It was a Monday afternoon in mid-November. Carpool was over and the campus was quiet. Rue was in her office doing the payroll for Bill Glarrow, who was on vacation, when she heard a scream from the parking lot.
Cynda Goldring was not an hysterical woman, but when Rue reached her, she was crying. Emily was there seconds later, and the two of them stood with her beside her car as she blew her nose and apologized.
“I know, I’ve completely wrecked my mascara,” she said. She had, indeed. There were dark, wet puddles under her eyes. “Sorry. I’m okay now. I shouldn’t have screamed.”
“What happened?” Emily asked. She touched Cynda’s shoulder, comforting, but Cynda shrugged it off. She was back in control.
“You won’t understand why I made such a fuss. It just surprised me.”
“What?”
“Get in the driver’s seat and look in the rearview mirror.”
Emily climbed in and did as she was told. At first she inhaled sharply, then swung around to look at what she was seeing in the mirror.
“That is absolutely sick,” she said, scrambling out of the car.
Rue got in. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw written in black ink on the leather above the rear window were the words, Die, You Bitch.
As Emily had done, she whirled around to look straight on. The writing was careful, skillful mirror writing.
Rue got out. “Was the car locked?”
Cynda shook her head no.
“Nevertheless…some little beast came out here in daylight, bold as brass, and climbed into your car and took his time doing that.”
Cynda nodded.
Emily asked, “Do you have any idea who?”
Cynda shook her head. “The eighth graders are terrors. But I like the bad ones! They all know that!”
“You’re not having special trouble with anyone?” Cynda shook her head.
Rue and Emily looked at each other. Now what should they do? Should they urge her to ignore it? Should she be frightened? Who would do a thing like that?
She stood looking miserable for a moment. Then she said, “I didn’t need to make such a fuss. I’m not usually such a baby. It’s just that Elliot and I decided to get divorced this morning.”
“What?” cried Emily.
Rue whispered, “Oh, no!”
“It’s all right,” said Cynda. “We were hardly speaking to each other. We didn’t even like to pass each other in the hall. It’s just that now that it’s over and he’s going I feel a little…jumpy.”
“Maybe Elliot did it,” said Emily.
“Not a chance, he’s not clever enough,” said Cynda.
“This is somebody bright and really malicious,” said Rue.
“I guess I better start locking my car,” Cynda said. She climbed in.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want me to follow you home?” asked Emily.
“No, really. I’m fine.” Cynda turned on the engine and pulled out of her parking space rather suddenly. She drove off leaving Rue and Emily staring at each other.
“This job is a laugh a minute,” said Emily to Rue.
“Tell me about it.” They stood in the sunshine.
“Did you know Cynda and Elliot were unhappy?” Emily asked.
“I noticed they were never together. He never came to faculty lunches, or anything.” They started walking back to Home.
“What’s he like?” Emily asked. “Maybe he’d like me.”
Rue laughed.
“I wasn’t kidding,” said Emily.
“I know you weren’t,” Rue said, and briefly patted Emily’s arm. “Don’t worry, we’ll find somebody for you.”
The weeks leading up to the Christmas break had become a complicated time in the life of The Country School. Under the Miss Plums, all had been serene. There was a Christmas pageant telling the story of the Annunciation and Nativity from the point of view of the Angels. The first and second graders performed in the entr’actes, dressed in nightgowns and spangly wings, but the action was controlled from Gabriel’s headquarters, which looked a lot like the newsroom of a big city paper.
An angel would run in dressed in a big suit. “Boss, they only got as far as Bethlehem and it looks like the Lord is going to have to sleep on the ground.”
“Oh, we can do better than that,” Gabriel would say, taking his feet off the desk. “Get down there and disguise yourself as a pig or something, and tell the animals to take care of them.” Then the lights would move to the stable scene. A pig would appear on stage and whisper to the oxen and the sheep, and pretty soon a nice clean manger full of straw would be ready to receive the infant. At the end of the performance Miss Carla Plum would remind the audience that In Those Days angels appeared on earth dressed as shepherds of the first century just as today angels were all around you, looking exactly like ordinary people. And who knows what they wear in heaven, she would say, and the audience would laugh as their children appeared dressed as sheep, shepherds, and newspapermen for curtain calls.
Miss Lourdes Plum then would play the piano and lead the school in Christmas carols. There was a wassail bowl after the program, and Miss Carla Plum appeared in a Santa Claus costume with a pillow under her tunic and a cottonball beard taped to her face. She handed out sweets and oranges and told everyone they should look for miracles every day, not just at Christmas.
Now there was no Christmas celebration at Country. Instead there was a Festival of Holiday customs, featuring costumes, music, song, and story from three foreign countries each year, if possible represented by families in the school. This year the countries were Nicaragua, Tibet, and Armenia, and preparations were by no means going smoothly. The Nicaraguan family was staunchly pro-Contra and had run afoul of another mom on the committee whose brother had helped prosecute Oliver North. The mom from Lhasa knew very little of the holiday folkways of her country; she had grown up in Nepal in a house the size of Vaux Le Vicomte, in which the king of Tibet was being held prisoner on the second floor. She was a charming woman, beloved by all and now married to a venetian blind salesman, but the exotic holiday treats she remembered best from her childhood, which she reconstructed from a yellowing recipe written in Hindi by the family cook, turned out to be brownies. The Missirlians were preparing a huge map labeled Armenia, chunks of which the rest of the world tended to call Iran, Turkey, or Russia. They were also preparing tableaux vivantes depicting the Armenian holocaust and diaspora. This was actually quite popular, but it had caused unfestive feelings in the Hikmet family, Turkish-Americans whose five children had been attending Country for a span of sixteen years.
Rue and Mike Dianda were drinking mugs of herb tea in Mike’s office. It was the end of a long day.
“What else?” Rue asked.
“Well Pat Moredock seems to be going crackers. She is keeping a diary of her grievances, and she’s started stuffing pages from it into my mailbox every day,” said Mike. “Also, she went to the store to buy a couple of hacksaw blades and some construction paper, and came back with receipts for two hundred and seventeen dollars.”
“Worth of hacksaw blades?”
“No, she bought twenty soldering irons, and a few bales of copperfoil, and she had her whole trunk full of sheets of stained glass.”
Rue covered her face with her hands.
“Bill Glarrow made her take it all back, but she’s bitter. She says the teachers teaching academics can spend money without asking first. I pointed out that they can’t, but never mind.”
“She thought she’d teach stained glass in an elementary school? Can you imagine the insurance?”
“Insurance, nothing. We’d have to build an entirely separate studio. You get tiny little shards of glass in everything when you cut glass.”
“Speaking of insurance, the Lozattos are now suing us for fifty thousand one hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
“What?”
“Yes. They asked that Patsy’s tuition be returned, so I sent it back….”
“And Jerry Lozatto signed the contract. The insurance company wants to settle the suit, but Ann Rosen is so mad now that she won’t.”
“Good for her.”
“And someone in the eighth grade took forty dollars from Cynda Goldring’s wallet.”
They sat in silence, finishing their tea. “I better go talk to Pat Moredock,” said Rue, sounding as if it was the last thing she wanted.
“Take Bonnie with you,” said Mike.
“Great idea, thank you. I will.”
Rue and Bonnie found Pat Moredock cleaning up her studio. It was a large bright room lined with gray and orange tiles, with art projects stacked on every surface. On the long workbenches in the center of the room lay gray life masks, eerie eyeless visages that the sixth graders made by applying surgical cast material to each other’s Vaselined faces. The masks were drying now, after which the students would paint them so that the masks became a statement of identity. Sometimes the most apparently sunny children would paint their masks in dark, disturbing colors, or color one-half one way and the other side quite different, or paint on strange scars.
“So interesting,” said Bonnie to Pat as she walked from dead face to dead face. “Since sixth graders all wear masks anyway.”
“Do they?” said Pat. She had been expecting a more conventional compliment. She was used to people making a great fuss about the sunny color that flooded the room, the artwork and materials everywhere, the feast of possibilities she provided the children.
“I think so. They’re so frightened of standing out of the crowd, and yet angry that we don’t see how they’re special.”
“I think they’re all special,” said Pat stiffly. She went back to wiping down tables and putting the caps back on the jars of tempera paints.
“Oh, yes, but do we see in what individual ways? Behind these little blank faces?” She gestured to the masks.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” said Pat, with her back to the room. Pat was a big woman, with iron-gray hair, inexpertly curled. She wore large loose shirts and skirts, and in the studio, a denim apron. She moved soundlessly in thick-soled brown Hushpuppies. She was very busy putting things in order. Rue couldn’t interpret her tone, or for that matter, her meaning. Was she agreeing with Bonnie? Or brushing her off?…
There was a pause. Rue, listening, found herself looking at a shelf of cubbies stacked with drawings. She took down a pile and began to leaf through them. They were designs, or in some cases pictures, that incorporated letters of the alphabet. Here was a clever one in which a large K had become a tree with a rake leaning against it.
“You already washed those once,” Bonnie said next. “The brushes.”
“I did not,” said Pat, quite aggressive.
“You did,” said Bonnie gently. “I watched you.”
“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here? I know my time isn’t as valuable as the Latin teacher’s or the math teacher’s, but it’s mine, and I’m fond of it.” Rue went on paging through the drawings. That sentence didn’t make much sense, she thought. She’s so angry about something that it’s making her speechless.
“I’m sorry,” said Bonnie. “We did come for a reason. We want your advice.”
“Oh,” said Pat. “All right. Do you need me to sit down?”
“Do what you have to do.”
Suddenly Rue felt herself go white. She was looking at a drawing that was very different from the others in the stack, which she judged to be by eleven- or twelve-year-olds. It was a picture of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like character looking into a mirror. It was more a cartoon than a portrait but it was extraordinarily well done. Over the muscleman’s head was a thought balloon. “STUD,” the figure was thinking, as he looked in the mirror. In the mirror, a very different male figure looked back. He was a puny-limbed, sagging creature. In his thought balloon, in perfect mirror writing, were the words Eat Shit. Around the drawing was a frame of thick, wonderfully drawn branches, with twigs and leaves and words woven along. Half the words were normal, and the other half were mirror writing. The straight writing gave words like Jock…Macho Man…Punk Cruiser. The mirror ones, cleverly disguised among leaves and tendrils, said Asshole or Suck My Dick.
“Pat, what are these?” Rue held up several of the drawings.
“Oh, aren’t those clever? Those were done by the sixth grade two years ago.”
“This year’s eighth grade.”
“Yes.”
“Who did this one?”
She carried the drawing with the mirror writing to Bonnie and Pat. She could see that Bonnie saw at once why it interested her.
“Guess.” Pat made a face.
“Tell me.”
“Kenny Lowen.”
Bonnie was holding the drawing. “This is extraordinary,” she said.
“It really is, isn’t it? He’s incredibly talented. But awful.”
“May I take this?” Bonnie asked.
“Well…”
“I just want to copy it. I’ll bring it back.”
“All right,” Pat said, but suddenly again she sounded angry.
She turned and went back to her sink. She ran the water and searched for a while for her sponge, which was on the floor. Eventually she found it, swore, and resumed washing the paint stains from the porcelain.
“What did you want my help with?”
“I wanted to ask you what kind of a year Lyndie Sale is having in your class.”
Pat stopped scrubbing again. “Lyndie Sale…Lyndie Sale. I think fine. Let me get my grade book.”
She walked off, leaving the water running. Rue turned it off. “Can’t stand running water,” she said to Bonnie. “Georgia’s got me trained.”
Pat came back from her office with a ring-bound notebook. “Lyndie Sale…got a B+ for her fantasy map and a B on her tie rack. She had trouble handling the stain. Other than that she’s doing fine. Why?”
“No special reason. She gets along with the other children?”
“Always has.”
“But you haven’t seen a change this year?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well. Thank you. That makes my life simpler.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll bring this drawing back Tuesday,” said Bonnie.
“No problem.” Suddenly there was a feeling that Pat was in a hurry for them to leave. So they left.
They walked across the wide lawn toward Home, looking at Kenny Lowen’s drawing.
“Are you going to show it to Cynda?” Bonnie asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think yes. What about the parents?”
“There’s no point now. I certainly would have if Pat had seen fit to show it to me at the time he did it. But hold on to it. I think we’re going to have a rough year with him.”
“I think you’re right. What are his parents like?”
“Bradley’s a sweetheart. Very bright and funny and kind. Corinne is one of those intense moms who lives through her kids, and she’s very competitive. They have a daughter in Catherine Trainer’s class.”
“Jennifer Lowen? That’s his sister?”
Rue nodded. “Kenny was the most adorable toddler. But always a dickens. Jennifer is entirely different. A princess, with all that that implies.”
“Interesting family.”
“Tell me about Pat Moredock. Did she really wash the brushes twice?”
“Not only that, I watched her take the tops off the paint jars and then screw them all on again.”
“We seemed to scare the hell out of her. What is that?”
“Don’t you know?” Bonnie asked.
Rue felt a sudden shift of terrain, a momentary blankness. Was there something right in front of her she couldn’t see?
“I have no idea. Do you mean you do?”
“Of course.”
The two women
stopped and looked at each other. Bonnie was puzzled. Rue was feeling rather frightened.
“Well?” said Rue. “What is it?”
“She was drunk,” said Bonnie.
Rue gave no reaction at all for a moment, except to blink.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Haven’t you ever seen anyone drunk?”
Rue looked completely bewildered.
“Poor Pat,” she said at last. “Now what am I going to do?”
“We better talk about it,” said Bonnie. “Does she have any family?”
“A daughter at college. She’s divorced.”
“Mother? Father?”
“I think so. In the south someplace. Maybe Arkansas. Should we do an intervention?”
“Well, wait. How drunk is she? How often does it happen? Is this temporary or chronic?”
“I see what you mean.”
“I know of a case where a business did an intervention on a longtime bookkeeper. They sent the woman off to a dry-out farm. She’d been functioning at a pretty high level, so they didn’t figure her for a hard case. She did the whole course, and then on the way back to San Diego, she got off the plane in Denver and got so drunk in the airport she wound up in jail. After that the company fired her, and her family wouldn’t take her. Her sister says she was arrested a year later stark naked, up in a tree. Throwing things at people.”
“So you don’t just bust in on someone who’s operating without a safety net.”
“I’d give it careful thought.”
They walked in silence. “I’m exhausted,” said Rue. “I think I’ll go home to my husband.”
“And have a stiff drink,” said Bonnie.
“And a big cookie,” said Rue.
They both laughed.
Bonnie said, “That should work. I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
And they parted.
Chandler Kip and his wife, Bobbi, were giving a Christmas party for the faculty and trustees. Their vast half-timbered Tudor house was filled with decorations of the Olde English variety. There were strings of twinkling white lights winking in the many-paned leaded windows. There were pine boughs on every mantelpiece and tucked behind every picture frame. There were pine ropes twined along the long curving bannisters, tied with red velvet ribbon, and clutches of mistletoe hanging at every doorway. The immense Douglas fir in the front hall was so tall Bobbi had had to have the top four feet cut off, so it seemed to grow into the ceiling. It was strung with popcorn, cranberries, and paper snowflake chains made from silver paper. Instead of electric lights, it was lit with candles, clipped to the boughs in genuine antique Victorian holders. Unfortunately, every time someone opened the front door the candles flared, threatening to ignite the paper chains. That, or half of them blew out. Bobbi, who had only spent a full month of her life planning the decor for the holidays, had been called a moron by her husband, and had wept much of the day. Chandler had now solved the problem, sort of, by employing their nine-year-old daughter, Missy, to sit beside the tree throughout the party holding a fire extinguisher. Missy, who appeared to be borderline anorexic, was a ballet fanatic, and agreed to this duty if she could be dressed as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Saying Grace Page 15
