will be in the minutes,” Travelers announced. “We’ll take a short recess now. It will give you time to gather your things, Ms. Richardson.”
She stayed in her chair. The frown on her pale face showed she was making a decision. Travelers had no legal right to remove her. She turned to Fred. “It was over for me as soon as Marjorie left,” she said. “I could have saved you your little charade.” She started to collect her copy of the financial papers.
“Not those,” said Travelers. He reached to take them. “They’re confidential. For board members only.”
Harriet Richardson took a sudden breath, stared at Travelers, and held the papers in her tiny hand. Travelers wore a little smile, gave a tug; Ms. Richardson let out her breath, and now Travelers held the papers. Ms. Richardson sat very still for an instant. “You won’t get away with this,” she whispered, then got up, walked across the room. The big oaken doors didn’t open for her, she was so little. Fred wondered if he should get up and open them. She pushed again, and the doors opened just enough, and then she was gone.
DURING THE RECESS Perkins murmured to Fred, “Just in case you’re worried, I’ve told a few lies myself in my day. I’m kinda proud of them. They did more good than harm.”
Then he handed Fred a note. It said: Let’s give old Vincent a little going-away present. I’ll take care of it. Two years’ salary. Anonymous. He obviously doesn’t have any money.
After they reconvened, Alan tried to persuade McGarvey not to bring her proposal to the board. She refused. “I have to do what I think right,” she said. “Besides, the biggest problem isn’t going to be the board. It’s going to be the faculty. As soon as they find out the board’s even toying with the idea of going coed, they’ll be rabid. And the biggest problem on the faculty will be Francis Plummer. You think that little old lady who just resigned feels strongly?” she asked. “Wait’ll you see how our senior teacher reacts to the idea!”
“Whaddya expect?” Perkins grumbled. “He’s loyal.”
“He’s loyal to Marjorie,” McGarvey said. “You think he’s going to be loyal to Fred here? And he’s everybody’s hero. The girls call him Clark Kent, you know, from before I was there. He’s a loose cannon with a great big bang, and he’s cracking up.”
“He might be,” Travelers said. “Look at the way he took you on, Milton—right in the middle of the reception for Fred.”
“So I told a story and he told a better one.” Perkins said. “Who cares? We were both playing games.”
“Completely out of control,” McGarvey said, and Fred remembered that Gregory van Buren, in one of his insistent appointments during the search process, mentioned sotto voce that he thought people who were cracking up were the most difficult to control because you don’t know what they were going to do next. Fred also remembered hearing that Francis Plummer had taken to referring to Sonja McGarvey as Sonja Testosterone. He had laughed when he heard that. Now he had to be careful that the name wouldn’t slip off his own tongue.
Goodness knows he was worried about Plummer. When he had interviewed with the senior teacher last January just before being appointed, Fred could tell how distraught Plummer was at Marjorie’s dismissal. It was one of the many warning notes that would have told a more detached, analytical person how great a risk it was hitching his wagon to Miss Oliver’s star. On Fred the warnings had had the opposite effect; he was inspired by the challenge. And Karen Benjamin was right: Miss Oliver’s was the school he would have loved his daughter to attend. Why wouldn’t he want to rescue it? So he had persuaded himself he could win Francis Plummer’s loyalty. Surely a man so in love with his school as Plummer was would control himself, tamp down his anger, and join the new head in keeping the school alive. Now Fred wondered if the man really was out of control, really cracking up. What better way to get back at a board member who had helped get rid of the headmistress he loved than by taking him on in front of the faculty? Sometimes pretending to be out of control was a very good strategy. All Fred knew is that he needed Francis Plummer.
“You better reel him in, Fred,” Travelers was saying. “Or else you’ll have to get rid of him. I hate to say that. He’s been a loyal teacher.”
“There you go with loyal again!” McGarvey turned to Travelers. “He’s loyal to what was. We are responsible for the future. If it were me, I’d reel him right out the door.”
“You guys sound like Congress,” Perkins growled. “I could get sick.” He turned to Fred. “So, you want to know all this crap about Plummer or not?”
“Let me handle him,” Fred said. “That’s my job.”
“I hope that’s possible,” McGarvey murmured.
THAT NIGHT AFTER dinner, Gail and Fred sat on the back porch, and Gail knew something bad had happened at the meeting, something he didn’t want to talk about or else he would surely have told her at dinner, but he was so distracted it was as if she were not even in the room with him, and she waited and waited for him to tell her what was bothering him. Whatever it was, it must be worse than the budget fiasco he had told her about last night. “Don’t ask,” he had said. Which of course meant exactly the opposite, and even before they’d gone inside, he told her that the under-enrollment was exactly twice as large as he had thought and that he had only two years instead of four to save the school. So what was going on now, only a day later, that he was hiding from her?
“You’re not telling me something,” she said, sitting beside him in the twilight. “It’s all over your face.
He prevaricated by telling her everything about the meeting, describing it blow by blow, except the part where Ms. Richardson turned on him. He didn’t tell her that part. That’s what had been bothering him. That’s what he didn’t want to talk about.
She saw right through this. “Come on, tell me,” she urged when he’d finished. “What’s really bothering you?” She knew the board bringing up the prospect of admitting boys, instead of him, wasn’t bad. It was good. It took the heat off him, it was what he wanted.
He gave in finally and told her how Ms. Richardson had made him tell a lie. “How suddenly it all happened!” he exclaimed. “First she’s a kind, elderly woman, then she’s Machiavelli.”
“You were right to lie to her, Fred,” Gail said. “You’re a realist. A grown-up. It’s nice to be married to a grown-up.”
They sat side by side in the squeaky wicker chairs. June bugs banged on the screen door, hungry for the light. Gail picked up Fred’s hand and kissed it, held it to her cheek, then returned it to his knee. Neither of them spoke. After a while Gail stood up. “It’s ten o’clock, I’m going to bed,” she said, bending down to kiss his forehead. “Come on up when you think you can sleep.”
He took her hand, held her back. He was still mulling over what she’d said. “A realist? You usually say idealist.”
“That too. You’re both. You’re Don Quixote with a brain.” He laughed and let go of her hand.
She wanted to add, You could have chosen a school that didn’t need to be rescued. That would have been just fine with me. But she kept the thought to herself, bent to kiss him again, and went upstairs to bed.
He sat for a while, nowhere near ready to sleep, remembering the hollow sound of their voices in their house at Mt. Gilead after the furniture
