Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  Now, less than two weeks into the school year, Noah wondered if he was up to the job. To say that he wasn’t a popular man on campus was putting it mildly. He didn’t have a friend. The faculty treated him like an outsider; the students treated him like the enemy. The strength of his convictions didn’t waver—he knew that he was doing right by the school—but that fact did nothing to make his work easier. He was lonely.

  That was why, he supposed, Paige Pfeiffer caught his eye. She was a doctor, an intelligent woman who would support the changes he was trying to make, or so he had assumed—and it wasn’t that he had assumed wrong, just that she was coming at things from a woman’s point of view. She saw the emotional side of the issue, while it was his job to see the structural side. He was the rule maker, the disciplinarian, while she could be softer and more permissive, which was all fine and good. She wasn’t the one who had to answer to an army of demanding parents and an even tougher brigade of trustees.

  Still, he watched for her. She intrigued him somehow. He decided that it was her long, lean, runner’s legs. They were sexy as hell.

  The inappropriateness of the thought brought home to him the sad state he was in. He needed a friend in Tucker. More than that, he needed encouragement, a sign that what he was trying to do just might work.

  Determinedly he showered, put on a clean pair of slacks and a fresh shirt, and went to the dining hall, but rather than taking his customary place in the faculty alcove and sitting through another meal with another teacher who would get in little digs about the extra class he had to teach that term, he plunked himself down in the middle of a group of freshman boys.

  Those who weren’t eyeing him warily exchanged nervous glances with each other.

  “How’re you guys doing?” he asked in a friendly way.

  One brave soul found the courage to say, “Okay.”

  “Classes going well?”

  Several shrugged. Others found sudden interest in their food.

  “What do you think of the building project?” he asked to get them going.

  They looked at each other.

  One said, “It’s okay.”

  Another said, “We’re not old enough to do it.”

  A third said, “It may not look so good when it’s done. Homemade stuff stinks.”

  “There’s nothing ‘homemade’ about the house we’re building,” Noah chided. “The plans were drawn up by a legitimate architect, and the construction is being supervised by a legitimate builder.”

  Another boy said, “My brother’s helping. It’ll be a disaster.”

  “Uh-uh,” Noah argued. “I can’t afford a disaster. Everyone who’s helping will learn to do it right.”

  “Yeah,” said another with smug looks at his friends on either side, “so they’ll be able to graduate and build houses.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Noah said.

  “My dad isn’t paying big money for me to learn to build houses.”

  “No, but that would be a great little side benefit to the formal education you’re getting. Let me tell you, there’s satisfaction to be had in building a house.”

  “You’ve done it?”

  “More than once.”

  “Your own house?”

  “No. They’ve always been houses for other people who wouldn’t be able to afford it without a little help from their friends.”

  One of the boys groaned. “Here comes the pitch.”

  “What pitch?” Noah asked him.

  “You’re going to tell us that the community service requirement is the best thing to hit campus since the salad bar, but I hate salad.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to hate community service.”

  “In Tucker? Are you kidding? The town is the pits. There’s nothing here.”

  “There’s a grocery store, a library, and a post office. There’s a hardware store, a lumberyard, and a bookstore. There’s a crafts collaborative. There’s the Tavern. And the inn. There’s an ice-cream shop, and there’s Reels. And the hospital.”

  “Tucker General,” someone snickered.

  “From what I hear,” Noah said, “Tucker General’s saved many a Mount Court kid from disaster, so don’t knock it.”

  There were several more snickers with no words attached. Then someone mumbled, “I wouldn’t want to have a heart attack there,” and the others laughed.

  “Why not?” Noah asked. “The doctors at Tucker trained at the same hospitals that you know and trust. They just choose to live in Vermont. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that Tucker offers more personal care than the big city hospitals do.”

  “That’s because the nurses are hicks. They don’t know any better.”

  Noah was disappointed by the boy’s cynicism, but not surprised. Spoiled was never far from arrogant and arrogant never far from jaded. These fifteen-year-olds were all three. “John, is it?” he asked the boy who had spoken last and found satisfaction in his surprise. “I tell you what. You do your thirty hours at the hospital and then tell me you still believe that, and I’ll treat you and three of your buddies to sundaes at Scoops.”

  “Thirty hours?” John asked, looking appalled.

  “That’s the requirement.”

  “Where are we supposed to find that kind of time?”

  “Saturday mornings, six weeks’ worth, five hours each,” Noah said. “Or Saturday afternoons, or Sunday afternoons, if you can’t get out of bed early enough. The hospital is always in need of help on weekends. Or if you don’t want to work at the hospital, you can tutor math at the elementary school, or read to the elderly at the nursing home, or work at the recycling booth at the town dump. The point is,” he concluded, “that you all are a privileged lot. You have advantages that others don’t have. You owe it to society to give something back.”

  “We pay taxes.”

  “Your parents pay taxes,” Noah corrected. “You’re the ones taking so much without giving back.”

  “We’re too young to give back.”

  “You’re never too young.” He rose from his seat. Much more and he’d have indigestion, and he hadn’t yet started to eat. “Who knows?” he added, tray in hand. “The concept of charitable giving might just sink in. You might find that you like it. You might leave Mount Court a nicer person.” On the verge of saying something sharper, he took his leave. He ended up back in the faculty alcove and ate his dinner feeling somehow defeated. So, when he was done and back out in the early evening air, he tried again.

  This time it was Paige Pfeiffer’s group—Julie Engel, Alicia Donnelly, and Tia Faraday, plus Annie Miller and several juniors, plus two sophomores, Meredith Hill and Sara. They were sitting on the lawn, finishing assorted concoctions of the frozen yogurt that had been served for dessert. He slid his hands into his pockets and sauntered up.

  “How’s the yogurt?”

  The girls eyed him with varying degrees of caution. Julie shrugged. Annie tipped her head. Tia said, “It’s okay.” They continued to eat, some licking cones, some spooning yogurt from dishes.

  “An improvement over last year’s food?” he asked.

  They consulted each other with glances. Finally Alicia said, “This is.”

  The implication was clear. Noah waited for someone to elaborate on it. When no one did, he elaborated himself. “But you didn’t like the tofu we had for lunch, is that it?”

  Annie made a face. Tia grunted. Julie said, “It was vile.”

  “Tofu takes on the flavor of the foods it’s cooked with,” Noah explained. “Our cook hasn’t gotten the idea yet. But he will. I thought his pizza was great.” It had been covered with extra cheese and an assortment of vegetables and, more important, had been prepared without the extra dollop of oil that school cooks mistakenly assumed added flavor.

  No one commented.

  Noah pushed on. “He’s doing okay with the salad bar. And the sandwich bar.” They had been Noah’s ideas, too, the theory being that there would be less waste if food was p
repared simply and presented in such a way that students could take what they wanted and leave the rest. They much preferred bagels for breakfast than burned corn muffins that the cook had spent an hour preparing. Noah had had the dubious honor of tasting the latter during his visit to the school the spring before.

  Alicia stretched out her legs. Tia whispered something to Julie. The juniors took extra crunchies from a dish and sprinkled them on their cones. Meredith and Sara reached for napkins from a wad that sat on the grass.

  “How’s your dad feeling, Lindsey?”

  The girl, one of the juniors, looked up in surprise. “How did you know he was sick?”

  “I talked with him on the day he and your mom dropped you here. He said he was having surgery.”

  “He did. He’s better.”

  Noah nodded his satisfaction. He looked up in time to catch a wayward Frisbee that had sailed out of control from the game in progress farther down the lawn. Good catch, Noah, he told himself when none of the girls said a word. He sent the Frisbee off again.

  “This time last year,” he told the silent group, “I was in the hills of northern Virginia. I thought fall was beautiful there, but it’s even more so here. Another few weeks and the color will be spectacular.”

  The girls looked at each other. Julie said, “That makes it even harder to concentrate on classwork.”

  “And on official school business,” Noah said, “but it has to be done. Besides,” he added on a note of humor, “concentrating when it’s the hardest is what builds character.”

  No one laughed. No one even smiled. Noah felt a tangible resentment directed his way.

  Alicia pushed herself up from the grass. “I’m taking this back to the dining hall.” She was immediately handed other dishes and spoons, which she stacked, and left.

  Julie rose, said pointedly, “I have to get ready for study hall,” and started off. She was quickly joined by her friends.

  The sophomores were the last to leave. Noah would have liked to talk with them, but when his eye caught Sara’s, the abject fear he saw there kept him still.

  He worried about her. She had come from San Francisco and a mother who was unable to cope with a teenage daughter, which had to be one blow for the child. Another had to be leaving all her friends behind, and a third, starting over in the middle of high school.

  She was a sweet girl. Beneath the stoicism that kept her feelings hidden, she was sensitive. He was sure of it, and because of that, he had doubts that this was the right school for her. He liked Meredith, and others of the sophomores seemed nice enough, but he wasn’t wild about the seniors in the cross-country gang. Paige Pfeiffer seemed fond enough of them—she could afford to be fond of them, since her time with them was limited—but they struck him as tough. He didn’t know whether he could get through to them in a year. The underclassmen were something else. He had a chance with people like Sara, assuming they weren’t turned off by the seniors. He vowed to do everything he could to prevent that, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  Nothing was, it seemed, where Mount Court was concerned.

  Feeling sad, tired, and alone, he crossed the campus and followed the path through the trees, behind the library and the art center, to the headmaster’s house. It was a beauty, a small brick Tudor covered with ivy, and had been one of the lures of the Mount Court job. That was before he had taken a closer look.

  One could call the place dignified, elegant, even stately, but the most appropriate word was old, and although Noah had nothing against old houses that had been cared for, this one hadn’t been. He had already personally replaced nonfunctional door-knobs, front and back, put weather stripping around the windows, and reshingled large sections of the roof when the storms of late August had sent rain dripping inside. He had had a plumber in to replace the hot-water heater, all the while wondering if the Head before him had enjoyed cold showers, and when the refrigerator had proved nonfunctional, he had purchased a new one himself.

  It was a small house, as fitted the image of the Head whose children were grown and living on their own. Noah wasn’t of that ilk, but he liked the intimacy. The first floor held the living room, dining room, kitchen, and den that were used from time to time for official entertaining. The kitchen and den jutted out from the back of the house as offshoots of an original, smaller kitchen. With their predominance of windows looking out onto the woods, this was Noah’s favorite part of the house.

  The second floor had two bedrooms, each with its own bath. He had found the wallpaper so depressing that he had stripped it off within days of his arrival. Now, replacement rolls sat in boxes. He fully intended to do the repapering himself when he had the time.

  One part of him thought he was crazy. It wasn’t his responsibility, during a temporary stint as Head, to make improvements in the physical facilities, at his own expense, no less. The other part knew that doing things like papering the walls would be therapeutic. At the rate he was going in the popularity sphere, come the cold weather, when he would be spending more evenings and weekends at home, he would be desperate for things to do.

  There was satisfaction in working with one’s hands. Lord knew he needed satisfaction from some quarter.

  He took The Washington Post from the pile of daily mail and felt an instant comfort. The Post was a relic of his life before Mount Court. It represented a world that valued Noah and awaited his return. Whether he chose to return to it was another matter, but the choice was his, and in the meantime the knowledge that he was appreciated somewhere was a solace.

  He headed for the kitchen, intent on reading the paper at the round table in the glassed-in breakfast nook. The sun had fallen behind the trees. Dusk was approaching. He flipped the switch to illuminate the lamp that hung over the table. When nothing happened, he jiggled the switch, and when nothing happened still, he swore.

  He dropped the paper on the table, unscrewed the bulb from the lamp, tossed it into the wastebasket, and took a new one from the storage closet in the back hall. The lamp remained dark when he flipped the switch, so he removed the bulb and tried another.

  This time when he tried the light, fireworks flew from the switch on the wall with such force that he jerked back. He swore again and louder, then stood with his hands on his hips, his heart banging an unhappy message against his ribs, and his head bowed in defeat. He knew enough about electrical systems to know that this particular light switch would have to be rewired. He wondered how many others were in like state.

  He didn’t understand how a house that was so beautiful on the outside could be so broken-down inside—and, in his frustration, he wondered if there might be a broader message in that. He had come to Mount Court with the best of intentions. If they, too, blew up in his face, he didn’t know what he would do.

  Hating decrepit things, detesting snotty little rich kids, and, mostly, despising the thought of failure, he grabbed his car keys and made for the garage. Soon after, he was in his Explorer, winding over the Mount Court roads, curving around the main drive toward the wrought-iron archway. He kept his eyes straight ahead and his foot on the gas, and didn’t let up for a minute until the image of Mount Court, as seen through a rear window dotted with decals from another life, was a memory.

  “She’s been dead more’n a week now. So how’s it going?”

  The question came from Charlie Grace. As one or another of Peter’s three older brothers often did, he had slid into Peter’s booth at the Tavern uninvited. Normally Peter didn’t mind. His brothers had made so much less of their lives than Peter had that letting them sit with him was an act of charity. But Peter was tired. He had just ended another long day filled with questions about Mara from parents of her patients.

  “It’s going fine,” he told Charlie, but he didn’t gesture the waitress—Beth was on that night—for a beer for Charlie, as he usually, benevolently, did. He was in no mood to encourage his brother to stay. He needed time alone before Lacey arrived.

  “She was a strange one,” Charlie m
used. “She could be a class-A bitch—Jamie Cox is the first one to say that—but her patients loved her. My kids think she’s the greatest.” He gestured Beth for a beer.

  Peter wished he hadn’t. More than that, he wished Charlie wouldn’t put him down. “They think Mara’s the greatest simply because I precluded myself from being their doctor. If I hadn’t, they’d think I was the greatest.”

  “They still think you’re the greatest,” Charlie said with a sincerity that made Peter feel like a heel, “but she was a woman, and a woman has something else going for her. She was like a second mother to the kids. She had half the men in town in love with her, too.”

  “If you’re going to tell me about Spud Harvey, save your breath. That’s old news.”

  “Spud? Him, too? I was thinking about Jackie Kagen, and Moose LeMieux, and Butchie Lombard. She dated them all.”

  “Once or twice, each one, that’s all,” Peter specified. “You make her sound loose, but she wasn’t. She was decent when it came to men. She never led one on. She never promised more than she was willing to give.”

  “Hey,” Charlie said, raising a pacifying hand, “I’m not accusing her of anything. Besides, Norman agrees. She didn’t have any enemies. He told me so at the doughnut shop this morning. He checked it out.” He grinned an over-the-hill football hero’s grin at Beth. “Thanks, doll.”

  Peter felt an uncertain alarm, though he was careful not to let it show. “What do you mean, Norman checked it out?” he asked with commendable nonchalance.

  “Checked out her love life. Talked to the guys she dated. Talked to the guys she didn’t date but who wanted to date her. He didn’t talk to you?”

  “I’m her partner. I didn’t date her.”

  “Come on, Pete,” Charlie chided in a lowered voice, “I saw you two out on the old covered bridge at dawn more than once.”

  “We’re both camera nuts. We used to photograph it.”

  “At dawn?” he asked skeptically.

  “Pictures are always more interesting when the lighting is oblique. Dawn and sunset are the best. Trust me. Mara and I didn’t date. So Norman had no cause to talk with me. He must have annoyed the others but good.”