Red for
red
light?” How unsubtle of Mrs. Turniphead. How meanly self-fulfilling, like a churlish fortune cookie.
“No. They’re red for tulips.” And she puts her two lips together and makes a joke, a big pizza kiss in the air.
Dan Rather speaks of a volcano in the Dutch Antilles. Two-thousand-degree lava flows and bubbles thick as chowder across our TV screen.
“Poor Beruba people,” mispronounces George. Then she switches the subject. “We do fire drills next week. Lauren says there’s never any fire and all you do’s get yelled at by teachers for talking in line.”
“Didn’t you have fire drills last year in kindergarten?”
“Uh-uh.”
“No fire drills?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head then stops. “Opes. That’s right, I forgot.”
An ant is checking out the oil stains on the pizza box. I pinch it between a napkin and the cardboard.
“Can we go to Beruba someday?” asks George with her mouth full. I have taken George on two vacations—once to Toronto, a city of manufactured whimsey suited only to shoppers, and once to Cape Cod to see the ocean, at which she was much astonished and at the age of three raced exuberantly up and down the beach, arms spread, shouting at the water, “Juice! Juice! Look at all the juice!”
To me the ocean, so loaded with seafood, is more like a loud and giant bouillabaisse.
“To all that lava? Into the eye of the potato? You want to?”
“Yeah. We could be hula girls.”
“That’s Hawaii, George. We would have to be Beruba girls.” I stand up to throw the ant napkin away but instead wave my arms and wiggle my hips. George stands up and pulls the bottom of her shirt up through the neck so that her belly button and midriff are bare. She sways and rimples and giggles around the pizza box. Dan Rather is signing off, getting the hell out of our livingroom, a living room of Beruba girls. Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to be George’s playmate, or if it comes naturally to me, if it comes like the easiest thing in the world.
“They’ll never learn that
a lot
is two words,” mutters Eleanor. “Or
no one
. Or
another time
. I had three students spell
another time
as if it were a season. Give me Gym class any day.”
“Anothertime and the living is easy.”
“Yeah. That’s for when Harry the Dean of Sophomores calls you up to go to the movies. ‘Thanks—
anothertime
.’” I had gone to the movies once with Harry, Dean of Sophomores. Afterward we ate chocolate sundaes and he told me about the Baltimore medical student he was engaged to. “She works hard,” he said. When Harry first came to FVCC, he was a music professor. “I teach Canon and Fugue,” he had said, and all I could think of was detectives, a TV show like
Starsky and Hutch
. Then he became Dean of Sophomores. Eleanor had gone out with him once, too, to a poetry reading. “Medicine is a fascinating profession nowadays,” he had said three times in the car on the way home. When she got out at her house, so did he, following her, attempting to kiss her. She didn’t know what to do, so she made some crack about the Taco Bell Canon and then electronically lowered the garage door onto one of his shoulders. Though he wasn’t seriously hurt, he never called her again. “A damn poor sport,” said Eleanor.
“By the way, didya hear we might get fired?” Eleanor’s expression is a cross between urgency and marijuana.
“Huh?” She’s switched subjects too quickly for me.
“Budget cuts. Distribution changes. Curriculum overhaul. They’re looking around at all of us non-tenured folk. They’re looking at the courses we’re teaching. They got cyanide in their eyes, sugar shoes.”
“
Sugar shoes?
When’s this supposed to happen?” I ask itwearily. A woman named Phillie McCabe has put a poem in my department mailbox. It is about losing weight. “Oh diet, diet, they said / and I looked at the bread / trembling with dread / and said, ‘What color?’ / and then went to
red
light?” How unsubtle of Mrs. Turniphead. How meanly self-fulfilling, like a churlish fortune cookie.
“No. They’re red for tulips.” And she puts her two lips together and makes a joke, a big pizza kiss in the air.
Dan Rather speaks of a volcano in the Dutch Antilles. Two-thousand-degree lava flows and bubbles thick as chowder across our TV screen.
“Poor Beruba people,” mispronounces George. Then she switches the subject. “We do fire drills next week. Lauren says there’s never any fire and all you do’s get yelled at by teachers for talking in line.”
“Didn’t you have fire drills last year in kindergarten?”
“Uh-uh.”
“No fire drills?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head then stops. “Opes. That’s right, I forgot.”
An ant is checking out the oil stains on the pizza box. I pinch it between a napkin and the cardboard.
“Can we go to Beruba someday?” asks George with her mouth full. I have taken George on two vacations—once to Toronto, a city of manufactured whimsey suited only to shoppers, and once to Cape Cod to see the ocean, at which she was much astonished and at the age of three raced exuberantly up and down the beach, arms spread, shouting at the water, “Juice! Juice! Look at all the juice!”
To me the ocean, so loaded with seafood, is more like a loud and giant bouillabaisse.
“To all that lava? Into the eye of the potato? You want to?”
“Yeah. We could be hula girls.”
“That’s Hawaii, George. We would have to be Beruba girls.” I stand up to throw the ant napkin away but instead wave my arms and wiggle my hips. George stands up and pulls the bottom of her shirt up through the neck so that her belly button and midriff are bare. She sways and rimples and giggles around the pizza box. Dan Rather is signing off, getting the hell out of our livingroom, a living room of Beruba girls. Sometimes I wonder if I try too hard to be George’s playmate, or if it comes naturally to me, if it comes like the easiest thing in the world.
“They’ll never learn that
a lot
is two words,” mutters Eleanor. “Or
no one
. Or
another time
. I had three students spell
another time
as if it were a season. Give me Gym class any day.”
“Anothertime and the living is easy.”
“Yeah. That’s for when Harry the Dean of Sophomores calls you up to go to the movies. ‘Thanks—
anothertime
.’” I had gone to the movies once with Harry, Dean of Sophomores. Afterward we ate chocolate sundaes and he told me about the Baltimore medical student he was engaged to. “She works hard,” he said. When Harry first came to FVCC, he was a music professor. “I teach Canon and Fugue,” he had said, and all I could think of was detectives, a TV show like
Starsky and Hutch
. Then he became Dean of Sophomores. Eleanor had gone out with him once, too, to a poetry reading. “Medicine is a fascinating profession nowadays,” he had said three times in the car on the way home. When she got out at her house, so did he, following her, attempting to kiss her. She didn’t know what to do, so she made some crack about the Taco Bell Canon and then electronically lowered the garage door onto one of his shoulders. Though he wasn’t seriously hurt, he never called her again. “A damn poor sport,” said Eleanor.
“By the way, didya hear we might get fired?” Eleanor’s expression is a cross between urgency and marijuana.
“Huh?” She’s switched subjects too quickly for me.
“Budget cuts. Distribution changes. Curriculum overhaul. They’re looking around at all of us non-tenured folk. They’re looking at the courses we’re teaching. They got cyanide in their eyes, sugar shoes.”
“
Sugar shoes?
When’s this supposed to happen?” I ask itwearily. A woman named Phillie McCabe has put a poem in my department mailbox. It is about losing weight. “Oh diet, diet, they said / and I looked at the bread / trembling with dread / and said, ‘What color?’ / and then went to
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