7 May 2002 Ellen Boisvert is munching on a lobster salad and scanning the real estate ads in the Coventry Daily Gazette when she feels someone watching her. The Risen Planet Café is packed with the usual business crowd—the gallery owners and bankers and real estate agents that comprise Coventryby -the-Sea’s year-round commerce. Earlier, when she walked around town, some Friday tourists were strolling among the shops and galleries. And there was the usual dribble of bicyclists with their maps and helmets and spandex. Ellen looks up from the Gazette to see a woman in a pink T-shirt and blond highlighted hair giving her that puzzled, do-I-know-you look. At the table inside the window, the woman sits there with her three kids—a blond girl of about six, a baby in a stroller, a toddler on one of those wooden high chairs, swinging his fat legs and absently eating something from his tray top. The woman flashes her a tentative grin. Ellen manages a push-button smile. She feels strangely annoyed, embarrassed by this woman’s hopeful, pretty face. Today the Gazette’s real estate pages are packed with grainy pictures and jazzy headlines for houses and condos: water view, single-family, move-in condition. Wait! Here’s a downtown penthouse with a chef’s kitchen and a rooftop balcony. The woman is probably somebody’s parent. It’s a family who’s driven from elsewhere in New England, or even halfway across country for yesterday ’s school graduation ceremonies at Coventry Academy, where Ellen Boisvert teaches French to grades 9 through 12. Or they’re here to pick up their 8 * Áine Greaney kid—he or she can’t be more than a freshman or sophomore—for summer vacation. And now, the woman recognizes Ellen as one of her kid’s teachers. Yesterday, Academy graduation day, Ellen must have met a hundred parents, aunts, uncles, alumni of the quintessential New England prep school. As vice chair of the school’s graduation committee, she exchanged a hundred handshakes and pleasantries. She knew that something about this petite, thirty-nine-year-old American disappoints them; they have been expecting somebody taller, more chic. But still they asked, “Now where in France are you from?” “I’m not. I’m American. My parents were—are—French Canadian.” Most prep-school parents are too well schooled to show their disappointment . Or to say aloud that, for $42,000 per year, their kid should get a native-born language teacher. Her lobster salad tastes bitter. Her hangover is settling in. Last night, she had too much red wine at the headmaster’s end-of-year party where the faculty stood around nibbling on canapés and inquiring about each other’s summer plans. This school vacation, Ellen has only one plan: to find a new place to live, to move permanently up here from Boston to Coventry-by-the-Sea. After her husband Fintan’s death last year, she immediately sold their marital condominium in Boston. She knew from the realtor’s doubtful look that it was priced too low, that Ellen had grabbed a premature and first offer. In those weeks between the funeral service and her return for the school semester, she found some strange solace in packing up boxes. She wanted something in her life to feel controlled, achievable, complete. The academy’s faculty apartments were intended for the new-arrival teachers—gratis accommodation while they find their feet, adjust to a new school and this town along the Massachusetts seacoast. Now, as a secondyear teacher, Ellen knows that her extended stay is the headmaster’s concession to her state of young and sudden widowhood. She looks up. Across these loud, chattery lunch tables, over the voices and the clatter of plates and the whoosh of the cappuccino machine, that woman is still watching. Ellen takes a long drink of her sparkling water and returns to the Gazette. [44.200.141.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:40 GMT) Dance Lessons * 9 The penthouse’s bedroom has exposed beams and skylights for nighttime stargazing. All this semester, when the snow piled up on the rickety wooden deck outside her faculty apartment, Ellen woke from a repeating dream of Fintan walking up the hill from work, just an ordinary day in which he expects to turn the key and loosen his tie and kick off his shoes, open their fridge for a drink...