Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  I kept quiet because the only honest answer was that I’d asked because I was an inept idiot, who behaved as if Beth had no brain or sense of curiosity.

  “You owe it to me.” This wasn’t a familiar Beth. Perhaps this hard-edged tone was part of Business Beth’s new wardrobe. “I’m hoping to do business with her, so if there’s some dark secret I should know about, then . . . then—I should know about it!”

  Macavity saw the broom and took off for the other side of the loft. I got back down and poked at the shoe with the handle until it was out the other side, and said only, “There’s no secret—network her like crazy. You’re safe.”

  Beth was silent for a moment, digesting this and not giving up. “Then it has to be because she knew that newcomer you met,” she said. “That Emmie Cade.”

  “Apparently.” I’d forgotten that Beth had written down the name. And then I heard what I’d dreaded—that nearly silent oh! where Beth figured something out, most likely that I hadn’t met any newcomer who babbled about her life to me. I was about to say something to hold her off at the pass—as soon as I thought of what it was, when she dropped the entire matter. Maybe I’d been wrong about her powers of intuition.

  “You don’t have to tell me a single thing more—I understand. But don’t act like your job’s so unglamorous, like you’re a clerk and nothing more,” she said, making me wonder what she thought she understood. “And, since I have you on the phone, what do you think of the Emory mansion?”

  “Excuse me? I’ve never heard of them, let alone visited their home.”

  “The family died out years ago, and their house is used for events. It’s beyond gorgeous, and it’d be perfect. I’m going out there this morning, to check it out for a corporate party. Anyway, it’s about thirty minutes outside—”

  “Nice, Beth, but I have to get to work. Good luck with the Averys.”

  “Emorys! Aren’t you even interested?”

  “Of course I am. I love hearing how you put things together, but right now, I haven’t even had coffee and—”

  “I mean for you! For your wedding.”

  “What wedding?”

  “Aren’t you ever going to set a date? What’s wrong with you? And then you’re going to let me help you with it, aren’t you? It’s what I do, and you have to think ahead, way ahead. This place gets booked—”

  This was way too weird for a dark, rainy morning, but since she was already scratchy about Victoria Baer, I had to tiptoe around this. It took another solid five minutes to extricate myself from the conversation and to extract a promise that she’d say nothing further about this mansion or my wedding date until so requested. But for fear of making something more important to her than it already was, I didn’t extract a similar promise about last night’s dinner conversation. The less said, the better, I felt. I wanted her to forget about it, and mentioning it would only make it seem still more important. I could only hope for the best. After all, she didn’t know Emmie Cade, so I couldn’t envision any problems ahead.

  A learning experience, I told myself. That’s all it was. A lesson in the perils of speaking before I thought through all the possible consequences.

  WE WERE INTO THE SECOND-DAY SLUMP, or they were.

  American ingenuity and business sense has made sure there are numerous perks about back-to-school. Kids get new clothing, new supplies with delicious designs and covers. Even assignment books, designed to list the hated work they’ll have to do—even those are cleverly packaged. First day back, everything from head to foot is new or newly washed. Back to school is filled as well with nonconsumer benefits, like seeing people after a long summer’s absence.

  Twenty-four hours later, the student body’s collective expressions reflect a sense of having been duped, as in some primitive cartoon series. Fooled again, though they aren’t sure how it happened this time. They can’t blame this one on the teacher. They were party to it, but now, it’s the second day of forever, and their shoes have scuffs and no matter what teen idol is on the cover of the assignment book, its blank pages are all waiting to be filled with things they don’t want to, but have to do.

  A lot of heavy lifting ahead.

  Perhaps they even remember that they didn’t see those other kids all summer because they didn’t particularly want to.

  They looked at me with inarticulate desperation, as if I could help them, or at least explain what had happened, but of course, I was a part of the problem and not its solution. Anyway, I knew it would get better, and I also knew that they’d probably felt just as robbed and cheated by summer, which was never the two-month dream of bliss they’d envisioned.

  To balance things out, my back-to-school malaise was gone, and I felt glad to have shifted gears and to be in my element again. We all have our own ways to delude ourselves, and mine was to believe—again—like my own variation on that hapless cartoon character: this year would be different. I had three preparations for my five classes, had planned out the year, and was positive, despite all past evidence, that not only would the students enjoy the challenges ahead, but so would I. And of course I’d work efficiently, gladly, and promptly, papers returned almost before the students handed them to me. And when they looked at their compositions and my comments—they’d get it. They’d change. They’d think coherently, make clear points, learn new words, and thank me for my incisive advice. And while we were at it, they’d fall in love with books and reading and ideas and self-expression.

  I was basking so comfortably in this pedagogical hallucination that I smiled back first thing in the morning when I arrived, dripping wet despite my umbrella, which had turned inside out, and Sunshine said, “And aren’t we glad that heat wave’s over!” It wasn’t a question—it was a command to be joyous. “And isn’t this just the most perfect day for studying?” she continued. “Mother Nature herself is saying, now kiddies, forget about that lazy summertime you had—it’s back-to-work time!”

  It was still pouring, the skies so low and menacing, I anticipated forty days and forty nights. My umbrella was ruined, and I was drenched, but so what? I borrowed a smidge of Sunshine’s attitude and added it to my dizzy belief in the new school year. I’d dry out. Life would go on.

  And I didn’t particularly mind, though I wasn’t overly amused, either, when Bo Michaels avoided committing to any book at all for his report by falling off his chair and pretending to have a heart attack. I had tagged him as class clown the day before, but today, drenched in the milk of human kindness and teacher-blindness, I tried to avoid classifying him, labeling him in any negative way. Instead, I determined to focus on why he needed to make a fool of himself.

  And third period, I was able to ignore the still-subtle shenanigans of Butch and Sundance. I knew, even in this strangely manic mood of mine, that they’d soon be problems needing attention, but for right now, they were simply vaguely amusing, testosterone-poisoned adolescents.

  Gilding my benign-teacher float was the afterglow of having done well with my first assignment for C. K. I loved the day. I loved my capabilities. I loved my students. I loved Mr. Mackenzie.

  I should have known that every calm precedes a storm, and giddiness during a storm precedes God only knows what. At noon, while I was checking that all the seniors, including Bo the Clown, had indeed chosen books, a messenger arrived. That did not, however, seem bad news. In fact, it was good news, proving that Sunshine was educable. She now understood the relationship between messengers and messages.

  Apparently, her deciphered message meant that one of my ninth-grade parents was downstairs, wanting to meet her daughter’s English teacher. 1ts 2CU Sunshine wrote. I struggled with the 1ts until wants became clear. Little Office Sunshine had signed her note with an oversized smiley-face with an exclamation point for a nose. A really smiley-face. I had my first tremor of less-than-joy, but it had nothing to do with the message, only the person who’d written it out. Ten months of unsolicited, inept rebus puzzles and jolliness lay ahead. I had to find a way to
depress her.

  But aside from that, I took the note and the visiting parent as a sign that things were indeed improving. Perhaps our standards were rising, as Havermeyer claimed. This woman could have waited until parents’ night and I could have gotten more work done, but I wasn’t ready to object to an overinterested parent after years of complaining about the other sort, the ones who dumped their screwed-up children on us as if we were an all-purpose repair service. While we patched in literature and history, we were expected to also toss in ethics, etiquette, and psychological soundness.

  So I walked downstairs to meet Mrs. Lawrence, expecting a pleasantly nervous mother who wanted to tell me something special about her child. A talent with words, a shyness she’d like me to notice. Problems at home.

  And I tried to remember her daughter, one of the new students in ninth grade. I thought she was the pretty girl with streaked blonde hair and an aura of confidence, and wondered what her mother’s special worry would be.

  Sonia Lawrence was a striking woman, dressed in a navy silk blouse and a fawn-colored suit with shoes to die for. She carried her raincoat on one arm, and held a folded umbrella, and neither the sky nor either of those items had allowed one drip on her. Her hair was the same sun-streaked blonde as the student I’d picked, so I thought I’d been right.

  “I hope you don’t mind this unannounced intrusion,” she said, “but my office is nearby, and I had an unexpected break. The school told me you had a prep period now, so I hoped I could have five minutes of your time.”

  Nobody on earth has ever braved a storm to make a five-minute optional personal trip. I should have gone on alert, but why? It was the second day of school. I hadn’t had time to commit grave offenses. “Why don’t we sit on the benches in the entry,” I suggested.

  “But I’ll only take—”

  “It’s more comfortable,” I said, and she followed me to the carved wooden bench near the front entry.

  “My daughter Melanie is in your last-period class,” she said once she’d settled herself.

  I nodded and smiled, waiting for her to define what was special about Melanie, aside from her striking good looks and what seemed inherited self-confidence.

  “She brought home Lord of the Flies last evening.”

  I nodded again.

  “I realize that it’s something of a classic.”

  I was getting tired of nodding.

  “The author’s famous.”

  “He won the Nobel Prize.” I had to hope that if it was good enough for the Swedish Academy, it was good enough for Mrs. Lawrence.

  “In these times,” she said, “do you think you’re being sensitive to the traumas the children have been through—the entire nation has been through?”

  I waited for her to continue, to make sense, and when she didn’t, I sighed, then spoke. “Mrs. Lawrence, I honestly don’t know where you’re headed. It’s a rich, complex book that’s also approachable, a wonderful study of many things the students come to understand—mass hysteria, mob psychology, various approaches to life, civilization and what it might mean, the potential for evil in—”

  “That’s precisely what I mean. Why present our children with more evidence of human evil? Do you think that’s sensitive in these times?”

  The second sensitive in one minute.

  “I understand that the term lord of the flies is a translation of the word Beelzebub—the devil himself.” She looked triumphant, convinced she’d scored a point.

  I still wasn’t sure of the game.

  “Don’t be mistaken—I’m not a religious fanatic. I’m not a book burner. I am nonetheless quite upset at the idea of my daughter being forced to read about young boys who wind up committing murder. Perhaps in years gone by, Miss Pepper, but in these times, I find this book to be in poor taste.”

  “I appreciate your input, but I think it’s more important than ever to encourage thought about how we behave, and why. And about violence and hatred—”

  She put one well-manicured hand on mine. “They’ve had enough. Haven’t you read about the traumatized children? You’re standing by with a whip, to inflict further pain.”

  “Don’t you want Melanie to learn to think? Isn’t that what keeps democracy alive—citizens who think? It isn’t so much the specific content of any given book as it is what she’s going to take from it, and the unit plan has them learning—”

  “I don’t like what they’re learning. They’re learning that people can revert to savagery in the blink of an eye. To murder. That they can choose a scapegoat and destroy him. Is that who you’re saying we are?”

  “Excuse me—I didn’t write the novel. And the author isn’t saying anybody in particular is any particular—”

  “I know how that novel ends. The rescuers are at war, too. The adults are just as cruel, aren’t they? That’s his point, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps one of many points.”

  “The adults are just as capable of moral relativism and violence, aren’t they. He’s saying—and you’re saying by teaching that book—that everyone is basically rotten. We’re animals under a thin veneer of civilization.”

  “No. Not so. Not everybody in the book—”

  “Thank you for hearing me out. I don’t want my daughter reading this, so perhaps you’d better think about this some more. In these times—we’re at war, Miss Pepper. You have heard the president, haven’t you? We’re at war against evil—and you’re teaching your students that everyone is evil.”

  “No. If we don’t think things through—”

  “Even children.”

  “—people are capable of evil, out of fear, out of mass hysteria, and—”

  “It’s not only insensitive and an incorrect view of mankind, it’s unpatriotic at a time like this. I’ll get back to you on this.”

  She stood up, smiled, took my hand to shake, and said, “Thank you for taking time with me.”

  And that was it. She was out the door. This was an entirely new line of attack and criticism, and she wasn’t finished with me. But what frightened me most about Sonia Lawrence was her efficiency. She’d delivered her message, her warning—or threat—her reasons for her feelings. The frightening part was that she’d done it in precisely five minutes.

  This was a woman who meant every word she said.

  Now I, too, was into the second-day slump.

  Nine

  “INSENSITIVE! She said it more than once! Someday, every single book ever written will be on a forbidden list,” I fumed. “It’s either sex, or historically accurate but nowadays-offensive racial words, or the hint of subversive political leanings—or—or—well, now, insensitivity! She all but accused me of being a traitor to my country!”

  Mackenzie looked mildly sympathetic. Ozzie, over in his corner cubicle, didn’t even look up. I wasn’t sure that Ozzie had ever heard the word book, let alone read one. He was the man for whom TV and beer were invented.

  Not that I’m insensitive to TV-watching beer drinkers. Some of my best fiancés are to be found in that group now and then.

  And in truth, even Ozzie has another great passion, and that’s for speed. In others. He himself is slow-moving, except, I gather, when he’s on his motorcycle. He loves it, and anyone or anything that physically taxes itself to the limit. “I like fast,” he’s said repeatedly, explaining himself in typically terse fashion. And the office illustrates that in a style that would confuse most viewers who didn’t understand the theme and mistook his lair for old-fashioned sloppy.

  The portion of wall I’m near at my desk is layered with pictures of champion racehorses, the Concorde, an ad for a Jet Ski, photos of Lance Armstrong, drawings of greyhounds, and motorcycle-related icons. Ozzie does not discriminate—if it’s fast, he likes it, pinning up posters and magazine pages as they appear and appeal to him.

  To the best of my knowledge, this is the one place on earth that defies the laws of gravity and here, what goes up never comes down. I suspect that small, blind life-fo
rms breed between the images, but I’m not going to check it out.

  “You ask me,” Ozzie suddenly said, though nobody had, “you have two choices. Either tell her to go to hell—”

  “An appealing idea,” I said, “but it then involves my finding another job.”

  “—or change the book. It’s school, it’s work, and does any kid care what the book’s called they have to read? In fact, does anybody care?”

  “I care. I know it’s not the best school in town, but I care. These kids aren’t stupid. They—including her daughter—are capable of thinking about the potential for evil, about choices, about mob violence—about the book I’ve assigned. How can they vote and be part of this country—she pretty much called me unpatriotic!—if they don’t learn how to reason things through?”

  “Jeez,” Ozzie said. “It was only a suggestion.” He turned back to his computer, more convinced than ever, I feared, that talking to women wasn’t worth the breath it took.

  “I should have taught math,” I said. “Math teachers don’t get harassed. Nobody tells them that algebra is insensitive, or calculus unpatriotic.”

  “There’s the small issue that you aren’t fond of mathematics,” Mackenzie said softly. “In that case, you’d be miserable because nobody was tryin’ to stop you.”

  “Then history,” I muttered.

  “Subject to interpretation and reinterpretation,” he reminded me. “But speakin’ of history, both political and personal, reminds me. You sufficiently decompressed now to consider Emmie Cade?”

  “I’ve been working on it.” Mackenzie had been out checking real estate records—another thing I’d have to learn about. And while he was gone, I’d been finding out what I could about Jake King and his widow, holding on to my anger about Sonia Lawrence and all the well-dressed ignoramuses with whom I had to deal. Then Mackenzie appeared, and I exploded. Because I could. If for no other reason—though there are many other reasons—I’d marry the man because he knows when it’s time to stand back and let me release my steam valves.