Saying Grace

  “Her class control is terrible,” said Mike Dianda. “She didn’t command their respect from the beginning, and I don’t think she can recover.”

  Rue pushed a paperweight around her desk. The parking lot gossip vine had it that Mrs. Goldsborough was nice but clueless. Several eighth-grade girls aiming at competitive high schools were worried they wouldn’t score well on their admissions tests. There had even been complaints from other teachers—well, from Lynn Ketchum—about the noise from Mrs. Goldsborough’s classroom.

  “I guess I better start interviewing,” said Rue. “Will you go on working with her, though?”

  “I will.”

  “Did you get to observe Roberta Shaftoe?”

  “I spent an hour in pre-K this morning.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t see how we can keep her,” said Mike. “She won’t come to school without a hat. If her hat of the day comes off her head, she gets hysterical and yells ‘Where’s my bankey?’ over and over, even if it’s right at her feet. She treats the other children like objects in her fantasy life. This morning I saw her yell ‘Danielle, the phone is ringing!’ and then answer the phone herself, as if Danielle were inanimate.”

  “What kind of hats?”

  “Baseball yesterday. Mickey Mouse today. Her small motor skills are terrible. She can’t cut out a paper doll without cutting off its head. She can’t write her name. She’s terribly fearful of loud noise and new situations.”

  Rue sighed. The Shaftoes, delighted with The Country School, had just donated $2,100 to the Capital Campaign fund for a bronze plaque to be set in the new gym lobby floor, with their names on it.

  And then there was the Bird Feeder Affair.

  At her own expense, and with her own little hammer, Catherine Trainer had hung a bird feeder outside her classroom window and was loopy with excitement when there appeared among the robins and mourning doves first a dark-eyed junco and then a western tanager.

  “A western tanager!” she had babbled to all who would listen. “Oh, it was lovely with its little red skullcap and that golden breast. You know you almost never see one. You hear them sometimes, but they’re terribly shy. You hear them call piit err ick! The children were so excited!” She went on so much about it at lunch that Bill Glarrow, the business manager, actually left his office during class hours and went over to the middle school to view the bird feeder. The next thing you know, he had torn it down and was going off with it.

  Malone gave a fairly merciless accounting to her mother of the spectacle Mrs. Trainer then made of herself. She stopped her history class in midsentence and shouted at the window, “What do you think you’re doing?” Then she sprinted from the classroom, and the delighted children ran to the windows in time to see her catch up with Mr. Glarrow and give him a great angry push with both hands. Malone demonstrated how Mrs. Trainer had pushed and the astonished look on Mr. Glarrow’s face before he gathered his wits and saw who was attacking him.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she had howled at him, red in the face. Surprised into indiscretion, Mr. Glarrow had pointed and shouted back, “Look what’s happening! The birds are sitting on that branch up there, waiting to get at the feeder, and they’re shitting all over the camellias!” The children were overcome with delight. They looked down and saw that the hedge of dark green leaves below them was glazed with white, a virtual birdy toilet. “Those are specimen shrubs!” Mr. Glarrow had yelled. “Do you know what it would cost to replace them? It’s not a cold climate, for god’s sake, the birds have enough to eat!”

  Apparently Mrs. Trainer and Mr. Glarrow then had a race, speedwalking, to see who would get to Rue first. Mrs. Trainer won, because Mr. Glarrow had to stop outside the office to put down the bird feeder. By chance Rue appeared in her office doorway just in time to see Mrs. Trainer burst into the reception area, and Catherine beetled into Rue’s office and threw herself into a chair. They were in Rue’s office for about ten minutes when Catherine came out calmer, but sniffling and still talking about the dark-eyed junco, and went back to her class.

  Then Rue went in for a talk with Bill Glarrow, and after a while he stumped off to the middle school. Emily later learned he had been sent to apologize to Mrs. Trainer for not discussing his decision with her before he acted upon it, although Rue agreed that he was perfectly right to prevent the death of the camellia bushes, dark-eyed junco or no.

  The parking lot was ablaze with gossip by next morning, with the moms of fifth graders retailing this story to anyone who would listen.

  Chandler Kip had not been anyone’s first or even second choice for president of the Board of The Country School. He was fairly new to this Board and had no other experience with nonprofits. He had no talent for building consensus; his management style was to give orders and expect them to be taken. As with many self-made people, appearances were very important to him, and he didn’t have much tolerance for deviation from what he considered normal.

  Rue had had an unfortunate confrontation with Chandler the first month he was on the Board. Her assistant head had been hired away by a school in New York, and Rue wanted to hire Mike Dianda. Since hiring the staff was in her job description, she foresaw no problem. But she mentioned her choice to the Board as a courtesy, and Chandler made a great fuss. It was bad policy to promote a member of the faculty to management, he claimed. Rue gave several good reasons why it was not. Mr. Dianda was weak, Chandler then claimed. Discipline would be his province, and Mike Dianda couldn’t “play in the traffic.” Rue, baffled, insisted that the opposite was true. His judgment was sound, he kept a cool head when all around him were losing theirs, and he had excellent rapport with both faculty and parents. The objections went on without making definitive sense until Ann Rosen said, “Chandler…are you trying to tell us Rue shouldn’t promote Mike because he sleeps with kangaroos? Because we know that, and we don’t care.”

  Chandler had turned crimson, and there had been laughter. Because Ann Rosen read him absolutely right, he dropped the discussion. Because Ann Rosen was his social equal, he couldn’t hold such a grudge against her as he felt entitled to. But Rue was his employee, an overweight, self-important schoolteacher, and because of her, he had been humiliated. Rue, who did not feel herself to be less than Chandler’s equal, did not notice that she had made an enemy.

  Nobody thought that Chandler would be a perfect Board president. But it was a time-consuming job, and usually thankless, and for the last year and a half, Chandler had made it clear that he actively wanted it. The other more likely candidates actively didn’t. When at a faculty retreat (which Chandler had been too busy to attend) the Board vice president began to weep during a role-playing exercise and announced that he had at that moment decided to retire from public life and devote himself full-time to undergoing Jungian therapy, the nominating committee was left with no other candidates. They decided the school had weathered worse things; it would weather Chandler.

  “It’s only for two years,” Rue had said to Henry. “How bad can it be?”

  Rue had a full agenda when she arrived at the California Chuckwagon for her first weekly lunch with Chandler Kip. The Chuckwagon was a cafeteria with wagon wheels next door to Chandler’s office, where you stood in line to order Stew ’n Biscuits or Doc’s Rattlesnake Chili and then ate at formica tables and were done in twenty minutes. That was all right with Rue; whenever she was off campus for more than an hour, something seemed to blow up or catch fire.

  Rue explained about the problem with the Shaftoes, and Chandler nodded. She reported that Emily Goldsborough wasn’t working out and they were seeking a replacement. Chandler concurred. Chandler reported that he had had an angry call from a mother of a second grader who claimed her daughter was being abused by her teacher.

  “By Janet TerWilliams? I can’t believe it. Who was this?”

  “Helen Blainey.”

  “Ah,” said Rue.

  “She said her daughter was made to sit in a corner for half
an hour. The child had been humiliated.”

  “Did she tell you what her daughter did to deserve it?”

  “Her point was that the child is seven…what could she have done?”

  “She announced in a loud voice that there are too many fucking Jews in this school,” said Rue.

  “Oh.” Chandler noticed that two people at the next table turned to stare at them. He tried to look as if he and Rue had sat down together by accident.

  “If she does it again, I’m going to expel her,” Rue added. “I hope I’ll have your support.”

  Chandler broke off a piece of sourdough bread, rolled it into a pill, and ate it. “That seems hard on a seven-year-old.”

  “It’s the mother I’m expelling. I discussed this with Mrs. Blainey the day it happened. You can see what kind of support I got.”

  “Okay,” said Chandler, “I’ll tell her I’m backing you up.”

  “Thank you,” said Rue, feeling an unexpected wave of gratitude. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad.

  Chandler wiped some bread in the grease on the plate left by his Blanket Roll Hash. He wasn’t finding this job at all as he had expected. He was used to conducting business in a decisive world of move fast, cut to the chase, on to the next. The men he worked with respected and enjoyed this style. With Rue he found himself continually in a mushy world of six sides to every question. He felt like a basketball superstar who finds he’s been traded to a football team. He wondered how to regain his footing.

  “I had a talk with Oliver Sale the other day,” said Chandler. “You know he works for me?”

  “Yes,” said Rue. The Sales were relatively new to the school. They had moved out from Sheboygan a year and a half before and put their children in public school, but it hadn’t worked out. Rue had taken both children in the middle of last year, under some pressure from Chandler Kip. There was a girl, Lyndie, now in fifth grade, and a boy named Jonathan in junior kindergarten who was passing strange. Jonathan had a walleye and he licked the palm of his hand all the time, as if he were a cat trying to calm himself. He also had a trick of sticking his tongue way out as if he were trying to get it into his nose. He was not an attractive child and seemed racked with anxieties. Late last spring Rue had asked the Sales to come in to talk about Jonathan, but they hadn’t responded to the message. That was fairly unusual. When parents were paying X thousands of dollars a year, they usually wanted all the attention they could get, and they virtually always snapped to attention at any hint that a child was not working out at Country.

  “I don’t know how well you know them,” said Chandler.

  “Not well.”

  “He’s a very bright guy, genius level.”

  Rue only nodded. To her Oliver Sale was a tall and angular but flabby man who seemed to glower even when he tried to smile. His head was strangely proportioned, as if it had been necessary to cram all his features together at the bottom of his face, and leave the other two-thirds for forehead. The wife, Sondra, was more approachable, although nervous, like Jonathan. Rue’s memory was that when they came in for their interview, Oliver did all the talking.

  “Oliver says that Lyndie doesn’t seem to have any homework. They ask what her assignment is and she doesn’t know.”

  Uh oh, thought Rue, here we go. She said, “I’ll speak to Mrs. Trainer.”

  “Thank you. You know I’ve heard nothing but complaints about Catherine Trainer since I joined the Board? I’d like to raise a point of curiosity. We’re in a recession here. Teachers are a dime a dozen; they’re stacked up over the airfield waiting for a job like this. Young kids with good degrees who would cost half as much as Mrs. Trainer. Isn’t that true?”

  “In a way.”

  She looked at him, feeling weary. Oh, he was going to be one of these kinds of presidents. She wished they could all be like Ann Rosen, intelligent and supportive, good at leading the baying hounds away from the wounded deer, so that Rue could do her job while Ann channeled the Board in directions that strengthened the school.

  “In what way?” Chandler asked.

  Rue said, “It isn’t true that good teachers are a dime a dozen. There are plenty of teachers, but not plenty of good ones. Mrs. Trainer has been one of the best teachers I ever saw. She has a history with the school that is worth a great deal to the faculty, to the alumni, and to me.”

  Chandler smiled, and took another roll. “Well, those points are well taken.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But in my business when we have a difficult personnel issue, we make a clean cut and go forward. We aren’t sentimental and no one expects us to be.”

  “Can business really be as simple as that?”

  “Yes,” he said, though they both felt instantly that this was a lie. They sat silent another moment.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said with an air of beginning over. “Just for my information. When a teacher is past it, what does it take to decide you’re cutting her too much slack?”

  “It’s a matter of judgment. The important thing is that I have to be sure to think with my own brain and not let parking-lot politics think for me. I’ve had years when a particular teacher will come under fire for no reason known to God or man, and then the storm blows out to sea and the next year’s class is delighted with her again. And when I do decide that a longtime employee of the school is ineffective, there are right ways and wrong ways to handle it. So I have to do what I have to do in the right way, at the right time.”

  Chandler seemed annoyed by this answer, and shot his cuffs to display heavy mother-of-pearl cufflinks. He put one hand in his pocket and fumbled around, a gesture that looked habitual, like looking for a lighter and then remembering you don’t smoke anymore. He put his hands back on the table, folded together. Finally, he said, “Do I understand you to say that you are going to fire her? In the right way, at the right time?”

  “You do not.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m saying that it is improper for school parents, and most especially for Board members, to interfere with the head in personnel matters. Maybe we should schedule another board retreat, at your convenience, to review this sort of thing.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, during which they both looked around the room, as if suddenly enchanted with the decor. Each had come to the meeting determined to establish a rapport, hoping to make a new start with each other. Rue felt chagrin that once again she had let her impatience show because a new trustee knew so much less about schools than she did. Of course he knew less; it wasn’t his job. He hadn’t been at it for eighteen years. Chandler, for his part, had agreed to be president in the hope of serving the community, and also, of course, for the pleasure of wielding a big stick. He had told the Sales that he would take care of this. Now what was he going to tell them? It was embarrassing, and Rue knew it.

  “Let’s talk about the auction,” he said.

  “Let’s.”

  “I’m concerned about the theme,” said Chandler.

  “You are? Gay Nineties? I thought it was very clever. We’ve found a collector to lend us some antique bicycles, with the huge front wheels. The eighth-grade girls will wear leg-o’-mutton sleeves and bustles. Imagine how much they’ll learn about how uncomfortable women’s lives used to be, these little ones who spend their lives in sweat clothes.”

  “I don’t like the overtone of homosexuality.”

  “Chandler!”

  “Well, I don’t. I asked my wife what she thinks of first when she hears the word gay and she agrees with me.”

  “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard!”

  “Thank you very much. It’s not a lifestyle choice that should be associated with The Country School.”

  “It’s not a lifestyle choice at all! It’s a lovely word, with many meanings. This decade a hundred years ago was called the Gay Nineties, and that’s what it’s always been called.”

  “What about Merry Nineties?”

  “You’re not
serious.”

  “Do you realize that from the beginning of this lunch, you have brushed off or belittled every single thing that I came here to say to you?”

  She paused. She could see that in fact she had but…but…did she really have to deal with this? Maybe she could get Ann and Terry to sit down with him and explain to him what the job was. Maybe she could talk Terry into taking it over next year. She said carefully, “I can see that it seems that way to you, and I’m sorry. But the auction is run by the Parents’ Council. Firing is done by me. If you are going to overstep your bounds in areas like this, I’m going to fight you tooth and nail. It isn’t good for the school.”

  “And you are the authority on what’s good for the school?”

  “In this case, yes.”

  “I think I better go,” said Chandler quietly, and he went. It was the first time in her seventeen years of leadership at the school that a Board president, man or woman, had stuck her with the check.

  Life had not been entirely fair to Catherine Trainer. It was not fair that Norman should have died the way he did. He never smoked. He didn’t drink, except a thimble of wine at Passover. And yet he got a ghastly cancer when he was only fifty-seven, and lingered, getting paler and thinner and less and less himself as his immortal spark was replaced erg by erg with man-made drugs. He lingered on in the hospital bed in the downstairs den long after he knew, where he was, or even who he was, and long after he lost all control of his bladder or sphincter muscles, which at least he never knew, thank god. Catherine used to race home from school at lunch and immediately after class to be with him. She started recycling lesson plans and putting off grading homework as Norman’s suffering grew, and she was the only one who could soothe him. It turned out not to make much difference, either the putting off or the soothing of Norman. School went on in a blur, and so did Norman. Finally she had to have a nurse in the daytime, while she was at work, but she nursed him alone every night and all weekend. In the last months, he was so drugged that he could hardly be said to have slept night or day; he just slipped in and out of trances of pain. And she slept sitting up in a chair beside him. Once she let the doctors bully her into letting him be carried off to the hospital. But the minute he saw her in the morning, in his first lucid moment in weeks, Norman made her promise to take him home and never let them take him again, and she kept the promise. She was holding his hand when he died, although there was so little of him left by then that he slipped away without a ripple, and she missed it.