View from Saturday (9781439132012) (4 page)

Dr. Rohmer could not, would not take his eyes off the man at the podium, and Mrs. Olinski thought of
Alice in Wonderland.
“Don't look at me like that!” said the King to the Cheshire Cat. “A cat may look at a king,” said Alice. Mrs. Olinski wanted to tell Dr. Rohmer that a cat may look at a king. But why bother? The audience was not permitted to speak.

After The Souls had won the Epiphany Middle School championship, Dr. Roy Clayton Rohmer paid a visit to Mrs. Olinski and asked—guess what?—why had she chosen this team. She still did not know (and wouldn't until after it was all over), but by that time the success of The Souls (even if she did not yet know that they were The Souls) had made Mrs. Olinski less timid.

Dr. Rohmer had announced that he had just completed a three-day workshop on multiculturalism for
ed-you-kaytoars.
Mrs. Olinski had always been amused by educators who called themselves
ed-you-kay-toars.
So, when he asked her how she had chosen the four members of her academic team, Mrs. Olinski knitted her brow and answered with hushed seriousness. “In the interest of diversity,” she said, “I chose a brunette, a redhead, a blond, and a kid with hair as black as print on paper.”

Dr. Rohmer was not amused. He gave Mrs. Olinski a capsule lecture on what multiculturalism really means.

“Oh,” she said, “then we're still safe, Dr. Rohmer. You can tell the taxpayers that the Epiphany Middle School team has one Jew, one half-Jew, a WASP, and an Indian.”

“Jews, half-Jews, and WASPs have nothing to do with
diversity, Mrs. Olinski. The Indian does. But we don't call them Indians anymore. We call them Native Americans.”

“Not this one,” she replied.

“Mrs. Olinski,” Dr. Rohmer asked, “would you like it if people called you a cripple?”

Mrs. Olinski gave up. Everyone believed that she could be wounded by the word
cripple.
She could never explain to Dr. Rohmer, nor would she try to, that the word itself does not hurt, but the manner of its delivery can. For all of his training, Dr. Rohmer would never believe that cripples themselves are a diverse group, and some make jokes.

Nadia was the redhead of Mrs. Olinski's diverse group.

Had she been born five hundred years sooner, Raphael would have chosen her as a model for his cherubs. Tendrils of bright red hair framed her face, a spray of freckles powdered her nose, and she was as plump as a perfectly ripened peach. Raphael probably would have painted out the freckles, and that would have been a mistake. Like brushing the cinnamon off cinnamon toast.

For the first few weeks of the new school year, Nadia hardly spoke. All the sixth graders—like Mrs. Olinski herself—were new to Epiphany Middle School, but Nadia—like Mrs. Olinski herself—seemed most disconnected. Both were watchers and waiters, cautious about being friendly, about showing themselves.

Then on the middle Monday in October, Nadia Diamondstein arrived in class with a smile and addressed her teacher. “Don't you think, Mrs. Olinski, that autumn is the most glorious time of year?” Mrs. Olinski confessed that it was her favorite season and told Nadia that she sometimes felt guilty because she thought she ought to
prefer spring, with its pledge to make the lilies bloom again.

Every morning thereafter, Nadia smiled as she entered class and greeted Mrs. Olinski with a word from her southern past. She said, “Hey.”

Mrs. Olinski knew that Nadia Diamondstein was not only incandescently beautiful but was also a star.

T
he commissioner of education picked up the next question. Looking over the rims of his reading glasses, he slowly unfolded the paper. “This question has two parts,” he said. “To receive credit, you must answer both parts.” Lowering his eyes, he read, “What is the name given to that portion of the North Atlantic Ocean that is noted for its abundance of seaweed, and what is its importance to the ecology of our planet?”

Nadia Diamondstein rang in.

My grandfather is a slim person of average height with heavy, heathery-gray eyebrows. He lives in a high-rise condominium on the beach in Florida. He lives there with his new wife whom he calls Margy. I was told to call her Margaret, not Aunt Margaret or Mrs. Diamondstein. It sounded disrespectful to me—calling a woman old enough to be my grandmother by her first name, but I did as I was told.

Last summer, just before my grandfather married Margaret, my mother and father got divorced, and Mother moved the two of us to upstate New York where she had grown up. She said that she needed some autumn in her life. I had never thought that I would see autumn in New York or anywhere else because even when we vacationed at a place that had one, we always had to return for school before it started. In Florida school starts before Labor Day. Whatever it says on the calendar, Florida has de facto summer.

Dividing up my time was part of the divorce settlement. I was to spend Thanksgiving, spring vacation, and one month over the summer with Dad. He left Christmas holidays
for Mother because it is her holiday, not his. I am the product of a mixed marriage.

This first summer of their separation, Dad chose August for his visitation rights. He picked us up early Friday evening.
Us
means Ginger and me. Ginger is my dog. I do not know who was happier to see me at the airport—Dad or Ginger. The worst part of the trip had been checking Ginger into the baggage compartment.

Dad always was a nervous person, but since the divorce he had become terminally so. He was having a difficult time adjusting to being alone. He had sold the house that we lived in when we were a family and had moved into a swinging singles apartment complex, but my father could no more swing than a gate on rusty hinges.

For the first day and a half after I arrived, Dad hovered over me like the Goodyear blimp over the Orange Bowl. He did not enjoy the hovering, and I did not enjoy being hovered, but he did not know what to do with me, and I did not know what to tell him, except to tell him to stop hovering, which seemed to be the only thing he knew how to do.

On Sunday we went to see Grandpa Izzy and Margaret.

Grandpa Izzy was happy to see me. Under those bushy eyebrows of his, Grandpa Izzy's eyes are bright blue like the sudden underside of a bird wing. His eyes have always been the most alive part of him, but when Bubbe Frieda died, they seemed to die, too. Since he married Margaret though, they seem bright enough to give off light of their own. He is sixty-nine years old, and he is in love.

Margaret is a short blonde. She is very different from my bubbe but not very different from the thousands who make their home in South Florida. There are so many blond widows in the state of Florida, and they are all so much
alike, they ought to have a kennel breed named and registered for them. Like all the others, Margaret dresses atrociously. She wears pastel-colored pantsuits with elastic waists or white slacks with overblouses of bright, bold prints. She carries her eyeglasses—blue-rimmed bifocals—on a gold metal chain around her neck. They all do. Margaret is not fat, but she certainly is not slim. She is thick around the middle, and when she wears her green polyester pantsuit, she looks like a Granny Smith apple. Grandpa Izzy would say Delicious.

Grandpa Izzy and Margaret are like Jack-Sprat-could-eat-no-fat and his wife-could-eat-no-lean. Grandpa Izzy says that Margaret is
zaftig,
which is Yiddish for pleasingly plump. Everything about her pleases him. He seems to find it difficult to keep himself from pinching her or pinching himself for having had the good fortune to find and marry her. Such public displays of affection can be embarrassing to a prepubescent girl like me who is not accustomed to being in the company of two married people who like each other.

On Sunday we went out for brunch at one of those mammoth places where the menu is small and the portions are large, and every senior citizen leaves with a Styrofoam box containing leftovers. We had to wait to be seated at the restaurant because Sunday brunch is a major social custom in Florida retirement communities. Dad twice asked the restaurant hostess how much longer we would have to wait. Grandpa Izzy and Margaret tried to tell Dad that they did not mind waiting since visiting with each other was part of the plan, and they did not mind doing it at the restaurant. But hovering at low altitudes seemed to be my father's new best thing.

When we were finally seated, we had a nice enough
time. Margaret had Belgian waffles and did not require a Styrofoam box for leftovers because there were none; she ate everything that was on her plate—strawberry preserves, pseudo whipped cream and all. She did not order decaf coffee but drank three cups of regular.

Margaret was not at all curious about me. I thought she would want to know how I liked our new home, which is in Epiphany, the very town she had lived in before she moved to Florida. Maybe she thought that I was not curious about her because I did not ask her about her wedding, which neither Mother nor I attended. But I believe that the grown-up should ask the questions first, and besides, Mother and I had gotten a full report on the wedding from Noah Gershom who, due to unforeseen circumstances, had been best man. I did not find Noah's account of the events surrounding his becoming best man quite as amusing as he did, but for several complicated reasons, I did not express my opinion.

One of the complications was that my mother works for Dr. Gershom, who is Noah's father. My mother is a dental hygienist by profession, and Dr. Gershom is a dentist. One of the reasons we moved to Epiphany was that Mother got a job there. My mother happens to be an excellent hygienist, and Dr. Gershom was lucky to get her, but nevertheless, I thought it best not to tell Noah Gershom that his account of my grandfather's wedding was not as amusing as he thought it was.

Dad's new apartment complex was miles away from our old neighborhood. I called two of my former friends, but getting together with them was not easy. Our schedules, which had once matched, seemed to be in different time zones now. Geography made the difference.

When we finally got together, I thought we would have fun. We did not. Either I had changed, or they had changed, or all of us had. I would not try again. I concluded that many friendships are born and maintained for purely geographical reasons. I preferred Ginger.

Work seemed to be the only thing that held Dad together, but leaving me alone that week while he went to the office made him feel guilty and ended up making him even more nervous, if such a thing were possible. I spent part of my time at the apartment complex pool, which was almost empty during the day. I read and watched talk shows and took Ginger on walks around the golf course that bordered the swinging singles complex. I enjoyed not having Dad hover over me, but I did not tell him so.

Grandpa Izzy called every day. He volunteered to come to swinging singles to pick me up after Dad left for work and after the morning rush-hour traffic. All the retirees in South Florida wait for the rush-hour traffic to be over, so that when they go out on the highways, they can create their own rush hour. But I declined. Then on Thursday, after I had had the unsatisfactory visit with my former friends, Grandpa Izzy called with a different suggestion. He asked Dad to drop me off at their place in the morning before he went to work. Margaret's grandson Ethan, who was my age, had arrived, and Grandpa Izzy thought a visit would be good for both of us. I thought he meant Ethan and me, but maybe he meant Dad and me because after he took the call, the look on my father's face was a new way to spell relief.