“Where is she? Where in God’s name is April van Osdale?”
“Ms. Bannister, Dr. van Osdale has been in Jackson all day.”
“Doing what? Doing what?”
“I don’t know.”
“There has to be a way to reach her!”
“I’ve been trying to call her on her private line; she doesn’t pick up.”
“Give me her private number! I’ll try to call her!”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to do that.”
“But we have an emergency here!”
“I’m sorry, but…”
Nina flipped the phone shut.
“Nina! I think I’m going crazy!”
“We both are, Meg.”
“Why did the students have to see that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I feel like a criminal!”
“Just try to take it easy; we’ll figure it out.”
“How?”
The cell phone buzzed.
“Jackson?”
“Yeah.”
“Jackson, have you heard?”
“Heard what? I’ve been huddled with a client.”
“Two patrolmen just came and escorted Meg Brennan out of the high school.”
“What?”
“Two patrolmen…”
“Okay, I heard! That’s crazy!”
“You better know it’s crazy!”
“Where’s Meg now?”
“I’m with her! We’re driving in her van.”
“Where?”
Nina looked at Meg, who was shaking her head and muttering inaudible sounds.
“Meg, where are we driving to?”
“I don’t know.”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know where you’re going?”
“No.”
“Then come here. Drive to my office. I’ll be waiting for you.”
They did.
He was.
Three PM signaled the beginning of rush hour in downtown Bay St Lucy. Nothing much happened in downtown Bay St. Lucy in the winter (or in the summer either, if one wanted to be scrupulously accurate), and so designations such as rush hour, mid-morning coffee break hour, early morning rush hour, and evening quiet time, did not mean very much.
But there they were, if one wanted to deal with them.
Meg and Nina parked in front of the red brick two-story building that housed Jackson’s current (and Frank’s once upon a time) law firm. They clambered out of the van and somehow got round to the sidewalk, Nina keeping her arm around Meg, who was still sobbing quietly, this being due to the fact that women are overly emotional, and sometimes react quite strongly to small events, such as losing a career and being humiliated by state troopers in front of two or three hundred of their students.
“I don’t understand this.”
“It’s all right, Meg.”
“No, Nina, it isn’t!”
And of course it wasn’t, so there remained little to say to that.
They approached the door and Nina pressed the appropriate button beside Jackson’s name. There followed an immediate ‘buzz,’ then a reassuring ‘click,’ then a strange and almost indescribable ‘quaat,’ then the door swung upon.
The stairs stared down at them.
“Come on, Meg. Let’s go up.”
“How am I going to tell Jenny about this?”
“We don’t even know what’s going on yet.”
“I’m fired, Nina! They’ve fired me!”
“Maybe not.”
“My God, those policemen! And right in front of everybody!”
“I know.”
“We’re not going to have enough money to live on! Jenny’s shop brings in a little, but that’s mostly in summer. We don’t have that much savings!”
The door at the top of the stairs swung open, and Jackson appeared in it, his form outlined in yellow, glowing background light.
“Come on up. Come up here. Let’s get the two of you inside.”
They climbed the narrow stairwell, which was just wide enough for the two of them to pass side by side, Nina’s arm still tight around Meg’s waist.
She kept it there for fear Meg would turn around, peer down the ten steps they’d already climbed, decide to end it all, and jump.
‘Despairing lesbian coach kills self with plunge down stairwell of prominent attorney.’
Not good publicity.
They reached the top of the stairs.
“Come in! Come on in, Meg. Nina, you sit over there. Can I get coffee for the two of you?”
Meg shook her head:
“I can’t drink anything!”
“Jackson,” Nina said, “why don’t you get a cup for each of us?”
It was, she had found, a universal truth that a little coffee never made things any worse.
And these things were about to get a lot worse.
“Sure! Sure, both of you have a seat. Little cream?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Sugar?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Splenda?”
“NO!”
“NO!”
Things were already getting better.
Nina, seated now in one of the imposing green leather chairs (She could remember when Frank had bought the chair from a downtown furniture store. She had doubted the possibility of getting it up the stairwell.)
But miracles of all kinds happened in those days; new clients showing up, victories in court, chairs fitting into impossible places and turning absurd angles…
….a long time ago.
“Here. Here’s a cup for both of you.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
So, finally, they were all seated, coffeed, deep breathed, and miserable.
“Jackson,” Nina said, “do you know anything about this?”
He nodded:
“Yes, I do. I’ve been on the phone with the capital for the last fifteen minutes, ever since I got your call.”
“And?”
He shook his head, then said quietly:
“Meg, I’m afraid you’ve been terminated.”
“Oh, God! Oh God, no.!”
“Why, Jackson?” asked Nina.
“Because of me.”
“You?”
“Yes, Nina, because of me. Because I behaved like an idiot. I followed those girls home in the bus, and I bought them dinner. I’m a professional attorney. I’m a school board member. If anybody should have known that such things are against the rules, it’s me.”
Meg looked at him.
“I knew you were going to follow them home in the bus. But I thought that would be okay. And as for the meal…I thought the players were going to pay for their own food.”
“They should have. But I…I just wanted to do something special for them. I must have been out of my senses.”
“But…”
Meg was stammering.
“…but that seems like such a small thing. Okay, we broke the rules. Couldn’t they just give me a slap on the wrist? I’d be happy to write an apology and promise never to do it again!”
Silence in the room.
A huge gorilla—probably a male silverback, weighing at least eight hundred pounds—wandered in, leapt upon the littered mahogany desk, and simply sat there, staring at each of the three of them in turn, saying in gorilla-speak:
‘You can’t ignore me, can you? I’m the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, and sooner or later you’ve got to acknowledge me.
Meg did.
“This woman. This new ‘coordinator’ or whatever.”
“April van Osdale,” whispered Nina.
“Did she know about this?”
“Yes,” Nina continued to whisper. “I told her.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m stupid.”
“You told her about the meal?”
“Yes.”
“But
did you tell her…”
“About New Mexico? Yes. I told her you’d gone to New Mexico after the game.”
“To get married.?”
“Yes.”
“To Jenney?”
“I didn’t go quite that far; but I’m sure she found out quickly enough.”
The gorilla jumped off the desk, said ‘Thank you!’—again in gorilla—and walked out of the room.
“So,” said Meg, ‘that’s the real reason, isn’t it?”
“Two of your best friends,” Jackson said, quietly, “have just gotten you fired.”
The room was silent.
It was better, Nina decided, with a gorilla in it.
“But I can try it. I can try to do it.”
––William Faulkner, Light in August
Between the hours of three thirty and eight PM, too many things happened in Bay St. Lucy to be described.
So no attempt will be made.
It is possible to report, though, that a secondary conference room in the city hall was reserved for a small group of people, and that Edie Towler, the mayor, Jackson Bennett, the attorney, and Nina Bannister, the principal, all found themselves in it, when April van Osdale entered and threw a leather briefcase on the table before them.
“I have been,” she said, “in Jackson. All afternoon.”
No reply.
“Do any of you know,” she continued, “how close we came to incurring sanctions?”
“Dr. van Osdale…”
“Mr. Bennett, you are an attorney. You are a school board member. How could you have been a party to this?”
“I made a terrible mistake.”
April van Osdale shook her head.
“No, Mr. Bennett. You made several terrible mistakes. You gave what amounts to a cash reward to student athletes. You might as well have slipped each of them a fifty dollar bill and said ‘Good job!’ Then you took charge of them, herded them into a bus, and pretended to be their official escort during a fifty mile bus trip. If anything had happened during that trip, the school—as I’m certain you must know—would have been liable for millions of dollars in lawsuits.”
“I understand all of that, Dr. van Osdale. But, as I’ve already said, it’s my fault.”
Again, a shake of the head.
“No. It’s Ms. Brennan’s fault. Those student athletes were her responsibility. Now, as for what she did after the game, where she went, and whom she married, those are her concerns, not mine. And I don’t worry about them.”
You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying You’re lying you’re lying you’re lying…
…thought Nina.
But she did not say anything.
“But when she left those kiddoes to, in effect, find their way home, and allowed monies to be doled out to them—she put our entire athletic department at risk.”
Edie Towler, always the voice of reason, said quietly:
“We all have just been wondering, Dr. van Osdale: is there no way she could be let off with a reprimand?”
A shake of the head.
“Apparently the three of you do not understand—and perhaps no one else in the town understands—just how passionately I have had to plead this entire afternoon, and with the heads of how many disciplinary committees, just to make this thing go away. A number of people came close to losing their positions this afternoon. Now I’m sorry that this happened the way it did. I know it seemed rather sudden. The presence of the patrolmen was—well, unfortunate. But Ms. Brennan had to be taken from the school immediately. And she was.”
“There is no way,” Jackson asked, “for her to keep her job?”
“Absolutely none. No one is going to thank me for keeping every one of our teams: football, track, baseball, boys’ basketball, all of them—from having been put on probation for at least one year. But I did so. And the cost of one coach’s job was, if regrettable, still the best possible alternative.”
More silence.
It was Edie’s turn to talk.
“So. The girls should not have to suffer for this. Who will be their new coach?”
“As far as I can tell,” answered April van Osdale, “no one.”
“What?” asked Nina, Jackson and Edie, in complete simultaneity.
“We have no one to spare at the school to take over those duties. Not at this point.”
“But…” stammered Jackson. “One of the assistant boys’ coaches?”
“Those coaches already have a full slate of duties, both in the gym and in the classroom. To ask them to take on an entire new coaching responsibility would be unfair to them. Also, I’m very uncomfortable with men coaching a women’s team.”
“But that’s done all the time!”
“And it might be done here, in the future. I don’t know. I’m sure the search for our new coach will be a careful one. We’ll interview a great many candidates.”
“But,” asked Jackson, “what will happen to the team now?”
“Nothing.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“We have no team. Our basketball season is over. For this year, anyway.”
Jackson’s mouth fell open.
He could only stammer.
Edie was stammering, too, but more intelligibly.
“Can’t we bring in someone from outside simply for the interim?”
“And pay that person out of what funding source? Everyone in this community seems to think the school is made of money. We aren’t.”
“But…”
“The long and short of it is, there is no woman currently employed at the high school, who understands women’s basketball, and whom I would feel comfortable asking, on a purely volunteer basis, to coach this team.”
“I’ll coach them,” said Nina.
All eyes turned to her.
All of them asked:
“What?”
“I’ll coach them.”
April van Osdale leaned forward:
“You’re the principal! You don’t have time to do this!”
“Yes, I do.”
“But Nina—you don’t know anything about basketball.”
“I was an all district point guard for the Bay St Lucy Mariners my last three years in high school.”
Silence for a time.
Finally, April rose, saying:
“Well. Let me think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” said Nina.
“All right then. I’m sorry for the events of this day. I wish none of it had happened.”
And so saying, she left the room.
“Nina,” said Jackson. “You never played basketball a day in your life.”
Nina nodded, then replied:
“No. But April van Osdale doesn’t know that.”
Then someone smiled.
It might have been Nina.
CHAPTER 13: THE PLAY BOOK
The following day winter returned to Bay St. Lucy.
The balmy breezes and improbable January picnics on the beach were replaced by north winds, scudding clouds, and pelicans that sat shivering on pier posts, their gray feathers ruffling and their implacable eyes staring toward the sea.
Things at school had gotten somewhat better.
At least no more state patrolmen showed up.
Classes resumed.
A substitute was found to teach Health and Wellness.
The parents who visited the school, faces flushed, fists pumping, and obscene comments either muffled or not muffled, were divided into those who hated April van Osdale for labeling their children as retarded and those who hated her for firing a winning basketball coach.
Just things as usual, things as usual.
At three PM, Nina—having left school a bit early––fou
nd herself in the living room of Meg Brennan and Jennifer Warren, a cup of steamy hot chocolate in front of her, a picture window rattling in the north wind at her elbow.
“This is not that bad,” Jennifer was saying. “We’re going to deal with it.”
The newlywed couple had for several years rented an old frame house only blocks from the city center, and, consequently, Jenny’s Art Treasures. Rental property was easily found in Bay St. Lucy, most of the older houses being owned by shop owners, who liked the ability to walk or bicycle to work. Nina had walked through the area on several occasions, always remembering the neighborhood, a mile or so distant, where she and Frank had spent so many years. She always found herself wandering wistfully from block to block, gazing at flower boxes on the dormer windows and remembering a former life.
“The shop is not doing that badly. We have some savings.”
Jennifer was tall and slender. Her page boy haircut glistened black in the yellow light cast by an overhead ceiling light.
She wore a sweater and jeans, and thus was dressed exactly as her spouse was dressed, except her gray sweater bore an image of Bob Dylan, and the sweatshirt of Meg Brennan bore an image of Goofy.
A small fire crackled and sputtered blue-orange in the fireplace.
Tiny marshmallows floated in the chocolate, resembling mini-icebergs adrift in a kelp-brown sea.
“I’m sorry I overreacted yesterday, Nina,” Meg was saying between slurps. “It was all just so unexpected.”
“You can’t let that bother you. Anyone would have been thrown off balance.”
There was a movement from a glassed-in front porch. Nina turned and saw a white form lumbering toward them, its tongue, like an obscenely red garden hose, hanging halfway to the ground and spraying saliva as though it were an extremely slow flying crop dusting plane with short, white fur.
The animal looked occasionally from side to side but kept its attention riveted for the most part on Nina’s knee, until that bodily part was directly beneath It and needed slobbering on.
She put her hand upon the dog’s broad back, the effect being something like a small Cessna landing on an aircraft carrier.
“Borg,” said Jennifer. “Don’t bother Nina.”
Borg remained implacable, lying at Nina’s feet with as much restlessness and potential movement as The Spitsbergen Ice Glacier.
Game Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 3) Page 13