Madame Celestine, the French mistress, was the one who approached the substitute teacher as he stood beside the spreading chestnut tree, looking about him. He seemed a pleasant enough young man, with an intelligent enough expression on his face. “A good day to you,” she said, holding out her hand. “I am Madame Celestine. May I welcome you to the Hilliard School?”
He had a firm handshake and was not, now that she was closer to him, quite as tall as he had first appeared to be. He introduced himself with a quick smile—“Lorenzo Apiedi”—and then turned his attention back to the activity on the playground.
“What an odd name,” she said.
“Yes, isn’t it?” he answered, and turned his head to give her another of those brief smiles, which did, she checked, reach his eyes and were therefore genuine. But what odd eyes the young man had, like the truffles of her homeland, slightly gray and very dark brown. It didn’t do to stare, so she looked back at the children playing on the grounds and said, “I don’t know if they told you?”
Max, dressed for the role of Lorenzo Apiedi, the tragic young hero of A Patriot’s Story, spoke boldly and frankly, as had Lorenzo to the judge who would sentence him to death. He could say with total honesty, “They didn’t tell me anything.”
“Ah, well, it is the lunch hour—they will have left their desks,” Madame Celestine explained. “I can assure you that our students are as a rule well behaved, even in their games, but they are still children, and so there can be … mishaps? mischiefs? And even sometimes meanness. Some of our students haven’t learned to control their tempers when they are not under our eyes in a classroom. But they are good boys and girls at heart. And why should they not be, coming from the families they come from?”
“The world will not have been very hard on them,” the substitute suggested, and the French teacher, who felt the world had sometimes, maybe even often, maybe even unnecessarily often, been hard on her, nodded in agreement.
“I must return to my post. It has been a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
He gave her a last smile, a brave one, she thought, and so, thinking he might be substituting for the first time and a little fearful, she promised him, “It is not so difficult. You will see.”
“I hope I do,” Max agreed, and resumed his observation. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, here at the school.
He had passed by the line of seven dogs and two cats, tied to the railings across the street from the school gates. The cats had made themselves comfortable, in the way of cats. They had curled themselves up close to the fence, where passers-by would not be likely to disturb them, and gone to sleep. The dogs were not so philosophical. They rose to their feet and wagged hopeful tails, seven hopeful tails wagging at Max, fourteen dark, imploring eyes. “Good dogs,” he said, noticing the nine water bowls, some of delicate porcelain, some decorated in bright colors, and one—belonging to one of the cats, he hoped—entirely encrusted with glass chips, perhaps trying to look like diamonds. “Good dogs.” Some dogs had plain leather collars, a couple sported a bejeweled collar like the one Sunny had worn until Joachim replaced it, and a heavy-jawed bulldog even had a collar with spikes all around it, as if he dreamed of a more dangerous life than a house pet could hope for.
When Max had stepped past them and into the street, the row of dogs sighed and lay down again, their heads on their paws. He could see them now, patiently watching, waiting. Max wondered if their masters came out to give them fresh water or treats during recess, if the students were allowed to leave school grounds, and he wondered what happened in bad weather, rain or snow or even the kind of chilly, damp fogs that often rose from the lake on early spring mornings.
Max was undisturbed if not unnoticed as he considered the groups of children, and tried to identify the animal owners. A small group had gathered around one girl who was seated on a bench, and he recognized her as Clarissa, mistress of Princess Jonquilletta of the Windy Isles, otherwise known as Sunny. Clarissa wore the same blue pleated uniform skirt and white short-sleeved blouse as all the other girls on the playground, but she had a thick black ribbon in her hair, and she wore a black mourning band around one arm. The others bent toward her in sympathetic attitudes. As Max watched, Clarissa raised one hand to her eyes to wipe away tears. In the background, the excited voices of the younger children filled the air, like cries from flocks of small, busy birds, nuthatches or sparrows. Clarissa’s grief stood out all the more in contrast to this happy background.
Clarissa saw the substitute teacher watching her and managed a watery smile and a subdued toss of her brown curls, but she didn’t recognize him as the Mister Max her father had hired to either find, or confirm the loss of, her dog. She said something to the girls around her, who turned briefly to look at Max—by then he had looked away and only sensed their attention—before returning to the satisfyingly sad task of offering comfort to Clarissa.
Toward the edge of the playground, close to the high fence railings and just across the street from the animals, two boys stood talking. These were certainly pet owners, Max decided, seeing the way that every now and then one or the other boy would look out across the street and one or the other of the dogs would stand up and wag its tail. The cats, of course, paid no attention.
Max moved around the tree to see what was happening on the other side of the playground, and almost as soon as his back was turned a ruckus erupted behind him. There came cries, not at all like birdsongs. These were shouts of anger and alarm, and he saw that a fight had broken out, between the two boys at the fence, he thought.
Well, boys liked to fight, especially boys of eleven or twelve, thought Max, who now felt years older than that. For a few seconds he watched the flailing arms and tumbling figures as he would have watched any of his own schoolmates having a good fight. Then he heard someone calling, “Lorenzo Apiedi! Come help! Mr. Apiedi!”
At the repetition of the name, Max remembered who he was, and where. Of course a substitute teacher, and a man at that, would be expected to help break up the fight. He ran down to the fence.
The fight was not between the two boys after all. A third party had joined in the fracas, a long-haired person—a girl?—but who was fighting whom, he couldn’t tell. He reached in, grabbed an arm, and pulled. At the same time, Madame Celestine pulled another combatant loose. This left the girl alone, panting, her fists clenched, her long white-blond hair pulled loose from its braid. Then her fists unclenched and she grinned angrily, as if she wished the fight had not been interrupted.
“Thomas? Hector! You are coming with me right now! Mr. Apiedi, you take Pia.”
“Yeah, let him deal with Pee-pee.”
“That is enough from you, Hector. We do not call names at the Hilliard School. It is also against the rules—as all three of you know—to fight on school property.”
Pia, the girl, was brushing dirt from her skirt and pulling up her socks. Her fingers pushed her hair messily back into place. The boys left their shirts untucked and their hair untidied. The children refused to look at one another.
“Before school lets out, you will all apologize,” Madame Celestine predicted grimly. “You’ll apologize to your classmates, to one another, and to me. If you plan to return tomorrow, you’ll apologize today. Yes, even you, Pia. This time you’ll apologize, or … Because if you don’t, it may not matter how much money your father has. Come along, boys. And tuck your shirts in, for goodness’ sake.”
Max was left with the girl, whose hair shone like snow even on that overcast day and who had started the day with a bright red ribbon tied at the end of her long braid. Now the ribbon hung limply, its bow undone. The girl glared, still grinning, right at his chest. In her fury and frustration she didn’t look at his face, for which Max was grateful. Few adults, he had noticed, really looked at things or people. Children, however, were a different story.
And then—without warning, like the sudden gust of cold wind that comes before an icy rain—Max remembered who he really was
, and where, and why. He had a sudden vivid memory of his parents, his lively, laughing mother, his father with those dramatics and enthusiasms—and he wished with all his heart that they had not left him behind. He wished they would be waiting for him at home even if that meant they’d lay claim to his time and energy for their own uses. He wished he was not a boy alone. That wishing and longing, and the sadness it dragged along behind it like a huge, heavy chain, made Max shiver, despite the sunshiny warmth of the day. The girl saw this and she stared into his face, frankly curious.
Max was in danger of being discovered.
Luckily, he knew what a teacher would say, and so he asked, “Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” In Max’s experience, teachers often asked questions they knew wouldn’t be answered, and by asking that kind of question he turned himself back into the substitute teacher.
She continued staring into his face and said, “No.” Her eyes were a dark blue and her eyebrows unexpectedly, dramatically, black. She was eleven, he guessed, maybe twelve, short and solid, with a stubborn jaw and broad shoulders. Hands on her hips, she glared up at him, waiting to see what he’d do next.
“As you wish,” Max said, and he smiled down into her angry face.
This confused her. To confuse her further, he then looked away from her, across the street to the row of patient pets, as if they were what really interested him. A wagon rattled by, loaded with wood, the horse’s hooves clopping on the macadam. An automobile went by in the opposite direction, heading out of the New Town, going perhaps up into the hills or maybe as far as the distant mountains. The voices from the playground had recommenced their bird-like cries. When Max looked back at her, the girl was biting at her lip and her forehead was wrinkled. She said, “I suppose I have to tell you.”
He didn’t answer, the adult being patiently grown-up while the child figured things out.
“They called me Pee-pee. You heard. They don’t like me, that’s all,” Pia said. She shrugged, and grimaced. She had a wide, flexible mouth, good for grimacing and grinning and probably sneering, too. Her nose had a bump in the middle, as if it had been broken in a fistfight.
“You, on the other hand, want to be everybody’s friend,” Max said with gentle sarcasm. She smiled then, quite a pleasant smile. He smiled pleasantly back, and she gave a little happy laugh. “You’re no teacher,” she said.
Max ignored that. What could he have said, anyway? Instead, he asked, “Why don’t they like you?”
“Nobody does,” she explained. “Not the girls, not the boys, not the teachers—although the teachers are polite about it.” She thought for a brief time. “Especially the girls don’t like me,” she concluded cheerfully. “It doesn’t break my heart. It’s not as if I’m worried they’re better than I am. It’s not as if”—and this thought made her laugh again—“we’re going to be in school for the rest of our lives. It’s true, isn’t it? That things are really different after school. My father says.”
“You don’t have any friends?”
She shook her head, and looked defiantly up at him as if she expected him to deny that.
But Max figured that she would know if she had a friend, and he knew what that was like, being friendless at school. They called him Eyes, so he also knew what it was like on the receiving end of name-calling. He asked, “Are you new to Hilliard?”
“This is my third year here.”
“Did you ever have friends? Or even just one friend?”
She shook her head, No and No.
“Did you ever want one?” he asked. She was interesting, this Pia. She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself, and she certainly wasn’t creeping around the edges of one group or another the way some people did, hoping not to be pushed away even if they knew better than to hope to be asked in.
She thought about his question, as if it was something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “No, I don’t think so,” she decided. “I have brothers and sisters at home,” she told him. “My father enjoys my company. I’m not lonely. But what are you doing here if you’re not a teacher?”
“Who said I wasn’t a teacher?” Max asked.
“Me,” she reminded him. “I did.”
Max avoided the girl’s question. “If you’ve been here for three years and never had a friend, what was there to fight about today?” he asked her.
“What there always is,” she told him. “My father, the name they call me. Plus, they don’t like my ideas about some things. And I don’t like being told not to have the ideas I have,” she announced, and glared again. She was a good glarer, this girl.
Max waited, letting the silence grow.
“My father was a brewer,” she explained, although that explained nothing. “He still is, but now he’s more, too. My father is a successful businessman. Their fathers are bankers and lawyers, doctors, professors, and their grandfathers are just the same, but my grandfather was a dairyman. He took care of cows for a rich farmer. Their mothers were all debutantes and speak French, and the girls will all be debutantes, too, but you couldn’t make me do that if you paid me a million.” She thought a little more, then added, “Unless, of course, I needed the money. Which I probably wouldn’t, because my father’s beer is in every bar and pub and restaurant. That’s not even counting his other businesses. That’s why we’re so rich,” she explained, “even if we’re not good enough for them.” She gave him a broad smile and assured him, “Not that I want to be good enough for them.”
Max nodded. “What is it they don’t like about your ideas? I mean, other than that you don’t admire them for the reasons they want to be admired.”
She turned to look through the fence to the street and across to the other side. “You see those animals?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it’s wicked to leave an animal tied up there all day? Especially a cat. I mean, really wicked, like Attila the Hun. It’s cruel, and stupid, it’s—”
“Well, I wouldn’t like it,” Max agreed.
“It’s just showing off,” Pia announced decisively. “It’s just a contest they have, to be the one with a pet everybody else wishes they had.” She wheeled around. “You see that girl?” She pointed to the bench where Clarissa was still sitting, still surrounded by sympathizing friends, still holding her handkerchief. “The pretty one, with a black armband? You’d think her sister had died or something, her father. But it’s her pet, a dog. A nice dog, I admit, but …”
Max asked, curious, “Her dog died?”
“If she has, I bet Clarissa wouldn’t care. Not really. It’s all pretending. If they really loved these pets, don’t you think they’d leave them at home instead of keeping them tied up here all day? They just … I don’t know why it makes me so angry … it’s not as if I care whether or not they’re good pet owners. I don’t know why I get into fights about it. But what do you think? Don’t you think they’re hypocrites?”
“Not everybody has a pet tied up there,” Max pointed out.
“Only people who think they’ll win the contest bring their pets. The rest just talk about them, what Fluffy did that was so cute, that kind of boring stuff. If I didn’t have my classes to think about, I’d die of boredom here. I would, and if I didn’t die of boredom I’d kill myself from boredom.”
Max laughed.
She scowled at him and her dark blue eyes narrowed, ready to be angry. “You think I’m lying?” she asked.
“I don’t think you’re a liar,” he told her.
“I’m not,” she agreed, and that was the end of her anger.
“That might make you unpopular, too,” Max said.
She looked back to the playground, and the expression on her face changed again. It grew wary, maybe even a little frightened. But before he could turn to see what was upsetting her, “Listen,” she said, speaking fast. “You’re no teacher, whatever you pretend, and I think they’ve figured it out, so if you don’t want to get caught you better run.”
Max was too much th
e actor to turn his head, but he didn’t have to. Someone called out, and not in a friendly fashion, “Mr. Apiedi! Lorenzo! I wonder—”
Pia reached out to shake his hand. “I’ll create a diversion. Good luck.” And then she jerked her hand away and cried out, “I’m not sorry! I won’t say I’m sorry! You can’t make me! And you can’t catch me, either!” She took off at a run toward the gate.
Max moved behind her, letting her draw ahead as he heard the voice shout angrily, “Pia! Where do you think—? Pia, stop! Stop right now! You’re not allowed to—!”
At the gate, Max sped up to pass the girl and run out onto the road, crossing it between a brougham and a group of three workmen in dirty overalls busy arguing with one another. He took off his hat and jacket as he ran so that when Madame Celestine—Pia held firmly by the wrist—looked for him, the substitute teacher had disappeared. The only person she saw of the right general size was a tall, skinny boy, probably playing hooky. But not from the Hilliard School, she thought with satisfaction.
In which Max and Joachim discuss thorny topics, and Grammie has a strange encounter
Max was troubled by what he’d learned. He doubted that Clarissa cared about the dog at all. That was a problem for him. Also, he didn’t want to return the dog to a life of being tied to a fence, day after day, as if it were a prisoner in a jail, as if being a pet was committing a crime. On the other hand, the dog did belong to Clarissa. Legally, he had to return Sunny. Didn’t he? It would be dishonest not to, and it would also count as a failure for Mister Max.
But what about the dog herself? How could it be a success for Mister Max to do that to the dog?
Max was not unhappy to have this thorny question needing his attention, and as he rode his bicycle home he was so concentrated on the Hilliard pet problem, which was the Sunny problem, that he barely noticed when it began to rain. But the bad weather and the difficult thinking added together convinced him to pay a visit to Joachim and the dog to see how they were getting on. He leaned his bicycle against the garden wall and let himself in. If Joachim was working, he wouldn’t want to put down his brush to answer the door. If Joachim was eating lunch, he wouldn’t want to put down his spoon, or sandwich, and get up from the table to answer the door.