The Headmaster's Dilemma (2 page)

"You might have more of a point, my dear Donald, if your tycoons could bequeath their brains as well as their money to their progeny. But that, except in your own admirable case, is not often the situation."

"Oh, I know your passion to fill Averhill with the smartest students. But have you ever stopped to think that they're just the ones who don't need Averhill? Getting between a really bright kid and a library or laboratory is like getting between a hippo and the water. They educate themselves! The glory of the private school is something we can't boast about. It's what we can do with the dumbbells."

Michael chose not to reply to this. It was a point that had much troubled him. The real danger of men like Donald was not when they were wrong but when they were right. However, the latter's next remark put him clearly in the wrong.

"And while we're on that subject, Mike, I might observe that I view with some concern the distinct increase of Jewish and Oriental boys in the school since you took over. It's all very well to have some, but there comes a point where you're changing the fundamental character of the institution."

"How many is some?"

"Oh, you can't reduce these things to an exact number. You have to use your discretion, of course."

"And if I have none?" Michael sighed. "We've come a long way from Socrates who needed nothing but a courtyard and a few questions. I don't suppose he worried about the ethnic origin of those he taught."

"Don't you believe it!" Donald exclaimed with a rude chuckle. "He'd have kicked out a Persian!"

Ione now entered the discussion by asking Donald about the possibility of creating an art gallery for the school where they could mount visiting shows or even start a permanent collection of their own. It was a favorite project of hers, and Donald showed a mild interest in it. Anything interested him, Michael reflected sourly, if it contained the opportunity of putting his name on it in capital letters. He let them talk, dropping out of the conversation, and letting his eyes drift over the playing fields to the blue-black line of the awakening forest.

He was wondering, as he so often found himself doing, if he had been right in taking his present job. It was not a throbbing worry; he was too used to it for that. It was a soft, constant, sometimes even oddly relaxing worry. He had no idea of making a break with his commitment. He had undertaken a task, and he would certainly stick to it. But he was quite able now to contemplate the possibility that he might fail. As the voices of his wife and his chairman jangled in his ear, he could almost fancy her as Eve and him as the serpent in the garden.

But the idea was ridiculous. He had to get away from Donald. Impatiently he arose.

"I'll study these plans tonight, Don, and I'll call you the first thing on Monday. I just can't discuss it further today—I'm sorry. Please forgive me, but I've got to go for a stroll."

As he strode quickly across the empty playing fields toward the blessedly solitary woods, he tried to be fair in his mind to the chairman of the board. After all, even allowing for his egotism, wasn't there some element of generosity in the throwing of his millions at the school? That many philanthropists sought personal glory from their bounty did not mean that nobler motives were total strangers to them. And shouldn't one pity Donald for the obvious fact that his wealth had failed to make him happy? How could it when he had always had it? And wasn't his wife an alcoholic? Didn't people say that she regretted having married him for his money? And hadn't he suffered at school from a cruel nickname derived from the fact that he had been endowed, at least in his early teens, with a smaller than usual penis?

At this last thought Michael pulled himself up to shudder in disgust at the ways of the world. Did history have to be made out of the resentments of physically underprivileged great men? Had millions had to die because Napoleon was stubby and Kaiser Wilhelm had a withered arm and Cardinal Richelieu hemorrhoids? Had hundreds of Americans been thrown out of work and fine old businesses wrecked because of the late development of Donald Spencer's private parts? With a weary sigh he turned his steps back toward the school.

Who was he, after all, to think he could change the world? What would it gain him to stand between Donald and the rip tide of his millions? Did he think for a minute that the board would back him? Did he not know that they would tear down the chairman's pants and place their lips devoutly on his fat exposed rear end?

As he approached the headmaster's house he saw that Donald had left and that Ione was sitting alone at the coffee table idly examining a blueprint. The temperature had dropped and she had put on a striking red sweater that went well with her gold necklace and large gold bracelets. He recalled that she had said that only gold could be worn with sweaters. Her tan hair was also gold-tinted, but the hardness suggested by the shining metal was softened by her beauty. Michael reflected as always that he could get through anything with her behind him.

"You look exhausted, my love," she said as he came up. "You should really have a drink or a vitamin pill before any meeting with dear Donald."

He slumped into the chair beside her. "Oh, he'll have his vulgar sports plaza, I've faced that. There's no fighting his big bucks."

"Yes, but you can moderate them. I've been going over the plans. They can be cut down. The new buildings can be scattered. The whole thing can be spread out and muted."

"But he'd never stand for it, darling. He's got his great architect. The whole thing's a must. It's what he calls a work of art. You can't fiddle with works of art."

"The board may not see it that way."

"Ione, you're dreaming! They'll gobble it up."

"You have friends on the board. More than you think."

"But not enough for a battle like this."

She suddenly stood up, as if to make a great point. "And you have the ace of trumps up your sleeve! You can threaten to resign!"

He too jumped up, but in astonishment. "And if they accept my resignation?"

"Then we'll go! There are plenty of other places that will want you. Do you think, my darling, that I haven't known how often you've been wondering if Averhill is really the right place for you? Or if any New England boarding school is the right place for you?"

He gazed at her in admiration. "Darling, what's got into you?"

W
HAT INDEED
had got into Ione?

From childhood, she had been a deeply serious girl, eager to find the right place for herself in a confusing society and often wondering if such a thing as a right place existed. At Barnard College she had joined the ranks of the majority of the girls in her class who believed that women should keep their maiden names after marriage, have full-time jobs even while raising a family, hold liberal political views, and prefer casual dress to haute couture. The great thing in life was to be natural. The great thing to be avoided was something called fancy pants.

The trouble was that her mother, whose only child she was, seemed the very opposite of much of this. In many ways indeed her parents appeared the essence of fancy pants. And yet they were a brilliantly successful couple; they were even, at least in Manhattan, almost famous. Her father, Ira Fletcher, sleek, slim, ebony-haired, and elegant, was the highly reputed designer of women's wear, and Diane, her mother, the graceful grande dame of urban chic, was the editor of the popular fashion magazine
Style
. Photographs of the couple in splendid evening attire appeared so often in newspaper accounts of Gotham revelry and charity balls that friends made health inquiries if their images were missing for a couple of weeks. Yet for all of this their manners were open and kind; they exuded a charm that won them hearts wherever they went.

Ione's particular difficulty, when she came of college age, was that she couldn't fault them. They both took what had to be a sincere interest in her studies, in her amusements, in her boyfriends, even in her would-be rebellious resistance to their interest in her. They included her in their parties well before her eighteenth year; they apparently saw no reason why she should not fit snugly into their world. They simply did everything right—shouldn't that be enough? But wasn't something missing in her mother's delicate peck of a kiss on her cheek, in her father's gentle pat on her back, something like the bear hug she had seen her friends' parents give their offspring? Did she dare to compare the manicured lives of Ira and Diane to a finely produced and expertly acted parlor comedy?

She had no occasion to discuss these doubts with her friends because, without exception, they were all, even the most liberal minded, dazzled by her parents, who greeted them with invariable charm and warmth. But as Ione's graduation approached, she began to feel the absolute necessity of a candid discussion with her mother as to her future career. They
had
to talk frankly, at least once.

She had no sooner started on this than Diane interrupted to assure her there would always be an opening on the staff of
Style
.

"Oh, no, no, that's not my idea of a career at all!" Ione exclaimed, seizing on this with a kind of desperation to introduce the real topic. "I have in mind something totally different!"

"You sound as if
Style
were beneath you," Diane replied with a mildly reproachful smile.

"Oh, it's not that, Mummy. It's not that really.
Style's
all very well for those that like it. It's just that ... well, I'd like to be more in the real world."

"And you think
Style
isn't real?"

"Well, it's not grubby. If that's what I mean."

"You're looking for something grubby? How singular."

"I was thinking of law school."

"Well, I guess that's grubby enough for anyone." Diane paused now to consider this new option. Oh, she was always ready to consider things! "Actually, women are beginning to make great strides in the law. They say Betty Stackpole has made a fortune in divorce cases, and I hear she's going to represent Ted Saunders in his wife's bigamy suit. That should net her a walloping fee."

"Oh, I don't think I'd go in for domestic relations. I'd want a wider field than that. Divorce lawyers make dirty waters dirtier. I'd want something more in the public interest."

"Well, so long as you don't spit at money, my dear. You'll find it can come in very handy. But talk to your father about this. He's had more experience with lawyers than I have. He won a big suit last year against some crazy shop that claimed he'd stolen a design.
That
was grubby enough for anyone."

Ione decided that she would discuss it with Ira that very night, and when he came home he promised that he would go into it with her at dinner, which, for once, they were all three to have alone. But at the last moment the table in the elegant Pompeian dining room had to be reset for four because Ray Adla, the great ballet star, had asked himself suddenly to the meal on the pretext of discussing with Ira the offer from a French ballet company that he had just received.

Adla had been a protégé of the Fletchers ever since his humble and impecunious start, and his subsequent fame had not tempered his gratitude. He consulted them in everything, eagerly and submissively. Ione reflected bitterly, as the evening droned on until bedtime, with her father never seeming to notice that he had promised her an important meeting, that Adla was like the son he had never had.

And then a nasty thought struck her, the fruit, no doubt, of her suddenly aroused jealousy. She had been having some sad talks recently with a Barnard friend who was distraught over her discovery that her beau and lover was finding greater diversion with a member of his own sex. She took note now of the peculiar warmth of her father's treatment of his ballet star. Was it really paternal? Wasn't it something more cherishing? Even more carnal?

The young man was certainly lovely to look at. His every motion was gracefully true to his profession. And his reputation in love, as Ione and his fans well knew, was notoriously bisexual. This, of course, was common in the world of ballet and hardly to be commented on. But what Ione was coldly observing from across the room was not the dancer but her father. He was totally taken with his guest; Ione and her mother for the moment had ceased to exist.

He did, however, find the time to discuss with his daughter at breakfast the next morning her desire to go to law school, but she could not but compare the seemingly perfunctory speed at which he approved her plan with the rapt attention he had given to Adla's problem the night before. Still, his assent and support served to quell her mother's doubts, and Ione found herself enrolled the following fall in New York University Law School, and deriving even greater satisfaction from her courses than she had anticipated. She particularly liked contracts, where she sat by and soon made something of a pal of a sandy, tousled, and tense young man called Tom Murphy who was a deeply devoted student and obviously the type destined to make the law review. He came of a very different background from Ione's—his father was a police detective—but he responded to her friendly overtures and was soon helping her to analyze difficult cases. After a few weeks she got up the courage to ask him for a weekend at her family's villa in Rye, and to her surprise he not only accepted but easily fitted into a household more elegant, presumably, than any he had previously encountered. He brought his law books with him; they must have been the only things that really impressed him.

Ira and Diane were charming to him, of course, but Ione could see that he bored them, however little they showed it. Unexpectedly she found herself sharply resenting this. Alone with her mother on Sunday night after Tom had returned to town, she suddenly challenged her.

"You were bored stiff with poor Tom, weren't you?"

"Dear me, did I show it?"

"Only to me, of course. Never to anyone else. But it troubles me that you don't see anything in a man like that. He's good and true, and he's going to be a first-rate lawyer. Maybe even a great one. And you don't give a damn. Any more than Dad does." She felt an odd wave of relief as her tone waxed almost strident. "You both only care about how things look. And I care about what they
are
. That's the difference between us!"