by Owen Thomas
Although not taking his eyes off of David, who had stood on the curb looking morosely at the back of the car, Hollis had stiffened himself and accelerated his way to the office. Sure, David was feeling down, and he did not like to see his children upset. But it was just first-day jitters. That, and maybe some resentment that he could not go to Littlefield Middle School with his friends. But David would suck it up. He was smart as a whip and The Academy was where he belonged. He was a Johns, by God! A Johns! He would rise to the challenge.
He had known at the time that David would be surprised at how right Hollis had been. He had known that Susan, too, would be surprised, for she had only grudgingly indulged the monstrous investment and had been far too willing to send their children to public schools. Hollis, however, would not be surprised and he would not regret the investment. That, by God, was what money was for: investing in your children. The investment had been huge, sure. But he had known that it was well worth the stretch.
Still, Susan had had her concerns about the money. He had had to admonish her to stop living in the past and to look more to the future.
“You act like I’m still selling houses, Susan. That was fifteen years ago. You still act like you don’t know if I’ll be able to pay the damn electric bill. We could have paid for this even when I was in mortgage loans.”
Susan had wavered, shaking her head uncertainly and turning back to dicing the celery. Hollis had seen this opening in the debate that had been conducted over many nights and he had rammed on through.
“We’re not in Dayton anymore, Susan. This is the big leagues. The money is good. It’s good enough.”
She had stopped her chopping and looked up at him. She had opened her mouth to speak, but he had pushed on.
“This is a great opportunity for our son. This is precisely why I work so hard; to take advantage of opportunities like this one. Okay?”
And Susan had shaken her head and resumed her dicing, saying something like it was still a lot of money, but Hollis had not let up.
“Fine. So what. It’s a lot of goddamned money. I earned it and this is how I’m spending it. David is going to Vanguard and so will Tilly. I’m not skimping on their education, Susan; I won’t do it. Besides, you seem to be missing the bigger picture here.”
It had taken Hollis another hour to re-explain for her the bigger picture, which by Hollis’ reasoning was that an investment in The Vanguard Academy would actually make them money in the long run. The bigger picture had involved Charles Compson III, the imposing, ruggedly attractive, statuesque founder of the Vanguard Academy, who in those years had been one of the largest commercial developers in central Ohio and who had an impressive project record stretching over into Illinois and down into Indiana.
Mr. Compson, who had made his first fortune running his father’s highly successful Miami-based residential construction company in Florida, had settled comfortably into his own, building and developing far-flung commercial projects with no nexus to his Floridian roots. He had started early, of course, dropping out of school and working full time for his father at the age of sixteen. By the time he was in his early forties, Compson Construction had a presence, if not a solid competitive foothold, in a dozen major cities scattered throughout the Ohio River Valley. He had an innate talent for reading the palm of urban sprawl and for picking the project that would bend the forces of municipal evolution to his will. He tended to avoid the hot and heavy vogue markets, preferring instead those communities on the cusp of identity, teetering between yet-to-be and never will. He underbid and over-performed as though the business of building and making money was set to music. The lenders loved him.
Charles Compson had not moved his family from Florida all the way to Canal Winchester, Ohio for business reasons. It was true that a business headquartered in Columbus was more in keeping with the geographic scope of the Compson Construction business model than was Miami. It was also true that Ohio offered distinct advantages over Florida in managing his labor and equipment needs. Nevertheless, the move had been more for personal than business reasons.
He built a large but tasteful, modestly appointed home near Jackson Lake – on the outskirts of the quaintly historic Canal Winchester, only twenty miles outside of Columbus – because beneath all of his success and urban polish, he resonated with the vibrations of a simple life, led by a set of simple values. His grandfather on his mother’s side had come from Pennsylvania Mennonites. His father, although stubbornly nonreligious as an adult, had been raised Pentecostal. Unassuming frugality, doctrinaire certainty of purpose, and an innate distrust of moral complexity were all in Charles Compson’s blood. Compared to the cacophonous, color-colliding, morally pungent Miami free-for-all, the relative simplicity of Ohio – its quiet, rural celebration of Rockwellian Midwestern values – struck a chord in Charles, like the aroma of an apple pie cooling on the windowsill, that told him this was a place to call home.
Financially speaking, living in Canal Winchester had made Charles Compson a very big fish in a very small pond. A whale in a bowl of goldfish. The median income of Canal Winchester residents compared to that of the Compson family annual income in the same way that Jackson Lake compared to the Gulf of Mexico. He certainly could have chosen to live among his economic peers. Indeed, he did own houses, condos, and other home-like structures in which he and his family slept and ate and stored their luggage while vacationing. Maui. Vail. Manhattan. Cabo San Lucas. But a man’s home – the place he actually lived – defined the man himself. Charles Compson III believed himself a man of unquestioned virtue, uncompromised by success because in spite of so much opportunity, he was made of simple tastes and drawn to simple pleasures. A modest man of great means. The size of the pond was the whole point.
When he was not traveling from one project site to another, which was often, Charles relished the antidotal simplicity of home. With a population of less than five thousand souls, the municipal corporation of Canal Winchester was classified as a “village” by the state. He could walk to the Methodist church, where his wife, Alice, stayed true to her mother’s example as an active community organizer for the good of the faith. He developed personal relationships with each of the seven members of the Canal Winchester Village Council. He joined the Lions Club. He took turns coaching Little League and sponsored village entrants in the annual Columbus Soapbox Derby. Had there been an annual frog-jumping contest, Charles Compson would have raised frogs. And all of this bucolic Americana was a scant twenty miles southeast of Ohio’s capital and largest city where Compson Construction counted its money and kept its books and received service of process. It was, in a word, perfect.
The Vanguard Academy completed that perfection. Charles and Alice Compson brought with them to Ohio their six criminally attractive children and their very strong opinions about the corrupting influence of the public schools. The schools in Miami had inspired trouble-prone Charles to drop out and to join the real world early, the first in a long unbroken string of highly lucrative decisions. That decision had been mostly practical; a weighing of his chances of graduating against more immediate rewards.
But by the time he had his own children to educate, Charles’ opinion of public schools had merged into his evolving Randian personal philosophy that tended to pit the inherent virtue of the individual against the acquired depravity of the collective. The key to a successful life, he thought, lay in the struggle against moral compromise. Melting pots, he concluded, bred the contagion of personal corruption. Come out from among them and be ye separate.
Charles Compson III had, therefore, moved to Ohio and built his own damned school. An academy is what he had built. A refuge for intellectually gifted children with parents who were discriminating and disinclined to wallow in mediocrity. He had financed the construction of the school and its first year of operation using Ohio First Securities and Credit money for which he had pledged two of his commercial properties – a shopping mall near Jefferson and a Columbus office complex – as coll
ateral. The deal had been shepherded by an up-and-comer at OFSC named Hollis Johns whom Charles seemed to like a great deal and whom he had taken to calling and inviting out for drinks whenever a new project struck his fancy. Charles Compson thought Hollis Johns had his finger on the pulse of things in the state of Ohio and he often told him so.
“You and I are going do a lot of deals in this state Hollis,” Compson had told Hollis once after too many drinks. “A lot of deals. Stick with me and I will stick with you and I will make you one wealthy son of a bitch.”
Charles Compson, in other words, was a good man for Hollis to know. And when, in the flush of male bonding over drinks and a very fine dinner in downtown Cincinnati, Charles had asked about Hollis’ children and had personally encouraged Hollis to enroll his son, David, in the Vanguard Academy to ensure that he received “a quality education” – by which Charles meant the finest and well-screened teachers from around the country, no expense spared on the class materials, and a principal recruited at a very high price out of his position as an Associate Dean at Yale – Hollis had had no choice.
“Call my girl at the office and she’ll get you an application. Send it to me and I’ll take care of the rest. Your boy is just the material the Academy is looking for.”
Susan had eventually relented. Not agreed, exactly. But she had deferred, as she had been increasingly apt to do in those years. Hollis’ conviction on the issue had proven stronger than both her reservations about the Vanguard Academy and her idealistic affinity for the concept of public education. That, and Hollis certainly was the breadwinner; she could not get around that irrefutable point.
The money from Columbus First Savings, the pre-merger incarnation of OFSC, had been spectacular compared to their modest beginnings. The move out of Dayton to Columbus had not been entirely necessary. The commute would not have been onerous, especially since they had blossomed into a two-car household. But Hollis had felt the pull of Columbus. It was not enough to work there and to still live in Dayton in the house paid for and furnished by his mother. Dayton had become a child’s suit, pinching him under the arms and leaving his ankles exposed beneath the cuffs. He had blamed it on the commute, but both of them had known that that was simply a stand-in argument, substituting for reasons that defied articulation. Susan had relented.
They had sold the Dayton gift-house and purchased another, bigger and better in every respect, located in a well-kept neighborhood only twenty minutes outside of Columbus proper. But while Columbus had meant big opportunities for Hollis, Susan’s career had foundered both as a result of the move and the rearing of two children.
“You can teach there as well as you can teach here,” Hollis had said consolingly.
But that had not proven to be true. The Columbus market for teachers was much tighter than it had been in Dayton. Had she really pushed, she might have found a position – a grade, a school – that was right for her. There was a grade school position in Westerville that might have worked. Or, she could have commuted to and from Dayton, keeping her old job in the school that she loved. But she had not pushed. There was David to consider, and little Tilly. They needed her first.
Hollis was doing what he could to support the family, up early and home late and gone plenty of weekends. OFSC did not acknowledge the concept of banker’s hours; or at least Hollis did not. He would not be able to feed and dress children just so that she could commute to and from Dayton. Hollis had not said or done anything to foreclose the option except to suggest the hiring of a nanny as their best option. Susan was not hiring a nanny. Hollis did what he could, and she would do what she could.
The upshot was that Susan’s value – her contribution to the family – was not easily or intuitively monetized. Hollis made the money; she made the bed. Hollis wore the pants, she the apron. If there were ever a question about beds or aprons or food preparation, then Hollis would defer to her judgment. But if it was about spending – or investing, which was his word for spending – the paycheck he brought home, then Hollis expected her to put in her two cents and then step aside. And, for the most part, she did.
The issue of the Vanguard Academy had provoked more resistance than normal only because it concerned things like education and her children. These were issues in which Susan had greater than normal interest and experience and, for the same reason, Hollis had been more solicitous of her views than might otherwise have been the case.
Susan’s opinion of the Vanguard Academy had never been one of outright opposition. She did not have enough hard information to completely oppose the idea. Instead, she had counseled a niggling skepticism; a dogged resistance to acknowledging the Vanguard Academy as the spectacular opportunity that Hollis believed it to be. Hollis saw that she could not shake her educational romanticism and that she had equated a quality secondary education at a well-funded private school with a kind of social elitism that simply rubbed the fur in the wrong direction.
It did not help that she disliked Charles Compson, whom she had once met at an OFSC Christmas party and found to be rather disdainful and aloof, an opinion which Hollis did not share and which he had chalked up to the man’s extraordinary rectitude and formality when it came to dealings with women. Charles Compson had not bowed, exactly, upon his introduction to Susan, but there had been a slight rigidity in his manner; a perfunctory genuflection in the eyes that betrayed the wariness with which he always seemed to receive the opposite sex.
“He’s no friend of women,” Susan had opined later, removing her earrings.
“Who, Charles? You’re misinterpreting.”
“Chivalry and manners on the outside, all pig on the inside.”
“Oh, come on. That’s a little harsh. He’s just very proper. Respectful.”
“Didn’t feel respectful. Creepy maybe.”
“Creepy?”
“I know when I’m being sized up.”
“Are we talking about the same man?”
“Yeah. Mr. Darcy meets Count Dracula. That one.”
“Well, I like him. I like him a lot. Hell of a businessman. He’s taught me a lot.”
“Oh, I have no doubt he’s a hell of a businessman.”
“And a hell of a family man.”
“Someone married him?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I pity her.”
“She worships him.”
“I’ll bet.”
“He worships her. Married for twenty something years. Rock solid.”
“So.”
“So?”
“So it’s just every other woman he holds in contempt?”
“Contempt? I thought you said he was sizing you up.”
“Same thing.”
“It is?”
“How’d you like to be reduced to a set of pecs?”
“I saw respect. I didn’t see contempt. You’ve got him all wrong.”
“He called me Madam.”
“So?”
“So he’s barely older than we are.”
“So?”
“He squeezed the tips of my fingers.”
“So?”
“He never looked me in the eyes. Not once.”
“You’re imagining…”
“Really? How would you know? You took off to fetch him a glass of wine.”
“Fetch… I was just being polite. It was our party. He’s the client.”
“Fine. But while you were gone I felt like I was two tits and the plague.”
“You’re very attractive and he’s very proper. Very traditional.”
“Yeah, as in women-have-their-place traditional.”
“No, as in any-woman-who-is-not-his-wife-has-her-place traditional.”
“And I’m telling you that my place is in the apartment he keeps in the city.”
“I just don’t…that’s not Charles Compson. He very well respected in this state. He’s a millionaire many times over. Totally self-made. He came from nothing. Wholesome upbringing. Good values. He’s no Don Juan.”
“We go to the same Rotary Club. All the women seem to like him just fine.”
“Rotarians. Who else?”
“Well… Malena seems to like him when he comes in. So does Iris.”
“Iris likes him?”
“Seems to.”
“So then it’s just me.”
“Like I said, he’s just very formal with all women.”
“The formality’s a cover, Hollis.”
“It’s just how he is. You’d like him if you got to know him. You should hear him talk about the importance of family and how Alice occupies the center of his universe.”
“He says these things?”
“All the time.”
“What kind of business meetings are these anyway?”
“The friendly kind. He talks a lot about his family. About his wife.”
“Do you talk about yours?”
“Me?”
“Yes. You.”
“I don’t know. Yes. I have, I guess.”
“What have you told him?”
“That I have one. A wife. A family. Basic stuff.”
“Male bonding through commiseration?”
“No. Just good business.”
“I bet he’s one of those men that keeps his wife locked away to keep her pure. Contained. Uncontaminated. Alice sits alone with the kids as he’s off making his secretary take dictation.”
“No. Nope. Not Charles Compson.”
“What does she do?”
“Alice? They’ve got four or five kids. Or six.”
“Six? Is she a rabbit?”
“Her hands are full. She’s got a teaching degree she doesn’t use.”
