“How do you like it?”
“Magnificent.”
I didn’t know why he wasn’t friendlier. Usually, Dad didn’t mind the odd June Bug spiraling over to him. And he certainly wasn’t above encouraging them, opening all the curtains, turning on all the lights by launching into certain extemporaneous lectures on Gorbachev, Arms Control, the 1-2-3s of Civil War (the gist of which the June Bug missed like a rare raindrop), often dropping hints about the impressive tome he was authoring, The Iron Grip.
I wondered if she was too attractive or tall for him (she was almost his height) or perhaps her unsolicited Bogie comment had rubbed him the wrong way. One of Dad’s pet peeves was to be “informed” of something he already knew, and Dad and I were well aware of her crumb of trivia. Driving between Little Rock and Portland, I’d read aloud all of the eye-opening Thugs, Midgets, Big Ears and Dentures: A Real Profile of Hollywood’s Leading Men (Rivette, 1981), and Other Voices,32Rooms: My Life as L. B. Mayer’s Maid (Hart, 1961). Between San Diego and Salt Lake City I’d read aloud countless celebrity biographies, authorized and unauthorized, including those of Howard Hughes, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and the highly memorable Christ, It’s Been Done Before: Celluloid Jesuses from 1912–1988, Why Hollywood Should Cease Committing the Son of God to Screen (Hatcher, 1989).
“And your daughter,” she said, smiling at me, “what school will she be attending?”
I opened my mouth, but Dad spoke.
“The St. Gallway School.”
He was looking at me intently with his I’m-Thumbing-a-Lift-Here look, which soon slipped into his Please-Pull-a-Ripcord face, and then, If-You-Would-Be-So-Kind-as-to-Administer-a-Rabbit-Punch. Normally, he reserved those faces for instances when a June Bug with some sort of physical deformity was actively pursuing him, like a faulty sense of direction (extreme nearsightedness) or an erratic wing (facial tic).
“I’m a teacher there,” she said, extending her hand to me. “Hannah Schneider.”
“Blue van Meer.”
“What a wonderful name.” She looked at Dad.
“Gareth,” he said, after a moment.
“Nice to meet you.”
With the brazen self-confidence present only in one who had shucked off the label of Sweater Girl and proved herself to be a dramatic actress of considerable range and talent (and enormous box-office draw), Hannah Schneider informed Dad and me that for the last three years she had taught Introduction to Film, an elective class for all grades. She also told us with great authority that the St. Gallway School was a “very special place.”
“I think we should be getting along,” Dad said, turning to me. “Don’t you have piano?” (I hadn’t, nor have I ever, had piano.)
But, quite unabashedly, Hannah Schneider did not stop talking, as if Dad and I were Confidential reporters who’d waited six months to interview her. Still, there was nothing outright haughty or overbearing in her manner; she simply assumed you were deeply interested in whatever she was saying. And you were. She asked where we were from (“Ohio,” seethed Dad), what year I was (“Senior,” fumed Dad), how we liked our new house (“It’s fun,” frothed Dad) and explained that she had moved here three years ago from San Francisco (“Astonishing,” fizzed Dad). He really had no choice but to throw her a scrap.
“Perhaps we’ll see you at a home football game,” he said, waving goodbye (a one-hand-in-the-air “So long” that could also pass for “Not now”) and steering me toward the exit at the front of the store. (Dad had never attended a home football game and had no intention of attending one. He considered most contact sports, as well as the hooting and woofing spectators, to be “embarrassing,” “very, very wrong,” “pitiful exhibitions of the Australopithecus within.” “I suppose we all have an inner Australopithecus, but I’d prefer mine to remain deep in his cave, whittling away at Mammoth carcasses with his simple stone tools.”)
“Thank God we made it out alive,” said Dad, starting the car.
“What was that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. As I’ve told you, these aged American feminists who pride themselves on opening their own doors, paying for themselves, well, they’re not the fascinating, modern women they imagine themselves to be. Oh no, they’re Magellan space probes looking for a man they can orbit without end.”
One of Dad’s favorite personal comments regarding the sexes was his likening assertive women to Spacecraft (fly-by probes, orbiters, satellites, landers) and men to the unwitting subjects of these missions (planets, moons, comets, asteroids). Dad, of course, saw himself as a planet so remote it had suffered only a single visit — the successful but brief Natasha Mission.
“I’m talking about you,” I said. “You were rude.”
“Rude?”
“Yes. She was nice. I liked her.”
“Someone is not ‘nice’ when they intrude upon your privacy, when they force a landing and take the liberty of discharging radar signals that bounce off your surface, formulating panoramic images of your landscape and transmitting them ceaselessly through space.”
“What about Vera Strauss?”
“Who?”
“Vera P. Strauss.”
“Oh. The veterinarian?”
“Check-out girl in the express lane at Hearty Health Foods.”
“Of course. She wanted to be a veterinarian. I remember.”
“She accosted us in the middle of your—”
“Birthday dinner. At Wilber Steak, yes, I know.”
“Wilson Steakhouse in Meade.”
“Well, I—”
“You invited her to sit down for dessert and for three hours we listened to those awful stories.”
“About her poor brother getting all that psychosurgery, yes, I remember, and I told you I was sorry. How was I supposed to know she herself was a candidate for shock treatment, that we should’ve called those same people who arrive at the end of Streetcar to cart the woman off?”
“At the time I didn’t hear you bemoaning her panoramic images.”
“Point taken. But I remember with Vera, very distinctly, she had an unusual quality. The fact that this unusual quality turned out to be of the Sylvia Plath variety, well, it wasn’t my fault. And at least she was extraordinary on some level. At least she provided us with a raw, uncensored view of complete lunacy. This last woman, this — I don’t even remember her name.”
“Hannah Schneider.”
“Well, yes, she was…”
“What?”
“Commonplace.”
“You’re nuts.”
“I didn’t spend six hours quizzing you on those ‘Far, Far Beyond the SAT’ flashcards for you to use the word ‘nuts’ in everyday speech—”
“You’re outré,” I said, crossing my arms, staring out the window at the afternoon traffic. “And Hannah Schneider was”—I wanted to think of a few decent words to blow Dad’s hair back—“prepossessing. Yet abstruse.”
“Hmm?”
“You know, she walked by us in the grocery store last night.”
“Who?”
“Hannah.”
He glanced over at me, surprised. “That woman was in Fat Kat Foods?”
I nodded. “Walked right by us.”
He was silent for a moment, then sighed. “Well, I only hope she’s not one of those defunct Galileo probes. I don’t think I could withstand another crash landing. What was her name? The one from Cocorro—”