An Almost Perfect Moment (14 page)

A
cold and wet April was followed by a cold and wet May, but the showers brought flowers, and by the end of the month, lilacs and posies and forsythia bloomed and the sun was big and yellow like a daffodil in the sky. Spring fever hit Canarsie High School in epidemic proportions. Young love abounded and hormones were ricocheting off the walls. Boys and girls took all and any opportunity—the few minutes allotted between classes, before and after lunch—to nuzzle in the hallways, and as Mr. Fischel the principal put it, “For Christ’s sake, it’s like a petting zoo around here.”

And what these kids wore to school made Mr. Fischel yearn for the good old days when at least there was a dress code. When students came to school clothed decently and modestly instead of wearing provocative skimpies. Now the boys sat in history and English class as if dressed for a basketball game, and the girls,
Jesus H. Christ,
who could believe their parents let them out like that; shorts
so short you could see practically everything and tube tops, and halter tops which showed more than everything.

Although she was as style conscious as the next girl, Valentine was not wearing short shorts because that Friday morning when she put on her white cutoffs, she found she could not zip them up. The same thing happened when she put on the blue ones; nor could she button her dungaree skirt. Not one thing from last spring season fit her. Valentine felt around her hips and turned in the mirror to check out her butt. These things, metabolism and obesity, are often genetic, and certainly it was possible that Valentine had embarked on the road to rotundity.

The only thing in Valentine’s closet that fit her was a demure dress which had been a gift from her grandmother. It was exactly the sort of dress a grandmother would buy, and later, after Rose had gone home, Valentine had said to her mother, “Ma, I can’t wear this. It’s queer.”

“So don’t wear it.” Miriam was with-it enough to know what the kids did and did not wear and that the consequences of wearing the wrong thing could be dire. “Hang it in your closet, and one night when your grandmother is coming over, you’ll put it on and make her happy.”

Now, in the kitchen, Miriam poured Valentine a glass of orange juice and asked, “That’s the dress Grandma Rose bought you? You know, it’s cute and she always buys quality, but it’s not very becoming on you.” Miriam, so kill her for it, was characteristically honest.

Valentine shrugged and said, “Nothing else fits me. I’ve gained weight.”

“I thought so,” Miriam said. “A few pounds maybe. So we’ll go to the mall tomorrow and get you some new things.”

“I don’t know, Ma. I think maybe I should go on a diet.”

But Miriam disagreed. “It suits you. You were too thin before. You were looking drawn. This is just right.”

Valentine ate four waffles smothered in maple syrup, and still hungry, she rummaged through the pantry for potato chips.

“Potato chips?” Miriam noted. “For breakfast? Who eats potato chips for breakfast?”

For breakfast, John Wosileski ate potato chips because that was all he had in the cupboards. Potato chips, and a can of Dinty Moore stew. There were two Swanson Hungry-Man dinners in the freezer, and fours cans of beer in the refrigerator. It did occur to him that potato chips for breakfast was kind of disgusting, but he couldn’t say that he cared. Try as he did, John couldn’t manage to care about much of anything. No, wait. That—try as he did—isn’t accurate. He didn’t try to care. To make an effort indicates that you at least want to be among the living.

Wiping his fingers on his khaki trousers, potato-chip grease leaving telltale stains, John Wosileski left his dispiriting little apartment, and he was halfway to work when he too was afflicted by spring fever. Not the way the students were touched by the season of rebirth; he did not long to toss a Frisbee, and although he might have liked to kiss a woman, the fever was not concentrated in that area. For John Wosileski, spring fever revealed itself with a keen desire to walk, to walk along Rockaway Parkway, past Avenues J and K without turning to enter Canarsie High School. He was
overtaken with something like a gust of wind propelling him onward, a gust of wind he imagined to be like the wind of childhood cartoons, where the wind was personified and had a face with big, puffy cheeks, the same wind he imagined whenever Father Palachuk made reference to the Holy Ghost. And because this wind was inside of him as opposed to an external force, John Wosileski might very well have been filled with the Spirit, the Spirit telling him to blow off work, not just that day but forever, to walk from Canarsie to East Flatbush to Crown Heights and across the Williamsburg Bridge to Manhattan and from there to the Bronx and from the Bronx to Yonkers following the Post Road all the way to Albany and from there to Plattsburgh. He considered how he could get an apartment in Plattsburgh and a job as a math teacher. Didn’t the career counselor tell him that math teachers were always in demand? Why should Plattsburgh be different in that way from Brooklyn? He could teach math and buy himself a used car and every weekend all winter long he could ski and live as near to a happy life as John Wosileski would ever know.

Before leaving for work, Joanne Clarke gathered up the brochures she’d been perusing; brochures for nursing homes, private nursing homes, spanking-clean places with good medical care and the latest in occupational therapy and recreation—checkers, bingo, and ballroom dancing—for the infirm aged “because you want nothing but the best for your mother or father.”

Not that those prices, I don’t
. Joanne Clarke dumped the glossy brochures in the trash basket.

By no one’s account was Beth Sandler an enthusiastic student, but oh, on that morning she could not wait to get to school. Bounding out of the house with a bunnylike bounce to her step, Beth hurried to get there early; early enough to make out for ten minutes, ten glorious minutes, with Joey Rappaport before the bell rang. Beth Sandler was wildly in love with Joey Rappaport and she thought, on this beautiful spring morning, that she would explode from it. Indeed, love burst from her heart and spread all inside her like strawberry jam. She was, as the expression went, creaming in her jeans.

John Wosileski got as far as Flatlands Avenue, all of three or four blocks toward his dreamed-of destination, before turning back. Any semblance of determination deserted him, the gust of wind died to a standstill when he remembered that he had no money other than the seven dollars in his wallet and the $56.42 in his checking account, which was not enough to buy a used car, never mind first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit on a new apartment. And he’d never get another teaching job if he walked out on this one before the year’s end.

Another man, in the face of this reality, might have retained sufficient spunk at least to plan for a move, to start saving, to work an extra job on weekends, to start looking for a job in the Plattsburgh area. Another man could have made such a move before the start of the new school year, just weeks really before the ski season began. But John Wosileski was not such a man. Inertia stopped him in his tracks. The thought of rallying exhausted him. Laziness, in the
guise of fatalism, won out as he determined that there were no choices for him anyway, that his fate was sealed, and a woeful fate it was. His hope vanished in the same way it happens when you forget what you were going to say. The particulars vaporize, leaving behind nothing but a vague sense of frustration. Many lives are ruined by that, by laziness.

Mr. Fischel walked through the hallways, his eyes taking in far more than he preferred seeing. Legs, thighs, shoulders, bobbling breasts, cleavage galore. It was sickening. At least there was one student, the principal took note, who, in his estimation, was attired for school as opposed to a day at the beach. It was that pretty girl, the one who seemed a little dopey, who distinguished herself by wearing a daisy-print dress, which, although stopping several inches short of her knees, at least allowed her to bend over without showing her underpants. Some of these girls bent over would reveal the whole panties. Mr. Fischel supposed he ought to be grateful that they at least wore panties. God, he hated this job.

Valentine’s assessment that the dress from her grandmother was a queer dress was confirmed when, after homeroom, on her way to art class, she passed by those who had cast her out as irrevocably as Eve from the garden, and Marcia Finkelstein said, “Nice dress, Valentine,” whereupon Beth Sandler and the others giggled their pretty selves silly.

The game was at Edith Zuckerman’s house, not because it was her turn, but because Edith had gotten a new couch, and she wanted to show it off. A white sectional couch. “White?” Miriam questioned the wisdom of that. “Edith, white is going to show every mark and stain. What were you thinking? White.”

“I got the plastic slipcovers,” Edith said. “I’ll keep them on except for when I’m entertaining.”

Miriam made a face. Plastic slipcovers, which weren’t really plastic but vinyl, were horrible. Never mind even how they stuck to your skin, they looked so cheap. You could have a million-dollar couch; if you cover it with those plastic slipcovers, it’ll look like you bought it at Levine’s, that cheesy discount furniture showroom on Flatbush Avenue, the one where he tried to pass off imitation Capodimonte as the real thing.

The day would come when Miriam would be relieved that Edith’s couch was protected with plastic slipcovers; not quite as relieved as Edith would be, but relieved nonetheless because a ruined couch is the sort of thing that could come between friends.

That day, however, was months in the future, a future that none of them could have predicted, not in their wildest dreams, so while Sunny Shapiro spread her hands over the tiles, washing them, Miriam said what she was thinking. “Slipcovers or not,” Miriam said, “I still think you should’ve gone with a print. A nice floral.”

“I know you have an eye”—Judy Weinstein deferred to Miriam this much—“but I think the white is stunning. So she’ll keep the slipcovers on when there’s no one here to see. When she’s got people to impress, she’ll take them off.”

It was a good thing all the way around that Edith never thought of The Girls or their husbands or children as anyone to impress. The Girls and theirs were extended family.

“Did I tell you”—Miriam discarded one tile—“that Rose is going to Israel?”

Sunny Shapiro took a tile from the wall and made a face. Sunny always gave her hand away with those faces she made. “Rose is going to Israel? For a vacation?”

“My mother-in-law went last year,” Judy said. “With the Temple Seniors. She’s still talking about it.”

“Rose has a sister there. In Tel Aviv. They haven’t seen each other in twenty years. Sy, may he rest in peace, had a mortal fear of flying. So she’s going for a visit.” Miriam reached for a cookie. “For a month. It was a spontaneous decision, but it’s been a dream of hers for as long as I can remember.”

“That’s so beautiful. I’m choked up just thinking about it.” Sunny wiped at her eye. “What a joy for her.”

“Girls,” Edith said, “are we gabbing or are we playing?”

Valentine took her gym suit—a hideous outfit if ever there was one, part jumpsuit, part bloomers, and in hospital green—from the locker, and like the other girls getting ready for the volleyball game, she was in a state of undress when Miss Marks, the other gym teacher, the one the girls liked as opposed to Miss Dench whom they all hated, save for the tennis team, came through the locker room blowing her whistle. “Ladies! Ladies!” she called out. “Let’s get a move on it. On the count of—” Miss Marks stopped short, distracted by the sight of Valentine Kessler standing there in her bikini underpants and bra.

From time to time the rumor floated that Miss Marks was a lesbian, and that she, just like Miss Dench, came through the locker room with the express purpose of checking out the half-naked
nubile girls, but this was only a rumor, invariably revived by some mean-spirited girl. While all the girls professed a kind of horror over the possibility, no one ever reported such a thing to either Mr. Fischel the principal or to her parents. The truth of the matter was that whether or not Miss Marks was a lesbian, she came through the locker room with her whistle only because she knew, from experience, that if she did not hurry them along, these girls would dawdle away the forty-minute period and never get on the volleyball court.

Rest assured that there was nothing untoward about Miss Marks stopping short at the sight of Valentine in her underwear. Rather, it was genuine concern which caused her to say, “Valentine, get dressed and meet me in my office.” Then she blew her whistle and ordered everyone onto the court. As the girls filed out of the locker room, Miss Marks selected Terry Ambrose and Mindy Silverman to be team captains and Beverly Johnson would referee. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble out there.”

It did not go unnoticed by the other girls that Valentine Kessler was not among them, which was a good thing because she really stank at volleyball and no one wanted her as a teammate. The gratitude experienced by both teams did not, however, diminish their curiosity and they asked one another what was going on. Why was Valentine in Miss Marks’s office?
Is she in some kind of trouble?

While her class hacked up earthworms in a vain attempt to observe the digestive track, Joanne Clarke put pen to paper and with her signature committed her father to a nursing home. Not to one of the ones advertised in the glossy brochures, but to a state
nursing home, which was something of a snake pit. She told herself that she didn’t want to do this, but that she had to, it was for his own good, and perhaps it was for his own good, and while it was true that, at some point in the future, she really would not have been able to care for him, now, at least some of the time, he found his way to the bathroom. Yes, she did have to prepare food for him, but he could feed himself, and he was happy enough in front of the television set, especially when cartoons were on. She did not
have
to do this; she
wanted
to do this. Yes, it would’ve been nicer all the way around if she’d been able to afford a decent nursing home, a clean and well-staffed place as opposed to the state-subsidized hell-hole to which she was consigning him for the rest of his days. But she couldn’t afford it and any money he had saved, which wasn’t much to begin with, was pretty much gone.