Norman Trainer had been the only person left alive who didn’t call her Catherine. He had called her Caddy, as she had been called when she was little. Now no one called her that. Grandchildren might have, if she had any. She always thought that she would teach her grandchildren to call her Caddy, as she couldn’t imagine she would ever feel old enough to be Granny. But to have grandchildren you had to have children, and she was lacking those.
She and Norman had had a full life though. Norman was an electrical inspector for the city, which was a terribly interesting job. He was always meeting new people and visiting new sites, and people always liked Norman. He had honest eyes. And she had her children at school. No one but Norman knew to what extent they became, in her mind, her own children. She yearned over the little ones in the preschool, watching them grow up on their way to her. She followed the big ones as they moved to the upper school, and then off into the big world. She followed them around the campus with her eyes; she followed them in her mind’s eye when they physically departed. She had never missed a Homecoming at The Country School in all her nineteen years. She loved to see the grown-up strangers approach her, great twenty-five-year-olds whom she had taught when they were ten, and see them smile and exclaim “Mrs. Trainer!” You could see in their eyes how they had loved her. And they knew that she loved them.
Catherine made fifth grade fun. If she did an Egypt project they all made a model of King Tut’s tomb. When they studied the Age of Discovery, they made model Ninas and Pintas and sailed them on the carp pond, and then they studied the People of the Americas and did things like making a whole meal of foods eaten by Incas.
She taught her children to sprout beans in little dishes as the Natives of New England had taught the Pilgrims to do, to avoid scurvy in the long winters. They made popcorn, of course, and they read about pemmican, a convenience food made of sun-dried strips of deer or buffalo meat, packed in leather pouches with melted fat for energy, and often mixed with dried blueberries or cranberries for flavor and vitamins. The children felt this would be fun to make but too disgusting to actually eat. Likewise the cooking methods of the nomads of the plains, the tipi-dwelling Sioux, Cheyenne, and the like. Catherine taught how they trailed their tipi poles, skins, and fur robes along behind their horses or women (the two beasts of burden) on the trail, but they didn’t carry any pottery or cookware. For a cooking pot they used a buffalo stomach, which they would fill with meat and fat and whatever vegetables might be gathered, then bury it in a hole filled with steaming hot rocks, and let it simmer. Then they dug it up and ate the stew, and then the pot. The children thought that would be gross, if you didn’t wrap it in aluminum foil before you buried it.
A favorite project was the Sweat Lodge, which the fifth grade built each year on its Indian Overnight. For safety this was held on campus at the school. Parents helped each year to erect three genuine Cheyenne tipis, whose poles were stored in the Bus Barn and the skins in Catherine’s garage. The skins were actually marine duck, now smoke-stained and painted all around with pictograph accounts of battles and buffalo hunts. Every fall the children helped to cut and peel new tent pegs and lacing pegs from shrubs on campus, as the Indians would have. On the night of the Overnight, Catherine and Norman cooked and served maize (corn on the cob) and stuffed buffalo gut (hot dogs) in the Mess Tipi. The tipi was furnished in the ceremonial way, with the doorway to the east and the altar at the back, and the children sat cross-legged on blankets around the fire, passing food hand to hand. After dinner they did ritual prayer dances, chanting chants they had written, and then they told ghost stories until the last streaks of light were gone from the sky. Then the children were sent to bed, the girls in one tipi and the boys in the other.
Norman and Catherine used to sit watching the firelight until the worst outbursts of whispers and laughing had subsided and every child had been escorted by torchlight to the bathroom at least twice. At first light, they all got up and began building the Sweat Lodge. While the children sweated, Catherine made bread dough, which the children wrapped around green sticks and cooked over the fire until it was black on the outside, though raw on the inside. They ate this dripping with butter and authentic Indian wild grape preserves, which came from a somewhat unauthentic Welch’s jelly jar. Norman cooked jerky strips (bacon) over the fire, and then the parents arrived in their Volvos and took their sticky Indians home to sleep it off.
Since Norman died, Catherine had to arrange each year for a supportive dad to do Norman’s part of the Sweat Lodge ceremony. She could cook the bacon, but she couldn’t carry the bucket of hot rocks. She was wondering whom she would choose as she drove to school, a half hour earlier than usual because she had to meet with Jennifer Lowen’s parents before class. She had already had an interminable meeting with Mrs. Lowen last week, but Rue said they wanted to come back for more. Maybe Nicolette Wren’s father would help with the Sweat Lodge. She was a nice little girl, Nicolette.
Corinne Lowen sat beside her husband, Bradley, on the couch in Rue’s office. She was a pretty woman, with short perky hair and big, intelligent eyes with long lashes. Bradley was neat and small with a cherubic smile, who always wore shiny black loafers. He was a CPA whose clients included most of The Country School community. Catherine had often heard it said that he was so kind and funny that Seven Springs was the only place where people actually enjoyed tax time. He was holding his wife’s hand, with absent-minded affection, when Catherine came to the door. Rue sat at her desk.
“Come in, Mrs. Trainer,” said Rue as Catherine tapped at the doorjamb, a bright little birdlike sound. Catherine, a once pretty woman whose colors had faded, like an Ektachrome print exposed to years of sun, tripped in and perched on a chair with her back to the windows. She was wearing a denim dress with mother-of-pearl snaps and deep pockets filled with erasers and paper clips and treats for the campus dogs. The Lowens, facing her, looked out over green campus, glowing in sunlight, a little haven for lucky children, Catherine thought. She had always liked the Lowens. She had taught their little Korean son, Kenny, four years ago, and they got on famously. He was a bright one, Kenny.
“The Lowens have some concerns,” said Rue to Catherine, “about the way the school year has started for Jennifer. I thought we all ought to discuss them together.” Catherine knew the drill, of course. It was a game they all had to play. Overinvolved parents fretted to Rue, Rue was elaborately attentive about it, then Rue and whatever teacher was being second-guessed had to meet with the parents and explain to them the long view. Half an hour from now Catherine would be free to go back to her children, where she would teach a special unit on bird-watching as her science class, and they would have the kind of fun that made the children love her, that instilled love of learning in a way you couldn’t measure.
“We are concerned that Jennifer doesn’t seem to have any homework at night,” said Bradley. “At ten, it seems to us, she should be developing the habit of homework. Besides, if she doesn’t have any, then she wants to watch television.”
“Children work at such different speeds,” said Catherine blithely. She was trying to remember what homework she had assigned. Math worksheets, well of course most of the children did those in class, and had there been spelling to study? Yes…and a chapter to read in geography, by the end of the month, and journals. Of course. She could not see a problem. “I think it’s very positive that Jennifer is such a committed student that she does all her homework at school.”
“We don’t, Mrs. Trainer,” said Corinne. “We think she’s bored. We would like to see her challenged. And she wrote a composition last week that you haven’t handed back yet. She was very proud of that composition. It’s discouraging for her not to know her grade.”
“We think writing is important,” said Bradley.
“The curriculum says that in fifth grade the children write compositions every week,” said Corinne. “We want to know if that’s happening.”
“And math,” said Bradley.
“The children are keeping journals,” said Catherine. “They make notes about the books they are reading. They make science notes on the flowers and birds on campus.”
“Is Jennifer supposed to be doing that?”
“Of course.”
“And is she?”
“I assume so,” said Mrs. Trainer.
“Don’t you know?”
“She was writing a book report on Pippi Longstocking, I know.”
“And what grade did she get?”
“I don’t grade the journals on a weekly basis.”
“How often do you?”
“Well, that’s hard to say. Every week is different.” Really, thought Catherine, she was ceasing to enjoy this. Did these people think she was a robot? Did they think teaching children was like making shoes?
“So do you know for a fact whether she’s written in her journal at all?”
“I’m sure she has,” said Catherine, sounding impatient.
“You’re sure? Does that mean you know for a fact? Have you graded her journal at all?”
“I think we understand your concern,” said Rue, deciding it was time to impose her body between the ravening tigers and the tethered goat, although the goat seemed oblivious to the danger. It was clear to her that Catherine hadn’t the faintest idea what homework her class was doing, and didn’t seem to care. “I’m sure we all agree that Jennifer should be asked to perform up to her ability. Suppose Mrs. Trainer and I work together in the next few weeks to arrive at a program we can define to you.”
“So we know what she’s supposed to be doing,” exclaimed Corinne. So we can ride herd on her, so we can cross-examine her on every comma, is what that meant, thought Catherine. She’d had a child in last year’s class whose homework always reeked of cigarette smoke, because his chain-smoking mother went over it line by line, or did it for him. Jennifer isn’t as bright as Kenny, she thought, in case you hadn’t noticed. She felt sorry for poor little Jennifer, being hounded to meet an impossible standard, being taught to grub after grades instead of loving to learn for its own sake. She was beginning to feel really cross with these people.
Now came the jockeying for Rue’s ear. The Lowens wanted to stay after Catherine left, so they could demand to have Jennifer switched to the other section. Catherine wanted to stay after the Lowens left, to justify herself and complain about the Lowens. Fortunately, Merilee came to the door and said, “Mrs. Shaw, when you’re done, could I have a minute?” and Rue gratefully said, “Of course.”
The Lowens left reluctantly, not at all reassured. Catherine left reluctantly, to go and find some sympathy in the faculty lounge. When they had gone, Merilee shut the door behind them. “Lee wants to move to Colorado,” she said, and burst into tears.
Rue’s heart sank. “Oh, Merilee.” Merilee’s husband had recently taken early retirement with a huge golden parachute. Ever since, he’d been pressuring Merilee to retire as well.
When the storm of tears was over, the nose blown, Merilee said, “He’s found a house he wants to buy, where he can fish. That’s all he likes to do, besides work. He likes to fish.”
“What about you?”
Rue knew without asking that what Merilee liked was her garden and her job and her church. None of them portable. “We’ll be closer to the children…” said Merilee in her kind, piping voice, and started to cry again. The children were both in Massachusetts.
“I can’t imagine the school without you,” Rue said, and meant it. “What will I do?” She was wondering equally what would Merilee do. Retirement struck her as an awful prospect, if you loved what you were doing. As she knew Merilee did.
Merilee said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Why don’t you give the job to Mrs. Goldsborough?”
“Brilliant,” said Rue. “That’s brilliant. Oh, Merilee.”
Emily sat in a deep chair in Rue’s office, looking defeated.
“I knew I wasn’t doing very well, but I didn’t think I was going to get fired.”
“I’m not firing you. I’m offering you a job that pays better.”
“But I wasn’t doing well, was I?”
Rue let a moment pass. “No.”
“I don’t know how to be a secretary—”
“You’re smart, and you’re sensible. You’ll be my backstop…. I make mistakes, and I need a friend to catch what I drop and point me in the right direction. I can teach you what you don’t know.”
Emily was not used to being found wanting, especially in her own eyes, and lately she was getting a steady diet of it.
“I feel like I got called to the principal’s office and expelled.”
“That happened to me,” said Rue.
Emily had expected Rue to comfort her, which would have annoyed her. This, however, was interesting.
“You got expelled?”
“Yes, from boarding school.”
Emily looked at Rue with new eyes. “You did? What did you do?”
“I thought the school was a wicked place. It was encouraging all our snobbery and self-importance and not teaching us all that much. And the rules were irrational, designed to make us easy to handle, not to teach us anything about being decent members of a community. So I decided to try to break them all.”
Emily didn’t know what to think—of her own boarding school self, who indeed had been a “good” girl, quite satisfied with the status quo, or of Malone, who was showing signs of becoming quite a burr under the saddle as her hormones kicked in.
“And did you? Break them all?”
“Most of them. But I didn’t mean to get caught.”
“Were your parents furious?”
“Let’s say they were in character. My mother was embarrassed…as if something had happened to her, not to me. I remember her saying ‘Rue, ever since you were a little girl, you’ve seen everything from your own point of view. You can never see till it’s too late how much you are annoying people.’”
“Oh dear,” said Emily.
“Of course, it hurt so much because it was true. I hope it’s less true now.”
“What did your father say?”
Rue smiled. “He, who always did see other points of view, saw that apart from being stunned and angry and ashamed of myself, I had never failed before, and I was frightened. I thought my life was ruined. No other school would take me, I wouldn’t get to go to college, and my whole life would be blighted by one mistake. So he came to me that night after dinner, when I was holed up brooding, and he stood in the door and said, ‘Rue, it’s silly for a girl like you to worry what to do with her life. You should just become queen of a small country.’”
Emily laughed. Rue laughed too, her wonderful rich, deep laugh.
“What school was it?” Emily asked.
“A New England one where my mother had gone. I was the first person from our town to go away to school. Maybe the last.”
There was another silence. Rue sat quietly.
“I think I could have handled the eighth grade, if it hadn’t been for Kenny Lowen,” Emily said at last.
Rue did not seem surprised. Instead she offered, “I once heard a psychologist say that when he studied groups of children, he couldn’t necessarily pick out the ones from what we used to call broken homes, but he could always spot the ones who were adopted.”
“Not that you’d have much trouble with Kenny; he looks about as Jewish as Reverend Sun Yung Moon.”
“Which makes it worse for him. He does seem to have an empathy problem.”
“I’d say he’s an evil little shit.”
“I was using the technical language. It’s too bad he’s so bright; it makes it so easy for him to manipulate the other kids. Do you want to think about this job for a day or two?”
“Either way, I can’t have the teaching job?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Then I want it.”
“Good.”
Emily found that her position on campus changed dramatically with her new job. She
was no longer a gear in a machine, she was the closest thing to the main axle. If she had foreseen what the advantages were, she’d have begged for the job in the first place. In many ways, she soon knew more of what was going on than anyone else on campus, including Rue. Not necessarily all of it was useful, but nearly all of it was interesting, in the way that family gossip is interesting to members of the family. There were many things that people wanted Rue to know but did not want to be seen to have told her. The faculty made publicly a unified front but among themselves were full of feuds and annoyances. Teachers who wanted Rue to know that Charla Percy had spent three times her budget on new classroom furniture, told Emily. Teachers who wanted Rue to know that Marilyn Schramm was not doing her share of cleaning up the mess in the art room, told Emily. Teachers who wanted Rue to know that they all felt threatened when she let the Lowens terrorize Catherine Trainer, told Emily.
And parents who wanted Rue to know that they might withdraw their children if their children got Catherine Trainer next year, told Emily. Parents who thought Sylvia French was siphoning money from the hot lunch fund, told Emily. Sometimes parents told Emily other parents’ secrets for the hell of it, so she’d owe them one if they wanted her to tell a secret to them.
The first week in October got off to a great start. Lynn Ketchum had planned an eighth-grade class outing for Wednesday, to see an exhibition of memorabilia honoring Anne Frank, the famous teenage martyr and diarist. Unfortunately, the Jewish parents of the class were incensed.