Mummers' Curse (27 page)

“She—” Fabian shouted, or more accurately, gasped, pointing at me, still doubled over.

“What now?” Vincent asked me.

“Now?
Now
? As if I’ve—”

“The article, isn’t it?” he said. Fabian grunted assent. “Listen, Mandy, stop thinking about yourself all the time.
Your
credits,
your
résumé,
your
income. If you drag our names through the dirt—”

I stared, trying to really see him. He was my professional colleague and, I’d thought, my friend. And I didn’t know a thing about him, except that he had a mercurial temper, he’d lied to his wife, lied to the police, and in a definitely unfriendly act, used me as his alibi. This was not good stuff to know.

I didn’t know if Vincent Devaney was a killer. I didn’t know if Fabian was an embezzler and a threat and a killer. Looking at the two men this morning, I did, however, know that no matter what either or both of them had done, even to each other, they were on the same team and I was an interloper, an intrusive outsider. I don’t think Vincent would have rescued me from Fabian if I’d needed him to. He hadn’t made a move, just stood there and been testy with me.

I was a threat to both men, because I wasn’t one of them, and because of an article that was actually a figment.

But a person who is perceived as a threat is in danger. That, unfortunately, was no figment at all.

Sixteen

THE OFFICE WITCH DIDN’T SAY “GOTCHA!” BUT SHE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE. She didn’t bother hiding her malevolent triumph, either. Caught me as I tried to walk past the office. “Dr. Havermeyer’s waiting for you.”

“Now?” I was disheveled and trembling from the encounter outside. I wanted to call Mackenzie, tell him about Fabian, get the man off the streets.

Helga nodded, folded her arms over her chest, and gloated. Being summoned to the principal’s office had the same effect on me as it would have had twenty years ago. “I was supposed to make an appointment with him this morning for—”

“He’s
waiting
. You were supposed to arrange this appointment for this morning, but you left in a big hurry, as I recall.” She would have made a great prison matron.

I couldn’t contemplate, let alone face, Maurice Havermeyer immediately after mad Fabian. Too much terror for one day’s dawning. “My homeroom, I have to—”

“We’ve sent a monitor to take roll and maintain order.” She glanced at her watch, making the gesture a condemnation even though I wasn’t late and hadn’t done anything wrong except misread a poorly worded memo.

I stood tall and refused to be intimidated, or at least to look intimidated. Fabian had rattled me, but after my kickboxing round with him, I was also as cocky as my shaking nervous system allowed. Don’t mess with me.

Unless you’re Maurice Havermeyer, He Who Authorizes the Paycheck. I took a deep breath, nodded, and went to meet my fate.

It wasn’t only He Who I faced. Renata Field and her parents were also in attendance. That’s why the meeting had to be now.

The day kept getting better and better. At this rate, I wondered if I’d survive it.

“Miss Pepper, good to see you!” He Who said, as if this were a surprise social gathering. “Have a seat. Of course, all of us here know Renata, but I also believe the rest of you have met Miss Pepper, Renata’s English teacher, Mr. and Mrs. Field?”

I hadn’t met her parents. They’d waited to make contact until now, when their daughter’s negligence was out of control. Nonetheless, we nodded and sat back in our chairs, pretending to have a prior relationship. I, for one, didn’t want to go through the motions of introductions, particularly as it might involve something as hypocritical as smiles and handshakes.

“Mizzzz Pepper.” A sign of desperation when Havermeyer lengthens my name as a delaying tactic. This is a man who will do anything to say nothing, and when, as now, he’s faced with a charged situation, his armory of hot air and euphemisms isn’t enough. He needs to drag every syllable through mucky resistance. “As I have already told Mr. and Mrs. Field, and as Renata surely knows, Mizzzz Pepper is one of our most popular teachers. And, I might add, an outstandingly gifted one as well.”

Litigation. The way to Havermeyer’s heart. Or at least the appearance of a heart. I had suddenly become a Class-A teacher with Maurice as my cheerleading team. I’d have to remember that the next time I was up for a performance review.

“This is therefore quite unusual.” He sat behind his enormous desk, leaning back so that his scholastic key—it looked like Phi Beta Kappa, but was not—glinted in the cold, early sunlight. “Unique,” he went on, “I might say, in the truest sense of the word. Indeed, this entire, ah, proposed lawsuit, is the first such action against her. Or, I hasten to add, against any of our excellent staff. Gradewise, we have heretofore never been impugned, so you might call this an historic event.” He chuckled.

Apparently, the stern-faced Fields did not find any of this amusing. For all I know, they were puzzling over the word
impugned
.

I allowed secondary muscles to relax. Bossman was championing me, defending our record, albeit in typically garbled style.

“You can imagine my consternation and amazement when I first was made aware of your distress,” he said, swiveling toward the Fields. They were an unhandsome couple, but compensating for nature’s minginess with everything money could buy. He was fit and elegantly coiffed and tailored, and his nails looked as if they’d been buffed. She was all gritted-teeth effort. Hair in a hard, geometric cut, plain features burnished with a practiced hand, workout-enhanced body in a precision-engineered suit. Not to mess with.

And rich.

But I had justice and perhaps Maurice Havermeyer on my side.

“Now, as you have every right to assume, there is a definite set of standards against which our students are measured, and such standards are necessary in order to preserve the integrity of the very idea of education as well as our own school’s accreditation,” Havermeyer said. “I’m sure that’s why you chose this school for your daughter. And within that structure, Miz Pepper’s academic standards, I have been assured and have personally observed, are equitable and reasonable.”

Renata pouched her lips and emitted an explosion of sneering air. A raspberry, as if we were in a ballpark.

Everyone overlooked, ignored her rudeness. I figured her whole life had been handled that way.

“That is one great part of the reasons,” Havermeyer said, “that and her excellent teaching, of course, that we have been so proud to have Miz Pepper as an integral, important part of our staff for these several years.”

I felt less comfortable. We’d slithered into the murky realm of the too-effusive. I heard the first hiss in Eden. A “however,” large, fat, and lethal, lurked behind his flowery words. The muscles I’d relaxed returned to near-spasm.

“Let’s get to the point, Doctor,” Mr. Field said with such familiarity and self-assurance that even my earlobes clenched.

“Of course, of course.”

“My child’s entire future is at stake.”

His child sniffed victory and smirked at me.

“I am, of course, aware of your concerns, and, of course, aware of the significance of a student’s grade point average.”

“Particularly a senior’s.” Mrs. Field’s voice had a razor edge.

Havermeyer nodded.

I knew I was dead meat.

He cleared his throat, still nodding, then spoke. “All of what I said was by way of making clear that this is why, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I realized there must be some grave perceptual or conceptual error on one or the other of the parties’ parts, or perhaps, on both of them. I am, however, more than positive that this is an issue we can resolve here and now, and amicably. After all, the teachers, students, and parents of Philly Prep are a team, all of us working together for the greater good, isn’t that so?”

The Fields, my purported teammates, stared blankly. They really didn’t get it. Renata wrinkled her brow, giving the impression of one puzzling through what he’d said, and even I nodded once before I stopped myself. The action felt too much like lowering my head to the guillotine blade.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but Renata and I have already worked this out. There’s no need to involve the legal process. I don’t understand why any of this is necessary.”

Mrs. Field tilted her head as if I were a ridiculous but interesting specimen. “This is necessary because a C is not a satisfactory working-out,” she said, her words slicing through the office. “A C”—she outlined the letter in the air, for fear, I assume, that I had not yet learned the alphabet—“is a mediocre mark, an ordinary, middle-of-the-road mark. My daughter is neither mediocre nor average. A C is not a first-rate, college-level entrance grade, and it will seriously impede and perhaps change the entire course of our child’s future.”

I waited for Havermeyer to interrupt or redirect her.

“A C is not the sort of grade Fields get,” Mr. Field said.

Fields? We were talking about one girl named Renata.

Was her poor work now pulling down her entire family name? I imagined the conversations between the Fields and Sally Bianco’s mother. Doom, doom, family name ruined, like a bad opera.

Havermeyer did nothing except nod encouragingly to both of Renata’s parents.

“We cannot allow one teacher’s blind spot, rigidity, and stubbornness to destroy our daughter’s future or ours,” Mrs. Field said. “We have plans for Renata, dreams that are now seriously threatened.” She shook her head. “I will not allow that to happen.”

Having delivered her prepared speech, she tapped a long fingernail against the arm of her chair and watched me, a vulture waiting for me to die.

Havermeyer harrumphed. Once, I’d thought that was a sound only comic-book characters made, but the choking, coughing, throat-clearing exhalation that bought time and meant nothing was his favorite word.

I waited for him to say something more about grades, about fairness, standards, about anything, but instead, he looked at me. “Mizzzz Pepper?” he asked.

I had no idea what response he had anticipated, so I murmured a noncommittal “Yes?”

“Do you think there might be some way for us to take another look at Renata’s record and recalculate the grade for the semester so as to…” Even he couldn’t think of a graceful, dignified exit from that sentence. So as to placate her parents? So as to once and for all sell out, lose your last vestige of teacherly pride? So as to keep your job? All of the above?

“She…she didn’t do her work, not at all.”

“You lost it,” her mother snapped.

“No, I—”

“My daughter says you lost it! I trust my daughter.”

More fool, you, if that’s the truth. But I moved on. “The one assignment she did hand in was copied. Plagiarized. Both girls therefore shared the grade, which would have been excellent, had only one of them written it, but was a failing grade of fifty when divided in two. They both knew the policy. So the C—that’s not even guaranteed yet. First, Renata has to make up a whole lot of work, and—”

“From what I read in yesterday’s paper, you’re not exactly committed to the classroom,” Mrs. Field said. “It’s a career in journalism you’re after, isn’t it?”

Havermeyer looked in need of major analgesics.

“No,” I said, “that was a—I—what that man wrote has nothing to do with my classroom practices. Or the truth.”

Mr. Field spoke directly to Dr. Havermeyer. “If what I’m hearing from you and your staff is a
no
, then consider our daughter withdrawn from this school, and speak to our lawyers from this point on.” He stood up as he spoke.

“Please. Have a seat. This can be worked through.” Havermeyer’s voice and entire history made it clear that we weren’t going to work this through via the Fields. I was going to work this through,
i.e.
give Renata whatever she, her parents, and my headmaster wanted. Do whatever it took to keep the tuition coming in and prevent a lawsuit.

The air in the room and even the supply stored in my lungs had been siphoned out. How was I going to live without a job? How was I going to live
with
a job as a performing pet willing to do any trick that pleased the people with the money?

And the world wasn’t exactly begging for impractical, dreamy-eyed former lit majors. I’d wind up with the displaced licorice factory workers.

“Miz Pepper?” Havermeyer let the real question hang unsaid.

“I—I—” I couldn’t frame a sentence, couldn’t agree with this bargain with the devil, and couldn’t afford to refuse it. I was working hard to avoid crying with anger and frustration. Mrs. Field tapped the wooden arm of her chair. Mr. Field smoothed the crease in his slacks. Renata considered the wall, studied it.

Havermeyer, however, looked concerned. It is possible that he noticed that I was on the verge of either hysteria or catatonia. “Perhaps you’d like time, Miz Pepper, to work out the way we can best handle this?”

I nodded.

“Then this will, ah, be handled?” Mr. Field asked.

“Of course, of course. Didn’t I say so all along?”

“She’s my child, after all,” Mrs. Field said. “We only want the best for her. A parent’s duty, after all. An A would certainly help on her application form.”

I had heartburn without having eaten anything. “My class,” I said. “Have to get to…first period’s about to …”

Havermeyer nodded. “Of course. Far be it from me to hinder a dedicated teacher from fulfilling her obligations.”

“Thank you for seeing to this,” Mr. Field said to Havermeyer. “We appreciate your taking the time.”

“It’s my pleasure and obligation,” my leader said.

I nodded by way of farewell and bolted out of there. Helga barked my name. “Messages. You have more. You’re supposed to pick them up first thing each morning, as you should remember.”

My mail box was, indeed, loaded. Mackenzie had been sarcastically impressed that the article spared mention of my address, but of course, it said where I taught, so the end result was the same. Anybody could find me.

This time I heard from Andrée Jansheski, the hairdresser, who hoped she hadn’t said anything out of line, and reminded me that her salon was not a place of gossip, and what was it that I was planning to put in my article, anyway, and if I still wanted a haircut, it’d be on the house.