The Day the Rabbi Resigned

by Harry Kemelman

  “Then at the turn of the century, it became Windermere Christian College for Women because ladies’ seminaries and finishing schools were going out of fashion. It became a four-year college of liberal arts because—because, I suppose, things were beginning to open up for women and there were other things they could do besides teach school.”

  “Or perhaps because two years was not enough time in which to catch a husband,” Levine suggested.

  Macomber chuckled. “You may have something there,” he conceded. “In any case, they kept the Christian in the name, maybe with even a little more justification since the four-year girls’ colleges were a lot less supervised than the two-year seminaries had been. I don’t think anyone thought of it as a school with any religious orientation. In going over the names of some of the graduating classes, I noted a number of names that were almost certainly Jewish.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” said Levine. “In Catholic countries like Ireland and Poland, I understand Jewish youngsters are enrolled in the religious schools with a dispensation from attending the religious services.”

  “I suppose so, but I would think that after the school had been in existence for so many years, its general orientation would be pretty well-known, at least in the area.”

  “All right.”

  “Then after World War Two, with the G.I. bill enabling large numbers of veterans to go to college, it became coeducational, the way many schools did. Women’s Lib had something to do with it, I imagine.”

  “But you still kept Christian in the name,” Levine insisted.

  “Yes, it became Windermere Christian College of Liberal Arts. As I understand it, they kept the Christian in the name because it had always been referred to as Windermere Christian. It’s not easy to give up a name. The company is still called American Express even though it hasn’t engaged in the business of delivering parcels for years. And then, too, it was argued that there were a number of scholarships and gifts of one sort or another that had been made out to Windermere Christian, and that these might have to be given back if they changed the name. At least, that was one of the arguments that was offered me when I took over as president. I didn’t push it because I sensed that the board wouldn’t go along with me. But I did do something to indicate that the school was nondenominational. I hired a Rabbi Lamden to give a three-hour course in Judaica. He is the rabbi of a Reform congregation in Cambridge. He’s not much of a scholar, but he’s popular because it’s a snap course and anyone taking it is sure of an A. You see, the school had become a fall-back school—”

  “Fall-back?”

  “Yes, you know, as it got harder and harder for kids to get into the prestigious colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, they’d apply to those and then to some less prestigious school, like Windermere, to fall back on if they were refused admission to their first choices. Well, because Windermere had become a fall-back school, it had begun to get students from outside the Boston area, especially from New York and New Jersey. The student body had been pretty much local until then. Quite a few from the New York and New Jersey area were Jewish, and I thought the Judaica course might allay whatever suspicions their parents might have of the name.”

  “I see, and you think my name on the Board of Trustees would add to the effect?”

  “No, believe me, Mark, that’s not what I had in mind.”

  “What then? An endowment, perhaps?”

  Macomber smiled. “A college can always use some extra money. But that’s not what I was thinking of either. Look, the board meets only four times a year, and the agenda is set beforehand. If you can’t make it to one of the meetings, there’s no harm done. Many of the out-of-state trustees come only once or twice a year, although the college picks up the tab for the trip. There are twenty on the board. When a vacancy occurs, I nominate the replacement, and although they vote on it, my nomination is tantamount to election. There’s a vacancy right now, and I’d like to put your name up. And by the way, it’s for life.”

  “Really? So someone has to die before—”

  “Well, there are resignations, and once one of the trustees was involved in a rather smelly bankruptcy. The board called for his resignation, and it was understood he would be voted out if he did not offer it. But that was before my time.”

  “Well, I’m clean, but why do you want me?”

  “Because I want people on the board I can be sure of.”

  “But if you’re the president, don’t you automatically get the backing of the board?”

  “It’s not like taking over a corporation where your people hold the majority of the stock. In a nonprofit institution like a college, the members of the board aren’t there because they own a certain number of shares. They’re there because they are presumed to be important people or to come from important families. Some of them even inherit their places on the board.”

  “Come, come, you mean their fathers will the seats to them?”

  “Of course not, but what frequently happens is that when John Whatsis the Second, the president of the Geewhiz Corporation dies, and John Whatsis the Third takes over, he’s apt to be offered his father’s place on the boards of the various charitable institutions that his father had held, at least the smaller ones. Right now, I have a majority, but it’s a bare majority.”

  “And with me, you’d have a comfortable majority?”

  “It will be better, but not yet enough to give me full control. Because for certain things—and changing the name of the college is one of them—I need a two-thirds majority.”

  “You realize, Don, you can’t count on me to make a financial contribution, not while you’re Windermere Christian. Every Jewish organization would be on my back for donations or to increase the sums I’ve already given.”

  “Believe me, I understand.”

  “All right, as long as you understand, I’ll come aboard. Will that give you your two-thirds majority?”

  “No … It would have, but you see, sometimes you make a mistake. When we were expanding by buying up all the old brownstone front houses on Clark Street, I found a Cyrus Merton, a very knowledgeable realtor who proved to be extremely helpful. He had entrée to any number of banks for mortgage money, and he’s a genius at financing. So I asked him to serve on the board. He was very pleased and accepted.”

  “And he didn’t work out?”

  “Oh, he became one of our most active members. He is semiretired and has plenty of time for us. He’s chairman of our Faculty Committee and spends a lot of time around the school.”

  “But?”

  “He backs me in almost everything, except the name change. He’s a very devout Catholic, fanatic, according to Charlie Dobson, another Catholic on our board. It is the Christian in our name that attracted him to the school. And from his point of view, the fact that we’re not denominational made it all the more important that we retain the name.”

  “And my coming on the board?”

  “Will probably please him,” said Macomber promptly. “To him it will signify that while all faiths are represented, the institution is essentially Christian.”

  “But the two-thirds—”

  “With you on the board, we’re close, but not there yet. He’s the leader of the opposition, and as long as he keeps his troops in line, he can stop us. But they’re not all as adamant as he, and if we can detach just one, we’ll be home free.”

  3

  At sixty-five Cyrus Merton was a wealthy man. Shortly after graduating from high school, he had got a job in a small real estate office in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, where he had grown up, as a typist/file clerk, which included whatever else had to be done in the office, such as sweeping and dusting, running out for coffee and doughnuts, and delivering documents to banks and the Registry of Deeds. By the time he was twenty-two, however, he was showing properties to clients, and he even received a percentage of the commission when he occasionally succeeded in closing a deal. By the time he was twenty-five, he had a brok
er’s license and had opened his own office.

  He was not too successful, was struggling, in fact, until by chance he met a high school classmate who had gone on to a seminary and was now Father Joseph Tierney, a curate at St. Thomas’s in Barnard’s Crossing. It was through him that Cyrus was brought in contact with the pastor who was engaged in building a parochial school. There were problems with acquiring the necessary land, and Cyrus was able to help out with the negotiations for the financing and with various real estate transactions involved in the purchase of several of the needed lots.

  The pastor was grateful and reciprocated by recommending him to parishioners who were interested in buying or selling property. Quite suddenly, Cyrus began to prosper, and closed his Boston office and opened one in Barnard’s Crossing.

  It was a fortunate decision, for Barnard’s Crossing, which had been largely a summer resort separated from Boston by an arm of the ocean, was fast becoming a suburb of the city by reason of a tunnel under the water and a bridge over it, and property values were beginning to climb. Cyrus bought or secured options on as much property as he could, and within a decade he was rich.

  From the time he had moved to Barnard’s Crossing, he had attended Mass daily, not merely because he was a devout Catholic—formerly he had been devout but not all that devout—but because it was good business. After all, the pastor of the parish was recommending, indeed pressing, his name on his parishioners. Then, as his success continued in increasing volume, he began to feel that perhaps it was due to his being so faithful in his attendance.

  He had not married; he was too busy. When he thought about it, he reflected that the Mertons always tended to marry late. But now, forty-five and rich, he decided he ought to look around for a wife who would cook for him and manage the fine house on the Point he had acquired, one whom he could confide in and discuss his business deals with of an evening, who would keep an eye on the staff in his office on those days when he didn’t go in, and most important, who would bear his children to continue the Merton line. Sex did not really enter into it. He had no great need for it, and when the need did arise occasionally, he had no difficulty in satisfying it, although he was always careful to mention his fall from grace when he made confession.

  For a bachelor as rich and successful as Cyrus Merton, there was no paucity of young and attractive women who would have given him the rather limited sexual gratification he needed and would have borne him the children he wanted, but none of them quite fitted his requirements for housekeeper/confidante/office manager. And then, quite suddenly, there was at least a partial solution to the problem: his younger sister, Agnes, was notified that her husband, Army Captain Ronald Burke, was missing in action in Vietnam. She had married late, at thirty-nine. She was a longtime civil servant, a clerk-supervisor working in a federal office where she had first met her husband. It was not difficult for Cyrus to persuade her to come and keep house for him while she awaited news of her husband, which never came.

  There was a third Merton, a half brother, James, quite a bit younger. Neither Cyrus nor Agnes had much to do with him, or he with them. They had resented his mother because their father had married her shortly after the death of their own mother, and this resentment had increased when James was born, and she had neglected them in favor of her own child. What little family feeling they might have had for him was dissipated when he disgraced himself and, they felt, them by marrying a Puerto Rican, or as Agnes put it, “a dirty little spic.” The derision inherent in their receiving a wedding invitation several days after the wedding did nothing to improve relations. They debated whether or not to send a gift, and finally decided not to. And when, three months later, they were notified of the birth of a daughter, Margaret, they came to a similar decision. Occasionally they exchanged Christmas cards: that is, when they received a card from Mr. and Mrs. James Merton, Cyrus Merton and Agnes Burke jointly sent one in return; otherwise not. They did not see Margaret until they were notified that James and Theresa Merton had both drowned. From what they were able to learn, James had suffered a cramp while swimming, and Theresa, in trying to rescue him, had also been pulled under. Margaret was twelve at the time.

  In addition to the grief they thought they ought to feel over the loss of a brother, even though they hadn’t seen him in years, they felt guilty over the death of the wife who had tried to save him; Agnes especially, since she had been most scornful of their sister-in-law. The very sight of the little girl when they brought her to Barnard’s Crossing to live with them was a reproach. This feeling was assuaged somewhat when Cyrus suggested that the report of the double death might have been wrong.

  “It could have been the other way around, you know,” he remarked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, those reports, you never can trust them. It could have been James who tried to rescue her. He was a pretty good swimmer as I remember. Nobody actually saw her try to rescue him, just that somebody thought he saw him go in the water first.”

  “And so he could have drowned, trying to save her.”

  “It could have been that way.”

  “Yes, it could.” And she felt better about it.

  4

  If Margaret had come to them when she was two or three, they would have had to hire someone to take care of her, to be sure, but she would have been cute, and they would have played with her and loved her. But she was twelve, an awkward and ungainly age, and she was not a pretty child; even worse, she resembled her grandmother, their stepmother. She was thin and pale and sad, the last at least understandable, but nonetheless upsetting to Cyrus and Agnes. Frequently, at night they could hear her crying. Never having had any experience with children, they did not know what to say to her or how to comfort her, and she spoke to them only in answer to direct questions. Father Joe Tierney, now the pastor of the parish, naturally expected she would be enrolled in the parochial school Cyrus had helped establish, but when Agnes explained to him that there was no one to take care of her when she got out of school, he suggested sending her to a boarding school in Ohio that was operated by the same order that ran the school in Barnard’s Crossing, Sisters of Mary of the Mount.

  “That way, you see, there’ll be no trouble when you decide to bring her back and transfer her to our school.”

  “But won’t she feel sort of, you know, abandoned?” Cyrus demurred when Agnes explained the plan to him. “Here, she’d just lost her folks, and then we, the only kin she’s got, send her off to strangers.”

  “But we’re like strangers to her,” said Agnes, “and there she’ll have a lot of girls her own age, and the Sisters will keep her busy so she won’t have time to mope around.”

  She wrote to her aunt and uncle once a week—the Sisters saw to that—a page long, as required, and signed “Your loving niece, Margaret”—anything less affectionate would have elicited inquiries. She told about the weather—“It snowed all night and after class we made a snowman and threw snowballs,” and of what she was studying—“We are studying about the New England states in geography, and I had to tell them about Massachusetts. I told them about Boston, and Barnard’s Crossing, which they had never heard of. And I told them about the ocean and the lighthouse on the Point, and the sea gulls. And Sister Anne said it was very interesting.”

  She came back to Barnard’s Crossing at the end of the school year for a round of shopping in the Boston stores, and then she was shipped off to the school’s summer camp. And this became a pattern: school, summer camp—first as a camper and later on as a counselor—and then school again. In between she would spend a week or two in Barnard’s Crossing. Her uncle and aunt were kind to her, but distant and impersonal. They were merely another set of authority figures to her, like the school principal and the camp director.

  Of course, they intended to go to the graduation, but an important deal was impending and Cyrus felt he just couldn’t get away.

  “Then perhaps I ought to go alone,” said Agnes. “Somebody from the fa
mily should be there. It’ll look funny if she has no one.”

  “Look, Agnes, I’m going to be out of the office most of the time, and I’ve got to have you there to keep an eye on things. The Ralston thing is coming to a head, and I can’t trust anyone but you to manage it.”

  “But the Sisters will think—”

  “They won’t think a darn thing. It’s a boarding school, and lots of the girls—their folks are away in Europe or just can’t get away, like us. Margaret herself told me so the last time she was home. As for Margaret, she may feel kind of neglected that day, but she’ll forget all about it when she gets home and sees the present I’m planning to get her.”

  “What are you planning on?” asked Agnes curiously.

  “What do you say to a real snappy roadster? She took Driver Education, so she should be able to get her license right away. And it will be awfully handy when she goes back to camp for the summer, and when she goes on to college next year.”

  “I don’t think she cares too much about going to college.”

  “Well, she’s going. And you know why? Because she’ll be the first Merton to go to college. She’s got to go.”

  “She might not be able to get in. Her marks were not very good.”

  “Oh, I’ll get her in someplace. I’ve got contacts with colleges through Macomber. Don’t worry, I’ll manage it.”

  When Margaret came home, she assured her uncle and aunt that she had not minded their not coming to her graduation. Cyrus was pleased that she concealed her disappointment, and resentment perhaps, from them. Agnes thought perhaps she really meant it.

  She was of course delighted with the car they had bought her, and it seemed to Agnes that for the first time she felt close to them. Nevertheless, Margaret was vague when they questioned her about her plans for the future. Later, however, when Agnes pressed her in private, she explained that she was certain she would not be able to gain admittance to a college because she had taken the general course rather than the college preparatory course.