THE ATLANTIC SEPTEMBER 2019 43Secrets and lies
in the school
cafeteria
The
Lunch
Ladies
of
New
Canaan
BY SARAH
SCHWEITZER
LATE ON A FALL AFTERNOON,
a skeleton crew staffed the cafeteria at
New Canaan High School, in Connecticut.
Custodial workers cleaned up the day’s
remains while one of the cooks prepped for
the evening’s athletic banquet.
A woman entered quietly through the
back door, the one designated for deliver-
ies and employees. She wore a jacket over
a loose gown. She clutched something to
her chest that appeared to be a bag con-
nected to an IV.
“What are you doing here?” one of the
workers asked.
The woman said nothing. She shuffl ed
to her small offi ce. The door clicked shut.
The workers exchanged looks. They’d
heard that Marie Wilson had been under-
going treatment for breast cancer. She had
every right to stay home and rest. Yet here
she was, hobbling into the kitchen near
sunset, reporting for duty.
There would be more days like this
one. Days when Wilson endured life’s
worst moments—a grandson’s leuke-
mia diagnosis, successive surgeries for a
wrenched wrist, a foreclosure. On every
one, without fanfare, she made an appear-
ance in the cafeteria.
To some, Wilson’s unfailing atten dance
was an act of dedication, the fastidious-
ness of a woman charged with helping to
feed some of the country’s wealthiest chil-
dren. The job didn’t lend itself to missteps.
This was New Canaan, a sylvan place of
old-money mansions and modern farm-
houses built with Wall Street bonuses.
Standards were high—for the students, for
the teachers, for the administration. The
cafeterias were no exception.
Headed by Bruce Gluck, a classically
trained chef, the kitchens of the New
Cana an public schools served farm-to-
table fare before such a label existed. Gluck
pushed his workers hard, demanding that
they achieve his formidable vision. The
workers were largely immigrant women,
many of them Italians for whom English
was a second language. Clashes inevitably
arose, and when they did, Gluck turned to
his second in command. Wilson knew how
to talk to the women; she could explain
what he wanted.
Wilson had grown up in neighboring
Stamford; her father was an Italian immi-
grant and trash hauler whose everlasting
advice to his children was that they sur-
round themselves with respectable people.
After a deli she owned shut down, Wil-
son got a job in a school cafeteria in New
Cana an and moved into a modest house
there. A year after Wilson was hired, herPHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE VOORHES THE ATLANTIC SEPTEMBER 2019 43