An Almost Perfect Moment (7 page)

“I was thinking we could go to Beefsteak Charlie’s,” he said. Beefsteak Charlie’s boasted an All-You-Can-Eat Shrimp and Salad Bar.

After solidifying plans with John, Joanne Clarke went to her father’s room. “Dad,” she said, softly but hoping to wake him all the same, because she had to tell somebody. “Dad.”

His eyes opened and Joanne’s father smiled at her in recognition, which was yet another reason for her to be happy.

“Dad,” she said. “Guess what? I’ve got a date for Saturday night. With a nice man. Another teacher.”

Mr. Clarke’s smile twisted into something else and he let go with a hair-raising shriek worthy of Edvard Munch.

Nine days came between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas, and like the way a seesaw goes, as the holiday anticipation for the Catholic and Protestant families soared high, the Jews plunked down. Their holidays were over, and the snowmen, the Santa Clauses, the angels, the trees, the lights, the colored balls, the tinsel, all of it was a big party to which they weren’t invited. Aiming for stoicism, they acted like they couldn’t have cared less. They tried to go about their lives, business as usual, but still, you couldn’t ignore it completely. Not when your next-door neighbors, the Sabatinis, had Christmas carols coming from a loudspeaker hooked up to a Santa in a sleigh with the eight reindeer on the roof of their house.

“Honestly, Miriam. I don’t know how you stand it,” Sunny Shapiro said. “It would drive me up a wall. Five Bam.”

Miriam exchanged three tiles. “They’re good people and good neighbors. Once a year, I can put up with it.”

“Last night,” Edith Zuckerman said, seemingly apropos of nothing, “I dreamed we were at a tournament and all my tiles were blank. I kept picking tiles and there was nothing on them. Then I looked down and saw I was naked except I was wearing elf shoes. Pung.” Edith had a hand of three Four Dots.

Nor could they escape from the Christmas specials on televi
sion, The Charlie Brown one and
Miracle on 34th Street
and that movie with Jimmy Stewart which was shown practically nonstop.

And how everyone said, “Merry Christmas,” as if it were a universal greeting.

It’s a depressing time for Jews, no matter what they might say to the contrary.

Of the Jewish contingent of Canarsie, only Beth Sandler and Joey Rappaport seemed genuinely unaffected by the Christmas tidings and joy. That’s because they were fucking like bunnies, which was one of the reasons Beth hadn’t called Valentine for days. When she wasn’t thusly engaged, she preferred talking with her other friends. So now, when she did call, Valentine said, “Beth? Beth who? I don’t know anyone named Beth.”

“Come on, Valentine. Give me a break here. I’m sorry I haven’t called you. Really I am.”

And so all was forgiven, and once all was forgiven, Beth filled Valentine in on all she’d been up to, sparing no details. “You would not believe how good it feels.”

“Like what? Compare it to something.” Valentine stretched out on her bed, as if to prepare herself for the sensuality of the analogy.

Beth thought for a moment and then said, “It’s really not like anything else, but it’s a little bit like, you know, when you have to pee
sooooo
bad, like you’re holding it for hours, and then finally you can. It kind of feels good like that.”

“It feels like peeing?” Valentine’s voice registered disillusionment. “Peeing isn’t so great.”

“Trust me on this one,” Beth said. “You’ve got to do it. It’s better than peeing.”

As if she were madly in love, which she wasn’t exactly, Joanne Clarke entertained a light-headed, silly mood which prompted her to stop into Woolworth’s on her way home from the beauty parlor, where she’d gotten herself a fresh haircut. Really just a trim, a shaping. There, at Woolworth’s, she bought a Christmas tree. Neither fir nor spruce, but spurious. A fake. An impostor. A polystyrene put-up job that wasn’t even as tall as her legs. But it was a Christmas tree nonetheless, Adirondack green, and it came fixed on a stand. Joanne Clarke hadn’t had a Christmas tree since her mother died, which was a long time ago. To decorate her tree, she bought one box of little gold-colored balls, one box of candy canes, and a package of tinsel.

As she exited Woolworth’s, Joanne Clarke did not take notice of the obese woman and her pretty daughter entering through the adjacent door, which was a blessing because the sight of Valentine Kessler might very well have diminished her moment of holiday cheer.

Miriam Kessler went directly to the party-goods section in search of those little paper umbrellas used to garnish tropical drinks. Miriam wanted them to decorate a pineapple cake.

Valentine wandered off in some other direction in search of who knows what. Now that Valentine was no longer a child, her wanderings no longer caused Miriam the consternation they once did, when, whether it would be in Macy’s or Stern’s or in the A&P, it didn’t matter, Miriam would suddenly find her hand holding empty space, air, instead of little Valentine’s hand. Miriam’s
heart would jolt and she’d go racing up and down the aisles until, inevitably, she found her child either in the toy department or jewelry or fine furnishings or frozen foods. That, or else over the public-address system she would hear, “Would Valentine’s mother please come to the manager’s office.” There, Valentine would be waiting for Miriam, her mother who would be short of breath and nauseous from worry, but Valentine would be as tranquil as the Buddha, licking the lollipop lost children are invariably given.

Now Miriam was confident that, when the time came, she and Valentine would find each other, and sure enough Miriam spotted her daughter in one of the several aisles devoted to Christmas. She was fingering a miniature fir tree. Not a real tree. Not like Miriam’s little bonsai. This tree was made from wire and silver bristles like a garland. It was less than a foot high, in a foil-covered pot. From its branches hung little silver balls.

John Wosileski’s apartment was devoid of Christmas spirit, but at his parents’ apartment there was a plastic wreath on the door and another one on the coffee table. Seven Christmas cards, all from far-flung relatives, were displayed on a shelf. One card was particularly beautiful. It depicted the Nativity scene and the snow was real crystal flakes, like glitter but white. The Wosileskis no longer put up a tree. Mrs. Wosileski said it was because John wasn’t a little boy anymore, so why go through all the trouble and expense, but really it was because of that one Christmas Eve ten years ago already, when his father, drunk and angry, kicked the tree over and stomped the glass balls to bits. The plastic wreaths were all that survived that year. Everything else broke for keeps.

After the groceries were put away, Joanne Clarke undid the knot in the rope around her father’s ankle. The other end of the rope was tied to his bedpost. Before anyone gets aghast at the idea that she kept her father on a leash, understand that she had no choice. If she didn’t, he would leave the apartment and roam the streets of Brooklyn clad only in a bathrobe for warmth. Twice already the police brought him home that way, and Joanne simply could not afford a full-time sitter for him. Besides, he didn’t seem to mind.

“Come here,” she said, holding out her hand for her father to take. “I have a surprise for us.” She led him to the living room, to the artificial tree. “Do you know what that is?” she asked him.

“A puppy,” he said.

“No. It’s a Christmas tree. We’re going to decorate it. Won’t that be fun?”

“I don’t know.” He scratched his genitals.

“Well, it will be fun. Here. Let me show you.” Joanne opened the package of tinsel and pulled out a few strands, letting them fall onto the branches of the fake tree. “Like that,” she said. “Do you think you can do that?”

Joanne busied herself with the gold balls, placing them just so, not too close together, not too far apart, and all the while she sang “Winter Wonderland” and allowed herself to hope that maybe next Christmas would be entirely different, maybe, just maybe, by next Christmas she might even be married and she and John would have a real tree. When the last ball was hung, and Joanne went for the candy canes, she caught sight of her father stuffing a handful of tinsel into his mouth. Before he could swallow, she grabbed him,
squeezing his cheeks hard between her fingers with one hand to force him to open wide. With her other hand, she reached in and pulled out the tinsel, which was wet with saliva. “Did you have to ruin this too?” she snapped at her father.

Her father began to cry, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why he was crying.

On the morning of the last day of school before the Christmas vacation, which would later come to be called Winter Recess, John Wosileski entered his classroom to find, on his desk, a little silver Christmas tree in a pot. He looked around to see if there was a card to tell him who’d left it there, but he couldn’t find one. With no evidence to the contrary, he assumed it was from Joanne Clarke. This assumption did not intoxicate him, but it wasn’t entirely dissatisfying either. Even though he didn’t much care for the thing—who really wants a tinfoil tree in a pot—no one before, other than his mother, had ever given him a Christmas gift, and she always gave him things like flannel shirts and underwear. John started to walk to the door, to cross the hall, to thank Joanne for the gift, when he was brought up short by the sight of Valentine Kessler just outside his door. He had no idea how long she’d been there looking in, but when their eyes met, she turned and took off like a little deer bounding through the forest. John went back to his desk, reminding himself that he’d have to thank Joanne later.

Valentine made a beeline for the girls’ room, the ubiquitous puke-green bathroom on the 2nd floor, barging in on Beth Sandler, Leah Skolnik, and Marcia Finkelstein, all of whom went deadly quiet
when they saw Valentine. This sudden halt of what had been an animated conversation could very well have been an indication that Valentine was the subject of said animated conversation except then Marcia Finkelstein said, “Not in front of the virgin.” The three of them giggled and toyed with their gold heart-shaped lockets with diamond chips in the center.

Between the fifth and sixth period of that last school day before Christmas vacation, which might as well be a vacation day for all the work that gets done, John Wosileski and Joanne Clarke met up in the hall. “Thank you,” he said to her, and she said, “For what?”

“For the tree,” he said, and missing a few beats, she said, “Oh, don’t thank me. It was nothing.”

Christmas Eve found: John Wosileski at St. Stanislaw’s, sitting in a pew beside his mother; Beth Sandler and Joey Rappaport boinking in the backseat of Joey’s Ford Torino; Joanne Clarke and her father watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
on television; Miriam Kessler in the kitchen picking at the remains of the chicken they had for dinner; and Valentine Kessler in her bedroom, at the window, her gaze fixed on the sky as “Joy to the World” burst forth from the loudspeaker on the Sabatinis’ roof.

D
ecidedly peeved about having to work the day after Christmas—
It’s one of our busiest weeks of the year,
her supervisor had said,
no one gets off
—Lucille Fiacco was deep into the latest issue of
Glamour
magazine—a benefit to the job of a librarian, Lucille got first crack at all the finest magazines—when she was interrupted. “Excuse me,” said a teenage girl.

A pretty girl, but if she did a little something more with herself, she’d be a knockout. Mascara for sure and some eye shadow, blue. Not baby blue, but maybe like a midnight blue with a little glitter to it. And definitely a more flattering hairstyle, something with layers and wings. This was a hobby of Lucille Fiacco’s, mental makeovers. On the bus or in a doctor’s waiting room, Lucille would select a plain woman and give her a mental makeover. There was many a day when Lucille thought it had been a mistake to become a librarian; that her real calling was cosmetology. Well, just because she was a librarian didn’t mean she had to look like one. Her hair was
dyed blond and frosted silver at the tips. Her lipstick was a Christian Dior—
thank you very much
—called Passion Fruit.

“Yes?” Lucille asked the teenage girl. “Can I help you?”

“Do you know about the music? Over there?” Valentine pointed to the section of the library which consisted of a listening booth and four bins of LPs. “I’m looking for a song, but I don’t know the name of it.”

“Do you know who the recording artist is?”

Valentine shook her head.

Lucille had little patience with these people who came to the library asking for books whose titles they couldn’t recall or the article they simply had to read only they didn’t know what magazine it was in. What? Did these people think she was a miracle worker?

“But I can sing a little bit of it,” Valentine offered and Lucille thought to herself,
Oh great. Now we’re playing Name That Tune.

Leaning forward, in a less than mellifluous voice but on key, Valentine sang softly so that no one but the librarian could hear, “
Arrre Vey Maaaareeee er
.”

“The ‘
Ave Maria
.’ Of course I know it.” The librarian, Lucille Fiacco, had been going to Sunday mass since day one of her life. She was listening to the “Ave Maria” while still in her mother’s womb.

“Do you have it here?” Valentine asked.

“Try the liturgical section.” What Lucille, she too of Brooklyn, did with the word
liturgical
was a vocalized wonder, the way it came out in fits and snorts, like the warm-up on a trumpet.

The liturgical section comprised six LPs which included Handel’s
Messiah,
Mozart’s
Requiem,
and Dean Martin’s
Favorite Christmas Carols,
so it didn’t take long for Valentine to find the “Ave Maria” as performed by the Vienna Boys Choir. She settled herself
into the listening booth, where she adjusted the headset and leaned back into the chair.

Watching the clock does nothing to encourage the passing of time, so instead Joanne Clarke went to her closet to pick out what she would wear for what would now be her third date with John Wosileski. Tonight they were going to the movies. Not to the Canarsie Theater because there they risked running into students. Although she agreed with John entirely that such a meeting might be awkward, part of her wanted to chance it. If they ran into a group of students, maybe after the movie they’d all go for a pizza or ice cream, and then when school started up again, she and John would be popular teachers like Mark Ornstein or Bethany Sullivan, teachers who sat embosomed by students, popular students too, at school basketball games. Joanne imagined that to be one of the popular teachers would compensate for having been a colossally unpopular teenager. She thought it was possible that she and John could be included in an “in crowd,” and better late than never. It was a thought, but not a realistic one. Let’s be honest here: If Joanne Clarke and John Wosileski had been spotted together at the movie theater by students, they would have been the target for spitballs and hooting and mirth.

“So where’s Valentine today?” Judy Weinstein passed two tiles—a Three Dragon and an Eight Dot—to Miriam.

Miriam returned the two tiles to the wall,
clickity clack,
and said, “At the library, do you believe? I don’t know whether to be pleased
as punch or worried sick.” In fact, Miriam was at neither end of that spectrum. While she wasn’t unconcerned over Valentine’s recent foray into solitude, her daughter was not a drug addict and her grades at school were good. So really, what could be so wrong? A falling-out with her friends? A phase of trying to find herself?
Whatever it is,
Miriam had decided,
it’s not the end of the world
.

Edith Zuckerman’s hands moved as quick as the eye, exchanging one tile from her rack with one from the wall, as she asked, “What is she doing there, at the library?”

“They all go to the library now,” Sunny Shapiro said. “My David, in from Cornell for five minutes and he’s at the library. The one in the city, mind you. He’s doing some big report.”

Sunny Shapiro was mistaken, as was Lucille Fiacco’s supervisor. They didn’t all go to the library, and far from one of the busiest days of the year, this day after Christmas was proving to be the slowest in Lucille Fiacco’s memory. Besides the pretty girl in the listening booth, Lucille had assisted only two people thus far, which was well into the afternoon: Mr. Brickman, who came in every damn day without fail to read the newspaper because, even though Lucille happened to know for a fact—her sister’s husband was the old man’s accountant—that Mr. Brickman was sitting on a mountain of money, he was too cheap to spring for the
Daily News
. The other man who asked for help was lost and wanted only directions to Atlantic Avenue.

Having finished with
Glamour,
Lucille paced the floor. If there’d been bars on the window, she would have rattled them, that’s the kind of stir-crazy she was going. The kind of stir-crazy that
prompted her to say, “Oh, what the hell,” and the kind of stir-crazy that led her to the listening booth.

Most likely it was because she was wearing earphones, the pretty girl did not respond to Lucille Fiacco’s rap on the door, nor did she look up until Lucille tapped her on the shoulder. Then the girl slid the headset down around her neck, wearing it like a futuristic collar, as if science fiction took up the medieval punishment of the yoke.

Lucille perched on the edge of a table, facing the girl. It was then that Lucille noticed the diamond earrings the girl wore. Holy Mother of God, what Lucille Fiacco wouldn’t have given for a pair of earrings like that. “What are you listening to?” she asked.

“‘Are Vay Maria,’” the girl said.

“‘
Ave
Maria.’” Lucille corrected the girl’s pronunciation, but you’d be hard-pressed to have caught the distinction between the two deliveries. “So that’s it? You’ve been listening to the same song for over two hours?”

“It’s so beautiful,” the girl said. “I heard it for the first time maybe a month ago, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“I take it you’re not Catholic,” Lucille said. “There’s no offense in that. It’s just that if you were Catholic, the ‘Ave Maria’ would be coming out your ears.”

“Jewish,” the girl said, and Lucille Fiacco nodded knowingly. She would’ve guessed that. Jewish. If only because of the earrings. Those Jewish girls have jewelry to die for. “What’s your name?” Lucille asked.

“Valentine.”

“Valentine? Like the saint?” Lucille leaned forward, closer to the girl, and although there was no one to hear them, she
nonetheless whispered, “Have you ever read
Lives of the Saints
? It is so hot.”

Twelve years of parochial school with the nuns taught Lucille Fiacco to sneak cigarettes in the ally behind the rectory, to drink vodka because it doesn’t smell, to roll up the waistband of her plaid skirt, the uniform of St. Joseph’s School in Bensonhurst, until it was at the midpoint between her crotch and her knee. She made out with boys named Vinnie and Paulie and Sal. She was what was known in her neck of Brooklyn as
fast
.

It was at the College of Mt. Saint Vincent where Lucille Fiacco’s intellectual horizons expanded. There, among other sizzling theological works, she read and reread
Lives of the Saints
. For the hot parts.

“Hot?” Valentine asked.

You want teenagers to read? Give them books with hot parts.

“I swear to you,” Lucille confided in this girl, “I’d read a chapter or two of that and have impure thoughts for a week after.”

“Really?” Valentine arched her back, as if in preparation for an impure thought of her own. “Do you have that book here? Can I take it out.”

“It’s in biographies. Two weeks, but you can always renew if you want to keep it longer. And the best part is, you don’t even have to hide it because everybody just thinks it’s a holy book. Unless you’ve read it, you don’t know that there’s smut on every page.” Lucille eased off the table. With her feet on the ground, she said, “I better get back to my desk.” She took two steps in that direction and then turned to Valentine, about to offer a friendly suggestion—eye shadow—but when she looked at the girl again, Lucille decided she was wrong about that. Maybe it was the dia
mond earrings adding that extra spark, but the kid didn’t need any eye shadow.

Joanne Clarke did not have in her possession underwear that could be classified as lingerie, but with careful deliberation she chose her most recently purchased bra, a Playtex Cross-Your-Heart, and a fresh pair of panty hose to wear beneath her beige wool slacks and the brown V-neck sweater, because
maybe
—it would be their third date—
it
could happen.

It
had happened three times before. All three times during her senior year of college. The first was with a groundskeeper at the school, in the shed where he kept his tools, and maybe that sort of thing was Lady Chatterley’s idea of a time to remember, but for Joanne Clarke it brought about nothing but a brief moment of pain and a shame that would never leave her. Next was a boy her own age, a blind date where clearly each party was disappointed at the sight of the other. Then he asked her, “So what do you want to do?”

Joanne said, “I don’t know. I guess just go someplace and talk.”
Someplace
meant maybe a diner to talk over a cup of coffee or even to a bar; she would’ve had a glass of beer, but he drove to a motel off the Long Island Expressway. Joanne didn’t know how to tell him that this wasn’t what she meant by
someplace,
that by
talk
she really meant
talk
. He rented the room for all of two hours, and they had time coming when he checked out. He never called her again, but she wasn’t expecting that he would.

Last was her Bio-Chem II professor. Professor Chase. A nice man, but already near retirement age. His wife had died the year before, he told Joanne. He was lonely without her. Did Joanne know what it was like to be lonely? Yes, yes, she did. And so they
sought solace with each other right there in the lab, and Joanne thought maybe she might even be a little bit in love with him. She imagined having a husband so many years her senior. She imagined being a faculty wife, the other faculty wives clucking over her, mother hens tending to their new chick. She knew in time that she would be a young widow, but she could always say,
I wouldn’t have traded our days together for anything in the world
.

Many wisdoms are gleaned in girls’ bathrooms, vital information is shared, hard lessons are learned, and it was in the girls’ bathroom, the one down the hall from the chemistry labs, that Joanne Clarke overheard Melissa Greenberg say to Karen Elliot, “I can’t believe it. That disgusting Professor Chase made a pass at me.”

“Did he give you the story about the dead wife? About how lonely he is?”

“Yes!” Melissa Greenberg’s pitch was high enough to shatter glass. “How did you know?”

“He tries that on everyone. Meanwhile, his wife works over in the admissions office.”

Joanne Clarke remained locked in the stall in the bathroom until night fell.

Now Joanne refused to think about such things. This, this night was different. After behaving like a perfect gentleman, concluding each of their previous evenings together with a brief kiss, but on the lips, John Wosileski obviously both liked and respected her. Therefore, if things were to go in
that
direction, she might very well say yes.

John Wosileski was thinking about sex too. It was possible that tonight he could get lucky, and he felt a slight pressure in his groin at the prospect of a live woman. Because, he knew, Joanne Clarke
lived with her father, if anything did happen, it would happen here, at John’s place, and so in preparation, should the event come to pass, he brushed off the bits of debris and crumbs from the sheets, and he picked his dirty socks up from the floor.

Valentine Kessler came in through the back door and raced up the stairs to her bedroom, where she hid a book under her bed. No matter what the librarian said about not having to hide it, the librarian wasn’t Jewish.

Then, easy as you please, Valentine joined her mother in the kitchen, where Miriam asked, “What was that about? The charge upstairs?”

“I had to go to the bathroom,” Valentine said, which Miriam knew to be a lie. The upstairs bathroom had plumbing that reverberated throughout the house. When that toilet was flushed, the Sabatinis could hear it next door.

Later that evening, Valentine curled up on the couch with a bag of Cheez Doodles watching
Get Christie Love,
the adventures of a sassy undercover girl cop, on the television. In real life, Teresa Graves, the actress who played Christie Love, died under suspicious circumstances in a fire, but that was to happen far off in the future, in the next millennium.