The Headmaster's Dilemma (3 page)

"My dear child, what has that young man's goodness and truth and legal aptitude to do with me or your father?" Diane's tone manifested pure reasonableness; she offered no acknowledgment of her daughter's rising temper. "We wish him well, of course, very well. But his virtues are hardly my affair. He doesn't interest me. Except, of course, as a possible husband for my dearly loved daughter. Mothers always see any young man their daughter brings home in that light. We can't help it."

"Well, you can cross Tom off that list. He's not my affair. We work together, that's all. He won't marry until he's a junior partner in some big firm, and then it will be to Miss Mouse. But if I were to take him seriously as a beau, how would you feel about it?"

"We needn't go into that, need we?"

"I'd like to know your criteria."

Diane paused. When she spoke it was after her evident decision that perhaps her daughter
did
need some guidance. "Well, it's my belief that if one has only one life, it better not be spent being bored. The girl who marries your Tom will probably have a kind and faithful husband. But unless she's devoid of imagination she will, after the first thrill of sexual union has passed, have to come to grips with a lifetime of ennui. If she's as hipped on the law as he is, that may be a way out for her."

Ione realized at this with a sudden shock that what her mother was implying was perfectly true: no daughter of hers would ever dream of marrying a man as devoid of humor and imagination as the honest and industrious, the all-deserving Tom. But did that have to mean that she had become a captive of the maternal philosophy, if philosophy it could be called? She found that she was actually trembling with a nervous irritation. She felt an irrational need to shy a stone against the glittering glass fabric of what she wanted desperately to believe was the parental palace of illusion.

"Boredom isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world!" she exclaimed hotly. "Boredom may be only a minor problem in a fundamentally happy marriage to a good and useful man. I don't want my marriage to be like..." Here she paused. Was she really going to say it?

"Like your father's and mine?" Diane finished for her coolly. "Go ahead and say it, my dear. It's obviously on your mind. We'd better have it out."

"Well, it does strike me at times," Ione answered in a humbler tone, "that your marriage is based more on the things you don't mention than on the things you do."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, Mummy, please!"

"What sort of things?" Diane repeated inexorably.

Ione took a deep breath. "Well, Daddy's rather excessive feeling for Adla, for example."

"Ah, at last!" Diane exclaimed as if a great point had been reached. "You catch a whiff of homosexuality?"

"Well, I don't mean they actually
do
anything," Ione murmured miserably.

"They do quite a lot, actually." Diane settled back in her chair. "And I see it's time you and I had a frank talk about these matters. Girls your age chat about everything, I know, so there's no reason for you to suppose that your parents live on a different planet. Your father's generous nature includes both sexes. He has a distinct penchant for handsome young men with which I not only sympathize but which I share. We have both discreetly indulged this penchant. We never asked for it; nature gave it to us. Like alcohol it is harmless unless taken in excess. We have both recognized that we live in a society which is perfectly tolerant of anything that is not blatantly exhibited. We have no wish, in any event, to make a proclamation of things that are essentially private. We regard such follies as 'gay pride' parades or public displays of affection between men and women as the ultimate vulgarity. We enjoy our own warm compatibility and deem our marriage happier than most. It is perfectly true that we care vitally about appearances, perhaps too much, but it's because we both hate ugliness. The world, like your dress and your drawing room, needs to be kept clean and handsome. If you make a good enough replica, it is not only as good as the truth. It can
become
the truth! There we are, my dear. You can take us or leave us. We hope, of course, that you'll take us. But in any event we'll always support you."

When Diane had finished there were several moments of silence during which she gazed with a mildly inquiring look at her daughter while the latter looked down at the floor. When Ione answered her at last her tone was low and apologetic.

"You make me feel that I've been presumptuous and even impertinent, Mummy."

"There's no occasion for that, my dear. Your generation prides itself on its tolerance. I simply expect you to stretch it to cover your parents, which I know is difficult. The most liberal of the young are still capable of being Queen Victoria herself when it comes to judging Mummy and Daddy. I believe that your father and I have been as useful, which is the term you use, as any lawyer, even if that's not saying much. We have tried to contribute a little beauty to a world that signally lacks it, he in how women dress and I in how they live."

This conversation had a considerable effect on Ione's thinking during the rest of her law school career and afterward in her job as an associate in the law firm of Abrams and Sholtz, where she engaged in legal research for the great negligence lawyer Simon Abrams. While she prided herself on being a part of what she liked to think of as the "real world" of injured plaintiffs, ugly lawsuits, and large damages, she was still occasionally glad that it was at least partially balanced by the lacquered world of her parents, whose denizens dressed well and talked well and cultivated charm as a primary virtue. When her mother came to court one day to hear Abrams cross-examine a hostile witness on a subject worked up by her daughter, Ione had to admit that she made the whole procedure seem rather shabby.

She had her own apartment now, a handsome four-room affair beautifully decorated by her mother—her parents always supplemented her moderate salary—and she had developed a lively circle of bright young professional friends who questioned everything from the war in Vietnam to the existence of God, but who were as one in their belief in the importance of "getting ahead."

Her father, whose keen interest in her and deep affection she no longer felt was in any way diminished by his sexual tastes, was much concerned with every aspect of her social life. He was obviously motivated by the desire to see her marry a man whom he would consider worthy of his beloved daughter and one who was apt to make his mark in the world. To Ira, the lawyers in Ione's firm and practice were usually what she called "grubby." But she could never afford not to recognize his impeccable taste or that the young men she met at the family board, those who had clearly been invited for her benefit, were able and honorable youths who bore the aura of success in their different fields and had none of the characteristics of a certain ballet star. Ira Fletcher, like his wife, was always deeper and smarter than one might suspect.

When, therefore, Ione met Michael Sayre at a dinner party at her parents' she knew that he had to be taken seriously, even if his good looks and smooth manners did not assure him of that. He was a young friend of Ira's, a member of an evening discussion group at the Century Club to which both belonged. She couldn't help sending an amused glance down the table at her father, conveying the silent message "Dad, you've hit the jackpot." For Michael was perfect: in looks, in manner, in wit, in sympathy, and in his immediate and enthusiastic reaction to her. He called her at her office the next morning, and they were soon seeing each other on a regular basis. She had had friendships with men, and even one affair, but nothing remotely like this had ever happened to her.

Yet they didn't have an affair, though she made no secret of her willingness. Michael firmly made it clear that with him it was marriage or nothing. He did not in the least imply that he was a virgin, or that he wanted to be one, or that he set the least value on any such state; it was simply, he insisted forcefully, that in his life she had assumed an importance that made any relationship outside of wedlock irrelevant. That was the odd term he used. This, of course, was intensely winning, if it were not mere flattery, and hearing him, she could not doubt his sincerity. It was impossible to doubt his sincerity.

Was this not the man she had been waiting for, the man who would at last unite the seemingly inconsistent worlds of her parents and herself? For like Ira and Diane, he cared for appearances: he showed this in his clothes, in his neatness, in the smooth agility of all his motions, in his careful and beautiful diction, in the ease with which he adjusted himself to any friends to whom she introduced him. On the other hand, his role as a protester against the war in Vietnam had shown him effective and fearless in dealing with mobs and the police, and in his military service in the conflict—for he had refused to reject the draft and he had been decorated for valor. The only inconsistent thing about him was his extraordinary impassivity; he never seemed to lose his temper or even to demonstrate that a right cause or a wrong one had aroused much feeling in him. He was totally consistent in his invariable support of the moral imperative, but bad things, evil things, seemed to him to be simply vermin that had to be efficiently and unemotionally disposed of. Ione imagined him as a heretic hauled before the Spanish Inquisition, coolly pointing out to the court its manifest errors and facing the stake with total equanimity.

She did not like it, however, one evening at a nightclub, when she asked for his opinion of her law firm and received this calm but devastating evaluation:

"I appreciate the argument that every plaintiff is entitled to the best presentation of his case. Lawyers have always cited this as exempting them from any responsibility to society for the havoc that swollen jury awards, vastly exceeding the cost of any damages suffered, have inflicted on our economy. The result is that we perish in paperwork and enormous insurance premiums. An audiologist can't take wax out of your ears without a life history of your illnesses, operations, and allergies."

"And you accuse my firm of causing all that?" she demanded indignantly.

"Simon Abrams is notorious for the way he bamboozles juries. Everyone knows that."

"You're calling him a shyster?"

"I haven't, but I'm quite willing to."

Ione was outraged. "You pretend to care for me, yet you sit there calmly and slander my boss!"

Michael seemed entirely unperturbed. "I don't for a minute admit it's slander, and I fail to see what his being your employer has to do with my assessment of what he may be."

"Because you're calling me a shyster, too!"

"I am not. You look up the law for him. He's certainly entitled to that. It doesn't make you responsible for what he does with it."

"But you think I should quit my job, don't you?"

"I'd be happy if you did, yes. But that's your affair. You must lead your own life, my dear, and not mine. However, I'm always going to be frank with you when you ask me a question. You asked me one tonight."

"Well, I shan't ask you again! You've spoiled my appetite, and I want to go home."

In the taxi she pouted in silence, and at her house she leaped out of the cab without bidding him good night. But there was very little sleep for her in the restless hours that ensued. She finally brought herself to the point of admitting that she would have to choose between her job and Michael. She couldn't go on seeing him and knowing how he viewed her daily occupation. And by morning, pale, exhausted, and defeated, she had made peace with her decision that he was going to be her life. Or at least, she added to herself, with a last fling of defiance, a good part of it.

The very next day she gave notice to her firm that she was quitting her job, offering the acceptable excuse that she was contemplating matrimony, and a few weeks later she applied for and accepted a position with Legal Aid. Michael actually laughed when she informed him of this, and said she hadn't had to go
that
far, but she could see that he was deeply pleased, and in the following month they were married, to the great satisfaction of both their families. The hours at Legal Aid were less arduous than those at her old firm, and she was able to give more time to the babies, a boy and a girl, who made their appearance in the first three years of a blissful marriage. Michael, despite his absorption in his newspaper work, was just as helpful in their domestic duties as she had been sure he would be, and though she never agreed with him that her former boss was a shyster, she knew she had the perfect husband. And when the dazzling offer of the headmastership of Averhill was made to him, he added, if such were possible, another jewel to the crown of his marital perfection.

He told her firmly that he wouldn't consider a position that involved the giving up of her Legal Aid job that the move to Massachusetts would require.

"Oh, my darling," she replied with a gasp, "you can't really compare the headship of a nationally famous school with my representing a few battered wives and petty shoplifters. Of course we're going to Averhill."

"I don't see it that way at all," he retorted stoutly. "I see it as a plush academy for rich kids as opposed to helping the poor and needy in their legal troubles. And not only are you doing a splendid job in Legal Aid—you know you love it."

It was true, Ione reflected ruefully. She
was
doing a decent job, and she
did
love it. A good nurse looked after the children in the daytime, and she was home by six and all the weekend. It was a good life. But she knew what people would say. "He gave up a great career because his selfish wife wanted to keep her trumpery job." She had always believed that in a perfect modern marriage the minor career should bow to the bigger one. She knew that Michael would have surrendered his had she been offered the headship of a great girls' school in another state.

"We needn't argue about it, my dear," she said conclusively. "I shall tell Legal Aid tomorrow that I'm leaving them—whether or not you accept the Averhill offer. So my job will cease to be a factor in your decision."