In the weeks that followed, she became more convinced of their being right for the job. She had not yet officially notified any of them because she wanted to make all four appointments at the same time, and the fourth was causing problems.
She had been considering asking Hamilton Knapp—yes, that Hamilton Knapp. Although he was naughty, he was also smart, and bad boys had always held a certain charm for her. But each time something told her he was the right choice, something else told her he was wrong. So she held back.
While she waffled between asking Ham and not asking him, she never gave a thought to asking Julian Singh. He was smart (or else his English accent made him seem so).
And he was sophisticated (or else his English accent made him seem so). But Julian Singh was too far off the mainland. He was an island unto himself, definitely not a team player. Ham Knapp was a leader. Ham Knapp had friends. But Julian stood alone. Just as he had stood alone the first day of school at the blackboard in front of the word CRIPPLE.
On the day that Epiphany Middle School was invited to attend Annie, Mrs. Olinski had driven her van to the high school and had arrived ahead of the school bus. She waited at the foot of the steps as the kids filed out. She saw Julian Singh push his way forward and then scurry down the steps and out of sight. He had disappeared into thin air. She didn’t want to call into thin air and look to all the world (and all the other teachers) as if she had no control of her class. Mrs. Olinski was annoyed with Julian Singh. Once inside the auditorium, she had looked for him again but had been unable to spot him before the house lights dimmed, and the show got under way.
Then Sandy appeared on stage, and the clapping and the chanting Arf! Arf! Arf! had started in the section of the auditorium where her class was seated. From where she had been sitting, in a handicapped space by the exit, she could not see who had started it, but she knew one of her students was responsible. She knew it, and she was angry. Mrs. Olinski had a great tolerance for mischief, but she had no patience for malice. This was not mischief. There is a playful quality to mischief. This was malice. There is a mean quality to malice. Someone in her class was terribly mean.
When the lights went on, and Mrs. Reynolds stormed on stage to scold the audience, Mrs. Olinski was able to wheel herself around to examine her students. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she scanned them one at a time. Like the cursor on a computer screen her eyes moved from the first row to the second, then stopped. Her pulse quickened. She knew. She had no proof, never would have proof. But she knew. She knew who had started the ruckus.
And she knew then that she would not, could not, ask Hamilton Knapp to be the fourth member of the team.
And that is when she went to tea at Sillington House.
Margaret Draper Diamondstein must have been waiting at the window. No sooner had Mrs. Olinski stopped her van than her old friend came rushing out the door. She was wearing a jogging suit but no coat. The wind was whipping off the lake, and she hugged her upper arms and stamped her feet as she waited for the door to open. Margy Diamondstein reached up into the van, and Eva Marie Olinski reached down out of it, and they hugged.
Then a voice said, “Hi, Grandma.”
It was Ethan.
Margaret asked, “Ethan? Is that you?”
“Yeah. Me. Ethan.”
“Come on down out of that van and let me see you,” she said. Ethan stood in front of her, looking enchantingly awkward until Margaret pulled him to her. Eva Marie Olinski saw his arms hanging limply at his side, his wrists hanging below his cuffs like meter sticks showing how much he had grown since the jacket was new. Ethan slowly lifted his arms and fit them around his grandmother’s waist as she rested her chin on the top of his head. She closed her eyes and absorbed the blond waxy smell of his hair before she stood him at arm’s length. “You’ve grown since summer,” she said.
“I have. I know,” he answered, and shot his arms out of his sleeves showing several inches bare above the wrist bones. “Would you believe, only a month ago, these covered my fingertips?”
Margaret laughed and said, “No, Ethan, I would not believe.”
“Just testing.”
Nadia waited until they had backed away from each other before saying, “Hello, Margaret.”
“Nadia!” Margaret said. “What a surprise. Is Eva Marie—Mrs. Olinski—your teacher, too?”
Nadia replied, “Yes, Margaret. Yes, she is.”
At that moment a slender man with heavy gray eyebrows came out of Sillington House, holding his knuckles to his hips as he looked over the scene. He saw Nadia and sprinted over, calling, “Nadia! Nadia!” He hugged her close and then kissed the top of her head several times until Ginger wedged her way between them. “I had no idea I’d see you this afternoon.”
Nadia said, “Ginger is a star, Grandpa. She is excellent.”
Her grandfather replied, “I have no doubt about that. After all, Ginger is a genius. And we’re going to see her tomorrow night. We’re all going. We’re going with your mother.”
“I know,” Nadia said, looking very pleased. “I know.”
Eva Marie Olinski watched Margaret Draper Diamond-stein hug her grandson. The new Mrs. Diamondstein was dressed in a jogging suit. A turquoise jogging suit. Turquoise! She had always regarded the color turquoise, like shocking pink and chartreuse, as the color equivalent of the word ain’t: quaint when seldom used but vulgar in great doses. As she watched Margaret hug her grandchild and Izzy hug his, her mental censors and her customary good manners started shutting down. She could not stand it another minute. She was on the verge of screaming with pain and rage when she felt her wheelchair begin to move. She felt herself being pushed toward the front porch of Sillington House.
Eva Marie Olinski was so blinded by jealousy that she had not noticed Mr. Singh come out. From behind her chair his voice floated down upon her in soft waves. “I have prepared a tea,” he said.
A tea? she thought. Yes, a tea. It was that time of day. It was four o’clock.
“The others will join us shortly.” Eva Marie Olinski turned around and at eye level saw a long blue apron. Her eyes traveled upward and saw a black beard, a broad white smile, a pair of amber eyes, a white turban. Saved by a genie, she thought.
Mr. Singh maneuvered her wheelchair to a table in the back of the dining room. Without asking, he ceremoniously poured tea into a delicate china cup. Cream? No. Sugar? No. Yes, it is best to drink tea without. And she did. She drank unhurriedly. Before her cup was empty, she felt something lift from her shoulders. Was it jealousy or injury? Was it anger? Was it all of the above? She replaced her emptied cup in its saucer. She waited. She was calm.
Margy and Izzy joined her at the table, and she drank another cup of tea and ate a cucumber sandwich, taking four bites out of a patch of bread so trim she could have swallowed it whole. She hardly heard what Margaret and Izzy were saying. She did not interrupt, and soon she was listening, first out of politeness—for courtesy was the first of her civilized senses to return—and then out of interest, genuine interest.
She looked around the room and saw the four children, Ethan, Noah, Nadia, and Julian sitting at a table on the far side of the room. They were talking among themselves and drinking tea. They did not interrupt one another, Mrs. Olinski thought, how unusual. There were nods and smiles and obvious pleasure in one another’s company. Mrs. Olinski thought, how unusual to find four sixth graders who listen to one another sympathetically, unselfishly. How curious. How courteous. Mrs. Olinski thought, when people come to tea, they are courteous. She thought, I believe in courtesy. It is the way we avoid hurting people’s feelings. She thought that maybe—just maybe—Western Civilization was in a decline because people did not take time to take tea at four o’clock.
The Souls continued their animated conversation, when suddenly, as if on signal, the four of them looked back at Mrs. Olinski.
And that is when she knew.
That is the exact moment she knew that Julian Singh would be the fou
rth member of her team and that she would always give good answers when asked why she had chosen them. And then and there, she also knew that someday she would drink another cup of slow tea at Sillington House.
6
The commissioner looked over his list of possible answers. “Posh and tip?” he asked. Julian quickly answered, “Posh means fashionable and is the acronym for Port Out, Starboard Home, referring to the time when India belonged to Britain, and the people traveling there wanted the shady side of the ship both going and coming. And tip, meaning the small sum of money given for services rendered, is the acronym for To Insure Promptness.”
The commissioner laughed. “You may be a little ahead of us on that one, Epiphany. I don’t have either of those acronyms on my list. We’ll have to check with our advisory panel.” He nodded to the three people sitting at a table on the far side of the room. One rapidly punched keys on a computer as the other two consulted large books. The three of them conferred briefly and passed a note to the commissioner.
“We can allow posh, but we do not find a reference for tip.”
Julian said, “With all due respect, sir, I think you ought to check another source.”
Their path to the state finals started with the sixth-grade championship. Mrs. Olinski had expected victory, for her team was quick and informed and worked together perfectly. No one had expected them to trounce the other two sixth grades, but they did. Their victory was so profound that the sixth-grade math teacher, Mrs. Sharkey, confided to the music teacher, Ms. Masolino, that for the first time in the history of Epiphany Middle School there was a chance—just a possibility, mind you—that a sixth-grade team might beat the seventh grade. Mrs. Sharkey said that, after all, she knew the current seventh grade, for she had taught them just last year, and in her opinion, when they were very, very good, they were mediocre.
The Souls practiced during activities hour—that portion of time between eleven-thirty and one o’clock that was not devoted to eating lunch. Mrs. Olinski read questions from note cards: one card; one question. She used three sets of questions.
The first was a series of questions required of everyone in a particular grade. Knowing that they would be competing with grade seven, she added their questions to her sixth grade set. The second set had been culled from previous contests. Some required only speed: How many quarters in twenty dollars? Some required cleverness: If one man could paint an eight foot by twelve foot wall in a half hour, how long would it take three men to paint a wall that was eight feet by twenty-four feet? The third set of questions were ones she had made up by weeding items from the news and connecting them to geography or history or both: A masterpiece by the artist Rembrandt was recently stolen from a museum in his native country. What is that country? What is its capital? Mrs. Olinski required that they find the country on a map, and then would ask them to name two other famous artists. Their countries? Their capital cities?
They beat grade seven, almost doubled their score. Fact: No sixth grade team had ever defeated a seventh grade team. They were scheduled to go up against grade eight. Further fact: No sixth grade had ever competed against the eighth because no sixth grade had ever gotten that far.
When word got out that Mrs. Olinski’s homeroom had a chance of beating the eighth grade, kids from the other two sixth grades started signaling a thumbs-up sign when passing a team member in the hall. They raised their arms high overhead and lifted their thumbs like a forest of small apostrophes at the ends of their closed fists.
Excitement grew throughout the week. Mrs. Olinski’s sixth graders were David versus the eighth grade Goliath, and the kids with the slingshots knew how to use them. Soon the vanquished seventh grade chose sides; they would cheer for grade six. On Thursday, the day before the showdown, kids from grades six and seven lined the halls between the cafeteria and Mrs. Olinski’s room and gave her and The Souls a round of applause as they returned from lunch to practice. Mrs. Olinski smiled and said thank you, thank you as she wheeled herself between the flanks of honor guards.
Traces of her smile remained as the rest of the class filed in for social studies. She sat at her desk and sorted out the papers that were due to be returned.
The room was quiet until a student in the back of the room let out an enormous belch and said, not too sincerely, “Sorry.”
Mrs. Olinski continued sorting papers before looking up. “Hamilton Knapp?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
“Would you please come to the front?”
He walked slowly, watching her, a half smile on his face. She let him take his time. Before he reached the front of the classroom, someone launched another belch. Its sound rocketed forward, and the laughter that followed traveled the same trajectory. Mrs. Olinski waited until Ham reached the front of the room before asking, “Jared Lord, would you please join Mr. Knapp?”
Jared also took his time, and Mrs. Olinski did not rush him either. As he ambled down his row toward the front of the room, smiling faces lifted and tilted toward him like the broad front faces of sunflowers as they follow the sun across heaven. Mrs. Olinski allowed that, too.
“Now, Mr. Knapp and Mr. Lord,” she said, “I would like the two of you to teach the entire class how to belch on command. Please describe the process for all of us.” She picked up a piece of chalk from the ledge. “Which one of you wants to take notes on the instructions we are about to receive?” Neither volunteered, so she thrust the chalk into Knapp’s hand. “I think you enjoy writing on the blackboard, Mr. Knapp,” she said. Ham took the chalk. The class registered its approval with body language that was the equivalent of silent applause.
The class waited. “I’ll help you with the spelling,” Mrs. Olinski said.
Ham began to clown around, rolling his eyes and saying, “Well, first you …”
The rest of the kids tightened their stomachs, opened their mouths, and tried to figure out how to explain a belch. Jared stood at the blackboard—empty-handed, awkward, uncomfortable—and he too, tried to figure it out. Knapp made another attempt. “Well, first you …” Then another long, awkward, uncomfortable wait. “Well, first you …”
Mrs. Olinski allowed them to stand there until three minutes seemed like thirty. Then she sent them back to their seats. “Since you cannot describe what you have done, I would call belching loudly to interrupt our class an unspeakable act. Unspeakable. And because you cannot explain how to do it, I would say that you cannot teach either.” She paused, locked eyes first with Knapp and then with Lord before adding, “But I can. If I choose to, I can explain how to belch on command, and I could teach you. If I so choose.” She looked at Knapp and Lord again, her nostrils flared slightly, then slowly turned her head to the class and added, “But I don’t.
“The front of this classroom is privileged territory. There are only two reasons for you to be here. One, you are teaching something to the rest of the class or, two, you have been invited. From now on, the only tricks that I am willing to put up with are those that you can first explain and then teach.”
She looked at Jared Lord and asked, “Do you understand, Mr. Lord?” Jared attempted a grin. His attempt failed, and he nodded yes. “Then let us have no more interruptions with unspeakable acts. No barking Arf! either. Do you understand me, Mr. Knapp?” Ham nodded yes. “Mr. Lord?” Jared said, “Yes, ma’am.”
As he returned to his seat, no one smiled at Ham or even made eye contact with him.
Suddenly Nadia Diamondstein thrust her left leg straight out into the aisle. Noah Gershom, who was three seats in back of her, stuck out his right leg. Ethan Potter saw and raised his right arm in the air. As if on cue, Julian Singh raised his left fist. For a moment above and below eye level, all four limbs stuck out, and then, just as quickly, all four disappeared. It was quite a balancing act.
Mrs. Laurencin called a school assembly for the contest against the eighth grade. The principal herself asked the questions. If a team missed its question, the other team had an opportuni
ty to answer. To break a tie, the last team to answer correctly had to correctly answer one additional question.
This was the question that the eighth grade could not answer and Noah could: Name all the parts of the human eye in the order that light reaches them.
This was the four-part question that they answered to win: Name the famous fathers of: Queen Elizabeth I of England. Esau and Jacob. Alexander the Great. Our country.
Mrs. Laurencin was impressed. The sixth grade was jubilant. Ms. Masolino said she knew it all along, and Mrs. Sharkey said they gave new meaning to the term “bottoms up.”
The Souls were now the school’s team. The next step was the contest against Knightsbridge for the district championship.
7
Any other team on spaceship Earth would have worried about Julian’s defying an official of the sovereign state of New York. But not The Souls. They would let him risk whatever he wanted.
The commissioner was—to put it politely—annoyed. He looked at his seating chart. “Mr. Singh?” he asked. “Are you Julian Singh?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Well, Mr. Singh, we all agreed to stand by the ruling of the panel of experts.”
“The panel’s information is not complete, sir.”
“Mr. Singh, we must stand by the ruling of the panel.”
“Sir,” Julian said, “long ago in England, pub owners used to place a box on the bar. They put a sign on the box that said To Insure Promptness, capitalizing each of the three words. People dropped coins …”
“I’ll allow posh but not tip.”
“With all due respect, sir, you are wrong.”
At that point, the commissioner could have disqualified the entire Epiphany team—and maybe would have—except that he was rendered speechless.
To prepare for the contest with Knightsbridge, Mrs. Olinski continued to drill her team during activities hour. The week of the Knightsbridge contest, the five of them brown-bagged their lunches so that they could practice through lunch. Mrs. Olinski’s packets of note cards grew. She drew questions at random from each of the three sets. The Souls had become so familiar with some of them that she had to ask only, “What did Martin Luther …” before four hands shot up in the air and four voices would shout out, “The Ninety-five Theses.”