Читать книгу Saving Miss Oliver's - Stephen Davenport - Страница 11

THREE

When Francis called Peggy from just east of the Mississippi River the day after Fred Kindler’s first day in office, she didn’t even ask where he was. He’d called to tell her how excited he was to be at the huge river, how much he wished she were with him so they could see it together, but she started right off before Francis hardly said a word. “He’s already here!” she exclaimed. “He showed up yesterday. What do you think about that?”

“Who?” Francis asked. “Who’s already there?”—as if he didn’t know.

Peggy left a freighted silence. Then, wearily: “Come on, Francis. You know who,” and now Francis wished he had traveled faster instead of spending four whole days at his college reunion in Ohio, two more at a friend’s house in Indiana, and then a whole week in Chicago easing his conscience at a math teachers’ conference. It didn’t occur to him that maybe he’d been keeping himself on a short leash by stopping so often so he could turn around and go back to the school before it was too late. Nor did it occur to him that the reason for his taking his school clothes with him, his blue button-down shirt, striped tie, sports coat, and slacks, wasn’t just the college reunion or the dinner at the end of the math conference; it was that these were his uniform, his identity. Instead, he thought that if he had escaped across the big divide of the Mississippi right away, he’d now be much further into the West and he wouldn’t care where Fred Kindler was. He’d have room to breathe.

“Marjorie left early,” he heard Peggy say. “She cleared out.”

“Oh,” he said. “So soon?” Then he realized he was not surprised. That was exactly what Marjorie would do.

But Peggy wasn’t talking about Marjorie now; she was talking about the new guy. “Two whole weeks before he even needed to be here!” she said. He knew what she left unsaid for him to think about: The new headmaster shows up early for his responsibilities—while you run away from yours. But that’s not what he was thinking about. What filled his brain instead was the picture of Fred Kindler actually ensconced in Marjorie’s office, enthroned behind her desk, surrounded by the pictures her students made for her. The wrongness of the fit, its impropriety, astounded him. It was Marjorie’s office!

“Well, what do you think of that?” Peggy asked again.

“Maybe he can’t read a calendar,” he said.

“Very funny, Francis.”

“I didn’t call you up to talk about him!”

“Oh, you didn’t?” Peggy mocked. “All right, then. So forget about it.”

He let a long silence go by, desperate for a way to rescue them from this. “Peg,” he finally begged, “let’s not fight.”

That’s right, she thought, let’s not.

“How are you, Peg?”

I’m confused, she wanted to say, and I’m scared we’ve lost each other, but she was too angry to plead for sympathy. “I’m okay,” she told him.

“Only okay, Peg?”

She shrugged her shoulders as if he were there to see. There was a long silence, while he waited for her to speak. “Where are you?” she finally asked.

“Just east of the Mississippi.”

“That’s nice,” she said, failing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. But she really did think it was nice that he was seeing the country and wished she were seeing it with him. And then it dawned on her that neither of them ever considered her joining him. The reasons for his trip were too foreign to her for that.

“All right, Peg,” he sighed, hearing only the sarcasm. “I’ll call you later.”

“All right.”

“I miss you, Peg.”

“I miss you too,” she admitted, “but if you were here we wouldn’t have to miss each other.”

Neither of them could think of what else to say. Francis hung up first and walked back to his old yellow Chevy, and started to drive again. In Denver, he would pick up Lila Smythe, next year’s president of the student council, and give her a ride the rest of the way to California. Lila, one of Francis’s and Peggy’s favorite students, lived in the dorm they parented, and though Francis had been delighted when she decided to join the dig, he now regretted his promise. She’d want to talk to him, as faculty advisor to the student council, about the council’s agenda for the coming year. He was much too preoccupied for that.

And Peggy lingered by the phone, willing Francis to call again. She’d speak more gently this time, she told herself. But he didn’t call, and now she knew he was on the other side of the Mississippi, much farther away from her than he’d ever been. She’d never been in that part of the country and could only see it in her imagination as endless, empty space. And her husband was lost in it.

PEGGY LOOKED AT her watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and she had a meeting with Fred Kindler at quarter to eleven. She wanted to get there a little early because he’d told her that he had to leave at eleven-fifteen for a meeting downtown at noon. She was worried about how he’d react when, on only his second day in office, she would tell him about a problem that was going to make the budget crisis even worse. So she left the phone, stepped out of her house and across the thick green lawns of the campus toward the administration building. In the distance, at the campus edge, she saw the river gleaming in the sun.

The first thing she noticed about Fred Kindler’s office was the big clock on the wall behind his desk, an imitation of a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, complete with huge leather wrist straps that reached from ceiling to floor. It hadn’t been there yesterday when she glanced through the door. She smiled, getting his message right away, and wondered if Eudora Easter had had a hand in this. Maybe people would start getting to places on time now.

He smiled too, an easy greeting, and stepped from behind his desk with that ducklike, toes-out gait she knew she would never have noticed if Francis hadn’t pointed it out to her. When Kindler put out his hand to shake hers, she realized again how formal and old-fashioned he seemed. They sat down in front of his desk, facing each other.

“How’s Francis’s trip going?” Fred asked her.

“He’ll be in California by the end of the week.”

“I hope he’s having a great time.”

“I hope so too,” she said before she had time to think what this remark might reveal. She saw him look away from her for just an instant and knew that he was not hiding his surprise—there was no dissimulation in that not-very-handsome face—but being kind. Whatever else he is, he is a good person, she decided. One of the things she was proud of was her ability to size people up.

Fred wasn’t sure whether it was surprise flashing across her face as Peggy’s eyes met his and stayed longer than most people’s—maybe that’s why he already liked her so much—or whether she was about to ask him a question. If so, he knew what the question would be: are you considering allowing boys into this school? He wished she would ask it. He guessed she was the kind of person he could think aloud in front of.

But he knew that of course she wouldn’t ask. Not yet. She was too kind to ask so early. That she’d just admitted a hint of trouble between herself and Francis gave him a rush of sadness for her—and anxiety for himself. I need your husband too, he wanted to say. He’s the senior teacher. The most gifted on the faculty. Teaches both math and English beautifully. That makes him powerful. If he’s against me, I’m dead.

“We need more air conditioning in the Pequot Indian area,” he heard Peggy say. “We had a consultant tell us that the displays would deteriorate.”

“How much?”

“It’s a lot. The estimate’s for fifteen thousand.” If he said yes, then she knew he understood how important the display was; it would mean he “got” Miss Oliver’s School for Girls—and Francis would be wrong.

“Fifteen thousand!” Fred exclaimed; then to himself: What the heck. What’s another fifteen thousand to a deficit like ours?

“I know it’s not in the budget,” Peggy said. “It’s a lot to ask.”

He made a little motion with his hand in front of his face as if to brush her comment away. “When we get the budget to where it should be, you won’t have to ask.”

“Won’t have to ask?”

“Department heads’ll have their own budgets. They’ll have discretion,” he explained, discovering how easy it was for him to share his ideas with her. He wished he could tell her about the emergency meeting with the board’s executive committee that would start in just over an hour, where he was going to drop the bomb about the budget. He’d get her advice.

“Really? Discretion?” Peggy was surprised. “We always went to Marjorie for—”

“Well, anyway,” he interrupted, “you’ve got it. Fifteen thousand.”

“Really?” she said. “Wonderful!”

He saw relief flooding her face, felt her eyes on his. Then a worried frown.

“Where will we get the money?” she asked.

“I have no idea, but I do know what’s indispensable and what is not.”

Peggy sat very still, taking his comment in. See, Francis, you’re wrong, she thought while it dawned on her how different this was from her meetings with Marjorie, how tired she’d grown of sitting side by side with her headmistress on a sofa, having her arm patted every time Marjorie made a point. For that’s how it had always gone: Marjorie making the point, not the other way around. And now Peggy realized she had something else to say, she was going to make a point—because she knew he’d listen. “Just one more thing,” she said. “I know you’re busy.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Don’t you bring it up. You’ll get crucified if you do. Let the board do it.”

“It?” he said. “You’re being mysterious.”

“No, I’m not. You know what I’m talking about. If we have to let boys in here, let it be the board’s decision. Fight it. Even if you think it’s right. Fight it anyway. For a while at least. Otherwise—”

“I’ve thought about that,” he said, hearing again Melissa Andersen’s Don’t you fucking dare. “Still, it doesn’t quite feel right.”

“Of course it doesn’t. Do it anyway!”

“You’re a smart lady,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” she replied, standing up. He rose too and reached to shake her hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, realizing she’d just done what Francis should be here to do: give advice. Show where the land mines were.

“Thanks,” he said, tempted now to put his other hand out too, take her hands in both of his. But that was too forward; he hardly knew her.

RIGHT AFTER PEGGY left, Fred made the call to Mavis Ericksen that he’d been dreading.

“Hello, this is Mavis.” Her voice was cheerful.

“Good morning, Mavis, this is Fred Kindler.” Silence.

“How are you this morning?” he tried.

She still didn’t answer, and it came to him that maybe she thought his question was sarcastic, as if to ask, Are you still crying? “I called to follow through on our conversation about Ms. Saffire,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting,” she said, making it clear she didn’t like to wait.

Yes, for only twenty-four hours, Fred thought. “Earlier this morning I talked to Dorothy Strang—”

“I don’t care what Dorothy—”

“Ms. Saffire reports to Dorothy Strang,” he said. “Dorothy evaluated Ms. Saffire last November near the end of her first year as having done quite well. Like everyone else, she’s been given some goals and will be evaluated again this November.” Fred didn’t tell Mavis that one of the goals assigned to Joan Saffire was learning how to handle certain kinds of people, and that when he had asked Dorothy, “What kind of people?” she had whispered, “Assholes,” and then got red in the face and started to giggle. And then admitted that she shouldn’t have sent a beginner to see Aldous Enright. She would have gone herself, but she was on vacation.

“November!” Mavis’s voice was quivering. “It’s only July!”

“Yes. November. It’s an annual evaluation.” There was another seemingly endless silence. Fred felt sweat running down the inside of his shirt. “You and I need to talk,” he said. Maybe if he took her to lunch and they got to know each other, she would understand why it was important that the board not intrude on the head’s domain. “Let’s make an appointment,” he began. Then he heard her hanging up.

How much safer he would be if Joan Saffire were incompetent and he could fire her, he thought—and immediately regretted the thought.

AN HOUR AND a half later in a private dining room of the River Club in Downtown Hartford, Alan Travelers got right to the point. “Our new headmaster’s had a very busy first day,” he told the executive committee. “Among other accomplishments, he discovered that we have a larger deficit than we thought we did.” Impeccable in his blue suit, Travelers was standing at the head of the table. His tone sounded surprisingly cheerful to Fred.

“Yeah?” Milton Perkins growled. “So what else is new?”

“You’re about to learn,” Travelers said. “I think it’ll get your attention.” He sat down.

“Oh?” Perkins said. “How much?”

“Six hundred and seventy-five thousand.”

Perkins sat back in his chair as if he’d been shoved in the chest. He stared at Travelers. Then he turned to Fred. “Tell me I didn’t hear that right.”

“You heard it right,” Fred said, and from their frames along the oak-paneled wall opposite the tall windows overlooking the river, an array of nineteenth-century patriarchs, masters of New England thrift, looked sternly down at the room.

Fred handed out the papers he had prepared and proceeded to explain the difference between Carl Vincent’s figures and his own, going slowly, line by line. While he talked, no one touched the raw oysters that Perkins, who has lived at the River Club ever since his wife had died five years earlier, had ordered for the lunch, and when he finished, the members continued to stare down at their papers. They couldn’t bring themselves to look at each other. Perkins got up from the table, went to one of the windows, and stared at the river, his back to everybody.

“So much for the bad news,” Alan said dismissively, breaking the silence. He knew he needed to get these people past their disappointment and, worse, their humiliation at having been so gulled by Vincent’s numbers. “There’s good news too. We’ve got a head who before he does anything else—on his very first day!—gets us to the truth. That’s huge.”

“Yes,” said beautiful alumna Sonja McGarvey. “Finally some reality around here!” She turned to Fred, sent him a grateful—maybe even an admiring—look. She had black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and her lipstick was very red. Only ten years out, Sonja was already rich. Marjorie had often pointed to her derring-do, entrepreneuring in software, as proof of the empowering effect of single-sex education on women, and Fred was already planning to ask her for the lead gift from the board this year.

“Exactly!” Alan said. He had to admit, he liked this challenge, since it gave him something to sink his teeth into, put some spice in his life. He’d won battles like this before. “We’ll just go faster,” he urged. “We’ll just rebuild the enrollment in two years instead of four. We’ve got the right head finally. We’ll just do it!”

But now Sonja McGarvey was shaking her head in disagreement. She leaned forward across the table toward Travelers, pent up, waiting to speak.

“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do!” Travelers went on. “Revise the plan and move on.”

“That’s unrealistic,” McGarvey snapped. “It’s a pipe dream.”

All eyes came off Travelers and moved to McGarvey, then back to Travelers, who was obviously surprised. He was not used to being contradicted, especially by a woman who was not yet thirty. He started to say something, but from the window, Perkins beat him to it.

“So it’s unrealistic,” Perkins said. His back was still to the group, and he was still staring out the window, as if he were addressing the river. “When you don’t have a choice, who cares?”

“What’s he been smoking?” McGarvey asked the group. And when Perkins turned to face her, she asked him, “Can I have some too?”

Perkins left the window and, taking his seat again, leaned to McGarvey across the polished mahogany. “You could be right,” he growled. “Bean counters are every once in a century. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe we’ll pull something out of a hat.” He was grinning now, egging her on.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, here we go again!” she said.

“And if we don’t,” Perkins said, “the one thing we aren’t going to do is let boys in here.” He wasn’t grinning anymore.

The room went silent once again. Everyone stared at Perkins, who was plunging a fork into an oyster now.

“Fred didn’t say anything about letting boys in,” Travelers said. His voice was tight. “Neither did I. Neither did anyone. That’s not even on the table.”

“Good,” Perkins said, waving the fork with the oyster still on it. “We got that settled.”

“Jesus!” from McGarvey. “Welcome to fantasyland!”

Perkins turned again to study her, miming a mild scientific interest at the source of such a strange remark. He extended the fork, the oyster he was about to eat still dripping on its tines, across the table to her. He raised his eyebrows, kept the oyster before her. It was a test: If she took it, then she was normal after all.

McGarvey, of course, was much too smart to rise to this. She hardly looked at the oyster—or at Perkins, turning instead to Travelers as if chastising the chairman for letting the meeting get out of hand. So Perkins shrugged, plopped the oyster into his mouth, nodded up and down, then broke into a grin and aimed it around the room.

On McGarvey’s right, the elderly Ms. Harriet Richardson, who hadn’t said a word, was too ladylike to acknowledge the animus that had just drenched the room. She nodded her birdlike head at Milton Perkins. “For once you and I agree,” she murmured. Ms. Richardson, the former academic dean at one of New England’s most prestigious women’s colleges, stared intently across the table at Perkins, her tiny body very erect. “It would be a tragedy,” she said. “An abandonment of the reason we exist.”

Milton Perkins was grinning again. “You and I agreeing, that’s a sign things are completely out of control,” he told her. For Perkins, even to appear to agree with the likes of Ms. Richardson, a worshipful biographer of FDR, was more than he could stand.

“I’ll say it again,” Travelers said. “Nobody said anything about letting boys in.”

“Not yet,” McGarvey said.

“My dear, you aren’t suggesting—?” Ms. Richardson’s tremolo trailed off, while McGarvey put her blue eyes on Ms. Richardson’s face and stared. Ms. Richardson tried again. “We have a vision to uphold!”

“It’s not a vision. It’s a hallucination!” McGarvey hissed. “We’re supposed to know the difference.” Ms. Richardson’s face went pale, and McGarvey, who was trying to learn diplomacy and regretted her harshness, softened her voice. “Ms. Richardson, girls-only just doesn’t sell anymore,” she said.

“Sell! My dear, this isn’t a store!”

So much for McGarvey’s mildness. She reached across the table, tapped her bright-red nails on Ms. Richardson’s copy of the papers Fred had distributed. “See where the number is below the bottom line on Carl Vincent’s budget?”

Ms. Richardson took the bait. “Yes,” she said. “I see.”

“The one in parentheses?”

Ms. Richardson didn’t answer.

“Now look at Fred’s numbers; the figure in parentheses is bigger.”

“Sonja McGarvey,” said Ms. Richardson. “I can read.”

“By almost three quarters of a million dollars.”

“Six hundred and seventy-five,” said Ms. Richardson.

“I can read too,” said McGarvey. “I just like to round things off.”

“Six hundred and seventy-five,” Ms. Richardson insisted. “My dear, six hundred and seventy-five is not three quarters of a million; it is six hundred and seventy-five.”

“People!” Travelers rapped his knuckles on the table. He was clearly irritated. McGarvey and Ms. Richardson stopped.

This was the opening Fred had been waiting for. “Even if it were three quarters of a million—a full million—it wouldn’t make any difference to me,” he told them. “I came here to help turn this thing around in four years. So now that we’ve only got two, we’ll do it in two.” Everyone’s eyes were on him as he spoke, for the hunger for leadership was palpable among this board which, until the unseating of Marjorie, had been so dominated by her that they never developed the will, or the sophistication, to do their job. And he was doing what he came here to do—he was leading. He was giving them a solution to their problem in the cash-flow projections he’d put in front of them, which demonstrated that the addition of twenty-six girls, recruited during each of the next two academic years through aggressive marketing of the school’s excellence and the efficacy of its single-sex mission, put him on the same pace to a balanced budget as the original plan, which had called for thirteen additional enrollments each year.

It’s a good plan, he told himself, his confidence blossoming, because it provided him a fighting chance to save the school as single-sex, while leaving the option of admitting boys as a last resort if it became apparent the enrollment targets weren’t being reached. Because the one thing he wouldn’t do was close the school! Nor would he offer himself as sacrificial lamb by being the one to suggest bringing boys in. He remembered Peggy Plummer’s advice. “I’ve given you new numbers,” he said aloud. “They’re challenging, but if we get the message out, we can do it.”

“Good for you!” Perkins exclaimed. Then, “Whose numbers? Not Vincent’s, I hope.”

“No,” Fred answered. “They’re mine.”

“Fred tells me he’s going to let Mr. Vincent go as soon as he comes back from vacation,” Travelers said very quietly.

“Carl! Gone?” Ms. Richardson asked, staring at Fred.

“Well, good for you,” McGarvey murmured.

“Yeah,” said Perkins. “Good for you. Poor old guy. Didn’t know a number from a road sign.”

“Well, anyway,” said Travelers, “we’re in trouble, and Fred’s recommended a solution.”

“We are not in so much trouble that we can let loyal, longtime employees go just like that.” Ms. Richardson snapped her fingers.

“Jeez, he couldn’t even count!” said Perkins. “As soon as he finishes getting Alzheimer’s his IQ’s going to double.”

“That’s enough, Milton!” Travelers said.

Ms. Richardson was still staring at Fred. “You mean you’re firing him?”

“Oh, please!” said McGarvey.

“There’s a principle here,” Ms. Richardson said. “Mr. Vincent has been allowed to perform for years in this way, and suddenly he’s dismissed? We don’t interact that way at Miss Oliver’s. I’m surprised at you, Mr. Kindler.”

“Alan, for God’s sake, we have an emergency!” McGarvey exclaimed before Fred could respond. “Can we deal with it?”

“We’ve already dealt with it,” Perkins barked. “We’re going with Fred’s new plan.”

“And if that doesn’t work? What then?” McGarvey asked.

“We’re going to close the school. That’s what. Because if it’s not going to be a girls’ school, the hell with it. You think I’d let myself be bored to death in board meetings for a school where boys get all the attention so they can run the world while girls stay home and cook? I’ve got three daughters, and I know what they learned here. You might as well think it’s going to snow in Florida in the middle of summer to think that boys are ever going to come in here. So why talk about it?”

“We’re going to talk about it,” McGarvey said. “I promise. Because the one thing I’m not going to let happen is closing the school. So if you people won’t bring it up at the September board meeting, I will. I’ll force the issue.”

Once again the room went silent while everyone stared at her.

“Why in the world would you do that?” Travelers asked at last.

“To save the school, that’s why.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” Travelers said.

“It’s being whispered everywhere,” McGarvey persisted. Travelers leaned toward her shaking his head, but McGarvey held her ground and told him, “I’m going to put it to the board. Where it counts. And get some clarity.”

“You put letting boys into the school on the table like that, how’re you going to keep it quiet?” Perkins asked. He shoved his plate of oysters aside. Cracked ice spilled onto the table. “The board’ll decide not to do it,” he said. “They’re not that crazy. But the story that’ll come out in the first three seconds after the meeting anyhow is that right away we’re going to admit seven hundred boys—all of them nine feet tall—and with extra big dicks. Fred here will have a crazy house on his hands.”

The instant Perkins was finished with his harangue, McGarvey turned back to the chairman. It was as if to her Perkins wasn’t even in the room. “Alan,” she asked, “are you going to try to tell me I can’t speak my mind at a board meeting?”

“No, Sonja, I’m not saying that. I don’t have the right. But I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Good. Because if you were, I’d do it anyway.”

“So that’s what firing Mrs. Boyd was really about!” Ms. Richardson exclaimed.

Now it’s Ms. Richardson’s turn to be stared at.

“Where did that come from?” Travelers asked.

“You are very clever, Mr. Travelers,” Miss Richardson said. “Far cleverer than I. But even I can see how this meeting has been contrived.” She turned her stare on Perkins. “First Milton Perkins opens the door for all the posturing by saying the one thing we aren’t going to do is admit boys,” she said, then turning to McGarvey continued, “which of course gives Miss McGarvey the opportunity to propose that we should admit boys and that she will recommend admitting boys to the board of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. And you”—she aimed her glare at Alan again—“pretend that you can’t stop her.”

“You’re out of line, Ms. Richardson,” Travelers finally said. “You need to take that back.”

But Ms. Richardson actually believed she had discovered the truth and wasn’t about to take anything back. “All along I suspected,” she said. “But I put my suspicions aside. I kept my faith.” Her voice was a quaver, on the verge of weeping. “Now I see how naive I was. All along. A plot: prey on the school’s misfortune, use it to pry Marjorie Boyd out of her office so we can bring in this man and open the doors to boys!”

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Travelers said, clearly amazed.

“Oh, please, don’t go on with this.” Ms. Richardson’s tiny shoulders were shaking. “It’s out now! In the open! Why else would you fire the finest educator this school has ever had? I could never answer that question. Why fire the person who has made the school what it is?

“And you!” she turned on Fred when no one answered. “You have just confirmed my original suspicion, which I put aside because you seemed a gentleman and so sincere. Well, now I know. First, we get a male chairman of the board. Then a cabal under his direction gets rid of Mrs. Boyd to make room for you; then you, on your very first day, get rid of one of her most faithful colleagues, and then on the very next day it is proposed at the executive committee that the board of trustees contemplate the admission of boys. It’s plain what’s coming next. I won’t be part of it. I’ll resign.”

“Ms. Richardson, you’ve misinterpreted everything,” Fred said softly. He was devoid of anger. Instead, he was fascinated. For an instant he thought maybe he could unravel this for her.

“Oh? You deny it!” he heard her say, mocking surprise. “Then let me ask a question. Which one do you favor, Mr. Kindler?” She was not on the verge of weeping anymore. Her face had gone hard.

Fred saw the mine she was planting. Now he was irritated.

Alan stood up. “Harriet, stop!” He saw what was coming, and he didn’t trust Fred to lie. “Just stop!”

But Ms. Richardson calmly went right on. “We did have two philosophies proposed this morning,” she said, like a teacher reviewing the lesson for the dumbest student. “One that we should admit boys in order to keep the school in operation. The other that it would be better to close the school than to admit boys.”

Fred’s face flamed, his chest constricted; he felt everyone watching, and for an instant he could hardly see.

“Don’t be angry,” Ms. Richardson said. “Just answer the question.”

“I’d close the school before I admitted boys,” he said, lying deliberately and looking Ms. Richardson right in the eye.

It was very quiet in the room while she returned his stare. Then she said, “You don’t lie as skillfully as you need to yet, Mr. Kindler, but I’m sure your performance will improve with time.”

Travelers cut in. “Ms. Richardson—”

But she wasn’t finished yet. She was still facing Fred, her back to Travelers. “The truth is, Mr. Kindler, even if you were an honorable person, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Harriet, you offered your resignation a minute ago,” Travelers said.

“No, I didn’t. I only threatened.”

“Yes, you did, and it’s accepted.” He looked at Sonja McGarvey and Milton Perkins.

“Yup,” said Perkins. “I heard her resign.”

“Me too,” said McGarvey. “Plain as day.”

“It will be in the minutes,” Travelers announced. “We’ll take a short recess now. It will give you time to gather your things, Ms. Richardson.”

She stayed in her chair. The frown on her pale face showed she was making a decision. Travelers had no legal right to remove her. She turned to Fred. “It was over for me as soon as Marjorie left,” she said. “I could have saved you your little charade.” She started to collect her copy of the financial papers.

“Not those,” said Travelers. He reached to take them. “They’re confidential. For board members only.”

Harriet Richardson took a sudden breath, stared at Travelers, and held the papers in her tiny hand. Travelers wore a little smile, gave a tug; Ms. Richardson let out her breath, and now Travelers held the papers. Ms. Richardson sat very still for an instant. “You won’t get away with this,” she whispered, then got up, walked across the room. The big oaken doors didn’t open for her, she was so little. Fred wondered if he should get up and open them. She pushed again, and the doors opened just enough, and then she was gone.

DURING THE RECESS Perkins murmured to Fred, “Just in case you’re worried, I’ve told a few lies myself in my day. I’m kinda proud of them. They did more good than harm.”

Then he handed Fred a note. It said: Let’s give old Vincent a little going-away present. I’ll take care of it. Two years’ salary. Anonymous. He obviously doesn’t have any money.

After they reconvened, Alan tried to persuade McGarvey not to bring her proposal to the board. She refused. “I have to do what I think right,” she said. “Besides, the biggest problem isn’t going to be the board. It’s going to be the faculty. As soon as they find out the board’s even toying with the idea of going coed, they’ll be rabid. And the biggest problem on the faculty will be Francis Plummer. You think that little old lady who just resigned feels strongly?” she asked. “Wait’ll you see how our senior teacher reacts to the idea!”

“Whaddya expect?” Perkins grumbled. “He’s loyal.”

“He’s loyal to Marjorie,” McGarvey said. “You think he’s going to be loyal to Fred here? And he’s everybody’s hero. The girls call him Clark Kent, you know, from before I was there. He’s a loose cannon with a great big bang, and he’s cracking up.”

“He might be,” Travelers said. “Look at the way he took you on, Milton—right in the middle of the reception for Fred.”

“So I told a story and he told a better one.” Perkins said. “Who cares? We were both playing games.”

“Completely out of control,” McGarvey said, and Fred remembered that Gregory van Buren, in one of his insistent appointments during the search process, mentioned sotto voce that he thought people who were cracking up were the most difficult to control because you don’t know what they were going to do next. Fred also remembered hearing that Francis Plummer had taken to referring to Sonja McGarvey as Sonja Testosterone. He had laughed when he heard that. Now he had to be careful that the name wouldn’t slip off his own tongue.

Goodness knows he was worried about Plummer. When he had interviewed with the senior teacher last January just before being appointed, Fred could tell how distraught Plummer was at Marjorie’s dismissal. It was one of the many warning notes that would have told a more detached, analytical person how great a risk it was hitching his wagon to Miss Oliver’s star. On Fred the warnings had had the opposite effect; he was inspired by the challenge. And Karen Benjamin was right: Miss Oliver’s was the school he would have loved his daughter to attend. Why wouldn’t he want to rescue it? So he had persuaded himself he could win Francis Plummer’s loyalty. Surely a man so in love with his school as Plummer was would control himself, tamp down his anger, and join the new head in keeping the school alive. Now Fred wondered if the man really was out of control, really cracking up. What better way to get back at a board member who had helped get rid of the headmistress he loved than by taking him on in front of the faculty? Sometimes pretending to be out of control was a very good strategy. All Fred knew is that he needed Francis Plummer.

“You better reel him in, Fred,” Travelers was saying. “Or else you’ll have to get rid of him. I hate to say that. He’s been a loyal teacher.”

“There you go with loyal again!” McGarvey turned to Travelers. “He’s loyal to what was. We are responsible for the future. If it were me, I’d reel him right out the door.”

“You guys sound like Congress,” Perkins growled. “I could get sick.” He turned to Fred. “So, you want to know all this crap about Plummer or not?”

“Let me handle him,” Fred said. “That’s my job.”

“I hope that’s possible,” McGarvey murmured.

THAT NIGHT AFTER dinner, Gail and Fred sat on the back porch, and Gail knew something bad had happened at the meeting, something he didn’t want to talk about or else he would surely have told her at dinner, but he was so distracted it was as if she were not even in the room with him, and she waited and waited for him to tell her what was bothering him. Whatever it was, it must be worse than the budget fiasco he had told her about last night. “Don’t ask,” he had said. Which of course meant exactly the opposite, and even before they’d gone inside, he told her that the under-enrollment was exactly twice as large as he had thought and that he had only two years instead of four to save the school. So what was going on now, only a day later, that he was hiding from her?

“You’re not telling me something,” she said, sitting beside him in the twilight. “It’s all over your face.

He prevaricated by telling her everything about the meeting, describing it blow by blow, except the part where Ms. Richardson turned on him. He didn’t tell her that part. That’s what had been bothering him. That’s what he didn’t want to talk about.

She saw right through this. “Come on, tell me,” she urged when he’d finished. “What’s really bothering you?” She knew the board bringing up the prospect of admitting boys, instead of him, wasn’t bad. It was good. It took the heat off him, it was what he wanted.

He gave in finally and told her how Ms. Richardson had made him tell a lie. “How suddenly it all happened!” he exclaimed. “First she’s a kind, elderly woman, then she’s Machiavelli.”

“You were right to lie to her, Fred,” Gail said. “You’re a realist. A grown-up. It’s nice to be married to a grown-up.”

They sat side by side in the squeaky wicker chairs. June bugs banged on the screen door, hungry for the light. Gail picked up Fred’s hand and kissed it, held it to her cheek, then returned it to his knee. Neither of them spoke. After a while Gail stood up. “It’s ten o’clock, I’m going to bed,” she said, bending down to kiss his forehead. “Come on up when you think you can sleep.”

He took her hand, held her back. He was still mulling over what she’d said. “A realist? You usually say idealist.”

“That too. You’re both. You’re Don Quixote with a brain.” He laughed and let go of her hand.

She wanted to add, You could have chosen a school that didn’t need to be rescued. That would have been just fine with me. But she kept the thought to herself, bent to kiss him again, and went upstairs to bed.

He sat for a while, nowhere near ready to sleep, remembering the hollow sound of their voices in their house at Mt. Gilead after the furniture was taken out and put in the moving van. It was a relief that Gail’s profession was portable. A graphic artist as good as she could be successful anywhere, make as much money here in Fieldington as she ever did—more than he did—and maybe, when she was ready, after she got her roots down, and he got things at school a little more squared away, whatever was keeping them from getting pregnant would stop happening, and they’d be parents again. “We’re going to stay right here,” he said to the empty porch. “This is the place for us.”

After a while he went into the house, tried to read; when that didn’t work, he turned on the TV, soothed himself with late-night blather, finally dozed in the chair. Near dawn when he went upstairs and got in the bed beside Gail, he found she was awake. He put his hand on her shoulder. That’s when she started to cry.

“Hey!” he said. He put his arm around her, cradled her head. “You said yourself it’s not so bad. And anyway, it isn’t going to happen. They’ll never let boys in here.”

“That’s not what I’m crying about,” she said. “Besides, I’m stopping.”

“I know,” he whispered, kissing her cheek. “I know, I know.” How safe things used to be, that’s why she was crying. For that. Before he had decided to be a head. Before they had learned that a car accident could actually kill their daughter. If I were a great teacher, a Francis Plummer, he thought, maybe I wouldn’t be a head.

“It’s like you’re out in space,” Gail said. “All alone.”

“But I’m not,” he said. “I’m right here in bed. With you.”

FAR WEST OF the Mississippi now, in the same dawn, Francis couldn’t sleep either. In this huge landscape where there were no woods, no little hills to wall him in, he felt released but unanchored too, much too restless to sleep. So he drove instead, went faster and faster. It was four-thirty in the morning, fifteen hours after his phone call to Peggy, and there was no other car in sight. Just a big semi up ahead getting bigger and bigger.

He’d promised Peggy he wouldn’t eat greasy breakfasts at roadside restaurants, so he was fasting, three cups of black coffee, that’s all, and the caffeine was throbbing in his temples. He zoomed by the truck and waved to the fat guy, pasty faced, loaded on speed, NoDoze, everything but sleep, who from miles above waved back, then blasted the air horn, a crazed hello in the early morning.

Now Francis was going almost a hundred, the car was beginning to quiver, and he started to laugh. Once when he was a little kid crossing the living room, past the black-robed glowering of his ancestor’s portrait above the mantel, and tripping on the rug, he heard his father mildly explain to a visitor, “Francis lacks coordination. And he’s so dreamy, he doesn’t always know where he’s going.” Francis, who at age fifty-five was still small, unathletic, and absentminded, remembered that now, so he pushed harder on the accelerator. Risk was the best revenge. When the car’s shuddering increased, he laughed again, surprised that he was laughing, that he wasn’t crying, wondered why he was speeding; he didn’t ever know anymore how he was going to feel in the next moment. He thought maybe he was finally living up to the romance the girls had built up around him, living a secret life they insisted on believing.

Signs, telephone poles, fence posts blurred by, and after a while he found himself wondering how it would be to steer for one of them, smash his car and himself, and go to sleep. The image frightened him more than the midnight ocean into which he’d fallen overboard and was drowning all alone. So he slowed his car way down, gained control of it and of himself.

Now he had only several hundred miles to go until Denver, where he would pick up Lila Smythe. He felt less regretful now about his promise to give her a ride; he’d had enough of loneliness. And there was something comforting about keeping a promise to a student, something solid and practical and helpful, about saving her the money it would cost her to fly. He hung on to that.

Three hours later, he saw the front range of the Rockies up ahead. Soon he’d be in Denver.