“Can you tie my shoe?” It’s the Saunderson girl again, snotty-nosed and laces dragging. Really, these children have no idea how they interrupt the genius of Ms. Mitty’s inner life!
“Liane,” Ms. Mitty commands, with real vigor in her voice, “by now you should have learned to tie your own laces. Please do so.”
Liane sighs, props one foot on the wastebasket, and promptly overturns it. She starts to whimper.
“Don’t whine!” Ms. Mitty is sharp with whiners. “And tie those laces before you trip.” Liane shuffles off, snuffling. The errant laces trail beside her feet like trolling fishing lines.
There, thinks Ms. Mitty with satisfaction, that’s how you deal with malcontents. With firmness. Firmness is the mark of a leader. She makes Basil stand the basket upright and put the scattered papers—including the illicit computer shamrocks—back in.
Jack had always admired her decisiveness. You’re soft on the outside, Margaret, but your inner core is granite, rock-solid. You’re a natural-born leader. They were lying aboard a Greek fishing vessel in the Mediterranean, and he was rubbing suntan oil on her voluptuous back. After my second term, I’ll devote my energies to your career. Governor, U.S. Senator... who knows how far you could climb. We’ll have to position you so that when opportunity knocks...
President Mitty hears the rapping but chooses to ignore it. How dare they interrupt her in the Oval Office! The noise persists. There is a babble of small voices. “The door. Someone’s at the door.” Then, “Miss Wentworth, Miss Wentworth.”
Ms. Mitty surfaces, realizes the rapping is not opportunity, rather it comes from Amy Peterson, her colleague across the hall. Amy has agreed to knock each day to remind her of lunch. Now she hovers solicitously by Ms. Mitty’s desk while the children jostle and shove themselves into ragged lines.
“Are you okay, Margaret? You looked kind of out of it there for a while.”
“I’m fine,” Ms. Mitty snaps. “The children were just extremely trying this morning.” To prove her point, Basil Bates is writing a computer address on the side chalkboard. Probably the one for shamrocks. “Young man, erase that. Right this minute.” Amy could use an example of decisiveness. Often, Ms. Mitty hears the children in the adjacent classroom. They are usually laughing.
In the lunch line, Ms. Mitty hears the problematic Basil criticizing the day’s meal. “Yuck, it’s mystery meat again. Do you think they slaughtered Mr. Dooly’s dog?”
Ms. Mitty is outraged. “You will eat what’s given to you and stop your complaining,” she says, leaning out of the line and forward for emphasis. Basil looks sullen but takes a proffered slab of thin, gray meat. “Just wait until you get in the Army. You won’t be so fussy then.” She doesn’t hear Basil’s under-his-breath whisper that he intends to go to Yale like his dad, not the freaking Army.
Horsemeat. All they have had to eat for days has been rancid horsemeat. But on such ignoble fare her gallant battalion has managed to storm an artillery site, capture a key city, and hold open the bridge, the crucial bridge to escape, so the last bedraggled prisoners of war can make their way to safety. Jesus, Margaret, a man couldn’t have done it better, her staff sergeant says admiringly. He is a grizzled veteran, his stubbled face lined with years of experience. You’re the kinda general we look up to. You don’t stay in some fancy office sending orders, you come down here in the trenches with your enlisted men. Thanks to you, we’ll be able to bring peace back to this troubled land...
“Peas?” The server behind the hot-lunch counter is holding a scoop of withered green nuggets out to her.
“War,” Ms. Mitty manages to croak. “War and Peace.”
The server’s weathered face crinkles quizzically but she takes the statement as a yes and dumps the overcooked peas onto the plate.
The rest of the day is tedious. Most of them are. Ms. Mitty much prefers the night. Snuggled down under her Great-Aunt Ellen’s quilt, she floats away to foreign lands and alternative lives. All are immensely more satisfying than that of spinster schoolmarm. She is brave. She is beautiful. She excels and is admired. The fate of the world hinges on her decisions. During the velvet night, Ms. Mitty writes Great American Novels, composes Wagnerian arias, replants the fabulous gardens of Versailles around her modest cottage. She is the first woman to step on the moon, the only one to climb Kilimanjaro and back again in a single day.
But not all of her lives are self-serving. Actually, Ms. Mitty specializes in the selfless and heroic. In the soaring night, she discovers a cure for AIDS, heads a wildly successful fund-raising campaign to build six new dormitories at her alma mater, argues a winning capital punishment case before the Supreme Court. (Although here Ms. Mitty is ambivalent. Sometimes, she persuades them to save the poor wretch; at others, she convinces the court to let the evil bastard fry.)
Although she cannot swim, Ms. Mitty saves a drowning child. She ventures out onto thin ice to rescue a freezing mutt. Like John Henry, she props up the timbers of a collapsing coal mine until the men are led to safety. She is exhausted in the morning after such strenuous nights, is barely able to pour her breakfast tea and get to the school in time for playground duty. She manages (barely) to break up a fight between Edgar Belliveau and Basil Bates. And she scoops up the little Saunderson girl, who has fallen off a swing, and while not exactly comforting her (Ms. Mitty hates whiners) she does manage to apply a bandage to her scraped knee. Small triumphs, to be sure, but they all add to the legend of the fabled Ms. Mitty, Woman Extraordinaire.
The school is strangely quiet today. Amy Peterson and one of the other teachers have taken a large group of students to a state music festival. Margaret Wentworth is left with the stragglers from her own classroom and Amy’s. She hands out dittoed maps of the United States, instructs them to fill in the names of the states and their capitals. “Without your books, children. Let’s see how well you know this grand country of ours.” Ms. Mitty is herself a tad hazy when it comes to Iowa and the Dakotas, but knows she can look it up. After all, isn’t that what reference books are for?
The alarm sounds at 11:21. At first, Ms. Mitty (her filly, Marvelous Margaret, is poised at the gate for that all-important first Derby attempt) thinks it’s the starting bell. Then, perhaps, an early reminder of lunch? But then the intercom squawks a message from the principaclass="underline" “This is NOT a practice drill. I repeat, NOT a practice drill. Please take your students and evacuate the building in an orderly fashion.”
Ms. Mitty insists that the children put their maps and pencils away, then makes sure they are formed into orderly lines. She opens the door. The corridor is filled with thick black smoke. “Oh my,” she says, thrilled at the opportunity for her two worlds to mesh. Today, the country will learn that Margaret Wentworth is made of finer stuff.
“Hands, children,” Ms. Mitty says, clasping the tiny palm of the little Saunderson girl. “We’re going to make a crocodile. Everybody take the hand of the person in back of you and don’t let go until I say so.” Coughing, she leads the wobbling line out and towards the stairs.
Smoke clogs Ms. Mitty’s lungs and stings her eyes. She is aware of leaping flames. She stumbles on the stairs. Someone tugs on her skirt. She can’t see him but she recognizes the voice. Her bête noire, Basil Bates.
“Miss Wentworth, Miss Wentworth, we’re going the wrong way! The door is at the other end of the hall!”
“Nonsense!” Ms. Mitty is outraged. How dare he interfere with her heroic rescue! “I’m taking you children upstairs. That’s where the fire escapes are.” The hook-and-ladder captain’s eyes are filled with admiration as she hands her students, one by one, into his strong arms. Save yourself, he begs her. The flames will be upon us any second now. But Ms. Mitty is firm. Not until all the children are down...