A Spring Break Carol: A Short Ghost Story Read online

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  Tuesday’s faculty meeting was exactly what you would expect from a gathering of self-absorbed, overly fastidious intellectuals. I quashed one power-hungry associate professor who attacked the new Academic Standards proposal I was backing. Even though his supporters sent the proposal back to committee, the measure would be approved next month. No one else would attempt a similar frontal assault.

  The rest of the day passed smoothly, until Susie’s lower drawer, where she keeps her purse, growled open and the outer office door tapped closed. I fastened my eyes to the Admissions report. Acceptances were still down from last year, but closer to our goal than last month and higher than national averages.

  Old College’s bell struck five times. I did not look at the chair. Our marketing strategy was working; compared to last year, one hundred more applications had been made. Now to translate those applications into enrollment. . . .

  “Still busy, I see, Jason,” Maynard said.

  I glared as I had at the Chi Psi members responsible for burning their fraternity’s house last autumn. “I demand an explanation for this intrusion.”

  Maynard lifted his caterpillar eyebrows and steepled his fingers. “Well, now, Jason, I’m not sure I have one to give.”

  “I presume you are here to discuss Ms. Douglas. You know we didn’t hire her.” When Maynard made no response, I prodded further. “Your colleagues declined to hire your hand-picked successor. So what do you have to say about it?”

  “I stole Nicole from Physics, you know, when she was a student here. She’d planned to be a science major. She had the most crystal-pure mind I’d seen in ten years. The originality, the way she put details together. . . . You know, it’s a miracle to find a mind like that, sitting with those other poorly prepared souls in freshman composition.”

  “She is too soft. She’s not the caliber of scholar we expect in this faculty.”

  Maynard snorted. “I imagine she isn’t, not the faculty you want to build, more’s the pity. She’d have changed the entire tone of the English department, little by little.”

  “That was precisely my concern. This isn’t a half-rate regional college anymore.”

  Maynard examined my face as though he had a right to do so. “It’s a serious thing, to kill a dream. You’ll be called to answer for it –”

  A strangled sound interrupted him. It surprised us both that it came from me.

  Maynard grinned at me – grinned! “Oh, did I startle you? I wasn’t talking about the hereafter. I meant you’d answer for it in this life, though I doubt you’ll recognize it. Of course,” here he shrugged, “who am I to say you won’t spend time reflecting on it in the next life, too?”

  “You misunderstand. Deliberately. I was simply surprised you believe a dean can make decisions based on sentiment. I’m concerned with turning this shabby school into a viable institution, not with a young woman’s dreams of living in some kind of academic ivory tower.”

  Maynard smiled, an irritatingly superior smile. “That’s right, when you leave this school for a more prestigious institution, you want to leave a legacy: reborn from the chalk-dust, a college acclaimed by surveys and number-crunchers. Let’s not let education get in the way.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Would you prefer the College to close its doors, like Grunford did? It could happen.”

  Maynard leaned back and stretched his legs in front of him. “I’ll tell you a story.”

  “You’re avoiding the point, and I don’t have time for stories.”

  “Of course you do. The same year Nicole was in my freshman class, there was another student named Tiffany Sweeney, whose name I wouldn’t have recalled when I was alive. She was nothing out of the ordinary, just an English major with a sweet face.”

  “I hope this rambling has a purpose.”

  He shrugged and waved a vague hand. “After she graduated, Tiffany taught high school competently, then quit to have babies. She’s a nice enough stay-at-home mom who cuts coupons and volunteers at school fundraisers. It’s the ordinary, respectable life I would have predicted for her, had I bothered to think about it. But I know now Tiffany is also a poet, has been since a child. She’s getting a collection published. Their lyricism is haunting.”

  “Although I am of course pleased an alumna has done well, I still fail to see the point.”

  “Don’t you? She came by my office sometimes, was eager for my attention, but she didn’t strike me as interesting, just one more average student, not brilliant like Nicole. So I was polite and taught her well enough, but I never bothered to develop a rapport with her, and I could have. I could have read her poems when I was alive, encouraged her and given her advice, known about her success. I could have known her.”

  The silence stretched. A distant click signaled a door closing elsewhere in the building, and the soft tattoo of footsteps echoed in the hall.

  Maynard cleared his throat. “Well. Talking is therapeutic, isn’t it? That’s why I see her now, because I missed her then. No, I didn’t miss her. I deliberately chose to overlook her, chose to not see a lovely soul that lay directly along my path.”

  “You have missed your own point.”

  “Really, Jason? Is that so?”

  “This Tiffany girl did well enough despite you. Perhaps your attention or lack of it was not so important as you’d like to think. Nicole Douglas will also succeed somewhere else, in her own way, without this job, at this school.”

  His gaze sharpened. “I don’t doubt she will. But don’t think her survival has anything to do with you, either. Her life’s going to have a completely different path now. So will the school.”

  “Exactly. Things work out for the best.”

  “Hogwash. And maybe I didn’t do so well by Nicole. Did having a brilliant student to mentor flatter me so much that I cultivated her mind for me instead of for her? Did I influence her too much?”

  I held his eyes. I had won this one, and he knew it.

  “Well,” Maynard rubbed his hands together, as though brushing off garden dirt, and braced them on the chair, ready to rise. “Well. This has been a most illuminating discussion. You’re running late, I think?”

  The bell clanged the quarter-hour.