staring at Fred. “You mean you’re firing him?”
“Oh, please!” said McGarvey.
“There’s a principle here,” Ms. Richardson said. “Mr. Vincent has been allowed to perform for years in this way, and suddenly he’s dismissed? We don’t interact that way at Miss Oliver’s. I’m surprised at you, Mr. Kindler.”
“Alan, for God’s sake, we have an emergency!” McGarvey exclaimed before Fred could respond. “Can we deal with it?”
“We’ve already dealt with it,” Perkins barked. “We’re going with Fred’s new plan.”
“And if that doesn’t work? What then?” McGarvey asked.
“We’re going to close the school. That’s what. Because if it’s not going to be a girls’ school, the hell with it. You think I’d let myself be bored to death in board meetings for a school where boys get all the attention so they can run the world while girls stay home and cook? I’ve got three daughters, and I know what they learned here. You might as well think it’s going to snow in Florida in the middle of summer to think that boys are ever going to come in here. So why talk about it?”
“We’re going to talk about it,” McGarvey said. “I promise. Because the one thing I’m not going to let happen is closing the school. So if you people won’t bring it up at the September board meeting, I will. I’ll force the issue.”
Once again the room went silent while everyone stared at her.
“Why in the world would you do that?” Travelers asked at last.
“To save the school, that’s why.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Travelers said.
“It’s being whispered everywhere,” McGarvey persisted. Travelers leaned toward her shaking his head, but McGarvey held her ground and told him, “I’m going to put it to the board. Where it counts. And get some clarity.”
“You put letting boys into the school on the table like that, how’re you going to keep it quiet?” Perkins asked. He shoved his plate of oysters aside. Cracked ice spilled onto the table. “The board’ll decide not to do it,” he said. “They’re not that crazy. But the story that’ll come out in the first three seconds after the meeting anyhow is that right away we’re going to admit seven hundred boys—all of them nine feet tall—and with extra big dicks. Fred here will have a crazy house on his hands.”
The instant Perkins was finished with his harangue, McGarvey turned back to the chairman. It was as if to her Perkins wasn’t even in the room. “Alan,” she asked, “are you going to try to tell me I can’t speak my mind at a board meeting?”
“No, Sonja, I’m not saying that. I don’t have the right. But I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Good. Because if you were, I’d do it anyway.”
“So that’s what firing Mrs. Boyd was really about!” Ms. Richardson exclaimed.
Now it’s Ms. Richardson’s turn to be stared at.
“Where did that come from?” Travelers asked.
“You are very clever, Mr. Travelers,” Miss Richardson said. “Far cleverer than I. But even I can see how this meeting has been contrived.” She turned her stare on Perkins. “First Milton Perkins opens the door for all the posturing by saying the one thing we aren’t going to do is admit boys,” she said, then turning to McGarvey continued, “which of course gives Miss McGarvey the opportunity to propose that we should admit boys and that she will recommend admitting boys to the board of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. And you”—she aimed her glare at Alan again—“pretend that you can’t stop her.”
“You’re out of line, Ms. Richardson,” Travelers finally said. “You need to take that back.”
But Ms. Richardson actually believed she had discovered the truth and wasn’t about to take anything back. “All along I suspected,” she said. “But I put my suspicions aside. I kept my faith.” Her voice was a quaver, on the verge of weeping. “Now I see how naive I was. All along. A plot: prey on the school’s misfortune, use it to pry Marjorie Boyd out of her office so we can bring in this man and open the doors to boys!”
“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Travelers said, clearly amazed.
“Oh, please, don’t go on with this.” Ms. Richardson’s tiny shoulders were shaking. “It’s out now! In the open! Why else would you fire the finest educator this school has ever had? I could never answer that question. Why fire the person who has made the school what it is?
“And you!” she turned on Fred when no one answered. “You have just confirmed my original suspicion, which I put aside because you seemed a gentleman and so sincere. Well, now I know. First, we get a male chairman of the board. Then a cabal under his direction gets rid of Mrs. Boyd to make room for you; then you, on your very first day, get rid of one of her most faithful colleagues, and then on the very next day it is proposed at the executive committee that the board of trustees contemplate the admission of boys. It’s plain what’s coming next. I won’t be part of it. I’ll resign.”
“Ms. Richardson, you’ve misinterpreted everything,” Fred said softly. He was devoid of anger. Instead, he was fascinated. For an instant he thought maybe he could unravel this for her.
“Oh? You deny it!” he heard her say, mocking surprise. “Then let me ask a question. Which one do you favor, Mr. Kindler?” She was not on the verge of weeping anymore. Her face had gone hard.
Fred saw the mine she was planting. Now he was irritated.
Alan stood up. “Harriet, stop!” He saw what was coming, and he didn’t trust Fred to lie. “Just stop!”
But Ms. Richardson calmly went right on. “We did have two philosophies proposed this morning,” she said, like a teacher reviewing the lesson for the dumbest student. “One that we should admit boys in order to keep the school in operation. The other that it would be better to close the school than to admit boys.”
Fred’s face flamed, his chest constricted; he felt everyone watching, and for an instant he could hardly see.
“Don’t be angry,” Ms. Richardson said. “Just answer the question.”
“I’d close the school before I admitted boys,” he said, lying deliberately and looking Ms. Richardson right in the eye.
It was very quiet in the room while she returned his stare. Then she said, “You don’t lie as skillfully as you need to yet, Mr. Kindler, but I’m sure your performance will improve with time.”
Travelers cut in. “Ms. Richardson—”
But she wasn’t finished yet. She was still facing Fred, her back to Travelers. “The truth is, Mr. Kindler, even if you were an honorable person, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Harriet, you offered your resignation a minute ago,” Travelers said.
“No, I didn’t. I only threatened.”
“Yes, you did, and it’s accepted.”
