An Almost Perfect Moment (24 page)

T
he light of dawn blanketed the bed, swathing across Valentine, across the baby in Valentine’s arms. Miriam dozed in a chair in the far corner of the room, which was still dark. At the foot of the bed, a nurse fingered the small gold cross she wore around her neck.

Valentine gazed at her baby as if the infant were a star in the sky, something far away, something she saw perfectly well, but could not fathom. Then the baby urinated, and Valentine passed her off to the nurse, saying, “She peed.”

John Wosileski emerged from his bedroom, sleep crusted in his eyes. Worries and miseries should have kept him tossing and turning, but apparently Morpheus took pity on him, granting him a good night’s rest. But fat lot of good it did him. Now he was awake and had to face the day. Wearing nothing but his Jockey shorts and a T-shirt, John opened his door and tiptoed across the hallway to
Mr. Schaefer’s doorway, where he snatched the New York
Daily News.
John wasn’t stealing his neighbor’s paper. He would return it after perusing the help-wanted section.

It would be untrue to assert that Joanne Clarke wasn’t unnerved by, that she wasn’t moved by, the death, and the apparent cause of death, of The Captain. But, aside from being a biology teacher who had to dissect frogs and fetal pigs in college, Joanne had grown adept at concealing her sensitivities. She wrapped them up in five layers of who-cares encased in a steel box of sublimation so that no one, not even Joanne herself, could recognize them for what they were.

With the edge of a magazine Joanne swept the decapitated bird into a body bag made of newspaper. That she put into a brown paper bag, which she left in the hallway right outside the door with the intent of putting it in the garbage bin on her way to work. Not much of a funeral, but for crying out loud, it was only a bird.

A candy striper—she of thick legs and thick-lensed eyeglasses and no older than Valentine, who volunteered to work in the hospital before and after school two days a week in preparation for her calling—set up the breakfast tray alongside Valentine’s bed. With a flourish, she lifted the metal cover from the dish as if to reveal a four star meal or the result of a magic trick, as if there would be something remarkable on the plate. But instead of a pair of white doves or the queen of hearts, there was a soft-boiled egg and an orange cut into halves and halved again. A demented still life.

A cup of coffee with milk, no sugar, and two slices of cinnamon toast for breakfast, and Joanne Clarke went to her bedroom to get dressed. Only after she’d put on her panties and panty hose did Joanne pull her nightgown up over her head and off. Not even when she was all alone in the world did Joanne Clarke feel comfortable being naked. Given her stellar shape, you’d think she’d have liked looking at her body, but Joanne was always quick to cover up, thus denying herself what beauty she had.

Rifling through her closet, Joanne took out the gray wool jumper with the decorative red buttons. She hadn’t worn that in ages, and she couldn’t think why not. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten the day the students in her classes went wild with laughter; it’s that she made no connection between their hilarity and the jumper she was wearing.

Accountant, Must Have 5 Years’ Experience. Housepainter, Must Be Experienced and Bonded. Experienced Keypunch Operator Wanted. Telephone Sales. Watch Repair.
John read the help-wanted section from beginning to end. It didn’t look at all promising, which, in the final analysis, was something of a relief. If a potential position had revealed itself, he would have had to apply for it. And then what? Either would have faced rejection or else he would be hired, in which case he’d have to leave Canarsie High School. He didn’t want to leave Canarsie High School.

Joanne Clarke turned the key to lock the door and bent down to pick up the bag containing The Captain’s remains, but the bag was gone. Someone, a thieving neighbor, must have taken it, perhaps expecting to find something of value in it, because it didn’t just up and fly away.
Well, won’t whoever be in for a little surprise
, Joanne let go with a “heh,” which was as close to a laugh as she could get.

As spontaneously as if something inside her head had combusted, Beth Sandler went left instead of right, which was the way to Canarsie High. She’d never done this—cut school—before. Hardly a model student, still Beth Sandler had a respect for institutional authority which could have been considered unhealthy, depending on who was doing the considering. Like most people who follow the leader, it was the fear of getting caught breaking the rules which motivated her obedience. So this—cutting school—should have been a big deal. But it didn’t seem like a big deal. There was no adventure to the spirit of this reckless behavior, no sense of the madcap, no adrenaline rush, no pulse quickening. Rather, as if it were Sunday and not Thursday, she blithely turned left instead of right and, like a homing pigeon, one who’d been temporarily off course but now righted its compass, Beth Sandler found herself at the Ice Palace.

Yet, some part of her was genuinely surprised, not to find herself at the Ice Palace, but surprised to find the Ice Palace there where it had always been. That somehow she thought if she no longer skated there, it must have vanished or been turned into a Vic Tanney’s exercise studio.

The Ice Palace didn’t open until eleven, although why they opened at all before school let out was a good question. Monday
through Friday the rink was deserted until figure-skating lessons started at three-thirty in the afternoon, when a half-dozen or so prepubescent girls in flippy skirts would skate onto the ice, forming a semicircle around Miss Denise, who was the resident coach. It was Miss Denise who first saw talent in Beth Sandler; it was Miss Denise who had said to Beth, “You know, you could be the next Sonja Henie.”

It was just after nine when Beth entered the coffee shop across the street, where she sat at the counter and ordered a toasted bagel with butter and jelly. She would wait it out because, on that day, Beth was determined to skate on ice.

Five students were at the blackboard when John Wosileski heard a commotion in the hall. Poking his head out the door, he was nearly decapitated by Joanne Clarke, whipping past him as she raced down the hall.

Shutting the door, John turned his attention to the five geometry problems on the blackboard.

Joanne Clarke locked herself in a stall in the bathroom. They were laughing at her. That much was clear. But why? What about her was so damn comical?

Nothing about Joanne Clarke was comical. Nothing.

Rejuvenated after what amounted to no more than a catnap, The Girls, filled with the spirit of a mission, descended upon the Kings County Mall. No frankincense and myrrh for this infant; this baby
would be showered in precious outfits, which were, for these women, one of the gold standards.

Holding up a dress, red velvet, that seemed better suited to a Madame Alexander doll than to a person, Judy Weinstein said, “Is this adorable? I ask you? Is this adorable or is this adorable?”

“It’s adorable.” Edith Zuckerman displayed a pair of shoes, dangling them from her fingers; shoes an inch long, of white patent leather. “Tell me the truth. Are these the cutest things you ever saw or what?”

“Girls.” Sunny Shapiro held out a pale pink sweater that fit in the palm of her hand. “Look at this. Will you look at this? Look at the little itty-bitty buttons. Could you die?”

Having composed herself, Joanne Clarke stepped from the bathroom stall and over to the sink where she splashed cold water on her face to ease the sting caused by the laughter of those pimple-faced morons. Pimple-faced? It is safe to assume that the maxim about people in glass houses etc. had no place in Joanne Clarke’s code of rules to live by.

With paper towels that had more in common with sandpaper than terrycloth, Joanne patted her face dry, and it was then, at the mirror, that she discovered head-on the source of the hilarity. There, in the mirror, looking back at her, were two of the red buttons, erect and perfectly aligned with her nipples. She might as well have been wearing tassels there for all the dignity these strategically placed buttons had stripped from her.

Shame and anger are often related by rage. Fury can cause the adrenaline to pump, which can result in an abnormal show of strength, the way it’s said that a mother can lift an automobile if her
child is trapped beneath its wheels. With her bare hands, Joanne Clarke tore the red buttons from her dress.

After two buttered bagels with jelly and a cup of hot chocolate, Beth Sandler, yet again, checked her watch, a Bulova, her Sweet Sixteen present from her maternal grandparents. It was seven minutes before eleven. For her Sweet Sixteen, her other set of grandparents, her father’s parents, gave her a United States savings bond, which thrilled her not at all.

Having stepped out to get them something nourishing to eat, because who could eat hospital mush, Miriam returned carrying two shopping bags laden with dried fruit—apricots and figs and prunes for purposes of regularity—and a jar of cashews and a box of crackers and a package of Swiss cheese and two quarts of fresh orange juice and a bottle of milk.

Miriam was unpacking the groceries—she put the perishables out on the windowsill to keep them cold—when The Girls arrived bearing gifts. They sat Miriam down and arranged their chairs in a semicircle around her. As if it were Miriam’s Sweet Sixteen party, they ceremoniously bestowed upon her gaily wrapped packages. Miriam received the first box; she untied the ribbon, she parted the tissue paper, and lifted out the lavender-colored angora sweater big enough to fit a kitten. “This is too cute,” she said. “It’s killing me, how cute this is.”

“Wait,” Sunny Shapiro said, and from the same box she took out the matching cap. “Now it’s too cute.”

The Girls presented Miriam with a cornucopia of cuteness—
pink leather booties,
feel that leather; it’s like butter,
a bunny-rabbit print smock for day wear as opposed to the red velvet dress with satin collar and cuffs,
for an occasion,
six pairs of socks adorned with itty-bitty bows, white leggings of the softest Egyptian cotton, a plaid jumper with buttons shaped like flowers, and a sweatshirt with
DISCO BABY
emblazoned across the front in silver glitter.

With boxes and paper and ribbons at her feet, Miriam broke open the jar of cashews and a package of dried apricots.

At some point during the festivities, Valentine got up from the bed and, wearing hot-pink fuzzy slippers and a green hospital-issued gown over her nightshirt, she shuffled down the hall to the nursery where the babies were kept, where she looked through the plate glass as if she were window-shopping, and then, as if not finding anything to her taste, she moved on to where the vending machines were located and got herself a can of Diet Pepsi.

Because she didn’t have her skates with her, Beth Sandler was reduced to renting a pair, size seven, and she sure hoped there was no crud or athlete’s foot or gangrene or funk lingering.

The rented skates did not fit her like gloves. The heel chafed, and when she skated onto the ice, her knees and ankles wobbled, which she should have expected. She was long out of practice. She could not even recall when she last skated, but whenever it was, Valentine was there watching, which meant it was another lifetime ago.

No one bothered to turn on the sound system just for Beth. There was no music to skate to. Beth’s thoughts were her own then as she cut across the expanse of pristine ice; actually the rink was nearer in size to a bathtub than an expanse, but Beth was
thinking of it as
an expanse
because to have the rink all to herself was both glorious and surreal, as if it were a daydream stepped outside of itself.

Around and around she skated, cutting smaller and smaller circles, until she found herself in the center of the rink, where she arched onto her toes, or rather onto the points of the blades of the skates, and spun and spun like cotton candy.

Perhaps she’d spun herself dizzy, spun herself right out of her frigging mind, because there on the ice she saw another girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, wearing a baby-blue skating costume that Beth recognized as identical to the one she’d worn those years ago. Beth watched this girl, this echo of her former self, this ghost of the skater past, do figure eights. It was not lost on Beth that she was watching this girl the way Valentine always watched Beth do her figure eights. Valentine was a good friend. Beth knew this now, but she knew it then and always. It was she, Beth, who behaved badly. Now this phantom skater did a flawless pirouette, just as Beth’s own pirouettes were once flawless. One time, after such a pirouette, Valentine had said to her, “I expected you to spin into an angel.”

Valentine.
She had to go and get weird on me,
Beth thought,
the way she got quiet was so queer. It was like I had to do the talking for both of us,
and then, like smack on the head, it hit Beth that maybe Valentine got so quiet because Beth was talking enough for two; maybe Valentine got quiet because Beth never shut up, all day and night with
Joey this
and
Joey that
. Maybe Valentine was quiet because she was listening.

Beth could have redressed her bad behavior over these last few months. She could have gone back to Valentine, apologized, spent every afternoon at the Kessler house, being there for Valentine the
way Valentine had always been there for her. She could have. But she didn’t because Beth rallied to her own defense.
If that was it, that Valentine was such a good listener, well, isn’t there something queer about that?
Couldn’t it be considered extremely peculiar to hang on every frigging inane word that Beth Sandler uttered?

And as her pirouette wound down, when she came to a full stop, Beth Sandler said, to no one at all, “I was almost a champion.”