Jane Austen in Boca (28 page)

He was gone before Flo had a chance to register his leaving. As she looked at the empty area surrounding the pod pool, she felt at once excited and desolate. Stan Jacobs’s visit had rattled her, there was no doubt about it. And though she tried to return to
Ravelstein
and to summon up the memories of the old Chicago haunts that had entertained her a moment ago, she could not do it. Her mind was elsewhere.

A
DECISION HAD BEEN MADE TO MEET FOR DINNER THAT NIGHT
at Pete Rose’s, the popular sports bar and restaurant off Glades Road. The choice had been in deference to Adam, though it was Norman as much as Adam who wanted to go. Norman had been eagerly awaiting the time when his own grandson would be old enough to take there, and was pleased to be able to make the trip sooner than expected.

Flo tried to be tolerant of whatever fell under that lively rubric known as popular culture. Yet she found it hard to appreciate the appeal of restaurants like this one. There was a great deal of sports memorabilia on the walls, which the men and boys examined dutifully, and there were numerous television sets positioned above the tables, which seemed intended to fill any of those embarrassing gaps in conversation that so often afflict men when women aren’t present to ease the transitions. She could see that a number of boys about Adam’s age had been brought by their grandfathers, who were busily cutting up their meat, buying them souvenirs, and explaining some arcane baseball lore, while the boys gazed over their heads at the progress of a golf tournament or wrestling match. The sound of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was playing insistently in the background, and there were large bowls of popcorn and pitchers of Coke on the table. Norman, in the manner of the other grandfathers present, was trying to explain to Adam about the good and bad points attached to Pete Rose’s career.

“Pete Rose was a great player,” explained Norman, assuming
the familiar grandfatherly pose of imparting information while also relaying a valuable lesson, “because he never gave up. He wasn’t the most talented player; he didn’t have the natural ability of a Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. But he gave it his all. He set his mind to being a great player, he practiced, and he succeeded. That’s something you should keep in mind in whatever you do.”

Adam, familiar with this tone and bored with it, pushed on to other things. “Is he in the Hall of Fame?”

“Well, no,” answered Norman, pleased that Adam had stumbled onto the precise question that would lead him into the second part of his lecture. “You see, he did some bad things that had nothing to do with how well he played. Now, you can work very hard and be good at something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you behave yourself in other areas of your life. One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other.” Norman felt he had expressed this well until he realized that Adam had lost interest and was watching the golf game on the television above their table.

Flo, however, had been listening, and stepped in to continue the conversation. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “It seems to me that all behavior is related, and that Pete Rose must have had flaws as a player that were reflected in his weaknesses off the field.”

“It’s an interesting point,” said Norman, giving it some thought. “He was feisty and volatile, I’ll grant you that, but he was solid. One hell of a good ballplayer. I wouldn’t say that he gambled with his talent on the field, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

“I just think that we generally reflect who we are in everything we do,” said Flo, insistently. She wasn’t sure what she was driving at or why she was being so insistent about it.

“That’s a mighty high standard, then, that you hold up for human behavior,” said Norman. “If all our mistakes are to be
taken as marks of our character, I’m not sure many of us could survive that. I sure as hell couldn’t.”

“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t forgive mistakes,” said Flo, frowning. “It’s just that they’re helpful tools in judging character. They’re markers or signposts of what there is to work with.”

“But I couldn’t disagree more,” said Norman, now taking to the discussion with relish. “There are many people whose surfaces don’t reflect their true natures. Shyness, for example, can get in the way”—he glanced at May—”or gruffness. Take Stan, for example. Who’d know from the look of him what a kind, generous man he is? He has students at Florida Atlantic who still make pilgrimages to see him, and he tutors half the Hispanic population of Boca in English three nights a week and doesn’t charge a dime for it.”

Flo felt a lump in her throat. So the Publix supermarket mystery was resolved, and, she acknowledged, it shed quite a flattering light on Stan Jacobs. He was out there making things better for people, she realized, while she was judging the tone of his voice. For a moment she felt angry that he hadn’t told her, so that she could have had a reason to think better of him all this time.

“I didn’t know that,” she said to Norman quietly

“Well, Stan doesn’t like to toot his own horn, you know. He’s got a heart of gold and he’s as loyal as a dog, but he’s sensitive in a graceless sort of way—though I’ve seen him be graceful, too, in a manner of speaking. He and Elsa used to go out dancing all the time, you know. Not that Stan was a great dancer. He just put his heart and soul into it, and he and Elsa had this loveliness about them. They used to read poetry together, for godsakes. The way he took her death—I’ve never seen such grief, and hope never to see it again. There’s a depth of feeling in the man; well, it’s beyond me to even comprehend.”

Amy, who had been setting up the camera with George and
chatting with some of the waiters, aspiring filmmakers it turned out, had heard part of the conversation and now burst in with her own take on the subject. “I’m surprised at you, Aunt Flo,” she scolded. “You, of all people, should know that surface manners mean next to nothing. You scare to death half the people you meet, though I know what a pussycat you really are.”

Flo was silent. She felt deeply humiliated and regretful. She had misjudged Stan Jacobs based on a few instances of surface behavior, all of which could be explained in ways that exonerated him from charges of mean-spiritedness, and suggested instead kindness and sensitivity. It was not in her nature to think back and review what she had done too minutely She had always acted with the confidence that she had behaved the best she could given the circumstances, and that there was no point regretting the past—it was better to move forward. Yet she couldn’t help feeling that had she been more careful in forming her judgments, things now might have been very different indeed. The thought made her feel uncharacteristically depressed. She had initially been relieved that Stan had not joined them this evening, as he so often did when Norman and May went out, because the sight of him would have annoyed her. Now she was relieved not to have to face him in her new state of regret. Obviously he couldn’t want to be around her after her self-righteous tirade that morning. She winced, remembering it.

“Couldn’t Stan make it tonight?” asked May. She had a gift for posing questions that Flo had in mind but chose to keep to herself. May, Flo knew, had developed a special feeling for Stan Jacobs and professed this frankly, even though Flo continually mocked her for it.

“Well, he’d planned to come, I think,” said Norman, “but I stopped in at his place before I came here, and he said he had a headache. He looked, if you’ll pardon the expression, like shit. Maybe he’s nervous about having the bunch of us in his course next term. The prospect, I have to admit, is scary I wouldn’t
want to try teaching Flo anything. She might bite my head off.”

Flo, who was normally amused by Norman’s characterization of her as sharp-tongued and critical, suddenly felt uncomfortable being portrayed that way. “I don’t know if I plan to sign up,” said Flo. “I think you’re right. I’m too argumentative, certainly for an undergraduate classroom. It wouldn’t be fair to the other students”—she paused—”or to Stan, to have me putting in my two cents all the time.”

“Don’t be silly,” Norman laughed. “We need you there. You keep Stan on his toes, and you give us something to chew on. If you don’t sign up, half our fun is gone.”

“I don’t know,” said Flo, remaining pensive and distracted. She didn’t feel like pursuing the subject. The prospect of sitting in on Stan Jacobs’s class, which would have entertained her a week ago, now seemed like a daunting prospect. She certainly would feel self-conscious, and she assumed that for him the experience would be uncomfortable and unpleasant in the extreme.

“I hope he’s all right,” said May, returning to the subject of their friend’s health.

“Well, I’ll stop and look in on him on my way home, if it’ll make you feel better,” said Norman, looking affectionately at May.

Flo also wondered how Stan Jacobs was, and if he would ever consider being in the same room with her again.

W
HENEVER A
B
OCA SENIOR NEEDS ASSISTANCE, A PROFESSIONAL IS
called in to do the job. Professionals are theoretically much in demand in Boca Raton, but they also pose problems. The residents of West Boca are educated consumers, but the phrase goes far beyond anything that Sy Syms might have had in mind. Boca residents judge their professionals with extreme suspicion and generally find them to be wanting, or at the very least, in need of correction and retraining. Thus, a plumber will find that he can’t work on unclogging the toilet without having a knowledgeable matron nearby suggesting that another size plunger would be better. And a wallpaper hanger, in the business for years, will be told by a woman in mules and a head scarf that he is applying the paste in the wrong direction and if he doesn’t change his technique, the paper will peel off in a week, take it from her.

If plumbers, painters, and washer and dryer repairmen are driven to distraction by Boca residents who claim to know these jobs better than they do, doctors face far greater problems—the stakes, as it were, being higher. While most people expect, realistically, that illness and death are inevitable, Jews, perhaps as a residue of their status as chosen people, have a deep-seated conviction that they are entitled to live forever, and that they share with the washing machine, the dryer, and the dishwasher a rock-solid warranty designed never to expire. Doctors, as they see it, are specifically licensed to guarantee this.

When illness does occur, the doctor must be minutely
questioned and generally harassed, to rectify the situation. Once a diagnosis is delivered, these patients seek not just a second opinion but a third and fourth. They walk into their doctors’ offices and study the diplomas on the walls as though they were valuable works in an art gallery. They continually impart treatment tips gleaned from
The National Enquirer
or a third cousin (a dermatologist in Baltimore) that they expect to be implemented on the spot. Only the most cunning of physicians (sad to say, not necessarily the best) can be expected to survive in this atmosphere. These are the few who manage to combine flattery with an unwavering air of certainty. A woman suffering from acid reflux reaction might visit three or four doctors, each of whom might prescribe a standard medication to treat her condition but whom she will dismiss as useless because they treat her “like a piece of furniture.” A fifth doctor, however, charging twice as much and prescribing the same medicine, will be judged a genius because he nods empathetically when she describes her difficulty properly digesting a nice piece of roast beef, which, by the way, she eats rare, and then tells her that her stomach is a sensitive organ in keeping with her poetical nature. He will conclude by fixing her with an authoritative stare and declaring that she must—if she values her life—do exactly what he says. It helps, of course, that this doctor has been on
Oprah
and performed colonoscopies on Goldie Hawn and Steven Spielberg.

The same basic consumer practices that Boca’s senior citizens apply to doctors also inform their approach to education. They want to learn, but they suspect that they know as much, if not more, than those they might consult to teach them. This dilemma emerged once the population began to take advantage of the area’s premier educational institution. Florida Atlantic University, located in the center of Boca Raton, is one of that vast number of academic institutions that, each year, flood the market with confused young people prepared to compete for amorphously defined white-collar jobs, usually involving computers.
Some years ago, in what looked at the time to be a brilliant PR strategy, the university began to encourage senior citizens to audit classes. There were several seemingly innocuous stipulations accompanying the policy: The seniors were expected to pay a fee (substantially less than that charged to the average matriculating student); they were expected to sit toward the back of the classroom so as not to make their appearance among the undergraduates too obtrusive; and they were expected to curtail their comments so that the regular students, notoriously hesitant and inarticulate, would have every opportunity to air their views and receive the full attention of the instructor. The then-head of university relations, since let go, believed that the area’s seniors citizens would add a new dimension to the classroom and, further, be the source of substantial bequests. Given that most were in their seventies, the benefits were likely to be realized sooner rather than later.

On paper, the idea was a good one. In practice, there were problems. For one thing, the seniors, savvy consumers that they were, soon began to complain that the fee, though reduced, was too high. After all, they did not get the benefit of the teachers’ comments on papers and tests—since they didn’t write them or take them. There was the additional problem of classroom dynamics. With a critical mass of five to ten elderly people seated together at the back of a room, the temptation to speak became, at times, irresistible. Violent arguments began to erupt over topics like whether the Pilgrims were anti-Semitic or whether the so-called sweatshops on the Lower East Side were really so bad. The undergraduate students, whose attention spans were fleeting under the best circumstances, lost interest once the skirmishes were under way, and the professors, though they tried to regain control, were swatted away by the disputants as too young to know anything. What did a thirty-year-old
vantz,
Ph.D. or no Ph.D., know about Guadalcanal, anyway? What did he know, for that matter (since we’re really going back in time), about
Renaissance poetry? The provost was soon fielding complaints from all quarters—from students and professors, angry about being disenfranchised in their own classrooms, and from the elderly auditors, complaining about tuition, handicapped access, and the need for better-quality soap in the bathrooms. When university relations went through the books, it discovered that not one of the auditors had given so much as a dime to the university since the program began. They had reserved their bequests for Harvard and Yale, in the hope of facilitating their grandchildren’s admission to these more august institutions.