The
Haddan School was built in 1858 on the sloping banks of the Haddan
River, a muddy and precarious location that had proven disastrous
from the start. That very first year, when the whole town smelled
of cedar shavings, there was a storm of enormous proportions, with
winds so strong that dozens of fish were drawn up from the reedy
shallows, then lifted above the village in a shining cloud of
scales. Torrents of water fell from the sky, and by morning the
river had overflowed, leaving the school's freshly painted white
clapboard buildings adrift in a murky sea of duckweed and
algae.

For weeks, students were ferried to classes in rowboats; catfish
swam through flooded perennial gardens, observing the disaster with
cool, glassy eyes. Every evening, at twilight, the school cook
balanced on a second-story window ledge, then cast out his rod to
catch dozens of silver trout, a species found only in the currents
of the Haddan River, a sweet, fleshy variety that was especially
delectable when fried with shallots and oil. After the flood
subsided, two inches of thick, black silt covered the carpets in
the dormitories; at the headmaster's house, mosquitoes began to
hatch in sinks and commodes. The delightful watery vistas of the
site, a landscape abundant with willows and water lotus, had
seduced the foolish trustees into building much too close to the
river, an architectural mistake that has never been rectified. To
this day, frogs can be found in the plumbing; linens and clothes
stored in closets have a distinctly weedy odor, as if each article
had been washed in river water and never thoroughly dried.

After the flood, houses in town had to be refloored and re-roofed;
public buildings were torn down, then refashioned from cellar to
ceiling. Whole chimneys floated down Main Street, with some of them
still issuing forth smoke. Main Street itself had become a river,
with waters more than six feet deep. Iron fences were loosened and
ripped from the earth, leaving metal posts in the shape of arrows
adrift. Horses drowned; mules floated for miles and when rescued,
refused to eat anything but wild celery and duckweed. Poison sumac
was uprooted and deposited in vegetable bins, only to be mistakenly
cooked along with the carrots and cabbages, a recipe that led to
several untimely deaths. Bobcats showed up on back porches, mewing
and desperate for milk; several were found beside babies in their
cradles, sucking from bottles and purring as though they were house
cats let in through front doors.

At that time, the rich fields circling the town of Haddan were
owned by prosperous farmers who cultivated asparagus and onions and
a peculiar type of yellow cabbage known for its large size and
delicate fragrance. These farmers put aside their plows and watched
as boys arrived from every corner of the Commonwealth and beyond to
take up residence at the school, but even the wealthiest among them
were unable to afford tuition for their own sons. Local boys had to
make do with the dusty stacks at the library on Main Street and
whatever fundamentals they might learn in their very own parlors
and fields. To this day, people in Haddan retain a rustic knowledge
of which they are proud. Even the children can foretell the
weather; they can point to and name every constellation in the
sky.

A dozen years after the Haddan School was built, a public high
school was erected in the neighboring town of Hamilton, which meant
a five-mile trek to classes on days when the snow was knee-deep and
the weather so cold even the badgers kept to their dens. Each time
a Haddan boy walked through a storm to the public school his
animosity toward the Haddan School grew, a small bump on the skin
of ill will ready to rupture at the slightest contact. In this way
a hard bitterness was forged, and the spiteful sentiment increased
every year, until there might as well have been a fence dividing
those who came from the school and the residents of the village.
Before long, anyone who dared to cross that line was judged to be
either a martyr or a fool.

There was a time when it seemed possible for the separate worlds to
be united, when Dr. George Howe, the esteemed headmaster,
considered to be the finest in the Haddan School history, decided
to marry Annie Jordan, the most beautiful girl in the village.
Annie's father was a well-respected man who owned a parcel of
farmland out where Route 17 now runs into the interstate, and he
approved of the marriage, but soon after the wedding it became
apparent that Haddan would remain divided. Dr. Howe was jealous and
vindictive; he turned local people away from his door. Even Annie's
family was quickly dispatched. Her father and brothers, good,
simple men with mud on their boots, were struck mute the few times
they came to call, as if the bone china and leather-bound books had
robbed them of their tongues. Before long people in town came to
resent Annie, as if she'd somehow betrayed them. If she thought she
was so high and mighty, in that fine house by the river, then the
girls she grew up with felt they had reason to retaliate, and on
the streets they passed her by without a word. Even her own dog, a
lazy hound named Sugar, ran away yelping on those rare occasions
when Annie came to visit her father's farm.

It quickly became clear that the marriage had been a horrid
mistake; anyone more worldly than Annie would have known this from
the start. At his very own wedding, Dr. Howe had forgotten his hat,
always the sign of a man who's bound to stray. He was the sort of
person who wished to own his wife, without belonging to her in
return. There were days when he spoke barely a sentence in his own
home, and nights when he didn't come in until dawn. It was
loneliness that led Annie to begin her work in the gardens at
Haddan, which until her arrival were neglected, ruined patches
filled with ivy and nightshade, dark vines that choked out any
wildflowers that might have grown in the thin soil. As it turned
out, Annie's loneliness was the school's good fortune, for it was
she who designed the brick walkways that form an hourglass and who,
with the help of six strong boys, saw to the planting of the
weeping beeches beneath whose branches many girls still receive
their first kiss. Annie brought the original pair of swans to
reside at the bend in the river behind the headmaster's house,
ill-tempered, wretched specimens rescued from a farmer in Hamilton
whose wife plucked their bloody feathers for soft, plump quilts.
Each evening, before supper, when the light above the river washed
the air with a green haze, Annie went out with an apronful of old
bread. She held the firm belief that scattering bread crumbs
brought happiness, a condition she herself had not known since her
wedding day.

There are those who vow that swans are unlucky, and fishermen in
particular despise them, but Annie loved her pets; she could call
them to her with a single cry. At the sound of her sweet voice the
birds lined up as politely as gentlemen; they ate from her hands
without ever once drawing blood, favoring crusts of rye bread and
whole-wheat crackers. As a special treat, Annie often brought whole
pies, leftovers from the dining room. In a wicker basket, she piled
up apple cobbler and wild raspberry tart, which the swans gobbled
down nearly whole, so that their beaks were stained crimson and
their bellies took on the shapes of medicine balls.

Even those who were certain Dr. Howe had made a serious error in
judgment in choosing his bride had to admire Annie's gardens. In no
time the perennial borders were thick with rosy-pink foxglove and
cream-colored lilies, each of which hung like a pendant, collecting
dew on its satiny petals. But it was with her roses that Annie had
the best luck of all, and among the more jealous members of the
Haddan garden club, founded that very year in an attempt to
beautify the town, there was speculation that such good fortune was
unnatural. Some people went so far as to suggest that Annie Howe
sprinkled the pulverized bones of cats around the roots of her
ramblers, or perhaps it was her own blood she cast about the
shrubs. How else could her garden bloom in February, when all other
yards were nothing more than stonewort and bare dirt? Massachusetts
was known for a short growing season and its early killing frosts.
Nowhere could a gardener find more unpredictable weather, be it
droughts or floods or infestations of beetles, which had been known
to devour entire neighborhoods full of greenery. None of these
plagues ever affected Annie Howe. Under her care, even the most
delicate hybrids lasted past the first frost so that in November
there were still roses blooming at Haddan, although by then, the
edge of each petal was often encased in a layer of ice.

Much of Annie Howe's handiwork was destroyed the year she died, yet
a few samples of the hardiest varieties remain. A visitor to campus
can find sweet, aromatic Prosperity, as well as Climbing Ophelia
and those delicious Egyptian Roses, which give off the scent of
cloves on rainy days, ensuring that a gardener's hands will smell
sweet for hours after pruning the canes. Among all of these roses,
Mrs. Howe's prized white Polars were surely her finest. Cascades of
white flowers lay dormant for a decade, to bloom and envelop the
metal trellis beside the girls' dormitory only once every ten
years, as if all that time was needed to restore the roses their
strength. Each September, when the new students arrived, Annie
Howe's roses had an odd effect on certain girls, the sensitive ones
who had never been away from home before and were easily
influenced. When such girls walked past the brittle canes in the
gardens behind St. Anne's, they felt something cold at the base of
their spines, a bad case of pins and needles, as though someone
were issuing a warning: Be careful who you choose to love and who
loves you in return.

Most newcomers are apprised of Annie's fate as soon as they come to
Haddan. Before suitcases are unpacked and classes are chosen, they
know that although the huge wedding cake of a house that serves as
the girls' dormitory is officially called Hastings House-in honor
of some fellow, long forgotten, whose dull-witted daughter's
admission opened the door for female students on the strength of a
huge donation-the dormitory is never referred to by that name.
Among students, the house is called St. Anne's, in honor of Annie
Howe, who hanged herself from the rafters one mild evening in
March, only hours before wild iris began to appear in the woods.
There will always be girls who refuse to go up to the attic at St.
Anne's after hearing this story, and others, whether in search of
spiritual renewal or quick thrills, who are bound to ask if they
can take up residence in the room where Annie ended her life. On
days when rosewater preserves are served at breakfast, with Annie's
recipe carefully followed by the kitchen staff, even the most
fearless girls can become light-headed; after spooning this
concoction onto their toast they need to sit with their heads
between their knees and breathe deeply until their metabolisms grow
steady again.

At the start of the term, when members of the faculty return to
school, they are reminded not to grade on a curve and not to repeat
Annie's story. It is exactly such nonsense that gives rise to
inflated grade averages and nervous breakdowns, neither of which
are approved of by the Haddan School. Nevertheless, the story
always slips out, and there's nothing the administration can do to
stop it. The particulars of Annie's life are simply common
knowledge among the students, as much an established part of Haddan
life as the route of the warblers who always begin their migration
at this time of year, lighting on shrubbery and treetops, calling
to one another across the open sky.

Often, the weather is unseasonably warm at the start of the term,
one last triumph of summer come to call. Roses bloom more
abundantly, crickets chirp wildly, flies doze on windowsills,
drowsy with sunlight and heat. Even the most serious-minded
educators are known to fall asleep when Dr. Jones gives his
welcoming speech. This year, many in attendance drifted off in the
overheated library during this oration and several teachers
secretly wished that the students would never arrive. Outside, the
September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich,
lemony sunlight. Along the river, near the canoe shed, weeping
willows rustled and dropped catkins on the muddy ground. The clear
sound of slow-moving water could be heard even here in the library,
perhaps because the building itself had been fashioned out of river
rock, gray slabs flecked with mica that had been hauled from the
banks by local boys hired for a dollar a day, laborers whose hands
bled from their efforts and who cursed the Haddan School forever
after, even in their sleep.

As usual, people were far more curious about those who'd been
recently hired than those old, reliable colleagues they already
knew. In every small community, the unknown is always most
intriguing, and Haddan was no exception to this rule. Most people
had been to dinner with Bob Thomas, the massive dean of students,
and his pretty wife, Meg, more times than they could count; they
had sat at the bar at the Haddan Inn with Duck Johnson, who coached
crew and soccer and always became tearful after his third beer. The
on-again, off-again romance between Lynn Vining, who taught
painting, and Jack Short, the married chemistry teacher, had
already been discussed and dissected. Their relationship was
completely predictable, as were many of the love affairs begun at
Haddan-fumbling in the teachers' lounge, furtive embraces in idling
cars, kisses exchanged in the library, breakups at the end of the
term. Feuds were far more interesting, as in the case of Eric
Herman-ancient history-and Helen Davis-American history and chair
of the department, a woman who'd been teaching at Haddan for more
than fifty years and was said to grow meaner with each passing day,
as if she were a pitcher of milk set out to curdle in the noonday
sun.

Despite the heat and Dr. Jones's dull lecture, the same speech he
trotted out every year, despite the droning of bees beyond the open
windows, where a hedge of twiggy China roses still grew, people
took notice of the new photography instructor, Betsy Chase. It was
possible to tell at a glance that Betsy would be the subject of
even more gossip than any ongoing feud. It wasn't only Betsy's
fevered expression that drew stares, or her high cheekbones and
dark, unpredictable hair. People couldn't quite believe how
inappropriate her attire was. There she was, a good-looking woman
who apparently had no common sense, wearing old black slacks and a
faded black T-shirt, the sort of grungy outfit barely tolerated on
Haddan students, let alone on members of the faculty. On her feet
were plastic flip-flops of the dime-store variety, cheap little
items that announced every step with a slap. She actually had a wad
of gum in her mouth, and soon enough blew a bubble when she thought
no one was looking; even those in the last row of the library could
hear the sugary pop. Dennis Hardy, geometry, who sat directly
behind her, told people afterward that Betsy gave off the scent of
vanilla, a tincture she used to dispel the odor of darkroom
chemicals from her skin, a concoction so reminiscent of baked goods
that people who met her often had an urge for oatmeal cookies or
angel food cake.

It had been only eight months since Betsy had been hired to take
the yearbook photos. She had disliked the school at first sight,
and had written it off as too prissy, too picture perfect. When
Eric Herman asked her out she'd been surprised by the offer, and
wary as well. She'd already had more than her share of botched
relationships, yet she'd agreed to have dinner with Eric, ever
hopeful despite the statistics that promised her an abject and
lonely old age. Eric was so much sturdier than the men she was used
to, all those brooders and artists who couldn't be depended upon to
show up at the door on time let alone have the foresight to plan a
retirement fund. Before Betsy knew what had happened she was
accepting an offer of marriage and applying for a job in the art
department. The Willow Room at the Haddan Inn was already reserved
for their reception in June, and Bob Thomas, the dean of students,
had guaranteed them one of the coveted faculty cottages as soon as
they were wed. Until that time, Betsy would be a houseparent at St.
Anne's and Eric would continue on as senior proctor at Chalk House,
a boys' dormitory set so close to the river that the dreadful
Haddan swans often nested on the back porch, nipping at passersby's
pant legs until chased away with a broom.

For the past month, Betsy had been simultaneously planning both her
classes at Haddan and her wedding. Perfectly rational activities,
and yet she often felt certain she had blundered into an alternate
universe, one to which she clearly did not belong. Today, for
instance, the other women present in the auditorium were all in
dresses, the men in summer suits and ties, and there was Betsy in
her T-shirt and slacks, making what was sure to be the first of an
endless series of social miscalculations. She had bad judgment,
there was no way around it; from childhood on, she had jumped into
things headfirst, without looking to see if there was a net to
break her fall. Of course, no one had bothered to inform her that
Dr. Jones's addresses were such formal events; everyone said he was
ancient and ailing and that Bob Thomas was the real man in charge.
Hoping to erase her fashion blunder, Betsy now searched through her
backpack for some lipstick and a pair of earrings, for all the good
they would do.

Taking up residence in a small town had indeed left Betsy
disoriented. She was used to city living, to potholes and purse
snatchers, parking tickets and double locks. Whether it be morning,
noon, or night, she simply couldn't get her bearings here in
Haddan. She'd set out for the pharmacy on Main Street or to
Selena's Sandwich Shoppe on the corner of Pine and arrive at the
town cemetery in the field behind town hall. She'd start for the
market, in search of a loaf of bread or some muffins, only to find
that she'd strayed onto the twisting back roads leading to Sixth
Commandment Pond, a deep pool at a bend in the river where
horsetails and wild celery grew. Once she'd wandered off, it would
often be hours before she managed to find her way back to St.
Anne's. People in town had already become accustomed to a pretty,
dark woman wandering about, asking for directions from
schoolchildren and crossing guards, and yet still managing to take
one wrong turn after another.

Although Betsy Chase was confused, the town of Haddan hadn't
changed much in the last fifty years. The village itself was three
blocks long, and, for some residents, contained the whole world.
Along with Selena's Sandwich Shoppe, which served breakfast all
day, there was a pharmacy at whose soda fountain the best raspberry
lime rickeys in the Commonwealth could be had, as well as a
hardware store that offered everything from nails to velveteen. One
could also find a shoe store, the 5&10 Cent Bank, and the Lucky
Day Florist, known for its scented garlands and wreaths. There was
St. Agatha's, with its granite facade, and the public library, with
its stained-glass windows, the first to be built in the county.
Town hall, which had burned down twice, had finally been rebuilt
with mortar and stone, and was said to be indestructible, although
the statue of the eagle out front was tipped from its pedestal by
local boys year after year.

All along Main Street, there were large white houses, set back from
the road, whose wide lawns were ringed with black iron fences
punctuated by little spikes on top; pretty, architectural warnings
that made it quite clear the grass and rhododendrons within were
private property. On the approach to town, the white houses grew
larger, as though a set of stacking toys had been fashioned from
clapboards and brick. On the far side of town was the train
station, and opposite stood a gas station and mini-mart, along with
the dry cleaner's and a new supermarket. In fact, the town was
sliced in two, separated by Main into an east and a west side.
Those who lived on the east side resided in the white houses; those
who worked at the counter at Selena's or ran the ticket booth at
the train station lived in the western part of town.

Beyond Main Street the village became sparser, fanning out into new
housing developments and then into farmland. On Evergreen Avenue
was the elementary school, and if a person followed Evergreen due
east, in the direction of Route 17, he'd come to the police
station. Farther north, at the town line that separated Haddan from
Hamilton, deposited in a no-man's-land neither village cared to
claim, was a bar called the Millstone, which offered live bands on
Friday nights along with five brands of beer on tap and heated
arguments in the parking lot on humid summer nights. There had
probably been half a dozen divorces that had reached a fevered
pitch in that very parking lot and so many alcohol-induced fights
had taken place in those confines that if anyone bothered to search
through the laurel bordering the asphalt he'd surely find handfuls
of teeth that were said to give the laurel its odd milky color,
ivory with a pale pink edge, with each blossom forming the shape of
a bitter man's mouth.

Beyond town, there were still acres of fields and a crisscross of
dirt roads where Betsy had gotten lost one afternoon before the
start of the term, late in the day, when the sky was cobalt and the
air was sweet with the scent of hay. She'd been searching for a
vegetable stand Lynn Vining in the art department had told her sold
the best cabbages and potatoes, when she happened upon a huge
meadow, all blue with everlasting and tansy. Betsy had gotten out
of the car with tears in her eyes. She was only three miles from
Route 17, but she might as well have been on the moon. She was lost
and she knew it, with no sense whatsoever of how she had managed to
wind up in Haddan, engaged to a man she barely knew.

She might have been lost to this day if she hadn't thought to
follow a newspaper delivery truck into the neighboring town of
Hamilton, a true metropolis compared to Haddan, with a hospital and
a high school and even a multiplex cinema. From Hamilton, Betsy
drove south to the highway, then circled back to the village via
Route 17. Still, for some time afterward, she'd been unable to
forget how lost she'd become. Even when she was beside Eric in bed
all she had to do was close her eyes and she'd continue to see
those wildflowers in the meadow, each and every one the exact color
of the sky.

When all was said and done, what was so wrong with Haddan? It was a
lovely town, featured in several guidebooks, cited for both its
excellent trout fishing and the exceptional show of fall colors
that graced the landscape every October. If Betsy continually lost
her way on the streets of such a neat, orderly village, perhaps it
was the pale green light rising from the river each evening that
led her astray. Betsy had taken to carrying a map and a flashlight
in her pocket, hopefully ready for any emergency. She made certain
to keep to the well-worn paths, where the old roses grew, but even
the rosebushes were disturbing when they were encountered in the
dark. The twisted black vines were concealed in the black night,
thorns hidden deep within the dried canes until a passerby had
already come close enough to cut herself unwittingly.

Excerpted from THE RIVER KING by Alice Hoffman (c) Copyright
2000. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, Penguin Putnam.
All rights reserved.