I Cannot Get You Close Enough (20 page)

“That doesn't have anything to do with your job, Marion. If you think the grades have been changed, you need to go to the principal. You're an accessory if you don't.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I'll call him then. Or maybe I'll go over there and talk to him.”

“It's your duty, Marion. You can't ignore this. What did the transcript say?”

“It was all A's. Except for a couple of B's in math. She couldn't have all A's. There's only one boy in school with all A's. His daddy is a lawyer and they own that department store on the square.”

“Marion.”

“Yes.”

“Go do your duty.”

 

Mrs. Walker put on a dress and went over to the principal's house and told him what she suspected. Then the two of them went to the school and keyed into the computer and looked at the grades. They pulled up Olivia's junior high school grades and test scores. Then they called the registrar.

On Monday morning the principal called the headmaster of Saint Andrew's Episcopal School in Charlotte and he called Daniel and at three that afternoon Daniel was sitting in the headmaster's office waiting for Olivia. They had sent someone to get her out of gym class.

“This is serious, sweetie,” Daniel said, when she came in the door, still dressed in shorts and a sweatshirt. “We've got a problem here. Do you know what it is?” The transcripts were spread out on the desk. Olivia took one look at them and collapsed into a chair. “I wanted to come here,” she said. “I wanted to come so much.” She dissolved in tears, folded into a paroxysm of tears. Daniel and the headmaster looked at each other. Then the headmaster called for help. “Get Lila in here,” he yelled to his secretary. “Go get the counselor and tell her to get in here right now.”

“I'll take her home,” Daniel said. “Come on, Olivia. We'll go home. You can talk to me then.”

“It doesn't matter,” Olivia sobbed. “I might as well kill myself. Now I'll never go to college or have anything, anything at all. I can't have anything.”

“Oh, my God,” the headmaster began. “This was badly handled. Olivia, we shouldn't have called you in like this, with both of us here. I should have done something else. This was badly planned.”

“You better believe it was,” the school counselor said. She had arrived and was on her knees by the sobbing child. “What a crazy thing to do, bringing her in here and springing this on her like that. My God, Morgan, you know better than this. You should have called me. Goddamn, you make my work so hard. You make it impossible.” The headmaster hung his head. He and the counselor had been fucking each other on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and sometimes on Sundays for seven months now. He was so much in love with her he was crazy. He had never loved a woman the way he loved this bossy brown-haired psychologist from Greensboro. Now he had bungled this matter of the half-Indian Hand girl and she might never give him another piece of ass.

“Lila, I'm so sorry,” he said. “You're right. Take her to your office. We'll talk without her. Olivia, just one thing. Are you saying what we suspect is true?”

“Morgan, this is not the time,” the counselor said. “Shut up, for God's sake.” She pulled Olivia up and started with her toward the door.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” Olivia said. “I guess you'll hate me now. I guess I'll never have anything, will I?” She started sobbing again and Lila led her off into an adjacent room. Daniel stood up. “I better go with them.”

“No, give Lila time to calm her down. Well, I guess that's it, then. I don't think we have to go into an investigation here.”

“What are you going to do?” Daniel lowered his chin, did the mental equivalent of taking his hat in his hands, got wary, thoughtful, shrewd, weighed the public scandal, weighed Olivia's chances of following his sister Anna to a suicide's grave, wondered what Morgan needed, wanted, had to have. “I hope you won't kick her out, Morgan.

We've been associated with this school for years. Sending money, sending kids. You can't just kick her out, can you?”

“I might have to.” Morgan sat back in his chair, imagining the room filling up with the tormented parents he had counseled in the last six years, more tormented every year and more of them. “I have to run a school, Daniel. We have to have rules and principles. What if it gets out? That we condoned this kind of cheating. Lawlessness. This is lawlessness. Breaking and entering in Tahlequah. Forgery. I'm sorry. I know it's your daughter but I have a responsibility to the school.”

“You want to ruin her life without giving her a chance? Goddamn, Morgan, she's only a kid. I've only had her a few months. She's a good little girl.”

“We know she is, Daniel. We all like her. But there may be criminal charges. I can't even talk to that guy down in Oklahoma. He sounds like some kind of mad dog.”

“There must be some probation she could get on.” Daniel had been kicked out of three prep schools. They had always let him be on probation first. Surely this fairy had heard of probation. Daniel was getting mad now. He was too spoiled to be much good at hiding his temper. “So what are you telling me, Morgan? You're kicking her out for sure then?”

“No. I have to think about it. She has to have some counseling, Daniel. No matter what happens here. You can't take this lightly.”

Daniel stood up again. Began to walk around the room. “I'm not taking it lightly. Where did that woman take her? I need to see her.”

“Will you come back and talk to me tomorrow? After we sleep on this? After we all have time to think? I might have to consult the board.”

Daniel stopped pacing. He gathered up his store of balance, became his most courteous self. “Of course, Morgan. I'm sorry if I seem upset. She's just a little girl. I don't know those folks who raised her. I'm doing all I can. All I know how to do.”

“Let's go find your daughter,” Morgan said, coining around the desk, taking Daniel's arm. “You can take her home.”

The next morning Daniel rounded up his brother, Niall, and they went back to the high school to try again. Niall was the most civilized person the Hands had thrown up for three generations. He was a throwback to the old teacher and classics scholar who had given the family its proper names. Niall spoke four Romance languages and Greek and corresponded with Sanskrit scholars. He had met the Dalai Lama. Also, he traveled with Phelan Manning. He had hunted with Phelan all over the world. How does Niall justify Phelan to the Dalai Lama? Anna had always been asking. Tell me that. He just goes along, Daniel always answered. He doesn't carry a gun.

This morning Niall was in his backyard fertilizing his roses when Daniel came over and rounded him up. “Calm down,” Niall said. “It will be all right. We'll fix it.”

“She's just a little kid. She was on the make, so what? We would have been in the same situation. Goddamn, Niall, that goddamn little fairy preacher. She was crying her little heart out. We had to get Momma over last night and Ben Torrey came by and gave her some tranquilizers. I gave that goddamn school two grand last year for their building fund.”

“Maybe it wasn't enough.”

“Well, shit, what a thing to say.”

“How much is left in Grandmother's education trust?”

“I don't know. Louise raped it a couple of years ago. You know about that. She got Momma to give her all that money to go to England.”

“How much is left?”

“Forty thousand, give or take a grand.”

“Well, let's go by and get Momma to give us a check big enough to get this headmaster in a good mood.”

“A bribe?” Daniel watched Niall spreading fertilizer on the straw beneath a rosebush. Niall never ceased to amaze Daniel. One month he was holed up reading books and voting for black candidates for mayor and the next month he wanted to bribe an Episcopal priest.

“He's an Episcopal minister.”

“Well, he's still got a school to run.” Niall put the sack of fertilizer back into a lard can and stood up and wiped his hands on his apron. Then he removed the apron and took his brother's arm and walked into the house.

“I like your little dark-eyed girl, little brother. I can see the Asian in her. She will flower someday and make all this worthwhile. How I envy you those daughters. I was thinking of them the other day, for hours I thought of you over there with your riches.”

“You wouldn't think so if you'd been at my house last night. She was crying and Jessie started crying. Then Ben gave them tranquilizers. House full of kids on tranquilizers. That's what I'm down to. What do you mean, Asian? Goddamn, Niall, you get the nuttiest ideas.”

“American Indians came from Asia across the Bering Strait. I love the darkness in her, the brooding. I was so thrilled when I met her on the street one day last month.

She was out walking and I saw her from a distance. I don't think she recognized me at first. To think, we have this young creature in our midst, with so much history in her face.”

“Are you going over there with me?”

“Would you like me to put on a suit?”

“Well, you can take off that old shirt. You want to go by Momma's and see if she wants to give us a check?”

“You call her while I change clothes. Tell her we're coming.”

The two men, Niall now dressed in a plaid shirt and khaki jacket like the ones his mother had bought for him down through the years, Daniel as always dressed to the nines in the finest slacks and sweaters his girlfriends could pick out at the best stores in Charlotte, went over and found their mother in her rose garden pruning her Frau Karl Druschkis and directing two men who were making her a bed for pink azaleas. There was nothing in the world that pleased Mrs. Hand more than the sight of good-looking men appearing in her yard at nine o'clock on a spring morning. She had been a belle and she was a belle and she needed courting. “My darlings,” she said. “Oh, Niall, Daniel is having such a bad time.”

“We need some money, Momma,” Niall said. “We need some money from Grandmother's trust.”

“What for?” she asked.

“To give the school,” Niall continued. “We have to get the little girl out of trouble.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Hand said. She pulled off her gardening gloves, looking down, thinking that she was tired of handing checks to her children. “How much do you need?”

 

At ten-thirty they presented themselves at the high school. The school counselor was waiting in the anteroom and escorted them into the headmaster's office. She was in a good mood this morning, wearing a dark silk dress with a string of pearls and a lot of Chanel 19. She and the headmaster had been at it for hours last night after they made up. He had gotten home so late it was sure to ruin his marriage. This time his wife could not pretend he had been working late. Even his dumb old wife would catch on now.

“Mr. Hand and his brother,” the counselor said, looking her lover in the eye, wetting her lips with her tongue. “I'll wait out here, Morgan, in case you need me. I'll tell Jennette to hold your calls.”

“We don't want to fool around with this,” Daniel said, when she had left the room and closed the door. “We want to put it on the table. Mother gave us a check for ten thousand dollars. We want you to know how much we value this school. How much we thank you for all the help you've been to our family over the years.”

“The little girl deserves another chance,” Niall put in. “We ask for your compassion, Morgan. You know you can count on us. It won't happen again. She won't embarrass you. We're asking a favor. We don't know what would happen to her if you kicked her out. It needs to be covered up, Morgan.”

“I don't know how far I can go. They know about it at the school in Oklahoma. It isn't only me.” Daniel put the check on the desk.

“Will you call them? Will you ask them to let it lay?”

“I can keep her here.” The headmaster picked up the check. It was for the school. He could add it to the scholarship fund. Half for the scholarship fund, half for the new gym. He held it in his hand. He was goddamned if he would be ashamed of taking it. Money does God's work. Money is food and clothes and teachers' salaries. “She'll have to have a math tutor, Daniel. And some therapy. We'll help you find someone. And I can't guarantee they'll keep it off her records out there. The principal's an irritable guy. I talked to him again this morning. He's fairly intractable, I think.”

“But you'll keep her here? She can stay in school.” Daniel reached over and squeezed his brother's arm. “You won't kick her out.”

“We like Olivia, Daniel. She's a bright child. No one wants to kick her out. She has to have some counseling however. For her sake as well as ours. I didn't realize she'd lost her mother at birth. If you'd told me that when you enrolled her, I would have suggested counseling then. Well, better late than never.” The headmaster stood up, feeling the long stretch in his loins that great sex always left him with. The wonderful itch that fresh money for the scholarship fund always gave him. Tell me there isn't a God, he told himself. Tell me it just happened that Carole decided to spend a few more days with her mother just when I needed time with Lila.

He smiled his beatific pulpit smile and came around the desk and walked Daniel and Niall to the door. Lila was waiting by the water cooler. He laid his hand on her shoulder. “Go get Olivia and bring her here,” he said. “Get her out of class if necessary. Let's put her mind at rest.”

Daniel and Niall got back in the car and started driving toward Niall's house. “Do you have to go to work right now?” Niall asked.

“I guess so. If I still have a business. I guess it's still there.”

“I thought maybe we could ride out to the country and go swimming in the lake. Don't you think we should celebrate this morning's work?”