I was wrong about things going back to some approximation of normal,
I mean.
The problem had
begun percolating along back in February, but nobody know because
Allen didn’t tell anybody, and he didn’t appreciate what might
come to go wrong.
There was ayearling
who tried to attach herself to him. That sort of thing wasn’t
uncommon—the program depended on personal connections between
students and staff, of course, and they often begin when a student
gravitates towards one of the masters. Then, too, Allen, like Kit,
sometimes became the object of student crushes. Unlike Kit, he was
never comfortable being a sex symbol and tried to ignore such
attention as best as he could, but the line between the different
types of student interest was definitely fuzzy and could shift.
This yearling in
particular struck Allen as unusual, partly because her
interests—mostly visionary mysticism—were nothing he was
qualified to help her with. Several times he suggested she reach out
to Kit, but she wouldn’t, only to him. But there was something else
that seemed “off,” as he explained later, as though her neediness
had an aggressive edge. It made him uncomfortable. But he also found
her funny, charming, and with a fascinatingly original mind, so he
allowed the connection to grow despite his discomfort and didn’t
think to bring the matter up with the others.
“I don’t
know how to think about emotions and relationships,” he told us,
later. “That’s why I became a psychologist, to figure that stuff
out. And it’s not like I was at my professional best that spring….”
Of
course not. His best friend was dying from cancer.
In
June, he started to notice some “red flags,” as he put it. This
woman had been having frequent hallucinations—visions—but a lot
of people on campus did. Allen had learned long since that seeing or
hearing or believing things that others don’t isn’t necessarily a
sign of psychosis and is in fact a normal form of spirituality for
some people. But this woman seemed different. Something was “off.”
He began to wonder if perhaps she might be mentally ill. He couldn’t
diagnose her because that isn’t his area of expertise and because
he was not in a position to formally evaluate her—Allen never takes
on students as individual clients, believing such to be a threat to
professional objectivity. He did try to gently suggest that she make
an appointment with one of his colleagues, but she refused, deeply
offended. He spoke to Greg
and got her excused from Zazen as a precaution, but felt deeply
uncertain about what else, if anything, he should do.
Finally,
just after Litha, the woman’s mental health appeared to
destabilize—Allen hasn’t
told us exactly what that involved, considering that information
private to her, but has said that he feared for her safety. He begged
her to seek help, but she refused, insisting that she was not sick,
only spiritually gifted. She again asked him to teach her to use her
gift, but he declined,
directing her towards Kit or Joy, but she
remained focused on him, blaming his lack of support for the trouble
she was having. She begged him not to tell anyone.
The
impasse continued for two weeks, with Allen unsure of how to
negotiate his various conflicting loyalties. Eventually, he called
her parents and arranged for her to be temporarily involuntarily
committed for evaluation.
She
never forgave him.
In
early August, the woman’s parents formally filed a lawsuit against
the school. I’m not going
to get into the legal details about any of this—as you may recall,
in telling our story I’ve changed certain details to hide our real
identities, but for obvious reasons I must exercise special care here
and simply leave a lot of details out. It is imperative that nobody
know which real legal incident I’m referring to. Suffice it to say,
then, that the school in general, and Allen in specific, were blamed
for the woman’s mental
illness based on a subtle misrepresentations of what had actually
happened.
We
had no liability insurance. We had always trusted our students and
employees not to sue us unless we deserved it.
The
Six (all five of them) called an emergency meeting, inviting the
non-teaching masters and the allies as well—so I was at that
meeting, seated with the others in an outer ring around the Six out
in the privacy of the Apple Orchard.
After
we reviewed the situation, Allen spoke up.
“I’ll
resign,” he said. “Then you can scapegoat me.”
“Don’t
be ridiculous,” Kit scoffed.
“How
am I being ridiculous?” he replied, indignant. “It might work,
it’s me she’s angry at. Give me to her and the rest of you can go
on with your work. I’m trying to
be selfless, here.”
“If
we do that,” Kit said, rather curtly, “we won’t deserve
to go on with our work.”
Allen
threw up his hands, scoffing
at her scoffing. His anger,
guilt, and hurt made him sound tight, confused, and a little hyper.
Hers made her short-tempered,
ungentle. We were all picking on each other to some extent. But Kit’s
assessment held; the school would survive morally intact or not at,
and there was nothing Allen could do to change our minds, though we
did try.
We
tossed around various options and then decided that we could not
decide without more information. Steve agreed to look into the legal
details of the situation, while John—I’ve hardly talked about
him, but he had succeeded Malachai as treasurer—agreed to conduct a
thorough audit of our financial resources. We adjourned.
A
few days later, we were back. Curiously, not as many attended that
meeting, just the Six, most of the non-teaching masters, Steve,
and me. I think some of the others had responsibilities that kept
them elsewhere, but some may have anticipated what would happen at
that meeting and not wanted to see it. Their presence wasn’t
strictly necessary because decision-making power for major issues
rested with the Six alone. I was there, not to influence the outcome
of the meeting, but to support my friends, particularly Allen, who
was having a very hard time.
Steve
presented his report, and it wasn’t good; in his view, the suit
might well be successful, and any qualified lawyer would likely recommend settling out of court. He gave us an estimate for the sum likely involved.
"We can't afford that," asserted John."And we can't raise that much, not in the amount of time we have."
"You might be able to find a lawyer who can negotiate it down," suggested Steve. "But I can't, that's not my area of law. We don't have any allies who can handle it, you'll have to hire someone at standard rates--and that's likely to eat up most of the savings you could hope to achieve. You could fight the lawsuit in court, but you'll have to pay a lawyer even more, and you might still lose."
We asked various questions and raised various suggestions, trying to wiggle out of the situation, but John and Steve had already thought of all of it and patiently explained why none of it would work.
"So, our only chance here is to fight it in court and win," summarized Kit. I could see magics aimed at prevailing in legal matters boiling in her brain. But Karen shook her head.
"We couldn't fight the charges in court without explaining how the school works, and the larger society isn't kind to entities like ours. Anyway, our entrance examination would be compromised," she said.
As you may recall, our "entrance exam" means simply that prospective students must recognize that the school exists and ask to join it--that wouldn't work if the true nature of the school were not secret.
"We are back where we were when Allen offered to be scapegoat," said Greg, who has a talent for forcing others to confront bad news. "Our only option for preserving the school's heartbeat risks losing its heart. It is time for us to choose between those two options, perhaps."
We all stared at each other, stricken.
"Wait!" said Kit, holding onto her chair with both hands and not looking at anyone. "I'm not comfortable doing this with an empty chair." As in all their meetings in recent months for whatever discussion topic, they had set up six chairs in the inner circle, since they were the Six, but the sixth chair, Charlie's was empty.
"We miss him, too," said Greg, gently.
"No, that's not what I mean," she said. "Yes, I do miss him--" and I saw Joy's jaw drop open. Apparently, there were things about Kit I knew but Joy did not. Kit was looking straight ahead and so she could not see Joy's expression beside her. Kit took a deep breath. "I nominate Daniel," she said.
And they all looked at me.
"I second the nomination," said Greg, with some consideration. Allen "thirded" it enthusiastically and unecessarily, there being no call for thirding motions in the simple rules of order the masters use, and the others chuckled a little.
Almost I refused. I can't replace Charlie! I thought. I didn't think I could even succeed him--I didn't want to succeed him, because I didn't want him to be dead in the first place. I felt so far from ready, so far from confident, that I wanted to run and hide, or at least bubble with protests and alternative nominations.
But to do any of that would have been to dishonor Charlie, first because he clearly had been training me to succeed him, and second because he had trained me not to act like an irrational child. I was the best choice, and only a denial of reality could say otherwise. After all, when the Six called a meeting to decide the future of the school, I had shown up.
"Alright," I said, through a strange terror.
Greg was Group Head at the time, so he took charge of the procedings.
"Any objections?"
There were none.
"I believe you know how to complete the ritual?" he asked me. I did--I'd sat in on enough meetings by then to know the words with which they sealed decisions.
I said them.
"This is our consensus, that I, Daniel Kretzman, will be one of the Six henceforth. Yes." Each of the others said yes in turn, and it was done. The terror passed, but I felt dazed. I got up and moved to occupy the previously empty sixth chair. Allen and Greg, who sat on either side of me, clapped me on the shoulder in a congratulatory way.
Then we got down to business.
That night, when I got home, June noticed right away that something was amiss. She started asking questions before I could even sit down.
"They made me a member of the Six," I said, a bit unwillingly. It was what I had always wanted, I'd realized, but not like this.
"That's wonderful," she responded, in tones suggesting she knew there was another shoe to drop.
"And then we voted to close and disband the school," I told her.
