appointment was with Eric Walker, the headmaster, and they had mentioned that they would want her to meet with the dean of students too. She gave the receptionist her name, and waited on a chair in the lobby. Five minutes later a man in his mid forties came out to greet her, in jeans, a black sweater, a tweed jacket, and hiking boots. He smiled warmly at Victoria and invited her into his office, and waved at a battered leather chair on the other side of his desk.
“Thank you for coming in from Northwestern,” he said, as she took off her bulky coat so he could see her new blazer. She hoped he wouldn’t decide she was too uptight for the school, which turned out to be much more casual than she had expected. “I was afraid you might not be able to get in, with the snowstorm,” he said pleasantly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, by the way. We were having a dance on Saturday, but we had to cancel. The kids from the suburbs and Connecticut couldn’t have gotten in. About a fifth of our students commute to school. We had to reschedule for next weekend.” He had her CV on his desk, Victoria noticed, and was fully prepared for the meeting. She saw that he had the transcript of her grades that she had sent him too. She had Googled him and knew that he had gone to Yale, and had a master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard. He was Dr. Walker, although he didn’t use the title on his correspondence to her. His credentials were impressive. And he had published two books on secondary education for laymen, and a guide for parents and students on the college application process. She felt insignificant in his presence, but he had a warm friendly demeanor, and turned his full attention to her.
“So, Victoria,” he said, leaning back in his own ancient leather chair, behind a handsome English partner’s desk he said had been his father’s. The things in his office looked expensive and well worn to the point of battered. And there were bookcases crammed full of books. “What makes you think you want to be a teacher? And why here? Wouldn’t you rather be back in L.A., where you won’t have to shovel snow to get to school?” He smiled as he said it, and so did she. She liked him, and wanted to impress him, and she wasn’t sure how to do it. All she had brought with her were enthusiasm and truth.
“I love kids. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher ‘when I grew up.’ I just knew it was right for me. I’m not interested in business, or getting up the corporate ladder, although that’s what my parents think I should do, and what they respect. I think that if I make a difference in a young person’s life, it would be much better and more meaningful than anything else I could do.” She could see in his eyes that it was the right answer, and she was pleased. And she meant it.
“Even if it means you’re miserably paid, and make less money than everyone else you know?”
“Yes, even if I’m miserably paid. I don’t care. I don’t need a lot to live on.” He didn’t ask her if her parents were going to help her-that wasn’t his problem.
“You’d make a lot more money working for the public school system,” he said honestly, and she knew that too.
“I don’t want to do that. And I don’t want to go back to L.A. I’ve wanted to live in New York since high school. I would have gone to college here if I’d been accepted at NYU or Barnard. I know this is right for me. And Madison was my first-choice school.”
“Why? Rich kids are no easier to teach than others. They’re smart kids, and they’re exposed to a lot of things. No matter what their grades are, and we have our weak students too, they’re savvy, and you can’t bullshit them. They know it if you don’t know your stuff, and they’ll call you on it. They’re more confident and bolder than kids with fewer advantages, and that can be tough for a teacher. And the parents can be tough here. They’re very demanding, and they want the best that we can give them. And we’re fully committed to doing just that. Does it bother you that you’d only be four or five years older than some of your students? The opening we have will involve juniors and seniors, and we might have you cover an English class for sophomores as well. They can be a handful, especially in this school where some of them are mature for their age. These kids have a lot of exposure to a very sophisticated lifestyle with all that that entails. Do you think you’re up to it?” he asked her candidly, and Victoria nodded at him with a serious look in her big blue eyes.
“I think I am, Dr. Walker. I think I could handle it. I’m certain of it, if you give me the chance.”
“The teacher you’ll be replacing will only be out for a year. I can’t promise you anything after that, no matter how well you perform here. So this isn’t a long-term commitment on our part, but only for a year. After that, we’d have to see what would come up, if anyone else is leaving or going out on leave. So if you want a long-term commitment, you should probably look somewhere else.” She couldn’t say that all her other options had turned her down.
“I’d be thrilled with a year,” she said honestly. She didn’t know it, but they had already checked her references with the modeling agency and the law firm, and were impressed by how good they were, in terms of her reliability, her conscientiousness, her professionalism and honesty. She had also completed her student teaching assignments, and the references on them had been excellent too. All Eric Walker needed to decide now was if she was the right teacher for their school. She seemed like a bright, sweet girl. And he was touched by how much she wanted the job.
After he spent forty-five minutes with her, Eric Walker passed her on to his assistant, and she gave Victoria a tour of the school. It was an impressive building with well-kept classrooms, full of alert students using brand-new, very expensive equipment. It was an atmosphere that any teacher would have given anything to teach in, and they all looked like bright, alert, interested, good kids to her. And then she met with the dean of students, who told her something about their student body, and the type of situations she’d face. They were the same as high school students anywhere, except with more money and opportunities, and in some cases very complicated family situations. But difficult home lives were not exclusive to the very rich, nor the poor.
At the end of the second interview, they thanked her for coming, told her they were seeing several other candidates, and would let her know. And after thanking them too, Victoria then found herself out on the street, looking up at the school, praying she would get the job. She had no idea if she would, and they had been so pleasant to her that it was hard to tell if they were just very polite or enthused about her. She didn’t know. She walked west all the way to Fifth Avenue, and then north five blocks, to the Metropolitan Museum, where she saw a new wing of the Egyptian exhibit, and then had lunch in the cafeteria alone, before treating herself to a cab back to her hotel.
She sat in the backseat watching New York slide by and people swarm around like ants in the streets. All she could hope was that she would be part of it one day. She expected to hear back from Madison in a few weeks. And she realized that if she didn’t get the job, she would have to start interviewing at other schools, in Chicago, and maybe even L.A., although the last thing she wanted to do was go home. But if nothing else turned up, she might not have any other choice. She dreaded the thought of living in L.A. again, and even worse, the possibility of living at home, and facing all the same problems she’d always had there. Living with her parents would be too depressing.
She packed her bag and took a cab to the airport. She had an hour to spare before her flight, and she was so anxious after the interview, wondering whether she had done well or not, that she went to the restaurant nearest her gate and ordered a cheeseburger and a hot fudge sundae, and devoured both. She felt stupid once she had. She hadn’t needed it, or the french fries that came with it. But she had been starving and nervous, and the meal she’d eaten offered some comfort and relief from her terrors. What if she didn’t get the job? She told herself that if she didn’t, she’d find something else. But the Madison School was the one she wanted most, if they would just give her a chance. She knew how unlikely that was, fresh out of school.
When they called her flight, she got up, picked up her hand luggage, and headed for the gate. All she could do now was wait and go back to Northwestern. All things considered, for once it hadn’t been a bad Valentine’s Day. And it would be the best one of all if she actually got the job in the end. She was still nervous about it, when she got on the plane, even after the cheeseburger and hot fudge sundae. They hadn’t helped. And she reminded herself as she put on her seat-belt that she would have to be serious about her diet again, and start jogging. Graduation was only three months away. But when she was offered a bag of nuts and another of pretzels, she couldn’t refuse. She ate them absentmindedly as she thought about her interview, hoping she hadn’t blown it in some way, and praying she’d get the job.
Chapter 7
Eric Walker, the head of the Madison School, made the call to Victoria himself in the first week of March. He
