She introduced herself as Ms. Parks to the class, but I already knew her as Phyllis. Phyllis lived with her parents who the summer before had moved into the apartment next door to my estranged father. That was the very same summer in which my beloved mother favored my sister to travel around the country with her, my mother being a school teacher herself. Phyllis completed her teaching internship my senior year of high school, graduating to full-fledged teacher as I graduated into becoming a full-fledged college student. Within six months of my graduation from high school, my parents buried the proverbial hatchet which allowed my emasculated father to move back in with mom and sis. But moving away and having my nose buried in books (most of the time!) I lost contact with Phyllis as there were plenty of college girls to eclipse the infatuation that had filled me with lust and love for the long haired, big breasted teacher to be.
That was more than thirty years ago. I had attended my first two high school reunions, ten and twenty year, but had skipped the last, tired of the arrogant cliques that still remained despite the years. There were two people I had always hoped to see again, Margret Olroyd and one Ms. Phyllis Parks. At the last reunion, I was sadly informed of Peggy's passing, succumbing to cancer. I was only comforted by the additional news that it had only been two months from discovery to death. However that alone had pretty much put the final nail in the coffin as for me attending any further high school reunions. I guess Peggy's death that became the precipitous event that led me to finally accept the truth —there are no such things as a way-back machine.
And so it went until finally, I retired from the working world. Unlike my parents, my own wife had made our trial separation permanent. Our daughter and son had since married, inconveniently moving to opposite ends of the country —daughter living in Boston while my son headed to Phoenix with his mother. Thus I found myself, after all the years, stuck in the flat lands of the Midwest.
Retirement is an interesting phenomena. Viewed for years as something of an idealistic panacea, its benefits hadn't taken long to wane. Oh, for sure I enjoyed not having to get up every morning to shoulder the drudge of another day at the office. I certainly enjoyed having a house to myself after all the years of raising a family and two years of a divorced, out of work sister who finally found her white knight and rode off with him into the blessed sunset. But having the house to oneself meant doing all the things that were once shared -meals, dishes, laundry and house cleaning, not to mention the yard which the ex had filled with ubiquitous gardens. i.e. weeds to pull, shrubs to trim and train, flowers to divide and care for. Yes, I stayed busy all the while seemingly accomplishing little with my new life of leisure.
There I was, languishing in leisure as summer put forth its final heat wave of the season, when an old friend encouraged me to volunteer at one of the local schools to read once or twice a week to children struggling with their words. Eventually he pursued me and in mid August I found myself doing just that. The young principle, cut just the summer before from his final pro league team, hired me Johnie on the spot. An interesting young man of whom I would later find out that all the young teachers nicknamed Clark Kent because of his chiseled face and heavy black framed glasses.
It was a rather large grade school. Times were tough forcing the district to consolidate three schools into one. I was glad that my schedule only called me in twice a week as the noise of youth was rapidly fraying the last few nerves left to me. Women seem to fair better than men in either ignoring it all or just absorbing it all in a motherly fashion. I suppose that was why of all the retirees volunteering at the school, only women chose to drive school buses —those reverberating yellow metal coffins of screaming mayhem. God help us all!
Basically this was how the school year passed and largely without incident. I met many new people I even made a few friends; had a parent or two try to set me up to meet either their single mother or grandmother. God, was I getting that old? 'Thanks, but no' I kindly declined though I wished for a companion to add a little noise to house every now and then. And I suppose that would have been the end of it if not for the long haired woman who stopped in at the school office to pick up an ailing grandchild as I myself was signing out to leave for home.
Sometimes you know them for who they were almost immediately. Other times, even when introduced, you never really quite place the old with the new. In this case, there was something in the way she moved, something in the way she placed her one hand on her hip while the other signed out poor little sick boy, Ricky Taylor. The glossy brunette hair had now turned gray, losing much of its velvety sheen. But it wasn't dry or thinning as some of the women's hair seemed to do after years of bleaching and coloring. I was taller than her now. She was still relatively as thin as she had been. On the other hand, I had put on a few pounds directly below the expanding barrel chest. She wore glasses while I sported newly laser corrected retinas. Amazingly, she still seemed as gay and alive with energy as I remembered her thirty years prior.
"Oh poor boy," I heard her comfort the ailing child as she turned toward the door of which I continued to open to both.
"See you Monday," I called back to Renee at the office desk, smiling back at me as always, waving as I stepped out into a beautiful cloudless day. Oh if only Renee were single!
I followed the woman and child out to their car parked inappropriately in the reserved 'Staff ONLY' parking lot. It was one of those new German SUV's with automated this and automated that. Someone had money to burn!
"You take care Ricky," I called out as the woman closed his door before walking to the back of the vehicle as its rear hatch closed all on its own.
"Forgive me," I asked as I tilted my head to one side, summoning the gray haired woman's attention, "but have we met? I don't mean to be rude but there's just something in the way you were standing at the desk, signing Ricky out that brought back a long forgotten memory." Careful, boy, I warned myself. Mustn't be too free with age related recognitions.
Standing upright in perfect feminine posture, the woman turned and looked at me full in the face. Searching every movement, I could not divine her thoughts.
"Well, I don't know. Are you from around here?" bright eyes inquired without any sense of resentment of being bothered by the questioning.
"I grew up here, graduated from high school but moved away until just a few years ago when, after my parents had died, I moved back into their house."
"What year did you graduate?" she asked.
"Sixty-seven," I answered, almost ashamed at the antiquity of it.
"Really! That was the year I interned at the old high school that burnt down. What class were you in?"
"Yours. . . . Phyllis?" I asked leaning toward her, cocking my head slightly seeking affirmation.
Call it what you will, but there is something I find strangely enjoyable when I have someone lost for an answer. The licking of her glossy red lips, the quick twinge of nose and slight raising of her glasses begged me to reveal myself.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I. . . ." People sometimes form sentences which are left unfinished with the express purpose in extruding information lost to them.
"Don't recognize me? That's okay. It has been a long time and I suppose I've put on a few misplaced pounds and then there is this," I said pointing to my well-groomed white goatee. "I suppose I could tease you and tell you were I sat and in which class. Or I remind you about the time when a certain young boy got caught flashing a Playboy centerfold while you were up at the board with your back to us as Mrs. Ryan just happened to look in through door window checking up on how you were doing."
I watched as the woman raised a hand to her mouth, drawing a deep breath as she cried in her sing-song way! "Oh my God! Yes, I remember that. Are you Brian? Ummm, give me a second. Brian Biggins?"
I suppose I had it coming. I had teased her memory instead of just being mature and up front with who I was. Brian Biggins had been a fat little turd who, now looking back on it, had always been strangely popular. Ever and always, he was quick with a joke or some witty sarcasm that often had even the teachers smiling at him. Unlike myself, he had gone on to become a prominent local land developer who's wealth had made him arrogant and totally suspect of even his best of friends.
Just smiling to her, holding out my hand, I finally confessed laughing, "No, not so fortunate. Ron. Ron. . ."
"Ronnie! Ronnie Kucera! Oh my God!" she screamed again in apparent delight. "How are you? Do you teach here? What have you been up to?"
"Oh I'm retired" I confessed, shaking my head no. "No, no. I just come here a couple of times a week to read to kids who are struggling with their words. And you? You still live around here?" I asked, greatly desiring a miraculous healing of little Ricky so I could scoot him off back into the school and have this lively woman all to myself.
With a sad face she answered me, "No, I'm just here visiting my daughter and her husband. I live down in Florida. My husband and I retired down there."
"You're married?" I asked trying desperately not to let on my disappointment.
