Erich Segal - The Class

They barely spoke at dinner. Sara assumed her husband was just emotionally spent and was thankful for the respite. She was somewhat surprised when he stood up and reached for his parka.

“Where’re you going?” she asked.

“I don’t know, I thought I’d walk to Canterbury Hall. It’s such a nice place when nobody’s around. I want to grade those exams tonight — so I can exorcise this whole business.”

“Good idea,” she answered, sensing that he had regained some confidence. “I can sit here and abstract one or two pieces from Wege zu Euripides .”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Sara, you are the Tenth Muse.”

“Thanks, sport, but I’m happy just being plain Mrs. Lambros. Now go off, do your homework, and come back to my loving arms.”

He sat in his tiny office and looked out over Windsor Green. A preview of snows to come had powdered its broad surface, which glowed softly in the moonlight. Now and then students passed, and the air was so still he could hear their laughter from afar.

The bell tolling ten o’clock admonished him to complete his task. He turned back to the pile of bluebooks on his desk and set about transcribing the results for submission to the dean’s office. They hadn’t been bad. A handful of A’s, two C’s, and the rest varying shades of B. All in all, something a language teacher could take pride in.

Of course, there was the no-show of a certain football player. But that was quite another matter.

It took him less than two minutes to enter the grades. Now only the space following Christopher Jastrow ’69 remained — like the new snow outside — fresh, clean, and unsullied. Blank.

What should it be — F, Incomplete, or ABX (meaning absent from the exam)? Any of these would put the quietus on the little bastard’s football career.

He sat there, staring at the paper, writing nothing.

At first he had no notion of what he was going to do. But then gradually it dawned on him that he had left the house and gone to his lonely, underheated cubicle for a definite reason. To get away from Sara. To elude the beacon of her conscience.

Sara was unable to understand the kind of fear that gripped him. Her family had status, substance, and security. He still felt like an immigrant, desperately needing roots in his new country. Perhaps her forebears had made compromises in generations past. But they were buried deeply now in the unshakable foundation of her respectability.

It was such a little thing to do. In years to come he would resent acting out of false bravado. This was not ancient Athens. He was not Socrates. So why the hell should he drink hemlock for some small-time football star? What lofty principle would be served by failing Jastrow?

No, he told himself. Our whole future’s at stake. This is for self-preservation.

He took his pen and in the space by Jastrow’s name hastily scribbled — “C.”

And en route home he dropped the grades in Barnes Hall.

As he entered, he could hear Sara in the bedroom speaking to someone on the telephone. At this hour?

He walked to the open door. She was so engrossed in conversation that she didn’t notice his arrival.

“I just don’t know what else to do,” she was saying plaintively. “This is such a blow for Ted, and I can’t seem to help him.…”

She paused to listen. He still did not signal his presence.

“Oh would you?” she then said eagerly. “I think that might really help.”

Who is she talking to? With whom is she sharing our most intimate secrets?

“I’m home, Sara,” he said quietly.

She looked up, smiled, and then immediately ended her phone call. “Oh, the man of the house just entered. Thanks for everything. I’ll call you in the morning.” And she quickly hung up and hurried over to kiss him. “How do you feel, darling? Can I get you a bite of something?”

“I wouldn’t mind a beer,” Ted answered tersely.

As they headed for the kitchen, he asked calmly but with an unmistakable edge of disapproval, “With what member of the community were you sharing our little moral crisis?”

“Oh, Ted, I’m so glad I don’t have to wait to tell you. I’ve just had a long talk with Daddy.

She opened the fridge, took out two beers, and handed one to him.

“Why did he have to know about this?” Ted asked.

“Because I thought he could help, and he can. He knows Whitney Vanderbilt — who’s as heavy a Canterbury alumnus as there is. Daddy’s sure he can get him to step in and help us out. Isn’t that great?”

Ted felt his anger mounting.

“So you went running to Daddy with our problem. My problem, to be precise. I find that slightly disloyal, to say the least.”

She was stunned.

“Disloyal? For God’s sake, Ted, you were suicidal when you left here. I would have done anything to help you — even strangle Tony Thatcher with my bare hands. I don’t see why you’re not overjoyed that my father actually has the power to help us….”

Her voice trailed off as she began to realize how furious he was.

“Sara, you shouldn’t have done this without asking me. I mean, am I or am I not the man in the family?”

“What the hell does this have to do with gender? Do you want to go down in flames just to preserve your masculine ego?”

Ted exploded. “Goddamn you, Sara!” And slammed his beer bottle so violently on the kitchen counter that it shattered.

Before either of them could speak, frightened sobs and shouts of “Mommy!” began to emanate from little Ted’s bedroom.

For another moment they just glared at each other. Finally she whispered, “I’d better go to him.”

It took Sara nearly twenty minutes to lull her fearful six-year-old back to sleep. When she returned to the kitchen she saw that Ted had cleaned up and disposed of the broken glass. She walked into the living room. He was seated, facing the fire, a glass of scotch in his hand. He did not turn when he heard her approach.

“Do you want to talk?” she asked calmly.

Still with his back to her, he said tersely, “I gave Jastrow a C.”

By now she had guessed as much. And knew she had to suppress — or at least postpone — her anger.

“Ted,” she began softly, “it was for you to decide. I just wish you’d trusted me enough to share the pain of compromise.”

He sat like a statue, unresponsive.

“Look, I said I’d stick by you. And if staying at Canterbury means that much to you, we’ll pay the price. We can be happy anywhere as long as we keep together.”

“You think I was a coward, don’t you?” he murmured.

“No, Ted,” she answered. “I was just as scared as you. I shouldn’t have tried to make you into some Sophoclean hero. I mean, life is full of compromises, and what you did is pretty minuscule in the scheme of things.”

He still did not turn. She walked up behind him and placed her hands gently at the base of his neck. Her touch brought a surge of comfort.

“Sara,” he whispered, “I sat there all evening wondering what the hell to do about it. And then something said to me that bucking the system would be like King Lear raging against the winds. It would have meant risking everything we worked for, everything we want to do.…”

“It’s over now, Ted,” she said softly, “so just forget it.”

“You know I can’t. I never will.” He paused, then added, “And you won’t either.”

Inwardly she knew that he was right.

The National Security Council had existed, at least in name, since 1947. But it was only after 1969 — when Richard Nixon named Henry A. Kissinger to lead this advisory group — that it began to impinge upon and gradually usurp some of the powers of the Department of State.