by Fiona Wilde
The room was silent now, except for her sniffling.
“You’re wrong, Anna,” he said. “You are so wrong.”
“Please,” she said dismissively, sarcastically.
“Is that what you really think?” he asked. “That life has handed me everything on a silver platter?”
“I’d count on it,” she shot back.
He opened another desk drawer and pulled out a framed photo. He spent several long moments looking at it before walking around to where Anna stood. Logan Chance sat down on the edge of the desk and handed her the picture. It showed a pretty blonde woman with a girl. Anna couldn’t tell if they were mother and daughter or sisters. Within moments, she had her answer.
“That was my wife,” he said, pointing to the woman on the left. “Her name was Camille. She was bright, beautiful, fun-loving energetic.” He pointed to the younger woman on the right. “That was my step-daughter, Patrice. She was fourteen when I met her mother. Patrice was a carbon copy of Camille. Just a wonderful girl. But she fell in with the wrong crowd and her mother was adamant that we handle things the ‘modern way.’ She was against draconian discipline, and by draconian I mean anything she thought my hurt Patrice’s spirit or infringe on her right to self-determination. Just about anything I wanted to do fell under that umbrella and I had to stand by and watch while that beautiful little girl slipped further and further away.”
Anna felt a sick feeling sink into the pit of her stomach. She knew this story would have no happy ending.
“Eighteen months ago, we got a call from the hospital emergency room. Patrice had overdosed at a party. Her mother never got to say goodbye, at not a goodbye that her daughter would hear. Patrice was in a deep coma for three days before she died.”
Logan Chance stood and walked towards the window. He looked out over the grounds of the school. He seemed to be struggling to continue.
“Camille...she…” He rubbed his forehead. “Camille joined her daughter three weeks later. I was at work when I got the call. I never thought she’d take her own life, but the grief and the guilt were just too much. She kept saying over and over that Patrice was afraid of the dark, and that she couldn’t let her be alone. If only I’d known what she meant. I made her go to therapy; I thought she was coping. But she wasn’t. She was pretending to cope.”
He turned to Anna.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think since I’ve been alone. Patrice was a child of privilege, just like I was, just like so many students here are. Camille was the same kind of parent as the ones who send their kids here. They think that overdoses and discipline problems are something that happens to ‘other’ kids. Kids like...”
“Like the ones I taught before coming here?” Anna said.
He nodded. “Yeah, just like those kids,” he said. “They think their social status immunizes them against the kind of horrific fate that befell Patrice. They think defiance is just a phase, a way of kids expressing themselves. They don’t see the danger. They let their kids down. Camille let Patrice down. I let Patrice down, and Camille. I should have done what my head kept telling me to do. I should have laid down the law to both of them and let them rant and rave and throw their tantrums. I should have taken them both across my knee for their attitudes. If I had, I’d have a wife and stepdaughter waiting at home for me. Now, when I want to take my wife flowers, I have to take them to the cemetery.”
“What happened haunts me, Anna. It will always haunt me. I know you oppose my being in this position given that I’m not from an academic background, but I think my experience with Patrice gives me the kind of insight that will benefit Bridgestone. I don’t pretend to be a teacher, but I know good ones when I see them. You’re a good teacher. You may not like my philosophy on discipline, but what I’ve learned in the last two years has taught me that a good, sound spanking is far less traumatic than other options. And believe me, these kids at this school need someone with that philosophy watching over them, because their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do it.”
Anna regarded him in silence. Her anger at him - in spite of what he’d done - had seeped away, leaving pity in its wake. She was still offended and sore, but more ready to talk to him. And to listen to what he had to say.
“Why didn’t you just tell me these things instead of…?” She looked at the paddle, laying there on the desk. It was hard to believe that something that still and lifeless could cause so much pain.
“...Instead of spanking you?” he asked. “Because you deserved a spanking, for one. I told you I wouldn’t be defied. And also because I suspect you’ve never been spanked. I wanted you to see that you could come out of it having learned a lesson.”
“It hurt!” she said, her lip beginning to tremble. She tried to stop it, and the tears that started to flow again, but could not.
He smiled sympathetically and then moved a hand forward, slowing as she flinched a little and then a little more until he was brushing the tears from her face with his fingers.
“I know it hurt,” he said gently. “But that’ll go away soon enough. And now you know what to expect if you try to rally these kids against me, don’t you?”
She looked at him, wide-eyed. “You’d do…that again?”
He nodded. “Consistency, Anna. If you defy me, I’ll spank you. You can count on it. And so can your students. Which means tomorrow you’re going to have to inform them that you gave them some erroneous information about your power to override your headmaster’s policy, understand?”
Anna closed her eyes and sighed.
“If I do that, then they won’t respect me,” she said.
“They’ll still respect you,” he said. “They’ll just respect you as someone who has to live within the same framework as everyone else. You can even tell them you don’t agree with it if you’d like. I’m not going to make my teachers pretend to agree with every policy I implement. But I won’t have them badmouthing policy. And I won’t allow them to defy it. Is that something you can live with?”
“Would it matter?” she asked.
The headmaster considered this and then slowly smiled.
“No,” he said.
Anna couldn’t believe it, but now she was smiling, too. And then laughing with him for a moment before they both fell silent and she realized they were making eye contact. She broke it before he did.
“I need to get home,” she said. “I’ve got lesson plans to prepare.”
“Yeah I’ve got to go, too,” he said. “There was a storm last night. It probably ruined the flowers on Camille’s grave. I’m going to go replace them on the way home. I don’t want to miss the florist’s.”
Anna nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. He made the statement almost casually, as if failing to understand how sad the admission seemed to someone outside his situation. Anna felt guilty thinking so badly of him, imagining that he’d had such a charmed life. She’d been so wrong; it was hard to imagine that kind of pain.
She thought about his situation all the way home, especially when she arrived to find her mother sitting in the chair staring out the window. Anna’s father had died under less traumatic circumstances, and she’d not lost a child, but even so the loss had nearly crippled her.
“Have you eaten?” Anna asked.
Her mother looked at her blankly. “No,” she said. “I was sitting here looking at pictures….”
Anna looked down; her mother’s laps were filled with photo albums.
“Mom…” She took the albums from her lap and placed them on the shelf, resisting the urge to tell her she couldn’t keep doing this, that she’d just waste away if she didn’t. But Anna knew she couldn’t control her mother’s grief. Different people dealt with loss in different ways. Right now, Anna’s mother’s grief was still too fresh and raw. Its weight was still too heavy to throw off.
“How about some Chinese food?” Anna asked.
“Jack loved Chinese,” her mother said quietly, staring out the window. “You know, I
need to tell the gardener to trim the grass around the tennis court better. It looks uneven.”
That was something else Anna was trying to get used to - her mother’s newfound tendency towards randomness. Beth Fowler had never been like that before, but her daughter understood that things changed, especially in the wake of a loss.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “We’ll leave him a note.”
Anna left the room and went to the kitchen, where she rifled through the drawers until she found the menu for the Chinese restaurant. She ordered orange chicken and spring rolls and crab rangoons. When the food arrived she served it to her mother with a large glass of tea and a Valium. Anna got her upstairs and into bed just in time. Within moments the older woman was out like a light.
As Anna sat preparing her lesson plans, she wondered how she ever could have threatened to leave Bridgestone. Her mother was dependent on her now, not financially –she was the classic rich widow– but Elizabeth Fowler sure needed her daughter in every other way. And Anna knew if she’d quit her job she’d go mad sitting home all day trying to get her mother off the couch before she was ready to rejoin the world.
After finishing her paperwork, Anna tidied the house even though the maid had left little to do. She showered then, and in the bathroom mirror caught a glimpse of her naked bottom. The faint imprints of Logan Chance’s large hand still remained on her alabaster skin. He’d spanked her. He’d actually spanked her. Anna’s mind replayed the incident in spite of her efforts to stop it. It had hurt so badly, and yet she’d been wrong. The spanking had not felt cruel; at least not the way he’d delivered it. Afterwards, he’d explained exactly why he’d done it. He’d been almost tender, his blue eyes looking into hers intently.
Anna felt a flush of blood and heat suffuse her breasts and then spread lower. To her horror, she realized the memory was having an unexpected physical effect. Her pussy felt swollen, her clit ached. Thoroughly embarrassed with herself, Anna dropped the towel she’d been drying herself with and jumped back in the shower, turning it on the coldest setting until she was shivering and the wanton feelings abated.
What in the world had happened? Where had that come from? Anna asked those questions over and over until she convinced herself it was fatigue and nothing more. Fatigue and stress. What else would explain that kind of reaction to a man she’d disdained since they’d been classmates?
She went into her mother’s room. Beth Fowler was snoring. Anna walked over to the dresser and picked up the bottle of Valium.
“Sorry, mom,” she said. “But tonight I need this as bad as you.”
Chapter Five
Anna’s students were less than thrilled to find that their new favorite teacher was being forced to enforce disciplinary policy after all.
“How’d they find out you told us?” asked one of the students, a slim girl that reminded Anna of herself. The girl’s name was Penelope, but her classmates called her Pixie.
“Someone told the headmaster what I said,” she replied.
The other students all turned in unison to look at Hannah Bartlett, who crossed her arms defensively across her chest.
“Snitch,” someone hissed.
“Please.” Anna raised her hands. “It doesn’t matter. For the record, I still disagree with the policy and the headmaster knows I do. But taking your frustration out on other students isn’t going to change Mr. Chance’s mind, so let’s just concentrate on having a good year in spite of it, shall we?”
“It’s dumb anyway,” a boy named Gary piped up. “Somebody told me they just show you the paddle and don’t use it. They said that everything about people getting whacked with it is made up.”
Anna’s mind flashed back to the day before. She’d been standing up to teach since she’d arrived that morning.
“No, I don’t think it is made up,” she replied. “In fact, I’m sure that people do get paddled. And if anyone is worried about it, then the best thing to do is to make sure they just follow the rules.”
“Listen to your teacher, kids. She’s a smart lady.” Logan Chance was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He wore a tweed jacket, thin white sweater, brown pants and loafers. He looked relaxed and handsome. Anna wondered how long he’d been eavesdropping.
“Miss Fowler, may I?”
She nodded, indicating he could enter.
“Miss Fowler meant well yesterday,” he said. “She has convictions, and I want you to have them too. And just for the record, the fact that she has to follow the rules and will be held accountable does not mean she should be seen as any less of an authority figure. In fact…” His eyes fell on Hannah Bartlett. “…if I even suspect that one of you is showing Miss Fowler any less respect than she is due, I’ll expel you on the spot. I don’t care who your daddy is, got that?”
The students nodded solemnly. Hannah’s face was flushed with anger, but she didn’t argue. Anna couldn’t help but to feel vindicated and satisfied. Logan Chance smiled at her as he left, and her heart lurched a little. She looked down so the kids wouldn’t see the flush that rose to her cheek. One of the things that Anna hated about being so pale was that it made hiding her embarrassment or pleasure exceedingly difficult.
The students seemed to heed the headmaster’s directive and Anna’s fears that they’d lose respect for her turned out to be simply that - fears. It was just a bonus to have them get excited about the unit on Shakespeare, especially when she told them she’d let them act out “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the end of the semester if they all worked hard.
When lunch rolled around, she sat at the staff table with the other teachers. Most were older but even so they treated her with respect and some even solicited advice and complimented her on how enthused her students seemed.
Anna ended the day with a great sense of satisfaction. The only damper came when she walked in the door to find her mother crying over a video of the last vacation she’d taken with her late husband.
“Mom…” Anna walked over and snapped the television off.
“We had such a good time,” Beth Fowler sobbed.
Anna came and sat down beside her. “Mom, you hated Aruba,” she laughed. “You said it was too sandy, remember? You said the landscape looked like Tatooine from Star Wars…”
Her mother laughed a little in spite of herself and dabbed her eyes with the corner of the bathrobe she’d been wearing when Anna had left the house.
“I know,” she said. “But your father was with me and now…”
“Mom…” Anna put her arms around her mother’s slim shoulders. It felt so odd, being the caretaker.
“Have you eaten?” she asked. Her mother shook her head.
“Mom...” Anna tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. She stood and went to the kitchen. Half the orange chicken was left, but Anna felt guilty serving her mother leftovers. Maybe a home-cooked meal was in order. She made chicken with a basil cream sauce, steamed some asparagus and served it all on a bed of jasmine rice. To her relief, her mother ate almost everything on her plate. Anna made a mental note to stop ordering take-out.
After dinner, Anna perused the family DVD collection for a movie they could watch. Nothing romantic, no comedies, and certainly not the action-adventure flicks that would just remind Beth Fowler of her husband, who could watch Die Hard a hundred times and never get tired of it. She settled on a spy thriller. It was one that Anna had never seen before, and she was actually enjoying it when she heard a noise. She sat up in her chair and looked towards the window.
“Did you hear that?” she asked her mother.
“Raccoons.” Beth Fowler glanced nonchalantly towards the window. “The gardener needs to trap them.”
Anna resisted the urge to tell her mother that the gardener wouldn’t be the gardener much longer if she started sending him after wild animals. She got up from her chair and opened the front door, and promptly dropped the drink she was holding. A car was speeding down the driveway, its wheels turning up gravel. Anna
knew enough from living in the inner city to make a mental note of its license plate. Then she went to her own car, which she could see didn’t look quite as she left it. Someone had dumped a whole bag of rotten garbage on the hood. The stench was incredible.
“Great,” she said, and went inside to get a bag and some rags.
“What was it?” her mother asked.
“You were right,” she said. “It was raccoons.”
“Where are you going with that bag?” her mother asked.
Anna stood there, thinking. “I need a liner for my trash can in class,” she said. “I’m going to put in my car so I don’t forget.”
Her mother looked at her suspiciously. “They don’t give you trash bags for your class?”
“The economy’s tight, mom,” she replied.
Beth Fowler nodded, her mind turning to other things. Anna went back outside and held her breath as she picked up the egg shells, dirty diapers and putrefying meat that coated her Mazda. She hosed it down and then walked down to the pool house, where she showered herself and slipped into terrycloth robe. She came back in through the back entrance and was relieved to find her mother had already gone up to bed.
Anna suspected who was behind the attack, but she couldn’t confirm it until the next morning when she called the police station and asked a deputy her mother went to church with to run the plate she’d seen on the fleeing car. It belonged to Beck Bartlett, Hannah’s older brother. Beck was a sophomore, and Anna had learned from one of the other teachers at lunch that he was a problem student who suffered from dyslexia and some other learning disabilities. Beck was a good athlete, but had a reputation for being a bit dim-witted and impressionable. It didn’t take much imagination to suspect the popular and pretty Hannah to convince her older brother to deface a teacher’s car.
But the knowledge put Anna in something of a dilemma. If she went to Logan Chance, he’d expel Hannah and Beck. Expulsion was a big deal, worse even than a paddling. Some kids - especially kids like Beck - ended up with worse problems if they got kicked out of school. Anna decided not to tell the headmaster. This was something she preferred to handle on her own.
