The Body in the Ivy Read Online Free PDF

a place students went for both help and enrichment. The new center would publish a journal of student writings, accepting submissions from sister schools, as well. She glanced down at the speedometer. Whoa! She hadn’t realized her little Mini-Cooper could go this fast. A meeting with the Art History Department chair, who was leaving with a group of students for a tour of Tuscany, had taken more time than Margaret had planned. She couldn’t wait to get to the island. “A small house party,” Bishop’s assistant, Owen, had said when he called with the news in February. He also asked that the president not make the announcement public until June, when Ms. Bishop would join her in releasing it to the press. Margaret had not even told Charles, her husband, which had not been that difficult since they tended to be like ships in the night, a commuter marriage since the beginning.
    When she thought back, it seemed as if she had wanted to be president of Pelham from the moment she had stepped on campus for her admissions interview in 1964. Subconsciously at first, then with each passing year, the goal emerged from hiding until it dominatedher thoughts. Margaret had used her Pelham time as training: class president for three years, student body president her fourth, and a visibly active presence on campus continuously. Then came the period of exile as she earned her credentials and polished her C.V., each job a step higher, a step closer to the prize. When the call had come seven years ago, she was more than ready. Charles was used to being “Mr. Howard” at the various campuses along the way, showing up for photo op events and holidays. They owned a small town house near Dupont Circle; D.C. had been the base of Charles’s operations since law school. Governments came and went, but both parties relied on his nonpartisan expertise in the area of international trade agreements. It wasn’t a loveless marriage. They cared about each other, enjoying each spouse’s successes. It was a marriage of equal partners—at least that was how Margaret viewed it—and if she sometimes smelled perfume that she knew wasn’t hers in their D.C. bedroom, she never mentioned it. The arrangement suited her. She needed a consort and it wouldn’t do to rock the boat.
    Boat! Owen had offered to send a car to bring her to the Bishop’s Island boat, but Margaret would be driving to Ohio to see her mother after the week on the island, and if there was a place she could leave the Mini, that would be easier. There was, he assured her, and she wasn’t to worry about time. Someone would meet her whenever she arrived.
    Margaret wondered who the other guests might be. Luminaries from the literary world? Bishop’s identity had become a campus tease over the years, with some asserting that she didn’t exist at all, but was a group ofseveral writers working together. Was this what Margaret would find? That the nom de plume was a feather boa?
    The assistant had mentioned that the house had a spa, plus indoor and outdoor pools. Accordingly she’d packed her workout clothes and a bathing suit, but she wouldn’t be wearing it in public. She’d struggled with her weight all her life, “big bones” her mother had said disapprovingly when Margaret reached puberty. The big bones had grown bigger; she’d grown taller—and even looking at a piece of cake added a pound. Academic robes covered a multitude of sins, but she had decided long before her Pelham graduation that she wasn’t going to rely on clothing to camouflage her girth. She’d stay thin, or at least thinnish, and she had. But she still wouldn’t wear a bathing suit in front of what she was sure would be a gathering of the beautiful people. Ecstasy filled her again. It would be a fabulous week. When would Barbara make the announcement? In her mind, Margaret was on a first-name basis with the author ever since the