The Eliot Girls (19 page)

“It's just one day,” Ruth replied. “They can go without.”

“Marlow can't hold his bladder all day. Can you come home today at lunch to let him out? I've got a surgery at noon.”

Ruth bolted to attention. She was unfolding the ironing board, and she lost her grip, dropping it to the floor. Richard turned to her. “Since when do you iron skirts first thing in the morning?”

“I have nothing to wear,” Ruth replied tersely. “Look, I can't come home at lunch. I have things to do.”

“Things,”
said Audrey ominously.

“I have a job!”

“You don't say.”

Ruth's and Audrey's eyes met, and they regarded each other with the suggestion of hostility. Ruth was sick of trying to deflect Audrey's general unpleasantness. Every day was a battle for optimism. She had begun to worry that she had made a terrible mistake by pushing Eliot so hard on Audrey. Yes, of course she thought Eliot was an excellent school. She had dedicated a decade of her own life to it, and she had considered it only natural that Audrey should share the experience with her. But a darker perspective had started to insinuate itself into her reflections. Why had she been unable to accept the repeated rejections, to take them as a sign that Eliot was not meant for her daughter? Had she only needed an obsession? Had she wanted something she couldn't have? Violently, she had tried to refute this interpretation of the matter—how could she accept that selfishness had been lurking at the bottom of every decision she had made for her child?—but her disquiet had been awakened now, and like a deluge of acrid smoke, could not be contained.

Each change she noticed in Audrey only added to her frustration. Even physically, Audrey was different. Lack of sleep, along with the disappearance of her summer tan, had made her skin more pale. She was leaner, too. The overall effect was of added fragility, though in her manner with Ruth, Audrey had never shown less vulnerability. It was an odd feeling, Ruth thought, noticing someone so familiar who seemed somehow indefinably different. And the truth of the matter was that she didn't even want to think about Audrey. She didn't want to be noticing and scrutinizing and worrying. For the first time in years, within her grasp was the pleasure of total self-involvement, and she wanted to be swallowed.

“Why are you staring at me?” Audrey said.

“Why are
you
staring at me?”

Audrey stood up and dumped the soggy remnants of her cereal into the sink, then turned to leave the room.

“Excuse me,” said Ruth sharply. “What did your last servant die of?”

Richard turned to her. “Can we focus please?”

“Can't we find someone else to do it today?” Ruth said.

“How do you propose we do that on such short notice?”

“Well, I don't have time to come home at lunch!” she cried. “And I don't have time to talk about this now.”

Marlow sat in the doorway to the kitchen, watching Ruth with jolly eyes as he awaited the verdict.

“We've got to do something about his breath,” Ruth said.

“Christ, Ruth! Do you hear yourself?”

Ruth pressed the iron hard into her skirt and furiously went at a wrinkle. What was wrong with her? Marlow had always been her favourite dog. He was everyone's favourite dog. Strangers stopped them on the street to ask what breeder he had come from and were shocked to hear that he had been found as a stray eating garbage in the street. “I guess I could try to do it,” she said. “It's just Larissa. She's so on me right now.”

“We don't believe in trying, do we?” Audrey said. “What is it Ms. McAllister always says? Either you do it or you don't.”

Although Audrey was ostensibly joking, in her voice was a sour edge, and Ruth wondered whether Richard had noticed it.

“Audrey's got a point,” Richard said. “I need your commitment.”

Ruth sighed. “Yes, fine, I'll do it.”

Richard gave her a wet kiss on the cheek. “That's all I wanted to hear.”

When she went upstairs to brush her teeth some time later, Ruth ran into Audrey loitering pointlessly in the hall. “Is that a new blouse?” Audrey said.

Ruth looked down at her shirt in artificial surprise. “This? No, it's not new,” she said. “I guess you've just never noticed it before.”

 

AS SOON AS AUDREY
entered the classroom, she could feel that something had happened. Nearly all the girls had congregated in the back corner in a circle, forming a barricade that eclipsed whatever lay at its nexus.

“What's going on?” Audrey said to Elise Smith, a quiet girl whose diminutive stature rendered her approachable even to Audrey. She was one of the few people who hadn't been drawn to the crowd, and she sat at her desk sketching a horse on a piece of lined paper. She looked up inattentively and shrugged. “I think Arabella got flashed or something.”

That this was truly what had happened struck Audrey as impossible until the crowd parted slightly and she caught a glimpse of the victim herself, sniffling implausibly. Whitney's arm was coiled protectively around Arabella's shoulders, and she was sipping listlessly from a Styrofoam cup. In her reduced state, she attracted even more deference than usual, and as the girls crowded in, they spoke gently, as though fearful that too much volume might undo her. In its rarity, the hush expressed greater urgency than the usual racket, and Audrey couldn't tell whether Arabella was genuinely upset or basking in the drama of her condition.

The strike had apparently taken place shortly after eight o'clock, not long after Arabella's mother had delivered her safely to the front door of the school. Arabella had gone around back—to accomplish what, no one explicitly asked, but a secluded pocket at the side of the school was known by everyone but the teachers to be an illicit smoking station. She hadn't been there for long when she heard a rustling in the shadows not far away, a movement that might have been nothing more than a pile of leaves. When she looked up, there he was. The wrought-iron fence separated them, but her view had been as clear as anyone's ever had. (Arabella's competitive spirit was such that even victimization was something she had to do better than everyone else.) His face had been decidedly neutral, neither sneering nor grinning, neither sinister nor jovial, not the red-eyed pallor of a porn-obsessed shut-in, or the flush of the irrepressible adventurer. His coat opened, and then he was gone, before she had a chance to get her mind in order and run away.

On her way into the school, the first person Arabella had seen, conveniently, was Michael Curtis, who'd immediately shepherded her into Ms. McAllister's office, where she delivered a cool-headed précis of the incident and was roundly praised for her presence of mind. “We've got to nab this guy,” Michael Curtis had said. “This can't go on.” Ms. McAllister, absorbed in copious note taking, offered a severe “Agreed.”

Possibly more distraught than Arabella herself, Michael Curtis had then immersed herself in the comfort of motherly ministrations. Whisking her ward possessively into the staff room, Michael prepared for Arabella a cup of chamomile tea and then, carrying her knapsack, accompanied her to the classroom, where she hovered, assuring Arabella that she need not tell anyone unless she was up for it. When students began to arrive, Michael Curtis reluctantly withdrew, but not before stroking Arabella's hair and saying, “If your description helps us catch this sicko, you can consider yourself a hero.”

And it seemed, as Arabella relayed her story with excessive dignity, that she did indeed consider herself a hero. “I don't know if I even believe her,” whispered Shannon Worth uncertainly, as though compelled against her better judgment to raise the spectre of doubt. If anyone else shared her hesitation, there was no sign of it. Questions were beginning to flow, though haltingly. The consensus seemed to be that showing too much curiosity was in bad taste, but the obvious desire for information outweighed all propriety.

“Did he say anything?” asked Emma Walter.

Arabella bowed her head for a moment's contemplation before offering a shake of her head.

“According to Beth Jensen, when he flashed her, he said, ‘You like?'”

“Ugh, that's such a load of crap.”

Julie Michaels, who was known for her impression of Chuck Marostica, had pushed her way to the front of the crowd and now sat, without the appropriate reverence, on the desk in front of Arabella. “Suzy W. said that he wasn't even wearing shoes. And that he smelled like garbage.” Her upbeat voice inspired a glare from Whitney.

“Suzy W. wouldn't remember to put on her own bra if her boobs didn't hang down to her waist. He's not some homeless guy. He just…” Arabella glanced up with a recognizable sparkle in her eye. “He looks like Vanessa's dad.”

Vanessa returned a subdued sneer. She was clutching her French notebook to her chest, torn between the current fuss and her desire to cram in some last-minute studying for a quiz that afternoon.

From her usual spot on the window seat, Seeta began strumming her guitar. Twenty heads turned to her accusingly. Feeling the gaze upon her, Seeta clapped a hand over the strings and giggled. “Oops, sorry, I'll keep it down!”

“Don't keep it down,” Whitney said frostily. “Shut it off.”

Seeta caught Audrey's eye and looked quickly away. Since she had accused Audrey of cheating, they'd dodged each other as much as they were able, given their forced proximity. In their mutual animosity, they were almost as intimately bound as lovers in a new blush of passion. Each time Seeta sat down next to her, Audrey sighed noisily. They kept furtive track of each other, rising to immediate awareness when the other entered the room. Stuck next to each other in nearly every class, they sat as far apart as their seats would allow, each girl keeping mutely combative guard of her personal space. Other than her discomfort with Audrey, however, little about Seeta seemed to have changed from that first day at Eliot three months earlier.

“Hey, Seeta,” called Dougie. “You've got some spinach in your teeth. Might want to check out a mirror. Too much chicken saag for breakfast?”

Seeta frowned and made a face. “Oh,” she said, dismounting the window seat. “Um, thanks.”

She was halfway across the room to the door when Dougie laughed. “Just kidding!”

Frustrated that the attention had been diverted from her, Arabella let out a loud cough and rested her head in her hands.

“Poor Belle,” said Whitney.

“Are you, like, totally scarred forever?” asked Dougie.

“God,” said Julie Michaels. “He wasn't hard, was he?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, Julie,” Arabella said crossly. “He totally had a hard-on.”

A sharp intake of breath signalled the presence in the room of an adult. Ms. Glover swept through the crowd. “Watch your tongue, Ms. Quincy.”

Arabella looked duly chastened. The duality of reputation Arabella had managed to create was possibly the most impressive thing about her. She was a favourite among the teachers. She was unfailingly polite, punctual, in their presence masterfully channelling her brassiness into good-natured warmth. Unable to staunch the wellspring of her giggles, it was Dougie who predictably became the scapegoat, bearing the brunt of the blame for the spirit of insurgence galvanized by Arabella.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Glover. Yes, Julie, in response to your concerned question, he was, um, suffering from an erection.”

“Now I really do think she's lying,” whispered Shannon.

The bell rang, and the girls disbanded. It wasn't until several minutes later, as she was crossing the quad to the chapel, that Audrey saw Arabella again. From behind her fired Dougie's laugh. She couldn't quite hear their conversation, but she thought she caught the word
penis
. Audrey crouched to tie her shoe, and as they were passing, they stopped.

“It's fucking freezing out here,” said Whitney.

“Can you get, like, hypothermia of the dick?” asked Dougie.

They were looking down at Audrey as though they were waiting for her and expected her to say something.

“Did you really see it?” Audrey said, standing up.

There must have been something in her voice that gave offence, perhaps the shrillness of excitement, or a babyish captivation at talk of a penis, but the girls' collective demeanour changed almost instantly. The aura of invitation withered. For the first time, Audrey noticed a slight redness around Arabella's eyes.

“What do you want, Audrey? A sketch of his cock?” she said.

Whitney took a half step in front of Arabella, as though shielding her from an imminent blow. “God, how insensitive can you be?”

They pushed past and joined the swarm of students entering the chapel, leaving Audrey alone to negotiate her way inside.

 

AT LUNCHTIME, THE BAKERY
around the corner was overrun by Eliot girls. The crowd of students pressed in, gathering around the glass display case to compare the wilted salads and crusty scones. The heavily steamed windows and the low ceiling, with its copper pendant lights, made for a stark contrast with outside, and every time someone opened the door a rush of gritty street air swept in. Every day the same girls staked out the five small bistro tables, racing over the minute the bell rang. Their position was so entrenched that on a day when two tables remained empty fifteen minutes into the lunch hour, the girls in line looked disapprovingly at a quartet of grade nines who sat down with their donuts and Diet Cokes. The owner, a man named Al with a bushy grey beard and, in spite of his bald crown, a long thin ponytail with a curl at the end, had long since reconciled himself to the fact that his main customer base comprised shrieking teenage girls, and he stood behind the counter with a crooked, easygoing smirk, ladling minestrone into Styrofoam tubs and doling out change with fingers rough as sandpaper. The girls liked to squeal, back at school, that they had found an Al hair in their soup. Arabella once swore that she had encountered a pubic hair afloat in her chicken noodle.