“It is not all right to humiliate them,” said Warden. “I’ve heard reports of these outbursts all year. If you cannot control your temper, you will need to find another job.”
Farnham was not visibly shaken by the threat. “Why did you never bring this up before?” he asked.
A valid question. Warden said he had hoped Farnham would come to control himself. Farnham brushed aside the answer.
“It’s not professional of you,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing all year, and suddenly my job is on the line. Why didn’t you mention these reports the other day, when I was helping you with your lesson plans?”
That was a direct hit. Warden had to respect the bastard for launching an effective counterattack.
“I had other things on my mind,” said Warden. Farnham responded by cataloguing Warden’s administrative errors for the year to date: the lost student essays in September, the forgotten departmental meeting in October, the failure to order all the books needed for the fall semester.
“You’re permitted to make mistakes all the time,” said Farnham, “and then you defend yourself by claiming outside distractions. But I’ve got to be perfect, is that it? Has it occurred to you that I might have something on my own mind as well?”
“Yes,” said Warden. “Do you wish to divulge it now?” Here we go, he thought. He’s going to confess to me that he’s hopelessly in love with my wife. What am I going to say?
“It’s this play,” said Farnham. His manner changed. He was less hostile, more defeated. “I want it to be perfect. This is my very first time to direct Shakespeare, and so far it’s a mess.”
It was a radical departure from what Warden had expected to hear. The play? Could the man become so unhinged over a play?
“This play provides my opportunity to make a reputation for myself at Montpelier,” said Farnham. “If it goes well, I’ve proved my competence. If it doesn’t, I’m a public failure. At this point nothing has gone right.” He listed his casting problems, rehearsal problems, staff problems. “What gets me is that I have to do it all by myself. You haven’t been down once to check on a rehearsal. You haven’t once asked whether you could do anything to help. Shouldn’t the department chairman take a little more interest in the activities of his department?”
Yes, damn it, all right, he had a point.
“Everything you say is true,” said Warden. He considered himself a terrible administrator. If Eldridge Lane had spent more time on the campus, Warden would probably have been eased out of the chair anyway. But it was not fair of Farnham to change the subject of their meeting. “Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless,” Farnham interrupted him, “these outbursts are unforgivable.”
“Yes,” said Warden.
“I agree,” said Farnham.
They sat in silence for a moment. Warden recalled Kevin Delaney and his fanatic devotion to basketball, and Kemper Carella and his late-night training sessions for wrestlers. He acknowledged his own enslavement to poetry.
“I never considered how important the play might be to its director,” said Warden. “That was literally thoughtless.”
Farnham said he had been cutting the text and planning the blocking for months. “The only comment you ever made to me,” he said, “was that you thought we should do another play. Now today you’ve called me in and blindsided me with a threat of firing me.”
Guilty, guilty, guilty. “You’ve raised some sensitive issues,” said Warden. He was unsure of what to say next.
“I know I’ve been irresponsible,” Farnham said, “but you’ve given me no support. Your wife has been much more understanding.”
That hurt, but Farnham was right. Warden had never warmed up to him. “I apologize,” said Warden. “I offer no excuse.”
Warden’s apology took the last heat out of Farnham’s voice. “Thank you,” said Farnham. “And I apologize in turn for my rudeness. I’m not always so outspoken.”
After the storm, both men relaxed into the spirit of mutual disarmament.
“Have you always had a temper?” asked Warden.
“Ever since I was born.”
A birthmark. Neither man used the term.
Farnham told him of learning to cope by expressing his rage externally. “I used to keep all my anger suppressed,” he said. “Then I developed an ulcer when I was thirteen years old. I’ve learned that I can avoid irritating the ulcer if I go ahead and ventilate my anger. When I’m alone, I’ll even throw things. My internist encourages that. Push-ups are good, too.” He said he was also trying more long-term solutions, like counseling.
“I’ve met with Chuck Heilman a couple of times informally,” said Farnham. “My problem is that I lose my temper too quickly. It’s the short fuse syndrome.”
“Do these informal counseling sessions help?”
“Not really.” He smiled. “Heilman says the best solution is for me to find a wife. It’s all sexually oriented, he says.”
“That sounds like Chuck,” said Warden. He thought Heilman was an aphoristic imbecile in most cases, but he wondered whether their minister had stumbled onto the truth this time. It was the moment to talk about Cynthia, about Farnham’s notorious infatuation with her, but how could he?
“Do you have a steady girlfriend?” Warden asked.
The question flustered Farnham only for a moment. “You might say I’m coming to terms with that issue,” he said. “My fiancee broke up with me in Alabama when I took a job at a rural, all-male boarding school. She wanted to practice law in a big city.”
Warden asked him why it was so important to him to work at Montpelier. “Didn’t your future wife matter more to you than the place you taught English?” he asked.
“I was ambitious. Maybe I made the wrong choice,” said Farnham. “But this was an opportunity to work with a nationally prominent poet.”
“Me?”
“I chose working for you over marriage,” said Farnham. “It hasn’t been what I expected.”
Warden was flattered, flabbergasted, stunned.
Farnham told him about discovering Warden’s poetry in little magazines when he was in graduate school, then finding the
