The Headmasters Papers (4 page)

I'm afraid we've got to get organized for the self-study. Bill Truax is already pushing me for data. I suggest we give the boys a half-day next Friday—if we beat Haverhill, make the half-day a prize. Ask the faculty to meet in academic departments and have each department indicate “human” and “capital” needs and priorities in two categories, “immediate” and “long-range”—agree? You and I can then try to make order out of whatever comes in.

I'd like to say I know when I will be returning, but I don't. When we get a green light, we will be in Boston for about a week (?) at Mass. General, then, depending on the treatment program recommended, we will head back here.

Please forgive my being irritatingly repetitious, but it is
very important
that nobody know anything more than that Meg is ill. This is not just so that we can avoid feeling depressed. It may also be an important factor in the course of her treatment. Why not start a rumor that this Boston trip is just a cover to sneak down for some September sun on the Cape? I appreciate your help, and I am sorry to burden further the most overburdened man at Wells.

J.

—Marge has my numbers in Sandwich and in Boston.

14 September

Mr. William G. Traux

President, The Fiduciary Trust Co.

New Haven, Connecticut

Dear Bill,

I am writing to ask if we can delay our end-of-the-month Finance Committee meeting until some later date convenient to you and to the committee. Meg has fallen ill at the Cape and will be checking in to Mass. General in Boston for some tests. I think it's appropriate that I join her. I solemnly pledge not to enjoy myself nor so much as to set sole into a boat. I apologize for the inconvenience but think the situation warrants it.

Preparations are underway for some faculty sessions on “Wells: Ten Years and After,” the results of which I will share with you when the full board meets in October.

Please convey my fond regards to Marguerite and to the boys.

Faithfully,

John

14 September

Mr. and Mrs. Asa Lewandowski

1446 Trelawney Avenue

Rumson, New Jersey

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lewandowski,

Thanks so much for your letter, and thanks especially for trusting us enough to tell us about David's condition and medication. I very much appreciate your reluctance to let us know, but it will be a great help to those responsible for him here to know his complete medical history.

It might ease your mind to know that we have had perhaps half a dozen boys here over the past ten years who have been on anti-seizure medication, and each of them has passed successfully through Wells without a hitch. I am sure you are aware that there is considerable evidence to show that an isolated seizure in adolescence by no means indicates an enduring health concern. Medication is often no longer necessary after full growth has been reached.

In keeping with your request, I shall give your letter to Dr. Baxter, our consulting physician, where it will be confidential, and I will tell his swim coach, his dorm master and his current teachers what you have instructed me to tell them.

Please do not hesitate to write or call if you think I may be of any further assistance.

My good wishes,

John O. Greeve

14 September

MEMO To Arnold Lieber

Maintenance

Arnold—

I've been called out of town, possibly for as long as two weeks. It's a bad time, but I've asked Phil Upjohn to assume command. I need your cooperation badly. If he asks for something, even for something unusual,
try to do it.
No debates, please. Save your frustration for me when I get back. Help!

J.O.G.

19 September

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Greeve

14 Bingham Drive

Tarrytown, New York

Dear Val and Frank,

It was a great relief and solace to talk to you two last night. Without family, I would literally be lost.

We are now ensconced in our respective Boston settings, Meg in a private room (a term bearing no relation to reality) in Mass. General and I—I'll explain later—at the Copley Plaza. If medical science were less benighted by half, Meg would be at the Copley Plaza and I in the bleak cell. At any rate, Meg is doing beautifully. Her attitude is all shrewdness, attention, and dry humor. Braver than brave—and that is so damned attractive. Dr. Dietrich, the specialist doing the tests and giving the “other opinion,” is a thoughtful, likable, humane sort of person—gives the impression of having lots of time and explains things, both to Meg and to me. He won't even venture estimates about treatment, remissions, percentages of cure, etc., until his own tests are in. No false optimism, either. Meg is sick, and it's cancer. I wonder if you can imagine the kind of fear and emptiness that statement arouses in me? I know Meg will endure whatever is required with strength and grace, but I feel like collapsing right now. I keep thinking I've got to
help,
I've got to be strong, but I feel like collapsing. Waiting is worst. I'll keep you posted.

Thank you, Val, for your generous offer to close up Little House and to look after the boat. I left the less equivocal food in the fridge and there is some meat in the freezer you might want to take home with you, if that is technically possible. When you are ready to leave, just call the Frazier number and say, “Come. Close up Little House.” He knows what to do about the pipes, and he'll haul the float off to the boat house.

This is all really very strange. Nothing is routine. There is a heavy overlay of irony and foreboding about every practical concern. The
Valmar,
for instance—will Meg and I ever sail in her again? If not, what an odd role that boat has played in our lives: a symbol of possibility, a means to never-quite-worked-out rest and adventure. Our plan was always to sail in and out of quiet Maine harbors, working our way slowly, maybe infinitely, down east. The school would of course give us an autumn leave for this, and we would be happily incognito, out of touch. But as we all well know, such is never the case with boats. The head has always got to be replaced to meet the requirements of the Clean Harbor Commission, the engine is never right, there is always a leak between the engine and the centerboard, unreachable by human hands—not an important leak, just enough to raise the possibility of serious trouble if cruising in cold water anywhere NE of the Cape. But could any actual cruise measure up to our hypothetical one? Probably not. Yard bills buy dreams, not voyages. Or Little House? What does Little House mean without Meg? This is pitiful stuff, I know, but it's the kind of thing I am actually thinking.

Frank, there is one more thing I want to ask which I forgot to mention over the phone. Could you brainstorm a bit with your attorney friends about how I might best locate Brian overseas? I've bombarded the post office at Cape St. Vincent where we last made contact, and I've written to acquaintances he may have been traveling with for a time, but I've heard nothing yet. I think it's very important that he be aware of what is happening with Meg as soon as possible. Are there people-finding services abroad? Do you think our embassies might help? Any tips, hunches, or advice on the matter would be deeply appreciated, Frank.

Again, thanks to both of you. Our best to Hugh.

J.

22 September

Mr. Jake Levin

R.D. 3

Petersfield, New Hampshire

Dear Jake,

I am finding this a very hard letter to write because I have something I actually need to tell you. Nothing is easier for me than to make glancing observations; to convey something central is paralyzing.

Meg is ill, very ill. She felt tired, feverish, and achey practically all summer on the Cape, but the symptoms—low grade fever, no appetite, swollen glands, lumps, aches—were somehow so ordinary, except for their duration, that we couldn't bring ourselves to get serious about them. At the end of the summer she had a series of tests at the Cape and then another series here in Boston at Mass. General, and the diagnosis is cancer. It is apparently widespread and relatively virulent, although there have been no visibly dramatic signs of this yet. There are tumors and other irregular growths on her cervix and in surrounding tissue, also in her breast, and probably elsewhere. The cancer has “metastasized.”

We have only known something was seriously wrong for a week. The prospect could not be less promising. Neither of us really knows how to respond. It hurts in a new way. It puts you on edge. A weak papery feeling permeates every thought and every activity and fills in the numb spaces in between. The effect is to make everything feel like an anxious
present.
Nothing in the past seems substantial, the future is unthinkable. In this present I keep telling myself the news: cancer. The setting is the off-white, faintly sickly smelling hospital. In spite of the routines and the gadgetry, there is a strange aura of personal unease generated by the staff of Mass. General. I don't think I'm imagining it. A sense of too many people with too much to do. Doctors and nurses seem reticent and haggard. They are reasonable and objective in the manner of my students who are not telling the whole story. Not that they necessarily know the whole story—at least in their heads.

The word for it is cancer, but it is much more than an irregular replication of cells and tissue. At least it's much more than that in a person, in a personality, in Meg. Describing the course of a cancer in terms of what studies show or in terms of treatments, or even in terms of grizzly symptoms and inevitabilities, is not
it.
No more than childbirth is a dilation of the cervix, rapid contractions, expulsion of a fetus and placenta. Like childbirth, cancer is experienced in powerful feelings and a theme. There is pain, depression. For Meg, her “rot,” as she calls it, is a summary comment on her adulthood, a consequence in her natural theology she would like to accept, or at least understand. As you know, Meg has always been an expansive, self-effacing kind of thinker. Being sick has made her think about herself and about her body. She will have to consider alternative “therapies”: nauseating radiation vs. nauseating medicines, etc. She will have to decide on terrifying, humiliating surgeries. Such inescapable preoccupation with her physical self is utterly abhorrent to her. The worst thing about the cancer for her is that it trivializes what experience she has left.

Right now we don't know how much time she has. Again, we've only known for certain for about a week. Neither of us has a feeling for cancer's rhythm or velocity. Our most hopeful plan is to get her home as soon as possible, or, if that is not possible, to get her to a comfortable hospital as close to school as we can arrange.

Meg will do fine. Cancer could never diminish her. This morning she said her diagnosis places a damper on some of her plans for a second career. “I had always wanted to start a worldwide mission to save the rich and powerful from themselves.”

It is I who may not do fine. Without distraction, I think I could do all right by Meg in her illness. The serving and tending are easy when you love someone thoroughly. What scares me is the rest: school. I haven't let myself think about it, but we're just moving into full swing, and I can't imagine picking up the reins in a convincing manner. Frankly school—even just teaching school—has always seemed daunting to me. I still have bad dreams about it. But now, since we've been in Boston, it just feels like noise, like a swarming irritable buzz just outside the sphere of what I can, with effort, manage to think about clearly. You can't know what school is like, Jake.

So that's my news. I'm lost.

Write Meg and make her laugh.

Love,

John

26 September

Mr. Frederick Maitland

St. Ives Academy

Derby, Connecticut

Dear Fred,

Pardon me for not responding sooner to your letter, but I have been out of town nearly two weeks and just returned last night.

I must say that I am surprised and disappointed by your response to my letter about our boys'
mutual
conduct at the opening game. Apparently I struck the wrong note and sounded merely wounded and self-righteous. But if that is the case, I failed to represent accurately the feelings and the views of our players, of our coaches, and faculty, including myself. I repeat, Fred, that visible brawling and the audible cursing have no place in a school's athletic program. The problem with its getting out of hand three weeks ago is not that the behaviors occurred in the heat of a battle, but that they seemed to prevail during that battle, as acceptable behaviors, as strategy. This is not a fine point.

Let me be clear about this. I could not care less whether we lost that game, or any game, by a hundred points. We are, as it happens, not very strong this year. But I would like to think that we are all operating from a shared athletic philosophy. And I know that you think so too.

To be honest, Fred, I was bothered by the tone of your response. Even if I
were
guilty of making too much out of too little, I was in earnest in doing so, and I hoped you would respect that.

So, in light of what I have already said, here is my “business.” (1) I am writing Dewey Porter, asking him to place on the agenda for the November Seven Schools Conference, a proposed code of uniform athletic conduct—with specific measures to be taken when good conduct is grossly absent. Such a code is probably overdue, anyway. More to the point, (2) I would like to hear from you acknowledging that there
was
unacceptable conduct, on behalf of both teams, in our opening game, and pledging, with me, to take personal action to stop such behavior on the spot should it occur again in contests between our schools. If you do not think you can agree to this request, I am afraid we are not in a position to continue our good competition with St. Ives.