Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  “This won’t take long. I’ve only got two things to say,” Kindler announced. “Listen carefully to both of them.”

  Francis said nothing.

  “The first—as you would have already learned from me without our little riot—is the board has decided that under extreme conditions it would consider whether or not it is in the school’s best interest to become a coed school.”

  “Consider? Or actually decide?” Francis asked carefully. His own rage was rising now, a counter to Kindler’s—if he could control it.

  “What do you think, Mr. Plummer?”

  “Just tell me,” Francis said. “This isn’t a quiz show.”

  “Consider, Mr. Plummer, merely consider. And I expect you to treat their consideration with respect. That’s the second thing.”

  Francis started to say how crazy it was even to think about this, how it would never happen, no matter who was running the school, but Kindler started talking again before Francis got a word out. “If you had behaved yourself, you wouldn’t have had to ask. I would have told you,” he said, staring at Francis.

  Francis opened his mouth to speak, but Kindler put his hand up and waved it back and forth in that gesture that drove Francis crazy. “Not now, Mr. Plummer. And not to me. I’m not interested in your opinion anymore. And won’t be until you get your act together.”

  “My act together?” Francis repeated, realizing suddenly: He thinks I knew! He thinks while he was talking with me in the office I knew there was a riot getting started. He thinks I set him up! He’d forgotten the coed issue. All he could think of was this.

  “If you fail to do whatever you have to do to get yourself back on track, I’ll fire you,” Kindler said.

  “Whatever I have to do? What does that mean?”

  “I’ve suggested therapy already, Mr. Plummer,” Fred said, aware that last time he had called it counseling. “Do I have to again?”

  Francis opened his mouth, but no words came out. If Kindler had stood up, reached across his desk, and punched him in the face, it wouldn’t have felt any worse.

  “Well, do I?” Kindler said.

  Francis still couldn’t speak. He was dizzy with anger; Kindler’s face was a blur.

  “I guess so,” Kindler said.

  “Don’t you ever say that to me again,” Francis said at last. “Do you hear? Ever.”

  Kindler just shrugged.

  “Or you’ll fire me? Who do you think you are?”

  “Be careful, Mr. Plummer. Or I’ll show you who I am.”

  “I’ll resign then,” Francis blurted thinking, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to get down on my knees and tell him that I didn’t even know what was happening! I was already in here when Sandra came on campus.

  Kindler put his hands on his desk, leaned forward. “You think I’d let you resign? You even begin to, and I’ll fire you. I won’t give you that to hide in. I’ll fire you publicly. I’ll announce it in the school newspaper. I’ll write an article in the alumnae magazine. I don’t care what kind of hornet’s nest it stirs up. If it weren’t for my respect for your wife, I could even enjoy such a fight. That’s how you win fights, you know. The ones you get in just for the hell of it are the ones you always win.”

  “My wife’s none of your business, Mr. Kindler.”

  “Except for the fact that she’s the best damn librarian in the business, you’re right.”

  “This fight’s just between you and me.”

  Francis watched Kindler’s body tense. He thought for a moment he’d won, the man was going to lose it completely, go totally out of control. He was wrong. Kindler spoke very slowly. “It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with either you or me,” he said. “It’s about the school. Why don’t you grow up?

  “Think about that,” Kindler added. “This meeting’s over.”

  THAT EVENING IMMEDIATELY after dinner, Peggy had an appointment with the ninth graders to teach them how to use the library. She went straight there from the dining hall. The minute she’d finished she would hurry home. She needed to talk with Francis.

  She was still hearing the bitterness in Fred Kindler’s voice that morning as he mocked Francis in front of the whole school, telling him to pick the Sunday for making up the classes, and cutting him off when he tried to speak. There had been something irredeemable in that very public insult, something much too reckless. How could he retreat from that, she wondered. How could Francis forgive him?

  She remembered the stony expression on Fred’s face as he walked down the aisle, stopped and said something to Francis, and then went out the door. Only minutes later, she’d seen Francis heading for the administration building and was sure he was going to Fred’s office. She needed to know what had happened there.

  Francis went home after dinner and waited for Peggy to finish with the ninth graders. As soon as she got home, he would tell her about the student council’s proposal to give the Collection to the Pequots. He didn’t want her to be taken by surprise when it came up in Morning Meeting. He had wanted to tell her right after morning classes to be sure she’d hear it from him rather than someone else. But then there had been the riot in the auditorium and Kindler attacking him in public and threatening to fire him in his office, and the Pequot issue had gone clean out of his mind.

  While he waited for her, he had two sets of compositions to comment on and grade. It was a rule of his own to obey: Every paper will be returned within forty-eight hours. Gregory van Buren almost never kept papers longer than that, and Francis wasn’t about to be bested by him. But it wasn’t long before Francis found that he was going to have to disobey his rule, because he couldn’t keep his mind on the students’ writing. He was too full of the pain of everything that had happened that morning. All day he’d been hearing the new headmaster say, “I’ll fire you publicly” and “I’ll write an article in the alumnae magazine.” He’d have to tell Peggy about it someday, though right then that was too humiliating even to imagine. His new boss, half his age, leaning across his desk and asking him why he doesn’t grow up!

  Francis gave up and went out into the dorm, poked his head into each girl’s room to say hello. His spirits lifted a little when Lila Smythe asked for advice about an essay she had written for Gregory van Buren’s celebrated course: “Tragedy from Oedipus Rex to Death of a Salesman.” Gregory had told her to do the essay over because there was a subtle flaw in the logic of her argument that she needed to find on her own, and on his first reading Francis couldn’t see it either. When he did catch on to Gregory’s point, he asked her some leading questions to help her discover it on her own and watched her understanding dawn. “Thanks, Mr. P.,” she told him. “You’ve helped a lot.” He was grateful for this warmth from Lila, and forgot for a moment his trouble with Kindler; but he understood that he never would have caught Lila’s error; he would have given her an A. And just the other day, Rachel Bickham had casually suggested to Gregory and Francis that they do what the teachers in her department do and visit each other’s classes. Of course that’s what they should have been doing all along: learning from each other, like grown-ups.

  Peggy finished with the ninth graders quickly. After all, there were only nine of them. Then she hurried across the campus and found Francis in the dorm just as he’d finished helping Lila. “I need to talk to you,” she said, motioning toward the door to their apartment.

  Naturally, he thought she’d heard about the proposal through the grapevine and wanted to know why he hadn’t told her. He should kill himself.

  He was wrong. She hadn’t gotten wind of the proposal. The near-riot in the auditorium, the specter of boys at Miss Oliver’s, those had shoved all thoughts of the Collection out of everyone’s mind. The council members weren’t thinking about it right now, and they weren’t telling anybody about it, and if they were, no one would have paid attention.

  In their apartment, Levi came across the room to welcome them, wagging his tail, his toenails clicking on the floor. They ignored him. “What
happened?” she asked before they even sat down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant to tell you before anyone else did.”

  She shook her head to tell him no. Of course Fred Kindler hadn’t told her what had happened between him and Francis in his office. How could Francis think he would?

  He thought she meant no, forgetting’s no excuse. “Well, I think you would have forgotten too,” he said, a little angry now.

  “Francis, please,” she begged. “What happened? Between you and Fred Kindler today.” Both of them were still standing up.

  “Oh, that’s what we’re talking about!”

  “Francis!”

  He was stunned, realizing that maybe he wasn’t ever going to tell her what Kindler said to him today. So now he felt guilty about that too. “Which time? I had two meetings with him,” he said. Anything to postpone having to admit to this disgrace.

  “After the auditorium. I saw you heading for his office.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You did. That’s where I went.”

  She waited.

  “He threatened to fire me,” he said at last, and added, “That’s all, nothing important,” as if it were a joke.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, discovering that it was true, though until he’d said it, she hadn’t dared think it. She looked away. She couldn’t bear to look at him, he was so chagrined.

  “He thinks I set him up. He thinks I knew Sandra was on campus.”

  “Oh, come on. He wouldn’t think that.”

  “Yes, he does, I could tell. He thinks I kept him in his office to give her time to get the meeting started without him.”

  “You?” she asked. “How could he?” Even if Francis were devious enough, he didn’t have that kind of cunning.

  Because he goes out of control at the drop of a hat, Francis wanted to answer her. Because he gets angry and acts before he thinks. But he wouldn’t say that. She would just leap to Kindler’s defense.

  He was right; she would. But she had seen Fred Kindler attack the school’s most beloved teacher this morning, right in front of everyone, and then, another reckless act, just leave the auditorium, just walk away. How did he know Sandra Petrie wouldn’t get the power back?

  “Peggy, I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to do my job and help him, whatever he does.”

  “Don’t say that, Francis.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever he does. As if he were an idiot.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Peg. I think you know it.”

  “All right,” she sighed, “it’s not how you meant it.”

  “Good,” he said. He was dying to change this subject. And he wanted to tell her about the student council proposal before ten o’clock when they always went through the dorm again to say goodnight to the girls. “Lila Smythe came to me this morning—” he began.

  She interrupted him. “Francis, why can’t you and Fred be friends?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew how naive they sounded.

  That stopped him. It had never occurred to him that he and Kindler could be friends.

  “It would save everything,” Peggy said. Naive or not, it was true. Not just our school, but our marriage too, she thought, remembering Eudora’s “we save the school, we save everything.” She tried to imagine Francis getting fired and teaching at another school and couldn’t. But she wondered nevertheless if she would stay at Miss Oliver’s or go with him. It amazed her that she couldn’t answer the question.

  “I don’t have to be his friend to work for him,” Francis said.

  “Maybe not, but you better explain to him, Francis. You need to go back and tell him you had no idea that Sandra was on campus. He’ll never trust you otherwise.”

  “Maybe,” Francis said, “I’ll try,” and knew he wouldn’t. He was not going to watch Fred Kindler decide that he was a liar as well as a sneak. Peggy watched him. His answer was not enough for her. But before he could think of the words to convince her he’s going to be loyal to Fred Kindler whatever Fred Kindler thought, the clock in the library’s steeple rang ten times.

  It was a relief. They could retreat from this problem between them into the routine that had been there for them to escape to all the years of their marriage. They went through their dorm, chatting with the girls, checking them in. When they got back to their apartment at eleven o’clock, Francis remembered the uncorrected papers on his desk. He thought he’d get up at five in the morning to get them done, then rejected the idea. He knew how tired he would be. So he sat down at his desk and went to work. Peggy went to bed.

  When he finished the papers at two o’clock in the morning and got in bed beside her, she stirred in her sleep. He turned to her and kissed her cheek. She didn’t awaken, and anyway, he didn’t know what he’d say to her. Maybe if it were not for the pile of papers he’d had to correct in the middle of the night he would have remembered to warn her about the proposal to give away the Collection. And yet there was nothing unusual about his staying up until early morning correcting papers. It was more likely that if Fred Kindler hadn’t threatened to fire him that morning, he would have remembered. And if Peggy had woken when he kissed her again in her sleep, he might have remembered. They would have talked about it then and gone in the morning to Kindler’s office with their ideas about how to respond. But she didn’t wake up, and then he fell sleep.

  BY TEN MINUTES after eight the next morning, five minutes before the beginning of first period, all three hundred and forty-five students were seated in the auditorium. Fred sat at the right-hand end of the first row, near the same steps he’d climbed up onto the stage the day before to the deafening chant of Marjorie and no boys! Today the auditorium was tomblike. The twelve members of the student council—three from each class—sat in chairs on stage. As tradition dictated, Francis Plummer sat with them, looking uncomfortable.

  President Lila Smythe rose from her chair, next to Francis, and slowly walked to the podium at the front of the stage. She stood there for a moment, prolonging the silence, much more poised than Sandra Petrie had been the day before.

  Lila’s voice was clear. “The student council has called this meeting.” She pushed the microphone, still off, to one side of the podium. She didn’t need a mike; she was a presence. Her voice carried. “Our head of school has an announcement.”

  The steps squeaked as Fred climbed onstage. The girls studied his awkward gait as he crossed to the podium. By the time he got there, Lila was sitting down. “Thank you, Lila,” Fred said as he stepped behind the podium.

  The thing came almost up past his shoulders, dwarfing him. It had been built for Marjorie Boyd! Why hadn’t he noticed that and stayed away from the damn thing? Yesterday when Petrie stood behind the podium she’d been plenty tall enough, but now that he was behind it, it was obvious he wasn’t. It dawned on him what the girls were seeing: only his head. A titter rose somewhere in the silence, began to grow, and for a crazy instant he had the idea that he would play with this absurdity. He’d bend his knees to make himself even shorter, disappear completely, clown around. That’s how some people he knew could handle this: join the laughter, relieve the tension, win the war. But that was not who he was, he knew—a fleeting regret—and he knew he couldn’t pull it off. He stepped around the podium and stood in front of it. The laughter stopped.

  “It is a little more than an announcement,” he said. He was silent again. He wanted them to know that for him this was heavy too, he wasn’t trying to slide it by.

  Then, careful not to speak down to the students, he laid out the whole situation: the baby bust, the national trends that had begun several years before away both from boarding schools and from single-sex schools for girls. “In spite of our school’s excellence,” he went on to say, “the result has been a serious under-enrollment, and the result of that has been a very disturbing deficit. We have less money in revenues than in expenses. When that happens several years in a row, schools get into serious trouble
.” He stopped there, hoping for some reaction, some questions he could answer. To get them involved was to enlist their help in saving the school.

  No one raised her hand; no one said a word. He was speaking to a sea of stony faces.

  He soldiered on, spoke passionately about his commitment to rebuilding the girls-only enrollment, described the efforts made over the summer, and turned the disappointment of the meager result—only six new students, other than the ninth grade—into positive news by exclaiming how wonderful all the new students were, what excellence he expected of them. For this, but for nothing else, he received a mild applause.

  He didn’t realize how foreign a territory he was describing. How could he? Francis Plummer could have helped him understand that Marjorie was even less inclined to share the realities of the financial situation with the students than she was with the faculty. But Francis Plummer and Fred Kindler weren’t talking to each other; and even if they were, Francis was probably not ready yet to recognize this characteristic of Marjorie’s leadership as a weakness. Instead, he would explain it—maybe even proudly—as “just how we do things at Miss Oliver’s.” So now, when Kindler invoked such terms as deficit, revenue, and budget rather than the school’s glory, because he assumed that especially at Miss Oliver’s, financial realities, the way things actually worked, should be part of the curriculum, he became for the students even more the interloper, the man who didn’t belong.

  Sitting on the stage behind Kindler and staring at his back, Francis could hear in his tone how passionately he wanted to build the girls-only enrollment, and for all his anger and his conviction that Kindler was the wrong person for this job, Francis was relieved. It was then that he realized that his meeting with the new headmaster yesterday had almost nothing to do with admitting boys. They had been so angry with each other, they had gone by the issue. Their fight had been merely personal, he was ashamed to realize. Neither had been doing his job.