Saving Miss Oliver's

by Stephen Davenport

  Praise for Saving Miss Oliver’s

  “It’s no surprise that Saving Miss Oliver’s is informed by a compassionate knowledge of the lives of all people who inhabit independent schools. After all, the book’s author spent years teaching at and leading this kind of institution, and later was one of the nation’s top school consultants. He knows the territory.

  What may surprise, though, is that the book is such a strong, beautifully wrought, engaging novel. As one reads along, it becomes clear that Davenport writes much too well and feels far too deeply for his complex, passionately human characters to resort to the hype and melodrama that so often maim “school novels.” Rather, he creates his figures and then lets them live, struggle, and develop in ways that are frequently moving and always honestly related.

  In other words, the book steps beyond its genre. And in so doing it powerfully reminds us that real people are at the heart of any first-rate school. Their integrity, strength of character, hope for the world, and courage are the capital good schools are always built on. Davenport knows this. At the end of Saving Miss Oliver’s, so will you.”—Peter Tacy, Former Executive Director of the Association of Independent Schools and Head of the Marvelwood School, Kent, CT

  “This book caught me by surprise—a surprise I would recommend to everyone. On the face of it, the story is about a difficult leadership transition in a well-established girls’ school that is experiencing hard times. It is much more. Mr. Davenport weaves an intricate tapestry of institutional and cultural history, and minefields in independent school leadership. His characters jump off the page and made me keep reading to find out what they were thinking, how they developed, and what they did next. I was enthralled by the stories within the story and moved to tears by the strength and bravery of the characters who so quickly became my friends and acquaintances. This is a story of struggle and disappointment, but most of all, it is a story about wisdom and hope.”—Jessie-Lea Abbott, Head of School, Katherine Delmar Burke School, San Francisco, CA

  “Steve Davenport is a consummate schoolmaster and a gifted writer. In this splendid first novel, Davenport builds on all the other exceptional “school” novels: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Rector of Justin, The Headmaster’s Papers and The River King. Saving Miss Oliver’s is a must read for anyone who appreciates the seasons of a school’s life and the lives of people who make schools work.”—Peter Buttenheim, Sanford School, Hockessin, DE

  “Steve Davenport’s novel is fast-paced, entertaining and singularly evocative of the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a boarding school. Steve knows schools, and he brings us face to face with their passions, their absurdities and their virtues—especially when it comes to schools for girls.”—Rachel Belash, Former Head of Miss Porter’s School, Farmington, CT

  “Saving Miss Oliver’s is a fascinating novel, a school story vibrant with personalities, crises, hopes, idealism, laughter, tears, struggle and soaring spirit. Anyone who has ever been a student or administrator or trustee or parent in a school will find the book riveting, and will stop again and again with recognition, shock and delight. The reader will care intensely about the persons and events in this book, the drama and comedy alive in it.”—David Mallery, Seminar Leader and Consultant to Schools in the U.S. and Abroad

  “If you are an educator and care about leadership and the role played by change in the life of a school, read this wonderful book.”—Rod Napier, President of the Napier Group, Consultant, and Author of The Courage to Act and Intentional Design and the Process of Change

  SAVING MISS OLIVER’S

  SAVING MISS OLIVER’S

  A NOVEL

  STEPHEN DAVENPORT

  Text © 2018 by Stephen Davenport

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or schools of any of the characters or schools in the novel is coincidental and unintended.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Davenport, Stephen, author.

  Title: Saving Miss Oliver’s : a novel / by Stephen Davenport.

  Description: Berkeley, CA : Graphic Arts Books, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018005418 | ISBN 9781513261317 (softcover) | ISBN 9781513261324 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781513261331 (ebk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women school principals--Fiction. | Boarding schools--Fiction. | Teaching--Fiction. | Girls--Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3604.A9427 S28 2018 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005418

  Front Cover: Raymond Forbes LLC/Stocksy.com

  Excerpt from “Home Burial,” copyright 1969 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LCC.

  Excerpt from “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” by Robert Frost.

  Published by WestWinds Press®

  An imprint of

  GraphicArtsBooks.com

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Proudly distributed by Ingram Publisher Services.

  GRAPHIC ARTS BOOKS

  Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens

  Marketing Manager: Angela Zbornik

  Editor: Olivia Ngai

  Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger

  TO JOANNA

  CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE: SUMMER

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  BOOK TWO: FALL TERM

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  BOOK THREE: WINTER TERM

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  BOOK FOUR: SPRING TERM

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK ONE: SUMMER

  ONE

  Even in that last year of her reign, Marjorie Boyd had insisted that the graduation exercise take place exactly at noon.

  “When the sun is at the top of the sky!” she declared—as she had every year for the thirty-five years she had been headmistress of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls. “Time stands still for just a little instant right then. And people notice things. They see! And what they see is the graduation of young women! Females! From a school founded by a woman, designed by women, run by a woman, with a curriculum that focuses on the way women learn! I want this celebration to take place exactly at noon, in the bright spangle of the June sunshine, so the world can see the superiority of the result!” Marjorie demanded once again, still dominant at the very end in spite of her dismissal. She would be the headmistress till July 1, when her contract expired. Until then, her will would prevail.

  Even her opponents understood that it was Marjorie’s vivid leadership that had made the school into a community so beloved of its students and alumnae (who were taking their seats now in the audience as the noon hour neared) that it had to be saved from the flaws of the very woman who had made it what it was. Founded by Miss Edith Oliver in 1928 and standing on ground once occupied by a Pequot Indian v
illage in Fieldington, Connecticut, a complacent suburb twenty miles south of Hartford on the Connecticut River, the school that Marjorie created was a boarding school, a world apart, whose intense culture of academic and artistic richness was celebrated in idiosyncratic rituals sacred to its members.

  “But it will be too hot at noon,” the more practical-minded members of the faculty had objected once again in an argument that for senior faculty members Francis and Peggy Plummer had become an old refrain. They were like theatergoers watching a play whose ending they had memorized.

  “No, it won’t,” Marjorie replied. “

  How do you know it won’t?”

  “I just do,” she said, standing up to end the meeting. For meetings always ended when Marjorie stood up—and began instantly when she sat down. Francis and Peggy understood that what Marjorie meant was that she would push the weather to be perfect for their beloved young women by the sheer power of her will. The weather had always been perfect for each of the thirty-three graduation ceremonies in which Peggy and Francis had been on the faculty—and that day, June 10, 1991, was no exception.

  Now the clock in the library’s steeple chimed the noon hour, and Marjorie Boyd was standing. She strode across the dais to the microphone. The graduating class sat in the honored position to the left of the dais, their white dresses glistening in the sunshine. The sky was an ethereal blue, cloudless, and under it the green lawns swept to the edge of the acres of forest that lined the river. Behind the dais a huge three-hundred-year-old maple spread its branches, and Francis imagined a family of Pequot Indians sitting in its shade. The scent of clipped grass rose. In the audience the mothers wore big multicolored hats against the sun, and behind them the gleaming white clapboards of the campus buildings formed an embracing circle.

  Standing at the microphone, Marjorie didn’t look much older to Peggy and Francis than when she had first hired them thirty-three years ago immediately after their marriage—Peggy as the school’s librarian, and Francis as a teacher of math and soon after also of English—assigning them too as dorm parents in what was then a brand-new dormitory. Marjorie still wore her long brown hair, now streaked with gray, in a schoolmarmish bun at the back of her neck. Her reading glasses still rested on her bosom, suspended from a black string around her neck. “You were Oliver girls,” they heard Marjorie say, and Francis reached to hold Peggy’s hand. They knew what she was going to say next, and when she said it—“Now you are Oliver women!”—giving the word a glory, Peggy started to cry. She was surprised at her sudden melting. For up to this moment she had managed to assuage her grief over Marjorie’s dismissal by reminding herself that she agreed with the board’s decision.

  But Francis wasn’t crying! He was too angry to cry, wouldn’t give his new enemies the satisfaction—for that’s how he thought of those colleagues, old friends, whom he suspected of optimism over the dismissal of his beloved leader. He gripped Peggy’s hand, squeezed hard, made her wince. It’s her school! he wanted to shout. Marjorie’s! Not theirs! He didn’t want Peggy to cry; he wanted her to be angry, to be obstreperous at every opportunity, to express disgust at the notion that schools bore any resemblance to businesses, as he did; he wanted her to say rebellious things in faculty meetings, the way he’d been doing, surprising everyone, including himself, by seeming out of control.

  Still sobbing, Peggy yanked her hand away. She’d been over this so many times before! You can be loyal without being stupid, she wanted to yell. She was your boss, not your daddy. But of course she didn’t. It wasn’t the time to tell her husband that maybe his ardent following of Marjorie was his way of escaping the dominance of a father who couldn’t have been more different from Marjorie—he would have fired her years before this! She kept her mouth shut. It was bad enough that people saw her sobbing.

  Marjorie sat quietly after exactly four minutes during which she told her audience that now they must take care of the school. All of her thirty-five graduation speeches had been exactly four minutes long. She practiced them, first in her bathroom. “I love to hear the words bouncing off the tile,” she told Francis and Peggy every year when she started working on her speech weeks before the event. Francis and Peggy knew that she timed herself with the same stopwatch she brought to the track meets so that she could congratulate any girl who had improved her time. In this last year of her reign she had been taking the stopwatch to faculty meetings so she could time the windy ruminations of Gregory van Buren, head of the English Department, who, second in seniority only to Peggy and Francis, sat that day immediately to Peggy’s right in the front row of the graduation audience, smirking as if he had discovered a grammatical error in Marjorie’s speech. Gregory didn’t even try anymore to disguise his joy at what he loved to call “Marjorie’s expulsion”—or the “demise of the monarchy at Miss Oliver’s School for Girls.”

  There was a second of silence after Marjorie sat, and then, simultaneously, Francis and the graduating class stood up. In an instant Peggy was up too, taller than her husband. The audience rose. Their applause swelled. The block of undergraduates sitting right behind the faculty chanted, “Yay, Marjorie! Yay, Marjorie!” On the dais, the trustees stood too, their board chair, Alan Travelers, looking uncomfortable.

  To Peggy’s right, Gregory rose too slowly. She turned to him, grabbed his elbow, pulled him upward. “Stand straight, windbag!” she whispered through her sobbing. “Stand straight and clap!”

  Gregory was too smart; he didn’t even turn his head to her. He was gazing up over the podium as if he were watching a bird, his hands coming together so softly they didn’t make a sound, and Peggy was amazed to hear herself hissing: “Louder, you politician! Louder! Or I swear to God I’ll poke out both your eyes right here in front of everybody!”

  For an instant as the words flew out, she felt wonderful, a prisoner released. But then stupid. This wasn’t her. She didn’t insult people, she had never been involved in the school’s politics. And she didn’t have Francis’s talent for effective goofiness. She thought maybe she was going to lose control permanently, wondered if everything was falling apart: Marjorie’s leaving and the resultant division in the faculty, and equally pressing, Francis’s leaving the next day on a trip that would last all summer, the first time in their thirty-three-year marriage they would be apart for more than a week. It was the final straw. So she made up her mind: She’d stay in control. Not just for herself. For Francis too—until he was able to control himself again.

  Gregory still didn’t turn his face to her. He stared straight ahead, placed his right hand on Peggy’s, lifted her hand from his elbow, placed it at her side as if he were putting something back in a drawer, and whispered: “I thought you understood, unlike your husband, who only understands the past. Actually, I know you understand.”

  Gregory was right. She did understand. It had been the newer members of the board who forced the issue. The era has passed, they had pointed out, when being a great educator is enough. No longer do certain kinds of families automatically send their children away to boarding school; and besides, just as boarding school grows too expensive for many families, single-sex education for women seems to be losing its allure. So pay more attention to the business side: to marketing scenarios, strategic plans, financial projections. That’s the road to survival.

  Peggy had tried hard to persuade her friend to pay attention; and when rumors began to fly that the school was so strapped that it might have to make the one decision no one could even dare imagine, the one that would destroy the reason for the school’s existence—namely, to admit boys—to survive, she had barged right in to Marjorie’s office and told her that if she, Peggy Plummer, the school’s librarian for the past thirty-three years, were on the board, she would vote for Marjorie’s dismissal in spite of their ancient friendship unless Marjorie changed her ways and started to act as if her profession, for all it was a calling, were a business too. But nobody gave Marjorie advice. It was the other way around. So Peggy hadn’t been surp
rised when six months later the board, whose chair, Alan Travelers, was the first male board chair in the school’s history, screwed its courage to the sticking place and demanded Marjorie’s resignation.

  Peggy stopped crying by the time she and her friend Eudora Easter, chair of the Art Department, had to go up front and confer the diploma on the first student. The order had been determined the night before when the president of the junior class picked the graduates’ names out of the tall silk hat that was brought out of safekeeping once a year, according to ritual. The hat was rumored to have belonged to Daniel Webster. At Miss Oliver’s it was a sign of loyalty to believe myths that lesser schools would scorn.

  Facing the audience beside Eudora, Peggy was calm again. She was tall, slim, full breasted, her short black hair not covered by a hat, and she wore a trim business suit—librarian’s clothes. Eudora was much shorter than Peggy, very round, her beautiful African features shadowed under a huge red hat, and her red slippers were pointed upward at the toes like a genie’s. The students cheered her costume.

  The ceremony went on for several hours. For the graduates the teachers recited poems, sang songs, performed dances, even put on little skits. Francis conferred the diploma on several girls by himself, and he and Peggy together did so for three girls who lived in their dorm. For each, Francis spun the amazing tale of their blossoming, thus blessing their parents. Gregory van Buren’s one girl got a long poem that nobody understood. She tried hard not to show her disappointment. When Gregory hugged her, he bent his middle away from her, sticking his butt out behind as if he were wearing a bustle.

  LATER THAT DAY in the desolate silence that overcame the school, when the last girl had left for the summer, Peggy roamed her empty dormitory. For the past four years at exactly this time, their son, Sidney, would return from college and she and Francis would focus on him all summer, feasting on his presence. But Siddy, who had finished college a year ago in June, left for Europe in September to wander for an indeterminate time. He’s figuring out who he is, what he wants to do with his life, Peggy told herself over and over, seeking comfort. All the young ones do that these days. The mantra brought her no more comfort than knowing that young people didn’t bother getting married anymore before they lived with each other. To Peggy, whose school was a home away from home for three hundred and forty-five students, wandering was anathema.