Story XVII: Solomio

A boarding school prank spirals into psychological warfare between a bullied teacher and a college-bound senior. Approximately 20-minute read.

After their teacher was overheard singing in the chapel during Orientation Week, the second formers began to call Master Steiner “Mr. Solomio.” The nickname, misunderstood to mean “all by myself,” leeched outward from the Lower School Circle.

Mocking impressions of Solomio were sung in the man’s earshot from the cloistered safety of groups, from below stairwells, and through insider cruelties in the school paper. By winter term, the new teacher in the Music department was ostracized from every direction. The chill seeped into faculty meeting seating arrangements.

Master Steiner pressed on in feigned obliviousness, his rehearsal practices unrelenting. Even in the depths of winter that year, the tall, slight man could be spotted like clockwork, kicking through the snow, carrying his dog in his arms to protect her feet from the icy pathways.

Punctually at 7pm, he entered the chapel through the main doors. Within a minute, his singing voice began to drift towards the open windows of the Lower School. It was as if he was racing to get started. As far as anyone knew, he wasn’t even part of any singing groups. The stupidity of the man astonished the fourteen-year-olds.

Early on, Thomas Goodyear sat out front on the dormitory porch in one of his two prized Wexler rocking chairs. Twice he’d been Master of the Year.

When he wasn’t on duty, he listened thoughtfully to Steiner’s voice drifting over until 7:30 sharp. From time to time, the beloved housemaster looked up from The New Yorker or The Atlantic, as if to appreciate the young teacher’s singing.

The boys came and sat beside him with soccer balls and lacrosse sticks. From time to time they looked at their housemaster’s face and then off towards the nearby chapel. They knew Mr. Goodyear was doing his best to model kindness.

Goodyear’s appreciation for the new teacher’s singing faded after an incident in the Dining Center line. The two were side-by-side holding their trays when Goodyear turned to him. “I can’t tell you how much the boys and I enjoy your singing in the evenings.”

It was an effortlessly heartfelt and targeted encouragement that missed its mark. Steiner seemed confused. Goodyear pressed on.

“If you’re up for it, I’d love to bring the boys over one evening.” It was still mid-term. Goodyear still believed it when he said it.

In an awkward silence, Steiner could not or would not acknowledge the compliment. It was as if he was distracted by the senior teacher’s graciousness.

Afterwards, Goodyear sat on his porch once or twice again, but never as precisely from 7:00 – 7:30. The young man would need to carry his own water or be culled. Prep school was not for everyone. If there had been a way to tell the young teacher without defeating him, he would have.

In the last afternoon before the boarding students dispersed for Winter Recess, they left behind a trail of scatological Solomio messages graffitied on the whiteboards of the History Building. By the time the students reached their home airports, the images went into rotation online.

Mr. Steiner was called to the Dean of Faculty’s office and requested to rehearse in the music building because, as powerful as it was, the singing had inarguably become a distraction for the second-formers.

“Maybe we all need to try something different. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The evening of the admonition, Mr. Steiner began singing from one of the piano rehearsal rooms in the music building. After the expansive reverb of the chapel, the lifeless acoustics must have felt like singing in a shoe box.

By the week of the students’ return, a new habit had taken root: the tall, thin man could be seen returning to Danson, crossing the Lower Quad with his dog Puccini.

§

Master Steiner called his dog Pucc. She was a Lowchen, an animal as adored as he was shunned. In the earliest weeks of the Fall Semester, prior to his social collapse, he had shared the origins of his pet’s name while on evening duty. At the time, she still raced freely from the pool room out into the common room, chasing after her shadow, making her soundless bark. No one complained.

For invisible reasons that charmed everyone, she would startle into the air, momentarily more cat than dog. She pressed her small head relentlessly into the boys’ hands when they pet her, and to pet her was to find oneself back home. 'She's like a time machine,' the husband of the lower school housemaster said.

Puccini had been given her own pet names. The faculty children called her “Poochie,” the students, “Madame B.” Nicknames take root in boarding schools.

By the start of Spring Semester, Puccini was tethered. She was no longer given the evening run of Danson.

In the classroom, Mr. Steiner grew equally constrained. His final classes that May consisted of recorded classical music with sparse commentary. He no longer dimmed the blinds when they listened. The modest pedagogical abilities he brought to share his passion were spent.

He brought Puccini to classes, breaking a rule only the most eccentric and senior faculty broke. He sat, petting her in his lap absently. If he was teaching the students at all now, it was through the involuntary lift of a fingertip or eyebrow as he listened. Otherwise, he seemed to protect what he loved from the students.

By the week before Summer Break, the ridicule no longer needed his singing or his presence. The younger boys crowed Solomio from their house windows towards the girls’ residence across the Lower Quad.

Their voices would be met by nervous laughter or the occasional returned caw from one of the more rebellious girls. These cruelties no longer seemed directed at Mr. Steiner. They became a ritual for something the crueler students could sense but not name.

Something like a low fog— a cold smoke, ominous and soporific—drifted about the lawns and floors of the Wexler campus. The students and faculty kicked through it mindlessly on their way to classes.

§

On the Thursday of Prank Week, Solomio showed up on the third floor of Al Maktoum, the “Makt,” the newest of the Fifth Form houses. Right outside Jeffrey’s doorway. Not good.

Fielder, who’d been screwing around all night in the hallway, went dead quiet out there.

Solomio didn’t knock. He just stood there staring in his creepy way, like he’d been waiting for the Fifth Former to look up.

He was not happy about something.

Jeffrey felt a low dread because right away he thought he might know what.

But he didn’t know how. There was no way any of the guys would have leaked. If they had, then no doubt it would be the headmaster standing there with his parents.

But Madame B. wasn’t with Steiner, and somehow that wasn’t good either.

Fuck, he thought.

Jeffrey waited for Steiner to say something first, but he didn’t. He had his arms folded over himself, crunched together.

Jeffrey was on his phone, tipped back in an office chair he retrieved from behind the Administration Building.

He wore sweatpants and a Bruins jersey, his boxers poked out from the waist the way he’d recently begun to wear them. His legs were crossed and perched on an unmade bed. The swivel chair creaked as Jeffrey took his feet down from the bed and faced Steiner.

“A member of the faculty is speaking to you. Please rise.”

If he hadn’t been so creepy standing there, the memorized way he said “please rise” would have made Jeffrey grin.

But it wasn’t how the guy spoke in class, and Jeffrey was caught off guard. The tone was wrong. He took his legs off the bed too fast. He was too obedient about it. He must have seemed guilty. He could feel it. Steiner’s face didn’t show anything, but he must have loved that.

Then Jeffrey’s salvaged chair wobbled because of its loose wheel when he got up, and he slightly lost his balance.

Jesus.

By now it was dead quiet in the hall. The whole floor knew Solomio was at Jeff’s door. They had to. He knew Fielder would be worried about it, too.

“It is six forty-five now, Jeffrey.” Steiner released his hands from his chest finally, thank God. “Come to the faculty room in Bergman at seven forty. Those clothes won’t do.”

This whole thing was like rehearsed. He’d even carved out his little time to get to the Music center and sing. He was an opera singing machine.

Somebody started laughing down the hallway. He couldn’t make out who. Almost a Solomio melody. Steiner pretended not to hear it.

After Steiner was gone, somebody down the hall did an impression: “It is six forty-two and twenty seconds, Jeffrey. You’re fucked for being a Bruins fan.”

There was laughter.

He couldn’t tell whose.

Seven-forty was all the information he had.

There was no way he could know.

Jeffrey stood there stuck. He couldn’t get his head around it or around himself. He was being scolded like a second former, “in the wringer” they used to call it.

He had a strange, sudden urge to reach for his lacrosse stick.

Edward stuck his head in the room. “Those clothes won’t do,” Edward said, doing a Steiner. “I don’t want to see your underwear. Or maybe I do.” Jeffrey glared and waved his hand to get rid of him.

All he could think about was why Steiner wasn’t with Madame B. Since the beginning of Prank Week, he hadn’t let her out of his sight. He chained her up everywhere. That was half the problem in pulling it off. They’d kept the prank up for five nights running, maybe one too many. They called the last “The Pièce.”

Jeffrey changed into different clothes. He looked around his room. He had no idea what if anything he was supposed to bring.

He was taking Steiner’s class History of Western Music pass-fail. He’d failed it his first year, before he got his footing at Wexler. Now it was his one last requirement to clean up.

Everything is fixable he told himself.

Mostly everything.

To avoid more conversations with his friends, he snuck out the emergency door they’d rigged in the back stairwell.

Fucking dog.

§

Jeffrey arrived at the Faculty Room in Bergman promptly at 7:40. He knocked and looked in. Steiner sat behind the room’s leather desk, bolt upright, by a green desk lamp. The room lights weren’t on.

Nothing had moved in here for a hundred years. The room’s windows opened into the rotunda and looked down at the first floor, a jailer’s lookout for the faculty.

The faculty room in Bergman was their clubhouse. Unless summoned, students didn’t go there. Jeffrey had hooked up on that couch at 2AM once.

Jeffrey was startled to see Madame B. tied up to the atlas stand. Night Four they’d tied her up in here the same way. Jeffrey felt the blood rush to his face. Steiner watched the moment like a hawk. He returned his focus to his papers, working on some kind of oversized music sheets.

Jeffrey went to sit down on the leather couch. “No,” Steiner said. “Please hand me your phone.”

This was going to suck.

Madame B. came over to get his attention which made everything worse. Steiner made a point of looking slowly at the dog, then Jeffrey, then back at Madame B. This was bad. Really bad.

“I’ll be with you momentarily,” Steiner said. Whatever he was doing was way too engrossing to even look up and make eye contact. It was all bullshit. He should just say what he’s going to say. For a flash, he couldn’t wait to get out of Wexler and all this endless shit.

Madame B’s chain brushed along the carpet as she came over. It couldn’t have gotten any louder. The chain rounded the leg of a leather Ottoman.

The room was so quiet you could hear her pant as she stood beneath him. Jeffrey hunched down to pet her. He was about to say that “Pucc looks like she’s at a dog show,” but it wouldn’t come out.

“Does she?” Steiner was now looking up at him with his boy-man face.

“Please remove the atlas from the stand, Mr. Parks.”

The atlas may not have been as old as Wexler, but it was at least as old as the building. It lay open like a Bible on the thick stand of blond wood. Jeffrey flopped the heavy pages over awkwardly, shut it. He wasn’t sure where to put it, definitely not on Steiner’s desk. He half spun in place then set it in a dent of well-worn leather couch.

“Please place it on the coffee table.”

This whole thing was ridiculous.

How many times can you say “please” normally? Jeffrey wanted to start saying “please” every time he spoke, but he realized he still hadn’t even said anything.

Madame B. got her chain wrapped around a chair leg and it restrained her. She jumped onto the couch and then down again.

“Be seated.” He had no idea where he was supposed to go. The whole thing was like he was in a school play. It was that phony. He sat into the deep leather couch, sinking in further than he expected. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t sat there, because now he had to turn to face Steiner, but didn’t want to look like he was facing away from him either.

Steiner didn’t say anything for a long time, and eventually Jeffrey turned and just stared at him, hoping Steiner could feel it.

Steiner was penciling notes on oversized, unbound music sheets on the desk. When he flipped them, Jeffrey saw they were a conductor’s score. Steiner continued to work for another five minutes, turning the large pages over and smoothing them, marking them, drawing out the punitive wait. Maybe he’d just have to wait here the whole night.

Things seemed loud at night, different. A small office refrigerator ticked. A door to the building slammed somewhere. Laughter.

Jeffrey looked over at the man with his weedy moustache and his shirt buttoned one short of the top button.

Madame B. managed to work her way between the fireplace tong and brush holder. Clearly, she was going to knock it over. Steiner saw but didn’t do a thing to stop it, but you could tell he wanted to.

Eventually the holder clattered over just like you knew it would, the sound echoing back from the empty hallways of the tile-floored academic building. Madame B surprised herself and did her hop.

Jeffrey had a first instinct to leave it there as a challenge, then almost against his will, he said, “Do you want me to get it?” It was the first thing Jeffrey had said.

His voice sounded thin.

Jeffrey knew no matter what he did, it would be deliberately the wrong thing, but better to clean it up. Steiner stared at him briefly, made a “you tell me” face. Jeffrey rose out of the deep couch and cleaned up the hearth stand, reset the tongs and the poker, and unwound Madame B’s chain over it.

Pucc came right up next to him to watch him cleaning. He pet her, then stupidly grabbed at Pucc’s collar to bring her closer.

He knew the red collar. They’d made a new one for every night, called them “Vacuum Cleaners.” The five of them pitched in for three hundred dollars of dog chains and collars and strung them end-to-end the same way they were now. The chains ended up as long as vacuum cleaner cords. Edward hid them.

He almost turned around to Steiner to check his face but told himself to take it easy.

That he was getting put through the wringer here during the last week as a fifth former sent a spike of anger through him.

Jeffrey decided he was ready to play ball. He pet Pucc affectionately again, made a friendly noise about it, saying, “yes, you,” and stood up like he was getting out of the penalty box.

Steiner had gotten up and out from behind his desk.

“Move the atlas stand here in front of the windows.”

The jailer’s view opened up onto the rotunda, then down to the first floor.

Steiner waited for Jeffrey to arrive with it, then set a fistful of pages of the conductor’s score on top of the stand. He stood there looking at Jeffrey up really close.

Jeffrey didn’t move towards it or away from it or anything. He had no idea what was going on. Steiner kept staring at him, getting bolder. Whatever it was, he was loving it.

“Sing,” Steiner said.

You must be fucking kidding me. Pieces started to fall. The stand was in front of the window so he could be seen. Steiner was going to make a fool of him. His way of getting him back. Steiner couldn’t even prove he’d done it.

“I don’t sing.”

“We all sing. Sing.”

Beady little eyes. Thin blonde hair starting to recede. He was standing right there waiting for Jeffrey to come over.

Jeffrey turned some of the pages as if he was examining whether it was acceptable music. The more he looked, the more the confidence he’d just felt deserted him. He wished he hadn’t touched them in the first place.

It was the notes.

There were like a million. They were complicated and everywhere. He saw Steiner’s pencil scribbling all over the place.

Several students passed by on the first floor. They were the ones laughing. If they’d looked up they would have seen him. He felt the heat rise up in his ears and wondered if Steiner could see it, which made him angrier.

Steiner was standing right next to him. He was taller than Jeffrey, but skinny, probably had one of those hollowed-out chests. He could have been a student. Jeffrey felt a wave of wanting to shove him.

Steiner turned the music pages back deliberately to the very first one. There was a penciled arrow.

“At the beginning.”

Jesus, his knees had started knocking.

When was the last time that had happened?

Steiner kept staring at him with those little brown eyes. He was close enough to smell his aftershave. Light stubble was growing on his face, nose hairs. He was taking all the time in the world, way more intense than he expected. They were locked on to each other, but Jeffrey didn’t want to look away.

“Sing for me.”

He’d said, “For me.” He’d remember that if he needed it.

“And I’m telling you I can’t. This isn’t a singing class.”

The teacher was right in his face. It was getting to be too much. Steiner was so much like a student, Jeffrey angled towards him, almost on instinct. Steiner might have flinched. Steiner retreated towards his desk, but he wasn’t done.

“You pick, then. Would you like to sing or hum?”

“I don’t know. Hum, I guess.”

“Start by humming.”

Jeffrey was relieved enough by the small probation, he turned back to the stand. The conductor’s sheet was a stack of music bars.

“I have no idea how to read music.”

“If the notes go up, hum up. When they go down, hum down.”

“What am I supposed to be learning?” Again, his voice sounded thin.

Steiner returned to his seat and pretended to busy himself with other activity. Jeffrey started to hum. Steiner didn’t answer, and he didn’t look up.

“Louder. Open your jaw.”

He did. He was at the dentist’s.

“What is it the lower school students call me?

“I don’t know. Solomio?”

“Sing it.”

Steiner looked up at him now.

“Sing it. You’re such a funny guy with your Pièce.”

Someone ratted.

It had been a long time since Jeffrey had been humiliated. He was a first-year, and a soccer coach who got fired mid-year did it right in front of the rest of the team, pulled him mid-game and got into his face, even with his dad standing right there. He was really good, but he’d grown late.

“You’ve warmed up. Now sing.”

The first notes he sang were soft, without his chest voice, still more of a hum really. He felt ashamed, but he couldn’t sing louder if he wanted to.

“That’s not going to do, Jeffrey. If you want to pass this class, that’s not going to do. Louder, please.”

Someone had heard the singing, though. There was a polite rap at the faculty room door, and Mr. DeCugnac stepped in. “Why, it’s rather dark in here! Quite the voice, Jeffrey,” Mr. DeCugnac said.

There was humor in it, but the old French teacher was gauging the situation, running the calculus on unexpected behavior: a student in the faculty lounge singing, the young teacher at the desk, the atlas stand moved to the interior window.

“Good evening, Mr. Steiner,” DeCugnac said politely, nodding his head to the side like some kind of French bird or something. He sounded like he was speaking to a student with Steiner. Maybe it was unintentional. Maybe it was a warning. Jeffrey couldn’t tell.

“Good evening,” Steiner replied.

Jeffrey heard it right there.

There was weakness in Steiner’s voice. Anyone would have heard it. The pecking order shifted. Steiner fussed with the folio on his desk. DeCugnac hadn’t entered the room for anything, probably just because of the singing.

“Ah bon! Chanson!” DeCugnac announced cheerfully and left the room before doing anything in there.

DeCugnac’s footsteps faded. Jeffrey saw Steiner waiting to say something.

Even though they were alone in the room again, perhaps because they were alone in the room again, Jeffrey was emboldened. He had a witness.

More than that, Jeffrey and Steiner both felt the shift. Jeffrey adjusted the atlas stand. Didn’t relocate it, but he shifted its angle further back from the window.

“Sing how you got Pucc out.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“You had everything to do with the violation. A violation in my home.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Sing how you didn’t chain her then.”

Steiner was hissing.

Jeffrey’s anger was getting away from him. He needed to be careful. Madame B got up and began to drag her chain again.

“You’re pass-fail. You need to sing to graduate.”

“You’re really going to fail me because I didn’t sing for you? Good luck with that. I’m not singing.”

“Sing, Jeffrey. You went into my home,” he repeated.

Jeffrey remembered hiding on Steiner’s screened back porch for hours so that he could get Madame B. out of there at 3AM. He tucked away behind the garden box. All the new teachers had the crap apartments with screened-off rear porches.

By Night Five nobody thought anybody could get Madame B. Steiner’s apartment porch doors were locked now, but Steiner’s kitchen door was still open onto the porch for air. Nobody had air conditioning, so you had to.

Jeffrey was the one who realized he could get Madame B. out of the apartment if he hid inside the locked screened porch. He’d be careful not to enter the apartment. Madame B. would just have to come over to him like the other nights, which he knew she would.

He was right.

Madame B came over to the kitchen door, but she had a chain on, even inside the house. Steiner was so worried about her ending up on the flagpole for the fifth night in a row he chained her in the house.

Jeffrey leaned into the kitchen and unhooked her, making sure he didn’t go all the way in. Somehow that seemed like the one thing that would really blow up. It was different from what he planned, though.

He saw Steiner sleeping through the inside kitchen door.

Steiner had the other end of the chain wrapped around his hand. His mouth was open. He was sound asleep. If he’d hadn’t been with the guys he would definitely have left her.

Jeffrey took Madame B and slipped out the porch back door that opened into the house parking lot. He locked the door behind him because that was kind of funny, too, like the perfect crime.

The guys were there with the chains and collars. The five of them left campus to avoid Security and snuck back in again across the golf course, then through the service roads.

The Quad was the easy part. They waited for the security patrol to pass and then chained Pucc up to the flagpole again. It was “The Pièce” for good reason. Totally unforgettable.

Good luck beating The Pièce, by any class prank ever again.

§

Steiner was back next to him.

“You or one of your friends was in my home. Please sing how you did it, Solomio. I’ll call Cornell myself.”

He’d been waiting to say that. That was coming the whole time.

Jeffrey saw the hate, pure hate, all of it concentrated on him. Right up close. Nobody hated him like that. Or maybe with somebody when you were in the rink together. Ready to charge. Ready to risk it.

“You sing it. Fail me. DeCugnac saw all this.”

Jeffrey paused for a long time.

He had him.

The two locked eyes. “Master Steiner,” he added. It wasn’t much above a whisper, but his own menace surprised him.

“You call Cornell, the board will call Cornell. Good luck with that.”

Steiner’s temper blazed, and he slapped the sheet music all over the floor like he was flipping a board game. Jeffrey was startled and jerked backwards.

It was surreal watching the pages float to the floor. They spent forever falling through the air. Student and teacher were shocked in their different ways. Neither of them looked at each other now.

Madame B. stepped into the papers.

Jeffrey could have left right then, with the papers settling. There was a finality to it. But Jeffrey found he didn’t have the courage to leave the room or even move.

It was like he had knocked the music everywhere, like he’d hip-checked someone too hard, like when something got away from him.

You always know when you’ve done it, when someone doesn’t get up, and you know they never want to play again, but everyone should get up. You have to get up.

Steiner went back to his papers, taking all the hate with him, skating off the rink welling up, like they did sometimes, checked into the boards in front of their folks.

The man started pretending to mark the scores again. But even from the atlas stand, Jeffrey saw Steiner’s hands trembling. Then he was doing something strange with his jaw, in and out.

Finally, Steiner looked up at Jeffrey, and Jeffrey knew the man would never look at him again after that. It was like he was blaming Jeffrey for everything that wasn’t even his doing. Hate. Nobody ever hated him like that.

For years, Jeffrey would remember suddenly leaning down for some reason and picking up the sheet music from the floor and off the couch.

He started to put them all back in order but then he couldn’t sort them out. For a moment he was going to square off the pile neatly on the desk maybe, but he didn’t. Couldn’t.

He set the pile on Steiner’s table below one of the green lamps. Mr. Steiner didn’t reach for them and didn’t look up. He kept trying to pencil whatever he was writing, probably nothing.

Jeffrey stood there for a moment, then he left the room. He knew his phone was still in the desk, but he didn’t ask for it. He wanted to get the fuck out of there.

§

Neither Steiner nor Jeffrey escalated the issue with the school. Jeffrey told his friends what had happened to get out in front of it. None of them were the ones that ratted.

Later that night Jeffrey snuck back into the faculty room. The green lamp was still on. His cell phone was still in the desk drawer. Steiner hadn’t even put the atlas stand back.

The papers were gone, though, and the room was quiet like nothing had ever happened, like the sea just closed up over it.

A few days later, DeCugnac slowly pulled up in his car while Jeffrey was walking in the village. He smiled, mysterious and conspiratorially, “Chanson!” Maybe DeCugnac was trying to be funny about the singing, so Jeffrey half-smiled, but he never knew what to make of it.

At commencement, the split second he had his diploma in hand, he got Steiner back. As he was heading over to the steps down from the stage, he stopped and sang out ‘o sole mio.’

Jeffrey had a manly, booming voice. He sang out loud enough that you could have heard him from the quad.

The guys all sang back. Titters and nervous laughter spread elsewhere. Jeffrey held his diploma up and raised his arms in the air like he’d scored a goal.

As he was coming down the auditorium steps, he looked over to try to spot where Steiner was sitting like he’d planned, but he couldn’t pick him out.

The faculty wore looks of disappointment or looked away. There was no one to take charge of the moment. Most of the board was in attendance. Jeffrey’s uncle was on the board that year. They must have all been hoping it was an inside joke.

Everyone found a way to pretend they didn’t understand. “Is this a thing?”

The headmaster looked on disapprovingly, but she clapped a “well that’s all very funny, boys” clap. It got things moving again.

They called the next name and all the names after that. On it went.

As students and parents milled around congratulating after the ceremony the Solomio shout-out came up.

To explain it, some students showed the video of the first night.

Steiner was leaning down into the low-lying fog and unchaining Pucc from the flagpole. When he lifted her, the dog was as relentlessly cheerful as ever. Then he carried her through the morning fog. She was even licking Steiner’s face. There were hearts on the post and “omg’s.”

It was a “scorcher” when they came out of the auditorium. The humidity and sunshine of an early New England summer bore down.

News spread. Over in the quad, someone had tied Madame B. to the flagpole during Commencement.

She frolicked there on a long string of chains, starting and stopping, amusing herself chasing after the passers-by.

Some of the younger siblings and the parents and the grandparents of the graduating class stopped to pet the small Lowchen. Then they headed on towards the overflow parking lot, their dress shoes and trousers kicking through the smoke.

Much later, when Jeffrey told the story about how they pulled off the pranks, he made up a bit about a small bowl of water at the base of the flagpole. He’d say he left it in a dish he’d borrowed from the dining center. To be honest, he couldn’t have told you why.