Taylor nodded in answer to Nicole’s unspoken question about Chase’s parents. “They’re the easiest parents I’ve dealt with in nineteen years here. They’re incredibly nice, discreet, responsible people, and Chase is a really great kid. He wants to go to UCLA and go back to the West Coast or Tisch Drama at NYU. His parents had wanted him to have an eastern school experience for high school, and they travel all the time. He’s a terrific student and athlete and an all-around terrific kid. So is Jamie, Shepard’s boy.”
Nicole knew that Matthew produced and directed as well as acted. There had been some important parents at the school she came from, but she had to admit she was impressed watching the Morgans weave their way through the crowd, and observed how discreet they were. Seeing them there was so unexpected that no one paid any attention to them, and once in a while you could see someone recognize them and look shocked. They kept their professional lives as far away from Chase as they could. You would never guess that Matthew was currently living with another woman, and he and his wife were about to get divorced. They looked like any other family there that day. And Taylor had seen some bitter divorces in his time, but not theirs.
By ten-thirty, all the room assignments had been picked up. The students and their parents were in their dorm rooms setting things up, and where fathers were needed, they lent a hand for mothers who had come alone. Gillian Marks was helping the freshman girls as best she could, with two of her assistants. Most of the girls had brought their own hangers, towels, bed linens, and soaps, and there were stacks of empty cartons everywhere. Larry Gray hadn’t been entirely wrong. Every girl in the freshman dorm had brought her own hair dryer and curling iron, and straightening irons too. It looked like a hair salon gone mad with special shampoos and conditioners, body gels, and face washes on every surface in the bathrooms.
At noon the entire student body had to be in the cafeteria, where tables had been set up for the faculty to greet them. As soon as everyone was in the room, as close as they could figure it, Taylor Houghton made a brief speech to welcome old and new students, and all the new female students. There was hooting and catcalls and whistles for that, while Larry Gray looked as though he had swallowed a quince. Taylor held up a hand and stopped it quickly, and introduced the new faculty members. Then he wished everyone a wonderful lunch. The noise in the cafeteria was deafening, but no more so than usual on the first day.
At one-thirty what Maxine called the Vale of Tears began. It was time for the parents to leave. New parents always cried, and this time so did the freshman girls. But the school kept it short and sweet. At one forty-five, each class had to be at orientation, to get their list of classes and teachers, the name of their counselor, and by two-thirty they had their first class. The school year was off and running.
Gillian Marks had reminded them before lunch in the cafeteria that team tryouts began the next morning at six A.M., and they each had a list of what tryouts were when. There was a list of clubs they could sign up for in the next few weeks, and special field trips throughout the year. She reminded them that the ski trips to New Hampshire and Vermont filled up quickly, and urged them to sign up soon.
An hour after their parents left, the students were so immersed in school, they had no time to miss them. And by dinnertime, which normally happened in three shifts, they were busy socializing, gossiping about teachers, talking about the classes they’d just been in, and were catching up with old friends, and making new ones.
Jamie Watts and Chase Morgan sat at the same table, as they always did. Steve Babson joined them a little while later, and Tommy Yee walked by them with his violin case, which never left his hands. His grandfather in Shanghai had given him a stunningly valuable violin made by Joseph Gagliano when he turned sixteen, and he took it everywhere with him. His classmates teased him about it at first, and now Tommy carrying his violin case everywhere, even to meals, was a familiar sight.
“Good summer, Tommy?” Jamie called out to him.
“I visited my grandparents in Shanghai. They made me practice my violin three hours a day.” He rolled his eyes and grinned. He said he was going to the music tryouts after dinner. The drama club was meeting that weekend, which was going to be a lot more interesting now, since they could do productions with girls in them.
“How are you holding up?” Simon asked Gillian, as they picked up their meals on trays, and sat down at the same table for dinner.
“I feel like I’m running a hair salon in the freshman dorm, but don’t tell Larry Gray.” She grinned, eating a lamb chop and a double portion of string beans. He was eating lasagna. The school was feeding nearly a thousand people three times a day, and the food was surprisingly good. “All that gorgeous naturally disheveled hair that looks like they just climbed out of bed apparently takes a lot of work and hair products to get that way.” She wore hers as short as she could. Being the athletic director left no time to worry about her hair. “I like the kids. You can tell they’re good kids. How was your day?” she asked him.
“Busy, crazy. It will be for the next few weeks. I have twice as many counselees as I had last year, and half of them are girls.”
“We start tryouts tomorrow morning, I’m going to be crazed with that. I have to be in my office at five tomorrow morning,” Gillian said.
“I’m doing soccer tryouts in two days.” He looked at her seriously for a moment then. “Working in a boarding school, do you ever miss having a real life?” She thought about it for a minute and shook her head.
“Not really. My whole life has kind of been like this. I trained for years for the Olympics. Then I went back a second time. I went to boarding school myself as a kid, because my parents moved around all the time. My father worked for oil companies based in the Middle East and my mother went with him. I was always training for some team in college, so I went for what I knew. I’ve been teaching athletics in boarding schools for ten years. It’s kind of nice living in a community. You never get lonely,” she said, smiling at him. She was a happy person, it showed, and she loved what she did. “What about you?”
“Up until a year ago, I was working in a fancy day school for rich kids in New York. I lived in France and Italy for two years after college, then I worked for two years as a teacher in New York. I lived in SoHo, and thought I was cool. I had a bad breakup with my girlfriend and gave up my apartment, so I decided to try teaching here last year. I liked it, and it was exciting being part of the transition, so I re-enlisted for another year. Sometimes I miss living like an adult in New York though, going home at night, and doing whatever I want on weekends.”
“You’ll get over it. I don’t think I’d know how to do that anymore. This works for me. In some ways, it’s like never having to grow up. You just stay a kid forever.”
“Yeah, but they graduate and we don’t. I’m thinking I’ll do this for another two years, and then see what I think.”