Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  Maybe I’m going to be fired, he thought as he drove north along the river’s edge toward Hartford. Maybe Kindler changed his mind about resigning and was going to get rid of him instead. Francis wondered whether Peggy knew he’d been summoned by the executive committee; she, too, would guess that he was about to be fired. If he were living with her, she would know, and they would talk about it. They always told each other their worries and comforted each other, he told himself. He shook his head. Liar! he thought. He knew damn well the problem between them hadn’t started with Marjorie’s dismissal and Fred Kindler’s arrival. Those events had just brought their troubles to the surface.

  Then he realized the board wouldn’t do the firing. Heads did that, not boards. But it was no consolation.

  A homeless person sat on the sidewalk holding a God Bless sign near where Francis parked. Impulsively, Francis gave him ten dollars—a ten-spot offered for propitiation to God. “God bless you, sir,” the homeless man said, as if reading his sign, and Francis, feeling a sudden intimacy with this derelict stranger, had a strong desire, which of course he squelched, to tell him everything that had happened lately at Miss Oliver’s School for Girls.

  Five minutes later he was twenty stories up, entering Alan Travelers’s office, and found Travelers, Milton Perkins, and Sonja McGarvey sitting side by side, Travelers in the middle, on the other side of the conference table in the center of the room. Francis moved toward them like an actor moving upstage into the lights. Travelers was pressing his hands together, making a narrow tent in front of his mouth. He was frowning. Perkins was the only person to stand up. He was smiling. “Good to see you,” he said. “How’s the teaching business going?”

  Before Francis could answer, McGarvey said, “Please, let’s just skip the bullshit. Let’s get this over with.” She didn’t look at Travelers when she said this; her eyes bored into Francis, her expression full of disgust. Francis felt his nervousness leaving, anger rising in its place, and stared back at McGarvey. He was no more ready for bullshit from her than she was from him. He sat down across the table from the three of them.

  “You got any idea why you’re here?” Perkins asked, sitting down again. The gentleness in his tone surprised Francis.

  Francis shook his head. The idea persisted: They were going to fire him.

  Travelers reached for a stack of papers. He took the top one off, slid it across the table’s polished surface to Francis. “Read this,” he said.

  “Yeah,” McGarvey said. “I’m sure you’ll be surprised.”

  It was two pieces of expensive paper, joined on their left margins to make a four-page booklet. On the top page he read: An Important Announcement to the Oliver Community, and Francis knew what he was going to read inside. He’d seen so many of these! Marjorie used to pin them to the bulletin board in the faculty room when they came in from other schools. “To keep everybody informed,” she used to say. But everyone knew what she was really saying: “Look! Heads roll everywhere. But I’m still here!”

  He lifted the top page, opening to the two inside pages. On the left, a letter from Fred Kindler. On the right, Travelers’s response. He read Kindler’s letter three times before he moved his eyes to Travelers’s letter:

  Dear Fred,

  It is with more sadness than I can ever convey to you in one short letter that I accept your resignation.

  As you know, when you first tendered it, I refused to accept it. The idea of our school’s losing a leader of such integrity was more than I could fathom.

  But when you insisted, I had at least to consider your offer—because, Fred, it was you who was insisting, you who described your reason as compelling. I have so high a regard for your leadership, your wisdom, and your dedication that what compels you to make a decision for the good of the school you have served with so much honor compels me to its consideration.

  Therefore, after much consideration, I accept your resignation. I wish you and Gail much happiness. The school to which you journey next will be most fortunate.

  Yours in admiration,

  Alan Travelers, Chair of the Board of Trustees

  Francis kept his eyes on the letter. “You win!” he heard McGarvey whisper. “Congratulations!” He looked up at her. But he saw the words on the pages he’d just read more clearly than he saw her face. “Don’t even think about trying to pretend you’re surprised!” he heard her say. “You’ve been working for this for a whole fucking year!”

  “Sonja, let it go!” Travelers commanded, and McGarvey shrugged and looked away.

  Francis made no answer to her, surprised he didn’t have her by the throat. In fact, his huge regret, grown even more painful now that he’d read these confirming letters, left little room for anger, he could only feel so much at once. He turned away from her as if she were merely a nuisance and asked Travelers, “Have you mailed them yet?” If not, there was still some hope. But as soon as the question was out of his mouth he wondered why he’d asked it. Kindler was not going to retract.

  “Not yet, it’s incomplete still,” Travelers said. And then shut up. He studied Francis’s face.

  And then Milton Perkins did the talking. He leaned across the table to Francis, white shirt cuffs shining at his wrists against the blue of his suit coat. “Awful late in the year for this to happen,” he observed.

  Francis said nothing.

  “Isn’t it?” Perkins asked, smiling now, and waiting for Francis to agree.

  Francis still said nothing. He had no idea what was coming next.

  “Too late to find a permanent head,” Perkins said. “We need an interim.”

  “That’s you,” Travelers said to Francis. “You’re the one. We need you to run the school.”

  THIRTY

  If you spend one more second pretending you’re surprised, I’m going to barf,” McGarvey said, and this time Travelers didn’t object. Francis Plummer had sat there like a stone and hadn’t said a thing for so long that Alan was sure he was faking. But in fact, Francis was in shock.

  Yesterday Sonja had at first refused to go with Alan and Milton to Fred Kindler’s office to tell him that Francis Plummer would be the next headmaster, if only for a year. Of course it was the right and courteous thing to do: tell Fred Kindler before calling Plummer in and appointing him. But Plummer! “How can we tell Fred Kindler that?” she had asked, though she agreed with the decision. The alumnae would follow him, it made a lot of sense. She didn’t want to see Fred’s face when they told him.

  But of course she had relented. Sonja McGarvey didn’t get where she was by ducking the hard jobs. She remembered how Kindler had turned his head away and looked out through those big French doors in his office yesterday when Alan said the name: Francis Plummer. Then Kindler had turned his head back, and she could tell he wasn’t surprised. Bitter, yes. Crushed. Humiliated. But not surprised. She admired the way he’d kept his face blank. But she saw his shoulders stiffen.

  Alan had seen it too. “I know this must be hard,” he had said.

  “I understand,” Fred had said. “It makes a lot of sense.” He didn’t tell them he’d already been through this once, when he had had to ask Francis Plummer to write those letters—for exactly the same reason that this decision made a lot of sense. He wanted to ask whether the decision was unanimous or whether there was argument among the board members, but of course he couldn’t.

  “It was a reluctant decision,” Alan had said, as if reading Fred’s mind. Almost the truth. He wasn’t about to go into it. Because most of the reluctance was in the executive committee, his and Sonja’s and Milton’s, who nevertheless knew what would work for the school.

  Near the end of the meeting Sonja had said to Fred, “I wish you’d fired the little prick,” and realized she was about to cry. Sonja McGarvey shedding tears, that would have been a sight! She was grateful to Milton Perkins for rescuing her—and Fred—from that grotesquerie by standing up to end the meeting. He’d seen what was about to happen.

  “Try t
o get a little distance, Fred,” Perkins had said.

  “Thanks,” Fred had said, standing up and shaking each of their hands. He had meant thanks for your good advice—which it was still much too early to be able to follow—and thanks for telling me first, but mostly thanks, Milton, for ending this meeting.

  Now, a day later in Alan’s office, Sonja took her eyes off Plummer and turned to Alan and said, “Alan, tell Superman here why we chose him.” She was going to get this much revenge at least.

  “Because the alumnae will follow you,” Travelers said.

  Francis waited for more, but Travelers’s mouth was shut. All three were watching him.

  “Well?” asked Travelers.

  “If that’s the only reason—” Francis said, then shut his mouth.

  “Well, it is the only reason,” McGarvey said.

  Now all Francis could see in the room was McGarvey’s face. He leaned forward into the table, and this time he could imagine himself reaching across it and squeezing her throat. “Maybe it is,” he said. “But I am surprised. Whether you believe it or not, I didn’t plot for this.” I’m a teacher, not a head, he wanted to yell. Besides, he didn’t give a damn what she thought, he just didn’t want to hear her talk. “Don’t open your mouth one more time,” he told her. “Do you hear? Just keep it closed.” McGarvey stared back at him, then looked away.

  “All right,” Perkins said into the silence. “You didn’t plot. That clears the air. That’s good.”

  “Fair enough,” Travelers said. “We assume you’ll accept.”

  “I need a day to think,” Francis said. His own words surprised him. He needed a day to think? Was he crazy? After being told, as if he couldn’t figure it out for himself, that the only reason for the offer was that the alumnae would follow him—and only till they found the one that’s right!

  “We hoped for an answer today,” Travelers persisted. “The school needs the certainty.”

  All three watched intently as Francis considered. “You’ll get it tomorrow,” he answered at last. “I’ll consider it very carefully, and if I think it’s what the school needs, I’ll accept.”

  “Don’t you think we can decide what the school needs?” Travelers asked.

  “Not as well as I can,” Francis answered mildly, standing up and moving toward the door. “I’ve been working here for thirty-three years.” He didn’t wait around for Travelers to respond.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Less than halfway home it dawned on Francis: There was no way he could say yes to Travelers! Even if he wanted the job. Even if he thought he was right for it, which, of course, he didn’t. How in the world could he tell Peggy that he was going to take Fred Kindler’s place? For the good of the school? he could hear her ask. The good of the school would have been your helping him. And now you’re taking his place? He would never even tell Peggy what the board had asked him to do. Nobody else either, of course. And he’d call Travelers this afternoon and refuse.

  But first he’d tell Fred Kindler. He should be the first to know. He hurried to Kindler’s office.

  “WHY NOT?” KINDLER asked from the other side of his desk. “You scared?”

  Taken aback, Francis didn’t know what to say. “Forget I said that,” he heard Kindler mutter.

  Francis didn’t respond. He was still trying to let Kindler know he could say anything he wanted.

  “You’ll have plenty of help,” Kindler said. “There’s lots of good people.”

  “That’s not the point,” Francis said, ignoring the sarcasm.

  “Lots of good people. Rachel Bickham, for one. And your own wife.”

  Francis shook his head.

  “You’ve been asked to serve!” Fred Kindler’s voice was hard. “You can let them really run the school. You can be the figurehead. It’s the image, you know.” He pronounced the word as if it were a disease.

  For all his intentions, Francis bristled. “If I did it, I wouldn’t be a figurehead!” he said, and Kindler raised his eyebrows. “I’d do the goddamn job!” Francis blurted.

  “Then, do it!”

  “No. I’m not the right person.”

  “I’ll give you that!” Kindler said. “Finally we agree on something.” Then after a pause. “Who is?”

  “Rachel Bickham. You know that.” Francis’s words surprised him. He’d never thought about who should do the job—only that he shouldn’t—until just then when Kindler had asked the question. “We both know that,” he added.

  Kindler leaned forward, put his eyes on Francis. “Yes,” he said. “We do.” He swept his hand across his empty desk. “But she’s new. Only been here five years. Nobody calls her Clark Kent, and besides, she didn’t take sides.”

  “That’s one of the reasons—besides being who she is,” Francis urged and added, “Comes fresh to the scene. You said it yourself in your resignation letter that’s what we need. Five years around here is pretty fresh.”

  “So?” Fred Kindler asked.

  “So that’s what I’m going to tell Travelers. I wanted to tell you first.”

  “You’ll have to tell Milton Perkins. Travelers has resigned.” Fred Kindler’s tone was matter-of-fact. As if this news were inconsequential and not surprising.

  Francis felt Kindler’s eyes boring into him. He made himself look back. Kindler was sitting there waiting for his reaction, but he didn’t have any; he’d hardly spoken ten words to Alan Travelers. Then it began to dawn. “Oh!” he said. “He’s associated with admitting boys too.”

  “You catch on fast,” Kindler said.

  “The same way you are—”

  “You catch on to some things faster than others.”

  Francis ignored the remark.

  “Alan Travelers is a wonderful person,” Kindler exclaimed. “He deserves better!”

  “So do you,” Francis blurted, and Kindler looked surprised. “That’s the other thing I came in here to say,” Francis added lamely.

  It wasn’t exactly true; he would have liked to put it a different way, but this was what came out. Across his desk Kindler stared mildly at Francis’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Francis finally said. “I could have helped you more. Maybe we could have made it work.” He didn’t say that he still thought Kindler was the wrong person for this school. That was not for him to say. Never was. All he wanted to do now was to acknowledge his own failure. “I regret my actions,” Francis forced himself to say. He was going to speak slowly, say it all. “I apologize.”

  But Fred put his hand up in front of his red mustache, like a traffic cop, cutting Francis off. “Part of me appreciates your wanting to get your feelings off your chest, but another part says to me that maybe you shouldn’t get them off so fast. Maybe you should live with them for a while.” He stood up. “And that’s the part I’m going with for now.” What would his struggle be worth if Plummer got off so easy?

  But he was already acknowledging to himself his resentment that by identifying Rachel Bickham as the best person to be the interim head, it was Francis Plummer—again!—who had come up with the right idea.

  “All right,” Francis said, standing up. He turned, walked across the office toward the door.

  But Kindler discovered he didn’t want this meeting to end, not yet, and had to call Plummer back. Damnation! “Mr. Plummer?” he said to Francis’s back.

  Francis turned.

  “Thanks for refusing the offer,” Kindler said. He wanted to acknowledge that Plummer was putting the school ahead of himself.

  But Fred Kindler should have known that the only way Francis would interpret his thanks would be as one more insult to go along with all the rest. What Francis heard was his gratitude for admitting that he wasn’t worthy and would ruin the school if he were its head.

  Nevertheless, Francis said nothing as he turned away again, and closed the door behind him.

  “WELL, I NEVER push a job on a man who doesn’t want it,” Milton Perkins said to Francis, who had just phoned to tell him he wou
ldn’t take the position.

  “Rachel Bickham?” Perkins said a minute later when Francis told him who should be the head. “Fred thinks so too?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Well, he ought to know. And we know she’s a star. We’ll talk to her.”

  “Good. She’s perfect for the job.”

  “Nobody’s perfect for anything,” Perkins said. “But we’ll talk to her.”

  Francis nodded his head as if Perkins could see him.

  “You’re going to keep this under your hat till we get it squared away, right?”

  “Of course,” Francis said. And hung up.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Out of the blue that afternoon Rachel Bickham got a call from Milton Perkins telling her he wanted to see her as soon as possible. He didn’t offer the reason, and she knew better than to ask over the phone. It was obvious something big was up. She’d find out what when she got there.

  Of course, by the time she was halfway to Hartford, she’d guessed: Perkins was going to tell her that Fred Kindler had resigned. The realization made her very sad—and not a little angry—that the good man deserved much better. But she was much too aware to be surprised. It was clear to her that no one—certainly not a man—who directly followed the thirty-five-year tenure of any head, let alone the charismatic Marjorie Boyd, could possibly succeed as the head of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. The person to follow Marjorie would inevitably be the sacrificial buffer between the past and the future. She wished she’d seen that more clearly when Fred Kindler was interviewing for the job. She would have told him.

  Of course he should have known himself. But that’s another thing she admired in him. That he was no politician. But a man of faith. And hope.

  Now she thought she knew why Milton Perkins was singling her out to hear this news before the rest of the community: Board Chair Alan Travelers, along with some other board members, must be interviewing Francis Plummer for the interim head’s position, while Milton Perkins took her aside to test the waters in case Francis refused. It just went to show you never knew what was going to happen next.