That evening as we were driving back to swinging singles, I asked my father if he knew that Margaret had set up Mother’s job interview.
“I did.”
“I think you could have told me.”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“Why does everyone think they know what is important to me? This was important. This is important. Do you think it is right that you should know and Ethan should know, and I should not?”
All he said was, “I didn’t know that Ethan knew.” I waited for Dad to say something more, to apologize, or simply tell me that I was right, but he did not. Like Ethan, my father has a strong taste for silence. Mother always said, “Your father is not a communicator.” She made that statement more than once. Sometimes more than once a day. I was glad that I had made the decision not to go on any more turtle walks and not to communicate with anyone about my decision.
The following morning when Dad knocked on my door, I was still undressed. He called through the closed door, “Better hurry. We’ll be late.” I said nothing. He opened the door a crack and said, “Nadia? Nadia, are you all right?”
“I am not going,” I said.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”
“I feel fine. I have decided to stay here.”
“Why?”
“It is not important.”
Dad waited by the door, waited for me to explain, but I said nothing. I wanted silence to make him as miserable as it had made me. He hesitated, then came into my room, sat on the edge of the bed, and said nothing. He hovered. I struggled with silence until I could not stand it another second, so I said, “Did you know that I did a report on turtles last year?”
“Yes. I knew that.”
“You never seemed very interested in turtles when I did my report.”
“I guess I had other things on my mind.”
The pulse in my ears was so strong, I hardly heard him. “I guess it took an invitation from Margaret to get you interested.”
“Partly that and partly that I had the time.’
“Your child custody time,” I said. Dad let out a long sigh and looked so embarrassed that I almost did not say what I was about to say, but I did. “I have decided not to spend your child custody time on turtle walks with Margaret and her grandson. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. If you want to take turtle walks, you go ahead and take turtle walks. You can get permitted without me. All you need are turtles and Margaret.” I had not only broken my silence, I was almost screaming.
Dad looked at his watch. If there is one thing I really detest, it is having someone look at his watch as he is talking to me. It says to me that time spent elsewhere is more important than time spent talking to me. “I have an appointment at the office in an hour.” He glanced at his watch again.
“I am sure it is an important appointment,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” he replied.
Dad was so preoccupied with time that he did not even notice the sarcasm in my voice.
“Let me call Margaret to let her know we won’t be there.”
“You can go,” I said. “You go. I would not want you to miss a turtle walk for my sake. It might interfere with your getting permitted.”
“There’s no way I can make it up there and back in time for my appointment.”
“Are you trying to tell me that I have kept you from your turtle walk?”
“Well, no. But, yes.” He looked confused. “What I meant to say is that, yes, this conversation has kept me from going on a turtle walk, but no, that is not what I am trying to tell you. You know that if it had not been for your unwillingness to go, I would have.”
He glanced at his watch again. “Let me call Margaret. Then we’ll have time for breakfast, and we’ll talk about it.” He started out the door, turned back and said, “I won’t tell her why you’re not coming.”
“Tell her. I do not care. She knows every other thing about me. Tell her,” I said. “And do not count on me for breakfast. I do not want any.” I turned my back to him and my face to the pillow.
The telephone rang in the middle of the morning. I let the recorder get it. It was Margaret, telling me that she would come pick me up if I would call. I did not. Instead, I took Ginger for a walk around the golf course that borders swinging singles. When we returned, I saw that there was a message on the machine. I played it. It was Grandpa Izzy asking me to please call. I erased the message. I sat out by the pool for a while and read, came back to the apartment for lunch, and that is when I ate the breakfast cereal that my dad had put out on the counter in the kitchen. He called while I was eating. I did not pick the phone up then either.
After lunch, I took Ginger for another walk, called the airline to see how much it would cost if I changed my ticket to go home early. Thirty-five dollars. I watched three talk shows on television. One was about teenagers whose mothers flirt with their boyfriends. They were pathetic. Another was about men who said they lost their jobs because they refused to cut off their ponytails. They were pathetic. The third was about people who pierce weird body parts: One girl had a silver nail run through her bellybutton, and another one had a diamond stud put in her tongue. One exposed her bellybutton, and the other stuck out her tongue. They were disgusting. The phone rang twice. It was my dad again, sounding worried that I was not answering. Then it was Margaret again, saying that she hoped we would come over since another nest was due to hatch.
I erased all the messages.
Not answering the phone but hearing what people on the other end were saying was a little bit like spying. I enjoyed it.
Dad walked into the apartment looking frazzled. He was looking very much like the unstrung self who had picked me up from the airport. “Where were you?” he demanded. “I have been calling every twenty minutes.”
“I noticed,” I said. When he asked me why I had not returned his calls, I said that I did not think they were important.
“I’m taking tomorrow off,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Hover?”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Nothing is a mean answer, but sometimes nothing works. Sometimes nothing else does.
“I thought we might go up to Disney World. You used to like Epcot.”
“What will I do with Ginger?” I asked.
“Well, let me find out what accommodations they have for dogs.…”
Just then the phone rang. Dad picked it up. I could tell by the way he was speaking that it was Grandpa Izzy asking if he would be coming over for the evening’s turtle walk. When he hung up, Dad asked me if I would like to invite Ethan to come to Disney World with us. I could not believe he was asking me that question. I just stared at him.
“Well,” he said, “he seemed to enjoy The Phantom of the Opera so much, I thought he might enjoy …” I continued to stare at my father and say nothing. He cleared his throat. “If you don’t like the idea of asking Ethan, would you like to ask one of your friends from the old neighborhood?” He was practically pleading with me to ask someone. Without turtles my father did not know what to do with me.
Even though Disney World was only a two hours’ drive from his apartment, Dad had decided that it might be more fun if we stayed overnight at one of Disney’s theme hotels. He called and got us reservations, and we went to our rooms to pack our overnight bags.
That evening a northeaster hit the coast. The winds were thirty-five miles an hour with gales up to fifty. There was coastal flooding, which meant that the low lying highways and many side roads and ramps would be closed. That meant that the interstates that were normally bumper to bumper but moving would be bumper to bumper and not moving. Before we went to bed, Dad suggested that we avoid rush hour by starting out late in the morning instead of early.
The phone rang at midnight. Dad called in to me and said that I should pick up the phone. It was Grandpa Izzy.
“It’s an emergency,” he said, pleading. “Our hatchlings
will be swept ashore by the winds. We have to harvest them early tomorrow before daylight. Before the birds get them. Margaret and I think you ought to drive up here now so that we can get an early start. Traffic will be impossible in the morning.”
Grandpa was so sincere, so concerned about the turtles, so convinced that we would answer his 911 that it was obvious Dad had never told him that I had canceled all future turtle walks. I waited to see how Dad would turn him down. Dad did his best thing; he remained silent.
Grandpa said, “Nadia, are you there? Are you on the line, darling?”
“I am here, Grandpa.…”
“You know what will happen if we don’t gather them up. Can’t you come?”
“Dad and I had plans…”
“What plans, darling? You don’t want the baby turtles to be blown ashore and die, do you? These are babies, Nadia. They need help.”
“Dad and I were going to Epcot…”
“Why do you want to go there to see Mr. Walter Disney’s Version of the World when you can see Mother Nature’s real thing?” I had to smile. Grandpa Izzy always called Disney World Mr. Walter Disney’s Version of the World. Then he said, “Margaret and I need your help, Nadia. So do the turtles. Sometimes one species has to help another get settled.” Grandpa was apologizing for not telling me about Margaret’s meddling. I did not know what to say.
Dad finally spoke up, “Let Mother Nature worry about the turtles. They can take care of themselves.”
But I knew that they could not. I said, “Let me talk to Dad, Grandpa. I will call you back.”
After I hung up, I went into the living room. Dad was in his pajamas. Striped. I had never seen Dad sitting in the living room in striped pajamas. He said, “Don’t worry about the turtles, Nadia.”
I explained, “The turtles will be easy to spot—so out of place, washed up on shore. The birds will eat them.”
“They couldn’t possibly eat them all.”
“Those that do not get eaten will be lost.”
“But, surely, the tide will come back and carry the seaweed—and the turtles along with it—back out.” He smiled again. “What comes ashore always washes back out. That’s not a philosophical statement, Nadia. It’s a fact.”
“They will be lost at sea.”
“Lost at sea? The sea is their home.”
“They will be lost at sea,” I repeated.
“Nadia,” Dad said, “how can that happen?”
“You have to understand turtles to understand how that will happen.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I told Grandpa I would talk to you.”
My father sat on the sofa, looking out of place in his striped pajamas. He nodded, a slow, thoughtful nod, and I knew that he would pay close attention, and I knew that I could explain it all.
“It all starts,” I said, “the minute the new hatchlings scamper over the sand toward the light of the horizon. Once they reach the water, they begin a swimming frenzy. They do not eat. They just swim and swim until they reach the Sargasso Sea. That is when they stop, and that is when Mother Nature turns off the swimming-frenzy switch and turns on a graze-and-grow switch. For the next five to ten years, they will stay in the Sargasso Sea, feeding off the small sea animals that live in the floating mats of sargasso grass. Tonight when the wind blows that seaweed ashore, there will be a lot of immature turtles in it—swept along with the sea grass they have called home.”
I paused in my narrative. I focused hard on Dad, and he focused hard on me. “Are you with me?” I asked. My father nodded, so I continued. “Here is the tragic part. Even if the tide does wash them back into the water, they will not be able to get back home because once the swimming-frenzy switch is turned off, it is turned off forever. Turtles do not have an emergency power pack or a safety switch to turn it on. So, there they are, once again at the water’s edge, but this time they are without a mechanism for swimming east. And that is why they will be lost at sea. They will want to graze. They will have an appetite, but they will not be where they can satisfy it, and they will not know how to get there because they cannot turn back their internal clock. They will not find home. They will not find food. They will starve and grow weak and be eaten.”
My father did not once look at his watch or the clock on the table by the sofa. His listen-and-learn switch had been turned on, and his own internal clock was ticking. I studied my father, sitting on the pale gray living room sofa in his blue striped pajamas. The storm in our private lives had picked him up and put him out of place. Me, too. I, too, had been picked up from one place and set down in another. I, too, had been stranded. We both needed help resettling.
“When Grandpa says that we must harvest the turtles, he means that we must gather them up and save them in buckets. Then we take them to Marineland. When the seas calm down, they will be taken fifty miles offshore and placed in the Sargasso Sea.”
Dad smiled. “They need a lift.”
Ginger rubbed herself against my legs. I stroked her back. “Yes,” I said, “they do.”
Without another word, we returned to our rooms, Dad and I. We got dressed. When we ran out to the car, the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was blowing so hard that umbrellas were useless. I held the back door open for Ginger, and she hopped in. Dad and I got pretty wet just from that short run to the car, and Ginger sat on the back seat, panting and smelling like the great wet dog she was.
The rain battered the car, and the wipers danced back and forth, never really clearing the windshield. There were only a few cars on the road. We didn’t pass any of them not only because it was dangerous to do so but also because we welcomed their red tail lights as a guide. Cars coming the other way made spray that splashed over the hood. Dad’s hands were clenched on the steering wheel.
These northeasters dump rain in squalls that last for miles, and then they let up briefly. During one of the few lulls in the storm, Dad leaned back slightly and asked, “What do the turtles do after they’ve finished their five to ten years in the Sargasso Sea?”
“They go to the Azores and become bottom feeders for a few years.”
“And then?”
“And then they grow up. When they are about twenty-five, they mate. The females come ashore and lay their eggs—on the same shore where they were born—and immediately return to the sea, not coming ashore again for two or maybe three years when they are again ready to lay eggs. The males never return to shore.”
Dad said, “You’ve left something out, Nadia. They are ten when they leave the Sargasso Sea, and they are twenty-five when they mate and lay eggs. What happens during the fifteen years between leaving the Azores and mating?”
Realization hit me. I laughed out loud. We were riding into a squall again, and Dad was concentrating so hard on driving that I was not sure he was even waiting for my answer. “What is it?” he asked.
“Another switch,” I said.
He took his eyes off the road long enough to demand, “Tell me, what do they do?”
“In the years between leaving their second home and their return to their native beaches, they commute. Year after year, all up and down the Atlantic, turtles swim north in the summer and south in the winter. Did you already know that?”
“I didn’t know for sure, but I had my suspicions.”
I had to smile. “And did you have your suspicions about me?”
“For a while,” he said. Then he took his eyes off the road long enough to return my smile. “But not now.”
“Of course,” I said, “I will be doing the same but opposite. I will commute north in the winter and south in the summer.”
“Yep,” he said. “And there will be times when you or I will need a lift between switches.”
“Yes,” I replied, “there will be times.”
3
Mrs. Olinski’s very first teaching job had been in an elementary school whose principal required sixth graders to memorize at least fourteen lines of poetry each month,
insisted that fifth graders know their multiplication tables up through twelve times twelve, and permitted no one to exchange valentines unless the names on the envelopes were written neatly and spelled correctly. There was no graffiti on the walls; no gum chewing, running, or shoving in the halls. There was locker inspection once a month, and everyone who used the bathroom, flushed.
That principal’s name was Margaret Draper.
Two years before Margaret Draper retired, the district reorganized its school system and sent sixth graders to middle school instead of elementary. Sixth had once been the top grade in elementary school, and was now the bottom grade in middle school. But it was still the place where kids had mastered enough skills to be able to do something with them. It was still the place where kids could add, subtract, multiply and divide, and read. Mostly, they could read—really read. Sixth grade still meant that kids could begin to get inside the print and to the meaning.
Mrs. Margaret Draper, who had never called herself an ed-you-kay-toar, had always been a superb teacher and principal, but between the time she had started as an elementary school teacher and the time she had retired as a middle school principal, sixth grade had changed, but sixth graders had changed more. Sixth graders had stopped asking “Now what?” and had started asking “So what?” She had not been sorry to retire when she did.
That very first summer after Margaret Draper retired was when Eva Marie Olinski left teaching. That was the summer of her automobile accident. For all the many months following the accident, Mrs. Draper stayed in touch with the young Mrs. Olinski. They were both widows now, and they saw each other on a regular basis.
After Margaret moved to Florida they continued to stay in touch in a Christmas card/life-milestone way. So Mrs. Olinski knew the major facts of Margy’s life. Her move to Century Village, her marriage to Izzy Diamondstein, her trips, her turtles.
Mrs. Olinski also knew that Ethan Potter was Margaret Draper’s grandson even though Margy never had much to say about him. When Eva Marie saw that Ethan Potter was assigned to her homeroom, she refrained from asking Margy about him or Ethan about her. She wanted to discover Ethan all by herself, so she watched him closely. Probably more closely than she watched the others.
The View From Saturday Page 5