26. Q&A, Part III
Audre hurries down the stairs, tying the belt of her bathrobe.
Things had been going too well. She and Coop had gotten the thumbs-up from Jesse Eastman and a warm reception from the kids at the Tuck.
Naturally now, the other shoe was about to drop.
When you’re the Head of School, there’s no such thing as unadulterated joy.
Audre opens the door to find Cordelia on the side porch, still in her workout clothes, breathing heavily. She must have come straight from the fitness center.
“What is it?” Audre says.
“May I come in?” Cordelia asks.
Something about Cordelia’s tone causes Audre to relax just a bit. Nobody is dead. But what’s so important that it couldn’t wait half an hour?
Audre holds the door open and Cordelia steps inside, shivering. It’s fifteen degrees outside, and Cordelia is without a coat. Maybe someone is dead. Roy Ewanick? Or—Audre chastises herself for even imagining this—Douglas Worth, Head of School at Northmeadow?
“Cordelia, tell me—”
“East and Charley Hicks broke up,” Cordelia says. “They’re done. Splitsville. Rhode just told me this morning at the gym. All the boys in North are talking about it.”
Audre needs a moment to recalibrate: No one is dead or injured, no one’s house has burned to the ground, no one was canceled by the internet, no one’s pet has passed (Audre thinks of Alistair, who has become a favorite in Classic South), nobody found out about Tiffin’s rapidly diminishing operating budget.
Instead, Cordelia has scared the wits out of Audre over a student breakup.
But it’s Charley and East. Which, Audre has to admit, is very unwelcome news. Charley was so good for East. She’d single-handedly turned him around.
“What happened?” Audre asks.
“No one really knows,” Cordelia says. “Though there are rumors it has something to do with a field trip that Charley took with John Maverick? To the Clark Art Institute?”
“I knew about the field trip,” Audre says. “Mav did all the paperwork. It was for the art appreciation class he’s teaching. I gave him a hundred dollars from petty cash for gas and lunch.”
“Charley is the only one in that class. And you know how it is sometimes when two people share a specific interest—”
“Cordelia.”
“I just wonder why it would become such a big deal. Teachers take students on field trips all the time.” Cordelia locks eyes with Audre, and an unspoken question passes between them: Is there something going on between Charley and John Maverick?
No, Audre thinks. Primarily because she can’t believe the universe would serve her a student-faculty scandal two years in a row.
Yes? Cordelia thinks. She saw Royce’s comment on Madison’s Tag Your Friend’s Crush post: @charlottehicksreads and #Mav. But she can’t admit this to Audre.
“I have no idea why,” Audre says. “And really, it’s none of our business.”
Unless it is our business, Cordelia thinks. “Well, I just thought you’d want to know.”
“Thank you, Cordelia,” Audre says. She holds the door open so Cordelia can run back to the Field House and they can both get on with their day.
In between C-period and D-period, Audre receives a text from Coop: I have news. Can we talk after school?
Audre had planned to use the hour between three and four to finally lock down the 115th-anniversary arrangements (or, more likely, get distracted and check TripAdvisor for the top restaurants in St. John USVI, which is where she and Coop are headed for spring break).
Sure, she says. Should we go for a walk? Rock garden to Jewel Pond?
I think your office would be more appropriate, Coop says. I’ll see you at three.
For the second time that day, Audre gets the Feeling. Her office? More appropriate? What is Coop going to tell her? She worries for a second that he wants to break up.
But that’s ridiculous, she thinks. They’re so happy.
Still, she’s nervous when Coop enters her office, closing the door firmly behind him. He doesn’t hug her or kiss her, though when he takes the seat across from her desk, he reaches for her hand.
“Audre,” he says.
“Why are you scaring me?” she asks.
Coop sighs. “I got a call from Loredonna.”
Loredonna: Coop’s daughter, who works for the New Orleans Saints and lives in the Garden District, only a few blocks from where Audre used to be Head of School.
“She’s pregnant,” Coop says. “With boy-girl twins.”
“What?” Audre cries out. Loredonna is single. While she visited over New Year’s, she regaled Audre and Coop with stories about the men she’d dated on Raya. “Who’s the father?”
“Unbeknownst to me, Loredonna has, for the past eighteen months, been pursuing single parenthood. The father is a sperm donor.” Coop clears his throat.
“I shouldn’t say ‘unbeknownst to me,’ because I knew she wanted a baby.
She told me a year or two ago that, if she didn’t meet someone suitable, she would take matters into her own hands.
But I didn’t know she was already going through in vitro.
She said that’s because she didn’t want to get my hopes up.
” He beams. “But now she’s eighteen weeks pregnant with twins.
She’s due July seventeenth, though twins are often early. ”
Audre comes out from behind her desk to give Coop a hug. “She hit the jackpot. You must be over the moon!”
When Coop squeezes Audre, she senses there’s something more to what he’s telling her.
“Audre,” he says.
Here it comes, Audre thinks. Whatever it is.
“I’ve decided to leave Tiffin at the end of the school year,” Coop says.
Audre only half hears what comes next: Loredonna has a demanding job…
she’s one of the top female executives in the NFL…
if Loredonna were married or in a stable relationship, it would be different…
if it weren’t twins, it would be different.
Coop promised his wife, Elizabeth, before she died that Loredonna would always come first.
Audre thinks but does not say: What about me? She blinks back tears. This is what she deserves for getting involved with a faculty member. She should have kept their relationship professional. They could have enjoyed a lovely friendship.
“Audre,” Coop says, “I love you.”
Before Audre can stop them, tears fall. “I love you too.” She has wanted to tell Coop for a while now, but she’d wanted him to say it first. Now he has—under the worst possible circumstances.
“I want you to come with me,” Coop says. “Please come to New Orleans with me, Audre.”
Audre laughs unhappily. “I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?” he asks.
Isn’t it obvious? Audre thinks. I am the Head of School. This isn’t just a job, it’s a career, and not just a career but a calling. For the past seven years, Audre has devoted her life to Tiffin. She considers the 240 students at the school her own children.
But for just one second, Audre plays devil’s advocate. This year has been a financial nightmare—first with the budget crisis and then with the news that Jesse Eastman is moving on. Maybe the academy would be better served by someone with a Wall Street background and a talent for fundraising.
Audre won’t beat herself up for her failures.
She has faced down a host of situations that honed her leadership skills: Cinnamon Peters’s suicide, the fallout from their unexpected number two ranking, the Zip Zap app, the debacle of Simone Bergeron and Honey Vandermeid, the Haydensboro Massacre and expulsion of Pippa Sacks, and the revelation that Tilly Benbow was conducting an affair with another student’s stepfather.
Audre has navigated all of this successfully—and, she might even say, gracefully.
But Audre has finally, at the age of fifty-three, found a suitable man to fall in love with, to plan a future with. Is she willing to give that up?
She allows herself to imagine a life in New Orleans.
She’ll be back in her hometown, she’ll be close to her parents, she’ll be with Coop, his daughter, his new grandchildren.
Audre will have no problem finding a job; her parents still have all kinds of connections at Tulane.
Maybe she could become dean of students?
What’s most important is that she’ll be surrounded by love. How can she argue with that?
She means to tell Coop that she’ll think about it—but isn’t that what she’s just done? Her choice is between staying at Tiffin, alone, heartbroken, dealing with a financial crisis, or returning to New Orleans to be among the people she loves most in the world.
Coop gazes at her with beseeching eyes. He is so dear to her, she can’t see straight.
“Yes,” she says. “I’ll come with you.”
Olivia H-T sends a text to Pippa: Charley and East have broken up.
Pippa responds with the head-exploding emoji. Seriously?
Seriously, Olivia says. She explains about the field trip with Mav. Charley didn’t get back to campus until nine thirty when the museum closed at five.
Pippa texts: Are Charley and Mav fucking?
That’s the subject of whispers in the first-floor girls’ bathroom.
Charley is definitely Mav’s favorite, and she’s the only one who goes to the art class he’s teaching, which is suspicious.
But even Olivia can’t imagine Charley actually sleeping with a teacher.
Then again, if it wasn’t something like that, why would Charley and East have broken up?
Olivia sends Pippa the shrugging emoji.
Olivia sees post-breakup Charley for the first time at Monday’s ’Bred Bulletin meeting.
She doesn’t look like a girl who’s just broken up with the hottest guy in school; she looks formidable.
She has a fresh blowout, dewy makeup, she’s wearing low-slung white jeans, a cropped black cardigan, and cute black mules.
It’s as though in shedding East, she has blossomed.
Olivia scowls. This wasn’t what she expected.
Charley tells the Bulletin’s staff that she wants to get an issue out before spring break. She gives everyone in the room an assignment except for Olivia.
“Everyone is free to get started,” Charley says. “Olivia, would you stay, please? I’d like a word.”
Grady nudges Olivia’s leg under the table. He raises an eyebrow as if to say, You good?
Olivia scoffs. Of course she’s good. I’d like a word? Charley is such a bot.
Olivia’s moxie dissipates, however, as soon as the others file out of the room.
Charley leans against the desk with the big computer terminal and crosses her arms so that a sliver of her perfectly flat abdomen is visible between her pants and sweater.
Olivia isn’t used to seeing Charley without her glasses, but she understands now that the glasses distract from Charley’s simple beauty.
She is, actually, one of the prettiest girls at school as well as being the smartest, which is obviously unfair.
But no, Olivia thinks. Charley is weird. She was weird when she got here and she’s still weird now.
“You suggested to East that I went back to Mav’s apartment after the field trip,” Charley says. It isn’t a question.
Olivia shrugs. “I was just wondering where you were.”
“You didn’t care where I was,” Charley says. “You were trying to stir the pot. And I get it… you’re insecure.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You were one of Davi’s minions before I got here,” Charley says. “The most obsequious, pandering minion of them all.”
Is she even speaking English? Olivia wonders.
“I’m sure you felt like I came out of nowhere and turned the social order upside down. Because I somehow captured the attention of Davi and East. Now Davi is my best friend and East was, until this past weekend, my boyfriend.”
“All I did,” Olivia says, “was ask a casual question. Why did he think you and Mav were so late showing up to camp?”
“The thing is, Olivia”—Charley plucks a strand of hair off the sleeve of her cardigan and lets it drift to the floor—“it was none of your business. You were eavesdropping on Davi and me by the Senior Sofa, because that’s what you do: You slink around and then use your ill-gotten tidbits of information to make yourself seem relevant.
” Charley laughs softly, as if she’s sharing an inside joke with herself.
“And also, in this case, to exact the revenge you seem to think I deserve. Because I don’t belong with East in your opinion.
Or because you’re jealous of my relationship with Mav. ”
“You suck up to him,” Olivia says. “And maybe more.”
Charley slow-blinks. “All I can assume is that you’re projecting, and that it’s you who wants to get with Mav. Which is sick, Olivia. He’s a grown man. Although that’s what you and your friends are into, right? Older, married guys are your kink.”
“For the record,” Olivia says, “I didn’t know about Tilly and your stepdad.”
“Of course you didn’t know about it,” Charley says. “Tilly didn’t confide in you because she knew you couldn’t handle that kind of secret.”
“That’s not why—”
“Do you understand how other people view you?” Charley asks.
“Everyone at this school, with the exception of Grady and a few of the fourth-form girls, pities you. Instead of being your own person, you adopt the personalities of others. People like Pippa and Tilly tolerated having you around because being with you was like looking into a flattering mirror. They didn’t like you, Olivia.
They used you—and you let them. Letting them use you became your whole personality.
Now that they’re both gone, you have no personality, which has understandably left you lost and angry.
Which is the reason you took it upon yourself to butt into my relationship.
” Charley sighs. “Aside from the In and Out list, you’ve turned in nothing for the paper. Because of that, I’m letting you go.”
“Letting me…? You’re kicking me off newspaper? You can’t do that.”
“Oh, but I can,” Charley says. “Have fun in strength and conditioning or community service, because you’re no longer welcome here.” Charley nods at the door. “Bye-bye.”
Olivia opens her mouth to protest—Charley can’t act on a personal vendetta!—but she isn’t going to grovel, and if Olivia were to take this matter to a teacher, it could be proved that Olivia has only written one article the whole year: the In and Out listicle.
But now Olivia is on the warpath. You want to see an article?
A news story? Olivia will dig and dig until she finds all the skeletons in the Tiffin closet.
She hitches her plum Goyard over her shoulder and, with a sniff (her eyes are watering, is this what it feels like to be fired?), she marches toward the door, only stopping to glare at Charley and issue a theatrical warning.
“As Shakespeare said, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’”
Charley smiles. “It was William Congreve, not Shakespeare,” she says. “But nice try.”