Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 1. Whole No. 791, July 2007

Ms. Mitty by Brenda Joziatis

The character Walter Mitty, from the Thurber story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and later the movie of that title starring Danny Kaye, is one of those fictional creations that have a life beyond the work in which they were born. Says author Brenda Joziatis, “I always thought there should be a female version [of Walter Mitty]... We all have dreams. The only reason I didn’t give Ms. Mitty the Pulitzer was because I was reserving that particular fantasy for myself.”

Ms. Mitty, also known as Margaret Wentworth, knows she is made for better things. During the day, she wears brown cardigans, slightly pilled, and high granny shoes, tightly laced. The latter support her weak ankles. But in free moments, when she lets her mind wander to what should be reality, it is a different story.

She has just performed a triple jump that brings the Olympic crowd to its feet. Ending in an arabesque that threatens to split her skimpy cerise costume, she bows her head modestly, accepting the plaudits of the audience. MargaretMargaretMargaret, they chant. The judges hold up their cards: all tens. She skates around the arena, waving and blowing kisses. Later, the gold medal bouncing between her perky breasts...

The children have finished with the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Mitty sighs and removes her hand from her ample chest. It’s March. She supposes she can have them cut shamrocks this week. But when she suggests it, their reaction is lukewarm. “Do we hafta?” whines the little Saunderson girl.

“Yes,” says Ms. Mitty. “Spring is coming. In Ireland, it’s already green.”

Basil Bates looks at her sceptically. “How do you know?”

“Well,” says Ms. Mitty, “I just know. They get spring sooner in Ireland.”

She was reluctant to go — What about Jackie? — but Jack had insisted. I want to show you my father’s land, the thatched cottages, the stone ruins, the Dublin pubs. So she smiled, that wistful little smile that he loved, and packed her bags. They took Air Force Six, the plane he kept for just such assignations. (The bigots called it Air Force Sex, but she ignored them.) Jack quoted Yeats to her over the ocean and they landed in a world of emerald green. Oh, how she sorrowed later in the administration when news of Dallas came crackling over the radio...

“Did you watch the Academy Awards?” The question comes from Serena but is really addressed to her classmates, not her teacher. The room instantly fills with whistles and catcalls.

“Whoo-ee! Some babes!” “Did you see Sharon Stone? I thought her boobs were gonna fall out of her dress!”

Ms. Mitty tries to run a tight ship but is increasingly unsuccessful. She shushes the rowdy ones, turns to Serena, and answers with dignity: “No, dear, I didn’t happen to watch them. Not this year.”

Everyone had told her this was her year. And they were right. She makes her way up the aisle, her mouth a moue of humble disbelief. Her gown is a simple black sheath, slit so her gorgeous legs show as she climbs to the stage. An Oscar de la Renta, of course. Elegant, chic, its very name a portent of what the evening holds. Best Actress. Her peers give her a standing ovation. Tears glisten in her eyes. She blinks them back. I want to thank the little people, she says. Without you, all of you, I couldn’t have done it. This (she waves the golden Oscar high in the air) belongs to all of us...

“Look, Miss Wentworth. I made enough for all of us.” Basil Bates is tugging at her sweater, flourishing a sheaf of shamrocks. Ms. Mitty, still trying to decide if maybe a fiery political diatribe might be more appropriate for the Academy Awards, has trouble focusing.

“Where did you get those, Basil?” She is sure that last year’s fourth-graders had taken their shamrocks home.

“From the computer,” Basil says. “I just did a Web search for shamrocks and printed these for coloring. We can make them orange or pink or purple even.”

This is too much! Basil is an arrogant little creature, she decides. If there’s one thing she hates worse than computers, it’s children who are proficient at using them. Ms. Mitty tries, but the thing always seizes up on her, leaves boxes with indecipherable messages, reduces her to a frazzle that borders on tears.

“Shamrocks are always green,” she informs Basil. Then: “Computers will destroy your creativity. We don’t need computers in Miss Wentworth’s classroom.” She hands out scissors, green construction paper, dittoed shamrock patterns. “This is how we do it in Miss Wentworth’s classroom.”

What type of computer do you use? asks the book reviewer for the New York Times.I don’t, she says sweetly. I compose my poems by hand, letter by exquisite letter, with a Parker fountain pen given me by my late father. The paper, of course, is handmade ragfashioned by my administrative assistant, the ink hand-ground and imported from Thailand...

“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 principal: “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...

“Besides,” she adds, “most of the smoke seems to be down here. The air will be clearer up there.”

Basil is frantic. “No, it won’t. Smoke rises.”

Does it? Science has never been Margaret Wentworth’s strong suit. Still, it won’t do to admit that before the children. “End of the line, Basil,” Ms. Mitty manages to choke out. “Follow me.”

Basil disappears. Or at least his voice ceases. Ms. Mitty struggles up the stairs to the landing, a turn, then up another. The children are like dead weights behind her. She is crawling now and see, the air is fresher here near the floor. She drags the children, every one precious to her, to a classroom with an open door, props them near what seem to be the windows, opens one. Too late to find the fire escapes; she’ll just have to drop them into the nets. “Help,” she croaks. “Help us.” The fire engines are just turning the corner.

As she loses consciousness, Margaret Wentworth sees the thick smoke form itself into thirty-six-point black headlines: GALLANT TEACHER SAVES CLASS FROM FLAMES.

When she wakes up, she is in a hospital bed. The patient in the next bed has the evening news on, and a solemn anchorman is intoning: “The death toll continues to mount in the tragic fire at the Timmons Free Elementary School. Police and fire officials are puzzled as to why veteran teacher Margaret Wentworth led her charges to the second floor and away from a safe exit. Six children were critically burned, another six died of smoke inhalation.” The announcer’s voice turns fatuous. “Among the survivors is ten-year-old Basil Bates, shown here with his friend Edgar Belliveau. Basil and Edgar managed to make it out the front door of the school and alert authorities as to the whereabouts of the missing children and their teacher. Firemen say they might never have found the group otherwise.”

The scene cuts to an on-the-spot reporter. “How's it feel to be a hero, Basil?” But Margaret Wentworth mercifully loses consciousness again before she can hear the little twit’s reply.

When she wakes a second time, a tall blond doctor is standing at the end of her bed. He takes her vitals, asks how she’s feeling. Margaret Wentworth’s eyes fill with tears.

The doctor pats her hand sympathetically. “The police want a few words with you, but I told them you weren’t ready yet.”

Margaret Wentworth nods. It’s too painful to speak. The doctor pats her hand again. You’ve been through a horrible ordeal, little lady. He looks at her meaningfully. You and I both know that the full story will never come out, that the wolves are always waiting in the wings to criticize. It’s highly probable that Basil and Edgar, those two ruffians, set the fire themselves so they could bask in the spotlight. But why ruin young lives, even heinous ones? You, my dear Ms. Wentworth, will take the blame. But it won’t be for naught. I’ve been searching all my life for a woman like you, tough, dauntless, dare I say noble? This summer, I plan to leave my lucrative practice and go to darkest Africa. The need for medical attention has never been greater there. Might I dare ask, might I dare hope, that you—the incomparable Margaret Wentworth—will accompany me?”

© 2007 by Brenda Joziatis