Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare) - Anne Tyler Page 0,3
you would at least be familiar with his name.”
“Three years? What happened to Ennis?”
“Good Lord! Ennis! Ennis was two assistants back.”
“Oh,” she said.
She didn’t know why he was acting so irritable. It wasn’t as if he ever talked about his assistants—or about anything, in fact.
“I seem to have a little trouble keeping them,” he said. “It may be that to outsiders, my project is not looking very promising.”
This wasn’t something he had admitted before, although from time to time Kate had wondered. It made her feel sorry for him, suddenly. She let her hands drop to her sides.
“I went to a great deal of effort to bring Pyoder to this country,” he said. “I don’t know if you realize. He was only twenty-five at the time, but everybody who’s anybody in autoimmunity had heard of him. He’s brilliant. He qualified for an O-1 visa, and that’s not something you often see these days.”
“Well, good, Father.”
“An extraordinary-ability visa; that’s what an O-1 is. It means that he possesses some extraordinary skill or knowledge that no one here in this country has, and that I am involved in some extraordinary research that justifies my needing him.”
“Good for you.”
“O-1 visas last three years.”
She reached out to touch his forearm. “Of course you’re anxious about your project,” she said, in what she hoped was an encouraging tone. “But I bet things will be fine.”
“You really think so?” he asked.
She nodded and gave his arm a couple of clumsy pats, which he must not have been expecting because he looked startled. “I’m sure of it,” she told him. “Don’t forget to bring your sandwich box home.”
Then she opened the front door and walked out into the sunshine. Two of the Christians for Buddha women were sitting on the steps with their heads together. They were laughing so hard about something that it took them a moment to notice her, but then they drew apart to let her pass.
The little girls in Room 4 were playing breakup. The ballerina doll was breaking up with the sailor doll. “I’m sorry, John,” she said in a brisk, businesslike voice—Jilly’s voice, actually—“but I’m in love with somebody else.”
“Who?” the sailor doll asked. It was Emma G. who was speaking for him, holding him up by the waist of his little blue middy blouse.
“I can’t tell you who, on account of he’s your best friend and so it would hurt your feelings.”
“Well, that’s just stupid,” Emma B. pointed out from the sidelines. “Now he knows anyhow, since you said it was his best friend.”
“He could have a whole bunch of best friends, though.”
“No, he couldn’t. Not if they were ‘best.’ ”
“Yes, he could. Me, I have four best friends.”
“You’re a weirdo, then.”
“Kate! Did you hear what she called me?”
“What do you care?” Kate asked. She was helping Jameesha take her painting smock off. “Tell her she’s weird herself.”
“You’re weird yourself,” Jilly told Emma B.
“Am not.”
“Are so.”
“Am not.”
“Kate said you were, so there!”
“I didn’t say that,” Kate said.
“Did so.”
Kate was about to say, “Did not,” but she changed it to, “Well, anyhow, I wasn’t the one who started it.”
They were gathered in the doll corner—seven little girls and the Samson twins, Raymond and David. In another corner all six of the remaining boys were crowded at the sand table, which they had contrived to turn into a sports arena. They were using a plastic spoon to catapult Lego bricks into a fluted metal Jell-O mold that had been positioned at the far end. Most of the time they missed, but whenever anyone scored a hit there would be a burst of cheers, and then the others would start elbowing one another aside and wrestling for control of the spoon so that they could try for themselves.
Kate should go over and quiet them down, but she didn’t. Let them work off some of that energy, she figured. Besides, she was not, in fact, the teacher; she was the teacher’s assistant—a world of difference.
The Charles Village Little People’s School had been founded forty-five years ago by Mrs. Edna Darling, who still ran it, and all of her teachers were old enough that they required assistants—one assistant apiece, and two for the more labor-intensive two-year-old class—because who could expect them to chase around after a gang of little rapscallions at their advanced stage of life? The school occupied the basement level of Aloysius Church, but it was aboveground, mostly, so the rooms were sunlit and cheerful, with a set of double doors opening directly onto