The Hand on the Wall(7)
“You’re Leonard Holmes Nair, aren’t you?” the boy said.
“I am,” Leo said.
“I saw your Orpheus One show in New York last year. I liked it very much, even more than Hercules.”
The boy had taste.
“You are interested in art?” Leo said.
“I am a poet.”
Leo approved of poets, generally, but it was very important not to let them get started on the subject of their work if you wanted to continue enjoying poetry.
“Would you mind very much if I took your photograph?” the boy asked.
“I suppose not,” Leo said, sighing.
As the boy raised his camera, Leo regarded his companion. The boy was pretty; the girl was interesting. Her eyes were fiercely intelligent. She had a notebook closely clutched to her chest in a way that suggested that whatever was in it was precious and probably against some rules. His painter’s eye and his deviant soul told him the girl was the one to watch of this pair. If there were students like those two at Ellingham Academy, perhaps the experiment was not a total waste.
“Are you also a poet?” Leo asked the girl politely.
“Absolutely not,” she replied. “I like some poems. I like Dorothy Parker.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I’m a friend of Dorothy’s.”
The boy was fiddling with the camera. It was one thing waiting for Cecil Beaton or Man Ray to find the right angle, but quite another to wait for this boy, however good his taste. The girl seemed to sense this and lose patience as well.
“Take it, Eddie,” she said.
The boy immediately took the photo.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Leo said, intending to be as rude as he wished, “but I am losing the light.”
“Come on, Eddie, we better get back,” the girl said, smiling at Leo. “Thank you very much, Mr. Nair.”
The two continued on their way, the boy going one direction, and the girl another. Leo’s gaze followed the girl for a moment as she hurried toward the small building called Minerva House. He made a mental note to tell Dorothy about her, which he promptly misplaced on a cluttered side table in his mind. He rubbed between his eyes with his oilcloth. He had lost his vision of the house and its secrets. The moment was gone.
“Now is the cocktail hour,” he said. “That’s quite enough for today.”
2
“I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW I’M DOING,” STEVIE LIED.
Stevie sat in front of the massive desk that took up a large part of this room, one of the loveliest in the Great House. Originally, it had been Iris Ellingham’s dressing room. The dove-gray silk still hung on the walls. It matched the color of the sky. But instead of a bed and dressing tables, the room was now stuffed with bookcases, floor to ceiling.
She was trying not to look directly at the person behind the desk, the one in the Iron Man T-shirt and fitted sports coat, the one with the stylish glasses and flop of blond-gray hair. So she focused instead on the picture between the windows, the framed print on the wall. She knew it well. It was the illustrated map of Ellingham Academy. It was printed in all the admission materials. You could buy a poster of it. It was one of those things that was always around and you never thought about. It wasn’t super accurate—it was more of an artistic rendering. The buildings were massive, for a start, and highly embellished. She had heard that it had been done by a former student, someone who went on to illustrate children’s books. This was the illusion of Ellingham Academy—the gentle picture painted for the world.
“I’m really glad you came up to talk to me,” Charles said.
Stevie believed this. After all, everything about Charles suggested that he wanted to be fun and relatable, from the signs on his office door that read, QUESTION EVERYTHING; I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN, and the big, homemade one in the middle that read, CHALLENGE ME. There were also the Funko Pop! figurines that cluttered Iris Ellingham’s windowsills, next to pictures of what Stevie assumed were Charles’s rowing teams at Cambridge and Harvard. Because, no matter how bouncy and earnest Charles was, he was highly qualified. Every faculty member at Ellingham was. They came, dripping degrees and accolades and experience, to teach on the mountain.
The thing was, she had not come here to talk about her feelings. Some people were fine with that—they could open up in front of anyone and pour out their business. Stevie would rather eat bees than share her tender inner being with anyone else—she didn’t even want to share it with herself. So she had to walk the fine line between seeming vulnerable and showing emotion in front of Charles, because displaying real emotion would be gross. Stevie didn’t cry, and she double didn’t cry in front of teachers.
“I’m trying to . . . process,” she said.
Charles nodded. Process was a good word, the kind that someone who administrated as a profession could hook into and work with—and it was clinical enough to keep Stevie from gagging.
“Stevie,” he said. “I hardly know what to say anymore. There’s been so much sadness here this year. So much of it has touched you in some way. You’ve been remarkably strong. You don’t have to be. That’s what you need to remember. There’s no need to be brave.”
The words almost penetrated. She didn’t want to be brave anymore. It was exhausting. Anxiety crawled under her skin all the time, like some alien creature that might burst through at any moment. Stevie became aware of the loud ticking in the room. She turned toward the mantel, where a large green marble clock sat. The clock had formerly been downstairs, in Albert Ellingham’s office. It was a fine, clearly valuable specimen, deep forest in color, with veins of gold. The story was that the clock had belonged to Marie Antoinette. Was it just a story? Or, like so many things here, was it the unlikely truth?