point of the flap. Beneath the tape was a black smudged fingerprint: she’d been changing the ribbon on her massive old IBM typewriter when he’d left for the day.
He frowned.
Sealed envelopes seldom held good news, but beyond that, if Lucy had information she felt was sensitive enough to justify being delivered in this way, why hadn’t she contacted him at home with it?
She knew how much he disliked being greeted by a crisis before he’d had a chance to make his rounds and get his bearings.
Irritated, he snatched the envelope off the desk and carried it with him as he pursued his routine, going to open the Venetian blinds. It took a moment or two of fiddling before the blinds were adjusted to his taste, and then he stood as he did every morning, looking out on the school grounds, surveying his domain, but of course now it wasn’t the same.
He was uncomfortably aware of the weight of the envelope in his hand.
Trying to ignore it, he squinted at the trees and considered whether they should be trimmed. Yes, he decided, although they looked the same as they had the day before—and the day before that.
One could never be too careful with trees, he believed. They weren’t to be trusted; the damn things could actually go and die, and still remain standing, in a kind of reverse game of possum:
I’m dead but I look alive.
In addition, they developed root rot, housed termites, or became infested with repulsively ugly beetles. They oozed sap—tree blood—that could take the paint off a car.
Limbs as thick as a man’s waist could splinter into kindling under the weight of a first grader, dashing the child to the ground. That very thing had happened the first week of school.
The child had broken his wrist.
Chances were, the news of the latest school mishap was what waited within the envelope he held. Mr. Barry tightened his grip on it, not caring at all that it wrinkled in his hand.
There was no avoiding it, he realized.
He peeled the tape off the flap of the envelope and opened it. Two sheets of paper, one white, one yellow, were folded accordion-style inside.
“In duplicate, yet,” he said, taking them out.
As he’d feared, the letter from Lucy detailed the report the hospital had given her on the injury the Browne boy had received.
Compound fracture of the right radius and ulna. Translated: a badly broken arm.
Well, he’d known that—one look at the boy’s arm was enough to convince him—but apparently it was worse than even the medics had suspected. Surgery was necessary, and the boy was being transferred today to the county hospital in Leland where the fracture would be stabilized by “internal fixation” of the bones.
He’d gained some expertise in medical terminology in his years here, and knew this meant they were going to put metal pins in the child’s arm.
A very bad break indeed.
For the boy and the school.
His ulcer threatened to act up as he read further down the page.
Cheryl Appleton wanted to see him during morning recess, or she would “take action” on her own.
“Lord save me,” he said. He’d listened to more than he’d wanted of her crazy accusations yesterday, and put it down to female hysteria.
And what had she really had to say? That little Jill Baker had broken her classmate’s arm.
Right. As if a delicate childlike Jill could even do such a thing. All anyone had to do was look at that pretty face and know better.
The only thing the girl would ever break was male hearts.
Hearing that nonsense from Miss Appleton, he’d wondered if John Downs was right. Downs had a theory for everything, and this theory proposed that ordinary females would always denigrate extraordinary females.
Weren’t the women who protested beauty pageants less attractive than the contestants?
But, although he’d been sorely tempted, he hadn’t accused her of being jealous of the child. Instead he’d walked away.
According to Lucy’s letter, the second grade teacher had left the
He frowned.
Sealed envelopes seldom held good news, but beyond that, if Lucy had information she felt was sensitive enough to justify being delivered in this way, why hadn’t she contacted him at home with it?
She knew how much he disliked being greeted by a crisis before he’d had a chance to make his rounds and get his bearings.
Irritated, he snatched the envelope off the desk and carried it with him as he pursued his routine, going to open the Venetian blinds. It took a moment or two of fiddling before the blinds were adjusted to his taste, and then he stood as he did every morning, looking out on the school grounds, surveying his domain, but of course now it wasn’t the same.
He was uncomfortably aware of the weight of the envelope in his hand.
Trying to ignore it, he squinted at the trees and considered whether they should be trimmed. Yes, he decided, although they looked the same as they had the day before—and the day before that.
One could never be too careful with trees, he believed. They weren’t to be trusted; the damn things could actually go and die, and still remain standing, in a kind of reverse game of possum:
I’m dead but I look alive.
In addition, they developed root rot, housed termites, or became infested with repulsively ugly beetles. They oozed sap—tree blood—that could take the paint off a car.
Limbs as thick as a man’s waist could splinter into kindling under the weight of a first grader, dashing the child to the ground. That very thing had happened the first week of school.
The child had broken his wrist.
Chances were, the news of the latest school mishap was what waited within the envelope he held. Mr. Barry tightened his grip on it, not caring at all that it wrinkled in his hand.
There was no avoiding it, he realized.
He peeled the tape off the flap of the envelope and opened it. Two sheets of paper, one white, one yellow, were folded accordion-style inside.
“In duplicate, yet,” he said, taking them out.
As he’d feared, the letter from Lucy detailed the report the hospital had given her on the injury the Browne boy had received.
Compound fracture of the right radius and ulna. Translated: a badly broken arm.
Well, he’d known that—one look at the boy’s arm was enough to convince him—but apparently it was worse than even the medics had suspected. Surgery was necessary, and the boy was being transferred today to the county hospital in Leland where the fracture would be stabilized by “internal fixation” of the bones.
He’d gained some expertise in medical terminology in his years here, and knew this meant they were going to put metal pins in the child’s arm.
A very bad break indeed.
For the boy and the school.
His ulcer threatened to act up as he read further down the page.
Cheryl Appleton wanted to see him during morning recess, or she would “take action” on her own.
“Lord save me,” he said. He’d listened to more than he’d wanted of her crazy accusations yesterday, and put it down to female hysteria.
And what had she really had to say? That little Jill Baker had broken her classmate’s arm.
Right. As if a delicate childlike Jill could even do such a thing. All anyone had to do was look at that pretty face and know better.
The only thing the girl would ever break was male hearts.
Hearing that nonsense from Miss Appleton, he’d wondered if John Downs was right. Downs had a theory for everything, and this theory proposed that ordinary females would always denigrate extraordinary females.
Weren’t the women who protested beauty pageants less attractive than the contestants?
But, although he’d been sorely tempted, he hadn’t accused her of being jealous of the child. Instead he’d walked away.
According to Lucy’s letter, the second grade teacher had left the
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