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“Well…”
“Well nothing. Heart. Mind. Subject closed. Now tell me—are you still reading prose? To the White Sea, perhaps?”
“Olivia, enough,” Marie says. “Please.”
Again the hand goes up.
“I read it. Now I’m on Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.”
“Oh my, that’s a dark one. A spill of terror. But full of vision.”
“And I’m reading Catalepsy. That’s by Professor Castro, the one who taught here.”
Olivia chuckles. “He was no professor, but he was a good teacher. Gay, did I tell you that?”
“I think so.”
Olivia gropes for her glass of iced tea. Marie puts it in her hand with a longsuffering look. She’s apparently given up on getting Olivia to the chairlift and upstairs to bed. The lady is engaged, her speech quick and clear again.
“Gay as gay could be. Attitudes about that were a little less tolerant ten years ago, but most members of the faculty—including at least two who have now come out—accepted him for what he was, with his white shoes, flamboyant yellow shirts, and beret. We enjoyed his sharp Oscar Wilde wit, which was the armor he wore to protect his basic kindness. Jorge was a very kind man. But there was at least one member of the faculty who didn’t like him at all. May even have loathed him. I believe if she had been department chairman instead of Rosalyn Burkhart, she would have found some way to toss him out on his ear.”
“Emily Harris?”
Olivia gives Barbara a sour, inturned smile that’s very unlike her usual one. “None other. I don’t think she has much use for people who aren’t white, which is one reason I made sure to steal you away from her even though I’m older than God, and I definitely know she doesn’t like those who are, in Emily’s words, ‘a bit loose in the loafers.’ Help me up, Marie. I believe I’m going to fart again when you do. Thank God at my age farts are relatively odorless.”
Marie helps her up. Olivia has her canes, but after sitting so long, Barbara isn’t sure she could walk without Marie’s help. “Think about that essay, Barbara. I hope you’ll be one of the fortunate five asked to write one.”
“I’ll put my thinking cap on.” It’s something her friend Holly sometimes says.
Halfway to the stairs, Olivia stops and turns back. Her eyes are no longer fierce. She’s gone back in time, a thing that happens more often this spring. “I remember the department meeting when the future of the Poetry Workshop was discussed and Jorge spoke up—very eloquently—in favor of keeping it. I remember it like it was yesterday. How Emily smiled and nodded while he spoke, as if saying ‘good point, good point,’ but her eyes didn’t smile. She meant to have her way. She’s very determined. Marie, do you remember her Christmas party last year?”
Marie rolls her eyes. “Who could forget?”
“What about it?” Barbara asks.
“Olivia—” Marie begins.
“Oh hush, woman, this will only take a minute and it’s such a great story. The Harrises have a party a few days before Christmas every year, Barbara. It’s tra-di-tional, y’know. They’ve had it since God was a baby. Last year, with Covid running wild, the college shut down and it seemed that the grand tradition would be broken. But was Emily Harris going to let that happen?”
“I’m guessing not,” Barbara says.
“You’re guessing right. They had a Zoom party. Which Marie and I chose not to attend. But Zooming wasn’t good enough for our Emily. She hired a bunch of young people to dress up in fucking Santa outfits and deliver goody-baskets to the partygoers who were in town. We got a basket ourselves even though we chose not to Zoom in. Didn’t we, Marie? Beer and cookies, something like that?”
“Indeed we did, a pretty blond delivered. Now for God’s sake—”
“Yes, boss, yes.”
With Marie helping her, the old poet makes her slow way to the stairs, where she settles—with another fart—into the chairlift. “At that meeting about the Poetry Workshop, when it looked… only for a minute or two… like Jorge might sway the voting members, Em never lost that smile of hers, but her eyes…” Olivia laughs at the memory as the chair starts to rise. “Her eyes looked like she wanted to kill him.”
July 27, 2021
1
KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH, reads the sign over the group shots of the school children who came here to bowl in the days before Covid made an end to such outings. Holly looks around to make sure she’s not observed. Darren—the young man now doing Cary Dressler’s job—is leaning beside the beer taps, studying his phone. Althea Haverty is back in her office. Holly is afraid the picture she wants may be glued to the wall, but it’s on a hook. She worries that nothing will be written on the back, but there is, and neatly printed: 5th Street Middle School Girls, May 2015.
Holly puts the picture back on its hook, and then—because she’s Holly—carefully straightens it. A dozen girls in dark purple shorts, which Holly recognizes as the 5th Street Middle PE uniform. Three rows, four girls in each. They are sitting cross-legged in front of one of the lanes. In the middle row, smiling, is Barbara Robinson, topped by the medium-length afro she wore back then. She would have been twelve, a sixth grader if Holly’s not mistaken. Cary Dressler isn’t in the photo, he’s not in any of the KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH photos, but if he started working at eleven, when the Strike Em Out opened, he would have been on duty when the kids came in.
Holly goes out to her car, barely noticing the heat and for once not wanting a cigarette. She gets the air conditioning cranking and finds the photo she took of the Golden Oldies, the one that features team captain Hugh Clippard and Cary holding up the trophy. She sends it to Barbara with a brief message: Do you remember this guy?
