” continued Ms. McAllister. “Do you understand how badly it reflects on George Eliot Academy for the daughter of a teacher to produce such substandard results? Have you anything to say for yourself?”

“I'm going to get a tutor,” Audrey answered. “I know I should do better.”

“It goes without saying that you
should
do better. The question, I suppose, is whether you
can
do better.” Here she swung her chair around to face the window, leaving Audrey to stare at its tall leather back. After a moment, she circled back to Audrey, her hands folded in her lap in a prayer pose. “Tell me. Why did you want to come to George Eliot?”

Audrey considered this question. In truth, she no longer knew why she had wanted to come to George Eliot. It had something to do with a memory she scarcely understood. A floating red balloon wending its way over the clock tower of Devon Hall, that murmur of magic in the place. From earliest childhood, her desire for Eliot had an inevitability she never thought to probe. She had championed Eliot's progressive feminist agenda. She had trained for the entrance exams and engaged in practice interview sessions with Ruth. She had visited the school and roamed its wide corridors in aspirational wonder. Never had it occurred to her to analyze why she might want to go there, any more than she could now explain why she wanted to stay there. Before that final round of entrance exams, trudging to tutoring every day after school, she had never considered opposing her mother's wishes, so indistinguishable from her own. Even now, as daily life involved no satisfaction greater than mere survival, the Eliot dream was not an easy one to relinquish.

“It's the best school there is,” Audrey said feebly.

“Indeed,” replied Ms. McAllister. “The question now is what will
you
do to be the best
you
can be?” She rose from her chair and crossed to the door. “You have much fodder for thought. Introspection is to be the order of the day.”