could still do a back handspring.
Back in the study, he wrapped the Junior Olympics fencing trophy in newspaper and put it in the bottom of the box. He added Bob Shirley’s lighter, the pair of Vuarnet sunglasses he’d taken from Jay Saravan’s BMW, and, finally, the battered schoolboy’s copy of Treasure Island that had belonged to Alan Manso.
He then hunted down several history texts lying around his study—books he no longer used in any of his classes—and piled them on top of the four souvenirs. Then he taped up the box and went to tell Mira he was going to school.
She’d just finished her yoga, and the living room was warm and smelled of her sweat, but not in a bad way.
“I’m off,” Matthew said. “Should I wait for you?”
“No, that’s okay. I have plenty to do here. How long are you going to be?”
“Not long at all,” he said, grabbing the car keys and his sunglasses. He stood for a moment in the foyer trying to think if he’d gotten everything. Standing there, he realized that Hen or her husband, Lloyd, might be out in front of their house, or looking out the window. They’d said they were going somewhere, but what if they were back and saw him leaving with a box? Would it be obvious he was getting rid of the trophy? Fortunately, his driveway was on the opposite side of the house from theirs. He’d be visible to them for all of about ten seconds as he left the front door and turned toward his car. He could risk it.
It was warm outside, more like a midsummer day than late in September. Across the street Jim Mills was mowing his lawn again, even though it had been only a few days since he’d last done it, and the smell of cut grass and gasoline filled the air, making Matthew slightly ill. It had been one of his jobs as a kid, mowing the back lawn of his parents’ house. His nose would run, and his hands would itch from the vibration of the push mower, and on wet days, the cut grass would clump underneath the mower and stick to his shins. He got into his Fiat and turned on the air conditioner. He put the box next to him on the passenger seat. Because of the smell of the lawn mower he’d barely even thought about Hen or Lloyd spotting him with the box. Probably a good thing that he didn’t cast a guilty look toward their house.
It was a twenty-minute drive to Sussex Hall, a private high school with about seven hundred students, half of whom boarded and half who came from the surrounding wealthy towns of this part of Massachusetts. Built on a hill, all the buildings of Sussex Hall, except for the newish gym, were constructed from brick at the turn of the previous century. Matthew did not always love being a teacher, but he did love the Sussex campus, with its Gothic dormitories and its nondenominational stone chapel. He parked in a faculty spot even though it was Sunday and he could park anywhere. He entered Warburg Hall through the back door, using his own set of keys, and went straight down the narrow stairwell to the basement. As one of his extra duties, Matthew had taken on stewardship of the history textbooks, most of which were shelved in one of the closeted storage spaces in the finished basement. But he also had a key to the older section of the basement, filled with the extra lawn chairs used for graduation ceremonies and, behind those, the discarded furnishings—blackboards, mostly, and old school chairs. There was also a stack of boxes in the far corner that contained the original cutlery from the dining hall. It was there that he slid his box of mementos, sure that they would never be disturbed or found, even if someone were looking for them. And even if someone did find the box, he’d made sure to wipe any fingerprints off all the items, and he’d checked that his name was not in any of the old textbooks.
Back upstairs, after washing his hands in the faculty bathroom, Matthew went to his classroom to work on his lesson plans for the week. Most of his classes were ones he’d taught dozens of times, but this semester he’d agreed to do a senior seminar on the Cold War, and he needed to brush up. This week they were focusing