Vera
After Agnes confronted us about Mr. Danvers, Ana and I returned to our room. We kept our poker faces until we heard Agnes
exit the back door and watched her head to the garden. When she was gone, we both burst out laughing. We laughed until we
cried.
“You know what’s crazy,” said Ana. “Is how easy it was.”
It was easy. It took a little reconnaissance, a little research, a little patience. But once we knew Mr. Danvers’s routine, how he
always had a thermos of tea with him, which he drank daily after lunch with some type of cookie or treat; how that thermos
sat all day in his unwatched, unlocked cubby in the break room; how he was already taking medication for a bad heart and had
suffered a minor heart event last year, it was almost embarrassingly simple.
Just to be clear, we weren’t trying to kill him.
We just wanted him to go away, like medical leave, or better yet medical retirement.
He was a lech, and a bad teacher, mean, favoring the boys, and always keeping the “bad girls” after class.
There’s a kind of man who knows how to walk the edge, push the boundaries.
Not outright molesting—but those inappropriate hugs, the lingering touch on the arm, a body brush by your desk.
Men and boys don’t see it. But women and girls do.
There’s an inner cringe, the urge to get away, to protect yourself from the unwanted advances of a dirty old man.
If you were unlucky enough to be kept after class or called to his office hours, Mr. Danvers might tell the story of how as a young boy he had a terrible crush on his teacher, or say something about how much you’d grown, or how he knows how difficult it can be when girls develop early.
He lauded the boys for their mediocre work and took every point possible away from the girls on their tests, or made incomprehensible corrections on their essays. “Too vague!” Or “Awkward!”
We happened to know that there was a younger, better teacher waiting in the wings. Ms. Bane, a Brown graduate studying for
her MFA at Sacred Heart College who was his steady substitute teacher. She was passionate, intuitive, in love with teaching.
With Mr. Danvers in a coma, Ms. Bane would be taking his class for the rest of the year. All the girls of Little Valley Academy
breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Just—we made a slight miscalculation in the dosage. Coma and possible death were not our intention precisely. Foxglove is
a beautiful flowering plant. From stalk to blossom, all parts of this common plant are extremely dangerous, and we knew in
Agnes’s garden to handle it in our beekeeper suits only. A digitoxin, foxglove can kill, but it can also heal in different
doses, is an ingredient in many heart medications.
In the kitchen we grated the stalk of the plant and created a paste, which we kept in a vial. Knowing that Danvers drank his
tea with copious amounts of honey, we banked that he wouldn’t taste it in small amounts. And he did not.
Of course, because Danvers already had a heart condition, no one questioned his heart event. There was no suggestion or question
of foul play. And if there had been, doctors might just have assumed he’d taken too much of the medication he was already
taking. Only Agnes suspected.
“I don’t feel bad,” said Ana, as we lay side by side on our twin beds upstairs later. “Should I feel bad?”
I searched my own heart for remorse. A man was in a coma and could possibly die because of what we had done. I found none at all. Maybe it’s how we’re made, Ana and me. Agnes and Sadie.
Women aren’t supposed to kill. We are meant to endure, stand by. There is a kind of strength in that, to be sure. The strength
to love, to hope for better, to forgive.
But the women in my family don’t have that brand of strength. We’re different.
I’m leaving Esme’s when the kids start texting about dinner. I call Brad, ask him to order a pizza.
“When are you coming home?” he asks.
“Soon.”
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” he says pointedly. The business, the fire. I’ve been so wrapped up in Ana’s mess that I haven’t
even checked on ours.
“I’m sorry. What’s happening?”
He runs it down, how the publicist put out a press release. How he reached out to some of our clients to offer assurances.
“I learned something today,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“So, Paul Hayes—you know, after we declined the services of his company?—was spreading rumors. Saying that our systems are
subpar, that we get our materials from China though we promise clients that everything we use is made in the US. I answered
some of those rumors today in conversations. But I’m starting to get why people hated him so much. He was a snake.”
The truth? I already knew about it. The rumors found their way to me through one of the wives. Paul and I had a little chat.
Fairly recently. But that’s not a thing I plan to bring up at the moment.
“Anyway, he won’t be spreading any more rumors about us now.”
Almost as soon as we hang up, I get a text from Brock. Hey, have you talked to Ana? She’s supposed to be watching the baby at our house and I can’t reach her.
A pulse of dread.
I’ll find her. How’s Iggy?
Actually, she’s doing a little better. The doctors are . . . optimistic. Call me when you reach Ana?
I call Ana, no answer. Text her. No answer. I check her location. Her dot is blinking at Iggy and Brock’s place. Maybe she’s
sleeping? Or in the shower?
But the white noise of concern that’s been humming since brunch is reaching a roar. Too many bad things happening. The world
spinning out of control. I remember that feeling of watching my mother being taken away in the cop car, her looking at us
out the window pressing her hands to the glass. I’m sorry, she mouthed. Ana was wailing; her cries that night are a sound that stays with me, is sometimes evoked by the calling of
gulls.
Outside, evening has fallen. I’m annoyed at Ana for being a problem once again. But I’m also scared, feel my usually iron
grip on everything slipping, my world spinning out of control.
Ana, where are you?