The Last First Day by Carrie Brown Page B

But they’re such a wrecking crew …
    Heavens. Nothing to wreck, Ruth began, but a howl had gone up from one of the other boys.
    Oh, god—Kitty had dashed away.
    Just telephone, Ruth had called after her. Anytime.
    But Ruth had never heard from Kitty. She had imagined that Kitty was—as any young mother would be, of course—too busy for tea with an old lady.
    Charlie had been clever about the school’s investments, Peter said. He was knowledgeable about secondary school curricular reform and accreditation matters and so forth. Yet Ruth disliked him. She did not in general trust people who spent too much time working on their own bodies, she told Peter—though not without a twinge of self-consciousness over her added pounds—and every time she saw Charlie on campus he always seemed to be emerging from the gym, a towel around his neck, or heading off on his bicycle in some silly-looking outfit that made him look like Spider-Man.
    Charlie Finney was ambitious, Ruth had said.
    Nothing wrong with that, Peter said.
I
was ambitious.
    But Ruth thought Charlie was manipulative and disingenuous, as well as ambitious. She imagined that he wanted Peter’s job, and she had no doubt that he thought he could do it far better than Peter, though he was too calculating to say so outright, too well mannered, too political, to reveal himself in that way.
    He sometimes called Peter
Pater
. Ruth hated this.
    It’s so patronizing, she’d told Peter. And so … 
stupid
!
    Peter had shrugged. I think he means it fondly, he said.
    Oh,
Peter
. Ruth had gazed at him. Honestly, she’d said. I know you’re not such an innocent. Can’t you see he means to dethrone you?
    Well, it isn’t much of a throne, Peter had said. It’s just an old swivel chair and a couple of drawers full of paper clips.
    You’re just putting on an act, she told him. I don’t know why you do that.
    Peter had run Derry brilliantly for all these years. He had the respect of his peers at other schools, had chaired national committees, had overseen many improvements at Derry, all the while working hard to find the boys for whom an education would matter most. People loved him.
    But Charlie Finney just wanted to turn Derry into a fancy prep school, Ruth thought. He wanted to live in the headmaster’s house, and he wanted to get rid of as many of Peter’s poverty cases, as she’d heard Charlie call them, as possible. There was no question about it; Charlie Finney wanted to be king of the hill. He did not care about the scholarship boys, the children for whom the school had been founded. He talked often and with great seriousness about sustainability—which, as Ruth said to Peter, was just a way for people to avoid having to have principles and do the necessary work to live by them. And he was always cracking his knuckles, a habit that got on her nerves.
    He brushed her cheek now, not a kiss exactly. Something that would look to others like a kiss, she thought.
    You look absolutely lovely tonight, Ruth, he said. What a pretty pin.
    Oh, stop, she said. Despite his politicking and his obsequiousness, she found that she occasionally enjoyed sparring with him. He got her dander up, as Peter said.
    But sometimes she also felt a little sorry for him. No one would ever love Charlie Finney the way Peter was loved. Charlie Finney had never sacrificed himself for anything or anybody, she thought. People loved Peter because, in the end, he did not believe himself better than anyone else. He believed in the inevitable virtue and happiness of a community if all members were treated with respect and kindness.
    Yet despite her suspicions about Charlie and his motives, she wanted him to reassure her now. He had probably spent more time today with Peter than anyone else. What had Jimmy meant earlier, asking her if she was all right, if Peter was all right?
    Did things go all right today, Charlie? she asked.
    Where
was
Peter now? she wondered.
    But Charlie had turned away to speak to