“Yesterday the trustees resolved that beginning next September, male students will be admitted to this school,” Alan Travelers said, and then he paused. He was not going to rush through this; he’d stand here and absorb the anger, take the heat. But the response was silence and staring eyes, so he went on. “This was the board’s decision,” he declared. “It was not the headmaster’s, or the faculty’s, or the alumnae’s; it was the board’s.” He paused again. The auditorium was silent, so he finished explaining the factors that compelled the decision, citing the numbers twice to make sure they were understood. He accomplished this in less than three minutes. He was clear, firm, and wholly unapologetic, and when he’d finished, no one said a word and no one stirred.
Then Fred got up and stood by Alan’s side. It would be his job now to control the riot.
But there wasn’t any riot. For a few seconds that lasted forever, the students sat, and the faculty stood by the closed doors in the rear. Then Fred saw Francis Plummer turn, open one of doors, and bolt across the frozen lawn. Then the other teachers followed Francis, and the students began to move down the aisles, and then the auditorium was empty except for Alan Travelers and Fred Kindler, side by side on the stage.
“Well,” Alan murmured, “that was a strange reaction.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Fred said. “I should have predicted it.” For this was exactly what had happened at Mt. Gilead when it was announced the school would close: The students fled to their dorms.
Outside the auditorium, moving away from it as fast as he could, Francis stopped in his tracks. For a crazy instant he thought he’d turn around, rush back into the auditorium, tell the crowd that was coming out the doors to turn around too and take their seats again. Then he’d climb up onto the stage, push Travelers and Kindler aside, and declare the decision void. Who had a better right than he?
But of course the fantasy dissolved as soon as he tried to think of what words to use, and he tossed it away as the absurdity it was.
Why wasn’t he gathering the faculty to organize a strike, he asked himself, why wasn’t he leading a demonstration, engineering a coup, instead of turning suddenly into a mere well-adjusted, practical man? Then it dawned on him that he’d been trying hard for the last six months to become a practical man who could adjust to the facts—and besides, he was living apart from his wife, and maybe he had only grief enough for that. So he headed for a dorm to comfort the students. Before the day was over, he’d go to all the dorms except the one he wanted to go to the most. For this would be the worst time, he thought, to force himself on Peggy.
What he didn’t know was that Peggy waited for him there. Foolishly perhaps, for after all, she was the one who’d kicked him out. When he didn’t come, she went through her dorm alone, spoke to each girl, and had never felt so lonely.
Fred wanted to hide in his office but made the rounds of the dorms, showing his face, taking the heat. A few girls told him they understood that this really was a board decision; most were too angry even to speak. Some were simply numbed by the discovery that the world was a treasonous place. He explained the board’s decision over and over, trying hard to be as factual and unapologetic as Alan Travelers had been.
That morning, Mavis Ericksen telephoned Sandra Petrie. She had needed the time since the board meeting to design a plan to present to Sandra. Otherwise some of the ideas in the plan might turn out be Sandra’s, and Mavis wouldn’t be in control. Though Mavis could never admit it to herself, the real reason for her enmity toward Marjorie was not the way Marjorie had run the school; it was that Mavis couldn’t control her.
The conversation was awkward. Mavis and Sandra hated each other. Sandra was fiercely loyal to Marjorie and resented this newcomer who had worked so hard to get rid of her. But that was the reason that Sandra could ask Marjorie to lead the alumnae to rebel against the admission of boys and Mavis couldn’t.
“All Mrs. Boyd needs is to have people like you invite her back,” Mavis said.
Sandra hesitated. She had been beaten up pretty badly the last time she tried to fight back. She wasn’t sure she was ready for another battle. She reminded Mavis that Marjorie was in Europe and wouldn’t be back for a month.
“I know that,” Mavis reassured her. “There’s plenty of time after she gets back. And we can get the word out to some of the alumnae that we’re doing this. They’ll be ready when Mrs. Boyd steps in to lead them. And I’m sure Barbara Tuckerman will go with you. I haven’t asked her because you’re much more persuasive than I could ever be, and you should talk to her. And anyway, I really couldn’t call last night, could I?” She knew that Sandra would understand; Barbara was usually drunk in the evenings.
A moment of silence passed while Mavis held her breath; then Sandra said, “Okay, we’ll do it. I’ll call Barbara right away and as soon as Marjorie returns, the two of us will pay her a call.”
“Bless you!” Mavis said. “Let me know what I can do to help.”
By noon, almost every student in the school, and about half the faculty, showed up wearing T-shirts with the word NEVER! emblazoned in red letters across the front. And that afternoon, placards began appearing on walls and other surfaces, including the trunks of trees. Some were hand printed, some computer produced, some obviously created in the art studio. All of them said FOR WOMEN ONLY!
The next morning, Gail Kindler got up early to join her husband on his morning run. This, before his day began, was the best time to be with him, to get his attention off the school and on to his family, though it was really not a family anymore, it was just a couple. When they would have a child—or was it if?—there’d be three, a family again, and he’d have to pay attention.
While he had one more sip of coffee, she went outside to wait for him and almost tripped on the little modeled bonfire, unlit, piled with books and sticks of kindling and little logs. She could feel the hostility of this insult that someone had snuck out of the dorms in the middle of the night to build on their doorstep, but for a few seconds she didn’t know what it meant, and then of course it came to her. It was about the article he’d squelched.
So he’s a book burner, a Nazi, because he wouldn’t print an article about teenage sex? Well, she thought, he’ll never see it. She kicked the wood and the books off the side of the steps into the laurel bushes by the side of the house. Just in time. When he came through the door, eager to run, he was already looking straight ahead, in the direction they would go: across the campus and to the path that went along the riverbank where he loved to run.
She knew he was running slower than he usually did so she could keep up with him. Her hips hurt. He chatted easily, pointed out a flock of geese grazing on a field across the river, speculated about why they didn’t migrate south in winter anymore, commented on the hardness of the frozen ground. She didn’t answer because she was breathing too hard; if she weren’t, she would have been crying.
They circled back to their house, and he went straight in, so intent now to take a shower and get to his office that she thought he wouldn’t have seen it if it had been still on the steps actually burning.
That afternoon, Gregory van Buren tried to persuade Fred to outlaw the T-shirts and have the placards removed. “I’m not the Gestapo, Mr. van Buren,” was Fred’s weary response. He didn’t even bother to point out that for every placard removed, several others would inevitably appear in the night, and he chose not to confess that besides, he admired the students for their resistance. Why should they give up?
Though the letter to parents, alumnae, and friends of the school announcing the board’s decision to admit boys had come from Alan Travelers as chair of the board, the majority of the responses was addressed to Fred. It didn’t surprise him that the board was still considered mere decorative support for a royal head. But the heat of the letters, especially from alumnae, was a shock. These assaults on him were so personal! Hate, he discovered, was just as intimate as love. Reading the letters, he felt soiled, as if the contempt and rag
e expressed in them were a filth that would stick to his skin, and yet they fascinated him. He had to struggle not to read them twice before he threw them away.
By one week after the board’s announcement, most of the alumnae had canceled their pledges, totaling almost six hundred thousand dollars over the next three years—unless the decision to admit boys was reversed—and all but fifty-seven reenrollment contracts—a number close to matching the number of undergraduates who did not sign the Declaration—were withdrawn, leaving behind the five-hundred-dollar deposit.
Nevertheless, Fred, who was still wondering what Mavis Ericksen and Sandra Petrie were going to do, didn’t give up. Sticking to the plan, he called alumnae and parents in each of the cities from which Miss Oliver’s drew its students to ask them if they would host gatherings at which he and Alan Travelers would explain the decision. Each of them refused.
Only then did he begin to confess to himself that he was running out of ideas.
TWENTY-ONE
In an afternoon in the middle of March, three weeks after the announcement, Francis hurried to be with Peggy, who waited for him in a coffee shop downtown. She wouldn’t have been there at all if it hadn’t been for Eudora, who the day before had given her some advice she really needed. “Peggy, don’t be an idiot. Tomorrow’s his birthday. At least take him to lunch.”
“You take him to lunch,” Peggy had answered. “You and Father Woodward. I’m too angry.”
“More confused than angry, I bet,” Eudora had murmured, and when Peggy didn’t answer, said, “All right, then at least meet him for coffee. One of you has to make a move.” Eudora remembered what it was like when there’s no move you can make and you have to wait for time to melt regret. She was angry enough with her husband for going away on a reserve Marine Corps training exercise just two weeks after their marriage and then getting himself killed on it! After that, she fed her anger and grief a relentless diet of huge peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hot fudge sundaes, all the goodies she’d been refraining from to snare a man like him. She grew so round and smooth that he wouldn’t have recognized her if he had awakened from the dead and returned to her.
Now Peggy was glad for Eudora’s advice. She couldn’t bear not to be with Francis on his birthday. All she knew was that she still loved him; she wouldn’t have been so hurt and angry if she didn’t. Just the same, she hadn’t the foggiest idea how she was going to act when they were together.
She kept her eye on the door and saw him before he saw her. And then she did know what she was going to do: ask him to return to their house. That was the move she’d been waiting to make! She wouldn’t go on with this sadness one day more.
Nevertheless, she didn’t want to wave to him. The least he could do was find her for himself. She knew that was stupid, but she still didn’t wave, and then she saw his eyes light up and stay on her face as he moved toward her and sat down with her at the table.
“Hello, Peg,” he said and touched her hand.
“Happy birthday,” she said. But now she knew that what she had wanted was for him to bend over her and kiss her cheek before he sat down.
“How are you, Peg?” He was still touching her hand.
“I’m okay.”
“Peg, I miss you,” he said. And she waited for him to say more. But he didn’t, because he wanted her to admit she missed him, and then the waiter showed up.
“You want some coffee, Francis?” Peggy asked, taking her hand away. “I’m going to have some coffee. Two coffees, please,” she told the waiter. “One decaf for me, and one regular for my friend.” The word surprised her, though she didn’t mean much by it. It was just a little dig. Just a little revenge, and then she could forgive him and ask him home.
“Friend!” Francis asked. The waiter, looking embarrassed, hurried away.
“Well, you are my friend,” Peggy said mildly. “Aren’t you my friend, Francis?” She knew it was crazy and couldn’t help it, and was amazed to learn how much she needed to punish before she forgave.
“I don’t do that to you, Peggy. I never do that to you.”
“Do what? What do I do to you, Francis?”
“You know! You know damn well!” Francis’s whisper was getting loud. He’d come here full of hope, and the first thing she did is insult him, and now he was too furious to care how loud he was. “Sarcasm, that’s what! Not saying anything straight. Hiding behind your rhetorical questions. That’s what you do. Hit, and then pretend you haven’t.”
“Not so loud, Francis. Everybody’s listening.” She kept her face bland, expressionless, as if she were commenting on the weather.
“See! See what I mean!” he barked. He wasn’t even trying anymore to disguise that they were having a fight. Nor did he care how stupid this was, how much they’d regret it later.
The waiter returned with the two coffees. Peggy pointed across the table at Francis. “My acquaintance there gets the regular,” she reminded the waiter, who put the two coffees down and fled. Francis stared at her across the table, and she could see the hurt all over his face. Later she’d remember that look and know this was where she should have stopped; she’d punished him enough.
“You ran away!” she heard herself saying. What else could she do but hark back to the summer? Otherwise he got away with it. With everything! she thought, her fury mounting. “For a whole summer,” she told him. “You took a powder. Is that a rhetorical question? Is that straight enough?”
“Peg, this is nuts!”
“And what about him? How do you think he feels?”
“Who? Who the hell are you talking about now?”
“What do you mean, who are we talking about now? Who do you think?”
“Kindler? What’s he got to do with this?”
She stared across the table at him. “Ask that again,” she said. “I dare you. Ask it again.” When he didn’t, she added, “It’s your fault that we had to let boys in.”
“Don’t say that!”
“I’m saying it.”
“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Pay the check, Francis,” Peggy said, putting some cash on the table, then standing up. “I need to go.”
By the time she went through the door, she realized she wasn’t angry anymore. She was amazed at how fast it had happened. She would give a billion dollars to do the last ten minutes over. She would ask him back before he even sat down. Now she couldn’t ask him back at all. She didn’t remember ever feeling quite so sad.
AN OLD MAN at the table closest to Francis caught his eye, then lifted his chin, pointing it toward the door where Peggy had just exited as if to say, Follow her. Don’t let her get away! Francis acknowledged this with a faint smile, but he didn’t move. He was not about to chase after her, begging forgiveness. Besides, something was worrying him at the back of his mind, something that brought relief along with this sadness. He needed to sit there and figure it out.
It’s your fault that we had to let boys in—the worst thing she could have said to him, that was true.
But boys aren’t going to be admitted. The alumnae won’t stand for it, he imagined himself responding. Neither will the parents.
Dreamer! he heard Peggy answering. When are you going to grow up? But the words were true. “They won’t stand for it!” he said again, discovering another reason he hadn’t started a riot when Travelers announced that boys would be admitted: “I knew it wasn’t going to happen,” he said out loud this time, and the man at the next table sent him another worried look.
Francis put a ten-dollar bill on the table—a big tip for his own good luck—and stood up. The old man smiled, relieved that Francis was going to rush after his wife after all. But that was not why Francis was moving so fast, almost tripping on a rug to leave the restaurant. He was going to rush back to campus, go straight to Fred Kindler’s office—and tell him how to save the school.
“REALLY? YOU WANT to see him?” Margaret Rice asked. Francis nodded in assent, ig
noring her surprise that he was here of his own free will. “All right,” she said, gesturing toward the open door to Fred Kindler’s office, the signal that anyone was welcome. “Go right in.” Then, to his back as he stepped toward Kindler’s office, Francis heard Margaret murmur, “Try not to have a fight this time, okay?”
The remark surprised him. Since when did Margaret want to keep things peaceful for this guy? He stepped into the doorway and waited for Kindler to acknowledge him. But Kindler, who couldn’t possibly not know that Francis was there, kept his eyes on some papers on his desk; so Francis had to knock on the wall beside him.
At last Fred looked up and stared. “Yes?” He didn’t even try to keep the animosity out of his voice. He stayed behind his desk, didn’t stand up.
“I have an idea,” Francis said.
“Really? What is it this time?”
Francis stepped into the office and started to close the door behind him. “Leave it open,” Fred Kindler commanded.
I don’t particularly want to be in the same room alone with you either, Francis thought, and walked across the rug to the two chairs in front of Kindler’s desk and sat down in one of them. Fred watched.
“I don’t know why no one thought of it before,” Francis began, striving to sound relaxed.
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you why,” Kindler said.
Francis sat and waited. He was going to hold his temper.
Kindler looked at his watch. “I don’t have a lot of time, Mr. Plummer.”
“How many more girls do we have to enroll for next year than we did this year to break even?” Francis asked.
Saving Miss Oliver's Page 33
