“Let’s just go inside.”
He opened the door for her.
The main chamber of the town hall glowed before her like a Christmas tree.
There must have been fifty people inside, all smiling at her, most holding glasses of champagne in their hands, which were stretched upward toward the door.
A huge banner, hanging from the chandeliers, read:
WELCOME BACK, NINA!
She was speechless.
Alanna Delafosse stood beneath one of the great windows, a street light shining through the half-closed blinds and making her face a caramel glow; John Giusti stood beside her, his wife Helen, late of the Broadway stage, standing only a few feet away. Even Tom Broussard, was there, standing in a far corner. And there, bringing him a cup of something, ostensibly coffee, more probably bourbon or some unknown brew even stronger, was his wife of not quite a year, Penelope Royale.
Penelope had recognized that, as the town’s most obscene speaker—she spoke only in obscenities––she shared kinship with Tom, the town’s most successful dirty novelist, and the two had married.
Before the marriage, each had lived the most disreputable lifestyle imaginable. Penelope had a small living space down by the boat docks, and apparently, as far as anyone could tell, survived by eating bait. Tom’s place was worse, and no one knew how he survived.
After the marriage, nothing apparently changed for either of them.
They each lived precisely as they had before.
Penelope kept her shack; Tom kept his.
And now they were here like everyone else.
Honoring her.
Penelope stepped forward and announced:
“Nina, we––––––but––––––if we don’t––––––and you––––––deserve it!”
Laughter, applause—
And then they were upon her.
The party lasted until well after midnight, and involved the consumption on Nina’s part of at least two glasses of champagne.
Perhaps three.
At any rate, too many for a hard working woman on the eve of a scary day.
It did end, though, as all deliciously evil things must, and slightly before one AM, she found herself in yet another car, being taken home, not by Jackson Bennett, who had been forced to leave early, but by Paul Cox.
His car meandered through the deserted streets, and his aquiline, almost birdlike, face reflected in the glow of the dashboard.
“Well, this is it.”
“This was wonderful, Paul. I can’t tell you how thrilled it made me feel. Thank you for organizing it.”
“I didn’t organize it. Your friends did. And you have a lot of them.”
“I know. I’m lucky.”
He nodded and slowed the car, as they turned onto Beachfront Boulevard, which would lead down to the sea and her shack.
“We’re the ones who are lucky. The whole town.”
“I hope I’ll do okay.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“There are so many things to remember, so many things that come up every day.”
“Just trust the people working around you. And trust your judgment.”
He was silent for a time.
The orange-lighted square windows of her shack loomed up before them.
The car stopped. Even though the windows of Paul’s van were tightly closed, she could still hear the roar of the surf.
And there was Furl, outlined in the window, looking down.
“Nina…”
“Yes, Paul?”
“There is one more thing I need to tell you.”
She stared at him across the seat.
“What is it?”
“Something I just learned today. We all just learned it today.”
“All right. Go on.”
“Well––”
“Let me have it. Get it over with.”
“I’d heard that something like this might happen. Politics being the way politics always are. And of course, it’s all politics.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nina, there’s been a new appointee.”
“What kind of an appointee?”
He shook his head.
“You know that the world in Jackson—like pretty much the whole country—is divided in its way of looking at things.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“Well, my appointment as educational consultant to the governor reflects one of those ways of seeing the world. I’m viewed as a reformer.”
“Who is the appointee?”
“A woman I don’t really know, and haven’t met. She’s to be the new ‘Commissioner of Educational Excellence for Southwest Louisiana,’ based in Hattiesburg. She has broad ranging powers.”
“Over me?”
“Over pretty much everybody. She answers to people who oppose the governor. But those people have a lot of power—and so does she.”
“Power to achieve what goal?”
“Get the test scores up.”
“Oh God.”
“Yes. And keep the schools running like—well, like these people want the schools to run.”
“Oh God.”
“There’s still time to quit.”
She felt herself laughing softly as she thought of the party tonight, and of the huge banner, and of Penelope’s obscene and wonderful speech.
She looked up at bedroom window. Furl was laughing too.
“No. No, Paul, it’s a little too late for that. So. What’s this woman’s name?”
“Dr. April van Osdale.”
“What?”
“I said her name is Dr. April van Osdale. Apparently she’s from…”
“I know where she’s from.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I know her from The University of Mississippi. About fifteen years ago, I’m sure you know, I went back there one summer to do the course work I needed to become principal. April and I had several education classes together, and we worked on group projects. She was in her early twenties and I in my mid-forties. I haven’t seen her in years. But, yes, I know her.”
“Well. I had no idea. That’s good then. You have a history together. Maybe that will be easier for you to work together.”
“Maybe.”
She opened her car door and stepped outside.
A light rain had begun to fall.
“I’m going up now. Thanks for telling me about this. And thanks for everything else.”
“Sure thing. By ten o’clock tomorrow morning Macy and I and the moving van will be half way to Jackson. But you’ve got my phone number, and you know that, well, if there’s anything I can do––”
“Sure, Paul.”
“All right. Good luck then!”
And, so saying, he pulled away.
She stood for a time in the cool rain.
Then she walked up her stairway, pausing to take the key out of her purse.
“April van Osdale,” she whispered to the doorknob.
It did not answer.
Yes, she knew April van Osdale.
She knew her quite well.
She had never, in her entire life, detested another human being so completely.
CHAPTER 4: FIRST DAY BACK
“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire.”
––William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
“I don’t think anybody can teach anybody anything.”
––William Faulkner
Ten years retired, ten years retired…
So much had changed. Not the students, for students are always the same. They behaved and misbehaved just as they always had in class, and they rampaged down the hallways between periods in precisely the same breakneck manner, the football players hurling themselves against the rattling locker doors, their coaches joining in the horseplay, the young girls gibbering and gossiping, somehow immune to being pinned against the lockers themselves, and always pretending to be oblivious to the mayhem.
Not the building, for it was just as it had always been.
Mid-sixties style, low and sprawling, wall of windows, lockers along the corridors, hospital lighting…
…no, the building certainly had not changed.
But many other things had.
Everything was done by email now. People could no longer talk to each other. When the server was down—and what in heavens’ name was a ‘server,’ anyway?—well, whatever it was, when it was down, the entire chain of communications broke down with it, and people simply wandered around the hallways, unable to fix meeting times or plan luncheons or even gripe with each other about whatever latest outrage had taken place in class.
Cell phones.
Although there were large signs posted along the corridors saying “Do not Bring Your Cell Phones to Class!”, the strange glowing things always appeared anyway, held furtively beneath desk tops, making their faint music at inopportune times, saving the students from the horrors of even momentary isolation, and allowing every boy and girl the reassuring knowledge that another human voice was whispering, at all times, if not into their ears, then at least into their palms.
And, of course, there were the tests now.
The Mississippi Academic Certification Evaluation.
The M.A.C.E.
Everything now depended on these examinations, and how well the students fared on them.
Reputation.
Prestige.
And above all, funding.
One good thing: Paul Cox had always hated standardized testing. “We do not,” he had insisted, “teach standardized students.” So he had protected teachers from the need to give continual “practice” tests.
One bad thing: as a result, Bay St. Lucy’s test scores were usually among the lowest in the state.
One other bad thing: April van Osdale was coming to town to change all that.
Well. Worry about one thing at time.
For example, the budget.
Budgetary matters were now handled by computer, of course, there being one website for this document and another for that document. It was and had always been stunning to her that in every educational establishment in the country (and probably the world) there was never enough money to get things done and always too much money to keep up with properly.
So that finances and the proper dealing with them were going to take up, she knew, a majority of her time, making her yearn for the chance simply to pop into one of the classrooms opening onto the central hall and teach, if only for a moment, one of Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Austen’s novels.
That, of course, remained the province of Macy and her fellow English teachers.
There was to be one more English teacher in Bay St. Lucy High School. Word had filtered down the prior week that Macy’s replacement (at least for the remainder of the school year) had been personally hired by Jackson Bennett, head of the school board––and would begin the following day, on Tuesday.
Max Lirpa.
No one seemed to know much about Max Lirpa, but if he’d seemed impressive to Jackson, then he was surely suitable.
Except that he was a man.
Nina made a mental note to herself: She would have to remember to warn Ms. Eunice Duncan, now head of the department, not to start each weekly meeting of the English teachers with the greeting: “Good afternoon, Ladies!”
All of these things, then, were different.
But the main things, the basics, never changed.
Despite everything, it was just as she remembered it.
There remained, and always would remain, the golden, eternal rule of being a principal: that being, ‘there is no golden rule.’
There is no book.
There is no syllabus.
There is simply arriving every day at precisely seven o’clock, realizing that whatever was to come in the next ten or twelve or fourteen or sixteen or whatever hours would be completely unexpected, and arrive neatly packaged on her desk in shining gold paper, labeled with the word “Crisis.”
And realizing also that there was an invisible sign outside her door from the time she walked into the building every morning, this sign reading:
I’M HERE. BRING IT ON.
And, of course, people did.
Monday morning, first official day back for Nina Bannister, 7:50 AM.
Her office door opened, and Thelma Blankenship, her administrative assistant, said:
“A school bus, Nina, has just slid off the road.”
“Oh, my God. Where?”
“Somewhere between Lee’s Landing and Portageville (these being villages adjacent to Bay St. Lucy, but in the St. Lucy School District).”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Apparently not. But they’re just stuck out there.”
The phone rang; Nina answered it.
“Yes? Yes, I’ve just been told about it. I’m taking care of it now. No. No, there’s no injury. No, I’m not sure how it happened. No. No, it’s certain that he wasn’t drinking. No. No, I just know. That’s Cal Taylor’s bus. He’s one of our best and most veteran drivers. Yes. Yes. No. No Yes No. I’m trying to get him on the phone now. No. No, we’re sending an auxiliary bus out to pick them up. No No. Yes, definitely. Not at all. No there’s no chance of that. Drugs were definitely not involved. I know it’s cold, but the bus is heated. No. No, Cal knows to guard against carbon monoxide poisoning. He’ll keep the heater on, but the children won’t be asphyxiated. I’m sure of it. No, I did read something about that, and, yes, they did freeze to death, but that was in northern Alaska. No. No, definitely not. Yes. Yes, they will all be given excuses and not be counted late. I’ve just informed their teachers. Yes, I know who they are, and I’m calling their teachers. Yes, of course, you can call me any time.”
Which they would.
And did, but that mattered little, because other crises came up, and still others.
They were all unimportant, though.
Only one truly important thing was scheduled for the first day back.
One essential thing.
That was, of course, the decoration of her office.
Until that happened, she was in limbo.
It did happen, though, shortly after lunch when the school van arrived carrying several boxes which she had stacked neatly, at six AM that morning, on her bottom step.
The boxes were brought in, and opened.
So that by one thirty, the office looked as she wanted it;
A picture of Frank, a picture of her and Frank just married, a picture of her parents, a picture of her grandparents, a picture of Furl, a picture of her and Margot, a picture of Elementals: Treasures from the Earth and Sea, a picture of her and John Giusti and Helen Giusti just married, two ivy plants, a picture of her beach shack with the sun going down behind it, a stuffed dog, a copy of her Bachelor’s Degree, two blue pennants with the word ‘Mariner’ on them, a stuffed rabbit, a stuffed bear, fifteen books of various kinds, a pillow, a big spherical glass that had snow falling in it when you shook it, a calendar, several ball point pens, a stapler, two reams of copy paper, a mouse pad for the computer—
––and the nameplate that said NINA BANNISTER: PRINCIPAL.
After that, it was all something one did by instinct.
And she had the instinct.
She didn’t know when or how she had developed it.
Some people never did, or never would.
And she could not have explained how she knew what was going to happen after school at the end of her first day.
She just did.
Perhaps word of it had filtered down through the ventilation system.
Perhaps she had overheard it talked of in another language, the language of students.
How did she know?
No matter; she just did.
So that she was standing in a particular place in the hall when fifth period bell rang. Normal hall chaos ensued. Bodies flew by here and there and someone ran into the blue and white Mariner mascot, knock
ing its paper Mache sword loose and separating the gold ring from its ear.
No matter. That could be cleaned up later.
Somehow, though, she singled out a student who was hurtling by in the flood of youthful humanity, much as a wrangler might cut out an unbranded calf, and, by means of an assortment of judo holds and subtle jabs and uppercuts disguised as gestures of affection, mangled him into a space beside the water fountain, where relative calm reigned.
“Hey Jeremy.”
“Hello, Ms. Bannister.”
“What’s going on, Jeremy?”
“Not much.”
“Really?”
“Not much at all, Ma’am.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“That’s not what I’m hearing, Jeremy.”
“Well…”
“So what’s going on?”
“I guess, maybe, I’m not sure, but, just guessing, some kids might be getting together.”
“That so?”
“Just what I’m hearing. Don’t know who told me.”
“Sure.”
“Just, you know, just getting together.”
“This afternoon?”
“I guess.”
“Where?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. Not exactly.”
“Where?”
“That lot behind the old Dairy Queen that’s closed.”
“When?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“When?”
“Right after school.”
“You going to be there?”
“Not sure.”
“You going to be there?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“Good. Well. You have a nice rest of the day, Jeremy.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
And Jeremy disappeared.
An hour and a half later, she was in the school’s mini-van, approaching Bay St. Lucy’s most disreputable neighborhood. It was not really a ‘neighborhood’ at all, though it had at one time been so. But it had fallen into disrepair and neglect, as certain areas do, for no discernable reason. It had been home to prosperous middle class families (though never to wealthy ones); these had been replaced by a certain economic level of off-shore oil workers who lived in the homes only sporadically and thus allowed them to decay; these had been replaced by painters, curio makers, and postcard writers, who lived as artists do and there needed nothing more to be said about that; and these last had been replaced by nothing at all except the novelist and drunkard Tom Broussard, who inhabited a shack that was safe to live in merely because the area had become feared by the town’s criminals and was inhabited only by stray dogs that had gotten poisoned somewhere else and had come there to die.
Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) Page 4