Saying Grace (40 page)

He was very frightened, and it made him have to go to the bathroom. But the bathroom was down the hall; to go there, he’d have to open the door and he’d see what was out there. Sometimes he could hear it walking up and down, crying, and just there, then, there was a THUMP as if it had thrown itself against the door. He began to whimper and lick his hand. Being frightened made him have to go even more.

I
t took just over a week for Chandler to ask that a special flag-raising be held, so he could introduce the new acting headmas-ter. On the day, he arrived with a man in his thirties in tow, a highly polished object with pale hair and lashes, who was wearing a gray suit and black Gucci loafers. When the nearly three hundred children (minus the preschool) and their teachers stood in rows before him in the winter sunlight, Chandler himself raised the flag, and then led the Pledge of Allegiance. Then he and the pale-haired man stepped up to the microphone. He told them he was pleased that the Board had been able to bring the school’s moment of disarray to an end so quickly.

“Chip Horde holds a bachelor of science degree from Harvey Mudd, and a master’s in business administration. He has many years’ experience in the human resources field, and the Board and I feel that he is the right man to lead us through this difficult time.

I know you’ll give him all the support you can as he gets his sea legs here. Please welcome Mr. Horde.”

There was anxious applause. Hundreds of faces studied this new one, wondering what his presence in their lives was going to mean.

Mr. Horde gave a brief and gracious speech saying that he was glad to be on board, and that he would need their help. He said he was weak on names and would be grateful if they would introduce themselves to him each time they spoke. He said he hoped this would be a time of learning and growing together for all of them.

After classes began, Chandler brought Chip Horde up to Home to introduce him around and show him his office. Chip greeted each person on the staff by name before he was introduced.

“You must be Emily. Chip Horde, good to know you. Mike, good to know
you
. Bill Glarrow…so this is the Business Office? What database are you using?”

“Nutshell.”

298 / Beth Gutcheon

“You’re kidding. Well.” And he went on with Chandler into Rue’s office.

“What does he mean, ‘Good to
know
you,’” said Mike. “He doesn’t know me. He just got here.” He and Emily and Bill Glarrow looked toward the door of Rue’s office. The first thing Chip Horde had done was close it.

C
hip Horde was on the phone with the police when Emily the secretary came to the door. It annoyed him to have her stand there listening to him. The English teacher, Cynda Goldring, had had her house burglarized; nothing was missing but the house had been trashed, and the burglar had painted swastikas all over the walls with Cynda’s nail polish. It was a disturbing crime, both unprofessional and uncannily malicious, and weirdly Mrs. Goldring suspected a child in the school, a Jewish boy. Kenny Lowen. It sounded to him like a hell of a PR problem.

The minute he hung up, Emily said, “Excuse me, Chip.” She came in with a software manual in her hand. “I’ve spent about an hour and a half on this; could you just show me once how you do it?”

Chip Horde, who was trying to understand the budget, looked surprised. “Do what, Emily?”

“I can’t get the program to print landscape, so we can print a run of envelopes. I could do one address at a time through the printer, but the software keeps overriding the printer command, and if I can’t do it through the software, I can’t access the mailing list….”

“Have you called Tech Support?”

“Yes, I have, but the people who make the printer say it should work and the people who make the software say I need another printer driver, but when I install the one they say, it won’t print at all….”

Chip Horde looked pointedly at his watch.

“I could do it faster by hand, honestly.”

“Don’t you think that looks a
little
unprofessional?” he asked sarcastically.

“Not as unprofessional as having the mailing two weeks late.”

“I can’t imagine this is normally the Head’s problem.”

“Normally, everything is the Head’s problem,” said Emily.

“I can’t believe she spent her time doing the secretarial work,”

300 / Beth Gutcheon

said Chip to Chandler. “You should see the files. They’re quite un-believable. No wonder she never had time for anyone.”

“That’s just what I thought,” said Chandler. “I knew it.”

By the end of the second week Chip had fired Emily Goldsborough. He was extremely surprised to receive a protest delegation of parents and Board members, including Sylvia French and Carson McCann.

“She just wasn’t trained for the job,” he explained. “She’s a very nice lady, I agree.”

“Chip, maybe you don’t understand what the job is. This school is an organism. We need someone who knows the DNA. Who’s out of town, who’s friends with whom, whose parents are getting divorced, what doctor to call when you can’t reach the parents.”

“Doesn’t Mike know all that?”

“No. Besides, she’s a single mother, she needs the money.”

“Everyone needs the money,” said Chip. He brought in his secretary from his former company, a failed start-up, a girl of twenty-four named Kimberly who could type like the wind. She worked weekends completely redoing the school’s filing system so that no one else could find anything. When she realized what had happened, the development director went quietly and reasonably to Mr. Horde to explain that Kimberly had just made her job undoable. Mr. Horde said that was too bad, but the school would be better off in the end if it ran in a more professional way. The development director quit.

Mike Dianda explained to Chip Horde that faculty evaluation was a major part of the Head’s job. Chip began spending an hour of every day observing classes. Then he would shut himself in his room studying the evaluations Rue had written for each member of the staff over the years. It baffled him. He couldn’t figure out what the hell was supposed to go on in a classroom, especially since it seemed to be different for every grade. The only thing he could tell for sure was that one of the art teachers, not the one in the Birkenstocks, was half lit three-quarters of the time. He called Pat Moredock in during her lunch hour, confronted her with vodka bottles found in her paint closet, and told her she was fired.

Missy Kip went home to her father in tears.

“Mrs. Moredock was crying, Daddy. It’s not fair!”

“It doesn’t sound very fair, Missy. I’ll see what I can do.”

Saying Grace / 301

“Oh, come on, Chandler,” said Chip Horde. “She was tight as a tick at ten in the morning.”

“She’s an effective and popular teacher, Chip.”

“I don’t see how she could be.”

“It seems a little inhumane, that’s all. Why wouldn’t it be better to have a talk with her, see if she’ll agree to go for treatment?”

“Why? We can replace her in a minute, at half the price.”

“Be careful,” said Chandler sternly. “Now I’m serious, be careful with that kind of talk. We had a union organizer on campus last week. The last goddamn thing we want is the whole group signing up with the Classroom Teachers’ Association.”

The two sat in silence. Chip didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t known private school teachers
could
join the Classroom Teachers’

Association. Jesus, what a con game this was. How the hell did you get people bright enough to teach at all, to work for half what they could get in public school, if they had the choice of getting a union to stick it to everyone for them?

Chandler was thinking of Missy, and how much he wanted to go home to her and tell her he’d rescued Mrs. Moredock.

“I wonder if we couldn’t arrange an intervention for Pat,” said Chandler. “If she’d go somewhere and dry out, we could hold her job for her. What does she have for family? Who are her friends?”

“Now look,” said Chip, “back off. Read the Handbook. Hiring and firing is
my
job. I’m trying to build a team, Chandler. If you keep coming in here, giving everyone the message that I’m not really in charge, you’re going to find out no one is in charge.”

“Sorry. I just wanted to give you my thinking,” said Chandler stiffly.

“I’ve already acted. I couldn’t take it back even if I were inclined to. You want a wuss in this job? Is that what you thought I was?”

Chandler stood. “Of course not. I was trying to be helpful.”

“I don’t think I need the help,” said Chip, rising too. “No offense.”

“None taken,” said Chandler. This was a lie on both sides. The two men shook hands and Chandler left the office.

L
yndie Sale’s room was aggressively messy. Her school books were spread out around her, but she wasn’t working. She sat still, cross-legged on the bed. She had a
Playboy
magazine hidden under her mattress, and a pint of Bailey’s Irish Cream that she had stolen from Tagliarini’s in a knapsack on the shelf of her closet. But she didn’t dare get these out while They were up. They had fixed her door so it could only be locked from the outside, and they came in whenever they felt like it, without knocking. She could hear the hum of voices and canned laughter from the television downstairs.

Lyndie got up and left her room on stockinged feet, moving toward the sound.

In the den, her father was watching television. His high forehead gleamed in the blue light. At a card table in the corner, her mother sat in lamplight, surrounded by yarn of different colors, and bowls of dead tennis balls. Lyndie knew what she was doing. Her mother would wind long hanks of yarn around a tennis ball, secure it, then divide the trailing wool into eight long clumps and begin to braid.

The eight clumps would be braided legs. She was making toy oc-topuses. You could see from the rows of them propped on the bookshelf that she had already made a great many, whether for a school or church sale or some other reason, Lyndie didn’t know.

Her eternal glass of red wine stood on the card table beside the tennis balls.

Without turning around, Oliver Sale said, “Lyndie…what are you doing?” Apparently he could feel that she had been gazing at his TV program from the doorway.

“I’m going to call Shannon.”

“Is your homework done?”

“No, I need the assignment. I don’t know what pages.”

“You can’t watch TV until you finish.”

“I know.”

Saying Grace / 303

She went on, into the kitchen. The kitchen was filled with every fancy appliance you ever saw, a microwave, a convection oven, a gelato maker, a vegetable juicer, a Kitchen Aid, a breadmaker, and a Cuisinart. You’d think her mother liked to cook. Lyndie’s kindergarten drawings were lovingly framed and hung on the wall. A valentine she’d made for her mother two years ago hung on the refrigerator door, held by a magnet in the shape of an ear of corn.

Lyndie took a popsicle from the freezer and started to eat it. She went to the phone and dialed. After a ring or two, a male voice answered.

“Hello?”

Lyndie just held the phone, and sucked on her popsicle. It was grape.

“Hello? This is Chip Horde…” the voice said on the other end, a little too loud. Lyndie said nothing, but made sure she was making enough noise that he knew someone was there. He said crossly,

“Who is calling, please…”

“Lyndie, what are you doing?”

Lyndie slammed the phone down and whirled around. Her mother was standing in the doorway, her empty wine glass in her hand.

“I was calling Shannon.”

“You just hung up on her?”

“No, we were done.”

“You’re lying, Lyndie.”

They stared at each other.

M
ike Dianda had asked for just a minute of Chip’s time.

He sat in the chair by the head’s desk, where he and Rue had so often sat.

“What’s on your mind?” said Chip, as he stuck a pencil into his electric sharpener.

When the whirring stopped, Mike said, “I’m going to be leaving at the end of the year.”

Chip looked at him. “But you signed a contract.”

“I know…I’m sorry. I’ve been offered a job in San Francisco, head of the middle school at Town.”

“But that’s a step down for you.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“What are they offering you?”

Mike was taken aback. “It’s not the money. It’s a job I campaigned for, and I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’m truly sorry to hear it, Mike. There are people who could tell me they were leaving, and I’d say ‘Godspeed,’ but you’re not one of them. Let me see if I can get the Board to do any better on your contract.”

“You’re
kidding
,” said Cynda at lunch. “If he
could
pay you more, why didn’t he frigging do it in the first place?”

“I said I thought he’d really be happier with someone of his own choice in my office.”

“You’re bad.” They both laughed. It was no secret that no fewer than seven members of the faculty would be gone by next year, in addition to Catherine Trainer and Pat Moredock. Four, including Cynda, had found jobs elsewhere, and three, including Janet TerWilliams, didn’t care. They just didn’t want to work at Country anymore.

Nine families had withdrawn a total of fifteen children, and preschool applications were way down from previous years. Chip was looking at a budget shortfall of $70,000.

Saying Grace / 305

Mike was the second member of the office staff to quit. The first had been Kimberly, who thanked Mr. Horde for the opportunity but said she could get more money working at Digital, and it wasn’t so, like, Reaganesque there. By which she meant, there were people of her own age, some of them straight single men, and you didn’t have to keep going off campus to smoke a cigarette.

Chandler found himself struggling to keep this hemorrhage from spreading to the Board. Terry Malko was long gone, and now em-broiled in a divorce proceeding. Sylvia French was resigning in support of Rue, but had agreed to finish her term, which would run until June. Ann Rosen had resigned, giving no reason. In this power vacuum Carson McCann had apparently become power-mad, lobbying behind the scenes on issues that affected her, such as whether children in first and second grades should have final exams.