Jonathan Kellerman - When The Bough Breaks

The campus was small, perhaps half a square mile, and filled with tree - shaded knolls, imposing stands of oak, pine, willow, elm and paper birch, and clearings inlaid with marble and bordered by stone benches and bronze monuments. All very traditional until you looked to the west and saw manicured lawns dipping down to the dock and the private harbor beyond. The slips were occupied by streamlined, teak - decked cruisers, fifty - foot craft and larger, topped with sonar and radar screens and clutches of antennae: clearly twentieth - century, obviously West Coast.

The rain had lifted and a triangle of light peeked out from under the charcoal folds of the sky. A few knots out of the harbor an armada of sailboats sliced through water that looked like tin foil. The boats were rehearsing some type of ceremony, for they each rounded the same buoy marker and unfurled outrageously colored spinnakers - oranges, purples, scar lets and greens, like the tail feathers of a covey of tropical birds.

There was a lucite - encased map on a stand and I consulted it to locate Crespi Hall. The students passing by seemed a quiet lot. For the most part they were apple - cheeked and flaxen - haired, their eye color traversing the spectrum from light blue to dark blue. Their hairstyles were expensively executed but seemed to date from the Eisenhower age. Trousers were cuffed, pennies shined prettily from the tops of loafers and there were enough alligators on shirts to choke the Everglades. A eugenicist would have been proud to observe the straight backs, robust physiques and stiff - lipped self - assurance of those to the manor born. I felt as if I'd died and gone to Aryan Heaven.

Crespi was a three - story rhomboid fronted by Ionic columns of varicose - veined white marble. The public relations office was hidden behind a mahogany door labeled in gold stencil. When I opened it, the door creaked.

Margaret Dopplemeier was one of those tall, rawboned women predestined for spinsterhood. She'd tried to couch an ungainly body in a tentlike suit of brown tweed, but the angles and corners showed through. She had a big - jawed face, uncompromising lips, and reddish - brown hair cut in an incongruously girlish bob. Her office was hardly larger than the interior of my car - public relations was obviously not a prime concern for the elders of Jedson - and she had to squeeze between the edge of her desk and the wall to get up to greet me. It was a maneuver that would have looked clumsy performed by Pavlova and Margaret Dopplemeier turned it into a lurching stumble. I felt sorry for her but made sure not to show it: She was in her midthirties and by that age women like her have learned to cherish self - reliance. It's as good a way as any of coping with solitude.

"Hello, you must be Alex."

"I am. Pleased to meet you, Margaret." Her hand was thick, hard and chafed - from too much wringing or too much washing, I couldn't be sure.

"Please sit down."

I took a slat - backed chair and sat in it uncomfortably.

"Coffee?"

"Please. With cream."

There was a table with a hot plate in back of her desk. She poured coffee into a mug and gave it to me.

"Have you decided about lunch?"

The prospect of looking across the table at her for an extra hour didn't thrill me. It wasn't her plainness, nor her stern face. She looked ready to tell me her life story and I was in no mood to fill my head with extraneous material. I declined.

"How about a snack, then?"

She brought forth a tray of cheese and crackers, looking uncomfortable in the role of hostess. I wondered why she'd gravitated toward pr. Library science would have seemed more fitting. Then the thought occurred to me that public relations at Jedson was probably akin to library work, a desk job involving lots of clipping and mailing and very little face - to - face contact.

"Thank you." I was hungry and the cheese was good.

"Well." She looked around her desk, found a pair of eyeglasses, and put them on. Behind the glass her eyes grew larger and somehow softer. "You want to get a feel for Jedson."

"That's right - the flavor of the place."

"It's quite a unique place. I'm from Wisconsin myself, went to school at Madison, with forty thousand students. There are only two thousand here. Everyone knows everyone else."

"Kind of like one big family." I took out a pen and notepad.

"Yes." At the word family her mouth pursed. "You might say that." She shuffled some papers and began reciting:

"Jedson College was founded by Josiah T. Jedson, a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in mining and railroads in 1858. That's three years before the University of Washington was founded, so we're really the old school in town. Jedson's intention was to endow an institution of higher learning where traditional values coexisted side by side with education in the basic arts and sciences. To this day, primary funding for the college comes from an annuity from the Jedson Foundation, although other sources of income are existent."

"I've heard tuition is rather high."

"Tuition," she frowned, "is twelve thousand dollars a year, plus housing, registration and miscellaneous fees."

I whistled.

"Do you give scholarships?"

"A small number of scholarships for deserving students are given each year, but there is no extensive program of financial aid."

"Then there's no interest in attracting students from a wide socio - economic range."

"Not particularly, no."

She took off her glasses, put her prepared material aside and stared at me myopically.

"I would hope we don't get into that particular line of questioning."

"Why is that, Margaret?"

She moved her lips, trying on several unspoken words for size, rejecting them all. Finally she said: "I thought this was going to be an impression piece. Something positive."

"It will be. I was simply curious." I had touched a nerve - not that it did me any good, for upsetting my source of information was the last thing I needed. But something about the upper - class smugness of the place was irritating me and bringing out the bad boy.

"I see." She put her glasses back on and picked up her papers, scanned them and pursed her lips. "Alex," she said, "can I speak to you off the record - one writer to another?"

"Sure." I closed the notepad and put the pen in my jacket pocket.

"I don't know how to put this." She played with one tweed lapel, twisting the coarse cloth then smoothing it. "This story, your visit - neither are particularly welcomed by the administration. As you may be able to tell from the grandeur of our surroundings, public relations is not avidly sought by Jedson College. After I spoke to you yesterday I told my superiors about your coming, thinking they'd be more than pleased. In fact, just the opposite was true. I wasn't exactly given a pat on the back."

She pouted, as if recalling a particularly painful spanking.

"I didn't intend to get you in trouble, Margaret."

"There was no way to know. As I told you, I'm new here. They do things differently. It's another way of life - quiet, conservative. There's a timeless quality to the place."

"How," I asked, "does a college attract enrollment without attracting attention?"

She chewed her lip.

"I really don't want to get into it."

"Margaret, it's off the record. Don't stonewall me."

"It's not important," she insisted, but her bosom heaved and conflict showed in the flat, magnified eyes. I played on that conflict.

"Then what's the fuss? We writers need to be open with one another. There are enough censors out there."

She thought about that for a long time. The tug of - war was evident on her face and I couldn't help but feel rotten.

"I don't want to leave here," she finally said. "I have a nice apartment with a view of the lake, my cats and my books. I don't want to lose - everything. I don't want to have to pack up and move back to the Midwest. To miles of flatland with no mountains, no way of establishing one's perspective. Do you understand."