<<  -- 5 --  Jenna Orkin    TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON

On Sundays Mr Eschenbach and Miss Laudon took a walk together. Once Michael met them on Madison Avenue, looking in the shop windows and once in the park, where they were watching the 'young people'. Never having seen them outdoors, Michael took in their appearance with heightened awareness. Miss Laudon wore a black coat and a scarf imprinted with music in a composer's hasty hand. In venturing out of the school, Mr Eschenbach seemed to have donned years along with his overcoat; Miss Laudon had linked her arm in his in support. Michael saw it as characteristic of Miss Laudon's graciousness to repay her friend's loyalty in this way. Although he didn't think consciously about the odd duo, he saw Miss Laudon as a protagonist of infinite depth in a play in which Mr Eschenbach was comic relief.

One Tuesday after he had been taking lessons from Miss Laudon for three years Michael arrived to find the front door of the school locked. When he went home and couldn't reach Miss Laudon or Mr Eschenbach, he called another teacher, Mr Moskowitz. Mr Moskowitz said Mr Eschenbach had had a sudden illness. He did not know when Miss Laudon would be back but it would probably not be for a while. Michael asked if Mr Eschenbach was in the hospital. Mr Moskowitz hesitated before answering, 'He died. Day before yesterday.'

The next time Michael called Miss Laudon, a strange woman answered. She said that Miss Laudon was not available at the moment but that she had asked for Michael to come see her the following day at five o'clock, if possible.

It was an afternoon in April, evening hovering above the roofs of the brownstones, the sky already painted over the park. Cold gusts started suddenly in the warm, still air. Winter and spring mingled like currents bound in opposite directions.

Miss Laudon answered the door, her eyes pink and washed-out blue.
'Come in,' she said. Michael followed her to a table on which lay papers in disarray.
'I don't know what to do with all these papers. Well, you can see for yourself what this place looks like ... What do you mean, 'not too bad'? It's chaos! It looks nice, usually.
'I don't know what to do. But you understand. You're such a nice boy.
'I don't know when I'll go back to school. Everybody tells me I should start teaching as soon as I can; it's better for me. But you see how much I have to do -- he died so suddenly.
'I don't know when they can open the school again. He did everything. Mr Moskowitz came in, I know, but he didn't really do very much.
'Why doesn't Mr Moskowitz help you with all this work?' Michael asked. 'Why do you have to do everything?'
'Darling, he was my husband. You didn't know that? Nobody knew at the school, except of course, the other people who worked there, who knew us for years.'
It had never occurred to Michael that Miss Laudon and Mr Eschenbach might be married. They called each other by their last names! He continued to look at Miss Laudon without showing his surprise.
'He didn't want anybody to know. Whenever we went anywhere, he just said I was his sweetheart.' Saying the word, Miss Laudon broke off her explanation to cry.
'Forty-nine years we were married. It'll be fifty in October. I can show you some pictures. They should be over here, somewhere.'

She went to a smaller table where more papers lay on the photograph album. On top was a newspaper clipping.
'Here's the obituary. They put it in on Wednesday. He died Sunday night. No, Monday. No, no, no, what am I talking about. Sunday, Sunday. He went like that. They all tell me how lucky he was. Never sick a day in his life. Then, just like that. You know, he always said when he got sick, that would be it. Here, here's what they wrote in the column. Isn't that nice?'

She showed Michael the notice sent to the Times by the school expressing their sorrow.
'Here are the pictures. This is Mr Eschenbach and myself when we got married. I like myself in this picture; I like it very much, don't you?' Michael smiled and said he did.
'You know I always say what I believe, don't I? Here. This is my daughter Margaret. You spoke to her the other day when you called. Now I want to show you my grandson.'
Michael watched in a trance like someone listening to the denouement of a court case when the defendant breaks down and tells the whole story.
'Wait a minute. Now where's that picture? Wait just a minute. Here it is. That's my little grandson when he was, I'd say, five or six.'
'What's his name?' Michael asked.
'His name is Simon. That's an unusual name. You don't find many people with that name although my daughter tells me it's more common over in ... What's that country ... you know, England! That's right. My daughter loves England. When she was little, she used to know all the kings and queens.
'I was talking to my daughter the other day and she said, "You know what I miss about him? His suspenders!" Oh I know it sounds funny but it's those little things!' she cried, her eyes blurred again in anguish.

When she had spent her grief, Michael went home. He didn't see her again til September, the week before he left for college. He'd decided to major in music. He couldn't turn his back on the vision she'd shown him.

She was calmer than she'd been in the spring. She showed him pictures of her family again, then remembered that Michael had visited her when Mr Eschenbach had died. Mr Moskowitz had taken Mr Eschenbach's place at the school, she said. Teachers often quit (the job paid minimum wage) and sometimes, until he found a replacement, Mr Moskowitz asked Miss Laudon to fill in. But she wasn't as young as she used to be; not like the old days when she could work til eight or nine and get up the next day. Her daughter told her to complain but Miss Laudon didn't want to. Mr Moskowitz needed her, she said.

Michael wrote her a letter from college describing his music courses. She answered in a fluently written letter punctuated by dashes about the death of her husband. Each sentence fragment seemed to stand for some ruin of her former world.

Continue >>