ONE
“Hello, it is I, your grandson, insert name here,” said Dinu.
“Correct,” said Professor Bogdan, language teacher at Liceu Teoretic. He leaned back in his chair and lit up a Chesterfield. “But too correct, you know?”
Too correct? Dinu did not know. In addition, he was asthmatic and the mere presence of a cigarette aroused a twitchy feeling in his lungs. No smoking in school, of course, but these private lessons, paid for by Uncle Dragomir, weren’t about school.
Professor Bogdan blew out a thin, dense stream of smoke, one little streamlet branching off and heading in Dinu’s direction. “There is English, Dinu, and then there is English as she is spoken.” He smiled an encouraging smile. His teeth were yellow, shading into brown at the gumline.
“English is she?” Dinu said.
“For God’s sake, it’s a joke,” said Professor Bogdan. “Is there gender in English?”
“I don’t think such.”
“So. You don’t think so. Come, Dinu. You’ve studied three years of English. Loosen up.”
“Loosen up?”
“That’s how the young in America talk. Loosen up, chill out, later.” He tapped a cylinder of ash into a paper cup on his desk. “Which is in fact what you need to know if I’m not mistaken, the argot of youth.” He glanced at Dinu. Their eyes met. Professor Bogdan looked away. “My point,” he went on, “is that no American says ‘it is I.’ They say ‘it’s me.’ The grammar is wrong but that’s how they say it. You must learn the right wrong grammar. That’s the secret of sounding American.”
“How will I learn?”
“There are ways. For one you could go to YouTube and type in ‘Country Music.’ Now begin again.”
“Hello, it’s me, your grandson, insert name here,” Dinu said.
“Much better,” said Professor Bogdan. “You might even say, ‘Yo, it’s me.’”
“Yo?”
“On my last trip I heard a lot of yo. Even my brother says it.”
“Your brother in New Hampshire?”
“No P sound. And ‘sher,’ not ‘shire.’ But yes, my brother.”
“The brother who is owning a business?”
“Who owns a business. Bogdan Plumbing and Heating.” Professor Bogdan opened a drawer, took out a T-shirt, and tossed it to Dinu.
Dinu shook it out, held it up, took a look. On the front was a cartoon-type picture of a skier with tiny icicles in his bushy black mustache, brandishing a toilet plunger over his head. On the back it said: BOGDAN PLUMBING AND HEATING, NUMBER 1 IN THE GRANITE STATE.
Dinu made a motion to hand it back.
“Keep it,” said Professor Bogdan.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. New Hampshire is the Granite State. All the states have nicknames.”
“What is nicknames?”
“Like pet names. For example, what does your mother call you?”
“Dinu.”
Professor Bogdan blinked a couple of times. Like the skier, he had a bushy mustache, except his was mostly white. “Texas is the Lone Star State, Florida is the Sunshine State, Georgia is the Peach State.”
“Georgia?”
“They have a Georgia of their own. They have everything, Dinu, although…” He leaned across the desk and pointed at Dinu with his nicotine-stained finger. “Although most of them don’t realize it and complain all the time just like us.”
“Does your brother complain?” Dinu said.
Professor Bogdan’s eyebrows, not quite as bushy as his mustache, rose in surprise. “No, Dinu. He does not complain. My brother grew up here. But his children—do you know what they drive? Teslas! Teslas almost fully paid off! But they complain.”
Those state nicknames sounded great to Dinu, even magical in the case of the lone star. He knew one thing for sure: if he ever got to America, Tesla or no Tesla, he would never complain. Just to get out of the flat where he lived with his mother, much better than the one-room walk-up they’d occupied before Uncle Dragomir started helping out, but still a flat too cold in winter, too hot in summer, with strange smells coming up from the sink drain and—
The door opened and Uncle Dragomir, not the knocking type, walked in. Professor Bogdan’s office got smaller right away. Bogdan half rose from his chair.
“How’s he doing?” Uncle Dragomir said in their native tongue, indicating Dinu with a little chin motion. He had a large, square chin, a nose that matched, large square hands, and a large square body, everything about him large and square, other than his eyes. His eyes were small, round, glinting.
“Oh, fine,” said Professor Bogdan. “Coming along nicely. Good. Very well.”
“In time,” said Uncle Dragomir.
“In time?”
“How much longer. Days? Weeks? Months?”
Professor Bogdan turned to Dinu and switched to English. “Weeks we can do, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Dinu said.
Professor Bogdan turned to Uncle Dragomir, switched back to their language, and smiling as brightly as he could with teeth like his, said, “Weeks, Dragomir.”
Uncle Dragomir fastened his glinting gaze on Professor Bogdan. “In my career I’ve dealt with types who like to stretch out the job. I know you’re not like them.”
Professor Bogdan put his hand to his chest. “The furthest thing from it. Not many weeks, Dragomir, not many at all.”
“Hmmf,” said Uncle Dragomir. He took out his money roll, separated some bills without counting, leaned across the desk, and stuffed them in the chest pocket of Professor Bogdan’s shirt. Then he turned, possibly on his way out, but that was when he noticed the T-shirt, lying in Dinu’s lap. “What’s that?”
Professor Bogdan explained—his brother, the Granite State, plumbing and heating.
“Let’s see it on,” said Uncle Dragomir.
“It’s my size,” Dinu said.
“Let’s see.”
Dinu considered putting on the T-shirt over his satin-lined leather jacket. Not real satin or leather although very close. But the T-shirt would probably not fit over the jacket. It was a stupid idea. The problem was that he wore nothing under the jacket, all his shirts dirty, the washer broken and his mother once again dealing with the swollen hands issue. He took off the jacket.
Professor Bogdan’s gaze went right to the big bruise over his ribs on the right side, not a fresh bruise—purple and yellow now, kind of like summer sunsets if the wind was coming out of the mountains and blowing the pollution away—but impossible to miss. Uncle Dragomir didn’t give it the slightest glance. Instead he helped himself to a Chesterfield from Professor Bogdan’s pack, lying on the desk.
Dinu put on the T-shirt.
“The plunger is funny,” said Uncle Dragomir, lighting up.
Desfundator was their word for plunger. Plunger was better. The smoke from Uncle Dragomir’s cigarette reached him. He began to cough. That made his chest hurt, under the bruise.
TWO
Something amazing happened on Court #2 of the New Sunshine Golf and Tennis Club just before lunchtime on the day after New Year’s, although it was amazing to only one person, namely Loretta Plansky, a seventy-one-year-old widow of solid build and the only female player in the whole club with a one-handed backhand. She and her partner, a new member Mrs. Plansky had met just before stepping on the court that morning and whose name she had failed to retain even though she’d repeated it several times to herself as they shook hands, were playing in the weekly match between the New Sunshiners and the team from Old Sunshine Country Club, the hoity-toitier of the two, dating all the way back to 1989. Mrs. Plansky had been something of a tomboy as a kid, actually playing Little League baseball and Peewee hockey on boys’ teams, but she hadn’t taken up tennis until she’d married Norm, so although her strokes were effective they weren’t much to look at. Now, up 5-6 in a third set tiebreak, Mrs. Plansky and her partner receiving, the better of the opponents, a tall, blond woman perhaps fifteen years younger than the others, lofted a pretty lob over Mrs. Plansky, a lob with a touch of topspin that was going to land inside the baseline for a clean winner. Mrs. Plansky wheeled around, chased after the ball, and with her back half-turned to the net flicked a backhand down the unguarded alley. Game, set, match. A nice shot, mostly luck, and not the amazing part. The amazing part was that Mrs. Plansky had wheeled around without giving it the slightest thought. She’d simply made a quick thoughtless instinctive move—quick for her, at least—for the first time since her hip replacement, nine months before. Mrs. Plansky wanted badly to tell Norm all about it. He’d say something about how she’d found the fountain of youth, and she’d say let’s call it a trickle, and he’d laugh and give her a quick kiss. She could just about feel it now, on her cheek.
“What a get!” said her partner, patting Mrs. Plansky’s shoulder.
The partner’s name came to her at last, literally late in the game. That bit of mental fun liberated a little burst of happiness inside her. Those little bursts, based on tiny private nothings, had been a feature of her life since childhood. Mrs. Plansky was well aware that she was one lucky woman. “Thanks, Melanie,” she said.
They hustled up to the net, touched rackets, then collected their tennis bags and headed to the clubhouse patio for lunch. Mrs. Plansky’s phone beeped just as she was pulling out her chair. She dug it out of her bag, checked the number, and stepped away from the table, off the patio, and onto the edge of the putting green.
“Nina?” she said.
“Hi, Mom,” said Nina. “How’re things? Wait, I’ll answer—no complaints, right?”
Mrs. Plansky laughed. “Maybe I should be less predictable.”
“Whoa! An out-there version of Loretta Plansky! You’d rule the world.”
“Then forget it for sure,” said Mrs. Plansky. “How are the kids?”
“Great,” Nina said. “Emma’s still on winter break—right now she’s out in Scottsdale with Zach and Anya.” Emma, a junior at UC Santa Barbara, being Nina’s daughter from her first marriage, to Zach, and Anya being Zach’s second wife, whom Mrs. Plansky had met just once, at Norm’s funeral, and very briefly. But in that brief time, she’d said something quite touching. What was it?
“Mom?” said Nina. “You still there?”
“Yes.”
“Thought I’d lost you for a second.”
“Must … must be a bad connection. I’m at the club. The service is iffy.” Mrs. Plansky moved to a different spot on the putting green, even though she knew there was nothing wrong with … well, never mind.
“The tennis club?” Nina said. “How are you hitting ’em?”
“No one would pay to watch,” said Mrs. Plansky. “And Will?”
“Will?”
“Yes. How is he?”
Will being Nina’s other child, fathered by Ted, Nina’s second husband. There’d been a third husband—called Teddy, kind of confusing—now also by the wayside, which was how Mrs. Plansky pictured all Nina’s husbands, Zach, Ted, Teddy, left behind by a fast and shiny car, the hair of the three men—none bald, all in fact with full heads of hair—blowing in Nina’s backdraft. Was that—a full head of hair—a criterion of hers when it came to husbands? Were there in fact any other criteria? Why had she never considered this question before? And now came one of those many moments when she wished that Norm was around. Yes, he’d say, it’s her only criterion. Or, no, there’s one other, and he’d name something that was funny, amazing, and true, something she’d never have imagined. And then: “Now can I go back to being dead?”
Copyright © 2023 by Pas de Deux
