Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

Bishop Whitaker’s school was to have everything: art, music, French, cooking, mineralogy, trigonometry, Old Testament history, astronomy, croquet, painting, philosophy, and bathrooms. Imogene forgot the Broken Promise, the bills, and Sarah Mary.

Talking steadily, comfortably, calling each other by their Christian names, Kate and Imogene rested in the cool of the kitchen over glasses of cold tea. “My mother used to have an old cook,” Imogene said. “She was the fattest woman I had ever seen. She could eat more than any two men. I used to sit down in the kitchen with her, afternoons in winter. I remember watching her consume enormous quantities of food and follow it with half an apple pie. Then she’d lean back, pat her stomach, and wink at me. ‘I think I’ve died and gone to pig heaven,’ she’d say.” Imogene looked around the wide, windowed dining room. “That’s how I feel. I’m in pig heaven.”

She stopped at Bishop Whitaker’s on her way back to the hotel. He was out, Mrs. Whitaker said, but she was welcome to wait. Imogene sat in the dim parlor, chatting with Mrs. Whitaker until her husband returned.

Ozi Whitaker looked like a picture out of the Old Testament of an illustrated King James Bible: a snow-white beard cut in the shape of a spade, a fringe of white hair around a bald dome, and features as sharp and unyielding as chiseled granite. Imogene stood automatically as he strode into the parlor; he was not a large man but he dominated the room. His thin-lipped mouth opened like a trap: “Mrs. Whitaker,” he said, “we seem to have an unexpected guest.”

Before Imogene could find voice, the bishop held out a cupped hand-a cottontail rabbit, not more than five inches from nose to tail, shivered there in his palm. Mrs. Whitaker lifted the little creature from her husband’s outstretched hand and, excusing herself, left the room. “One of the dogs had gotten it,” the bishop explained. “I’ll let it go out in the meadow when it’s old enough to fend for itself.” He smiled and gestured to the dusky green settee. Imogene sat abruptly, not quite recovered from his entrance.

The bishop sat down opposite her, completely at ease with the silence, watching her with kindly eyes and waiting until she was ready to speak.

“I was up at your school today,” Imogene began, and Ozi Whitaker leaned forward in his chair like a child about to hear a favorite story retold. “It’s the most beautifully thought-out school I have ever seen. Ever imagined.”

“Ah.” He sat back, smiling.

“I’m a teacher.”

He thrust out his beard. “Are you a good teacher?”

Imogene thought for a moment. “Yes.” The one word carried the weight of her life’s worth.

The bishop seemed pleased. “I have hired six instructors and the matron.” The bishop regarded her for a minute. He was thinking. He sat across from her as solid and easy as a tree. Imogene, too, was still, but the line of her back and the set of her jaw indicated that it was more a matter of control than of nature. A pendulous ticking sounded from a dark, ornate clock on the mantel behind the bishop’s chair. Imogene did not look at it.

“My girls will be Nevadans, most from small mining towns in the desert. Many, I hope, will be given scholarships according to need. They’ll come from all walks of life. A lot of them won’t have a primary education that’s up to our standards.” His pale eyes twinkled. “When we’re old enough to have standards,” he amended.

“Bishop Whitaker’s is a high school. We’ll need a teacher to take these girls from the desert and bring them up to entrance level-a preparatory school the girls can attend while they’re enrolled in other classes, until they’ve caught up. I’ve not yet found a teacher for my preparatory classes.”

“For the last three years I taught first through eighth grades in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania.”

“I’ll need your references.”

Imogene sat like a stone. Her jaw jerked once before she spoke. “Of course.” She was overly loud. “I’ll bring the address by tomorrow, if that would be convenient.”

Ozi Whitaker escorted her to the front hall.

“Forgive my manners,” the bishop said as Imogene started down the porch steps. “I haven’t asked your name.”

“Imogene Grelznik.”

“Tomorrow then, Miss Grelznik.”

Sarah was out of bed, sitting by the window in her nightgown, when Imogene got back to the hotel. Imogene apologized for having been gone so long, and hurried down to the kitchen to bring up a cold lunch. While they ate, she told Sarah of Bishop Whitaker’s School For Girls. Some of the light that had come into her face as Kate Sills was showing her the rooms returned as she talked. Sarah left off picking at the food and watched her intently. Imogene was laughing, telling of the bunny and the bishop when she broke off suddenly and her smile faded as she told Sarah, “He wants a reference.”

The significance of the request slowly registered on Sarah’s face. “You want this, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Write one myself?” Imogene smiled wryly.

“You can’t! It’s not honest!”

“No, I suppose I can’t. Bishop Whitaker’s going to write to Philadelphia. I’ll have to write to Mr. Utterback and tell him Mr. Aiken’s venom has done it again. I hope that he has returned from Holland, and that my letter reaches him before the bishop’s. I’ll post it this afternoon.”

When she finished writing the letter, she read it to Sarah. The younger woman listened quietly, her eyes fixed on her folded hands. “What do you think?” Imogene asked. Sarah shook her head without speaking.

Imogene sat aside the letter. “I’m sorry. I’ve made you go through it again, haven’t I?”

Sarah waved her hand, a frustrated, negative little gesture. “It’s not just that.” She looked up and the tears made her eyes seem enormous. “It’s that you’ll be teaching again and they’ll all be so bright and pretty and sure to love you.”

The schoolteacher sat down on the bed. “You mustn’t worry. It hurts me when you do, as if you don’t believe in me. Or think so little of me you think I could forget.” She stroked Sarah’s cheek. “You can be a little jealous to flatter me, but you mustn’t ever believe it.”

WEEKS PASSED AND THERE WAS STILL NO WORD FROM WILLIAM Utterback. The money that Imogene was able to earn by teaching her adult students was inadequate and inconsistent; they paid by the lesson and often didn’t come at appointed times. Lutie and Fred, though openhearted, began to feel the financial drain; the summer months were their busy time, and a room and two places at board paying only partial rates would be felt when money got tight the following winter. They were too kind to say anything, but it showed in their faces when Imogene returned from the bishop’s with no news. They, too, were waiting for the letter.

The last week in July, the bishop took Imogene into the formal parlor and closed the door. “I’m seeing a young man about the position today. As fond as Mrs. Whitaker and I have grown of you, I can’t in good conscience hire you without references, not when everyone else was asked to give them.”

Imogene nodded abruptly. “I understand.” She did not tell Sarah.

The young man was given the job.

William Utterback’s letter came the second week in August. There was a glowing recommendation addressed to the bishop, and a sealed note to Imogene so full of un-Quakerlike denunciations of Darrel Aiken that it warmed her heart to read it.

On September fourth, five weeks before Bishop Whitaker’s School was to open its doors, Kate Sills paid Imogene a call at the Broken Promise. There had been a gold strike twenty miles south of Reno, in the Washoe region. Rumors were stampeding the miners from older claims. It was said to be the biggest strike in Nevada ’s history. The bishop’s young man had come to him full of contrition. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, he had said, and he couldn’t live with himself if he passed it up. He was terribly sorry if there was any inconvenience, but he’d already bought his kit.