Peggy wasn’t talking about Marjorie now; she was talking about the new guy. “Two whole weeks before he even needed to be here!” she said. He knew what she left unsaid for him to think about: The new headmaster shows up early for his responsibilities—while you run away from yours. But that’s not what he was thinking about. What filled his brain instead was the picture of Fred Kindler actually ensconced in Marjorie’s office, enthroned behind her desk, surrounded by the pictures her students made for her. The wrongness of the fit, its impropriety, astounded him. It was Marjorie’s office!
“Well, what do you think of that?” Peggy asked again.
“Maybe he can’t read a calendar,” he said.
“Very funny, Francis.”
“I didn’t call you up to talk about him!”
“Oh, you didn’t?” Peggy mocked. “All right, then. So forget about it.”
He let a long silence go by, desperate for a way to rescue them from this. “Peg,” he finally begged, “let’s not fight.”
That’s right, she thought, let’s not.
“How are you, Peg?”
I’m confused, she wanted to say, and I’m scared we’ve lost each other, but she was too angry to plead for sympathy. “I’m okay,” she told him.
“Only okay, Peg?”
She shrugged her shoulders as if he were there to see. There was a long silence, while he waited for her to speak. “Where are you?” she finally asked.
“Just east of the Mississippi.”
“That’s nice,” she said, failing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. But she really did think it was nice that he was seeing the country and wished she were seeing it with him. And then it dawned on her that neither of them ever considered her joining him. The reasons for his trip were too foreign to her for that.
“All right, Peg,” he sighed, hearing only the sarcasm. “I’ll call you later.”
“All right.”
“I miss you, Peg.”
“I miss you too,” she admitted, “but if you were here we wouldn’t have to miss each other.”
Neither of them could think of what else to say. Francis hung up first and walked back to his old yellow Chevy, and started to drive again. In Denver, he would pick up Lila Smythe, next year’s president of the student council, and give her a ride the rest of the way to California. Lila, one of Francis’s and Peggy’s favorite students, lived in the dorm they parented, and though Francis had been delighted when she decided to join the dig, he now regretted his promise. She’d want to talk to him, as faculty advisor to the student council, about the council’s agenda for the coming year. He was much too preoccupied for that.
And Peggy lingered by the phone, willing Francis to call again. She’d speak more gently this time, she told herself. But he didn’t call, and now she knew he was on the other side of the Mississippi, much farther away from her than he’d ever been. She’d never been in that part of the country and could only see it in her imagination as endless, empty space. And her husband was lost in it.
PEGGY LOOKED AT her watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and she had a meeting with Fred Kindler at quarter to eleven. She wanted to get there a little early because he’d told her that he had to leave at eleven-fifteen for a meeting downtown at noon. She was worried about how he’d react when, on only his second day in office, she would tell him about a problem that was going to make the budget crisis even worse. So she left the phone, stepped out of her house and across the thick green lawns of the campus toward the administration building. In the distance, at the campus edge, she saw the river gleaming in the sun.
The first thing she noticed about Fred Kindler’s office was the big clock on the wall behind his desk, an imitation of a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, complete with huge leather wrist straps that reached from ceiling to floor. It hadn’t been there yesterday when she glanced through the door. She smiled, getting his message right away, and wondered if Eudora Easter had had a hand in this. Maybe people would start getting to places on time now.
He smiled too, an easy greeting, and stepped from behind his desk with that ducklike, toes-out gait she knew she would never have noticed if Francis hadn’t pointed it out to her. When Kindler put out his hand to shake hers, she realized again how formal and old-fashioned he seemed. They sat down in front of his desk, facing each other.
“How’s Francis’s trip going?” Fred asked her.
“He’ll be in California by the end of the week.”
“I hope he’s having a great time.”
“I hope so too,” she said before she had time to think what this remark might reveal. She saw him look away from her for just an instant and knew that he was not hiding his surprise—there was no dissimulation in that not-very-handsome face—but being kind. Whatever else he is, he is a good person, she decided. One of the things she was proud of was her ability to size people up.
Fred wasn’t sure whether it was surprise flashing across her face as Peggy’s eyes met his and stayed longer than most people’s—maybe that’s why he already liked her so much—or whether she was about to ask him a question. If so, he knew what the question would be: are you considering allowing boys into this school? He wished she would ask it. He guessed she was the kind of person he could think aloud in front of.
But he knew that of course she wouldn’t ask. Not yet. She was too kind to ask so early. That she’d just admitted a hint of trouble between herself and Francis gave him a rush of sadness for her—and anxiety for himself. I need your husband too, he wanted to say. He’s the senior teacher. The most gifted on the faculty. Teaches both math and English beautifully. That makes him powerful. If he’s against me, I’m dead.
“We need more air conditioning in the Pequot Indian area,” he heard Peggy say. “We had a consultant tell us that the displays would deteriorate.”
“How much?”
“It’s a lot. The estimate’s for fifteen thousand.” If he said yes, then she knew he understood how important the display was; it would mean he “got” Miss Oliver’s School for Girls—and Francis would be wrong.
“Fifteen thousand!” Fred exclaimed; then to himself: What the heck. What’s another fifteen thousand to a deficit like ours?
“I know it’s not in the budget,” Peggy said. “It’s a lot to ask.”
He made a little motion with his hand in front of his face as if to brush her comment away. “When we get the budget to where it should be, you won’t have to ask.”
“Won’t have to ask?”
“Department heads’ll have their own budgets. They’ll have discretion,” he explained, discovering how easy it was for him to share his ideas with her. He wished he could tell her about the emergency meeting with the board’s executive committee that would start in just over an hour, where he was going to drop the bomb about the budget. He’d get her advice.
“Really?
