said. “Wonderful!”
He saw relief flooding her face, felt her eyes on his. Then a worried frown.
“Where will we get the money?” she asked.
“I have no idea, but I do know what’s indispensable and what is not.”
Peggy sat very still, taking his comment in. See, Francis, you’re wrong, she thought while it dawned on her how different this was from her meetings with Marjorie, how tired she’d grown of sitting side by side with her headmistress on a sofa, having her arm patted every time Marjorie made a point. For that’s how it had always gone: Marjorie making the point, not the other way around. And now Peggy realized she had something else to say, she was going to make a point—because she knew he’d listen. “Just one more thing,” she said. “I know you’re busy.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Don’t you bring it up. You’ll get crucified if you do. Let the board do it.”
“It?” he said. “You’re being mysterious.”
“No, I’m not. You know what I’m talking about. If we have to let boys in here, let it be the board’s decision. Fight it. Even if you think it’s right. Fight it anyway. For a while at least. Otherwise—”
“I’ve thought about that,” he said, hearing again Melissa Andersen’s Don’t you fucking dare. “Still, it doesn’t quite feel right.”
“Of course it doesn’t. Do it anyway!”
“You’re a smart lady,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good,” she replied, standing up. He rose too and reached to shake her hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, realizing she’d just done what Francis should be here to do: give advice. Show where the land mines were.
“Thanks,” he said, tempted now to put his other hand out too, take her hands in both of his. But that was too forward; he hardly knew her.
RIGHT AFTER PEGGY left, Fred made the call to Mavis Ericksen that he’d been dreading.
“Hello, this is Mavis.” Her voice was cheerful.
“Good morning, Mavis, this is Fred Kindler.” Silence.
“How are you this morning?” he tried.
She still didn’t answer, and it came to him that maybe she thought his question was sarcastic, as if to ask, Are you still crying? “I called to follow through on our conversation about Ms. Saffire,” he said.
“I’ve been waiting,” she said, making it clear she didn’t like to wait.
Yes, for only twenty-four hours, Fred thought. “Earlier this morning I talked to Dorothy Strang—”
“I don’t care what Dorothy—”
“Ms. Saffire reports to Dorothy Strang,” he said. “Dorothy evaluated Ms. Saffire last November near the end of her first year as having done quite well. Like everyone else, she’s been given some goals and will be evaluated again this November.” Fred didn’t tell Mavis that one of the goals assigned to Joan Saffire was learning how to handle certain kinds of people, and that when he had asked Dorothy, “What kind of people?” she had whispered, “Assholes,” and then got red in the face and started to giggle. And then admitted that she shouldn’t have sent a beginner to see Aldous Enright. She would have gone herself, but she was on vacation.
“November!” Mavis’s voice was quivering. “It’s only July!”
“Yes. November. It’s an annual evaluation.” There was another seemingly endless silence. Fred felt sweat running down the inside of his shirt. “You and I need to talk,” he said. Maybe if he took her to lunch and they got to know each other, she would understand why it was important that the board not intrude on the head’s domain. “Let’s make an appointment,” he began. Then he heard her hanging up.
How much safer he would be if Joan Saffire were incompetent and he could fire her, he thought—and immediately regretted the thought.
AN HOUR AND a half later in a private dining room of the River Club in Downtown Hartford, Alan Travelers got right to the point. “Our new headmaster’s had a very busy first day,” he told the executive committee. “Among other accomplishments, he discovered that we have a larger deficit than we thought we did.” Impeccable in his blue suit, Travelers was standing at the head of the table. His tone sounded surprisingly cheerful to Fred.
“Yeah?” Milton Perkins growled. “So what else is new?”
“You’re about to learn,” Travelers said. “I think it’ll get your attention.” He sat down.
“Oh?” Perkins said. “How much?”
“Six hundred and seventy-five thousand.”
Perkins sat back in his chair as if he’d been shoved in the chest. He stared at Travelers. Then he turned to Fred. “Tell me I didn’t hear that right.”
“You heard it right,” Fred said, and from their frames along the oak-paneled wall opposite the tall windows overlooking the river, an array of nineteenth-century patriarchs, masters of New England thrift, looked sternly down at the room.
Fred handed out the papers he had prepared and proceeded to explain the difference between Carl Vincent’s figures and his own, going slowly, line by line. While he talked, no one touched the raw oysters that Perkins, who has lived at the River Club ever since his wife had died five years earlier, had ordered for the lunch, and when he finished, the members continued to stare down at their papers. They couldn’t bring themselves to look at each other. Perkins got up from the table, went to one of the windows, and stared at the river, his back to everybody.
“So much for the bad news,” Alan said dismissively, breaking the silence. He knew he needed to get these people past their disappointment and, worse, their humiliation at having been so gulled by Vincent’s numbers. “There’s good news too. We’ve got a head who before he does anything else—on his very first day!—gets us to the truth. That’s huge.”
“Yes,” said beautiful alumna Sonja McGarvey. “Finally some reality around here!” She turned to Fred, sent him a grateful—maybe even an admiring—look. She had black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and her lipstick was very red. Only ten years out, Sonja was already rich. Marjorie had often pointed to her derring-do, entrepreneuring in software, as proof of the empowering effect of single-sex education on women, and Fred was already planning to ask her for the lead gift from the board this year.
“Exactly!” Alan said. He had to admit, he liked this challenge, since it gave him something to sink his teeth into, put some spice in his life. He’d won battles like this before. “We’ll just go faster,” he urged. “We’ll just rebuild the enrollment in two years instead of four. We’ve got the right head finally. We’ll just do it!”
But now Sonja McGarvey was shaking her head in disagreement. She leaned forward across the table toward Travelers, pent up, waiting to speak.
“Yes, that’s exactly what we’re going to do!” Travelers went on. “Revise the plan and move
