Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher Page 20

  “I would,” Enid assured her crisply. “What have you got there?”

  Bobby looked down. “It’s my duds for the dance tonight.” Diffidently, she added, “Should I pick you up at Manchester, and we can go over together?”

  “Gee, Bobby, that would have been nice, but I promised Rod…”

  “Oh sure,” said Bobby quickly. “I’ll see you there, then.”

  “See you.”

  Bobby stood a moment after Enid’s departure, struggling with unfamiliar feelings. She was used to overwhelming waves of desire, fires of lust, the sensation of being passion’s pawn. But why was she so disappointed that Enid couldn’t walk across the quadrangle with her?

  Glancing across the lawn to Dorset, where the mixer was to be held, she saw the building was already bustling with activity. She could make out the silhouettes of girls, the decorating committee no doubt, hanging garlands around the windows. In front of the building, Mona was deep in conversation with a stranger. Had Aunt Dot come for a visit? Bobby squinted. Why, it was Netta Bean, from the Knock Knock Lounge. She must be Hoppy’s teacher friend. Did she know Mona too? The two women disappeared into Devon.

  Bobby’s glance moved right, to the two lit windows on the third floor of Kent. She could discern a silhouette there as well—the lonely shape of the Headmistress, propped up in bed.

  Enid’s right, she decided suddenly. And Mona’s being far too cavalier about her promise to come clean. I’ll tell Miss Craybill the truth about the ghostly cyclist!

  Leaving her garment bag in Cornwall, she hurried to Kent and up the stairs to the unfamiliar territory of Miss Craybill’s private quarters. Pushing open a heavy paneled door, she found herself in what seemed to be a little anteroom. Birds were everywhere. Framed prints of birds hung on the wall, which was papered with a pattern of twining green vines. Stuffed birds seemed to perch amidst this two-dimensional foliage. Canaries twittered in a cage hung from the ceiling. Beneath a painting of a redheaded woodpecker, a uniformed nurse dozed in an overstuffed armchair, upholstered in brown horsehair.

  Bobby crept past her and slipped through the half-opened door next to the nurse. She was in Miss Craybill’s bedroom. Quickly she took in the dark wood walls, the red Turkish rug, the fire burning in the big fireplace with the portrait of a falconer over the mantelpiece. Opposite the fireplace was Miss Craybill, looking smaller than ever in a large four-poster.

  “Miss Craybill,” Bobby said softly. “May I speak to you?”

  “Hello, Bobby.” Miss Craybill looked at her without interest and then turned back to the picture she was studying. As Bobby approached the bed, she could see that Miss Craybill’s counterpane was covered with photographs of Nerissa Froelich. In some she was garbed as Bobby had seen her in the school portraits. Others were evidently snapshots from summer vacations. Often Miss Froelich was holding a pair of binoculars and pointing at something outside the frame.

  “How are you, Miss Craybill?” Bobby asked, easing into a straight-backed chair by the bed. Miss Craybill picked up another picture.

  “This was taken right after she’d spotted her first snowy owl, in Thunder Bay, Christmas, fifty-six.” She handed it to Bobby, who studied the photograph, not knowing what else to do. Miss Froelich was seated in the booth of what looked like a woodsy restaurant, grinning ear to ear.

  Bobby put the picture back on the bed.

  “Miss Craybill, I found out who was riding that bicycle, pretending to be a ghost.” She waited, but Miss Craybill showed no interest, continuing to pick up and put down photos as if she were playing some queer game of solitaire. “It was Mona, Miss Craybill! She was biking to Mesquakie Point to see a—a friend. She’ll tell you herself, if you ask her. She put phosphorescence on the bicycle to make it glow.” Bobby raised her voice. “Phosphorescence, do you hear me?”

  Miss Craybill turned her head slowly to look at Bobby. The Games Mistress had never seen an expression of such melancholy sadness. Sadness had soaked into every pore, leaving the Headmistress sodden, like a dead leaf in the rain. Her eyes were windows onto a terrible void.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Nothing matters.”

  “But Miss Craybill, what about Metamora?” Bobby felt shaken and helpless. “Don’t you care what’s happening? The staff is in a disarray! The students are running amok! The rumors they’re spreading are getting worse! By next week they’ll have everyone saying that Metamora is haunted and that the ghosts of savage Indians pushed Miss Froelich to her death! Think of the damage—”

  She got no further. “Savage Indians, pah!” cried the Headmistress, suddenly agitated. “I killed Miss Froelich!”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Miss Craybill’s Confession

  “You!” Bobby was aghast. “But that’s impossible!” For a moment she pictured Miss Craybill pushing the hapless Math Mistress over the tower’s parapet and then running fast enough down the twisting stairs to reach the body before anyone else. The image made her dizzy. “How? Why?”

  “I killed her with my thoughtlessness. I murdered Nerissa with my blind self-regard,” sobbed Miss Craybill. “I might as well have pushed her—I drove her to jump!”

  Bobby tried her best to calm the hysterical Headmistress. “You’re overwrought.” She poured a mug of hot milk from the thermos on the bedside table. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Miss Craybill pushed away the hot milk with renewed vitality. “I know perfectly well what I’m saying and I’m not going to keep quiet anymore!” she cried. The milk spilled over the rim of the mug, spattering a photo of Miss Froelich and Miss Craybill astride a tandem bicycle.

  “Nerissa wanted to retire last year, but I wasn’t ready to give up Metamora just yet. I told Nessa it wasn’t the right time—there was no one to succeed me. The truth was, I’d never groomed a successor, because I couldn’t bear the idea that one day I’d have to give it all up, this little world I’ve made mine, the power to hire and fire, the best suite on campus, the travels to educational conferences, the adulation of the Old Girls, the endless succession of new girls, blanks ready to be stamped with the Metamora imprint.”

  Bobby had never heard Miss Craybill speak so volubly about her profession. The Headmistress favored the Socratic method in her Senior Seminar, preferring to pose a question rather than answer one. Now however, stories poured out, like an unquenchable public fountain, endlessly burbling. The torrent washed over Bobby so swiftly she could only catch an occasional fragment like a piece of flotsam in a storm—Miss Craybill’s lonely childhood, a pet cat who had died, her delighted discovery of Metamora, her first meeting with Nerissa, then a homesick transfer student. Bobby gave up trying to interrupt and just listened, hoping that this confession would at least ease Miss Craybill’s tormented mind. Miss Craybill spoke reverently of Miss Froelich’s love of birds, and how the dead Math Mistress used to bicycle to Mesquakie Point, rich in kingfishers, dippers, herons, and even an occasional bittern.

  “Ah, those halcyon days! Those blissful years! We only differed on one thing—birds. For me, birding was a hobby. But increasingly for Nessa it was an avocation, the career she wished she’d pursued. She subscribed to dozens of birding periodicals, and even contributed an article to Midwest Marsh Birds.”

  “But you were happy,” Bobby reminded her.

  “Until last spring. Nessa had an invitation to join a party of bird-watchers going to the Amazon this fall. They must be at Manaus by now,” the Headmistress added irrelevantly. “She reminded me of my promise to retire. I told her not yet. I said, ‘One more year.’ Nessa grew morose. She was older than I, and worried she wouldn’t be fit for such strenuous birding expeditions for much longer. The week before her death, I drew up the schedule for the following year, putting both of us down for our usual classes. She wouldn’t speak to me beyond what was necessary. She even slept on a cot in her office. She took long bicycle rides and would be gone for hours. I didn’t take it seriously—I believed it was just a peevishness th
at would pass. We had planned to go to Florida to seek a glimpse of the purple gallinule after school was out in June. I was sure she’d recover her good nature before then.

  “And then came that awful Thursday. I was sitting in my office, writing a letter to a parent about some contraband peanut brittle. I heard a shriek—for an instant I thought it was the cry of some rare bird, and I hoped Nessa would see it, and that it would cheer her. All that passed through my mind in the split second before I heard a heavy thud.” Miss Craybill shuddered and put her hand over her eyes.

  “I still think you’re jumping to conclusions.” Despite her protest, Bobby felt badly shaken by Miss Craybill’s revelation.

  “Jumping,” repeated Miss Craybill dully. “Jumped.” Tears leaked out the corner of her eyes and trickled down her lined cheek unnoticed. “I drove her to it,” she repeated. “I know. I ran through the grass to her body. Her eyes were open. She reproached me. She said—” Miss Craybill couldn’t finish her sentence.

  “She was dead when you found her!” Was it possible Miss Craybill, her mind overpowered with guilt, had imagined her dead friend’s reproaches?

  “She wasn’t,” contradicted Miss Craybill. “But Mona said we should keep it quiet—for the good of the school. She said it wasn’t my fault. You all say that. But you’re wrong.”

  Mona again. Bobby made a mental note to ask the happy housekeeper what she knew about Miss Froelich’s last words.

  Miss Craybill went on unheedingly. “I thought she might have left me a note—some final farewell. I searched everywhere, on the sly. There was nothing. Now I don’t care who knows. It was my fault. I did it. I don’t deserve to be Headmistress anymore. Everyone should know what an evil woman I am. I did it. I might as well have pushed her—”

  “What was it she said, exactly, Miss Craybill?” Bobby interrupted the mantra of self-reproach. But the Headmistress was too absorbed in her own misery to reply, and the next instant it was too late.

  “Bobby, what are you doing here?” Miss Otis hurried across the room, the nurse at her heels. “Agnes—Agnes, Mona’s made you a delicious rice pudding. Do you feel hungry, Agnes?”

  Miss Craybill continued to repeat her confession like a religious creed. “I did it. I don’t care who knows. I might as well have pushed her. I did it…”

  “I’d better give her another injection.” The nurse took out a hypodermic needle and a little glass vial. Miss Otis herded Bobby to the door.

  “You shouldn’t be here Bobby. Miss Craybill’s not herself. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She needs rest.” The Latin Mistress was practically pushing the young gym teacher. “Aren’t you chaperoning the Harvest Moon Mixer? Hadn’t you better get ready?”

  The last thing Bobby saw, before the door closed, was the nurse sliding the needle into Miss Craybill’s unresisting arm.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Dance in Dorset

  “May I present Henry Long?”

  “How do you do?” Bobby shook the moist palm offered to her. The line of girls and their dates seemed to stretch on interminably. The Games Mistress was at the end of the receiving line and was conscious of Enid and Rod, on the other side of the Burnhams. Enid, a vision of geometric loveliness in a floating gown of black and gray rhomboids on a pearl gray ground, had been the first to shake this hand.

  With the image of Miss Craybill’s lax body still vivid in her mind, the gaiety and color of the Harvest Moon Mixer seemed slightly bizarre to Bobby. She felt self-conscious in her borrowed evening attire, even though Serena and Alice had assured her that the black brocade jacket over the ruffled white blouse was just like a tuxedo. Bobby kept worrying she’d trip over the matching skirt, which fell to the floor.

  “May I present Curt Hudgins?” Kayo slid into place in front of the bemused gym teacher. “Curt is my cousin,” she added, with a wink. “Miss Blanchard, my…coach.” Bobby shook hands with the bespectacled youth, helpless before Kayo’s proprietary air. The Savages’ center was radiant tonight, in a full-skirted, ballet-length formal of ivory lace over smoky blue taffeta. Surely, thought Bobby with a shiver of fear, she wouldn’t force a one-on-one with her coach at the mixer!

  As the combo struck up a tune, Bobby watched Rod and Enid gliding among the students like the dance-contest winners they were. Rod looked darkly handsome in a tux with tails as he twirled Enid with a showy flourish. How Bobby envied him that tux!

  The gay crowd turned blurred as her thoughts reverted to the Headmistress. Miss Otis couldn’t keep her sedated forever. How long would Metamora survive once the parents learned that Miss Craybill blamed herself for the Math Mistress’s supposed suicide? True or not, the girls would be yanked out of Metamora faster than Bobby could strike out batters in softball season. She felt a little like someone in that creepy Edgar Allen Poe story Sandy Milston had told her about, watching the students dance, unaware of their approaching doom.

  Darn Miss Froelich, darn Miss Craybill, darn Mona even, Bobby thought sadly, helping herself to some of the pink punch. Just when I was getting somewhere with this teaching stuff!

  Laura came and stood next to her. Her deceptively simple strapless satin seemed more suited for a glamorous movie premiere than the Metamora mixer. “I knocked on your door the other night,” the Art Mistress murmured, a hint of reproach in her low, husky voice. “Where were you?”

  “I must have been busy.” Bobby avoided the Art Mistress’s soulful look. “You know what an uproar the students have been in this week.”

  The truth was, she’d completely lost interest in Laura. Was she fickle, or was this a sign of maturity? She couldn’t decide.

  “I’ve been looking over those books Enid confiscated,” Laura pursued. “They’re quite thought provoking.”

  Bobby was searching for Enid on the crowded dance floor. Some of the couples were dancing awfully close, but Bobby couldn’t be bothered to shove a phone book between them, whatever Miss Otis said. Rod was dancing with Beryl Houck, but where was Enid?

  “Oh? That’s nice,” the Games Mistress said belatedly, realizing Laura was waiting for a response. The dance ended and as the dancers applauded, Rod and Beryl joined the two teachers at the punch bowl.

  “A glass of punch, Miss Houck?” Rod proposed.

  “I’d rather have a beer,” Beryl grunted.

  “Beryl!” reproved Bobby.

  “Ah, Coach Bobby! May I have the next dance?” Rod took Bobby’s hand and skillfully twirled her away from the ill-mannered right wing and the frustrated Art Mistress.

  “I like your tux,” Bobby told him as they triple-stepped over to the other side of the floor.

  “I adore your brocade with the gold thread. Simple, yet stunning. And you carry it off marvelously!”

  “Enid looks lovely tonight,” Bobby ventured, hoping to draw Rod out about the enigmatic Math Mistress.

  “Thank you! I’m going to be an egotist and take all the credit, since I picked her dress out. In fact, I created Enid’s look. She was a thorough frump in high school, not to mince words. You know, baggy skirt, wrinkled blouse. But to win dance contests, you need some style!”

  Bobby thought that Enid looked good whether she ironed her clothes or not. But all she said was, “Well, she has her mind on things of the mind. I mean, ideas and stuff.”

  “So she says. But then why the sudden fascination with field hockey?”

  Bobby was so startled she stumbled. Recovering her balance, she automatically took the lead. Rod fell easily into the follower’s footwork.

  “Fascination?” asked Bobby, swinging Rod into a reverse turn. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she’s been reading up on the topic.” Rod looked at Bobby sideways as they danced a few steps in cuddle position. “I thought you’d know something about this new passion. C’mon Coach, give!”

  “Honestly, I haven’t a clue,” Bobby babbled as the song ended in a blast of brass. “I always thought Enid was dead set against anything athletic!”


  “So she’s always said,” replied Rod as they came to a halt. “But the heart has its reasons, that reason knows not, right?” And he dived into the crowd, on the prowl for gossip and wallflowers.

  Bobby scarcely saw him go. It was like a flashbulb had gone off in her head. All semester she’d been puzzled by the attraction she felt for the sharp-tongued Math Mistress. It was different than the desire that had driven her fling with Madge, those clandestine trysts in college, the disastrous affair with Elaine.

  I don’t want another notch on my belt, she realized. I want a steady!

  She wanted to go roller-skating with the Math Mistress, she wanted to hold hands at the double feature, and ride the Ferris wheel with her at county fairs. She wanted to park with her on Glen Mountain Road!

  Why hadn’t she seen it before? Bobby was amazed at her own blindness. We share the same socioeconomic background, the same basic values. Sure, there are surface differences, and maybe I can’t cook and don’t own a car, but we enjoy the same activities, like going to the Knock Knock Lounge and solving school mysteries. And we’re both trying to change the unfortunate psychosexual patterns we developed in adolescence!

  She had to share her discovery with the Math Mistress. “Ken, have you seen Enid?” she asked the History Master, after searching the room to no avail.

  “She’s on the trail of the kids who stepped out to the terrace for ‘fresh air.’” Ken laughed paternally. He waved his pipe at Bobby. “Do you know that in Samoa the youths frequently—”

  Bobby didn’t wait to find out what the teens did in Samoa. “I’d better give her a hand,” she said hurrying away, skirt swishing.

  Outside on the terrace there were a few couples sitting on the flagstone wall, talking quietly. Bobby spied the editor of The Metamora Musings. “Peggy, did you happen to see Miss Butler?”

  “She went thataway.” Peggy gestured vaguely down the steps.