At Briarwood School for Girls

by Michael Knight

  A brass plaque in the lobby maintained that Beatrix Garvey Memorial Auditorium could accommodate 216 people at capacity, but it was well under half full this afternoon, too many teachers with too many lessons to prepare, too many students with too many papers to write, too many people with too many better things to do. According to custom, seniors were granted the privilege of the first few rows, then juniors, and so on back to freshmen, faculty and staff filling out the rest. Bishop dropped into an aisle seat in the back row and scanned the crowd. He spotted Lenore with Poppy Tuttle and Melissa Chen, Poppy in the middle, the others’ heads tipped toward hers to hear whatever she was saying.

  On the stage, two chairs had been arranged to the right of a lectern emblazoned with the Briarwood crest—a wreath of thorny vines encircling a stately oak. Headmistress Mackey occupied one of the chairs, Vernon Plank, Bishop assumed, the other. The man was not at all the corporate shill Bishop had imagined. He looked more like someone’s idea of a favorite professor—bearded, bespectacled, corduroyed—and Bishop was struck by the notion that Disney had culled him from some secret back lot in order to put this particular crowd at ease.

  The house lights dimmed, and Headmistress Mackey ticked over to the lectern. She was a formidable woman, Augusta Mackey, pushing seventy, perfect posture still intact, all business from toe to neck but with a mane of white hair that suggested a touch of the sorceress about her. A Briarwood girl herself from 1941 to ’44, then a teacher of government and economics from ’52 to ’61 and assistant headmistress from ’61 to ’69, she was promoted to headmistress in 1970, the first woman ever to occupy the position, her tenure the longest in Briarwood history.

  “Most of you are already aware of Disney’s plans to build a historical theme park in Prince William County,” she began, and Bishop listened for a hint of endorsement or disapproval in her tone. “Our guest today, Mr. Vernon Plank, an assistant vice president for project development, has offered us a glimpse behind the curtain, to use his words. Let us give Mr. Plank our complete attention and our warmest Briarwood welcome.”

  While the audience clapped and Headmistress Mackey made way at the lectern for Vernon Plank, shaking hands in the exchange, a projector screen descended behind them, the same screen the students used for campus movie night, illuminated now with an artist’s rendering of an enormous blue bald eagle, wings widespread, trailing red-and-white-striped bunting from its talons as if carrying it through the sky. Emblazoned in gold letters over the top of this image were the words Disney’s America.

  “Thank you, Dr. Mackey, and thanks to all of you out there.” He shaded his eyes to peer at the audience through the bright stage lights. “Thank you for welcoming me today. Yes, I work for Disney, and yes, Disney is a great big corporation, but we’re also more than that. We’re an American corporation, our history woven into the fabric of this great nation. We want not only to honor the past but to reach forward into the future, build on that history, make something even better for tomorrow.” As he spoke, the images on-screen began to switch every few seconds, from a field of corn to an assembly line, from a family picnic to the steeple of a church backdropped by cloudless sky, and Bishop pictured a team of Disney dwarfs whistling while they worked the controls in the projector room.

  “As our nation grows and changes,” said Vernon Plank, “we at Disney are constantly reminded, not only of how far we’ve come but also how far we still must go before we can live up to the promise of democracy. Disney’s America offers a promise as well. We promise to celebrate those qualities that have always been a source of our strength and a beacon of hope to people everywhere.”

  The image on-screen shifted again, another artist’s rendering, this time an aerial view of the park, bustling, alive, already populated with thousands of guests. Vernon Plank explained that Disney’s America would be divided into territories built around a body of water called Freedom Bay, each territory portraying a different historical period. “The idea,” said Vernon Plank, “is not simply to entertain but to educate.” With that, he began to highlight some of the major attractions, including a white-water rapids ride, an Underground Railroad experience, an industrial-revolution-themed roller coaster, and daily battle reenactments. “While you sit in the grandstands, you can eat nachos and drink a cold Coke and watch soldiers give their lives for their country just like they did at the real battle of Manassas. Of course, in those days, the audience didn’t have nachos or Coke, and dead soldiers didn’t rise to take a bow at the end of the show.”

  Polite laughter from the crowd. Bishop was clutching the arms of his seat. He looked where Lenore was sitting, but he couldn’t tell one girl from another in the faint light from the screen.

  “The point,” Vernon Plank was saying, “is that Disney’s core mission has always been greater than entertainment. As a way of showing our support for educational institutions like Briarwood, institutions whose students will lead our country into the future, I am pleased to announce that I have in my pocket a check for fifty thousand dollars, seed money for a new computer lab.”

  So that’s it, Bishop thought. That explained why Headmistress Mackey was willing to play along. What currently passed for Briarwood’s computer lab consisted of a dozen word processors set aside for student use in Ransom Library. Since last fall, she’d been gearing up for a fund-raising campaign. Vernon Plank patted the air, tamping down a lazy roll of applause. He said he had time for a few questions, and students began to queue up behind a microphone at the bottom of the left-hand aisle.

  Thessaly Roebuck was the first student to reach the mic. She wanted to know if Disney had planned any movie tie-ins with the new park, and Vernon Plank was pleased to announce that, yes, in fact, an animated feature about Pocahontas was already in production.

  Next up was Poppy Tuttle. If Bishop had been able to see even a few minutes into the future, he would not have chosen that moment to make an early exit, but he had other things on his mind, and as Poppy stooped her lips close to the mic, he was already slouching toward the doors and out into the snow, sure he’d heard enough.

  Question 3

  In March of 1994, an organization called Hello Disney, composed primarily of local business leaders and politicians, released a report estimating the positive economic impact of Disney’s America on Prince William County. Which of the following was/were among their projections?

  A) 12,000 new jobs with an annual payroll of $295 million.

  B) 10 million yearly visitors to the park.

  C) $1.2 billion in total revenue.

  D) All of the above.

  IX

  The office of the headmistress looked out over the quad, with its stone benches and old oaks, the same benches and oaks Augusta Mackey had rested upon and strolled beneath when she was a student at Briarwood School for Girls, their very presence a reminder that, despite the necessity of progress, some things were built to last. Yes, there would be challenges along the way—such was the nature of life—but challenges could be met and overcome, and if one brought to bear all the savvy and gumption at one’s disposal, progress and permanence did not have to be mutually exclusive. Her history with the school was a perfect example. She’d matriculated to Briarwood at the tag end of the summer of 1941, the whole planet burning beyond the gates—the Japs would soon bomb Pearl Harbor, and the Krauts were battering Leningrad—but here, beneath those oaks, the girls went on reading The Iliad and Romeo and Juliet. That didn’t mean they were isolated from history. They had organized bandage-making parties almost every weekend, the fruits of which were shipped to the Red Cross and from there, presumably, overseas, where they might stanch the bleeding of wounded patriots. Or take her first years as headmistress, the Summer of Love barely in the past, not even history yet, Watergate looming in the not-too-distant future, the idea of single-sex education under siege as a relic of a time whose time had passed. Did she batten down the hatches to bar the winds of change? No, she did not. She raised money for scholarships, pushed for diver
sity in admissions. Ignoring change was no kind of education. Situating the wisdom of tradition within the turbulence of time—that was the way to proceed. And it was exactly the reason she had allowed the Drama Club to proceed with The Phantom of Thornton Hall, despite her personal aversion to the material, and courted Disney, despite her distaste for the sort of mindless recreation they were peddling. Permanence meets progress. The play provided a noteworthy connection to Briarwood’s past, and a new computer lab kept them squarely on a competitive course into the future. She’d expected a measure of resistance from the board of trustees, always slow to adapt, but not from one of her own students. Standing at the row of windows behind her desk, Headmistress Mackey watched the girls bustling across the quad to breakfast, all of them, whether they realized it or not, citizens of both a new world and the old.

  The intercom sounded on her desk. “Mr. Bishop is here!” Her secretary, Valerie Beech, chirped about new arrivals in the anteroom the way other people bleated banalities like “Have a nice day!” Headmistress Mackey was in favor of cheerfulness but not at the expense of dignity. She had, however, learned to live with Valerie’s false brightness and exclamation points because there were certain arcane processes and procedures required to run the school that no one but Valerie understood. For instance, it had been Valerie who reminded her that she couldn’t suspend Poppy Tuttle without convening a meeting of the Disciplinary Committee, a formality, to be sure, but a nuisance nonetheless.

  The door swung open, and Valerie shooed Bishop in with a laugh and swat on the bicep like he’d just said something cheeky, though clearly he had said no such thing. He looked as if he’d been rousted from bed for an interrogation, which, in a way, he had been. Poppy Tuttle would be arriving at nine. Headmistress Mackey had planned to call her parents, give her a thorough dressing-down, and send her packing for the rest of the semester, but since the Disciplinary Committee would have to be involved, she’d decided to gather what facts she could. And it wouldn’t hurt to find out exactly what sort of sedition had been fomented in Bishop’s classroom. If he’d been putting ideas in Miss Tuttle’s head, Headmistress Mackey ought to know about it, despite the fact that no amount of rabble-rousing by a teacher excused her behavior at the assembly. She’d instructed Valerie to have Bishop in her office before first period on Monday morning, and here he was.

  “Your tie is crooked,” she said, as Bishop lowered himself into one of the spindle-backed chairs on the other side of the desk. And his shirt was wrinkled, and his hair, still damp from the shower, was mussed, and she spotted a smear of dried shaving cream on his earlobe, but she’d learned from experience that people had a saturation point when it came to criticism beyond which they heard nothing at all. You had to pick your battles—a philosophy that applied equally well to the endless give-and-take between permanence and progress. Still standing, she lifted a framed photograph from her desk: her husband, Linwood, at the tiller of his sailboat, the Augusta, which he kept moored at a marina down in Portsmouth.

  “Do you sail, Mr. Bishop?”

  “Well, I’ve been sailing,” he said, tugging at his tie, “if that’s what you mean, but I can’t say that I sail per se, no, ma’am.”

  “You probably know that my husband sails competitively, though age has put his America’s Cup dreams to rest.” She chuckled fondly and returned the photograph to its place beside the intercom. “If he were here, Mr. Bishop, I’m sure he would tell you that piloting a high-performance sailboat through erratic winds and tricky seas requires a tremendous amount of teamwork. Each member of the crew must be absolutely certain that he can rely on his mates to do their jobs. Do you follow me?”

  “Teamwork,” he said. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I presume you know why you’re here this morning?”

  He stared at her, a glaze of wary panic in his eyes, as if he suspected that her question was a trap.

  “I’m guessing this has to do with Poppy Tuttle?”

  “You guess correctly,” she said, and she would have sworn he looked relieved. She lowered herself, finally, into the chair behind her desk, taking a last glance at the photograph of her husband. Linwood had been such a source of strength to her over the years. She knew he’d pursued her for her money in the beginning—her great-great-great-grandfather had founded a shipbuilding concern in Norfolk, and though the company had been liquidated before she was born, the proceeds, properly managed, ensured that her family would be taken care of for generations—but they had arrived at a mutual respect akin to, perhaps more potent than, romantic love. Linwood did not begrudge her devotion to her role as headmistress, and she did not begrudge his preference for spending time on his sailboat or riding horses at the Arbor, her family’s plantation in Kilmarnock. If anything, separation made their weekend reunions that much more fond. And Linwood was brilliant at fund-raisers and with the board of trustees, his reputation as a sailor verging on genuine renown, his charm balancing her tendency toward abruptness and practicality. Her only regret was that he’d never managed to give her a child, a failing she’d long ago forgiven him.

  “More specifically,” she said to Bishop, “you are here because Miss Tuttle suggested, during her outburst at the assembly, that you’ve been discussing Disney’s America in class.”

  Bishop bobbed his head like he’d considered the question in advance. “I thought it would be interesting, you know, keep all those dates and place-names from getting boring, sort of link the history to their lives.”

  “I’ve always thought of history as the great drama of civilization writ large. It’s only boring, Mr. Bishop, if you allow it to be so. You know?” These last words she spoke in italics. She’d always detested that tic of speech. If a person felt compelled to ask, then the odds were that, no, she did not, in fact, know or sympathize. Sort of was equally inane. A thing either was or it was not, and qualifying modifiers didn’t change the facts. “Isn’t that your job, to make history relevant and exciting for the girls?”

  “That’s what I was trying to do.”

  “Am I to understand, then, that you find history itself so inadequate to your needs that you feel compelled to inject personal opinion into your lectures, regardless of the consequences?”

  “I only meant that—”

  “I know what you meant. What I fail to comprehend is how slavery and the forced relocation of indigenous peoples, both subjects referenced by Miss Tuttle, can’t be made interesting for our girls without allusion to the Disney Company.”

  Bishop pressed his lips together and shifted his gaze to a point just to the right of her head. There was something he wanted to say—she could see that. The windows in her office faced due east, and as a result it was possible to judge the hour of the morning, allowing for seasonal variations, by the way in which the sun cast her shadow on the wall opposite her desk. At this particular time of year, the sun seeped over the horizon around seven o’clock, casting no shadow at all, was high enough to shine drowsily into her office by eight, her shadow a dim ghost of its future self, but by nine, the light was burning into her window, her shadow long and dark and imposing, her physical self, she imagined, rimmed with luminosity like the moon during a solar eclipse, radiance catching in her hair, that light beaming simultaneously into the eyes of whoever had the misfortune to be sitting on the other side of her desk. At this moment, behind Bishop, the shadows were just beginning to coalesce, not yet recognizable as herself or Bishop or anything else, reluctant gradations of light and dark, which put the hour somewhere shy of eight o’clock.

  “Speak your mind,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I left the assembly early. I heard everything secondhand. Did Poppy really call him a—” He stopped short of the word itself.

  “Douche, Mr. Bishop. Try not to seem so amused.”

  “But you can’t actually think this theme park is a good idea?”

  “What I think or do not think is irrelevant, just as your attitude toward potential donors is irrelevant to the way in
which history is discussed in your classroom. The question, in this instance, is not historical in the least. At issue is the future of this school.”

  “But that’s—” he began, and then he reined himself in a second time. He was right to reconsider. She was in no mood to debate, especially about an issue that had weighed on her mind so heavily and for so long.

  “Let me save us both a little time and possibly save you a great deal of regret. You might be inclined to argue that the presence of this theme park puts the future of the school in jeopardy, but if you think that I have not considered every possible ramification then you quite underestimate me, Mr. Bishop. Perhaps you have forgotten that I have been affiliated with Briarwood in one way or another for half a century. My own history and the history of this place are one and the same. I am confident that our foundation is built on bedrock, more than sturdy enough to bear whatever change the years might bring. This institution has weathered far greater storms than Disney. Better to ally ourselves with the agent of change than to have no control at all. You might also be preparing to make the case for historical accuracy, but you know as well as I do that history is just a story we tell ourselves about the past and has only the loosest relationship to the truth. Disney’s version of that story is insignificant in the long run. Do I wish this theme park were not going to be built? Of course. Do I foresee a way in which Briarwood can successfully prevent it? I do not.” She steepled the tips of her fingers beneath her chin. “Have I done justice to your arguments?”

  “You’ve got the gist,” he said.

  “We have to consider the big picture, Mr. Bishop. I should think that a historian would be aware of that. Besides, for all we know, Disney’s America will turn out to be the very best thing, exactly the right thing, for Prince William County and for this school.”