Waiting on the first floor for the elevator, which seemed stuck on the third
floor, Radix was about to give up and take the stairs when the lights signaled it
was moving again. The door opened, teachers came off, talking fearfully,
searching each other for information, any scrap of information, now that things
were suddenly in flux.
Radix stepped in and pressed the button, and just as the doors were closing
MaryJane Syphers rushed in.
“Almost got yourself crushed to death,” Radix said.
“Yes, that would have been something.”
MaryJane Syphers gave him a smile that acknowledged his presence; then
the smile abruptly vanished. She burrowed in her bag and became preoccupied
with whatever it was she couldn’t find.
The elevator moved, going down, not up. They both groaned, and Radix in a
spontaneous wish to dissolve the awkwardness said:
“The story of my life! You want to move up in the world…press the elevator
button…it takes you down…Next time I think I’ll rely on my own two feet.”
MaryJane Syphers released another frugal smile, and searched more frantically
in her bag. She seemed in no mood for small talk – not with this man in the
elevator. In any event when they got to the basement, Jim Holmstedder from
the attendance office came on, carrying sheets of computer printout, and
instantly her mood changed.
Maybe she’d known Jim Holmstedder a long time, and had more to say to him
than to a new teacher. In any event she got back her confidence, or must have
found that elusive thing at the bottom of her bag; and now suddenly she was
chatting away, not looking at Radix. Which left him free to study her again.
For the new semester, a new sweater. It didn’t conceal the veins in her
scraggy neck. Didn’t do much for her at all, though he was mindful of what
Bilicki had told him, that she'd lost her husband, her one true love, in the
Vietnam war. She seemed now a task-driven widower, all physical desire
turned inward; holding herself apart, a little curve at the shoulders, all flat
and pale and dry. Not much passion surging through her body; just that
skin-scratching resentment of the world for snuffing out the life of her
Vietnam warrior.
And now not caring to talk to Radix, though she evidently didn’t mind talking
to Jim Holmstedder, a teddy bear of a man, with a neat white beard and an
irresistibly friendly manner. They were having a tense exchange.
“I was told I might be excessed because they’re closing down the school. Not
that I’m crazy about this school. It’s just that… you walk in here, all set to
start the new year, and suddenly you’re pulled up like weeds…and tossed
aside… this is incredible.”
“They’re not going to toss anybody aside, MaryJane,” Jim Holmstedder said, in
his gentle teddy-bear voice.
“Well, that’s the impression I got.”
“I don’t think people were listening to what the Superintendent said; or maybe
they only heard what they wanted to hear.”
“Okay, tell me what you heard.”
“The way I understand it, there are going to be three schools instead of one.”
“Three schools?”
“Three schools…in the same building…Humanities and the Arts on the first
floor, Law and Government on the second, Mathematics and Science on the
third… three… separate…schools. They’re not going to shut down the building
and send everybody home. The plan, as I understand it, is to phase out the
old and phase in the new institutions. Starting next September. With the new
freshman class.”
“So what does that mean? Will they still need us here?”
“You’re needed right now,” Jim Holmstedder turned and winked at Radix. He
placed an affectionate arm around her shoulder and drew her close to his
warm friendly chest. “And as the classes from the old school graduate, and the
new school classes come in, they might even ask you to stay on and help.”
“Well, I don’t know if I want to be part of anything so…ridiculous… It’s so
confusing. Besides it’s not going to change anything.”
The elevator had reached the third floor; they all stepped off. Jim Holm-
stedder held the door and laughed; he should have gotten off on the first floor.
“See what you did?” he said. “You made me miss my floor. You sure know how
to grab hold of a man.”
A cherubic smile lit up his face. MaryJane Syphers smiled back at him, a rare
flower of a smile from the hothouse of her youthful years.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 