Had Poindexter been more diplomatic, he would have been an outstanding student, but he had a knack for responding to his teachers by argument, backtalk, and, most of all, ridicule. His fellow students grudgingly admired that in a fellow sufferer, and laughed uproariously at his parodies of the powers that be.
With apt mimicry, Poindexter pointed out the similarities between band teacher Igor Stroganoff and the hunchbacked assistant to Doctor Frankenstein. The social studies teacher was "Popeye," always searching for his lost can of spinach. The gym teacher, Max Woolrich, was "Wooly bully," a monster who provoked the cry: "Watch him now, he gits ya!"
But Poindexter went too far, obsessed as he was with righting the wrongs of a world where people wore the wrong clothes, said the wrong things, and failed to appreciate his genius. When he rode on the bus or the railroad, he left little notes behind with helpful hints for improving service. When he was ill, and the doctor asked if he was feeling better, he inquired, "Better than what?" When he visited restaurants or other establishments with suggestion boxes, he at once dashed off lengthy lists of goals and practices that needed prompt implementation.
In high school, Poindexter had a series of girlfriends, but his relationships were doomed to destruction on the rocks of "helpful hints" and "room for improvement." When he broke up with all the eligible and interested girls in his class, he began socializing with the younger grades, but of course he never found a girl who could withstand his critical pronouncements.
Starting college in 1967, Poindexter studied English literature and hoped to become a movie critic, or a journalist evaluating restaurants or resorts. He was swept up with the rebellious spirit of the 60's, demonstrating against the Vietnam War and the many wrongs of an unjust society. Drugs did him in. He dropped out of school and hitchhiked across the country, until an ex-roommate recruited him to stay at a new ashram in Southern California.
By this time he had a long, flowing beard. With his prominent nose, penetrating gaze, tall stature, and thin, ascetic frame, he was the perfect picture of a guru.
And then something strange happened. People who used to abhor criticism started turning to him for advice. In his marijuana-impaired mind, the disparaging remarks he wanted to make about Jim being too fat, and Jane wearing too much eye makeup, became entangled in a web of inscrutable quotations from the Ramayana or Immanuel Kant. He was taken for a visionary genius, and received offers from patrons to set him up in his own hermitage somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas, where he could dispense in suitable doses the wisdom of the ages.
Although Poindexter became something of a celebrity, he could never stay long in one place, because his continual faultfinding eventually made his locale seem insufferable. This was not a problem, however. His many devotees across the country enabled him to wander, visiting hippie communes, college campuses, and art colonies throughout the United States. In the communes, he farmed and helped renovate buildings. On campuses, he worked as a reporter and social activist. In art colonies, he helped organize galleries and shows and appeared in summer theatre. He was always ready to build something, write something, or create something.
All the while he studied mankind with the critical eye of an editor in search of typos. He had no lack of subjects for his life's study of the foibles and errors of mankind.
* * *
In 1973, Ginny turned forty-one, though she only admitted to thirty-three. She could get away with it, too, since her light hair had no strands of gray. Clairol called that color "golden," and what was good enough for Clairol was good enough for her. She didn't ask, of course, but she assumed that the other girls all colored their hair as well. At least she didn't have a perm, like Louise's. Much too curly. It aged Louise, and hadn't she noticed that people were ironing their hair, not curling it?
Ginny would never consider ironing her own hair, of course. A nice pageboy was a classic. She hadn't changed the style since her year at college, back in 1950. Steve had loved running his fingers through her hair. He told her it was the color of a medium sherry, and so, overcome by his sophistication, she'd married him. They'd agreed that she didn't need to continue at college. "Now that you have your M-R-S," he joked, "I can go on and get my B.A. Besides, once I get established, you'll never have to work again."
Ginny took the job at Graham, Willis, and Pierce just to help out. Actually, she didn't mind working there. Mr. Willis, especially, was really nice, and the girls were great. That was where she'd met Louise and Bethany, and they'd been friends all the years since, even after Steve got his first job and they decided it was time to have a baby. "After all," Steve pointed out, "you aren't getting any younger."
Steve Junior made his appearance promptly ten months after she quit her job, followed by Theresa and, two years after Terry, by Bill. Ginny agreed with Steve that three children were enough. "Two boys and a girl," said Steve. "Good job."
Sometimes, though, it didn't feel like a good job. Junior was such a good baby that he didn't prepare her for Terry's colic and screaming or Bill's--well, she just had to call it negativity.
"Billy, honey, don't you want to play quietly with your truck?"
"No! Want the dolly."
"Now, Billy, you know boys don't play with dollies."
"No! Want it." She took the doll away from him, put the truck firmly in front of him, then went off to get a bit of housecleaning done, only to be interrupted two minutes later by Terry's screams of, "Mo-o-o-mie, Billy stole my dolly."
Of course, she never mentioned this in particular when she and the girls got together for their kaffeklatches. She just complained jokingly that children were a handful, and why couldn't they play together nicely? Terry broke every toy she had, but maybe Billy would grow up to be a doctor, because he always put her dolls back together and was really gentle with them.
Louise and Bethany had both gotten married and had children of their own.
"Remember when we were at Graham, Willis and Pierce?" asked Louise. "All we could think about was getting married and having kids and getting out of there. But it wasn't so bad, was it?"
"You were already married, weren't you, Ginny?" asked Bethany. "Of course you were a bit older than us."
"I got married very young," Ginny pointed out, then added, "Remember the baby shower for that girl in Purchasing? I think she actually came back to work after her baby was born. They must have been really hard up."
There was a short silence, which Louise broke. "Have you ever thought about going back to work?"
"Of course not," said Bethany. "I have a full time job--taking care of Donald and the kids. That's the most important thing. Besides," she added practically, "Who'd take care of Bobby and Susan if I was off at work?"
"Well, maybe when the kids get older," said Ginny, suddenly remembering the bustle of the office around her. "When I did filing," she said wistfully, "the files stayed in order. It wasn't like housework at all. I love the kids, don't get me wrong, but I could do without the vacuuming and the dishes."
She kept coming back to that conversation in her mind, but she didn't dare suggest anything to Steve. He didn't want her to work. Sometimes she thought she could get a job and he wouldn't even notice, as long as the house was clean and food was on the table when he got home. Though he got home late a lot of nights himself.
The children grew up quickly. Steve was the picture of his dad, the same shoulders, the same way of standing, the same certainty about what he wanted and how he should get it. He started college at his dad's alma mater, and they only saw him on weekends. It was funny how little difference it made.
Terry was something else again. No matter how Ginny tried to help her with beauty tips, subscriptions to Seventeen, and trips to Macy's for special dresses, Terry didn't seem to care about being pretty and attracting boys. Whenever Ginny started a nice mother-daughter conversation, it degenerated into some kind of strange political diatribe. Luckily Terry didn't mention any of her radical ideas to her father. He'd have gone ballistic.
He did go ballistic when she joined the college students occupying the dean's office because the college allowed army recruiters to set up outside the Dining Commons. She wasn't charged, but he had to leave work to go down to the police station and get her. The resulting family fight was probably the worst they'd had, with Junior, home for the weekend, and Steve shouting at Terry and Billy, who was wearing a shirt with enormous purple flowers, which had the effect on his father of the red cape to the bull. Ginny tried hard, and unsuccessfully, to get them to sit down and talk quietly about the situation, but at the end Steve turned on her.
"You're the one that brought them up, and look at them. It's as though they were switched at birth. She's all mixed up in politics, with all of those drug-smoking hippies and their disgusting music, and look at your youngest son--he should have been the girl in the family! It's your fault and you know it is."
Ginny never knew if what happened next was the bravest or the stupidest thing she did in her life. "Fine," she said. "I did everything wrong--according to you. I spent twenty years of my life doing everything wrong. Well, if that's the way you feel, you'll be better off without me. Goodbye."
It wasn't that simple, of course. There was the legal stuff, alimony, child support and all. And there was all the mud that comes out in something like this. It turned out Steve had a mistress, a woman young enough to be his daughter, with ironed hair and bell-bottom jeans. He said he loved her because she was a free spirit. Louise and Bethany said she'd be sorry, and Bethany added that there was an opening at Graham, Willis and Pierce, even back in Filing where she'd been twenty years before, and they'd probably love to have her back.
"That's very nice," she said. "You know what I've been thinking, though? I've been thinking maybe I'll go on a little vacation."
"By yourself?" asked Bethany.
"Maybe."
"I know what it is," said Louise. "You need a change. You need to know what you really want. I think you should do it. But it's better if you start small."
"For example?"
"Well, if you don't mind my saying it you could start with updating your hairstyle."
But Ginny didn't change her hairstyle as Louise had suggested. Instead, she changed her name to Gloria. It was so much prettier than Ginny. And she decided to move to another state. New Hampshire seemed like a good place.
After some house hunting, she moved to Keene, a pretty college town with tree-lined streets and many flowers. Near the park in the center of town, she bought a small single-family house. It seemed like a great buy, although it did need a lot of fixing up.
One bright spring morning she decided to go for a walk and get some coffee on Main Street. The Cafe Diem looked friendly. She went in and poured herself a cup of Ethiopian coffee and sat down at the only empty table.
* * *
In the course of his visits to the many colleges of New England, Poindexter came to Keene, New Hampshire, and stayed at the E.F. Street Hotel near the center of town. It was a beautiful, sunny spring morning. But where would he go for breakfast? The radio advertised Cafe Diem as having a "community-minded ambience." That sounded right. He found it on Main Street, entered, poured himself a cup of coffee, then looked for a place at the six round tables where he could sit.
They were all occupied. But at one sat a single woman. He approached and asked if he could share her table.
Gloria wasn't particularly interested in sharing her table with a man. Since her divorce, she tried to think before she blurted knee-jerk social responses to men. She wondered if she were making too big a deal out of the request of a stranger to share her table while drinking a cup of coffee. But no, this was good practice. She looked up at him blankly.
His blue eyes seemed to mirror her true feelings. "That's okay. I don't want to disturb your peace." He smiled warmly, moving to the back of the coffee shop to look for another empty spot. During his time at the ashram, Dex had undergone sensitivity training. If you were the only one at a table, others seemed to assume that since you were alone you needed company. He certainly didn't. Perhaps this woman didn't, either.
In a moment, Gloria felt silly. His eyes looked so androgynous and mild; she supposed she could invite him to sit down. She turned around, made eye contact, and signaled with her hand for him to join her. She watched him come closer, slowly, carefully, with his gaze locked to hers. Gloria inhaled and said, "I'm Gloria." She was still delighted by the way her mouth felt when she said, "Gloria."
Dex continued to look directly at her. He nodded and said softly, "Gloria." He sat down. "My name is Dex."
Dex. "Dex? Is that short for something?" She felt oddly irritated by the name. Not for the first time since the divorce, she wondered if she were going crazy.
Dex, never one to lie, responded. "My parents named me Poindexter. I decided to change it. Quite recently in fact. I'm still getting used to it."
Gloria nodded. "I was a Ginny. And now I'm a Gloria. But I have to say, the name Poindexter takes a lot more nerve than Ginny to name a baby. Is that a family name?"
"No, but it means the same as Hotspur, or spur the steed. The word poin derives from pungo, to pierce or to prick; dexter means right as opposed to left; a word expressive of readiness of limbs, adroitness, expertness and skill."
Gloria didn't know quite what to make of Dex. He was an odd mix of qualities. He seemed so harmless, with his beard, glasses and tendency to babble on about things. She hadn't felt very comfortable around most men since her divorce, but Dex didn't feel like a 'most' anything. He felt more like a wizard from one of her kids' story books.
It was almost a disappointment when he offered to get her a coffee refill and instead of a dramatic gesture that caused coffee to magically appear, he just walked up to the counter and asked the girl for some French roast.
"Thanks," she said, when he returned. "It's funny, I ended up here on some kind of ... experiment, a quest ... don't really know what the word is for it ... to get away from everything and everybody I knew and be by myself, but I realize that this is the stuff I've missed. Just sitting and watching the world go by and having someone to talk to about it. Silly, I guess."
"Not at all. It is a well-known, almost basic, concept that the littlest things have the biggest impact or influence. The largest hierarchies are composed of the smallest particles. Just a leaf falling on the surface of a pond can cause ripples that stretch all the way across it. If the river crabs do not return to the river, the minnows that feed on their parasites would die. If all the mulberry trees in China were cut down, there would be no more silk pajamas in Los Angeles. Organic asparagus can strengthen people and make them walk twice as fast as would factory-processed foods. It's even been said that you can trace the curvature of the jet stream all the way back to the tiny movement of air caused by the beating wings of a caddis fly .... what?"
Gloria realized she was smiling. The whole thing, her trip, meeting Dex and this conversation were so different from her old life and the way she'd thought and talked about things. Steve and she never had conversations that rambled all over the place like this one. They hardly talked at all, she'd come to realize.
"It's just ... are you aware that you talk complete nonsense most of the time?"
Dex turned visibly paler. His eyes assumed a far-away look.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean... well, I guess I did mean it," Gloria said, "but I think it came out sounding ruder than I intended. Please tell me I'm not the first person to ever say that to you?"
"Actually, you are the first person to ever tell me that," Dex muttered, his forehead wrinkled in thought. "And now that I think about it, you're probably right."
Then he looked up at her and laughed. Gloria felt a huge sense of relief. She wasn't sure why, but it was important to her that she hadn't hurt the feelings of this odd, polite young man. In a quiet way, he had nudged her into thinking about things differently for a moment, and she hadn't felt like a forty-three year old divorcee and somebody's mom.
She'd felt like somebody's friend and like maybe she could be more than just somebody's friend.
That thought caught her completely by surprise, and she suddenly found herself looking at Dex, her own forehead wrinkling.
"Why not?" she said to herself.
"Sorry?" Dex asked, looking up from wiping at his glasses. "Did you say something?"
"I ...um ... maybe if you aren't doing anything tonight, we could go out to dinner?"
"Why not? But where? Keene doesn't exactly compete with Boston, in culinary variety."
"I know. I'm a fair cook, so if you're up for a home-cooked meal, and don't mind eating it in a place with sawdust on the floor, how about coming to my house?"
"You're in the midst of remodeling."
"How did you know?"
"I learned early on that I have a rare gift for being able to read people."
"In that case, what kind of cooking do you think I might do?"
"Not your--or my--momma's cooking. You know, gray roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas or string beans cooked to army-green. I see you as into something more exotic, like, say, Thai or Indian."
"As a matter of fact I was planning to do a West African stew--that is, if you're not averse to hot foods."
"Not at all. My visit to friends in New Orleans gave me a taste for Creole, which I learned to savor with lots of hot spices."
Gloria said she would expect him at eight.
* * *
Gloria peered intently at West African Cooking for Beginners and stirred the fufu on the stove. Beside it, the chicken in peanut sauce steamed. When the doorbell rang at eight sharp, she glanced doubtfully at the two bubbling pots, hid the book in a drawer, then answered the door.
Dex entered, sniffed the air and said, "Cumin and ginger, right?"
"Wow. Not too many people could pick out those ingredients just from the smell. West African cuisine goes down best with beer," she added, quoting the book. "Any preferences?"
"Anything but lite beer." She brought in two bottles of Heineken. Dex didn't seem to expect a glass, and she thought again of how different he was from Steve.
They sat together on the couch, the only piece of furniture in the living room, which was otherwise decorated with stacks of sheetrock. More sheetrock covered part of one wall.
"This is great. I knew you were a person who would have to have her own environment," Dex said, swigging his beer. "The remodeling looks good, but I think you're doing the work yourself, right?" He walked around the room, picking up a two-by-four, then putting it back.
"How would you know that?"
"Well, for starters, look at that wall. A contractor would install the wallboards horizontally, rather than vertically, as you have . . . not that it won't work that way."
"What else do you read from me?"
"You're not the 30-something person you let on to be. I'm guessing you're in your 40s." Noticing her wrinkled brow, he added quickly, "No offense. You're a very attractive lady. What I can't quite figure out is, why you're not married, or in a relationship."
There was a knock on the door. It opened and two young women walked in.
"Terry!" Gloria blurted. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm sorry, Mom, I didn't know you had company," Terry said, looking at Dex.
"Uh, Terry, this is Dex. Dex, this is Terry and her, ah, partner, Mandy."
Dex got up to acknowledge Terry, who retracted from her initial impulse to give him a hug, settling for a handshake. He wasn't sure how to greet Mandy. He finally offered her a handshake as well.
"We just came to Keene to visit Mandy's kid sister," Terry said, "and thought we'd drop in before heading back to Northampton."
Mandy stood frozen in place.
"You two look hungry; how about joining us for some African stew?"
Terry, though, saw that she and Mandy had done some damage to her mother's evening. "We ate before we came, so we'll be getting back." After giving her mother a quick hug, she whisked Mandy out the door.
A silence followed as the door closed. A tear welled up in Gloria's eye. "It's complicated," she finally said. "I needed to start my life over again and, you know..." She gestured in a semi-circular motion with both hands.
Dex stroked his beard. "There's an old Hindu saying: If you have a head, you can get 85 turbans."
Gloria thought: Do I really want a turban? But instead she said, "Where do you get all these sayings? Do you know any African sayings to go with our meal?"
"Sure," Dex smiled. "I once read a book of old Barotze sayings. 'When an elephant follows you, darkness conceals the hippopotamus. If you don't obey your husband, you'll eat far-off things. Birds with long beaks nest in short trees. While the old bag still works, the grasshoppers are roasted.'"
Gloria thought, Did that clown just call my daughter an elephant, tell me I should have obeyed my husband, and say I was an old bag?
But Dex had plowed ahead and was now espousing the plot of the Epic of Sundiata, some West African poetic history.
"I think the fufu is burning," Gloria said, and rushed into the kitchen, leaving Dex in the living room to preach to the wrongly installed sheetrock.
She took the jar of dried hot pepper and dumped a good third of it into the chicken sauce.
She returned to the living room. "It's ready, and I think you'll love it. It's completely authentic."
Dex ladled a generous amount into his bowl. "I don't need to be good at reading people to know you're a wonderful cook."
She almost felt guilty. Steve had never mentioned her cooking.
Grinning, Dex put the spoon into his mouth. Tears came to his eyes. A strange keening sound came from his throat. He grabbed at his beer and chugged a good third of it.
Finally he gasped, "It's very good."
"You don't mean that."
"You're right. I don't. Why did you make it so hot?"
"Maybe just to remind you that you don't know everything about everyone. Maybe," she admitted, "it was because I felt you were starting to bully me, and no one is ever going to bully me again."
He nodded. After a long pause during which his face returned to a normal color, he looked down at the simmering stew. "Would it be bullying or imposing if I suggested we just send out for a pizza?"
Which is why the sheetrock in Gloria's house still goes in two directions, and she never again sampled West African cuisine.
Gertrude Nye is a pseudonym for Bruce Hesselbach, Lucie Germer, Jerry Germer, Adrienne Spector, Travis Hiltz and Meg Cline. We are members of a writing group in Keene, New Hampshire, that has been going strong since 1991.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/short/153-gn-0310-guru and shortlinked at http://frsh.in/8d
