Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  “Yes!” Nan said. Fred said nothing, and, for a different reason, neither did Francis.

  The rabbi, who could not have survived for fifteen years in his position merely being a man of God and not a politician too, went on. “It was typical of Marjorie Boyd that after having built this wonderful school she had the grace to step aside,” he said, and watched Nan’s face, and now he knew that was exactly what Marjorie hadn’t done. So he turned toward Fred and said, “I followed in the footsteps of a longtime charismatic person just as you have. It wasn’t easy.” He waited for one of them to say what needed to be said so he wouldn’t have to, and when no one did he went on. “But I had an assistant who’d been here almost as long as my predecessor, and he said all the right things.”

  “Like what?” Nan asked, and Francis heard the fierceness in her voice.

  “We didn’t have any meetings like tonight, where nobody except Rachel and me remembers Mrs. Boyd,” Myron Benjamin said, as if he’d already answered Nan’s question.

  “Like what?” Nan asked again.

  “Like telling everybody who remembers Mrs. Boyd that the new headmaster is exactly the right person. That has to be the point of every recruiting meeting, doesn’t it? Since everybody who remembers Mrs. Boyd already loves the school.” And then he turned to Francis and asked, “That is the kind of meeting you’ll be having from now on, isn’t it?” When Francis didn’t answer right away, he added, “Where lots of the people will remember her?”

  “Well, is it or isn’t it?” Nan said. But Francis still didn’t answer.

  Rachel Benjamin turned to her husband then, put her hand on his. She knew when her husband should stop. “Dear, we need to let these people go,” she said. “They have a long ride home.” Myron sent her a little look of thanks and stood up to help his visitors with their coats and ushered them out and into their car.

  On the drive home, Francis burned. It’s one thing to support the man, but to have to lie, to have to get up in public and praise him when I think he’s absolutely the wrong guy for the job? When he had made up his mind to fulfill his responsibility as the head’s right-hand man, he hadn’t thought of that. I didn’t choose Fred Kindler, he told himself. I would have known better. Up front Fred drove and pretended to listen to the radio, and Nan pretended to sleep.

  The bastard! Francis thought. The manipulator! He thought of how Karen’s father worked the conversation so that he could nail him. But his anger was hollow, he knew. All the rabbi had done was tell the truth. “All right,” he said at last, to the back of Fred Kindler’s head, “I’ll do it.”

  “Do what?” Kindler asked. Francis watched him looking in the mirror to find his face.

  “What the rabbi says,” Francis answered. He couldn’t bring himself to put it into words.

  Kindler didn’t answer, just kept driving on through the dark

  “Well?” Francis asked. “Is that how we’re going to do it, or not?”

  “It’s up to you,” Fred said. He was damned if he was going to beg Francis Plummer for praise!

  And for the rest of the drive neither of them spoke again, and Nan White kept on pretending to sleep.

  LATE IN THE afternoon of December 13, the investigators reported that every suspect student’s name was cleared. The best evidence they could gather suggested the cause of the fire was faulty wiring. The next morning before the school broke at noon for winter vacation, Fred announced this fact to the school, going on to tell them how optimistic they could all be when school began again in January “after we’ve had a rest and the work of choosing the architect for the new library will have begun.” There was a visible relief among the students, but Fred knew, and so did they, that once the insult of a suspicion has been made, it takes a long time to melt away.

  Soon after the students filed out of the assembly, some of them got on a bus to be taken to Bradley Airport. Parents started showing up on campus to drive the others home. One of these was Mavis Ericksen. Before even speaking to her daughter she went directly to Fred’s office, getting there before either he or Margaret Rice returned from the assembly. She was sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk when he arrived.

  “Oh, hello!” he said, failing to hide his surprise and irritation at her barging in like this. She didn’t return his greeting, just crossed her legs and waited for him to sit—as if it were her office, not his—and despite himself, his eyes wandered to those amazing legs of hers. He could tell she’d caught him looking. She’d gotten this little victory already.

  “You told me you were going to evaluate Joan Saffire in November,” she said. “Well, it’s December. Have you fired her yet?”

  He hesitated, trying to decide whether to explain to her—as if she didn’t already know!—that it was none of her business.

  “Well, have you or haven’t you?”

  “Fired who?” he said, putting his hand to his ear as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “Why are you resisting me? Who do you think you are? You heard me. Joan Saffire. Have you fired her yet?”

  “Oh, Joan Saffire!” he exclaimed. “That’s who we’re talking about.” Then, stroking his chin, he said, “What was the question again?”

  “Have you fired her!”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “As a matter of fact, I just promoted her,” he said, a great big lie; he hadn’t done anything of the kind. He didn’t even evaluate Joan Saffire. Dorothy Strang did that. “Gave her a big fat raise too,” he went on. “Biggest raise I ever gave anyone.” He was amazed at himself, he’d never acted so crazy. But it was the first real fun he’d had in four frustrating months. He was not sure he would regret this later even when she paid him back. “I think I’ll hire her sister too,” he said.

  She was staring at him now

  “Anything else you want to know? I have an appointment.”

  “Who do you think you are?” Mavis asked again. This time it was not a rhetorical question. She really wanted to know.

  “The headmaster,” he said, standing up. “I do the hiring. And I do the firing. And you don’t.”

  A look of surprise flited across her face. She had graduated from Wellesley, her husband had an MBA from Harvard, they owned a big house in Old Lyme, and her daughter would get early admission to any college she wanted. Everything had always come out just the way she’d planned.

  “Oh!” she said. “Oh! Oh!” Then she was out the door, her high heels raining on the floor as she crossed Margaret Rice’s anteroom.

  A minute late, he was in Ms. Rice’s anteroom too, on his way home. He’d promised Gail they’d drive to the shore together, spend the afternoon walking on the beach. “I’m through for the day,” he told Ms. Rice.

  She didn’t answer. But she smiled at him—a surprise, until he realized why: Margaret didn’t have any more use for Mavis Ericksen than he did. Mavis was one of the ones who had helped get rid of Marjorie, one of the leaders of the pack. He returned Margaret’s smile, then left the office to begin his winter break.

  BOOK THREE: WINTER TERM

  NINETEEN

  It was very cold, and new snow sparkled in the sun as the winter term began. The occasional storms that replenished the snow and the days of sunshine in between preserved this loveliness all through a January that Fred Kindler would remember later as the time when he had been most convinced he could save the school.

  In the first week of the new term, three of the families who had attended the recruiting event at the Benjamins’ home visited the school, liked what they saw, and promised to apply. The school they visited wasn’t sick anymore with the suspicion that someone inside the community had burned the library down, for now that the charred bones of the library foundation were covered in virginal snow, the memory of that grim time before the students’ names were cleared had receded. The committee to select the architect had begun its work, and the belief that the new library would be even better than the old one spread across the campus.

&
nbsp; Most important, Hannah Fingerman’s two-million-dollar pledge, which the board had made public as soon as the lawyers assured them it would be fulfilled, had much reduced the fear that the school would close, and thus one of the reasons for not applying had been removed. Accordingly, Nan White was able to report an increase in the rate of inquiries and of visits to the campus. Though the numbers were far short of those needed to reach Fred’s goal of twenty-six new students enrolled for next year, the two million dollars would underwrite the shortfall and provide more time for the marketing efforts to take effect. Even with no increase in enrollment, the school could survive for at least another year, thanks to Hannah’s gift.

  The beauty of the winter brought no joy, though, to Francis and Peggy Plummer, who were still living apart, Francis continuing as the guest of Father Michael Woodward in the rectory and Peggy still mothering their dorm alone. They were so dreary and lonely that they lived in a state of continual surprise that they were still apart, and this surprise made them so angry with each other and themselves that it grew more difficult each day either for Peggy to give in and invite him back or for Francis to insist on returning. If Francis had banged on the door, Peggy wouldn’t have refused him—especially if he’d brought with him a sincere belief in the rightness of Fred Kindler’s leadership and a relinquishment of his pagan yearnings, two issues that in Peggy’s troubled heart had melded into one. But all she really needed was for him to insist on coming home—and then insist some more. When you kick your husband out of the house, he’s supposed to try to come back.

  Father Woodward, who true to his promise continued to pray for them both and couldn’t bear to see them apart, would have loved to say to them that their marriage vows had nothing to do with who was loyal to whom at Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. But Father Woodward, a dreamer, unversed in politics, who would never be elected bishop, would have failed to convince Francis. Even more than when he came rushing home from the West determined to redeem himself in Peggy’s eyes by redeeming himself at school, Francis believed he needed to help Fred Kindler save the school before he could reclaim his marriage. When that was done, he’d bang on her door and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Father Woodward would have also liked to tell Francis not to give up the spiritual questing that was one of Francis’s motiviations for going on the archaeological dig. Don’t do that to save your marriage. That’s too high a price to pay. But that was not how Michael Woodward worked. He thought people should figure things out for themselves.

  In fact, Father Woodward needed to apply this theory to himself. For he was so unselfishly focused on the needs of others that he hadn’t figured out yet how closely his own spiritual yearnings had begun to mirror those his friend was determined to ignore. He did know how his heart went out to Francis when Francis told him about his abortive sojourn in the Nevada desert: how grace would not come, and he fled in his car to a plastic motel in Winnemucca. Father Woodward could see himself staying in the desert much longer than Francis did—his own version of the forty days—breathing the spirit that inhabits the earth and quickens all. But he was not ready yet to understand that within a year or two he would no longer be able to so constrain his beliefs that they can be summarized by anything so human centered and so specific as the Nicene Creed.

  But he did know that he wouldn’t much longer be Francis’s host in the rectory. He would not be co-conspirator with Peggy and Francis in the destruction of their marriage by providing Francis this sanctuary. So if Francis didn’t soon decide on his own to return to live with Peggy, Father Woodward would make that happen by refusing to let him stay any longer as his guest. He’d kick Francis out of his house just as Peggy had kicked him out of hers. If necessary, he’d put Francis’s belongings on the front porch and lock the door and tell him to go home.

  A very painful moment in these first weeks of the winter term came for both Francis Plummer and Fred Kindler early in a recruiting event in West Hartford, when, as Myron Benjamin had told him he should—and as he promised he would—Francis declared that Kindler was exactly the right person to head Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. Francis hated himself for his hypocrisy, but he forced the words out, going so far as to list the same qualities the board had listed in its letter to the community announcing Kindler’s appointment: absolute integrity, passion for single-sex education for girls, appreciation of great teaching, skills at managing finances and marketing. Francis made this short speech with considerable aplomb.

  But he only did this once. As he spoke, he watched Kindler’s expression. It was all the poor man could do to keep from squirming in his seat while Francis talked. Kindler simply didn’t have it in him—he wasn’t that good a politician—to hear words of praise delivered in public by a man he didn’t trust. Well, that’s all right with me, Francis thought, his small admiration for Fred Kindler grudgingly rising one notch. And so without saying a word to each other, they made a pact: never again.

  Nevertheless, that recruiting event and the two that followed in January went quite well, and Fred’s spirits continued to rise and were still flourishing on a morning a month later in mid-February when he looked up from his desk to see Peggy Plummer in his office doorway.

  He jumped to his feet and came out from behind his desk to greet her.

  “Can we talk?” Peggy asked, closing the door behind her.

  “Of course we can talk,” he said, motioning to one of the chairs in front of his desk. He was puzzled. They’d always been able to talk.

  “I mean, really talk.” She remained standing in front of her chair.

  He moved to the chair facing hers, but since she hadn’t sat down yet, he didn’t either. “I hope I’ve never been hard for you to talk to,” he said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, then test me this time,” he said and smiled. Peggy sat down then, so he did too.

  “I don’t like any of the architects in the competition. Not one of them!” she said. “All their ideas seem so wrong to me.”

  “All wrong? Peggy!”

  “Why change so much?” she asked him. “Everybody loved the old library. Some people even called it the new library.”

  He hesitated, remembering how long her list had been under preserve and how short under change. He should have paid more attention.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” she persisted. “Change isn’t always good.”

  “Peggy,” he began, “I understand how you feel.”

  “It’s not that,” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me it is!” She was about to go on, to insist there was nothing wrong with her judgment, she was perfectly open to change—which of course everyone says when you ask—but there was a knock on the door, so she stopped talking, and Margaret Rice stepped in.

  “Yes?” Fred asked, letting his irritation show. The last thing he needed was an interruption. He needed to focus on this. Even Peggy Plummer wasn’t going to talk him out of the opportunity to create a better library.

  “It’s urgent,” Margaret said, pointing to the phone, and right away he knew the bad news he was about to hear.

  It was a Mr. Singleton, Hannah Fingerman’s lawyer, telling Fred that Fingerman’s ex-husband had decided to contest her right to the funds. Whatever weaknesses Fingerman’s former spouse had as a businessman, he seemed to have considerable resolve as a litigant, according to Singleton, who told Fred that Fingerman’s ex had hired a very substantial law firm to work on a contingency basis. It would be a long time before the case was resolved. In the meantime, the funds were not Fingerman’s to give away.

  “How long?” Fred asked.

  The lawyer hesitated. “A long time; maybe years.”

  “How many years?” One? Ten? Twenty-seven? Fred wanted to ask, but controlled himself and didn’t.

  “How do I know? It could be five.” Singleton sounded exasperated now. “After all, you gave them a great angle to work with, and they found it right away.”

  “I don’t understand.”
Fred tried to keep his face blank so Peggy wouldn’t know what this call was about. Alan Travelers should be the first to hear this news.

  “As you know, Ms. Fingerman put very specific language into the gift declaration,” Singleton explained “It stated that the gift was in honor of the anthropological thrust that distinguishes the curriculum of Miss Oliver’s School.”

  “Oh, I see,” Fred murmured, because now he did, and it was all he could think of to say. He knew what Singleton was going to tell him next.

  “And then to make matters worse, Ms. Fingerman provided the precise ammunition her ex-husband’s attorney needed by specifically stating that this distinguishing curriculum emanated from, is based on, and is still inspired by, the Pequot Collection,” Singleton went on, his voice rising exactly one note with each of this triad of phrases.

  “Oh, damn!” Fred said.

  “I quote,” Singleton said. “Those are the exact words.”

  “Yes,” Fred agreed. “They were.”

  “I believe she wanted to honor the school librarian, a Mrs. Plummer.”

  “I guess so,” Fred said.

  “So, when the Collection went up in smoke—”

  “All right, Mr. Singleton, that’s enough. You don’t have to explain.”

  But the lawyer was too amazed at the stupidity of others to stop. “Without that specificity in the language we would have a slam-dunk case,” he complained.

  “Really, Mr. Singleton? Well then, where in the world were you?”

  “Not involved, I assure you,” Singleton answered huffily. “Ms. Fingerman has fired her attorney and engaged me. And I can’t resist pointing out that your school attorney was also careless.”