Neither Susan Reinert nor Shelly seemed as threatening to Sue Myers as a woman Bill Bradfield had been seeing on and off for a few years, a woman from Annapolis.
Rachel had originally come to Upper Merion to talk to Bill Bradfield about his advanced students as potential candidates for St. Johns College in Annapolis, a liberal arts institution that promoted the Great Books concept.
Sue Myers had met Rachel on the very day that she’d scored the one-kick decision over Susan Reinert. When Sue saw the way Bill Bradfield was looking at Rachel she realized she might have more kicking to do.
Bill Bradfield started urging students toward a further education at St. John’s, Annapolis, or at the colleges sister campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
One summer, he and Sue Myers took a trip to Santa Fe so he could enroll in a seminar. Sue had to live in a godawful apartment in the outskirts rather than being close to the school where he spent most of his time. It made her wonder. Then she discovered that Rachel was also at the New Mexico campus.
Rachel was a very articulate, seemingly intelligent young woman, as petite as Susan Reinert. She wore no makeup; her clothing was modest; her shoes were flat. Her black hair was slashed down the middle and looked like it was combed with a steam iron. She had good bones and possibly could be attractive but probably never would be.
To Sue, she looked like she belonged on a widow’s walk in 19th-century fiction, floating between the gables. Rachel was different and mysterious and Sue Myers feared her more than the others.
This one, she thought, could be a Bill Bradfield “keeper.”
Sue was delighted to learn that Rachel had been married at one time. Sue believed that Bill Bradfield could never sustain a relationship with a woman who was not a virgin. Yet the more Sue studied Rachel the more she realized that this young woman looked as virginal as any that prowled the moors in a Gothic novel. And that’s how she looked: Gothic.
Chris Pappas enthusiastically agreed to join Bill Bradfield in a summer program at St. Johns in Annapolis where Rachel would be “helpful” to them. There would be vigorous tutorials, seminars, papers to be written on the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. Chris hoped to emerge more qualified, more confident.
As for his mentor it would be a very busy summer. He now had a whole bunch of people to keep apart.
Apparently, Bill Bradfield had talked to Susan Reinert about his fear that some of the folks in his summer seminar might not be up to snuff, morally speaking.
Susan fired off a contemptuous letter early that summer showing that she was aware of his friendship with Racheclass="underline"
I think it’s a bit hypocritical for you to rave about St. Johns lack of moral standards and “bed hopping” when you arranged to have your physical needs met from very early on. I wonder if your visits there are so emotionally difficult because you’re unsuccessful in reconciling your own past and present to your idea? Why don’t you accept yourself and not preach celibacy to others. Please think about what you can offer me come September.
I want: 1) You to love me. 2) You to be separated from Sue. 3) Us to work through our problems.
Love,
Sus
Rachel’s name began explicitly surfacing in Susan’s other letters that summer:
You have sent out messages to many women that you were interested in them sexually and that you cared for them in a special way, including former students, Sue, Rachel, me. Sue has certainly borne the brunt of it, hence her misdirected anger at me. I’ve also felt jealousy, even of Pat, and now Rachel in particular, but always had a feeling of uniqueness to carry me through. Hope it was justified.
Long ago I recognized that I wasn’t quite bright enough or disciplined enough for a life of the mind. I opted for a life of service (following my fathers footsteps?) yet I am also my mother’s daughter. I contemplate human relationships, not philosophy or science. Yes, I know they cast light on each other, but still, does this make us incompatible? It’s imperative for us to communicate more with each other. I still think that a serious attempt at therapy would help.
Susan Reinert related to therapist Roslyn Weinberger that Bill Bradfield would get angry at the mere mention of the psychologists name and ask testily why Susan thought it necessary to talk to “that woman.” He never became aware that she was freely talking to that woman about him.
That summer, Chris Pappas could not fail to notice that there were lots of nights when Bill Bradfield didn’t sleep in his dormitory room, and it was fairly obvious where he spent those nights. Sue Myers must have gotten the vibes long-distance, because one day when she was especially frazzled from trying to keep the Terra Art store open, she put in a long-distance call to Rachel and simply blurted out her suspicions.
“This is Sue Myers,” she said, “and I’m sure you and Bill are pretty much an item by now, so I want you to know that I wouldn’t mind giving him up. Maybe you wouldn’t mind delivering that message.”
And then the telephone practically froze to her hand.
“She was cold,” Sue Myers later remembered. “ ‘Bitchy’ is a word that doesn’t even work. She was the original ice maiden.”
Rachel said, “I’m afraid you’re talking to the wrong party. Mister Bradfield isn’t available for messages. I believe he’s sailing this weekend. With Shelly.”
So Sue Myers stammered something about child molesters and hung up in humiliation, and went back to stewing over things a lot less complex than Bill Bradfield. Things like mid-life crisis and bankruptcy.
Chris Pappas hadn’t met Rachel until that summer and often wondered about her relationship with Bill Bradfield.
“I found her to be very straitlaced,” he said. “She had an underdeveloped sense of humor or none at all, but Bill absolutely appreciated her. He once told me that she was the only woman friend he’d ever had who was able to pull herself up by her own bootstraps so admirably. After a bad marriage she’d gotten her life together. She’d managed to save money and was planning to enter Harvard for graduate study.”
When Bill Bradfield talked of Rachel to Chris Pappas, he smiled sadly and said, “She’s done a lot better in making something of herself than I’ve ever done.”
Chris wasn’t in the dormitory very long before he learned that Rachel and Bill Bradfield were very close friends, indeed. He was in his bathroom downstairs one morning when Bill Bradfield came rushing in with his face flushed and his beard frazzled, and his blue eyes aglow with rapture.
He just had to tell someone. It seemed that he and Rachel had had a terrible row and she became furious because of some complimentary things he’d been saying about little Shelly. And when he tried to tell Rachel that he simply saw Shelly as a “perfect human being” she became even angrier. Rachel admitted then that she was hopelessly in love with him and even wanted to have his children. She said that they had so much in common she couldn’t imagine why he could even think of that child.
And then Bill Bradfield showed young Chris Pappas a look of wonder and said, “I didn’t realize just how much I’m loved by her!”
Two hours later Chris saw them in the apartment of another former Upper Merion student named Jeff Olsen. Bill Bradfield and Rachel were arm in arm, giggling and chatting. She informed Chris that when Bill Bradfield eventually got his oceangoing sailboat, she was going to have an office on the boat. She’d work while Chris and Bill Bradfield went clamming and fishing and read their Great Books. The ice maiden was tingling. She seemed absolutely girlish.