The Eliot Girls by Krista Bridge Page B

upon buying me drinks. Sitting on bar stools with their legs spread wide, thrusting their groins at the world.”
    Demoralized at the recollection, she sank to her seat and Lorna Massie-Turnbull patted her shoulder.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Larissa. “We’ll get this bastard.”
    A delighted, nervous titter rose up from her audience. Larissa was known for reviling curse words as the lazy man’s mode of self-expression.
    â€œLet’s see how brave he is then,” put in Chandra Howard.
    Larissa made a lengthy note on her clipboard, then looked sharply in Ruth’s direction.
    â€œMay I ask why you are smiling, Ruth?”
    Ruth’s gaze had been fixed on the handout in her lap. The more she had tried to tell herself that the situation was not humorous, the sillier it had seemed. She had tried to imagine Audrey being a victim, how upset she would be, but all she could think of was how they would laugh about it together. She was sure that teenagers weren’t permanently scarred by that kind of thing.
    â€œWas I?” Ruth answered. “I’m very sorry, Larissa. Something else entered my mind.”
    â€œI’m sorry this news fails to hold your attention.”
    All the teachers had turned around in their seats to look at her.
    â€œI’m sorry, Larissa. It was a momentary lapse. I assure you that I’m just as concerned about the flasher as you are.” Ruth bowed her head to convey her shame, and as the meeting drew to a close she remained in her chair, unmoving, as though held down by the lingering weight of the reprimand.
    As Larissa withdrew to the side of the room to discuss the morning’s musical program with Lorna Massie-Turnbull, some teachers rose from their seats, stretching with a somewhat post-coital contentment. Chandra and Elaine began conversing in hushed tones, making Ruth suspicious that they were talking about her. In the centre of the seating area, Michael, flanked by Henry and Sheila, was animatedly describing her methods for training her children not to speak to strangers. After a year or so of what she called total intimidation (“and we spare them no gruesome details!”), she and her husband arranged to have an acquaintance attempt an abduction in a crowded mall or grocery store. So far, only one of her children had failed this test, a lapse that, given the number of children involved, struck her as an acceptable record of success.
    Others joined their cluster, and the conversation turned back to the flasher. Ruth couldn’t hear them well now, but she thought she heard someone say, “Apparently not small at all!” She decided she must have been mistaken—Larissa was still in the room, after all—but then she noticed that Henry was laughing, though the sound could barely be classified as a laugh. It was very contained, almost reluctant, a rustle in his throat: an acknowledgment of humour more than a release of mirth.
    For the past month, rumours about Henry had been vigorously circulating. Some people claimed that he had left his University of Toronto job after a nervous breakdown. Others guessed that he’d had an affair with a student. What was known was that he had recently married Clayton Quincy, the mother of Arabella. Out of this lone fact, the teachers spun a simple but epic tale. Clayton Quincy was perhaps the only single mother in the Eliot world. And although the fact that she could well afford to send her daughter to the school separated her from the truly disadvantaged, that she had been widowed in Arabella’s infancy was compensation enough. Ruth herself had no concrete recollection of the woman from Arabella’s time in grade four, but someone recalled that she had once been a cellist. Sheila had extracted the nugget that they had been engaged on top of a mountain. That Henry held himself apart, offering scant information, only inflamed their interest; speculation was more arousing than