It wasn’t the rumors about the judge that made Miss Marbledale decide she had to get out of the building for lunch. It wasn’t even her runins with Alice McGuffie and Judy Cornish. Those women might be on opposite sides of the political divide, but they had identical tendencies to shriek. And their children, Miss Marbledale thought, were identically warped by their enthusiasms. Granted, she’d rather have a student like Mallory Cornish than one like Barbie McGuffie any day of the week. Mallory was going to get stellar SATs and go off to a name college one of these days, and she would always know how to respond to Shakespeare and have her history homework outlined in the meantime. Still, Mallory was in her own way just as much of a bully as Barbie, and in this time and place that was going to cause a lot of trouble. People like Judy Cornish didn’t understand what the issues were. They thought they did, but they didn’t. Catherine Marbledale was ready to bet lots of money that Judy Cornish had been a popular girl in a high school where popular girls had damned well better have the grades to go off to someplace first rate, or they wouldn’t be popular at all.
Catherine was just thinking of calling her sister, Margaret, for moral support when one of the secretaries in the outer office buzzed her, and she found herself face to face with little Mrs. Morton. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember the woman’s first name. What did that say about the state of her memory? The Mortons were town, not development. Catherine had had Ted Morton in class when she was still teaching. For all she knew, she’d had this woman too, although she couldn’t remember it. It was hard to tell. It was hard to bring her into focus. She was a mousy thing, and she was in tears.
“I’m very sorry, I really am, about the way Elaine behaved,” Mrs. Morton said, sniffling, “and I do know there’s no excuse. But I can’t help but thinking, well—you know. I mean, it isn’t really her fault, is it? I mean, it’s her fault that she made fun of those other girls, yes, I understand that, and it was wrong to write things on them, you can’t trust Barbie McGuffie, really, she’s too forward. But still.”
The day looked cold and hard outside the office window, and Catherine was tired. “But still what?” she asked. “I should think it’s a fairly simple issue.”
“But it isn’t, is it?” Mrs. Morton said. “I mean, I heard you speak at the school board, you know, and I know how you feel about this, but it’s a controversial issue, isn’t it? It’s controversial. People say all kinds of things about it. You don’t know who to believe.”
“People say all kinds of things about bullying?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Morton said. “About evolution. They say all sorts of things about that. It’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it? And everybody has the right to their opinion.”
“Mrs. Morton,” Catherine said, dredging up the energy from she didn’t know where, “evolution is not a matter of opinion. Evolution is a fact.”
“Well, I know you think so,” Mrs. Morton said, “but that’s just your opinion, isn’t it? Other people don’t agree with it. And everybody has the right to express his opinion. That’s free speech, isn’t it?”
“It has nothing to do with free speech. Would you want our science classes to teach that the earth is flat, or that water flows up?”
“Well, no, of course not,” Mrs. Morton said, “but that’s the thing, you see. That’s the difference. Those are things everybody knows. There’s nothing controversial about those. But this is something else. It’s not like water flowing up.”
“It’s exactly like water flowing up,” Catherine said.
“If it was, there wouldn’t be so much disagreement about it,” Mrs. Morton said.
She really was a mousy thing, Catherine thought, staring at the top of her head. Her hair frizzed. It was some light color, or maybe an absence of color. And she looked mulish, the way children do when they refuse to be persuaded that they are not going to get their own way.
“I think it’s wrong to tell people they can’t express their opinions,” Mrs. Morton said. “I do. It’s un-American. It’s against free speech. Everybody should be able to express their opinion. And everybody should have their opinion heard. That’s all that Franklin Hale and the school board want, and I don’t think it’s right that you won’t let them have it. I think that’s what causes these—these situations.”
“You think your daughter is writing nasty words on the backs of other students because she can’t get her opinion heard on evolution? What’s stopping her? She can express her opinion about anything she wants.”