Read Online City of Light by Lauren Belfer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lauren Belfer
Ads: Link
I’m sorry you had to hear our little argument. Best if we all just put it out of our minds.” He stopped before Grace. “Now then, my little girl, have you finished your homework?”
“It’s too hard. The math is too hard.”
“Come on.” I rubbed her knee. “I’ll review it with you for a minute.” I stood and took her hands to pull her up. She looked pleased at the prospect of this unexpected treat. “But don’t tell any of your friends. I can’t have all the children asking the headmistress to help them with their homework!” We went upstairs, and soon after, the housekeeper returned and Tom left for his meeting at the club.
And I walked home alone, the streets alive with snowflakes that glimmered in the yellow haze of our electric streetlamps.
• • •
The next afternoon, I stood in the school’s front office pondering the disturbing events of the night before. Speyer’s unexpected visit, the ensuing argument … Tom’s world and, although I could hardly credit it, Tom himself seemed somehow fraught with menace. By contrast, the school was like a haven of peace and predictability. Here I could offer my students, and myself and my colleagues, a respite from the perils outside. Here nothing mattered except learning and camaraderie.
Nonetheless, I had to give my girls the ability to deal with the challenges that would one day confront them. I’d just finished teaching the seniors a weekly class pompously titled “Philosophy of Everyday Life.” There really was no other title for it, however, because we surveyed the history of philosophy with a practical goal: the discussion of moral standards and of the ethics by which the girls lived their lives. “All choices are ethical ones, opportunity and responsibility are inextricably linked”—those were the words written across the top of the blackboard. The class was my primary means of social subversion, and teaching it left me drained.
I was alone in the office for the moment, albeit in the company of a marble bust, in the Italian Renaissance style, of a woman called “Modestia.” She stared at me with a come-hither candor that wasn’t strictly modest. A gift from a benefactor, she couldn’t be put in a closet. I much preferred the Nike of Samothrace—the Winged Victory—who urged me to glory from her pedestal in the corner. The Winged Victory was quite fashionable; it seemed no home was complete until the Nike had been placed upon her pedestal, as she had been in the Sinclair library.
Modestia and the Winged Victory: two far different views of womanhood, and how were we to steer between them? That was the dilemma I faced every day in the struggle to turn girls into women, to give them the confidence, knowledge, and inner strength to face up to the challenges outside. Keep your rudder true. Make your lives count . These were the precepts I tried to instill in the girls every morning when we gathered for chapel, the school organist guiding our procession with Bach or Handel. Undoubtedly I was overearnest in my morning messages, but how else to inspire the girls if not in terms of the ideal?
I glanced out the tall, wide windows toward the elm-tree forest of Bidwell Parkway. If I could walk through the mullioned glass, I would enter a winter woodland of dryads and nymphs—a chilly Midsummer Night’s Dream , filled with intrigues as complicated as those among the girls right here.
I smiled at myself, for my fantasies, and realized once again that I loved this school. Like Grace, it was among the few things I could love. I loved the leaf-patterned shadows the sunlight threw across the walls; the hidden library nooks where girls went to read and dream; the stained-glass window at the stairway landing of young women walking boldly into the future; the long hallways, their wainscoting carved into birds and beasts; the Elizabethan dining hall with its oaken tables and high, arched ceiling; the flagstoned central courtyard with its fountain, its
“It’s too hard. The math is too hard.”
“Come on.” I rubbed her knee. “I’ll review it with you for a minute.” I stood and took her hands to pull her up. She looked pleased at the prospect of this unexpected treat. “But don’t tell any of your friends. I can’t have all the children asking the headmistress to help them with their homework!” We went upstairs, and soon after, the housekeeper returned and Tom left for his meeting at the club.
And I walked home alone, the streets alive with snowflakes that glimmered in the yellow haze of our electric streetlamps.
• • •
The next afternoon, I stood in the school’s front office pondering the disturbing events of the night before. Speyer’s unexpected visit, the ensuing argument … Tom’s world and, although I could hardly credit it, Tom himself seemed somehow fraught with menace. By contrast, the school was like a haven of peace and predictability. Here I could offer my students, and myself and my colleagues, a respite from the perils outside. Here nothing mattered except learning and camaraderie.
Nonetheless, I had to give my girls the ability to deal with the challenges that would one day confront them. I’d just finished teaching the seniors a weekly class pompously titled “Philosophy of Everyday Life.” There really was no other title for it, however, because we surveyed the history of philosophy with a practical goal: the discussion of moral standards and of the ethics by which the girls lived their lives. “All choices are ethical ones, opportunity and responsibility are inextricably linked”—those were the words written across the top of the blackboard. The class was my primary means of social subversion, and teaching it left me drained.
I was alone in the office for the moment, albeit in the company of a marble bust, in the Italian Renaissance style, of a woman called “Modestia.” She stared at me with a come-hither candor that wasn’t strictly modest. A gift from a benefactor, she couldn’t be put in a closet. I much preferred the Nike of Samothrace—the Winged Victory—who urged me to glory from her pedestal in the corner. The Winged Victory was quite fashionable; it seemed no home was complete until the Nike had been placed upon her pedestal, as she had been in the Sinclair library.
Modestia and the Winged Victory: two far different views of womanhood, and how were we to steer between them? That was the dilemma I faced every day in the struggle to turn girls into women, to give them the confidence, knowledge, and inner strength to face up to the challenges outside. Keep your rudder true. Make your lives count . These were the precepts I tried to instill in the girls every morning when we gathered for chapel, the school organist guiding our procession with Bach or Handel. Undoubtedly I was overearnest in my morning messages, but how else to inspire the girls if not in terms of the ideal?
I glanced out the tall, wide windows toward the elm-tree forest of Bidwell Parkway. If I could walk through the mullioned glass, I would enter a winter woodland of dryads and nymphs—a chilly Midsummer Night’s Dream , filled with intrigues as complicated as those among the girls right here.
I smiled at myself, for my fantasies, and realized once again that I loved this school. Like Grace, it was among the few things I could love. I loved the leaf-patterned shadows the sunlight threw across the walls; the hidden library nooks where girls went to read and dream; the stained-glass window at the stairway landing of young women walking boldly into the future; the long hallways, their wainscoting carved into birds and beasts; the Elizabethan dining hall with its oaken tables and high, arched ceiling; the flagstoned central courtyard with its fountain, its
Similar Books
