Old School by Tobias Wolff Page B

Ramsey said he had a touch of the flu, and wanted her to stand in for him, and pay his respects should Robert Frost appear. I heard her tell this to some masters and their wives as she carried a plate of cookies around the crowded room. Then she said it to Bill White and me in the same words and with the same helpless shrug, pursing her lips in sympathy for her ailing husband.
    Bill and I were standing by the fireplace. We each picked a cookie, and as she told her brave little lie Bill reached out and took the plate from her and set it on the mantel, below the picture of the Blaine Boys. She relaxed and made no move to go. I was struck by Bill’s confidence. Somehow I didn’t like it, but the result was fine—having Mrs. Ramsey linger with us.
    She said she’d heard Frost read once before, when she was a student at Foxcroft, and afterward he’d met with the girls and talked about everything under the sun. He was very funny, which surprised her, though she supposed it shouldn’t have, and a terrible flirt. Of course he got plenty of encouragement.
    The heat from the fire brought a flush to her face and made her perfume thicker, headier. She turned to Mr. Rice, an English master and a southerner himself, who was tapping the ashes from his pipe into the fireplace. Do you think he’ll come tonight? she asked.
    Frost? I doubt it. He seemed pretty well played out by the end there.
    Shoot, she said. She glanced toward the door as another group of boys came in, then turned toward Mr. Rice. Ramsey says y’all’re bringing that Ayn Rand woman here.
    Me—bringing Ayn Rand? What would Mrs. Rice say?
    You know what I mean.
    Bill and I looked at each other.
    There may’ve been some talk about it, Mr. Rice said.
    Oh, go on. It’s true and you know it.
    Roberta.
    I know, I know, she said. Boys, you didn’t hear a word. But still—Ayn Rand!
    Honestly now, Roberta, have you read anything of hers?
    Why, sure! Not a whole bunch. A little. A couple pages of one book, in a drugstore. I guess you’d have to say I haven’t, really.
    Nor have I, Mr. Rice said. And until I do I will refrain from poisoning these innocents against her.
    I’ve read her, Bill said.
    We all looked at him.
    The discerning Mr. White! I am shocked, Mrs. Ramsey said, but I could see that she was amused by the coolness with which he claimed this dubious ground.
    She has some interesting ideas, he said.
    Just then some of the boys started to sing, and others chimed in, the masters and their wives looking on tenderly. When I first arrived here I had tried not to gape whenever a bunch of boys suddenly gave voice like this, on the bus coming home from a game, in a sound-swelling stone hallway. It was like being in a movie of some Viennese operetta where everybody in the hotel lobby bursts into song, the doorman in his field marshal’s coat chiming in with a comical solo. Now I too knew the songs, and quickened to those moments when we leaned together, watching one another for cues, and joined our voices.
    The singers began to gather around the fireplace. Mr. Rice gave way and drifted back toward the other masters, but Mrs. Ramsey stayed with us and was soon surrounded by the chorus we’d become. She swayed to the music, laughing softly at a witty stanza, closing her eyes at a romantic line. She didn’t so much listen to the songs as receive them, as if we were serenading her. And indeed we were. She was a woman alone among us, eyes shining, color high, a pretty woman made beautiful by tribute of song. We could see our power to charm her and make her beautiful, and this gave boldness to our voices. All the poetry of the night, the agitating nearness of this young woman, the heat of the clove-scented room and the knowledge of the cold outside—all this was somehow to be heard in the songs we addressed to her. It was exciting and not quite proper, stirring and in some way illicit. It was a kind of ravishing. When one of the masters called a halt to it after several