especially by a woman who was not yet thirty. He started to say something, but from the window, Perkins beat him to it.
“So it’s unrealistic,” Perkins said. His back was still to the group, and he was still staring out the window, as if he were addressing the river. “When you don’t have a choice, who cares?”
“What’s he been smoking?” McGarvey asked the group. And when Perkins turned to face her, she asked him, “Can I have some too?”
Perkins left the window and, taking his seat again, leaned to McGarvey across the polished mahogany. “You could be right,” he growled. “Bean counters are every once in a century. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe we’ll pull something out of a hat.” He was grinning now, egging her on.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, here we go again!” she said.
“And if we don’t,” Perkins said, “the one thing we aren’t going to do is let boys in here.” He wasn’t grinning anymore.
The room went silent once again. Everyone stared at Perkins, who was plunging a fork into an oyster now.
“Fred didn’t say anything about letting boys in,” Travelers said. His voice was tight. “Neither did I. Neither did anyone. That’s not even on the table.”
“Good,” Perkins said, waving the fork with the oyster still on it. “We got that settled.”
“Jesus!” from McGarvey. “Welcome to fantasyland!”
Perkins turned again to study her, miming a mild scientific interest at the source of such a strange remark. He extended the fork, the oyster he was about to eat still dripping on its tines, across the table to her. He raised his eyebrows, kept the oyster before her. It was a test: If she took it, then she was normal after all.
McGarvey, of course, was much too smart to rise to this. She hardly looked at the oyster—or at Perkins, turning instead to Travelers as if chastising the chairman for letting the meeting get out of hand. So Perkins shrugged, plopped the oyster into his mouth, nodded up and down, then broke into a grin and aimed it around the room.
On McGarvey’s right, the elderly Ms. Harriet Richardson, who hadn’t said a word, was too ladylike to acknowledge the animus that had just drenched the room. She nodded her birdlike head at Milton Perkins. “For once you and I agree,” she murmured. Ms. Richardson, the former academic dean at one of New England’s most prestigious women’s colleges, stared intently across the table at Perkins, her tiny body very erect. “It would be a tragedy,” she said. “An abandonment of the reason we exist.”
Milton Perkins was grinning again. “You and I agreeing, that’s a sign things are completely out of control,” he told her. For Perkins, even to appear to agree with the likes of Ms. Richardson, a worshipful biographer of FDR, was more than he could stand.
“I’ll say it again,” Travelers said. “Nobody said anything about letting boys in.”
“Not yet,” McGarvey said.
“My dear, you aren’t suggesting—?” Ms. Richardson’s tremolo trailed off, while McGarvey put her blue eyes on Ms. Richardson’s face and stared. Ms. Richardson tried again. “We have a vision to uphold!”
“It’s not a vision. It’s a hallucination!” McGarvey hissed. “We’re supposed to know the difference.” Ms. Richardson’s face went pale, and McGarvey, who was trying to learn diplomacy and regretted her harshness, softened her voice. “Ms. Richardson, girls-only just doesn’t sell anymore,” she said.
“Sell! My dear, this isn’t a store!”
So much for McGarvey’s mildness. She reached across the table, tapped her bright-red nails on Ms. Richardson’s copy of the papers Fred had distributed. “See where the number is below the bottom line on Carl Vincent’s budget?”
Ms. Richardson took the bait. “Yes,” she said. “I see.”
“The one in parentheses?”
Ms. Richardson didn’t answer.
“Now look at Fred’s numbers; the figure in parentheses is bigger.”
“Sonja McGarvey,” said Ms. Richardson. “I can read.”
“By almost three quarters of a million dollars.”
“Six hundred and seventy-five,” said Ms. Richardson.
“I can read too,” said McGarvey. “I just like to round things off.”
“Six hundred and seventy-five,” Ms. Richardson insisted. “My dear, six hundred and seventy-five is not three quarters of a million; it is six hundred and seventy-five.”
“People!” Travelers rapped his knuckles on the table. He was clearly irritated. McGarvey and Ms. Richardson stopped.
This was the opening Fred had been waiting for. “Even if it were three quarters of a million—a full million—it wouldn’t make any difference to me,” he told them. “I came here to help turn this thing around in four years. So now that we’ve only got two, we’ll do it in two.” Everyone’s eyes were on him as he spoke, for the hunger for leadership was palpable among this board which, until the unseating of Marjorie, had been so dominated by her that they never developed the will, or the sophistication, to do their job. And he was doing what he came here to do—he was leading. He was giving them a solution to their problem in the cash-flow projections he’d put in front of them, which demonstrated that the addition of twenty-six girls, recruited during each of the next two academic years through aggressive marketing of the school’s excellence and the efficacy of its single-sex mission, put him on the same pace to a balanced budget as the original plan, which had called for thirteen additional enrollments each year.
It’s a good plan, he told himself, his confidence blossoming, because it provided him a fighting chance to save the school as single-sex, while leaving the option of admitting boys as a last resort if it became apparent the enrollment targets weren’t being reached. Because the one thing he wouldn’t do was close the school! Nor would he offer himself as sacrificial lamb by being the one to suggest bringing boys in. He remembered Peggy Plummer’s advice. “I’ve given you new numbers,” he said aloud. “They’re challenging, but if we get the message out, we can do it.”
“Good for you!” Perkins exclaimed. Then, “Whose numbers? Not Vincent’s, I hope.”
“No,” Fred answered. “They’re mine.”
“Fred tells me he’s going to let Mr. Vincent go as soon as he comes back from vacation,” Travelers said very quietly.
“Carl! Gone?” Ms. Richardson asked, staring at Fred.
“Well, good for you,” McGarvey murmured.
“Yeah,” said Perkins. “Good for you. Poor old guy. Didn’t know a number from a road sign.”
“Well, anyway,” said Travelers, “we’re in trouble, and Fred’s recommended a solution.”
“We are not in so much trouble that we can let loyal, longtime employees go just like that.” Ms. Richardson snapped her fingers.
“Jeez,
