Dear Miss Demeanor

by Joan Hess

  We quickly established that they were Beginning Features, and I was a substitute with no interest in their future. They agreed to hold down the noise; I agreed to leave them alone until I found the daily unit delineation book. My pudgy aide at last produced it from a cardboard box beside the desk.

  Since we were all content with the present arrangement, I left them to whisper while I scanned the book. Second period was to be Intro to Photo, and third was gloriously free, followed by a reasonable lunch break. Fourth period was Falcon Crier, which I presumed had something to do with the newspaper, fifth was Photo II, and sixth was something called “Falconnaire.” If I was alive at that point, I could go home.

  The whispering grew a hit louder. I turned a motherly frown on them, and the noise obediently abated. Pleased with my success, I wandered around the room, discovering a coat closet filled with old newspapers, boxes of curled photographs, a quantity of dried rubber cement bottles, and a small, inky hole that proved to be a darkroom in all senses of the word. It also proved to be the source of the garbage can aroma. I now knew the confines of my domain, for better or worse.

  I was sitting at the desk with an old newspaper when a box on the wall above my head began to crackle. After a moment of what sounded like cellophane being crumpled, a voice emerged.

  “Mrs. Malloy, I have neither your attendance list for first period, nor your blue slips. I must have them at the beginning of each period.” Miss Don, or Frosty the Snowman.

  I gazed at the box. “So?”

  “So I must have them, Mrs. Malloy.”

  Good heavens, the thing worked both ways. I wondered if she could see me from her mountaintop aerie as well. “I’ll send them to the office,” I called with a compliant expression, just in case. The box squawked in reply, then fell silent.

  Pudge waved a paper at me and left the room. Hoping she knew what she was up to, I returned to an article on the chances of a district championship in football, complete with photographs of neckless boys squinting into the sun, but nevertheless optimistic.

  On the last page, I found a photograph of Robed Redford himself. The caption below informed me that this was the new assistant coach, Jerry Finley. He thought the chances for a championship were good if the boys worked hard during practice, perfected their passing game, and gave the team their personal best. He was delighted to be at Farberville High and proud of the Falcons. His hobbies included water-skiing and Chinese cooking. When not on the gridiron, he would be found teaching general science and drivers’ ed, or supervising study hall in the cafeteria.

  Or dimpling at Miss Hart, I amended to myself

  The bell rang, and the class departed with the stealth of a buffalo herd. Their replacements looked remarkably similar. I tossed the attendance book to a weedy boy with glasses, made the same announcement about immediate goals, and even managed to send my attendance slip to the office before the box crackled at me.

  I spent the period rummaging through Miss Parchester’s desk for anything that might contain accounts. I found a year’s supply of scented tissues, worn pencils, blue slips whose purpose escaped me, and other teaching paraphernalia. When the bell rang, I went down the hail to the teachers’ lounge to drown my sorrows in coffee.

  As I opened the door, I heard a furious voice saying, “Mr. Pitts, you are a despicable example of humanity. I have told you repeatedly that you must not-must not-enter the lounge for any reason other than maintenance. I shall have to report you to Mr. Weiss!”

  The speaker was a grim-faced woman with hair the color of concrete. On one side of her stood a diminutive sort with bluish hair, on the other a lanky woman whose shoulders barely supported her head. All three wore long dark dresses, cardigans, and stubby heels. They also wore disapproving frowns. Despite minor variations, they were remarkably similar, as if they were standard issue from some prehistoric teachers’ college; I had had them or remarkable facsimiles throughout my formative years. Many of said years had been spent cringing when confronted with steely stares and tight-lipped smiles.

  The object of their scorn was a man with a broom. His thin black hair glittered in the light from years of accumulated lubrication. He wore dirty khaki pants, a gray undershirt that might have been white in decades past, and scuffed cowboy boots. His lower lip hung in moist and petulant resignation, but his eyes flittered to me as if to share some secret amusement. Having nothing in common with lizards, I eased behind the three women and slipped into the kitchenette.

  “Well, Mr. Pitts,” the woman boomed on, “it is obvious that you have been rummaging in the refrigerator once again. Stealing food, contaminating the lunches of others, and generally behaving like a scavenger. I am disgusted by the idea of your filthy fingers in my food! Disgusted, Mr. Pitts! Have you nothing to say in your defense?”

  “I didn’t even open the refrigerator,” he growled. “I ain’t been in here since yesterday evening when I cleaned. You don’t have no reason to report me, Mrs. P.”

  “My coffee cup is missing, Mr. Pius. The evidence is clear.”

  Oh, dear. I stuck my head out the door and pasted on an angelic smile. “I’m afraid I may be the cup culprit. I was in earlier and borrowed one of them.”

  Three sets of eyes turned to stare at me. The middle woman said, “We do not borrow cups from each other. It is unhygienic.” On either side of her, heads nodded emphatically.

  “I’m sorry, but there were no extra cups. I’ll wash it out immediately and return it to you,” I said, trying to sound composed in the face of such unanimous condemnation.

  “There is no detergent,” the woman said. “I’ll have to take it to the chemistry room and rinse it out with alcohol.” She held out her hand.

  I meekly gave her the cup and babbled further apology as the three marched out of the room. Once they were gone. I sank down on a sofa and lectured myself on the ephemerality of the situation.

  “Who’re you supposed to be?” the lizard snickered.

  “I’m the substitute for Miss Parchester in the journalism room.

  “I’m Pius, the custodian. I used to be a janitor, but they changed my tide. Didn’t pay any more money, though. just changed the title to custodian ‘cause it sounds more professional. I had hopes of being a building maintenance engineer, but Weiss wouldn’t go for it.”

  “How thrilling for you,” I said, closing my eyes to avoid looking at him. I immediately became aware of an odor that topped anything in the journalism room. Decidedly more organic, and wafting from the custodian’s person. I decided to risk everything and steal another cup; coffee held squarely under my nose might provide some degree of masking.

  Pitts leered at me as I went into the kitchen and randomly grabbed a cup. “You stole Mrs. P’s cup awhile ago, didn’t you?” he called. “She was gonna have my hide, but she’s always trying to get something on me. I’m beginning to think she doesn’t like me-ha,”

  I couldn’t bring myself to join in the merriment, so I settled for a vague smile. I returned to the sofa and tried to look pensive. Pitts watched me for a few minutes, then picked up a bucket and ambled into the ladies room, his motives unknown.

  The lounge door opened once more. A man and woman came in, laughing uproariously at some private joke. The man was dressed in tweeds, complete with leather elbow patches. His light brown hair was stylishly trim and his goatee tidy. My late husband had been a college professor, and I was familiar with the pose. I wryly noted the stem of a pipe poking out of his coat pocket.

  The woman had no aspirations to the academic role. Her black hair tumbled down to her shoulders, and her makeup was more than adequate for a theater stage or a dark alley. She wore a red dress and spike heels. She was dressed for a gala night on the town. At eleven-thirty in the morning, no less.

  The two filled coffee cups (I hadn’t stolen theirs, apparently) and came in to study me.

  “Cogito, ago sum Sherwood Timmons,” the man said with a deep bow. “Or I think that’s who I am. Who might you be?”


  “Claire Malloy, for Miss Parchester.”

  The woman’s smile vanished. “I’m Evelyn West, French. In case you missed it, Sherwood’s Latin-and other dead languages. We’re all so upset about Emily’s forced vacation. Weiss was rash to assume her errors were intentional.”

  “Anything Weiss does must be taken cum grano sails,” Sherwood added as he sat down across from me. “So you’re our newest of our little gang, Claire. How are you doing with the profonum vulyus?”

  Evelyn kicked him, albeit lightly. “Sherwood has a very bad habit of thinking himself amusing when he lapses into Latin. I’ve tried to convince him that he’s merely insufferable, but he continues to torment us.” She added something in French. Although I do not speak the language, the essential profanity of it was unmissable. He laughed, she laughed, we all laughed. Even Pitts, who had slithered out of the ladies room, made a croaking noise.

  “Hiya, Mr. Timmons, Miz West,” he added in an obsequious voice. “Say, Mrs. P. is mad at me again, but I didn’t do nothing. Could you see if you could maybe stop her before she goes to Mr. Weiss?”

  “Part of the reason she’s upset is that you did precisely nothing last night, including clean the classroom floors, empty the trashcans, or wipe down the chalkboards. It’s beginning to disturb even me, Pitts, and I vowed on my grandmother’s grave that I would be kind to children and dumb animals.”

  “Quis custodlet lpsos custodes?” Sherwood murmured.

  Pitts smirked. “I like that, Mr. Timmons. What does it mean?”

  “Who will guard the guards themselves. In your case, Arm Pitts, it loosely refers to who might be induced to clean the unclean.”

  Pitts snatched up his tools of the trade. “That ain’t funny, Mr. Timmons. It’s not easy to keep this place clean, you know. The students aren’t the only dirty people around here. Some of the teachers ain’t too sanitary-especially in their personal lives.” He stomped out of the lounge, muttering to himself

  “Arm Pitts?” I inquired, wrinkling my nose.

  Evelyn began to fan the air with a magazine. “Rather hard to miss the allusion, even in Latin. Pitts is a horrid, filthy man; no one can begin to fathom why Weiss allows him to keep the job. The supply room is around the corner from the lounge, and rumor has it that Pitts has enough hooch to open a retail liquor store. The cigarette smoke is thick enough to permeate the walls. Who knows what he peddles to some of our less innocent students while Weiss conveniently looks the other way.

  “Tell me about Mr. Weiss,” I suggested. If for no other reason, I needed to know the enemy.”

  “Herbert Weiss,” Sherwood said, “is a martinet of the worst ilk. The man has the charm of a veritable anguis in herba,”

  “Sherwood,” Evelyn began ominously, “you-”

  “A snake in the grass,” he translated, a pitying smile twitching the tip of his goatee. “In any case, Farberville High has survived more than ten years of his reign of terror, but this year he has become noticeably non compos mentis-to the maximus.”

  “That’s true,” Evelyn added. “I’ve been here four years, and I have noticed a change for the worse this fall. In the past, Weiss has remained behind his office door, doing God knows what but at least avoiding the staff. Now he roams the hail like Hamlet’s daddy, peering into classrooms, interfering with established procedure, and generally paying attention to things he has never before bothered with.”

  “Perhaps he’s up for a promotion,” I said. “Often that produces an attempt at efficiency.”

  “We’ve toyed with that theory,” Sherwood said. “Of course that means we’d have Miss Dort as the captain of our ship. In any case, I shall escape through my muse.”

  “Sherwood is writing the definitive work on parallels between the primitive forest deities and the Bible,” Evelyn said. “If he can get it published, he hopes to scurry into an ivy tower and teach those who strive for a modicum of academic pretentions.”

  The author stiffened. “I’ve had some interest shown by several university presses. My manuscript is well over a thousand pages now, but I hope to complete it for formal submission before the end of this semester. It is, and I speak modestly, srsi generis. In a class by itself.”

  When Sherwood the infant had lisped his first word, it hadn’t been modestly. However, I found the two amusing and civilized, especially in comparison to the others. I inquired about the woman whose coffee cup I had stolen.

  “So you’ve met the Furies on your travels,” Sherwood said gleefully. “Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera apply their stings to those who have escaped public retribution. Guardians of the FHS code of morality, our dear Eumenides.”

  “They don’t like Sherwood,” Evelyn said with a shrug. “They suspect him of saying rude things, but none of them understands Latin. They’re right, of course.”

  On that note, the Furies trooped into the lounge in a precise vee formation. The coffee cup was presumably sterile, its owner assured that my germs would not mingle with her own. But from their expressions (cold and leery), they were not sure that I wouldn’t pull another vile prank in the immediate future.

  Evelyn said, “This is Claire Malloy, who is subbing for Emily. Claire, this is Mrs. Platchett, chairman of the business department. On her left, Miss Bagby, who teaches sophomore biology, and on her right, Miss Zuckerman, who teaches business.”

  I stood up in an attempt to elicit forgiveness. “I’m pleased to meet you, and I’m truly sorry about using the coffee cup.”

  Mrs. Platchett remained unmoved by my gesture. “As Mae can tell you, certain microbes can cause great distress for those of us with delicate constitutions, although the carrier can remain unaffected. Will you be able to bring a cup from home, or shall I use our little lounge fund to purchase one for you?”

  “I’ll bring one tomorrow.” It seemed time for a new subject. “So you teach with Paula Hart? I met her here during the homeroom period.”

  “Miss Hart’s class was unusually rowdy this morning,” Mrs. Platchett said in an icy voice. “I should have realized she was remiss in her homeroom obligations. It is hardly surprising to learn she was not even there.”

  The thin woman flared her nostrils in sympathy. “I noticed the noise across the hall, Alexandria, but I assumed Miss Hart was doing her inept best to control the class. It is often impossible to teach over the uproarious laughter from her room.”

  Typing wasn’t all that much fun, but I didn’t point that out. Nor did I mention the lovers’ tryst that was obviously scheduled in advance for optimum privacy.

  Sherwood stood up and straightened his tie. “Pitts said you were on his case, Alexandria. Did you follow through or was it an idle threat?”

  “I shall presume, Mr. Timmons, that you are asking if I spoke to Mr. Weiss about Pitts’s shameful neglect of the basement classrooms. I did, although Mr. Weiss seemed unimpressed. He did agree to have a word with the man, but I doubt we shall see a substantial improvement in the future.”

  Evelyn joined Sherwood in the doorway. “The only word that might help would be ‘fired.’ In the meantime, I have a portable vacuum cleaner that I’ll gladly share.”

  Sherwood bowed. “In any case, ladies, carpe diem. Or to translate loosely in accordance with the current debasement of the English language, have a nice day.” With a wink, he strolled out of the lounge.

  THREE

  For the next fifty minutes, I huddled on the mauve-and-green sofa, trying to provoke appendicitis or something equally time-consuming. The best I could do was a sneeze, hardly worthy of hospitalization.

  The Furies took plastic containers from the refrigerator and settled around the formica table. Mrs. Platchett opened hers warily, as if suspecting it had been booby-trapped to explode.

  “It seems to be untouched,” she sniffed after a lengthy examination. “If Pitts has been poking in it, he left no fingerprints.”

  The diminutive one gave the contents of her container the same careful scrutiny. “Mine appears intact, also, but I doub
t that carrot sticks and broccoli spears might take fingerprints. The idea is enough to induce nausea, Alexandria. I’m not at all sure I can eat today.”

  “Nonsense, Tessa! You must eat, and you know it. Your doctor was most precise in the dietary orders.” Mrs. Platchett picked up a sandwich, and they all began to chew the precise number of times for optimum digestibility. Termites do the same thing, I understand, but more quietly.

  Paula Hart came by and offered to share her salad with me. Preferring to remain the martyr to the very end-and unsure if lettuce took fingerprints-I declined, and she left to munch greens in more congenial surroundings, or to peel grapes for the assistant coach with the dimples. Chomping steadily, the Furies failed to acknowledge her brief appearance.

  I finally decided to return to the cave to sulk without sound effects. As I rose, Miss Dort darted into the lounge. “Here you are, Mrs. Malloy. I went by the journalism room, but you were not there.”

  I certainly couldn’t argue with that. “I was on my way there,” I said. “The daily unit delineation book is more thrilling than a gothic romance, and I wanted to settle down with it for a few minutes before the next class.”

  Miss Don perched her glasses on her nose to peer at me. “Indeed, Mrs. Malloy. I wanted to remind you to turn in your blue slips with your attendance slips each period. They are vital.” She went into the kitchenette and came out with a square plastic box. “So sorry I can’t eat with you ladies today. The paperwork is piled sky-high on my desk, and of course I must prepare for the arrival of the auditors from the state Department of Education.”

  Mrs. Platchett washed down a masticated mouthful. “Bernice, I want you to realize how distressed I am by this sordid affair. Emily is quite innocent; she would never touch a penny of the school’s money. The idea is preposterous.”