The Hazards of Good Breeding Read Online Free Page A

BCD,” she says. “In Belmont.”
    â€œBCD,” he repeats. Faith is not sure if it is a question or an affirmation. He is very thin and his skin is so black it is almost bluish. His voice is surprisingly high and sorrowful-sounding.
    â€œBarton Country Day School—do you know where that is?”
    He shakes his head.
    â€œOh, dear—I don’t know if I remember what street it’s on. It’s sort of modern-looking. I think—I hope—I have it written down somewhere . . . maybe you can just get started in that direction and I’ll try to find—I can always ask directions in Belmont. . . .” She lets her voice trail off.
    The driver does not answer but pulls out into the traffic of the terminal. So typical of her, to have forgotten the address! She roots around in her purse for her address book, which she can’t find, but then it comes to her. “Bethune Street,” she says. Up front the driver nods without turning.
    Outside, the familiar raggedy pink brick of Chelsea springs into view along the water, and in the distance the Bunker Hill Monument, which has always struck Faith as mean-looking, full of shabby puritanical delusions of grandeur.
    It is strongly air-conditioned in the backseat of the taxi. Faith leans her head against the slippery black vinyl. There is an almost overpowering smell of berries—sweet, artificial, but not at all unpleasant. It strikes her as effeminate, which gives her a surge of compassion for the driver, who seems vulnerable, someone so new to this country he has not yet absorbed its most basic gender prohibitions. Someone who is probably made fun of behind his back.
    â€œI can’t believe I forgot the name of that street,” Faith says aloud, in an excess of warm feeling toward him. “My children all went there, my husband—actually, my ex-husband. . . . It’s just I guess you don’t really think about it, when you go there every day—drop off, pick up, you just think school , not Bethune Street.”
    The driver looks at her in the rearview mirror without smiling or nodding, and Faith immediately regrets her words. He has a gaunt face and bloodshot eyes, as if he has been driving all night. He is probably from one of those awful, war-torn countries whose names Faith always confuses. His wife and children are probably halfway across the planet in some shanty with no toilet, or worse—they are probably dead. And now Faith has reminded him of them with this frivolous talk about school—as if he had the opportunity to “drop them off, pick them up”—her words ring inanely in her ears. His children probably never had the opportunity to learn to read.
    The driver turns the radio on and settles on a classical station, and the soft notes of a cello stream out of the speakers—not the rock and roll or easy listening or daytime talk show Faith expected. Maybe he is from somewhere gentler than she had imagined. Somewhere subtler and more full of longing than fear. Or maybe . . . maybe—is it possible to be somewhere both grim and full of longing?
    Faith does not know much about classical music, but she recognizes this piece—the low warble of cello strings and undulating motion that makes her think of someone running across a wide-open expanse of rolling hills in late afternoon sunshine.
    â€œDo you know what this is?” she asks, leaning forward.
    The driver looks at her in the rearview mirror. “Music,” he says.
    â€œAh.” Faith nods and sits back. She rests her head against the smooth vinyl again and lets the sound take them both somewhere kinder and softer than here.
    O VER THE LAST FEW MONTHS, Jack Dunlap has become one of those people who do strange things in their sleep: he wakes up pounding the door to his closet, or sitting upright in his arm-chair, or slipping the key to the basement door into his left tennis sneaker. It gives him a feeling of shame and