Big Girl: A Novel

by Danielle Steel

  Victoria stood for ages looking up at the school, and then she turned and walked away and went back to the subway to go to Midtown. She wanted to go shopping for something to wear on Monday. She wasn’t happy with the outfits she had brought with her, and one of them was too tight. She wanted to look perfect when she interviewed for the job, and she knew how unlikely it was that they would hire her fresh out of school, and they must have had many other applicants, but her grades and recommendations were good, and she had all the excitement and enthusiasm of youth for her first teaching job. She hadn’t told her parents that she had come, because her father still wanted her to look for something in another field, with better pay and more possibilities for advancement in the future. Her dream of a teaching career didn’t meet their standards as something they could brag about or that would enhance their image. “My daughter is a teacher” did nothing for them, but working at the Madison School in New York meant everything to Victoria. It had been her first choice when she sent out inquiries to the best private schools in New York, and met all her criteria for dream job, no matter how low the pay. She would manage to live on it somehow if she even got the chance.

  Victoria walked back through the snow to the subway, got off at East 59th Street, took the escalator upstairs to Bloomingdale’s, and began looking for something she could wear. The clothes she liked frequently didn’t come in her size. She was wearing a size fourteen at the moment, although they were a little tight. She sometimes let herself get heavier, without meaning to, in the winter, and then had to wear her size sixteens. The pressure of wearing fewer clothes, showing her body in bathing suits and shorts, and not being able to hide everything under a coat usually helped her bring her size down in summer. She wished she had been more disciplined about it recently. She had already promised herself to lose weight by graduation, and particularly now if she got this job in New York. She didn’t want to be at her biggest when she started her first teaching job.

  After endless discouraging searching and some truly upsetting tryons, she found a pair of gray slacks and a long dark blue blazer to wear with a pale blue turtleneck sweater the same color as her eyes. She bought a pair of high-heeled boots that added a younger look to the outfit. It looked dignified, respectable, not too dressy, and just elegant enough to make her look serious about the job. It was the look she assumed would be worn by teachers at that school. And she was happy with the outfit, when she got back on the subway with her shopping bags and rode back downtown to her hotel. The streets were still snarled by snowplows, buried cars, and tall mounds of shoveled snow everywhere. The city was a mess. But Victoria was in great spirits with her purchases. She was going to wear a pair of small pearl earrings her mother had given her. And the well-cut navy blazer hid a multitude of sins. The outfit looked young, professional, and trim.

  The morning of the interview Victoria woke up with a knot in her stomach. She washed and blow-dried her hair, then brushed it into a sleek ponytail and tied it with a black satin ribbon. She dressed carefully, put on the big down coat, and went out into the February sunshine. The weather had warmed up and was turning the snow to slush with ice rivers in the gutters. She had to be careful not to get splashed with it by passing cars as she made her way to the subway. She thought of taking a cab, but she knew the subway was faster. And she reached the school ten minutes before her nine o’clock interview, in time to see hundreds of young people filtering into the school. Almost all were wearing jeans, and a few of the girls wore miniskirts and boots despite the cold weather. They were talking and laughing, with a wild assortment of hairdos and hair colors, carrying their books. They looked like kids in any other high school, not the offspring of the elite. And the two teachers standing at the main entrance as they filtered in were dressed the same way the kids were, in jeans and down jackets, running shoes or boots. There was a nice informal feeling to the group, and wholesome too. The two monitors were a man and a woman. The female teacher wore her long hair in a braid; the male teacher’s head was shaved. Victoria noticed that he had a small bird tattooed on the back of his head. They were chatting animatedly as they followed the last stragglers inside, and Victoria walked in right behind them, wearing her new outfit and hoping she would make a good impression. Her appointment was with Eric Walker, the headmaster, and they had mentioned that they would want her to meet with the dean of students too. She gave the receptionist her name, and waited on a chair in the lobby. Five minutes later a man in his mid forties came out to greet her, in jeans, a black sweater, a tweed jacket, and hiking boots. He smiled warmly at Victoria and invited her into his office, and waved at a battered leather chair on the other side of his desk.

  “Thank you for coming in from Northwestern,” he said, as she took off her bulky coat so he could see her new blazer. She hoped he wouldn’t decide she was too uptight for the school, which turned out to be much more casual than she had expected. “I was afraid you might not be able to get in, with the snowstorm,” he said pleasantly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way. We were having a dance on Saturday, but we had to cancel. The kids from the suburbs and Connecticut couldn’t have gotten in. About a fifth of our students commute to school. We had to reschedule for next weekend.” He had her CV on his desk, Victoria noticed, and was fully prepared for the meeting. She saw that he had the transcript of her grades that she had sent him too. She had Googled him and knew that he had gone to Yale, and had a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard. He was Dr. Walker, although he didn’t use the title on his correspondence to her. His credentials were impressive. And he had published two books on secondary education for laymen, and a guide for parents and students on the college application process. She felt insignificant in his presence, but he had a warm friendly demeanor, and turned his full attention to her.

  “So, Victoria,” he said, leaning back in his own ancient leather chair, behind a handsome English partner’s desk he said had been his father’s. The things in his office looked expensive and well worn to the point of battered. And there were bookcases crammed full of books. “What makes you think you want to be a teacher? And why here? Wouldn’t you rather be back in L.A., where you won’t have to shovel snow to get to school?” He smiled as he said it, and so did she. She liked him, and wanted to impress him, and she wasn’t sure how to do it. All she had brought with her were enthusiasm and truth.

  “I love kids. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher ‘when I grew up.’ I just knew it was right for me. I’m not interested in business, or getting up the corporate ladder, although that’s what my parents think I should do, and what they respect. I think that if I make a difference in a young person’s life, it would be much better and more meaningful than anything else I could do.” She could see in his eyes that it was the right answer, and she was pleased. And she meant it.

  “Even if it means you’re miserably paid, and make less money than everyone else you know?”

  “Yes, even if I’m miserably paid. I don’t care. I don’t need a lot to live on.” He didn’t ask her if her parents were going to help her—that wasn’t his problem.

  “You’d make a lot more money working for the public school system,” he said honestly, and she knew that too.

  “I don’t want to do that. And I don’t want to go back to L.A. I’ve wanted to live in New York since high school. I would have gone to college here if I’d been accepted at NYU or Barnard. I know this is right for me. And Madison was my first-choice school.”

  “Why? Rich kids are no easier to teach than others. They’re smart kids, and they’re exposed to a lot of things. No matter what their grades are, and we have our weak students too, they’re savvy, and you can’t bullshit them. They know it if you don’t know your stuff, and they’ll call you on it. They’re more confident and bolder than kids with fewer advantages, and that can be tough for a teacher. And the parents can be tough here. They’re very demanding, and they want the best that we can give them. And we’re fully committed to doing just that. Does it bother you tha
t you’d only be four or five years older than some of your students? The opening we have will involve juniors and seniors, and we might have you cover an English class for sophomores as well. They can be a handful, especially in this school where some of them are mature for their age. These kids have a lot of exposure to a very sophisticated lifestyle with all that that entails. Do you think you’re up to it?” he asked her candidly, and Victoria nodded at him with a serious look in her big blue eyes.

  “I think I am, Dr. Walker. I think I could handle it. I’m certain of it, if you give me the chance.”

  “The teacher you’ll be replacing will only be out for a year. I can’t promise you anything after that, no matter how well you perform here. So this isn’t a long-term commitment on our part, but only for a year. After that, we’d have to see what would come up, if anyone else is leaving or going out on leave. So if you want a long-term commitment, you should probably look somewhere else.” She couldn’t say that all her other options had turned her down.

  “I’d be thrilled with a year,” she said honestly. She didn’t know it, but they had already checked her references with the modeling agency and the law firm, and were impressed by how good they were, in terms of her reliability, her conscientiousness, her professionalism and honesty. She had also completed her student teaching assignments, and the references on them had been excellent too. All Eric Walker needed to decide now was if she was the right teacher for their school. She seemed like a bright, sweet girl. And he was touched by how much she wanted the job.

  After he spent forty-five minutes with her, Eric Walker passed her on to his assistant, and she gave Victoria a tour of the school. It was an impressive building with well-kept classrooms, full of alert students using brand-new, very expensive equipment. It was an atmosphere that any teacher would have given anything to teach in, and they all looked like bright, alert, interested, good kids to her. And then she met with the dean of students, who told her something about their student body, and the type of situations she’d face. They were the same as high school students anywhere, except with more money and opportunities, and in some cases very complicated family situations. But difficult home lives were not exclusive to the very rich, nor the poor.

  At the end of the second interview, they thanked her for coming, told her they were seeing several other candidates, and would let her know. And after thanking them too, Victoria then found herself out on the street, looking up at the school, praying she would get the job. She had no idea if she would, and they had been so pleasant to her that it was hard to tell if they were just very polite or enthused about her. She didn’t know. She walked west all the way to Fifth Avenue, and then north five blocks, to the Metropolitan Museum, where she saw a new wing of the Egyptian exhibit, and then had lunch in the cafeteria alone, before treating herself to a cab back to her hotel.

  She sat in the backseat watching New York slide by and people swarm around like ants in the streets. All she could hope was that she would be part of it one day. She expected to hear back from Madison in a few weeks. And she realized that if she didn’t get the job, she would have to start interviewing at other schools, in Chicago, and maybe even L.A., although the last thing she wanted to do was go home. But if nothing else turned up, she might not have any other choice. She dreaded the thought of living in L.A. again, and even worse, the possibility of living at home, and facing all the same problems she’d always had there. Living with her parents would be too depressing.

  She packed her bag and took a cab to the airport. She had an hour to spare before her flight, and she was so anxious after the interview, wondering whether she had done well or not, that she went to the restaurant nearest her gate and ordered a cheeseburger and a hot fudge sundae, and devoured both. She felt stupid once she had. She hadn’t needed it, or the french fries that came with it. But she had been starving and nervous, and the meal she’d eaten offered some comfort and relief from her terrors. What if she didn’t get the job? She told herself that if she didn’t, she’d find something else. But the Madison School was the one she wanted most, if they would just give her a chance. She knew how unlikely that was, fresh out of school.

  When they called her flight, she got up, picked up her hand luggage, and headed for the gate. All she could do now was wait and go back to Northwestern. All things considered, for once it hadn’t been a bad Valentine’s Day. And it would be the best one of all if she actually got the job in the end. She was still nervous about it, when she got on the plane, even after the cheeseburger and hot fudge sundae. They hadn’t helped. And she reminded herself as she put on her seat-belt that she would have to be serious about her diet again, and start jogging. Graduation was only three months away. But when she was offered a bag of nuts and another of pretzels, she couldn’t refuse. She ate them absentmindedly as she thought about her interview, hoping she hadn’t blown it in some way, and praying she’d get the job.

  Chapter 7

  Eric Walker, the head of the Madison School, made the call to Victoria himself in the first week of March. He said it had been a tough choice between her and several other teachers, but he was happy to tell her that she had the job, and she was thrilled. He said a contract had been sent to her by mail.

  She was going to be the youngest member of the English department, and she would teach four classes, to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. She had to report for teachers’ meetings on September 1st, and school would start the following week. In exactly six months, she was going to be teaching at the Madison School in New York. She could hardly believe it. And unable to keep the good news to herself, she called her parents that night.

  “I was afraid you’d do something like that,” her father said with a disapproving tone. He actually sounded disappointed in her, as though she’d been arrested for taking her clothes off in a supermarket and was in jail. As in why did you go and do a dumb thing like that? “You’re never going to make a penny as a teacher, Victoria. You need to get a real job, in advertising or PR, or something in the communications field. There are lots of things you can do. You can work in the PR office of any major company. You can go to work at McDonald’s and make more than you will as a teacher. It’s a total waste of time. And why New York? Why not here?” He didn’t even ask what kind of school it was, and gave her no credit for landing her first job, in a first-rate school, against stiff competition. All he had to say was that it was the wrong job in the wrong city, and she’d always be poor. But teaching was her chosen career, and it was one of the country’s best private schools.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, apologizing for it, as though she had done something wrong. “It’s a really great school.”

  “Really? How much are they paying you?” he asked bluntly. She didn’t want to lie to him, so she told him the truth. And she knew too that it was going to be hard to live on, but it was worth the sacrifices to her, and she wasn’t planning to take anything from him. “That’s pathetic,” he said, sounding disgusted, and handed the phone to her mother, who sounded worried the minute she got on the phone.

  “What happened, dear?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing. I just got a terrific job, teaching at a wonderful school in New York. Dad just thinks they’re not paying me enough, that’s all. But it’s a real coup that they hired me at all.”

  “It’s such a shame that you want to be a teacher,” her mother said, echoing the party line, and managing to convey to Victoria, just as she always had, that she had failed, and was a disappointment to them. They took the fun out of everything for her, and always had, and any sense of accomplishment over what she had achieved. “You could make so much money doing something else.”

  “I think I’ll really like the job, Mom. I love the school,” she said, sounding young and hopeful, and trying to hold on to the excitement and enthusiasm and pride she had felt before she called.

  “I suppose that’s nice, dear. But you can’t be a teacher forever. At some point you’ll have to get a real job.” When
did teaching become not a “real” job? It was all about money to them, and how much you made. “Your sister just made fifty thousand dollars for a two-day shoot for a national campaign,” her mother said. It was more than Victoria was going to make in a year. And Grace just did it for fun, and the college fund their parents had set up for her. To Gracie, modeling was like a game, for which she was highly paid, and she only did it occasionally. Victoria was going to be working hard for the money she made. The discrepancy and dichotomy were shocking to her. But it was no secret that teaching was not a highly paid job, and she had known that when she chose it as a career. She didn’t have the modeling opportunities that Gracie did anyway. They were not an option for her. And teaching was her vocation, not just her work. She hoped that she’d be good at it. “Where are you going to live?” her mother asked her, sounding worried about that too. “Can you afford an apartment on a teacher’s salary? New York is a very expensive city.”