brightened. “California, right?” Francis had the impression that the man had changed his expression on purpose to make him more comfortable.
Francis sensed Peggy watching him from across the room. “Right, California.” He took a sip of his drink, noticed that several people were watching him and Kindler. We’re on stage, he thought. It’s a big scene, and now he was seeing himself as some kind of fulcrum. Took another sip, his hand was shaking, spilled some wine on his shirt, felt its cold.
Kindler handed him a napkin. “Mount Alma, right?” “
Yes,” said Francis. “Mount Alma.” He saw himself driving out across the flat Midwest, lonely without Peggy in the car. Then he saw the mountains, felt a little surge of joy, but his hand was still shaking, and he spilled some more.
“You all right?” Kindler asked.
For an instant, thinking the question was sardonic, the new head’s first spear thrust, and Francis was relieved. Then looking at the man’s too youthful face, he realized the question was sincere, uncomplicated, devoid of subtlety, and he was panic-stricken. “I’m all right,” he managed. By now he was sure everybody was watching them.
“Look,” Kindler said. “I understand.” He was talking now very quietly so no one else could hear. “Why wouldn’t you feel that way? You’ve served her for years. I’ve admired her too—just from a greater distance. Just the same, I’m sure we can work together.”
“Well, as long as you don’t change anything,” Francis blurted. Then he realized what he’d said, how dumb it was. He managed a grin, a little chuckle, as if he’d been joking, as if he hadn’t meant exactly what had come out of his mouth.
His camouflage seemed to work. Fred Kindler smiled. Francis saw the red mustache move. “Good,” said Kindler. “I look forward to working with you.” Then he moved away to mix with the others.
THERE! FRANCIS THOUGHT, I’ve managed to get through it. Now I can go home! He looked for Peggy, saw her across the room, stared at her back until she turned. He signaled her with his eyes that he wanted to leave. But she turned her back to him to show she was engaged in the conversation. He felt empty, moved across the room to leave the house.
He figured if he could just get out the door …
But on the way, he overheard Milton Perkins telling one of his Polish jokes to a circle of uncomfortable-looking faculty members. Perkins, the recently retired president of one of the biggest insurance companies in the state, had been on the board a long time. Francis found himself slowing down on his way to the door, listening to the joke. He’d heard it before. Perkins was seldom able to resist baiting the faculty’s liberalism and being politically incorrect in a loud voice whenever he got an audience of teachers. Francis had always forgiven the man, understanding that underneath, Perkins had a deep respect for the school and the people who taught in it—which he had shown by years of generosity. To Francis, who, if pressed, would admit he liked to make derogatory generalizations about businessmen, Perkins was merely a gambler in a fancy suit who was just smart enough to sense the inferiority of his vocation to that of teaching. So why should Francis be bothered by the old man’s backwardness?
But now, listening to the story, knowing exactly how it would build to the punchline in rhythmic stupidities, Francis stopped walking toward the door, turned, stepped back toward Perkins and his group of embarrassed listeners. Francis knew what he was doing, knew he shouldn’t, discovered that he’d been holding back these feelings for years in order to make things work for Marjorie, realized also that Perkins probably had been instrumental in Marjorie’s dismissal. He took another step toward Perkins and his group of listeners and saw Rachel Bickham, the chair of the Science Department and director of Athletics, whom he admired, looking at him hard. She shook her head, an unobtrusive gesture meant just for him. Don’t, she seemed to warn. Just don’t. But he loved the release he was about to get. The room was very bright to him now, all its colors vivid.
“Why don’t you shut up?” he heard himself saying to Perkins. “Why don’t you just clam it?”
That’s exactly what Perkins did—for an instant. He turned to face Francis. He clearly didn’t know what to do. He was certainly not going to apologize! So he just turned his back on Francis and went on telling his story. That’s what enraged Francis so—the dismissal! After all those years! He tapped Perkins on the shoulder, and when the man turned around, his face flaming, Francis told the same story back to him, substituting Republican for Polack. The group of teachers to whom Perkins had been telling his story glided away, so it was just Perkins now, and Francis, in the center of the room. Francis was pronouncing the name Perkins with the same clowning sarcasm with which Perkins had emphasized the final syllable ski of the Polish person in the joke.
They were center stage. Francis glimpsed Marjorie, who was still standing by her fireplace, staring across the room at him. Her expression was begging him to stop. Father Michael Woodward, the local Episcopal priest and part-time chaplain, one of Francis’s and Peggy’s best friends, was standing by the opposite wall making slicing motions at his throat.
Francis didn’t see Peggy. He went on and on, building a vastly more complex story than Perkins’s joke, a fantasy of ineptitude in which the absurdly Anglo-Saxon main character reached mythical idiocy. When a few of the people in the room couldn’t resist laughing, he was even more inspired, felt the lovely release, and went on some more—until he realized that Eudora Easter was standing at his right side and Father Woodward at his left. Their hands were on his elbows. He shut up.
“Jeeeezus!” said Perkins into the sudden silence. “What in hell was that all about?”
Nobody answered because Eudora and Father Woodward were escorting Francis from the scene of the crime.
TWO
The instant Fred Kindler saw the look on his secretary’s face when she came into his office early on the morning of his first day as headmaster and caught him down on his knees giving thanks, he knew he’d made a big mistake. If she had found him working in his office in the nude she couldn’t have looked more affronted.
Margaret Rice, a tall, large-boned, black-haired woman in her fifties, who to Fred’s surprise was dressed in her summer vacation clothes—jeans and a man’s shirt, rather than the more professional clothes he had expected and would have preferred—stood in the doorway looking down on her new boss; and still on his knees in his coat and tie, he suddenly saw himself in her eyes: the bumpkin, country clod, ex-farm boy ascended. He was out of style, and, to boot, a man in a woman’s place. “Oh, my God!” Mrs. Rice whispered, then quickly correcting herself: “Excuse me; I should have knocked.” But the look was still on her face: Feminists don’t get down on their knees, it said. We’ve been there too much already.
Thank goodness he didn’t ask her to join him, his first reaction. Instead, already rising from where he’d been kneeling beside his desk, he heard the apology in his voice, hating the sound of it. “I didn’t know you came in so early.” She was looking past him, her eyes scanning the walls as if she were looking for something—which he knew she was: Marjorie’s paintings, each painted by an Oliver girl. All gone. Marjorie had taken them with her, and the walls were now bare and white. The office had a bright, clean, monastic look. He loved it, it energized him, and seeing in his secretary’s eyes her resistance to this new sparseness, he felt his own stubbornness rising and was glad for it. No more apologies. Just be yourself, his wife had reminded him, and so, in his awkward way, had his own proud dad who never even finished high school. “I’m a lucky man,” he found himself telling
