She moved from room to room. It didn’t surprise her that Rebecca Burley had left the poster of Jimi Hendrix on the wall; she and Francis had told each other more than once that this kid needed to try on lots of different coats before it was too late, but further down the hall, when she discovered a well-used bong sitting squarely in the middle of the desk of Tracy Danforth—who had just graduated and was president of the Honor Council—she wanted to get Francis, bring him here to show him how Tracy had been trying to show them who she really was. But she didn’t get Francis. Because he was too busy. Packing for his trip.
She thought: He can’t possibly pack for a whole summer without my help, he’s helpless about such things, doesn’t know where anything is, he’ll go off with no underwear and ten pairs of pants. She turned away from the empty dorm.
SHE FOUND FRANCIS in their bedroom. He was on the other side of the bed from where she stopped in the doorway the instant she saw him putting a big duffel bag on the bed. He was holding his hiking boots in his hands, about to stuff them in.
“Oh!” she said. “I’ve never seen those before.”
“They’re new.”
“When’d you buy them?” They were ugly, she hated them.
He shrugged. “The other day.”
“Oh!” she said again. She took one step back, almost out the door. Why did seeing him pack disturb her so? She wondered if she were going to cry for the second time that day.
He noticed the movement and stopped packing, his attention full on her. “I got them at Le Target.” He pronounced it “targay,” looking for her smile.
It didn’t work. But his little joke did stop her retreat. “Maybe you should pack later, Francis,” she said, taking several steps back into the room. “The reception for the new headmaster starts in half an hour.” She knew it was dumb to think he’d change his plans and stay home where he belonged if he deferred packing until after the reception. Nevertheless, the thought flashed.
“I’m not going to the new head’s reception,” he said.
“Say that again.” She was standing perfectly still now.
“I’m not going,” he said again. But already he was beginning to relent. He knew how foolish it was to stay away, how churlish it would seem. But in Marjorie’s house! It’s her home, he wanted to say, no one else’s. But of course it wasn’t her house; it was the school’s.
“Yes, you are, Francis,” Peggy said. “You’re going. You’re not childish enough to stay away,” and immediately she regretted using that word.
He dropped his gaze to the bed. Now he was tossing in his shaving things and his toothbrush and toothpaste. Loose. All jumbled up with everything else.
“Oh, for goodness sake!” she said. “You can’t pack like this!” She reached in, pulled out a wad of shirts, tossed them over her shoulder. “Or this!” she said, tossing a crumpled pair of chinos in another direction. “Or this!” Three big paperback books went flying, their pages fluttering. She put her hand back in the bag again. She was going to empty the whole damn thing. She knew perfectly well she wasn’t helping him pack, she was unpacking him, and she was crying now, his clothes flying all over the room.
“Peg! I said I’ll go!” He was gripping both her wrists now, one in each hand.
She let him hold her, keeping her hands still, and forced herself to stop crying. “You know,” she said, “sometimes I think we’re as married to the school as we are to each other.” It was the first time she’d dared to put the thought into words.
“No,” he said. “No way, Peg.”
“So when you risk your place here, I wonder what other seams will start to tear.”
“Peggy, I said I will go.”
She felt a huge relief growing, as if maybe she didn’t have so much to worry about after all. “You know, he’s been very considerate,” she said, speaking of the new head. She was looking at Francis again because now, with victory, she couldn’t resist explaining her point. “He refused the invitation to speak at graduation.” “
I know all about it,” Francis said
She saw Francis trying not to look irritated and persisted anyway. She wanted so much to convince! “He said it was inappropriate. He said it was Marjorie’s moment, not the new head’s. That’s pretty nice, you know.”
“I don’t want to talk about him, “Francis said. “I’m not going to his reception for him. I’m going for you.” She realized that the other part of her relief was that of the mourner who doesn’t want the wake to end because then she’d be alone.
FIVE MINUTES BEFORE they left for the reception, Francis stood in front of the mirror above his bureau, putting on his tie. Peggy came up beside him, kissed him on the cheek. Leaning against him, she felt his body soften. “Indians don’t wear ties,” she said, trying for a joke. Right away she wished she could take the joke back when she felt his shoulders stiffen. He turned his head just slightly away so that her kiss didn’t linger, and she stepped back, feeling her anger flame. Why right now? she suddenly wanted to ask again. To hell with jokes. On top of everything else! Don’t you know we’re too old to believe in different things? Francis moved away, leaving her framed in the mirror, and for an instant she didn’t recognize the tense woman who stared back at her.
Francis still thought he was going on an archaeological dig, the face in the mirror told her. He’s not ready to admit he’s going on a vision quest. It’s much too far out for Francis, too over the top, too embarrassing, to imagine himself, a middle-class white man in a tweed sports coat, a boarding school teacher, for goodness sake! chasing Indian visions. In California too, where everybody’s weird! But that’s what was happening. And she had thought for years that her vision and his were the same. She’d known almost from the day they met that Francis was a spiritual man. That was the deepest of the reasons she loved him so much. So it wasn’t hard to believe that the reason he had asked her to join in his family’s staunch Episcopal faith when they were married was that he believed in it. He thought so too, she understood, for the force of that belief was so strong in the family that he couldn’t believe he was different enough not to share it. But what she knew now, better than he did, was that the real reason he had asked her this favor was that he couldn’t imagine explaining to his father that he cared so little for his religion that he wouldn’t ask his wife to join it. Even though she had none of her own to relinquish if she did.
I’ve been hoodwinked, she wanted to say, hoodwinked and deserted, thinking of how much she’d been rescued from the barrenness of her own disbelief by the religion she’d joined and now was nurtured by, how much she’d come to love her father-in-law for the belief she shared with him, how much she’d missed him since his death five years ago. When you don’t resolve things with your father, you live with his shadow until you die too, she wanted to lecture Francis. It makes you crazy. She didn’t say that either.
AT THE FRONT door of Marjorie’s house, Francis hesitated. “This is Marjorie’s house,” he said. He’d walked through this door hundreds of times.
“It’s the headmistress’s house,” she reminded him. Then corrected herself: “The headmaster’s.”
He turned to her then, gave her a look as if she has just slapped his face.
“Sorry.”
“I can’t,” he said. “No way. Not in her house.”
She