Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  “That’s not the point,” Francis declared. He didn’t want excuses for himself.

  “It’s one of them. You’ve been here for thirty-three years. I’m only thirty-seven years old, for goodness sake!”

  “I can handle it,” Francis said.

  “All those years serving one person! I know how much you depended on each other.”

  “I can handle it,” Francis repeated.

  “Well, I’m not sure I could,” Kindler said even more softly. “Not without some help.”

  Francis stared. “Help? What do you mean, help?”

  Kindler was looking him right in the eye. “I simply mean there’s a lot of stress. A huge amount in a change situation like this.”

  Francis turned his head ninety degrees away from Kindler’s gaze.

  “All right, I’ve overstepped,” Kindler said. “All I meant is that if you, or anyone else on the faculty, wanted some counseling, some advice about dealing with the kind of strong emotions that come with this kind of change, I want it known that over the summer I got the board to extend the insurance to cover it. But I intruded on your privacy. I should have waited. I’m sorry.”

  Francis wasn’t hearing Kindler talking about the predictable, normal stress that organizational change engenders; he was hearing his new boss, Marjorie’s usurper, telling him he was sick. He started to stand up.

  “Please, Mr. Kent. I apologize.”

  Francis was standing now, staring down at Fred Kindler.

  “Could you sit down? Please. I really want us to talk.”

  “Mr. Kent? My name is Plummer!”

  “Slip of the tongue,” Kindler murmured, touching the fingers of his left hand to his forehead. “I seem to be really fouling up this meeting.” He paused, then shrugged. “It happens,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me. When I heard that the girls call you by that name—Clark Kent—it put the name into my head. It makes me happy that I have a teacher on my faculty who the girls admire so much he becomes a myth.” Kindler was almost smiling now. “So, please sit down. You should be very proud.”

  Francis made no move to sit down. “It’s a tradition that the adults in this school never mention the secret names,” he said, voice quivering. The guy thinks I need a shrink! And he mocks my name! “Only the girls ever mention those names,” he preached, forgetting that Marjorie had been the one exception. “That’s the tradition.”

  “Oh? Then forgive me,” Kindler said very quietly. He was silent for a moment, frowning; then he said, “I’m still learning. I’ll not make that mistake again.”

  Francis started to say, “Just the same, you shouldn’t—” then realizing how foolish he sounded, he stopped.

  “Just the same I shouldn’t what?”

  “I was just going to explain,” Francis murmured. How did he let himself get into this? He really did want to explain the traditions that Kindler needed to know.

  Now Kindler was standing too. It was very sudden. Francis saw again how small the man’s body was—just as small as his own. The anger on his face was clear, a kind of hardness.

  “Well now, I’m suddenly not in the mood for explanations.” Fred’s voice was quiet; the words came slowly. In the back of his mind he was aware he should be controlling this sudden rage. But he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—he didn’t care which. “In our next meeting, I will do the explaining,” he announced. “I’m sure it will be more productive than this one—which is over.”

  “Wait a sec! I didn’t mean—”

  “You heard me, Mr. Plummer. Our meeting’s over.” Francis still stood there. “You’re actually kicking me out of your office?”

  Kindler didn’t answer.

  “All right. But I’ll be back,” Francis promised.

  “WELL, HOW DID your nice little talk with our new headmaster go?” Margaret Rice asked as Francis walked through her office on his way out of the administration building. She had come in while he and Kindler were talking.

  “Fine.”

  “I bet!”

  Suddenly Francis wanted to talk to his old friend. He sat down on the loveseat, where visiting parents had always sat when waiting to see the headmistress. Now, before walking through Margaret’s office, they waited in a special room that was full of shiny school brochures that had appeared over the summer. When, at breakfast this morning, he had looked through one of the brochures Peggy had brought home, Francis had a strange feeling that he was reading about a school he’d never seen.

  “Well, what was so fine about it?” Margaret asked belligerently.

  “It ended quickly.”

  Margaret laughed. She sat very still behind her desk, a large woman in a yellow sweater the same color as the leaves on the aspen trees in the Rockies he was still seeing inside his head. She and her ex-husband, Bob Rice, whom Francis remembered as maybe the only male he had ever loved the way one might love a twin, used to invite Peggy and him and Siddy every Thanksgiving to their place in New Hampshire near Mount Chocorua. He remembered the five of them walking down abandoned roads through leaves that lay deep as their ankles on the frosted ground.

  But one day, Bob told Francis, “I just can’t stand it here anymore.” Francis knew that Bob meant he couldn’t tolerate the idea that only a few of his students would become full-time professional artists. His fine teaching made them see themselves as artists, but Bob had learned that in many parents’ view, one of the unspoken aims of so expensive an education was to insulate their children from such disturbing adventures of the spirit. Bob Rice had received more than one call from an agitated parent suggesting that he be not too inspiring, that perhaps being a lawyer was a sounder goal for a student. Or a stockbroker. Even an old-fashioned, full-time mother. But an artist? Only on weekends. “I’ve awakened to reality,” he told Francis on the day he went away. “I’ve finally faced it, and I can’t stand it anymore.”

  Margaret followed him to their place near Chocorua, where he still eked out his living as a sculptor, but after several years she had come back. She didn’t like living all alone, the wife of a man so obsessed he didn’t have any needs other than his work. Francis marveled at his friend’s courage to have discovered, at so much cost, who he really was. Discovery and grief are the same thing, he had thought to himself, smiling that faraway smile that inspired the girls to imagine he was reliving his exploits as Superman.

  Peggy had viewed Bob Rice’s departure in a different light. “He just gave up,” she had said. “Why should every parent immediately agree with him? Besides, if he really were obsessed as a sculptor, he’d be in New York City—not hiding out on a farm he inherited.”

  Margaret broke into his thoughts. “How old are you now, Fran?”

  “You know my age as well as you know your own. I’ll be fifty-six in January.”

  “Plenty of time left. Nine years, at the very least. You’ll outlast him.”

  “Maybe. And maybe not,” he said. “And besides, that’s not the point.”

  “Oh, yes it is, Fran. Very much the point. And don’t worry. We’ll both be here long after he’s gone.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because his mustache looks funny,” Margaret said with a straight face. “That’s the one thing they didn’t teach him at the New Heads’ Workshop: When your mustache looks like it should be under your armpit, you need to shave it off.” Margaret grinned.

  Just then the door to the new headmaster’s office opened, and Fred Kindler’s red hair appeared. He looked surprised when he noticed Francis sitting on the sofa. Francis forced himself to meet Kindler’s eyes. Then Kindler turned to Margaret. “I need you for a moment, Ms. Rice,” he said. “Please bring the calendar.” He closed the door and disappeared.

  Margaret turned back to Francis as he stood up. She was smiling again. “Good thing he can’t hear through that door.” It was obvious she wanted some reaction to her armpit joke. He failed to respond, didn’t return her grin. That was not how he wanted to defend the school, making jo
kes about the new guy’s funny mustache; he wanted some higher ground than that. If Kindler tried to bring boys in, he wouldn’t owe him any support. But he did owe him support.

  He saw a worried look in Margaret’s eyes. “You’ll be all right,” she murmured. “Say hello to Peg.”

  CROSSING THE CAMPUS back to his apartment, Francis remembered how happy he’d always been this time in the summer when the grass on the school lawns smelled like hay and the leaves on the big copper beech tree in front of the Administration Building were already shimmering with faint traces of red, and the new school year was going to begin in just a couple of weeks. Marjorie used to remind him all the time that he was in love with the school. That’s why she had trusted him. He knew she meant in love the way a man loves a woman. “Schools are just like people,” she had said. “They go through stages and are even more complicated.” He used to wonder if Marjorie thought that Peggy loved the school the way a woman loves a man.

  Peggy was still home when he arrived. She was usually in her library by this time in the morning. “How did your meeting with Fred Kindler go just now?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t be funny, Francis. Fred Kindler. Your new boss.”

  “He told me I need a shrink.”

  She waited for Francis to say more. She so wanted Francis and Fred Kindler to be friends!

  But Francis didn’t want her to know how badly the meeting had gone. “That’s what he told me: I need a shrink,” he repeated, trying to make it seem like a joke.

  She saw right through this. Her heart sank. And she was angry again. “Well, maybe he’s right,” she said as she left for her library.

  EIGHT

  When the phone rang in her Cambridge apartment at supper time on August 18, two weeks before the September board meeting and just a few days before the opening of the new school year, Ms. Harriet Richardson, late of the Oliver board of trustees, knew who was calling. She sighed, disappointed with herself for her procrastination. It would be Sandra Petrie, an Oliver board member. Sandra always called two Tuesdays before the board meetings to offer Ms. Richardson a ride. It seemed strange to Harriet that so volatile a personality could be so rigidly organized.

  If she had just written a note right after the summer executive committee meeting to tell Sandra that she wouldn’t be needing a ride to the September board meeting in Sandra’s Mercedes, Sandra would have forgotten to call and ask why. But now she would probe, Harriet thought, reaching for the phone. If she figured it out before the board meeting …

  “Hello, Sandra,” Harriet said. She hoped knowing who’s on the phone before Sandra even said a word would shock Sandra into forgetting to ask why she didn’t need a ride.

  It didn’t work. “You don’t?” said Sandra, sounding disappointed. It took her less than a minute to tease out of Ms. Richardson that the reason she didn’t need a ride was that she had resigned. She wanted to know why.

  “The reasons are personal, Sandra,” Harriet said.

  “Personal?”

  “I’m getting on, you know. I will be seventy-seven years old in November. It’s time for younger blood.”

  “I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

  “Really,” Harriet insisted. “Seventy-seven is getting on.”

  “They’re letting boys in, aren’t they? That’s what happening. They’re letting boys in!”

  “No, we are not.” Then remembering: “I mean, they are not. You’re on the board, Sandra; they wouldn’t make such a decision without you.”

  “Oh, my goodness! They’re letting boys in!”

  “Sandra, they’ve made no such decision.”

  “I knew it! I just knew this would happen!”

  “Sandra! Listen to me! Please! They have not made that decision.”

  Silence again; then softly: “Oh? What decision did they make?”

  “They merely agreed to let one of the members bring it up at the board meeting.”

  “Merely! No wonder you quit!”

  “Sandra. Please. Keep this to yourself. Deal with it at the meeting. But don’t tell anyone. Let the board deal with the issue.”

  “Let the board deal with the issue,” Sandra mocked. “Are you crazy? You think it’s just an issue? You sound like Alan Travelers. Or Sonja whatshername. I’m going to deal with the issue!”

  “Sandra, be careful.”

  “I’ll be careful, all right. Very careful! Careful to do whatever I feel like doing. That’s what you should have done. You should have stayed on the board to vote against it.”

  “I thought if I threatened to quit, it would change their minds,” Harriet said very quietly. “I thought it would shock them to see how I felt about it.”

  “Well, it didn’t work, did it!”

  After Sandra hung up, Harriet tried to guess what Sandra was going to do. Whatever it was, it would cause trouble. Harriet had to admit she was glad. But she decided not to put off calling Alan Travelers and warning him that the cat was out of the bag. She owed him that much. Let him try to guess where Sandra was going to strike!

  By the time Harriet had moved to the sideboard to pour herself a sherry—just one glass to calm her nerves—she had changed her mind. Why should she help that man and his new headmaster ruin the school? Whatever Sandra was going to do would make it harder to bring boys in. “No,” she said aloud to herself, “I’ll keep mum. That’s the least I can do.” This was a first for her, she’d always been known for her integrity. She took a sip of sherry, felt its warmth. “But this is different; they’re the enemy, and I don’t owe them anything. Not after what they did to Marjorie.”

  BOOK TWO: FALL TERM

  NINE

  On August 20, the second anniversary of her daughter’s death, Gail Kindler woke up crying and turned to reach for her husband and found the bed empty. So she turned her back, away from the place he’d left, and cried all by herself.

  Fred was up, dressed, and in his office. This was the day the faculty reconvened to prepare for the new school year, which would start in several days.

  Gail, though, with no new job to run to, stayed in their bed and again saw herself standing on the front porch of their house on the Mt. Gilead campus while her husband ran across the campus to her to get the news. She had phoned him to come home so she could tell him face to face. “I need to tell you something,” she had said. “Something bad has happened.” She still hadn’t believed it when she said it over the phone—and didn’t believe it until she saw his face as he came up the porch steps and understood that he had guessed. “Sarah’s dead,” she’d said.

  She’d never dreamed she would ever see a face so crushed as Fred’s, so melted, a perfect stranger’s face, and they didn’t dare touch each other, not a hand clasp or an embrace to share their pain, for all the hours and hours it took to call their relatives and tell them; they knew that if they gave in to their need to comfort each other, they would break down completely and never finish the phoning. She’d read in lots of places since then that for many marriages the loss of a child is the end. But not for us, she thought, we wouldn’t, either of us, do that to the other, or to Sarah. Our bond’s too strong for that.

  She stood up and took off her nightgown. She might as well get dressed. She was almost glad that he’d forgotten, the grief spread out to every day, for what difference did it make which day she died on? She was dead every day, and today was a special day in a very different way. Nevertheless, Gail hated this place, this house that belonged to someone else. It was like living on an iceberg.

  She turned now to get to the chair where her clothes awaited her and saw him standing in the doorway. “You forgot,” she said.

  “I only started to.” And then he was across the room and hugging her, and she was crying again, harder than she’d ever cried, as if the last pieces in the hollow insides of her were shattering again to even smaller shards, and he picked her up, right off her feet, and put her in the bed and got in beside her in his sports coat
, his tie, and his flannel trousers. His shoes, muddy from running to her across the garden, made a smear on the sheets, and now he was crying too. “Oh, it hurts!” she said. “It hurts. It hurts.” And after a while they went to sleep.

  They didn’t wake up until five minutes to nine—and he had to run to the meeting.

  BUT PEGGY PLUMMER was walking across the campus toward the meeting with a springy step. Under her new headmaster, the new school year really was a tabula rasa, a brand-new chance to do things right and save the school. Next to her, Francis, who had relived his disastrous meeting with Fred Kindler a thousand times, was more subdued. He’d promised himself that in future meetings he would try to see through Kindler’s eyes—and be alert to Kindler’s sudden storms of temper.

  They were headed to the exact center of the campus, to the library where the full faculty had always met in the big central room. Sometimes it made Francis just a little jealous that so much of the school’s life was centered in the library.

  In the library, Peggy and Francis sat next to each other at the same place at the same table where they had always sat. He was calm enough. He touched Peggy’s hand beneath the table, where no one else could see, to show her he was going to make this work.

  Fred Kindler stood to open the meeting, and Francis saw again how much shorter than Marjorie this new guy was. He didn’t fill the space around him the way Marjorie had. There was something subdued in the man—except when he was angry!—some hint of sadness that Francis hadn’t noticed before and didn’t seem right in someone so young.

  The first thing Kindler did was point out that the meeting had started ten minutes late.

  “At nine o’clock, our starting time, I took a head count,” he announced. “And discovered that about a dozen of us hadn’t arrived yet or were just coming in the door.” He paused for an instant and then resumed. “So I waited to start the meeting because I wanted all of us to be together.” Kindler’s voice was calm, the only person in the room who was not embarrassed. “I won’t wait again to start a meeting,” Kindler went on. He let his eyes rest on Francis’s face, and waited. It was clear to everyone that Fred Kindler was waiting for the senior teacher to say something in support of the new emphasis on punctuality; but there was something Francis wanted to add. He wanted to explain that Oliver lateness was a function not of carelessness but of intensity: the need to say one more thing in class, to finish up a conversation with a student. We’re here all day, he wanted to say, we’re not on a treadmill. Oliver people aren’t going to be dominated by anything, let alone a schedule. What he didn’t understand, of course, was that he was not defending the faculty’s bad habit with this flimsy argument. He was defending Marjorie. He couldn’t help feeling that every change the new head made insulted his predecessor and demeaned the past.