Excruciation

Nineteen eighty-four was the year of the great budget shortfall and the shocking number of teacher layoffs in Vermont. Ms. Hicks's department ordinarily had direct encounters with only a handful of individuals whose cases were "vexed" in any given year. In 1984, however, seventy-three teachers were let go by their schools; therefore, Ms. Hicks had to help carry out the exit interviews that were required by state law.

Ms. Hicks considered herself a vexed case. She disliked conversation in general, deplored professional face-to-face encounters of any kind, and could hardly bear contentious exchanges. Her talents as an administrator were research, writing, and what some state legislators called "creative solutions." She had a history of finding ways to resolve conflicts between teachers' unions and school boards.

Governor Richard Snelling, a Republican back in the days when Republicans were still sensible people, had come to admire Ms. Hicks's writing style. Off the record, he told a Times Argus reporter she was the only state employee he'd ever known to make him laugh out loud while reading an annual report. The governor sometimes sent his assistants to ask Ms. Hicks for help writing documents he had to sign or initial.

A diplomat in writing, an oaf in person, was a phrase Ms. Hicks cooked up for herself that she meant to say aloud sometime in the future, perhaps at her retirement party. Meanwhile, she found herself inept and inadequate in her interviews with the sad, angry, and newly unemployed teachers. Beyond their severance pay, she had nothing to offer them. Listening to them was all she could do.

She'd spoken with ten teachers, and she had two more to go when she encountered Lucretia Taft, a young woman from Maine who'd been terminated after her first year of teaching junior and senior English at Hazen Union School in Hardwick. Ms. Hicks met Ms. Taft in a conference room in the Pavilion, the government building on State Street in Montpelier. The two of them sat catty-corner at a table with ten empty chairs.

"I'm Cretia," Ms. Taft said when they shook hands. "Do you mind if I call you Hazel?" Ms. Hicks said she didn't mind. She supposed she didn't, though it struck her as peculiar for professional women twenty years apart in age to be on a firstname basis within a minute of meeting each other. "I'd looked forward to saying all four syllables of your name," she said. Cretia cocked her head then grinned.

While they settled themselves at the table, Ms. Hicks noted that Cretia had brought no papers to the occasion. The other teachers had placed documents on the table before them. When Ms. Hicks looked directly into Cretia's face she felt a slight stop in her breathing. Neither pretty nor beautiful occurred to her—they didn't apply—but Ms. Hicks could think of no single word for beyond beautiful.

Lucretia Taft's hair was red and curly, her skin was that pale pink that always seems to be on the verge of blushing, her lips were full, and her eyes were the blue of early twilight. Her skirt, blouse, and jacket, however, were impeccably modest. Ms. Hicks thought Cretia must constantly have to tone down her appearance to keep people from gawking. Ms. Hicks forced herself to stop staring at the young woman.

Cretia was smiling, not so much at Ms. Hicks but evidently at the room itself. Her demeanor suggested she'd come to this interview to accept a job rather than to beg to be allowed to keep the one she had. Ms. Hicks knew that she was twenty-three years old, a graduate of Bates, and the only first-year teacher in the history of Hazen Union School ever to receive a perfect score in her first annual evaluation.

"Have you ever taught?" Ms. Hicks shook her head. In fact, when she was a graduate student at Columbia she'd had a semester of student teaching at PS 75 Emily Dickinson on West End Avenue. Rather than explain to Cretia that she...