Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  Peg moved back in her seat, as if she’d been slapped.

  “All right then, screw him, is that a little better?”

  “No. It’s not a little better,” Peggy said.

  “He’s trying to ruin the school. He’s a traitor.”

  “Peggy’s never liked swearing,” Francis offered.

  “And you always have?” said Peggy turning to him.

  Hannah’s eyes went back and forth between them. She looked like someone trying to figure what the weather’s going to do. Peggy looked at Francis, waiting. “Traitor’s not the right word,” he told Hannah, speaking softly. But outsider is, he wanted to add.

  Hannah looked directly at him. “So? What is the right word?”

  “Headmaster,” Peg said.

  “Head of school,” said Francis. “For Christ’s sake!”

  “You do like to swear, don’t you?” Peggy said.

  “What’s going on here?” Hannah’s voice was alarmed. She paused, waiting for an answer. Then getting none, she said, “The guy’s a traitor.” Her voice was harsh again, but her question lingered in the air. “If he gets credit for this gift, he gets power,” she went on. “We want to get rid of him, not make him stronger.”

  Peg reached out her hand to touch Hannah’s. For a second, Hannah started to pull her hand away, but changed her mind. “Hannah,” said Peg softly, “your gift is going to save the school. We’ll always be just for girls. That’s what counts.”

  “So you’ll take it?”

  “No, Fred Kindler will. He’s the head.”

  Hannah turned to Francis.

  “That’s right,” Francis murmured after a little hesitation. “He’s the head.”

  Hannah pulled her hand gently away from Peg. “That’s the deal?”

  “That’s the deal,” Peggy murmured, and when Hannah didn’t reply, “You will go see him, won’t you?” And after another little pause: “Won’t you, Hannah?”

  “All right,” said Hannah. “With just a little added proviso.”

  “What?” Peggy asked warily.

  “To honor you. He gets the gift, but you get the honor.”

  Peggy shook her head; she didn’t understand.

  “I’ll specify,” Hannah said. “The two million bucks will be specifically to support the specialness of the curriculum. The whole anthropological thrust, or whatever it is. I’ll get a lawyer to think up the words. The whole anthropological thrust that makes Miss Oliver’s the best damn school in the world, the idea you started in your library. How about that?”

  “I think it’s just fine!” Francis said.

  “Wait a second,” Peg blurted. “It’s not my library.”

  “Oh yes, it is,” Hannah said. “If Kindler gets to receive the gift, you get the honor. He’ll have to stand up in front of everybody and read the words.” She looked intently at both their faces. Francis thought for a minute she was going to ask again what was going on between him and Peggy, but he knew she didn’t need to. He could see the disillusion in her eyes. Hannah stood up. “We’ve got a deal,” she announced.

  Francis stood up too. “Don’t go. Stay a while. We’ll have lunch.”

  “I’m going. Going to see Miss Oliver’s School for Girls’ boy headmaster. See if he wants a couple million bucks.”

  “Thank you,” said Peggy. “Just don’t put my name in, all right? Mention the curriculum, the library, but not me.”

  Hannah shrugged her shoulders.

  “Promise?”

  “All right,” Hannah said.

  Peggy stood, pulled Hannah into a hug, and over Peggy’s shoulder Hannah winked at Francis to tell him, Of course we’re going to put Peggy’s name in.

  His world saved, Francis couldn’t wait to be alone with Peg. He was going to put his arms around her, celebrate.

  “See you guys later,” Hannah said.

  “I’m coming partway with you,” Peg said. “I’m on my way to the library.” And then they were both out the door.

  THAT NIGHT, FROM her side of the bed, Peg said to him. “You would have taken it, wouldn’t you? You would have played that kind of game.”

  “No,” he responded, saying the words straight up to the ceiling in the dark. “Not after I thought about it, I wouldn’t. You made me think about it. I’ll give you that.”

  “Well that’s something.” She was turned away from him, speaking her words to the wall. “That’s something, anyway.”

  After a while, he said to the ceiling, “And you? You would have risked the gift, wouldn’t you? You would have just let it go if she didn’t agree to take it to Kindler.”

  “Yes, I would have risked it.”

  “Well, now I know,” he said.

  “Because I’m sick of the past,” she said. “Marjorie’s past. All her worn-out preciousness that she made into a theology you cling to.”

  “Peggy, be careful.”

  “It’s too late to be careful, Francis. Because suddenly I don’t care whether Fred Kindler brings in boys or not.” It was true: She didn’t care, it’s not what was important. The realization came to her as she spoke. “I don’t give a damn as long as the school’s thriving and he is running it.”

  Francis didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t really believe her.

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t care if the school becomes all boys!” she said, exaggerating out of her loyalty to Kindler.

  Well, now I know, he said to himself. He wouldn’t say it aloud again. He closed his eyes, as if he could sleep.

  SIXTEEN

  It’s only November now, Gail Kindler thought as she watched her husband get into bed beside her. Two weeks to go before he got a break at Thanksgiving recess, and after that, eight whole months of the school year left, and already he looked as tired as if it were March. We hardly have time for each other; and when we do, he’s so distracted it’s as if he were miles away.

  But not tonight, she decided. Tonight I’m going to get his attention. She snuggled up so that her head rested on the same pillow as his. He was flat on his back with his eyes closed. “Hey!” she said and draped her arm over his chest. His distracted “hey” in return was mere reflex, she knew, his mind far away from this bed, this dark, this heat. It surprised her that he couldn’t take his mind off the school even after a lovely windfall of two million dollars to underwrite the deficit! Plenty of time now to build the girls-only enrollment back up. He should be as optimistic as the board was when he told them the news.

  She cupped her hand against the other side of his face, turned his head to hers, kissed him on the lips.

  “You’re supposed to kiss back,” she whispered. “Those are the rules.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  So she flicked on her bedside lamp, then turned back, propping her head on her hand, seeing him squint against the sudden light. “Relax,” she said. “Just try.”

  “Yeah. Relax.”

  “This,” she said, touching his forehead with the tip of her finger. “Not that.” She pointed downward.

  He grinned. “Turn over,” she commanded, and as he did she got up on him as if riding a horse, straddling his hips, and began to massage the back of his neck, the tops of his shoulders. “It’s a wonder your head doesn’t break off in a wind,” she said, “your neck’s so stiff with tension.” She bent down, kissed the back of his neck, nuzzled her tongue behind his ear. “It’s nighttime!” she said. “You’re not in your office. It’s not school! It’s us!”

  “Sure doesn’t feel like the office,” he said.

  “Everything’s fixed now,” Gail said. “With that Fingerman woman and her big gift.”

  “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Maybe. A little further down, okay? By the shoulder blades?” She moved her hands further down his back, pressed hard, leaning in with her weight. “Ah,” he sighed. “Perfect. How much an hour you get for this?” “I don’t do it for anybody who has to pay for it. What do you mean, maybe?”

  “Just maybe
. Why don’t we do this tomorrow in my office? We’ll take our clothes off, I’ll lie down on the floor and dictate to Ms.—did you get that Ms.?—Rice while you massage.”

  “I’m busy tomorrow. Maybe Ms. Rice could learn.”

  “Uh-uh. She can only do one thing at a time.”

  “Well, now, that’s a relief. So why can’t you count on the Fingerman gift?”

  “Because I think maybe her ex-husband has a very long arm,” he said. Then after a pause: “Besides, even with the gift, I’m still not Marjorie.”

  “Well, screw them!” She wanted to bang her fists on his shoulder blades. He was worth a thousand Marjories!

  “Hey,” he said. “Gail! What’s got into you?”

  “Nothing.” She forced the anger out of her voice, let her hands relax. “That’s just the trouble,” she added softly after a pause. “Nothing, lately.” She tapped her finger on his back. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “I can fix that.” He turned over while she turned out the light.

  Above him in the ardent dark, she tried to see his face, was full of him, remembering in a wave of sadness that they used to wonder if their daughter heard them when they were doing this from her bed in the next room, on the other side of the thin wall, in the assistant headmaster’s house of Mt. Gilead school in Ohio—in the long ago. You really want to make a baby? she yearned to ask. For that’s what she really had meant, she realized now, by “nothing”: nothing’s inside her—or outside her either—to replace their daughter. Then focus on it, she wanted to say. First things first. Quit your job. I’ll make the money. Because I don’t become my work the way you do. Quit your job. We’ll make love all day.

  Afterward, while she held him, it was her mind this time that wandered: She was in her office again with the baby-faced client, the momma’s boy, his suit, his leather briefcase stamped with his initials, the pretty tassels on his shoes, who was so sure he knew more about her profession than she did. All right, she thought, I’ll design the damn brochure your way instead of the way I just explained to you three times already that would save you lots of money and do a better job. I’ll take your money. And laugh behind your back.

  Why can’t you laugh like that about your job? she wanted to ask her husband. But of course she didn’t. She wouldn’t even if he were still awake. Besides, she knew the answer: He didn’t think of it as a job. It never crossed his mind that he was making a living—though she would have liked to charge about three million dollars a day for feeling suffocated in this hermetic little fiefdom he wanted to save. And then the thought arrived, a discovery filling her mind with a too-bright light: Soon this time in their life would be over. He didn’t know how lucky he was that it wasn’t going to work; Miss Oliver’s School for Girls would never be Fred Kindler’s school—and he would be free to move on. She felt another wave of sadness. “Whither thou goest,” she murmured. “Whoever you try to become.”

  In his sleep, he pressed tightly against her.

  SEVERAL HOURS AFTER Gregory van Buren went through his dorm, checking the girls in for the night and saying goodnight to each of them, Julie Lapham climbed out the window of her first-floor room to sneak across the campus to the place where her brother had agreed to meet her in his Subaru. “We’re not going to a party,” he had told her. “We’ll just have a few beers and talk.” Julie was relieved and glad for this chance to be alone with Charley. She trusted him, now more than she trusted her parents, to know how she felt. In her bed on the other side of the room, Clarissa pretended to be asleep.

  Outside in the moonless November night, Julie shivered in the cold. She sneaked across the lawns, covered with fallen leaves, and stopped behind a faculty house where through an upstairs window she saw a lighted room. A bookcase filled one wall, a fireplace another. Above it, on the mantel, stood a vase of flowers, some photographs Julie couldn’t make out from the distance, and a pair of candles. Then a woman moved soundlessly across the window in the warm yellow light, and outside in the cold dark, Julie felt as if an arrow had struck her in the heart. She started to run.

  She climbed over a stone wall and crossed a field on the southern edge of the campus. She could just make out the shape of Charley’s car, parked up ahead on a narrow dirt road that led to the river. Soon she was at the car. “Charley!” she said. He was behind the wheel smiling at her through the open window. She ran around the front of the car to the passenger door, opened it, and put her face only inches from the face of a girl who looked up at Julie from the seat where Julie had expected to sit. “Surprise! Surprise!” the girl said. She held a bottle of tequila. There were empty beer cans on the floor by her feet. The girl’s face lurched into a crooked smile, and Julie knew she was drunk.

  “Get in the back!” Charley whispered. Julie opened the back door and jumped in on the right-hand side and slammed the door as Charley started the engine. Then the car was bumping over the dirt road toward the river, and she sensed someone was in the backseat with her she hadn’t seen when she jumped in. She turned to look at him. He was as far away from her as he could get, scrunched up against the door. She saw big shoulders, made out a leather jacket in the dark and a white baseball cap.

  “That’s Robin,” the drunk girl said. “Of linebacker fame. Or is it backliner? Is it backliner, Robin? I can never get it straight. Sports are so boring I can never remember.”

  “Penny,” Robin said, “please, just shut your mouth.”

  “Now you know my name is Penny,” the drunk girl said to Julie. “Now everybody knows everybody.” Her voice went up and down as the car hit the bumps. Charley was driving much too fast. Low branches scraped against the roof.

  “Charley, slow down,” Robin said.

  “He can’t slow down, he’s drunk,” Penny said.

  “Charley, slow down,” Robin said again.

  “Drunk with love for me,” Penny said.

  Charley giggled, drove even faster. Julie could smell the wet, marshy odor, like rotting leaves, of the river. She wondered if Charley knew how close it was. He might drive right over the bank!

  “Charley, stop!” Robin said.

  And now Julie was sure they were going to drive right over the bank. “Charley! Please!” she yelled.

  Charley giggled again and went even faster and then suddenly slammed on the brakes, and the car slithered sideways in the loose dirt of the road and stopped. He turned the engine off. In the sudden silence they could hear the rushing of the river.

  “What the hell’s gotten into you, Charley?” Robin said. He was still scrunched as far away from Julie as he could get. She was grateful for that.

  “I’ve gotten in to him, that’s what.” Penny said. “Maybe soon it’ll be the other way around. Him and lots of tequila,” and Charley laughed. Penny slid closer to him, put her arm around him, pulled him to her, kissed him on the mouth.

  Robin got out of the car, and now Julie was alone in the back.

  Penny turned back to Julie. “You want to watch us make out?” she asked.

  “Charley, take me home, please,” Julie said.

  “Oh, in a little bit,” Penny murmured. She put the bottle down on the floor, spilling it, and the smell of tequila filled the car, and then she pulled Charley’s head into her chest so his face nuzzled her breasts. Julie looked away and saw Robin by her door. It swung open. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll walk you home.” She hesitated. “Really. You’ll be safe.”

  “Oh, you’ll be safe all right,” Penny said. “That’s the trouble with Robin.”

  Robin reached into the car, took Julie’s hand, and tugged. She got out of the car, her hand in Robin’s, and they started to walk away from the river. They walked quite a few paces before they realized they were still holding hands. Embarrassed, they let go of each other and walked side by side. He seemed huge to her, his shoulders miles above hers as they walked, and it was so dark she could hardly see his face.

  After a while Robin said, “Your brother was comin
g to see you. So Penny and I thought we’d come too. We bought the beer and tequila on the way. Then Penny got drunk and got up in the front with your brother. She can be a pain in the ass when she wants to be.”

  “My brother got drunk too.”

  “Your brother gets drunk a lot,” Robin said, and then stopped walking. “Wait a sec, I just thought of something.”

  “What?” But before he answered, she thought of it too. “He’s too drunk to drive,” she said.

  “Yeah, he’ll kill everybody,” Robin said, taking her hand again, giving it that same little tug he’d used to get her out of the car, and they walked back toward the Subaru. This time he didn’t let go.

  When they got back to the car, Charley was not in it. Penny was passed out in the front seat.

  “Oh, shit!” Robin said. “Where’s that crazy bastard gone?” He reached into the car, shook Penny’s shoulder. “Where the hell is he?” he yelled. Penny didn’t stir. Julie felt panic rising: Charley had fallen down the bank into the river, he was drowning!

  “Charley!” she yelled.

  “Over here,” Charley called. They turned to find him, but it was too dark to see. They stumbled through the bushes toward the sound and found him sitting on a boulder. “Where the hell were you?” Charley said.

  “Let’s go, Charley.” Robin put his hand under Charley’s arm, lifted and steadied him. Julie got on Charley’s other side and steadied him too. They walked him to the car, opened the back door, and pushed him into the seat. Julie walked around to the other side of the car and got in beside Charley, and Robin got in the driver’s seat, turned the ignition, and started to drive. Penny was still passed out beside him.

  Julie turned to her brother and said, “Put your seatbelt on.” He didn’t stir. She reached across him to find the belt, and her face was close to his. His arms came up around her in a brotherly hug. She fixed his belt, then leaned to kiss him on the forehead, but he smelled like tequila and there was lipstick all over his face, and she felt a wave of disgust and lifted his arms away from her. His eyes were open, watching hers, and he tried to keep her in the hug, but he was too drunk and his arms flopped down at his sides, and Julie moved across the seat as far from him as she could get. In the glow of the dashboard that lighted the rearview mirror she saw Robin’s eyes. They met hers and then looked away.