View from Saturday (9781439132012) Read Online Free Page B

again.
    Every morning thereafter, Nadia smiled as she entered class and greeted Mrs. Olinski with a word from her southern past. She said, “Hey.”
    Mrs. Olinski knew that Nadia Diamondstein was not only incandescently beautiful but was also a star.

    T he commissioner of education picked up the next question. Looking over the rims of his reading glasses, he slowly unfolded the paper. “This question has two parts,” he said. “To receive credit, you must answer both parts.” Lowering his eyes, he read, “What is the name given to that portion of the North Atlantic Ocean that is noted for its abundance of seaweed, and what is its importance to the ecology of our planet?”
    Nadia Diamondstein rang in.

N ADIA T ELLS OF T URTLE L OVE
    My grandfather is a slim person of average height with heavy, heathery-gray eyebrows. He lives in a high-rise condominium on the beach in Florida. He lives there with his new wife whom he calls Margy. I was told to call her Margaret, not Aunt Margaret or Mrs. Diamondstein. It sounded disrespectful to me—calling a woman old enough to be my grandmother by her first name, but I did as I was told.
    Last summer, just before my grandfather married Margaret, my mother and father got divorced, and Mother moved the two of us to upstate New York where she had grown up. She said that she needed some autumn in her life. I had never thought that I would see autumn in New York or anywhere else because even when we vacationed at a place that had one, we always had to return for school before it started. In Florida school starts before Labor Day. Whatever it says on the calendar, Florida has de facto summer.
    Dividing up my time was part of the divorce settlement. I was to spend Thanksgiving, spring vacation, and one month over the summer with Dad. He left Christmas holidaysfor Mother because it is her holiday, not his. I am the product of a mixed marriage.
    This first summer of their separation, Dad chose August for his visitation rights. He picked us up early Friday evening.
Us
means Ginger and me. Ginger is my dog. I do not know who was happier to see me at the airport—Dad or Ginger. The worst part of the trip had been checking Ginger into the baggage compartment.
    Dad always was a nervous person, but since the divorce he had become terminally so. He was having a difficult time adjusting to being alone. He had sold the house that we lived in when we were a family and had moved into a swinging singles apartment complex, but my father could no more swing than a gate on rusty hinges.
    For the first day and a half after I arrived, Dad hovered over me like the Goodyear blimp over the Orange Bowl. He did not enjoy the hovering, and I did not enjoy being hovered, but he did not know what to do with me, and I did not know what to tell him, except to tell him to stop hovering, which seemed to be the only thing he knew how to do.
    On Sunday we went to see Grandpa Izzy and Margaret.
    Grandpa Izzy was happy to see me. Under those bushy eyebrows of his, Grandpa Izzy’s eyes are bright blue like the sudden underside of a bird wing. His eyes have always been the most alive part of him, but when Bubbe Frieda died, they seemed to die, too. Since he married Margaret though, they seem bright enough to give off light of their own. He is sixty-nine years old, and he is in love.
    Margaret is a short blonde. She is very different from my bubbe but not very different from the thousands who make their home in South Florida. There are so many blond widows in the state of Florida, and they are all so muchalike, they ought to have a kennel breed named and registered for them. Like all the others, Margaret dresses atrociously. She wears pastel-colored pantsuits with elastic waists or white slacks with overblouses of bright, bold prints. She carries her eyeglasses—blue-rimmed bifocals—on a gold metal chain around her neck. They all do. Margaret is not fat, but she certainly is not