Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher

by Monica Nolan

  “She’s—she’s not in peace,” the white-faced girl quavered. Bobby had to admire Linda’s courage as she contradicted the crazed Headmistress. She really must believe in that ouija board stuff, the gym teacher thought.

  Miss Craybill flinched, and for a second seemed cowed by the young girl’s assertion. She grasped the collar of Linda’s terry-cloth bathrobe and pulled the shivering student toward her. “She’s not? How do you know? What did she say?” She thrust her face close to Linda’s and whispered hoarsely, “Did she mention me?”

  The two teachers had been frozen in appalled silence, but now they sprang into action. “Perhaps tomorrow—” began Enid, edging herself between Miss Craybill and the terrified girl, while Bobby descended the steps and took Miss Craybill by the arm. “The important thing right now is to get these girls back to bed, I know you’ll agree.” Miss Craybill went along automatically, all the while stealing half-angry, half-supplicating glances at Linda as the little group moved down the wide hallway of Kent, the portraits of the founders and benefactors glaring down in the flickering flashlight.

  “No, but it’s ridiculous, irrational,” muttered Miss Craybill to herself, shooting another queer look at Linda. Suddenly she stopped. “What have you got there?”

  Bobby looked at Linda, but Linda was looking at her, and so was Miss Craybill. She looked down. It was the ouija board, tucked under her arm, that had attracted Miss Craybill’s attention, and before Bobby could react the Headmistress snatched it from her. “We’ll put an end to this nonsense once and for all,” she said, pushing open the door to the quadrangle. She hurled the flimsy game board to the ground and took the candle and matches from Sue’s limp hands. They all watched helplessly as their Headmistress managed to get the cardboard burning. “Let this be a lesson to you!” cried Miss Craybill triumphantly as the flames rose. “Do not seek to cross the divide that God has erected between our world and the next! Do not meddle,” her voice rose over the crackling of the fire, and Bobby detected the sharp note of hysteria in it, “with things beyond your ken! Do not—”

  “Look,” said Linda, pointing. The dancing flames of the burning ouija board revealed a glittering necklace draped over the sundial, the heart-shaped locket swinging gently.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the Locker Room

  Tuesday afternoon the blue bus with the words “Metamora Academy for Young Ladies” lettered on each side wheezed out the Academy’s front gate and roared up Route 32 toward Miss Mellyn’s Seminary in nearby Beaverton.

  Bobby sat up front, glancing over her shoulder at the subdued Savages. Angle slumped next to her, in her customary attitude of sulky defiance, and Lotta was across the aisle, stealing glances at the object of her affections. Except for a low-toned conversation here or there, the team was unusually quiet. Bobby glimpsed Kayo staring out the window, absently fingering the locket that hung around her neck.

  Despite her and Enid’s best efforts to hush up the circumstances, the story of the dramatic reappearance of the locket had rocketed around the student body. Linda was something of a celebrity. The credulous students told each other that the semi-successful summoning of Miss Froelich’s spirit was somehow connected with the return of the locket.

  “Don’t these kids think anything through?” Bobby asked Mona despairingly. “How could a spirit pick up a necklace and carry it around?”

  “Well, they have thought it through pretty thoroughly,” Mona reported. “The theory now is that Miss Froelich possessed someone who put the locket on the sundial, and since they were possessed they have no memory of it at all.”

  Bobby had to admit that it was a foolproof explanation—if you believed in the spirit world. She didn’t, she’d told herself firmly.

  And yet after talking to Mona, Bobby found herself climbing the stairs to the second floor of Kent where the class photos hung, and studying the class of 1963. There was Miss Froelich, in the bottom row, seated on Miss Craybill’s left. A round-faced woman wearing what looked like an old-fashioned pince nez, her gray curls and fixed smile revealed nothing.

  All the mistresses wore academic gowns. Bobby compared them in her mind’s eye to the ghostly bicyclist. Certainly, the mysterious cyclist and Miss Froelich shared the same wardrobe.

  I’m being ridiculous, Bobby told herself. Trying to ID a ghost from a photograph!

  She wandered down the hall, pausing in front of each picture long enough to find Miss Froelich. 1962, 1961, 1960…1949, 1948, 1947…Miss Froelich’s hair grew darker and longer, her wrinkles melted away and her glasses disappeared. Next to her, Miss Craybill seemed to grow taller, and plumper, smiling at the camera with vivacity.

  Bobby kept going. At the far end of the hall, Miss Craybill and Miss Froelich were students, the two friends now in separate rows. Miss Froelich stood with the sixth formers, Miss Craybill in the row in front. Bobby looked carefully at the young Nerissa Froelich. The dead Math Mistress was a tall, lanky girl, and the camera had caught her in motion, her head half turned, a mischievous smile on her face. She looked energetic, athletic—alive. For the first time, Bobby felt genuine sorrow at the thought of this girl’s unpleasant death. How had it happened? What rash act had tipped her off the tower?

  Suddenly the weight of these long-ago Metamorians, many of them probably as dead as Miss Froelich, was too much for the young field hockey coach. She fled the dim hallway and hurried down the stairs to the faculty lounge, seeking solace in sherry hour.

  There, too, the only topic of conversation was the superstitious sentiment sweeping the campus.

  “I confiscated another ouija board replica in Art II,” Laura declared, sitting up straight and holding out her glass for more sherry. “Cynthia Fellowes, one of my best students. She was supposed to be working on the design for the Harvest Moon Mixer poster, and instead this! She tried passing it off as a color study.”

  “On the positive side, the fourth formers hung on my every word when my American history class covered the Salem witch trials,” remarked Ken Burnham from his seat next to Laura. He seemed bemused by the novel experience.

  “Oh, there’s nothing positive about this ridiculous state of affairs,” moaned Miss Otis. “Don’t you realize what this will do to Metamora’s reputation? We must quash this craze before the Old Girls’ Tea. If the Old Girls get hold of this ghost story, they’ll spread it to the ends of the earth! Before you know it, people will start to think there was something funny about Miss Froelich’s death. And then—”

  An uneasy pause ensued, broken only by Madame Melville, who waved her cigarette airily and said, “I do not think you will flatten this gossip, Bunny. It must run its course, like a fever. Et alors.” She shrugged her Gallic shoulders. “Maybe there is a ghost. Did not your poet write, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’”

  That quote again, thought Bobby. Everyone knows it but me. She felt suddenly overwhelmed by her own inadequacy in the face of this latest crisis. She stole a glance at Enid, sitting below a gargoyle, correcting papers. Enid was hardly ever at sherry hour these days. She’d had a date with Rod almost every night this week.

  She’ll probably be announcing her engagement any day now, Bobby thought bitterly as Serena and Hoppy joined in the debate over the spirit world. Looking at Enid, Bobby felt shaken by a mixture of rage and desire. Why was she, Bobby, attracted to this woman who despised her? Why was she so bored by Laura? Why did Kayo’s adoration only worry her? Why had Enid kissed her that night?

  “There’s a scientific explanation for everything,” a voice observed dispassionately.

  For a moment Bobby thought it was a spirit voice, answering the questions churning around in her head. But it was only Miss Rasphigi, interrupting the debate Madame Melville had started.

  The teachers turned simultaneously. Miss Rasphigi stood at the edge of the circle, wearing a white lab coat over her usual shapeless black dress, a face mask around her neck. She surveyed the teachers with her cold dark eyes as if they were strange
rs, as indeed they were. Miss Rasphigi rarely attended faculty gatherings.

  Now her eyes settled on Mona. “My expresso,” she said with a hint of reproach.

  Mona got to her feet. “Oh, Connie, I’m so sorry, it completely slipped my mind.”

  “What is the explanation for our ghost?” Enid challenged Miss Rasphigi.

  Miss Rasphigi was following Mona out the door. “I have to get back to my spores.”

  The teachers laughed uneasily after she was gone. “Her spores,” repeated Miss Otis. “When the school’s reputation is at stake! If I thought she knew something she wasn’t saying, I’d wipe her petri dishes clean with bleach!”

  Bobby was rehashing that discussion in her head as the bus pulled into the parking lot of Miss Mellyn’s Seminary. She wondered what Enid thought. Did the Math Mistress believe in the Metamora ghost?

  “Everybody out!” called Mona cheerfully as she set the parking brake. The versatile housekeeper shared bus driving duties with Ole Amundsen, who was occupied that afternoon resodding the scorched patch of the quad. Bobby put her uneasiness aside and led her team off the bus.

  The next half hour was the usual flurry—greeting the coach of the Mellyn Nuthatches, the scorekeepers and umpires, getting her team warmed up and making sure Lotta was set with towels and water. She saw Mona sitting in the stands, laughing and chatting with a group of suburban matrons including the Kerwins’ aunt Dot. Bobby glanced at the svelte blonde disinterestedly before turning back to the business at hand. Even Aunt Dot doesn’t excite me anymore, she thought glumly.

  The game should be a shoo-in, Bobby knew. The Nuthatches, nicknamed the Birdbrains, were at the bottom of the league. Miss Mellyn’s school had a reputation as a haven for girls endowed with more money than mental ability. These daughters of the well-to-do whacked the ball about in a leisurely manner, as if whiling away the time until the next debutante dance. There were one or two players with talent—an energetic halfback and a wing with nice ball-handling skills, but they were no reason to worry. So why couldn’t Bobby get rid of this uneasy feeling?

  The squad’s silly superstitions were getting to her, Bobby thought. Going to Miss Mellyn’s locker room to hurry the stragglers, she came upon a scattering of Savages debating whether or not Kayo should wear the necklace during the game. “Miss Froelich wanted it returned,” Linda spoke with authority. “So it will bring us luck.” She was pulling her crimson knee socks on over her shin guards.

  “But what if it’s become possessed?” asked Penny. “We never got the chance to figure out if Miss Froelich’s spirit is malevolent!” She looked nervously at Kayo, who was putting her school uniform in a locker.

  Kayo turned on the two girls angrily. “You’re being too silly for words,” she said. “I’m going to wear it. I don’t want to lose it again.”

  Bobby, who’d been on the point of saying something, simply clapped her hands. “Hustle, Savages, hustle. Let’s get warmed up.”

  Where was their focus? Bobby worried as she took her seat next to Angle and the game began. Where was that healthy competitive spirit? That desire to stomp the opposition? That bloodlust that made a winning team?

  She clapped routinely as Annette scored a goal. The Savages were playing sloppy. Linda should have been in position for the rebound.

  As she watched, the Nuthatch with the ball-handling skills slipped around Helen and drove the ball into Savage territory. Angle tensed beside Bobby, and the next moment the coach and the squad on the sidelines had leapt to their feet as the stands gasped, “Ohhhh!”

  The Nuthatches had shot on goal, and in one of those freak occurrences, the ball Edie blocked had rebounded off the goalpost and thwacked the Savages’ stalwart goalkeeper just above her left shin guard. She clutched her leg and fell to her side.

  “Is that a goal? Does that count?” Angle was shouting as Bobby signaled for a time-out and raced to the stricken goalie’s side. Edie was gasping in pain, hugging her leg to her chest as she sprawled on the ground.

  “Just a bad bruise,” reported the umpire, who had reached the fallen girl first. Indeed, the red swelling of a hematoma had already made a visible lump on the side of Edie’s leg. As her anxious teammates helped the wounded goalie limp off the field, Bobby tried to decide which player she should sub in. Penny Gordon was more adept than stolid Dodie Jessup, but Penny was as high-strung as a half-broke thoroughbred filly, and with superstitions swamping her good sense, she’d be seeing ghosts at the penalty mark. Still, reasoned Bobby, maybe goalkeeping would snap her out of her distraction. “Penny!” she called, deciding in favor of skill. “You’re in for Edie.”

  When the halftime whistle blew with the score 3–1, the Savages clustered around Edie, who sat next to Angle, an ice bag on her knee.

  “It’s just like when Hector slew Achilles,” commented Lotta. “It always seemed kind of far-fetched to me, that he got stabbed in the one spot he was vulnerable. But look at Edie! Getting whomped in the one spot her pads don’t cover.”

  “That ball was helped,” declared Linda suddenly. “Do you realize who we’re playing?”

  “The Birdbrains, so what?” Shirley Sarvis was skeptical.

  “The Nuthatches. The very bird species Miss Froelich was observing in the tower when she fell!”

  Bobby, who’d been listening with half an ear, turned to intervene, but Angle beat her to it. “You kids make me sick,” she scoffed. “Blaming ghosts for your own lousy playing. Miss Froelich wasn’t even looking at nuthatches!”

  “Well, what was she doing up there?” Helen Wechsler challenged the team outcast.

  “I dunno.” Angle shrugged. “Maybe she jumped on purpose.”

  “That’s enough!” Bobby was next to Edie in two strides, wishing she’d spoken up before Angle’s unfortunate remark. “Angle, you’re running laps before dinner for a week.” It was getting harder and harder to find a free period to punish the troubled teen. “And the next person who mentions Miss Froelich, or ghosts, or Kayo’s necklace is benched!”

  “But—” began Linda.

  “You’re benched!” shot back Bobby, as the whistle blew. “Joyce, you’re up!”

  It was a demoralized tribe of Savages who straggled onto the field. Two second-string players in key positions, a captain wearing a cursed necklace and the burning question unsettled in their mind: demon possession, or suicide? Neither possibility rallied their sinking school spirit.

  The Nuthatches, on the other hand, had been infused with a new vigor by their unexpected goal and the freak accident that had taken out the enemy’s goalie. The second half saw their transformation from aesthetes to athletes. The goalie dived for the ball enthusiastically. The center with the pink nail polish gripped her stick like she meant it. Kayo won the bully, but lost the ball when she glanced toward her coach for approval. Bobby could only gnash her teeth as the team captain fouled repeatedly in her effort to repair her error. Beryl charged in to help her friend, leaving a hole the Nuthatches flew through, and Penny misjudged every shot on goal.

  Angle put her head in her hands, unable to watch. 5–4, a Nuthatch victory. Only Annette, Shirley, and Joyce kept the game from being a complete rout.

  “It’s too bad, Bobby,” Mona said sympathetically as the spectators dispersed around them. “Maybe some cocoa in the common room when we get back to Metamora will help perk up the Savages’ spirits.”

  “Cocoa!” Aunt Dot appeared at Bobby’s elbow. “What they need is a good talking-to.”

  Bobby prayed for patience. The last thing she needed was an alumna complaining about this embarrassing defeat.

  “The girls had an off day, I guess,” she said tersely. She headed toward the locker room, but Dot followed her.

  “Off day! I expected a five-point win—I never dreamed you’d manage to lose!”

  Bobby wondered how she had ever found this woman attractive.

  “We alumnae have certain expectations,” Dot told her. “I’ve studied the stats and I know what kind
of performance the team is capable of, with the right coaching. Why didn’t you play Angle?”

  Bobby was speechless. The right coaching? Was the Kerwins’ aunt blaming her for this debacle? Did Dot Driscoll think she could tell Bobby who to play?

  Fuming inwardly, Bobby managed to get away from the interfering alumna, and entered the locker room in time to hear a different post-game analysis. “Don’t feel bad,” Linda comforted her friend Penny. “The spirits were against us.”

  That was the final straw. Bobby threw her clipboard to the floor where it landed with a resounding crash.

  “You can’t blame the spirits, you can’t blame me, you can’t blame anyone but yourselves!” she cried in a fury. “Do you know why you lost? Because you played like a bunch of dopes!”

  The startled girls jumped and flinched, but Bobby was on a rampage.

  “You played like you’d never seen a hockey ball before—and because why? Because instead of studying the game, you’ve stuffed your heads with this superstitious bunk! You spend all your time wringing your hands about unimportant things like missing necklaces, and dead math mistresses, and who likes who, while your opponents steal the ball from under your silly noses!”

  “Miss Froelich’s death isn’t exactly unimportant,” Linda ventured.

  “A real hockey player would care more about smashing her opponent!” Bobby lashed out. “How do you girls expect to succeed in life, let alone on the hockey field, with this losing attitude?” She tried to think of the worst thing she could say. “I don’t think any of you will ever make the National Women’s Hockey Team. Not one.”

  Even as she drew in her breath at the conclusion of her harangue, Bobby began to realize she’d made a serious mistake. She’d lost her temper with the Savages. She’d been unsettled by the occult rumors, let down by her love life, sore about the score, goaded by Dot Driscoll—and she’d taken it out on the team.

  The Savages weren’t used to such harshness. The stricken girls looked down at their hockey cleats. Kayo’s blue eyes had overflowed, and Linda and Penny were clutching each other for support. Beryl muttered with forced bravado, “I can smash the opponent whenever I feel like it.” Otherwise there was dead silence.